Actual writing, that is. We looked over the first batch of stubs, and Jen liked the looks of scene number two whereas she wanted Kent to tackle number one. So with our initial assignments figured out we dove in and each wrote almost a thousand words.
We’re off!
A writing partner is someone who can double your daily output.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
We decided that we wouldn’t do any work during our arctic adventure, because we were on vacation. Some of it counted as research anyway.
Our intention was to get right into serious writing upon our return home, putting the new post-retirement schedule into full effect. It was a good intention, enough to fill a few potholes on that proverbial road. Sigh.
It was probably too long a break. It went beyond resting up and feeling refreshed, to the point of getting a little too comfortable with being lazy.
Another thing that set us up badly is that we’re at a transitional stage in our process. If we’d been in the middle of writing prose, it probably would’ve been pretty easy to pick it back up and knock the rust off. But we’re in a sort of workflow limbo. There’s no breeze to fill our sails.
Of course, what we’d like to blame for all our problems is the clutter of day-to-day life that accumulated in our absence, especially the stack of crossword puzzles. That certainly didn’t help… but we’re caught up on crosswords now and need to stop making excuses.
A writing partner is someone who’ll help you get back on the horse, even if that means first figuring out where said horse wandered off to.
As-Yet-Untitled Ghost Novel #1 is in the hands of our beta readers. We have turned our attention to Also-Untitled Ghost Novel #2.
Book One had rested for a few weeks, so we began with another read-thru of that installment. It was even better than we expected (not that we’re trying to influence our beta readers). Kent had been fretting over possible pacing issues in the first part, but it flowed very nicely. There are a few pages of heavier-than-necessary exposition here and there, but those will be easy to deal with. (To be clear, such infodumps are always Kent’s doing.) So, having made some notes, we moved on to the next step.
Utilizing both whiteboards, we set up the rainbow for Book Two. Perusing it was quite entertaining, because Jen’s got quite a wit, but also a little surprising. There were some placeholder character names, and some plot beats that have been superseded now that we actually wrote Book One.
We also have a long-form synopsis, which we usually refer to as the prose outline. That was created later, in parallel with the manuscript for Book One, so it should be up-to-date. Guess we’ll find out.
A writing partner is someone to accompany you on a journey of (re)discovery.
You know how you and your bestie have inside jokes that no one else gets? Or how you and your spouse have your own private language? Maybe don’t lean too heavily into those sorts of things when you’re writing up your notes. Ask us how we know!
Before Jen started writing the synopses for the rest of the books in the ghost series, we read through their plot rainbows together. Unfortunately, in several places there were phrases that were clearly meant to be cute, quippy references, but the context is lost to time. The plot rainbow is particularly prone to this sort of thing because each square in it is small. There’s not a lot of room for detail, so we often resort to shorthand. To our occasional detriment.
We’ve immersed ourselves in those plots again, and that’s allowed us to decode (most of) what we were talking about. There are no giant question marks. It’s a good reminder, though, that thorough notes are important, and pop culture references don’t always stand the test of time.
A writing partner is someone who can let you know when you’re being too clever, unless they’re caught up in it with you.
As-Yet-Untitled Ghost Novel #1’s first draft is nearly in the can. Or maybe it’s technically the second draft — we’re filling in the holes and smoothing out the inconsistencies, making it presentable for test readers. Very soon we’ll have to set it aside and start working on Book 2 in the series.
Jen wrapped up the lengthy prose outline for Book 2, a process made more complicated than it should have been through procrastination. During our year-long planning of the whole series, we took a ton of notes. We just didn’t organize them very well. Why should we? We planned to jump right in and write the synopses for all four books while the whole thing was fresh in our minds, but then we didn’t. Neither of us can exactly remember why. The upshot is that Jen had to do a lot of digging, and we had to have a lot of conversations where we tried to jog each other’s memories about story details we couldn’t quite remember but didn’t want to lose.
To prevent that from happening again when it’s time for Book 3, we decided to be smart this time and get the whole rest of the series organized and summarized and synopsized before we start writing any of Book 2. Jen’s been working on that while Kent day-jobs, presenting him with a page or two to review after he clocks out. It’s been quite interesting to review these later events now that we’ve gotten to know some of the characters. We’ve written a whole book about them, really gotten inside their skin. Now that they’re fleshed out (or maybe not “fleshed” out, since it’s a ghost story), it makes their actions that much more real, their story arcs that much more fulfilling.
In some cases, though, it makes our planned story beats feel like missteps. Our characters are like real people now, and we’ve noticed a few things that feel, well, out of character. So far they’re fairly minor details, nothing that will break the story. We’ve talked through them and found solutions. But uncovering these hiccups uncovers another reason for us to follow through and get the whole series thoroughly written up — we need to have a firm grip on the whole thing so that we don’t unknowingly steer ourselves into an untenable position.
A writing partner is someone who’ll tame the jungle of your old notes to make a garden of well-laid plans.