A Diligent Day

It turned out that my new vision of the scene I was working on was right. It was so much better than the old way that I'd been imagining for about a year. It somehow managed to fit in more information and more conflict with fewer words. And then I discovered that the next scene also needed work. I took an online class last year in which one of the suggestions was to go over your manuscript with highlighters, color-coding for stuff like introspection, dialogue, action, description, etc. This scene started with two pages of introspection/narrative. Plus I realized that I'd cut off the previous scene in that plot line with a slight cliffhanger, but picked up the next scene later, and there was room for more stuff to happen. So now I'm rewriting it to continue where it left off, weaving the introspection into a conversation. This version is likely to be longer than the first one because I'm adding so much, but I have spare words to play with.

I was especially diligent yesterday, clocking six hours of writing-related work time. That included work on my medical school project (work for the medical school. I am not in medical school), work on the book and research for the next book. That doesn't include my marketing-related and market research activities, like blogging, dealing with e-mail, checking up on industry blogs or administrative work related to some upcoming conventions.

This next book is going to require more research than I've ever put into a book. To be totally honest, most of my books haven't needed that much research beyond the location. The research I've done has been more about folklore and stuff like that, and it's to (maybe) give more depth to the story. It might also count as a procrastination method, though a good procrastination method because I think sometimes the subconscious needs that time to do its work. However, this next book needs tons of research because I'm delving into some areas I've never worked with. I suspect that by the time I'm done, I'll have read at least 30 books in preparation for writing the book. That does include some fiction because there's market research involved, as well as some fiction that actually counts as world-building research.

Hmm, just did a quick mental count and it's going to be way more than 30. If I count the market research and genre background research, I'm already at 20, and I'm only starting the specific research. The story idea remains pretty vague, with just a few details starting to come into focus. I have to get the world clear before I can create characters and the plot.