Friday 9th July 2021

An important lesson to remember from today is that I need to have future chapters mapped out.  I’ve been spending a lot of time on a flashback chapter recently.  After my Wowcation I returned and started finishing off the chapter.  I had originally intended for another set of events after where I’d got to, but decided yesterday that the chapter had said what it needed to say.

So I went to move onto the next chapter and found…  I had nothing planned.

So whilst I did get in a similar number of writing sessions, I spent a lot of one of them trying to figure out what I needed to feature in the new chapters.  That’s especially hard when you’ve had a break and all those emotional threads have been left dangling only for you to now try to remember what they all were and pick them on to continue the momentum of the story

I can fix a lot of this in the second draft but this first draft is very messy… probably the messiest first draft I’ve written in a long while.

I have a good idea of what the next chapters need to be.  This novel skips around a lot and I suspect that in later drafts some of these scenes will get cut or merged.  But it means that whilst I know where the overall story is going, scene by scene needs to be planned out a bit like a chapter.

Honestly, I think because this book doesn’t have chapters currently explains a lot of why it feels so messy.  Another reason is that this is an ensemble piece with a lot of POVs.  This idea was originally what I was going to use for The First Draft so the short scenes constantly swapping between characters was there from the beginning.

Yesterday, the words were a surprise and a joy.  Today it was a battle.  I always say it feels like I’m writing in treacle.  Every word feels forced.  But I got words done and that’s OK.  Future me will hate present me for the mess this manuscript is… but they’ve fixed worse.

I did also get another video done yesterday as well.  It was another Warcraft one but was an experiment at using voiceover in post production.  I’ve never done that before, despite having the kit to do it.  Because words had to match with pictures I ended up doing the audio piecemeal and slotting in voice over into videos where appropriate.  The other way to do it, is to have a script, and then match video to the script.  I’ve yet to try that yet but I still have plenty of videos I want to do, so there’s chance to do that.

I also started moving my Warcraft content away from my other social media.  I already have a separate channel, but I created new dedicated social media profiles last night.  The real sticking point is twitch.  The stuff like The First Draft that I want to do needs to be on my current profile, when I’ve predominantly made an audience on my Warcraft streaming.  I need to move them to the other profile.

Changing profile names isn’t that simple and I’ve found my Streamlabs is linked to my Twitch account which means I can’t use it to stream to both.  It ended giving me a headache last night so I’ll leave it for tomorrow.

I’m hoping for better word count tomorrow, but as I said, the real lesson from today is to make sure I don’t get so engrossed in a big chapter or scene that I don’t realise I’ve not planned out the ones that come afterwards.

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