We interrupt your regularly scheduled photo blog to talk about some actual writing.
No, really.
One year, six months and nine days after I started working on my original script Hive, I finished the first draft. That is a personal record for a sluggishness I believe. To be fair, I actually stopped working on it for about nine months to concentrate on polishing She Hates the Idea and Natural Tendencies. I had this crazy idea that since I'm trying to make a living at this, the smart thing would be to finish some projects before starting a new one. When those were done I went back to Hive.
This was a tough script. It featured a female main character who was not at all crazy. That is kind of the polar opposite of my previous scripts. And it had a non-linear story line, which I had never attempted before. And when you don't tend to outline, a non-linear storyline is a lot more headache inducing. This script forced me to try outlining for the first time, a process I don't much enjoy. But after months of getting nowhere, it became apparent that I needed to sort out the timeline of the story so that I knew exactly all the beats that should be included. With that solved I could start plugging things in.
One of the reasons that I don't like to outline is that system makes the writing feel stiff and too regimented, which my brain rebels against. But here it was essential. It freed me up from constantly trying to figure out where in the story I should be working. And when it came time to write out each beat I found that my original note on the subject wasn't good enough and wrote something different. Those new ideas would spawn other new ideas and the story went in a different direction than I was thinking but still ended up where it needed to be. So, strangely, structuring my writing gave me the freedom to ignore my plans and wing it.
Anyway, now I need to print off some copies and give them to (hopefully) willing alpha readers. Now I get to find out if the long wait was actually worth it.
