Installment #8: Distracted

Writing ByTrying My Hand At Writing A Novel

Apr 5

I’m distracted.

My emotions feel like confetti thrown into a wind tunnel, the pieces swirl around searching for a neat and tidy place to land, but as soon as they do, someone turns the wind back on and up they go again.

I’m trying to work through all of it. Trying to find words to put to the feelings. Trying to settle myself enough to put something like a story onto a page.

I went back to the drawing board on my novel. I had been writing haphazardly, bouncing around from chapter to chapter, reveling in the freedom of writing what inspired me at the moment and believing it would all come together in the end.

Sometimes I write my scripts this way so I know how things can start out messy and end up tight after I’ve worked through each aspect until it becomes the thing it was meant to be in the first place.

But a novel is a deep dive into many characters and multiple storylines. Keeping them all straight would take another level of organization and I was already wandering way off the main road.

By going back to the drawing board, I meant that I re-outlined the book. In the writing, I had discovered new characters and wanted to integrate them better. I was finding new motivations and uncovering themes.

I took what I already had and did a new beat sheet, numbering each chapter and giving it a short summary. I moved them around to where they really needed to be, and made sure the character names were correct since I had been very lax in that area. In one chapter the mother of one of the victims is called Marjorie. But in writing so quickly, in another she’s Melissa. As the character evolved, I realized that Marjorie is the name of a stout woman who makes her own skirts out of hemp. Melissa lives in a gated community. Ultimately, Melissa won out.

The re-outlining took a few days of just hammering away at it. I was bored by the process, but I knew I had to do it. I needed to be sure that this felt like one complete idea and not random threads that weren’t tied down. Like my emotions, the swirling ideas needed something sticky to adhere to.

Now that I’m done, I’m going back in and combing through what I’ve written from the beginning so that I’m tracking where the story is leading me. I’ll weave in the new beats without deleting anything and see if I feel better than I did two weeks ago.

I’m at 37,119 words, but that is with the chapter summaries laid in at the top of each chapter to keep me focused. I’ll check in again soon.

In the meantime, take a deep breath, get more sleep, and call someone you love.