I started writing a new book yesterday afternoon. I don’t know where it will go, but more and more of it kept coming to life in my head until I had to get it out, and I got close to 2,000 words written. So I guess I’m doing National Novel Writing Month with a bit of a late start. We’ll see what happens with it, but I did the usual “shiny new idea” thing by writing down what I knew about it, and it kept building and developing instead of fizzling out. Now I have fleshed-out characters and a world with history.

So, I guess I have a new story in the works. We’ll see where it goes from here, but so far, writing has been fun and I’ve looked forward to working on it. I got up this morning and wrote more than a thousand words. When work feels like play, it’s a good sign.

Now, about 25,000 words from now I’ll be struggling and another new idea will hit and it won’t be as much fun, but I’ll enjoy this while it lasts. Even if it doesn’t go anywhere, it’s good to be reminded that I started doing this for fun and only later made any money at it. This is reminding me of when I used to scribble in spiral notebooks in my bedroom when I was a teenager, making up stories. I just hope I finish this, unlike those things I wrote as a kid. I was really bad about getting an idea, starting to write it, then getting another idea that was even better, and starting to write it, and so forth.

Now I really want to get back to the story because something good is about to happen and I can’t wait to see it.

I’m on the verge of starting to write something new. The opening scene has been playing out in my head in different variations, and the one that hit me last night as I was falling asleep feels like it’s the right one. That led to seeing the second scene, and that means that the characters are pretty solid in my head and I’m seeing the movie of this book in my mind. That’s when it gets exciting and fun.

It’s a cold day and I still have a bit of a cold, so spending a day playing in an imaginary land sounds like the way to go. I’ve got my adjustable bed in what I call “recliner mode” so that it works like a chair, I’ve got the electric blanket, and I’ve got a pot of hot tea in the thermos. I’m all set.

Now watch me sputter out after an hour of writing, and I’ll know that there’s more work to do or maybe the idea isn’t viable. That’s why this is a fun/scary/exciting phase of writing, when that perfect, wonderful story in my head crashes into reality and I see what it really looks like.

Fortunately, the cold weather isn’t supposed to stick around long, but it’s been below freezing enough to kill off the mosquitoes, so I’ll be able to enjoy the outdoors even more. Now let’s just hope my cold goes away that quickly.

I’ve had a busy day so far. I’ve written a thousand words, I’ve taken a walk, I’ve gone to the library, and I’ve voted. Normally, I vote on election day since my precinct is usually pretty quiet during the day, but the early voting place is at the library, and I needed books anyway, so I figured I’d get it taken care of now in case election day is rainy or I get sick. Now I don’t have to worry about it.

I tried writing before getting online this morning, and that worked pretty well. I’m not normally a morning writer, but I thought I’d give it a try. I could probably have gone on, but I needed to look up info for some of the down-ballot candidates, and I wanted to get to the polling place before people started taking lunch breaks to go vote. Next week I’ll really see how far I can get before I check in online.

I’ve discovered the feature in Scrivener that takes your due date and your word count and calculates the number of words you need to write each day, then recalculates after each day’s writing session. I’m using an arbitrary date for this draft to make sure I have enough time to tinker with it before I need to turn it in, and although the daily total I need to make that deadline is a bit higher than I usually write, it’s not higher by much, and going over my needed count for the day will drop the daily goal on subsequent days. It’s amazing how motivational that is.

Because of my early start, just hitting the usual number of words I do in an afternoon will let me go above the current target. I’m more than halfway through with this draft, and I think I have a good idea of what will happen in the rest of the story, though a new idea that will alter things somewhat struck me on my walk this morning, so I need to play with that.

I’ve got a library book festival this weekend, and in addition to being on a panel, I’m doing a workshop on story structure. I spent much of yesterday working on my workshop, and doing that made me realize where I’m going wrong in the book I’m working on. It’s not a massive course correction, just some subtle things, but I’m glad I caught it now rather than after a draft when those little things had become major.

Some people seem to think of structure as a restriction or a constraint. I find it a useful tool. In a novel, you don’t really have to force it into a particular structure. I find that looking for the various stages is a good way to find the story and to stay on track instead of wandering all over the place. Just filling in the very basic elements of structure is a good way to test an idea. I think, to some extent, the difference between an idea and a story is putting some kind of structure to it — what does the hero want, what’s stopping him from getting it, what will he have to do to get it, what big decisions will he have to make along the way?

This is why I like doing workshops, even when I’m busy. I learn as much from preparing as any of the attendees do. It forces me to take a step back and evaluate what I’m doing instead of falling into bad habits or going on autopilot.

If you’re in the North Texas area and want to know more, I’ll be doing this workshop at the Mid-Cities Teen Book Festival on Oct. 20. Come see how story structure can work for you.

After some regrouping in previous days to fix some elements of the book before I moved forward, I made good progress yesterday.

Some of it may have been thanks to one of the sessions I went to at the event this weekend. It was about creativity and got into discussion of the “flow state.” I’d read the book on the subject when it first came out. Well, started to read. Then I had to return it to the library because it was due and there was a waiting list so I couldn’t renew it. I may have to pick it up again and make another stab at it.

Anyway, a flow state is when you just start doing something almost automatically. The critical part of your brain gets turned off and you lose track of time. It’s like you blink and an hour has gone by and you’ve written a couple of thousand words. I’ve experienced this, and it’s wonderful. I haven’t been doing a lot of it lately because I’ve been so busy analyzing what I’m writing.

One of the ways to help get into a flow state is to listen to classical or jazz music. Apparently, there’s something about that kind of music that distracts the part of the brain that normally trips you up, and it frees you to just create. Normally, I write in total silence, but I thought I’d give it a shot. I did get a fair amount done when I put on a Chopin CD, but I found that I focused a bit too much on the music because the music was so familiar to me. Next, I opened my Amazon Prime Music app and played my new choir director’s album. When she’s not directing our choir, she’s a concert pianist and has a lovely album of reinterpretations of classical Russian pieces for piano and cello. The new arrangements mean the pieces aren’t so familiar that they’re distracting. That worked well enough that I was startled when the album ended. Then I found a playlist of classical music for focus, and that also worked, except when a familiar piece popped up and I had to see what it was (in one case, it was a track from a CD I have).

So, it seems that playing unfamiliar classical music is the trick. I have written to movie soundtracks in the past, and that can work. Then the music becomes so familiar I can tune it out. It doesn’t work for John Williams because I just want to listen. One of the best CDs for tuning out the world and writing for me is the fifth Harry Potter soundtrack (Order of the Phoenix). But it just doesn’t work for me for this book. It’s the wrong mood/tone.

Now we’ll see if it works again today or if it’s just a fluke.

I’m in the early phase of a book, when I’m still kind of finding my way, figuring out the specifics behind a vague sentence in the proposal. I felt like I ran into a brick wall yesterday, where I wasn’t at all sure what should come next. When I immediately became quite distracted, I figured I knew what was up: my brain was trying to solve the problem and was getting me out of the way.

I woke up this morning with a partial solution. We had a good cold snap, so it was my first night of the season to get to sleep under the real comforter (instead of the knitted lace blanket or the light down throw) and wake up feeling warm and snuggly while it was cool outside, so I let myself lie in bed to enjoy it. That was when I found myself rewinding in the book and finding the spots I needed to tweak to set up what happened next. I’m still not exactly sure what happens next, but that may come to me once I go back and fix things. The things I need to fix are worldbuilding issues and how they intersect with the characters and story, so once I get my world clear, I think everything else will come together better.

So, all that lazing about this morning was really work time. Considering that I actually had narrative in my head that I now just need to transcribe, I don’t think that’s even a stretch or a rationalization.

And that’s why this job is awesome. I can get some really productive stuff done while snuggled under the comforter. Next, I’m going to take a cup of tea onto the patio to write out my revised outline and make sure it still makes sense now that I’m fully conscious.

I got a rough outline of scenes done yesterday, as well as developed the major characters. That means it’s time to start writing. I just have to do one bit of research and work out a timeline, and then I’ll be ready to start. This shouldn’t feel so much like the dive off a cliff that starting a new book usually feels like, since I’ve already written about a thousand words, but there’s still a moment that feels kind of like vertigo.

Meanwhile, I got my kitchen cleaned yesterday. I’d already organized the cabinets, and now the counters are pristine. I still want to do a little work on one of the pantry shelves and I need to mop the floor, but it’s progress. Cleaning is a better way to take breaks between writing sessions than social media. It’s movement that counts as exercise and that feels different from sitting, and it has visible results that are very satisfying.

We’re getting into the time of year when I really want to bake, but I’m strangely not all that keen on eating at the moment. I haven’t had much appetite since I got that cold a couple of weeks ago. I’ve even got desserts that are ready to go, but since I haven’t been hungry, I haven’t bothered. I’m stockpiling recipes for when I have a baking urge and am hungry. I’m trying to focus on nutritious food when I do eat, and I’ve been trying new recipes from a cookbook on the Mediterranean diet (recommended by my doctor), so I guess that takes care of my cooking urge. This weekend, I made a vegetable lasagna, which used a couple of kinds of squash, red bell pepper, goat cheese, and olives with marinara sauce and whole wheat lasagna noodles. It was … interesting. Not bad, but given the effort involved and the quantity produced (I have enough in the freezer to provide all the veggie lasagna I could ever want for months), I don’t think it will make it into regular rotation. We’re supposed to get a cold front this weekend, so I think I’m finally going to get to make a stew with my Instant Pot.

And that’s enough rambling for the day. Time to dive off that cliff and get to work!

Yesterday was all about getting back into the mindset to start work on this new book. The last time I opened those files was in February, so I had to dig up all my notes and remember what I’d decided about the characters and story. Then I realized that I hadn’t done much development for the characters who weren’t in the opening scene that was part of the proposal. I had a vague mental image of a character we’re about to meet in the next scene, and I knew the role he played in the story, but I didn’t have a good sense of his personality. I also realized I didn’t even know what the main character looks like. She’s the narrator, so I was seeing the world through her eyes and never actually saw her.

So I spent most of yesterday on character development. Today I’m going to be working on a more detailed outline, figuring out what scenes there need to be and a bit of what happens in each. I have a couple more characters I need to develop in more depth, but that may wait until they come up in the book.

Some of this feels like it could be procrastination, but I think the writing will go more smoothly and there will be less rewriting if I have more of it figured out ahead of time, if I make a lot of the tough story decisions up front. I reserve the right to change my mind if something better comes up, but it does help to have a plan up front.

Meanwhile, I’m trying to move more throughout the day, so every hour I’m taking a short (using a timer to keep it short) break to do housework. I got my kitchen mostly cleaned yesterday in five-minute increments. I have to admit that it was nice to come into the kitchen this morning to make breakfast and see all those clean, clear surfaces. Last week, I reorganized one of my cabinets, getting rid of a lot of extraneous food storage containers and clearing space to put a lot of other things away or make things that were at the back of the pantry more reachable. I seem to be becoming a neat freak as I get older. We’ll see how much organization and cleaning I can do in five-minute sessions throughout the day.

There are some dangers to being in research mode on one project and revision mode on another. I’m not overly crazy about revision. Sometimes it’s fun to take something that’s not so great and take it to the next level, but usually it’s just plain tedious. The excitement of discovering the story is over and there’s often a deadline looming. It’s very easy to fall into a zombie-like state and realize you don’t even remember what you’ve just been reading.

That’s why I’ve been breaking up revision sessions with research sessions. I work on a chapter, which is about as much as I can deal with before I find myself getting lazy, then I spend half an hour or so reading a reference book. Except sometimes the time gets away from me because I LOVE research. What I’m reading right now is history, which is something I love. I would have majored in history in college, but I wasn’t sure what kind of job I could get with that degree (and I needed to find a job to support my goal of writing novels). I probably ended up with an informal minor in history because almost all of my electives related in some way to history.

To me, reading a book on history is almost as much fun as reading a novel. For the book I’m researching, I’m drawing upon multiple historical periods. One is one I know a lot about, so I’m mostly looking for new insights and details that are pertinent to the world I’m building. One is a period I’ve done some research in and am interested in, but I still have a lot more to learn. And one is a period I know next to nothing about, but it’s fascinating to learn. I hadn’t even thought about drawing upon this period, but I was watching a documentary that I hoped would touch upon one of the other periods I was researching, and it brought up a lot of information about this other time, and I realized how relevant it was to the story I had in mind.

If I do my job correctly, readers may recognize bits and pieces in my world that are relevant to our real world, but it will still be a new and interesting place. Building a world is a lot of fun, imagining their history and culture, thinking about what it looks like, what people wear, what they do, what they eat, and so forth. This will be a true “secondary world” in that it’s not set in our world in any way, though it is based on things from our world (since that’s the only world I’ve lived in). It’s a story idea that’s been lurking in my head for years, and it’s finally jumping up an down and demanding attention.

But first, I have to finish revising this book. In between research sessions.

Something I’ve been struggling with lately is finding the right balance for creating tension by making things difficult for my characters.

It may have something to do with other stress I have going on in my life and in the world, but I’ve lately had real difficulty reading books in which characters make poor choices. I’ve been reading a series that I enjoy, but it’s sometimes difficult to get through because the characters just keep making bad choices that get them into more trouble. I spend a lot of the time I’m reading going “No! Don’t trust him!” or “Arrghh! You know better than to do that!” I sometimes even have to put the book down and walk away for a little while (which, I suppose, is a good sign that I’m emotionally invested).

I seem to have overcorrected in my own writing. The feedback I got from my agent on a book I’ve been working on is that there’s no tension because the characters never fail. If they come up with a theory, it’s proven correct. If they try something, it works. Looking back at it, I can see that, and I can tell I was writing most of it during the spring when I was going through all that medical stress. Maybe trying to write a book during all that was a bad idea. Or maybe I should give up on traditional publication with this story and publish it as something to read when you can’t deal with stress. A publisher wouldn’t be interested as-is, but there might be enough readers who just want a fun read to relax with.

What I need to find is a happy medium, where the heroes can make good choices that don’t make me groan out loud but still be wrong and still fail. That means the villains need to be smarter and more active or the heroes can be missing key bits of information. That’s still a bit stressful to me because institutional injustice, where the bad guys have all the power, is one of those things I find it hard to read/watch. But I’d rather have my characters up against someone who has too much power and that causes their efforts to fail than have my characters make dumb choices. If they trust the wrong person, it should be someone even the reader thinks they should have trusted. I don’t want readers going “No! Don’t do that, you idiot! Can’t you see he’s up to no good?”

I’m in a better place emotionally and medically right now, so maybe a lot of the problem will be taken care of going forward. I’ll just need to take a step back before I can work on fixing that book. And in the meantime, I can work on something else.