Tagged: As-Yet Untitled Ghost Novel #2

Sometimes We Can Have Nice Things

There is no shortage of story in As-Yet Untitled Ghost Novel #2, and no shortage of cast members either. That doesn’t stop us from coming up with more. We just need to keep it from getting out of hand.

One good way to control proliferation is by giving characters multiple jobs. Recently, we had a chance to apply this to our work-in-progress. We’ve known since pretty early on that one of our characters was going to need an accomplice. The plot doesn’t really work otherwise. Much more recently, we came up with some very colorful individuals that we wanted to put on the page because they’re a lot of fun. There’s no contradiction implied; we absolutely could have taken the “more is more” approach. As noted at the top, though, we already had probably more than we needed, so we had to be mindful about throwing in stuff that we just wanted.

Our way to have it all is that one of the colorful new people becomes the accomplice. It’s an elegant way to combine something that we need with something that we want.

A writing partner is someone who looks for ways to make the fun stuff work as an integral part of the story.

It Happens to The Best of Us

Chalk it up to staying holed up in the Writing Cave all the time… It took Covid about four years to track Rune Skelley down, but it found us right after New Year’s. We both had very minor cases (and we’re both better now!) but even so it was far from pleasant.

We did our best to keep working through it, but we were so tired. Productivity was very low. Guess we have to admit we’re human after all.

As of Monday we both tested negative. Kent even did a “disappointing” workout. So, it’s back to the grindstone for us.

A writing partner is someone whose major symptoms don’t come on until yours have started to fade, so you can take care of each other.

Gazing Into Our Crystal Ball

Our plan for our writing life in 2024 is simple: complete the first draft of As-Yet-Untitled Ghost Novel #2, and if there’s time, get started on #3. We got a quick start on #2 at the tail end of 2023, and we have a work schedule that’s working. It should be very doable.

Except.

We have a couple of major challenges coming up this year. First of all, we’re building a house. Not us personally. We’ve hired some fine professionals to do all the hard stuff because we want the place to be amazing. Even though we won’t be swinging the hammers ourselves, we expect the project to be an enormous distraction. Almost as big a distraction as our other challenge for 2024: our first grandchild.

Jen’s degree is in Human Development, and she’s worked with young kids a ton, so we’ll be providing a lot of care for the little one while he’s fresh. We’re stupendously excited! But we’re also realists who acknowledge that infant care is going to disrupt our writing schedule quite significantly. We’ve started talking about how to stay on schedule. Maybe we’ll reinstate our evening work sessions. Maybe we’ll alternate days of childcare and writing time. Maybe the kiddo will be a good napper and we’ll work while he’s snoozing. A lot depends on him, and we haven’t met him yet. We shall see!

So, in between changing diapers and choosing cabinets and tiles and appliances (and everything else), we will: write Novel #2. When that’s done we’ll review it alongside #1 to make sure it all flows smoothly, preview #3 and #4 to update anything necessary, do a deep dive into the prep for #3, and then start writing #3. And if we need to look away from the ghosts, we still have a Music Novel in need of an editing pass.

A writing partner is someone who stands beside you when life comes at you fast.

Look Back in Awe

As we’re sure you’ve noticed, 2023 is nearing the finish line. That means it’s time for us here at SkelleyCo Amalgamated Fiction Enterprises, LLC to review what we accomplished throughout the year.

Our main goal for the year was to complete the first draft of As-Yet-Untitled Ghost Novel #1, and that gets a big ol’ checkmark. The first draft was in the can by late summer, and we managed to squeeze in a couple of read-throughs and a sort of mini-edit to address the issues we uncovered. It might not meet the technical definition of a second draft, but whatever you call it, we’re happy with where it stands right now.

Our second goal was for Kent to retire, and again we accomplished it! (Well, Kent did. Jen cheered from the sidelines.)

Our third goal was to travel, and holy shit did we do that. We got to within 800 miles of the North Pole!

We forecast that we might edit one of the Music Novels if we wanted a substantial break from writing about ghosts between As-Yet-Untitled Ghost Novels #1 and #2. That was not necessary. The timing worked out nicely to put #1 to bed shortly before heading out on our Epic Arctic Exploration, and that adventure provided more than enough of a break.

It took longer than we liked for us to get our brains out of vacation-mode, and acclimate to all Kent’s new free time. We’d optimistically anticipated working 4-5 hours a day and having the productivity of the gods. It didn’t quite work out like that, but toward the end of the year we did settle into a pretty good daily schedule that we hope to expand on in the coming year. There will be some challenges to that, which we’ll talk about next week in our preview of the coming year.

Happy new year!

 

ETA: we finished the year with 7287 words in Book 2

Getting Things Off the Ground

We’re pleased to report that productivity in the Writing Cave has seen an uptick lately.

As Kent’s retirement date drew near, we envisioned our novels flying to completion. All that writing time during the day! Plus an added bonus of getting to have evenings and weekends again!

The one part of the above that we achieved right away was the evenings and weekends. But, novels’ wings don’t flap on their own. Regular readers already know that we’ve struggled to stick to a schedule, and that we had some ideas as to why that is. Well, now things appear to be on track, and we don’t really have much of a theory about why. Perhaps there’s a natural ebb and flow to our motivational energies. Perhaps we just needed this long to adapt to the new normal. Maybe we got brain frostbite in the Arctic and now we’re finally thawing out.

Whatever the reason, we like how it feels to be accomplishing stuff as a team.

A writing partner is the wind under your wings.

With Both Hands, And…

A map is a very handy thing for a writer. It can help you gauge how long someone’s journey would take, or remind you of the river between points A and B. If you’re using a real-world locale, then you’ll want to keep your depiction in line with reality. If your locale is your own invention, then you’ll want to keep your depiction internally consistent.

Way back at the start of things for As-Yet-Untitled Ghost Novel #1, we created a map of the main setting, which is a place we made up. Over the course of actually writing that book, we annotated the map with a great many pencil marks showing adjustments and additions. It’s become sort of a mess.

So, as part of our preparations for diving into prose on As-Yet-Untitled Ghost Novel #2, Kent is updating the map so we have a clean version to work from. The more we write about the place, the more we learn about it ourselves, so we assume we’ll need to do more map updates when we get to books 3 and 4 as well.

A writing partner is someone who helps you keep your bearings.

The Stubulator Has Been Activated

Progress report: Jen has stubbed out the first six scenes for As-Yet-Untitled Ghost Novel #2. Typically we aim to have about a dozen stubs ready before writing any of the actual scenes, so we should reach that stage very soon!

Each phase of our process (brainstorming, rainbowing, the prose outline, the actual outline, the stubs, and then finally actual prose) requires a different kind of writing. And there’s always a little hill to climb when we revisit any of those phases after being away from it for a while, to relearn how to do that kind of writing.

Still, we trust the process. Each of those phases helps us understand our story from another angle, making things go a lot smoother during the prose phase and leading to an overall superior end result.

Also, we’ve learned the hard way that staying in any one phase for too long can lead to burnout. We ended up writing the prose for two entire novels back-to-back once. But only once. It’s nice being able to shift gears, use different muscles now and then. Keeps us sane.

A writing partner is someone who shares your faith in the process.

Boo!

We’ve been immersing ourselves in the supernatural as we work on our ghost story, but perhaps we took things a bit too far. Netherwordly manifestations sprang up at the HQ of Skelleyco Amalgamated Fiction Enterprises. But the creepiest part? Every child in the vicinity seemed impelled to approach. Impelled by a hunger, a hunger for… candy.

Last year we missed trick-or-treating because we were in freakin’ Transylvania on Halloween. So this year we brought our A game. Not that we merited anything better than honorable mention in our neighborhood. The bar is set crazy high. We did have a great time, as did Lady Marzipan and the Bandit Lord.

decorative tombstones

front door flanked by skeletal bats

a corgi and a golden retriever in bony costumes

What we did not do was get much writing done. Doorbell was kept pretty busy.

A writing partner is someone who holds your hand when things get scary.

Rereading The Rainbow

The past couple of weeks have seen a happy uptick in our productivity. We got into a bit of a rhythm with our work sessions and had some very fruitful discussions.

Revisiting the rainbow for As-Yet Untitled Ghost Novel #2 gave us a chance to peek around a whole bunch of plot corners. Jen was very interested in avoiding surprises as we work on prose, which have tripped us up a bit in past projects. So, looking around the corners was the whole mission here. We were able to flesh out the through-lines for a couple of characters and unkink the timeline. Those conversations really jumpstarted things as far as being able to focus on the project, which made it much easier to (mostly) stick to a schedule from one day to the next.

Did we see around all the corners? Probably not! But we know we’re a lot better prepared than we were before.

A writing partner is someone who helps you avoid getting ambushed by your own plot.