It's Novel Season Again

Since I last reported in, the aforementioned revisions have been keeping me busy, and I'm making good if gradual progress. I devoted a solid, necessary chunk of time to planning the next draft of my novel but avoided getting trapped in that stage forever, so I'm now on to rewriting based on my plan.

My planning this time mostly involved making outlines, for some reason multiple partially overlapping outlines that I eventually had to merge together. Using these outlines, I tested out different ideas for new plot directions until I settled on the sequence that works best. I dealt in advance with many of the time-consuming logistics that so often stall me in the middle of writing, such as determining how to place a specific set of characters together with the motivation to discuss a certain topic, or deciding whether events should be shown, summarized, or skipped past with blank space. The scene-by-scene outline I wound up with gives me a place to keep adding any notes I think of while working on different scenes, or while lying in bed trying to sleep.

Tearing apart text I've previously worked so hard on is always scary (insert Halloween sounds), and I was nervous to begin actual revision, but I'm getting back into the swing of it. It's satisfying to recognize that I'm creating even better text, and I'm excited about putting my new plot and character ideas into action. Of course, I'm generally the least excited about writing at whatever moment I have to force myself to sit down and begin, but once I've stared out the window in despair for a few minutes, I tend to find that somehow sentences are coming together and time is passing and oh yeah, I guess I really do like this writing thing.

I haven't participated in National Novel Writing Month in years, but I'm still well-conditioned to find November an excellent month for writing productivity. As I'm cheering on my NaNoing friends, I hope to gain inspiration from the wordiness in the air this time of year. I don't have a specific goal in mind for next month, but I do intend to buckle down and focus on my novel (which originated as a NaNoWriMo project long ago).

In other seasonal developments, we've finally had some rain here in northern California, though the weather keeps climbing back to summer temperatures. While I do prefer sun to not, it's been such a hot year that I'm looking forward to chillier days and a chance to snuggle inside the cozy sweater I finished back in February, just before the weather started warming up. In case winter never comes, I've also started knitting a lighter weight sweater. And since the real purpose of this paragraph is to brag about my knitting accomplishments, I'll point out the two wraps I completed this summer.

Onward into autumn, and good luck to everyone embarking on NaNoWriMo or an alternate challenge!

Good Stuff Out There:

→ The Millions shares a comforting/panic-inducing conversation between Whitney Terrell, Emily Barton, and Alexander Chee about spending ten years or more on a novel: "Working so long on a book is a scary proposition in the supposedly 'fast-paced' media culture of the 21st century. But it happens more often than one might think. The three of us sat down to share strategies and retrace our steps in the hope that our experiences might provide a practical map -- or at least give some hope -- to other writers engaged in a long work. Here are our notes on a decade in the literary wilderness."