THE TRIALS OF A CRIME WRITER: PLANNING MORE STORIES
I gotta be honest here, after everything I went through last October, and the way things changed so much for me, I didn't know if I would ever be able to both return to being an author, and also be in a place to do more than revise, do edits, and publish. Those felt like very minimal typing needed. I already knew that it would be a lot harder for me to do a whole heap of things I'd been able to do before. From writing these posts, to doing scripts, to recording and captioning, and all of that. I had a lot of people say things like: dictation might work. I already knew it was not something I worked well with. For me to be able to tell a story, I had to be writing with hands rather than voice.
So when it's gotten to this point, the fact that in less than a month it will have been a year, and I am still here, and not just still here, but also, here, and writing, or at least planning to write makes me kinda emotional. I took a chunk of time off writing before the sepsis and such. I wanted to be able to spend some time doing both revisions and rewrites for older projects that I felt would need more time than I'd have been able to give them otherwise. I always planned to draft again at some point, in fact had tentatively booked April as my start month. It didn't happen, and I'll admit, during recovery, seeing those plans on my calendar, it hurt, it really did. I was at that stage where I didn't know still, and it kinda broke me for a time.
What makes me smile is that even though this April didn't happen, next April is looking like it might be a possible thing for me to start drafting two new books. For the first time ever really, I have allowed myself time to kinda really sketch out what I want from the books, and also where I want them to go. Normally when it comes to planning, my idea of it is, make a chapter list, and put like a couple of words for what should happen then. People see me and the way I'm so organised and assume that applies to drafting too. It does not. Those couple of words? Sometimes they are as descriptive as: Intro, school day, and X Meets Y.
So this is why a lot of my planning and organisational advice sticks to all the other ways I plan, because I would not even know where to begin with a proper outline, and by proper, I mean those who plan with a lot more detail than me, which to be fair, would not be hard!
That said, I do like fleshing out the story ideas. I can't always promise even half those ideas end up in the story itself, because it's more just me thinking that this thing would be great, and then I just never ever use it. An example would be for the Invisible Quartet, which to showcase how little I plan, was meant to be a duology, and Lights Out trilogy? Meant to be one book. Anyhoo, the example, I had a whole antagonist plan and character. I knew where I wanted them to come in and all their backstory. They never ever even got close to being hinted at, let alone mentioned!
So when it comes to being back to being able to actually plan stories I'm going to draft, it's lightness, and just joy at being able to be a writer again, to be able to start at the start again. I don't know how long it will take, I don't know what will come after those stories, if I will break for a bit and do more revision, I do know though that this is who I am, who I was meant to be, and I will never stop telling stories. They are mine to tell.
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