How Do These Pedals Work?

It ought to be just like riding a bike. We’ve successfully outlined eight novels, so it really ought to be second nature by now. And yet.

The final edits of Science Novel are in the rearview mirror. Its accompanying short story is resting comfortably and awaiting its own turn under the scalpel. With our to-do list pretty much exhausted, it’s time to close the door on that story universe for a little while and turn our attention to the Music Novels. Specifically Sibling of Music Novel, the middle novel of that series.

Before setting it aside a while back, we’d hammered out most of an outline. The only thing we’d left undefined were the actions of the final, let’s say, quarter of the plot. The part where tension is building and the action is all rising to a rousing finale. So, you know, only the most important part of the novel. No bigs.

This is a busy time of year, as we’re sure you know, and it’s a little busier for us this year due to some family obligations. We’ve been away from the Writing Cave more than usual. But one of the great things about brainstorming is that you don’t need to be sitting at a computer to do it. We’ve managed to have a few relevant conversations in the car, and in various restaurants and hotels. Those have even led to a few notions we’ve liked enough to add to the official Steno o’ Notes. But man oh man we are grinding the gears a bit. The transition from composition and editing to this other part of the writing process is not going as smoothly as we hoped.

Last night Jen dug up the 12-page single-spaced prose outline/synopsis and Kent made himself hoarse reading it aloud. It was a reassuring reminder of how much story we already have, and a very useful refresher. Obviously we should have started with that. Anyway, after story time we moved from the Writing Cave to the Writing Annex, where we jumped back into the brainstorming while Jen wrapped holiday gifts. We expected it to work better than it did. Jen is a million times better at gift-wrapping than Kent is, but it still requires a certain amount of brainpower. And Kent was fighting off a headache while simultaneously trying to take notes on our conversation and tamp down his envy/amazement at Jen’s mad wrapping paper origami skillz (She got the pattern to line up across the seam! More than once!).

It’s important that we keep up a regular work schedule even when things are so higgledy piggledy. Especially then. We’ve accepted that we’re not going to be as productive as we like while we figure out how to ride this particular bicycle again, through this particular obstacle course. But if we keep trying a little bit every day, imagine how easy it will seem when the distractions all clear up!