Let's just jump right in and have a catch up, shall we?
My current writing project is a romance novel titled Dash Away. It's basically a reverse Notting Hill, which is to say a Cinderella story. The MCs are a small town (Minnesota) high school librarian and a famous British actor who meet during a Christmas blizzard.
January, 2021
The novel began at the tail end of the pandemic, a time during which I was mentally incapable of holding Aelland in my head. Who can remember an entire created world when every single day saps 100% of your mental capacity? Not this girl.
And so, using a straightforward, formulaic structural framework (thank you Jessica Brody and the Save the Cat series), I began putting ideas together for a romance novel. For about six weeks at the start of 2021, character names were picked and a plot began to take shape. My favorite part of this birthing period was creating an IMDb page for the actor.
And then a thing happened, and there was no more time for writing. I gathered my notes into a folder and left them as a sort of "happy summer!" present to myself.
Summer, 2021:
After weeks and weeks of sorting notes and creating the most extensive outline of my writing life, I wrote three chapters in July. I spent as much time revising as writing, to be honest. Maybe more. Openings are so important. Luckily, Writing Excuses tackled some opening page traps and tips, so I had good ideas rattling around in my head.
The Save the Cat outline worked well for me. To start a chapter, I opened a new doc and did a short meta analysis of what needed to happen in the chapter by filling out this thing:
Then I pasted the notes from my massive outline below that and started writing. Although my word count ranged from 200-1700, I generally wrote about 800-900 words a day, which is a short chapter or half of a longer one. The next day, I revised before continuing on. I worked anywhere from one to five hours a day.
In the past, I used a different sort of "What needs to happen in a chapter?" reference page. There had been a computer shuffle in the previous year and a half, however, during which I lost track of that doc. I decided to stick with the new outline.
I was more productive at the start of August. In the first nine days, I wrote nine chapters. An out of town trip interrupted the flow, and it took a few days to get back into the swing. But I did write another nine chapters.
I ended the summer with around 26,000 words, knowing progress on the novel would not resume until summer 2022.
Summer 2022
Over the course of the summer, I wrote another 50,000 words. I'd describe those chapters as the MC's courtship. I left the couple just before their New Year's Eve. They stayed there until this summer.
Winter 2023
I learned three things about my writing and myself at a writing retreat hosted by Pam Houston in February.
Lesson #1: I have my 10,000 hours in. When we were given writing assignments, I had the facility and skill to pump out decent work. Our goal was process, not product, so I don't know if anything I wrote will ever become more than writing practice. But it will be nice to reflect on the confidence I felt that week when imposter syndrome rears its head in the future.
Lesson #2: I can write poetry! The only poems I had written before the workshop were Shakespearean sonnets created to demonstrate that form for my students. But most of what came out of me during the retreat was in poem form. It was a surprise, and I enjoyed it.
Lesson #3: I am funnier (on paper) than I realized.
These revelations led to a resolution to trust myself and to lean into the funny. Dash Away may be exactly as predictable as any Hallmark romance, but at least it will (fingers crossed) make people smile.
Summer, 2023:
Back at it!
I learned that I start writing in 1st gear (day one), move into 3rd gear (the next day), and then can sustain cruising speed indefinitely until I am interrupted. Even one day off derails my flow and forces me to drop back into 1st gear. So the key is a schedule with as many back-to-back writing days as possible.
And that has worked. My summer started with a full week of reading the incomplete novel on paper. I marked issues but didn't fix them as I read.
After a short vacation to see theater in New York, I continued the draft. I had planned to do my edits on the first 74,000 words, but it was much more fun to pick up where the story left off.
This pattern repeated a few times. Write. Short vacation. Write. Short vacation. Write. Write. Write.
During the writing weeks, I revised and wrote between three and five total hours a day, which was more than last summer, drafting about 8000 words per week. Today is my last free day of the summer to indulge in this project, and I am on chapter 59 out of 63 (probably). I really want to have a full draft before school starts, but we'll see.
So, that's where I am.
