If you’ve read my other blog posts, you know I’ve been working on a new book while my debut winds it way through the very exciting but very slow process that is traditional publishing. I workbooked and brainstormed, notecarded and outlined my new project, then sent my ridiculously long, unreasonably detailed monster of a proposal off to my agent.
And she gave me the green light!
So, this week I’ve been working on actually writing the thing. Which, you would think would go fast, considering the fact that I have such a comprehensive outline to guide me.
Yeah. Not quite.
You see, I’m very particular when I start writing a book. I need that first line to be “perfect.” I don’t mean it can’t change. It might, it might not. But I need it to set the tone for my first draft. I need it to evoke the emotion I’m trying to convey with my story. Mostly, I need it to pull the rest of the words out of me.
I’m a little over three thousand words into my manuscript right now, approximately 2.7% finished according to my estimated word count goal. The first chapter is done, my first line chosen with the utmost care. Which is laughable, really, considering it’s only two words. But I love it. And right now, that’s what I need: to fall in love with this new book.
The second chapter is coming together like a puzzle, but one of those puzzles from a thrift store or charity shop, where you’re not even sure if you have all the pieces until you start to figure out where the ones you do have fit. I have bits of information I want to work in, to lay the groundwork for the setting, the characters, the atmosphere. I try to give my story a strong foundation. It is slow work.
I prefer to write chronologically, even though I use Scrivener and have my entire plot outlined. I follow my words like breadcrumbs, make sure one scene builds on the next, leads to the next. If my goal is to have a changed character by the last page, then I need to make her change, watch her change incrementally in each scene. How do I know who she is on page one hundred, if I haven’t seen who she has become on page fifty?
Still, my outline is not set in stone. I have no character descriptions in my outline, no place descriptions. These things come to me as I write and as I research. In my very first chapter, I included a detail that will become relevant in another few thousand words. This is one of my favorite parts of starting a new project, building the world and characters from the ground up, making them feel like real people and real places.
The first chapters are the hardest, but I think they can be the most rewarding, too. It can be daunting, not knowing if you’re heading in the right direction, though the outline alleviates most of those particular anxieties for me. I know where I’m going. Now, I just need to get there.
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