I’m sure everyone has noticed how little I’ve been posting here recently, although in my defense I’ve posted 12-13 new blogs on The Written Connection. I’ll confess to you, it’s because I’m doing something very new and hard on my novel, and even though I haven’t written a single word on the novel itself, I’ve made a lot of progress.

Remember how I said I was trying noveling in reverse? It helped a little bit, but the same issue that has been cropping up over and over again happened even trying to write that way. The last chapter I mentioned writing is still usable, but every time I fill in a plot hole, regardless of which end of the novel I’m working on, it changes something else that I just wrote and I lose yet more words.

I’m tired of chasing my own tail this way. I’ve probably written and deleted 500,000 words just trying to get this paltry 60,000 exactly the way I want it. Enough is enough.

So I’ve been working on something new since my last blog post. Newer than noveling in reverse…I’m outlining. I write down each chapter, what happens, what’s going on in each plot thread, and how to resolve the plot hole in that particular section. So far I’ve gotten 3 chapters done, and yes, I’ve had to go back and make some changes to several chapters to make those changes work.

The difference? It’s a one line sentence of what I’m eventually going to change rather than a full chapter with thousands of words I need to completely rewrite.

I’m also dashing out to the store to get myself a piece of posterboard to graph this bad boy on. If it works, I’ll show it to you. ^^

Happy writing everyone! I’m diving back in for another go.