So remember how my plans were to finish detailing Project Murder House by the end of the quarter? Well . . . I just finished today, and let me tell you — y’all, I thought this novel was gonna be 30 chapters, 40 max, but it’s sitting at a hefty 51 chapters . . . and that isn’t including the prologue or epilogue. So yeah, my quick little novel is not so little anymore and all that’s left is to write the darned book . . . I think I’ll leave for later after I’ve hammered out my characters’ names (yikes. Yep, I really haven’t done that yet.)
In the meantime, however, I’ve spent the rest of my day organizing my general plan for juggling multiple writing projects at once. You wanna hear my plans? Sure you do — if you don’t, then why are you even reading this? For my good looks? I don’t think so.
Write a minimum of one draft 1 chapter in Project Murder House a week.
Edit said chapter to draft 2in the same week.
Alternate weekly between writing a draft 1 chapter of Evercrown and a short story in my short story project — Project Apocalypse.
Edit said chapter/short story in the same week.
Edit a past chapter of Evercrown to draft 3.
And done. That, ladies and germs, is how I — overachiever, type-A, workaholic Charlie — will manage writing a novel, book 1 of a trilogy, and book 1 of a five book series of short stories simultaneously. It’s all rather simple and efficient — what were you expecting, a fifty step course on writing? Non merci, this writer likes things that work not things that look impressive.
However, I’m decidedly not tackling Project MH as I have with OHME. I’ve put together a writing plan that’ll let me write like normal and still afford me my dirty habit of editing as I write — don’t try that at home unless supervised, kids, screw-it-editing is not for the faint of heart. In the past I had no idea what I was doing — thinking I’d write a portion of the book and start editing it as I continued to write (as I have with OHME). Learn from my mistakes. Don’t do that. I repeat. Do. NOT. Do. That. Instead, the editing plan I’ve built for myself is, again, simple and efficient.
Write five chapters over as many weeks and edit them to draft 2 (as mentioned in the above list).
Take a full week to edit said five chapters to draft 3 and use all spare time to work on other projects.
Repeat for every five chapters.
Every ten chapters, begin editing one to two previous chapters to draft 4. These chapters will be considered finished-for-now until after the alpha-reader phase.
Do this until the book is complete.
Give it to alpha-readers so they can tell you everything that’s wrong with it (and sometimes what’s right with it) and repeat until your fingers bleed. Hopefully you’ll have a book to publish by then, but if not — don’t worry — eventually the nerve ending in your fingers’ll die and you won’t be able to feel the pain anymore =). (Dear Lord, when was the last time someone made an emoticon unironically?)
Unfortunately, I have no progress on OHME or any of my short stories, but since I plotted out and arranged an entire novel in a little over a month, I think I can get away with it, yeah? Yeah. Plus, I’ll be making new YouTube videos this week between writing and life, so hopefully I’ll be able to edit them relatively well — I think I know someone who can help me with that, so keep y’all’s fingers crossed!
Alright y’all, that’s it from me this time. I don’t know y’all, but I love y’all — thank you for following my writing journey and I hope it inspires you to keep on track with your own creative craft! Bye!