Fast and the Furious Check In 1

I’m in Albuquerque, NM right now. My hubby and I road tripped down yesterday to go to a concert–Train, O.A.R. and Natasha Bedingfield. It’s nice here, but it’s apparently snowing in Denver. Yikes! I hope our flowers survive.

How Did I Do?

Okay, so let’s see what happened with my well-intentioned micro-deadlines.

May 16: Finish main story

Nope, but I feel oddly buoyant with my progress and here’s why. Last Thursday I got in a couple of good writing hours. Then on Friday, I hit a snag on the midpoint. The one I had so confidently identified was coming out contrived and forced—it wasn’t logical within the world I had built. ARGH. I spent most of the day reviewing notes on midpoints, watching my Michael Hauge video on story, and fast forwarding through a couple of movies to identify midpoints (procrastination or real work? Maybe a bit of both).

Rather than moving on to other scenes, I surfed for inspiration—looking for story structure breakdowns that might help. This is an issue with me—I get focused and determined to solve something and can’t seem to shift gears. Ack.

Sunday, author K.M. Weiland saved the day. You may recall back in November during my NaNoWriMo prep that I purchased two of her e-books. Somehow I never came across her story structure database. What a treasure!  After exploring a few, I hit on one that made me realize Turning Point #2 should actually be the Midpoint!

This then made me realize I needed to do some serious evaluation and reorg. I created a new Scrivener project (pic at right). I’m staying in Scrivener until all the scenes are written and in the order I want them.

See the purple highlighted scenes? They are brand new scenes I need to write. There are 13 of them and I’m sure more will pop up as I continue. But this got me unstuck and I’m writing smoothly again.

A Word on Getting Bogged Down

It took most of the weekend for me to get back on track so I lost valuable time. Or did I? I could have jumped ahead to other scenes and come back to the midpoint. But I also felt that if I didn’t solve it, any scenes I wrote later would have to be changed again so I think my stubborn desire to figure it out worked in my favor this time.

The weekend wasn’t really lost as it became a time of exploration and discovery, including me stumbling upon Weiland’s awesome datebase.

And What About Those Deadlines?

When I look at the micro-deadlines I had created, I think they helped me break down what still needed to be done and how I might accomplish it. That is fantastic and a great reality check. But deadlines like these can be fluid to a point. I do know that, based on past experience, I’m going to need that chunk of days to input and smooth out the manuscript so hitting that May 29 goal is crucial.

Speaking of which, back to the book!