February 2020 – ScarletQuill

This outline is eating my soul.

I really thought that it would be super easy to write my first real outline using all the amazing templates from amazing people that I found online. Instead of, you know, a soul-sucking experience that makes me want to eat all the Girl Scout cookies that are currently sitting in my house.

This is the first time I’ve committed to making this into a real novel, and putting in the work to make it viable and start out with strong plans from the beginning. And it’s fucking hard, ya’ll.

I have half-scrapped and started over this outline a solid three times, maybe three and a half, in this last week. I keep getting parts of it that I like, but parts that I can tell are not working because they’re just not exciting me. I switched to writing by hand to get the muse flowing better, and now this afternoon I went back to typing, to try to organize all the tragic scribbles that my notebook had become.

And I think I’m making progress. I have a better sense of who each of these characters are. What they want. What they have to overcome. What drives them. And I’m focusing on working with action-reaction. What happens, and then what does that cause to happen based on the flaws and motivations of these characters, and then how do the characters react to that, and based on THAT reaction, THEN what happens…

It’s slow going.

I really wanted to be drafting by now.

But I’m reminding myself that this is part of the process. That this is my first time, and I’m learning all this as I go. And rushing it is pointless. Just have to keep showing up every day and doing the work, cause it’s the only way to learn it better and get faster as I go.

I have been trying to outline A NOVEL since Jan 1, 2020. I have the scraps of like 5 scenes in a different novel than I started with a month later.

It’s all a process, dude. But I’m sticking with it. I’m not going to give up again just because I’m not expert status right away. I’m going to lean into this and enjoy the process of learning how to do it and learning what my process is. I’m gonna go ahead and embrace that shit, because the other way hasn’t worked so far, so…

Up earlier this morning — at my laptop with coffee in hand by 5:35am, and that was delayed an extra minute by forgetting my notebooks in the other room.

Yesterday had a morning full of self-doubt and “this will all take way too long why even bother” feelings, in which I sat on the couch and scrolled social media and moped and hated things. Eventually I managed to kick myself in the pants and call out the moment for what it was. I stopped scrolling first, as I’ve learned about myself that often this is only making things worse. And I reminded myself of all the other logical things I’ve said to myself in the face of this feeling before, and that it would pass, and that the best thing to do was anything else — read a book, get up and move around, etc.

I’ve been struggling with finishing an outline for my first novel that I like, and originally I’d wanted to have it finished by end of January. Not hitting that goal was making me antsy, like I’m off schedule, like I’m off schedule and therefore never going to have the chops to make it as a published indie author because I can’t do this fast enough to make money off it…

Sigh. Chill. Relax. There is no race, or timetable. The timing of your life is perfect by default. Things take the time that they take.

As a family we went down to the harbor in the afternoon, where there is a place to fish next to a grassy field. Hubs set up his poles, the kids ran around like squirrels, and I brought a beach chair and a blanket and my laptop and notebook, and sipped a coffee and felt restored with the world and the muse.

(See pictures down below, or on my Insta, @kate.duttera.)

I switched to outlining by hand and felt myself getting back on track with it again. So, now that the coffee has taken hold, I’m off to do that again for this morning’s session.

It is now 5:45, and I have until 7am — or one of the kids wakes up early — to devote to quiet time, coffee, and my writing. I would like to knock out several more scenes in the outline, but just being up early and making the extra space for it today makes me feel like a winner.