Toodles 2021
Pull up a comfy chair, dear reader, and together we’ll review what we blogged about over this past twelve-month. Are you comfortable? Would you care for an adult beverage before we begin?
We started the year by pontificating about Point of View. It shouldn’t surprise you to learn that we have strong opinions on the matter.
We closed out edits on our Science Novels as we closed out January, and our Ghost universe took over all of our work sessions. It involved a lot of brainstorming and plot-rainbowing. And we started watching Supernatural — an activity we’re still engaged in (there are a lot of episodes!).
And speaking of televisual entertainment, in March we offered up an incomplete list of our quarantine viewing material. And even now, 9 months later, we still haven’t braved a movie theatre. We enjoyed Only Murders in the Building, recently finished up the newest seasons of What We Do in the Shadows and the Great British Baking Show, and are almost done with Schmigadoon!, DreamCorp LLC, and Party Down. We recently watched Raiders of the Lost Ark for the umpteenth time (inspired by watching Raiders! The Story of the Greatest Fan Film Ever Made), and our most recent DVD was Harold and Maude (technically a rewatch, but it had been so long that Kent didn’t remember seeing it).
The dogs made a cameo appearance in April, then we went on to wax rhapsodic about our plot rainbow again some more. We were very proud of the concept we had for the ending, which has since gone through several further iterations. It’ll be interesting to see how much it further it morphs by the time we write it.
The joys and tribulations of plotting an entire 4-book series at once occupied much of May. And then our kids came for a visit!
The halfway point of all that outlining came in June, and that’s also when we started talking about redecorating the Writing Cave. We’re happy to say that the outlining is now complete. The Writing Cave reno, not so much. The big stuff is all done and the room is totally usable, but the finishing details are stalled.
In July we were a little hung up on how complicated our plotting process is, so we added a new member to our SkelleyCo writing team: our beloved white board!
When August rolled around we got started on Book 4 (the final Ghost Book for those of you keeping track at home). It’s kind of enormous, and we had to chop all of our paper squares in half so all the characters would fit on one side. We fretted that the 400 magnets we bought might not be enough. Fear not – we had a whopping 13 or 14 magnets leftover at the end.
September was light on blogging because we were shoulder-deep in the Writing Cave renovation, but we did manage to debate whether or not it was possible for a character to be too villainous. Conclusion: yes.
The end of plot-rainbowing was in sight in October, and we continued our passionate love affair with our white board. That thing is truly worth its weight in gold. And in addition to that we found time to update our Stichomancy Writing Prompt Generator.
In November we finally finally completed all the plotting for the whole entire Ghost Series. But that doesn’t mean we’re ready to start writing just yet. When we aren’t hosting visitors or helping our children move, Kent is working on maps and Jen is typing up the world’s longest, strangest outline (the old-school kind with Roman Numeral and regular numbers, and letters both capital and lowercase). The actual writing should commence soonish. Maybe in December, maybe in January.
And finally, in December we said a tearful goodbye to a beloved member of our critique group. It can’t be said frequently or forcefully enough: Fuck Cancer.