Further Plotting & Beginning on the New Stories

It’s Saturday morning and I am sitting here in the sunlight with my cats, my comfy clothes and my hot, yummy coffee.  FINALLY!  I got my Folger’s Black Silk back and I could not feel more at peace – their Columbian brew was just nasty to me.

I am trying to plan out my work for today.  I have to create art for the Secret Project work (not writing, but related) as well as work on my stories and create a baseline in a program to them share with my project partner.

I also have to do a HUGE amount of pages of art for the Sketchbook Summer challenge (finish 220 pages of a roughly 8×10 sketchbook in July) and I am waiting on pins and needles to hear back from my first beta reader.  I have to have time to finish fixing anything from her notes before sending the book off to my bug hunters.  And that could take an hour or a day or three days.  Ugh!

So I’ll be doing my Lesson 3 today (from the How to Write Short Stories course that I am working my way through) and figuring out how to handle the bits and pieces that I’ve done so far.  It looks like there is a significant amount of writing on today’s agenda.  I might be stuck on lesson 3 for a couple of days.   Sunday, I doubt I will get any writing done at all as I have the time with my mom (we Zoom every Sunday), secret project work all day except for the few hours I have to spend with my husband.  And whatever time I can spend trying to catch up on the Summer Sketchbook project.

Being stuck on lesson 3 for a few days is perfectly fine.  It looks like I am also focusing on the themes when it comes to these short stories.  That’s wonderful because, after writing Leaving Wandalucia, I am eager to return to meaningful stories!  The themes in that novel meant a lot to me.

Considering the fact that How to Write Short Stories is supposed to be an eight-week course and I’ve done two lessons in two days, I’m moving at a fine pace, even if I get stuck for a couple days.  And I don’t want to rush these stories.

Oh, shit!  I forgot to mention lesson 2!  It was fun but also hard, because it was taking me through different thoughts on how these stories could come about as well as different methods.  I kept returning to my lists that I made in lesson one to find a way to use those lists in these short stories and it worked in AMAZING ways.  I’m so pleased with how these ideas have been generated.  I’d get stuck wondering what new thing I could pull from Wandalucia to add something neat to this story and I’d look to my list.  I came up with some super cool stuff!

And I loved The 6 Cookies approach.  I usually use a scene by scene, character-based approach to getting the scenes and plotting done, but this was cool!

So I got all three stories done (as far as the lesson went) for the basic plotting.  I’ve gotten two fleshed out and the third just put together with the 6 Cookie method before calling it a day and spending time with the old man.

Also, I spent the first probably 45 minute of my “Focus Room” time (Skype’s chat feature where my mother and I work off of tens with each other, keeping, duh, focused) finishing up different things related to the Secret Project.  My mother and I both had a productive day!

So now I am off to work.  Happy Caterday to you all!

 

* Holly’s links are affiliate links and will never charge you extra because of this. However you can easily Google Holly’s Writing Classes to find all of her courses.  The link to the Sketchbook Summer page is NOT an affiliate link.  You can also find them on Instagram and Facebook.

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Three Wandalucia Stories

Yesterday I worked on the first lesson of How to Write Short Stories and it took a couple of hours.  I worked through the bulk of it in sections as I took care of other things like the pets, cleaning a bit, laundry, dishes, husband’s lunch (I read The Obesity Code and it’s eye-opening, especially for my PCOS riddled body, so I’ve changed my eating habits drastically and I am loving it, therefore I didn’t eat).  The rest I got to as soon as my husband left for work.  Using Holly’s methods with characters I already had in mind, I came up with some really kickass story ideas and cannot freaking wait!

The class is still in Splinter Mode (Holly’s version of beta-testing), so I found some typos and errors, but when I went to report them they’d already been mentioned.

I would have never thought to come up with the ideas in such a weird way, because my process is very different.  Doing it this way has left me with stories with elements I would have never thought of!  So cool!  It reminded me a little of the Mind Maps from How to Think Sideways which is my all time favorite and most life altering course of hers I’ve taken.

So I have three women that have all been mentioned in Leaving Wandalucia: Amber, Hannah and Sammy and three very different stories of romance.  Amber is a married woman with a tween, Hannah is a long-ago divorced woman with spunk and a 33 year old son, and Sammy is a 19 year old with an odd obsession – odd for the people of Wandalucia, anyway.   Holly’s method gave my muse Sammy’s obsession and I couldn’t be happier!

I am more than a bit giddy, and I’ll be working on lesson two today.  I wanted to get started on the story last night, wanted to pull out the old tried and true standby I learned from Syd Field’s book The Screenwriter’s Workbook (mine was an older version than the linked one, but that one is listed for $24!!) – the technique many writers use with a pack of index cards – and get to plotting… but as I am using her course to write these, I’ll wait and work on all of the stories as I follow along.

I have other things I need to accomplish (especially in the next 4 weeks) so I’m taking these lessons from How to Write Short Stories one at a time.  Still, I want at least one of these stories out well before Halloween (Sammy’s story) so I’ll be going at a decent pace getting these lessons done.  I believe it’s an 8 week course, so that means 8 lessons and I’ll have time to spare!

 

* Holly’s links are affiliate links and will never charge you extra because of this. However you can easily Google Holly’s Writing Classes to find all of her courses.  The links to The Obesity Code and The Screenwriter’s Workbook are NOT affiliate links.