September 29, 2020

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.

1. Write a minimum of one draft 1 chapter in Project Murder House a week.

2. Edit said chapter to draft 2in the same week.

3. Alternate weekly between writing a draft 1 chapter of Evercrown and a short story in my short story project — Project Apocalypse.

4. Edit said chapter/short story in the same week.

5. 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.

1. Write five chapters over as many weeks and edit them to draft 2 (as mentioned in the above list).

2. Take a full week to edit said five chapters to draft 3 and use all spare time to work on other projects.

3. Repeat for every five chapters.

4. 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.

5. Do this until the book is complete.

6. 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!

September 11, 2020

Hey y’all, so because of all the plotting and organizing I’ve put into my next novel — Project Murder House — I haven’t done a whole lot of blank-page-writing. Now, that’s my fault for letting myself get swept up in something and neglect my other book-babies, and it’s something that comes with the territory of working on multiple projects at once — especially when you intend on publishing each of them eventually. However, because of my short hiatus — like a week of no blank-page-writing — it left the first draft of Evercrown chapter 18 a hot mess. I don’t write these often, but chapter 18 was a . . . draft 0. I know, I know, shocking.

I wrote the first draft this past Wednesday and it was only three pages long . . . three pages! Never in my life have I ever written something so short — not even a short story. It was a glorified bullet point list of what happened in-story and I was completely dissatisfied, but I knew everything that needed to be there was there, so I did what any good writer does — I started editing it immediately because I was impatient and scared I had written a pile of crap lol.

I ended up editing half of it and added another page to the manuscript with details and much needed description, but it was late and my brain was hurting, so I left it alone to work on detailing more chapters of Project MH — which went well, btw. Then yesterday, I finished editing it to draft 1 and it is officially 5 pages long. That’s pretty normal for me unless the chapter involves multiple locations, so I’m much more confident in the installment and will edit it to draft 2 tomorrow — just in time to meet my weekly goals, lol.

As for Project MH, I’ve made tremendous progress. The entire novel is plotted out in bullet points that I’m now detailing into chapters. So far I’ve detailed up to chapter 11 or 12 — things are blurring together in my head lol, that’s why I write all this down — which doesn’t sound very far, but when I look at my remaining points, the list is pretty short compared to what it was. So I’m beginning to suspect Project MH will be a relatively short, fast paced novel. Under different circumstances this would worry me, but fast paced and relatively short is befitting of the murder-mystery/thriller type genre, so this just means I’ve plotted out my chapters well and only included things that were necessary. Yay me!

As I write this, however, I realize that I’ve been throwing around jargon that I never seem to explain — or never explain well — so lemme give a brief summary of my plotting process. I’ll make sure it’s to the point so no one gets bored lol.

1. Once I have an idea, I ask myself questions about it — who are these characters? Where are we? Why is this happening? What are these characters doing and why? Then I take the answers and ask even more questions until I have an idea of the characters involved, the location, the themes, and the goals of each character as well as my own.

2. With the foundations in place and grand ideas floating in my brain, I begin the thought-dump phase. I open a word-doc on my computer and let every small idea vomit onto screen — I also jot down ideas on my phone or in my writer-journal when I’m out. I keep doing this until those random ideas coalesce into connected ideas that become more complex and interwoven. In this step, world building happens naturally, as does backstory and plotting because all of these are connected in some capacity and directly effect each other.

3. When my random ideas have stopped being random and I can clearly see scenes and events and places growing in my story, I take each of my ideas and expand them, writing out whole scenes or subplots as bullet points as they come to me. This can be an intricate family history, a repeated action throughout the story that effects something, even intended imagery that’s meant to resonate with the reader and characters alike. At this stage nothing’s organized, but the story is gradually coming together in my head and I’m able to see scenes happening in order.

4. At this point, almost everything that will be in the story is written but disorganized, so I take the time to read through my notes and write them in one sentence descriptions on a second word-doc in chronological order. As I go, there will often be large gaps between major points, so I’ll sit and think how to get from one point to the next and write down the ideas that come. I allow these to be much longer depending on the detail of the ideas, but never more than ten sentences. If the idea is longer, then I’ll write it in detail on my thought-dump page and refer back to it later.

5. Once everything has been written in chronological order and the main plot, the subplots, the characters, the locations, the goals, the obstacles, and a clear beginning, middle, and ending have been accounted for, I go down the list of points and lump them together based on what i want in a single chapter. Now, there’ll also be things that will happen off page but will be mentioned or directly effects the story in some way that will never be shown. These points I will put in brackets so I know something has happened without needing to include it on page. I call this process detailing because, as I do this, I’ll write out in excruciating detail what will happen in the chapter by referring back to my thought-dump page. I do this until all my points are done and I’m satisfied with the flow of the story — If I’m not, then I’ll brainstorm other ideas to weave into the plot or scrap whole ideas for new ones.

So there you go, now you know my five-step process of pre-writing preparation and will hopefully understand my lingo a little better, lol. And now you can see why I’m so excited and motivated to work on detailing Project MH — it’s the last step before I begin actually writing the story and I’m so close to writing this novel it’s just about all my mind can dwell on lately.

Alright y’all, that’s gonna be it from me this time. I hope you enjoyed the post — maybe my process will even inspire some people, who knows. Remember to stay safe and keep creating! Bye!

September 4, 2020

With September comes the closing of the third quarter and my approach to meeting all my goals, y’all!

Evercrown is being written and edited — chapter 3 has been upgraded to draft 3 and chapter 17 has been upgraded to draft 2. Project Murder House is officially plotted out, all I have to do is arrange everything into chronological chapters (the first two are already planned in detail). So, for the remainder of the quarter I think I’ll spend it fine tuning Project MH and finally put down the first words of draft 1 between writing out Evercrown.

That’s pretty much all the news I have on the writing side of being an aspiring author, but on the advertisement side . . . I have made some progress — small, but it’s still progress. I’ve made two posts on my FaceBook page (which I never thought I’d do), I’ve been updating my bog semi-regularly (it’s better than when I first started) and I remembered I have an Instagram, so I’ve starting posting there again as well. I’ve gotten a few good eyes from it — nothing big, but I wasn’t expecting immediate attention anyway. And beside media, I’ve been telling everyone I can in person about my writing and goals as an aspiring author — I think people are starting to realize I’m serious about this author thing lol.

Aside from writing, the YouTube project I’ve wanted to do for almost a year has started to fall back into place. I’ll have to learn how to edit videos, but if I don’t do it then I’ll never . . . do it, y’know? So I just have to be brave and put myself out there — my face is already all over my Instagram and part of my FaceBook, so what’s different about it being on YouTube? * chuckles nervously * But in all seriousness, I’ve been working on making a podcast with some friends and it’s given me some practice in front of the camera (and what it’s like behind it), so I think it’ll be a little easier to make my own content in the near future. Then y’ll can see what it’s like up close and personal and I can even start sharing what I’ve learned on my brief journey and from others that are far ahead of me.

It may seem odd that I’m so passionate (driven?) about getting myself on YouTube, but that’s where I first learned that writers don’t have to be alone and isolated sufferers for meager profit. It’s where YouTubers like Jenna Moreci first taught me what to do/not do when writing. It’s where Kate Cavanaugh inspired me to write in the morning when I didn’t feel like it, because if she was just a normal person and still learning while being a writer then I had no excuses. It’s where I learned what people like to read, what it’s like to write full-time, what it’s like to write part-time. It’s where the first sprouts of the writer inside me grew and let me bloom into the creature I am today — an aspiring author and now-novelist who loves his craft.

So it may seem odd that I want YouTube to be a major part of my author-platform, but if I can inspire just one writer, if I can help impart some of my knowledge on someone who’s in the same shoes I was almost two years ago, then I want to do it. Us writers have to stick together because . . . we’re too weird for anyone else to understand sometimes lol.

Alright y’all, that’s it from me today! Remember that what you love matters, and even if you can’t do it for a career, never let it die . . . that’s a piece of yourself you’re letting go of, and you might not get it back. So keep writing, keep learning, and drawing, and cooking, and singing, and dancing, and being weird in the face of normalcy! Let yourself run wild and see where it takes you (so long as it’s within the law of course lol)! Bye!