Weekly Statistics and A Tangent on Series-Planning

So, let’s get some other business out of the way: last week’s statistics. I logged about 8.6 hrs (about 520 minutes or so) last week and wrote altogether 14K words. Not too shabby. Today, I put in about 68 minutes and wrote almost 2100 words, when the dust cleared, though it was split between the two projects of the guy on deserted island with ruins of ancient civilization and the other project inspired by the short story on the blog. 

I’m pretty happy with the way both of them are shaping up. Alternating between them seems to be a good way to focus, take some time off on one, get some perspective and then tackle the other. Or maybe spend a full hour on one project and then get another. It’s all working out. Then, of course, there’s the blog which gives me a chance to either rage at myself or pat myself on the back.

This is the third day in a row I’ve done these after I’ve already handled the main writing for the day. Maybe I should pen another short for the story, that might work out pretty well. But it’s kind of difficult to ramble about writing for fifteen minutes straight, especially when there’s not a lot to talk about. I sat down, wrote, it turned out well and I turned my attention to the blog, to gush about the project and where it’s heading.

The Island story should be interesting to write, it’s a different beast than what I’ve tackled before – there are layers of narratives, with the main character stumbling on these ruins with echoes of memories and ghosts. He’s trying to solve what happened to this civilization, basically, and it’s very anachronistic and kind of fascinating to watch. The Tomb-Robber story is more of a straightforward fantasy piece, with the main character trying to steal (and destroy) an artifact that will cause the apocalypse. I like both of them: two different standalone novels. 

Eventually, I’m going to gear up and start tackling a fully fledged 8-book series that I’ve had floating around forever but have never finished. I just think I need to start smaller, with a standalone novel or two and get those published – then I’ll start thinking series. Plus, by doing these I can start getting a feel for a better way to actually plan series of books out.

That’s something I consider a weak point – sitting down and drawing up plans for entire series, I just can’t seem to quite get it down. In theory, it should be the same as the others: find the flow that works, what’s the most natural course for the story to take. But, I don’t know, it never seems to work like that. It’s the same stuff I do when going from chapter to chapter, just on a larger scale.

I think it’s the scale that gets me – all of this planning needs to be done either in advance or concurrently. That way, the current books can be tweaked to have foreshadowing necessary for future events and the setup will be that much more significant. But that’s a ways off, its just something weighing on my mind while I work on these. 

I don’t really have any particular plans for where they’re headed – well, I do, I know where they’re headed, I just don’t know how they’re going to get there from where they currently stand and I know roughly what I want to achieve with both of them. Figuring out how to get them to do what I want is part of the process, I suppose. 

Thanks for reading.