It’s March already – happy St David’s day for yesterday everybody – which means it’s time to hold myself accountable for my novel writing progress. It’s been another busy month, with my Building Blocks of Fiction course still underway, several critique groups on the go, a retreat weekend to co-host, and a 5-night residential retreat to prepare and co-host next week. And yet, I do feel I’ve made some good progress with my writing, so yey.
The plan for February was to:
- Outline all the major plot points.
- Flesh out protagonists and develop other characters.
- Sketch out protagonist’s character arc.
I’ve done quite a bit of work on parts 1 and 3, but for the moment, I feel like the amount of planning I’ve done, particularly in relation to the second half, is probably as far as I can go at this stage. Same goes for the fleshing out the characters in part 2. I know all the major plot points (I think), and have an idea who the other players will be, but in order to work it out in more detail, I found that I needed to start writing. See what comes up and take it from there.
When I first came to writing, like so many, I was a pure pantser – somebody who just sits in a chair and writes by the seat of their pants with no idea where any of it is going. The Bycatch Principle was written that way (for the first draft) and it took a ridiculous amount of redrafting to knock the rambling mess into shape. I pants-ed a second novel too, which was such a rambling mess that I’ve never actually been able to pull it together into something coherent, and have abandoned it to a bottom drawer.
Over the years, as I’ve learned more and more about the craft, I’ve become more and more of a plotter. The last novel I wrote (co-wrote in fact) was plotted to the hilt before we ever got off the blocks (hopefully we’ll polish and start submitting that later this year). But really I’m a hybrid: part plotter, part pantser. About half way through February, having done some plotting, I realised I needed to hop over to the pantsing side of things, to start to let the details of the story unfold through the act of writing. So that’s what I’ve been doing.
While I might not have fully achieved February’s goals, I have made good inroads into them. Plus, I have knocked out 8,500 words, which more than covers the entire 6000 word goal I’d set for March. These are pantsing words, rough, but the story is building and unfolding in tiny stages. I have the whole of March to continue fleshing out the plot and characters, and I’m already guaranteed to surpass my goal for the wordcount by the end of the coming month. Happy bunny here.
So how come I’m suddenly finding the time to get all this done when I’ve been struggling for so long to fit my own writing into my life? The answer is, by committing to communal writing sprints. I’m terrible at turning up for my own stuff, but I always turn up for other people. I joined a few writing groups, where people gather together to undertake writing sprints – including the Falmouth branch of the Shut Up and Write group plus various online writing sprint sessions. This might sound like a simple change, but it’s been a deal changer for me. No matter what’s been going on, I have turned up and written. Stuff gets done in that hour, and it mounts up. So far, so good.
To help me get further with the plotting side of things this month, I’ve booked myself on as a guest at a writing retreat towards the end of March, so I’m hopeful that the bulk of my remaining plot queries will be well answered by my next blog. I’m confident that many more words will have been spilled onto the page by then too. All in all, I’m very pleased with progress so far.
If you’re stuck with your writing, or struggling to justify fitting it into your busy life, why not find a group of writers to commit to a regular meet up with? Put it in your diary, then turn up and write. I’m thinking about setting up a zoom group myself, maybe from April onwards seeing as I’m away a lot in March. If you’re interested in potentially linking up to that, keep following this blog and I’ll keep you updated. Maybe that one simple change will prove transformative for you too. After all, the biggest common denominator amongst all successful writers is that they turn up and get the writing done. Nothing happens without that.
Kath Morgan Writer 