Tuesday 11^th August 2020

Today was a really frustrating day.

So during weekdays the plan is that when I finish the day job, I pack up and crack out the writing work. Except with the current heatwave, from about 3pm onwards the office catches the afternoon sun and starts heating up rapidly, meaning that by the time I’m ready to start some writing work, it’s too hot to work and I have to wait for the office to cool down. By the time it does this, it’s time to go to bed.

My plan for today was two-fold. The first was research. This mainly consists of watching videos and taking notes on the key points. After my success with researching theme I’m keen to expand my skills with other areas. Except for some reason I chose comedy, and with the heat, medical issues (in part caused by the heat) and my general mood, I was not in the mood for comedy.

The thing I’d wanted to do but had no time to even start was taking this old novel and organising it in Scrivener.

As an experiment, and to do something different, I’d chosen to forego a chapter structure. Now, in refining my writing and editing processes, I work a lot with chapters. In many ways, they are the index which I use to structure and organise a novel. In Scrivener, I’ll use a lot of metadata. I might label chapters depending on POV character, or key plot points. I have a brief 2-line summary of the chapter in the notes (which really helps with writing outlines, as well as shifting scenes around on the corkboard).

You might argue that I still have scenes, even if I don’t have chapters. The problem with this is that they are less self-contained. A chapter will typically have a beginning, middle and end. They are a box in which to carry scenes. They stack nicely and you can label them so you can clearly find the one you need. Scenes are just goo that slop all over the place.

Note to self: You are an author who uses chapters. If you ever get ‘fancy’ and think it would be something different to try, you only have yourself to blame for the mess it’ll create.

So, in essence what I need to do is given this draft a bit more structure, put in chapters. And this might break some of the scenes as the natural cut might be half way through. I need to get to this stage, before I even look at a rewrite.

It’s a big job, and one that’ll keep me busy without me needing to worry if I need to be dragged away onto something else.

And I couldn’t get started on it last night. The document just sits there, without its chapter structure, laughing at me, gentle reader. It’s laughing at me!!!!

We’re due some storms today, so hopefully that’ll cool things down enough so I can continue to work, although knowing my luck, we’ll have a powercut. There’s always the comedy videos I suppose!