Organization and Order

Earlier last week, I had decided that I’d spend part of my weekend doing more brainstorming for the story I mentioned in my last post. There are two different paths I could direct the plot, but I figured that I’d finally sit down with my handy plot chart and decide which route I should take. Because at my current rate, there’s no way I’d be ready to start the actual process of writing in two weeks. (Life kinda got in the way and I had to push my project to the side.)

Except I did none of that this weekend.

Instead, I was drowning in photos.

On Friday, my dad finally decided to develop all the photos that have accumulated on the family camera and on his phone (plus a handful on my phone). Since I’m basically the family historian, I’ve been pestering him since January to take the photos to Walgreens already so I could fill in the photo albums. After all, there was a year and a half worth’s of pictures, and I wanted to have them in my hands as soon as possible.

Of course, nothing is ever as easy as you think.

We had to take four trips to Walgreens. Something about the app didn’t want to function properly on my dad’s phone, so there’d be gaps of pictures that didn’t get printed. And then some of the stacks that I received were all out of order. I had index cards to look off of for any photos that were derived from the camera; however, most of the pictures were pulled from the phone. That meant, when it came time to place the photos in their proper order, I had to constantly look at the phone’s gallery. Plus the camera itself, for the index cards doesn’t actually stamp dates on them.

On my quest for photo organization, I fanned everything around in me in a circle and began to sort chronologically. Everything to my left belonged to 2016, everything to my right were taken this year. One would think that I was about to engage in some sort of ritual. The albums were marked with post-notes of their pictures’ dates. (I can’t physically write the dates down yet, just in case I have to shift photos around and the days no longer matched.)

As of now, I’m only halfway done inputting all the photos within the albums. I don’t know the actual total of how many pictures I’ve been dealing with, but I know that it’s upwards of 700 photos.

While I’ve been figuratively crying to myself in a corner during this whole ordeal, it reminded me of the dreaded step of when I near the end of a large writing project. You see, once I finish writing the beginning of a manuscript (about 10k words), I then start skipping ahead. I have an idea of how I’d like the story to end, so I begin to write the scenes out of order. Basically, I write whatever I’m in the mood to write, because sometimes that’s the only way not to burn out or experience writer’s block. Once I’ve determined that I’ve written everything I can, then it comes time to piece everything together. I can’t even describe it as a puzzle because not all of the pieces are even there. I have to eventually fill in and write more scenes so I can thread all the already written chapters together and try to create some sort of cohesiveness. Overall, it’s very headache inducing.

And that’s what I’m dealing with in regards to these photos. For the most part, I know the order of events. But there are some minor details where I just don’t have a clue. (Like, why are there so many pictures of cars? At what point in time or event were they taken?) But like the entire writing process, sometimes things have to get messy and disjointed before they can finally come together to achieve your vision.

That’s always the hope, anyway.

Thinking Ahead

…Is it too early to think about this year’s NaNoWriMo? It doesn’t occur for another seven weeks, but I’ve already decided on what kind of project I’ll be working on for the month of November. (Of course, anything could happen within that time period and I could always change my mind.)

Perhaps I should rewind for a bit and explain.

Early last week, I decided to browse through some short stories of mine that I had saved on my computer. I felt like getting back into the swing of writing, but I was coming up a bit short on inspiration. Most of the stories I was rereading were pieces I had worked on back in the spring. Also, most of them were incomplete stories, but I just wanted to revisit them.

Once I opened up one particular story that I had written back in March, it sparked something inside of me. The “story” consists of only one scene, and sits at 681 words (so, three pages with double space). I actually stopped writing it in the middle of a conversation between the three characters, if you can believe it.

I didn’t have much of an overarching plot for this particular story, but I liked the characters I had created. On a separate Word document I saved during March, I had even (very) roughly sketched out four other characters that hadn’t appeared within that scene, along with a basic description of their main settings.

So naturally, I soon found myself brainstorming more about this story. I broke out my character development list in order to flesh out the major players. I haven’t reached for my plot charts yet, but they’ll be coming soon because I already know that this will be a large story.

And since I’m aware that this story could take me a while to finish, I figured NaNoWriMo might be the perfect time to write it. I have to crank out 50k words during November anyway, so I might as well. Especially since I haven’t worked on a single project for NaNo since 2013. (Yikes. Has it really been that long?) In the past three years, I usually write multiple stories until something sticks.

But a part of me goes, “Amanda, why don’t you begin writing this project in the middle of October? It’ll probably go beyond 50k words, so you might as well get a head’s start because you’re not going to want to write in December. It’s going to get difficult during the holiday season.”

Of course, I would never record any words I’d write in October for NaNoMriMo. Not sure if it’s considered “cheating” to jump into the middle of the project on November 1st, but I’ve always been a NaNo rebel, so I don’t really care.

This way, I can spend the next few weeks brainstorming – the world building and actual plot still need a lot of development. And then I can start writing around my birthday next month, which will prepare me for the discipline of writing daily again when NaNoWriMo occurs. Not sure what my word count goal would be in October, but I’m leaning towards at least 1000 words/day. (In November, it’ll be at least 1667 words/day.)

At least, that’s my plan right now.



P.S. In case you were curious, I’m nearing the end of CROOKED KINGDOM by Leigh Bardugo. I’ve finished 497/536 pages of the book so far. I’m hoping to finish it either tomorrow or Tuesday; I’m going to really miss this series once I finish.