JUST GOT TO CHAT w/MY BABY TWICE!!!

HOLY SCHNIKIES!!!

It's been a while since my Gnomey goddess has been able to get online. We've been keepin' the romance alive via texts and emails a lot lately.

BUT LAST NIGHT, THE DROUGHT ENDED!!!

Oops...

I just updated my Facebook status with a declaration that I just chatted with my baby twice in 4 hours. Which is accurate, but we video-chatted at 3:00pm (9:00pm on the Emerald Isle), and then we IMed for a bit around 1:00am, and then we video-chatted again just now -- around 5:30am.

So my update is technically correct. But what I intended to communicate was that I got to see her and hear her voice twice within a 24-hour period.

WHICH IS AWESOME!!! :D

AND...I don't know how, but I actually made progress on my outline!!!

More about that:

Okay, so I think I finally have my "first" novel and I've been slowly (VERY slowly up until tonight) chipping away at the outline.

First I got the general genre I wanted to write, then I found a circumstance I like (combination of location and why my characters are at the location). Then last week I worked-out a rough idea of how many and what types of people my cast might consist of. And I also figured out what my monster is going to be and exactly why it's killing folks. (When I said I had to work out my genre, I knew it was Horror, but there are many sub-genres to choose from, and I had to figure out which sub-genre I wanted to play with. I went with an update of the 1950s Creature-Feature. It'll be cooler than it might sound.)

HOWEVER... A clock has begun counting down!

I mean, I've always had the general countdown of "When I sell my first couple of novels I may be able to finally see the love of my life in person!" But generalized goals don't motivate as well as very specific ones. Changing-Your-Life-Into-Your-Dream-Life is too big to believe you can accomplish it. However, "Finish my outline before I take a brief vacation to go visit my mom next weekend" is a very useful goal because it's something I feel like I can actually achieve!

So I have roughly a week (and a half, if I need it) to complete my outline.

The reason, you may ask?

Because the Outline stage is where the "heaviest" creative "lifting" is done. You're making the BIG choices about the overall shape of your story.

You're still making hundreds of smaller, subtler choices when you write the actual pages. So you're still enjoying the creative process. And sometimes your characters behave differently than you thought they were going to, outline be damned.

However, the outline prevents that dreaded smasher-of-aspiring-authors'-dreams: The question "What happens next?"! With an outline, you KNOW what happens next! Even when things start going differently than you outlined them to!

I'm nowhere near the first writer to put it like this, but outlining is like taking a trip: You consult a map and plan the course you will take to your destination. Now, if you miss your turn-off, you can reconsult your map and figure out which street you need to turn onto to get you back to the highway. You still arrive at your destination, because you had planned out how to get there. But if you hadn't planned the trip, it might have taken you A LOT LONGER to arrive where you were headed. (And that's assuming some inbred mutants didn't pop your tires and chase you through the woods with their chainsaws! Always make a plan!)

So anyway, TONIGHT I made some serious progress in my outlining. I figured out who my main cast will be (the specifics of who they are and what they want during the course of the story), and what all their dramatic conflicts will be!

This is HUGE because if I think of a cool thing that can happen I have one, maybe two scenes. But when I know what my dramatic conflicts are, I have the bulk of the story!

Example: If one of my characters is a bank robber who has just pulled off a heist, and he and his partner duck into a Retirement Community sales pitch to hide from the cops and give themselves alibis, and his partner plans to double-cross him, I have several scenes right there!

1. The robbery
2. The escape from the bank
3. Ducking into the Retirement Community sales seminar
4. Making excuses (to one or more characters) why they are here
5. Trying to blend in
6. Main Guy notices Partner is acting weird
7. Partner tries the double-cross and succeeds/fails
8. Main Guy responds to Partner's duplicity
9. Maybe they try to keep their cover despite what's going on between them

...and so on.

That's 9 scenes. Depending upon how long I allow each scene to play out, that could be 9 chapters!

And that's just culled from an off-the-cuff situation I came up with an a single dramatic conflict. (Well, 2 if you count the dramatic conflict of them trying to fit in with a bunch of would-be retirees.) (Come to think of it, but 3 really, because the cops chasing after them is another dramatic conflict, which has to be resolved eventually.)

So I already had my main Story Conflict. Now I just needed realistic people with realistic problems who were going to be experiencing the Story Conflict! THAT'S MY WHOLE STORY! :D

And doesn't it seem a bit coincidental that I made such a huge dent after waking up early to see my Gnomage for the first time in a while? ;)

That woman is SO GOOD for me, in so many ways!!!

I had to post this, if for no other reason than to give myself a time-line I can look back on to check my progress on the novel. (My "first novel" if it sells, lol.)

And...you know...

...TO CROW ABOUT GETTING TO SEE GNOMEY!!! :D

I hope your weekend has been even half as fulfilling as mine has been!!!