Saturdays are great days for writing!

Let's just jump into it shall we? That's how good a day it was.

Okay, so I don't write my chapters in order. And I write what will write that day. I don't want to force it. When I force it, it's nowhere near as good as if I let it flow organically. So it goes something like this...plan 10 chapters, write 10 chapters, see where we are. Plan 10 more chapters, write 10 more chapters to fill in the holes/build up the story from the first 10 chapters. Well this is my third round of 10+ chapters, so the story's getting thick. The image I have in my head for this process is filling in a skeleton. And when you've completely filled in the whole skeleton, you've made a human. When I finish filling in my skeleton, I'll have written the whole novel. So we're really filling in the skeleton at this point.

My realistic goal for today was to write four chapters, and my dream goal was to write five. Well, I wrote three. But it totaled probably 5,000 words, so I'll take two beast chapters and a regular size chapter. And I planned out 7 more chapters, which will keep me writing for two more days. Then I'll read the novel as a whole again and hand write in the holes in the story. Then I'll take another day to make all of those edits. And then I start the process again. See. I have a process. Woo hoo! I am going to finish this novel...someday...

A couple of things I thought about today while writing...

1. We all have our sensitive spots. You know. We all have our hot button issues that just hit that sensitive spot in our hearts because we've had personal experience with that particular issue. For example...all of you who know me know how I feel about my dog. She's my baby, and I protect her like so. I get it from my Dad; we are animal people. Whatever. However, as I'm scheming today, I have the idea for my serial killer to kill the protagonist's dog. I don't know if I can write that. I just really don't. And it's one of many ideas for this particular part of the story, so I may not have to write that. And if I don't want to, I simply don't have to. That leads me to my second point.

2. As the writer, I get to call all the shots. However, this means I'm the one making all of the decisions. Which means I have to make the decisions!!! Every decision. All of them. So, I have this constant debate raging in my brain. Well, if Leia does this, then she can do this, and then she can say this, and he can kill her like this. But if Leia does that, then she can do that other thing, and say this thing and he can kill her like that! Which one do I want to happen? And which one's going to work best and easiest in the story as it is right now? It's not a huge deal to change your story for a new idea, but I feel like once you hit the 100 page mark, the idea has to be really good to justify going back through and changing little teeny tiny details throughout 100 pages.

And that's where we are tonight. I'll probably watch football and write a few more chapters tomorrow. And edit the three I wrote today. It's a vicious cycle once I get started writing. And I have my writer's group tomorrow night, which is always good for inspiration and encouragement.