I wrote The Protector Project by hand on the college-ruled notebook paper mentioned in my school supplies post. Every morning I sat down at the kitchen table, read the pages I’d written the morning before, and then wrote a few more pages. The whole book went like that, more or less.
Book 2 doesn’t have an official title yet, so for the purposes of this blog, I will call it Book 2.
For Book 2, I started the same way as I had with The Protector Project. Same notebook paper, same kitchen table, same very early hour of the morning. But about 55,000 words in, I suddenly had a home for The Protector Project and the prospect of Book 2 also going out into the world became suddenly more real.
So I bought this software called Scrivener.
And I bought a book about it and I watched Youtube videos about how to use it.
The miracle is, that Scrivener is the first tool to make me interested in outlining and further to see the use in planning.
The other 90,000 words of Book 2 were typed directly into Scrivener. (Yes, it’s a long draft.)
And because of the way Scrivener works, I can find scenes or chapters much more easily.
Don’t worry pantsers, I’m not going over to the plotter side.
A few years ago the great George R. R. Martin was here in Denver. When someone asked about his writing process he said something along the lines of, “I think all of us are both architechts and gardeners.”
I like thinking about that while I play with Book 2. A little bit of planning and a little bit of “let’s see what happens.”
Sounds like a good way to start an adventure, yes?