Normally, by this point, I’ve finished up a 1 to 2 page-long outline for my 3-Day Novel. This year? Well, I wrote an outline . . . for my original idea, then I changed my mind and decided to go with fun-and-weird instead of horrifying-and-macabre. I have about three paragraphs worth of summary and some character sketches, but that’s about it. And that’s all there will be – my schedule is too crazy right now for me to do any more than that.
But you know what? I think it’s going to be OK. Sometimes it’s just better to let your mind wander and see what happens. And this story idea is so screwball, I think it will work no matter which direction it goes in. I have a loose, general plot idea (doughnuts, funerals, bestiality cults . . . the usual) – and the more strange and off-the-wall the rest of the story can be, the better. This year I am trying something different. Maybe it’ll work; maybe it won’t. I’m not going to have the time to fret about it, so why waste my energy?
The novel I’m currently revising, we’ll call it B-Killer to keep things simple, started from an idea I got while on a three-day train ride, so I whipped out my iPad and just started writing. I never wrote a single outline, a single character sketch – nothing. As I’m revising it, I’m retroactively making a character/world bible just so I have something to refer to as I work my way through because a few characters did go from having “dark eyes” to “hazel eyes,” so for the revision process it’s good to nail those details down. But in your first draft – who cares! Quantity over quality – that’s always been my mantra when banging out a first draft. Write first. Worry about the details later. Just get that idea on paper before you’re distracted by the next shiny idea to pop in your head!
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