WiP Wednesdays 9/16- A Week in the Life!

Wednesday 9/9

WiP Wednesday post goes up and looks great. I've made so much progress in the previous week in so many ways.

I sit down in the morning to write. I usually aim for an hour of writing sometime in my day. I realize that my outline is now a jumbled mess that I can't work off of anymore. So I proceed to write up a clean, albeit much shortened outline for Oracles Promise. (Meaning chapters that are written just get their titles in the outline. Future chapters get more detail.) In the process my two remaining flashback chapters get cut. This reduces my chapter count to 16 plus a prologue and epilogue.

After completing the outline rewrite I suffer a severe case of mental blockage. I've no idea where to take the story from here. No words come. At all. I fully expected a slow-down but not a complete screeching halt when I hit the part of the book I've never written before. Which is where I'm at now.

Midday in the car something hits me about my trilogy--it might bear too strong a resemblance to an element of J.K. Rowling's final two Harry Potter books. This threatens to shelf the entire project.

Sometime Wednesday I begin to feel the tickle of an idea for a paranormal/urban fantasy. Waiting for it to gel.

Thursday 9/10

Research for paranormal idea and for WiP in the morning.

Sometime in the course of the day my brain kicks into gear and Oracles Promise is saved with no changes to plot or structure. I've overcome the self-doubt (sort of) and realized that the element of Harry Potter that I felt I was copying is a universal element at its core and it's the core that I was using. No similarities exist.

I write nothing but future blog posts all day.

After lights out a couple of ideas pop into my head for the paranormal. It's beginning to gel together more. Will probably be my next project when I finish Oracles Promise. Starting to get a more definite plot. No characters yet. Well, not by name anyways. General ideas for characters. Probably a single-volume, which I'm totally cool with, but I'll have to wait and see. It's a toss-up between elves and angels for the paranormal element.

Lights go on and off about a dozen more times. Angels are winning out at this point. The ideas just keep flowing and my brain won't shut off to allow me to sleep. I'm really liking the idea. There seems to be infinite possibilities in it at the moment.

Friday 9/11

More ideas rapid-fire in my mind. Oracles Promise is now officially on hold as I research and develop my paranormal/urban fantasy. I've no recollection of ever being this excited about a project ever in my life.

Hit up B&N and the local library for research materials. Lots of For Dummies books. Really really loving my idea at the moment. Spend all day researching as even more ideas rapid fire in my head, both inspired by my research and just random firings of my imagination.

I've not read anything like what I'm developing. Nor have I heard of any forthcoming books that seem to have a premise or mythos like mine. (Though I know that Hush, Hush is coming next month and it will probably be the first book of angels I read.)

I spent all day wishing I could wave a magic wand and have all the developing done so I can get to writing. Most especially because I have my first two lines written already and I absolutely adore them. I think they capture voice and setting really well. Love them and can't wait to be writing this book.

Only once do I turn on the light again to write down a flash of inspiration. Good brain. Sleep is better for writing the next day anyways.

Saturday 9/12

More research, plotting and planning. Character bios get started too. There's a much smaller cast of characters. I will develop others as I need, but I have the major ones plotted at this point.

After hours of research, I feel like I'm sort of ready to start writing this book! Squee! So, I head back downstairs to write. I'll turn on some music, let my mind get carried away into this new world I've created.

Wrote about 1,000 words. Struggling with the whole "show don't tell" thing, as always. But for some reason it makes me feel like more of a failure writing this book than with Oracles Promise.

Sunday 9/13

The day got away from me so nothing much happened for the book today.

Monday 9/14

Research, research, and more research! Mostly into Air Force and NASA. (If that's not a veiled teaser, I don't know what is!) Read up on fencing and archery. Bought a bed desk to do my work on. Now I feel like I at least have some semblance of a work space. Anxious to start writing again.

More character development. Four pages of stuff about my MC. Other characters are developed as much as possible (or as much as I care to at this stage because I don't really yet know who he'll interact with most or how so I'll rework that later.)

Wrote some before going to bed. Total word count somewhere close to 2,000 words.

Tuesday 9/15

More research. This time on locations and such in Houston. Will have to really work on realistic descriptions despite never having been to Houston. (I've never been in the Air Force or NASA either but that isn't stopping me.)

The internet is really a wonderful pool of miscellania and information.

Around 3 I begin to wonder if I shouldn't just go back to writing on Oracles Promise. I don't know what to do. Then there's the looming debate: write longhand or type on the computer first time around? I've started it longhand but I kind of want to just do it on the computer.

Plug away at it longhand and write probably close to 1,000 words. (But don't quote me on that.) Twice the work as always because then I have to transcribe my longhand to the computer. Love the bed desk.

Come up with a title. Lodestar

That's the title of this new WiP. When I finish it I'll return to Oracles Promise. Don't worry, both books will get finished. I'm just super excited about this book and story that I have to tell.

Full word count now somewhere near 3,000 words.