So Choices of Honor has let me know that it is a combination of plotter and pantser this time around. I sat down earlier in March to fill out my traditional plotting matrix, along with noodling in Scrivener to do some worldbuilding and character stuff. Well. The darn book cooperated with me for the first third of its planning, and then thumbed its nose at me and said, “Read the damn notes, woman. I don’t want to be tied down scene-by-scene like you did with the Netwalk Sequence novels. I’m not gonna work with you that way.”
Okay. Fine. Whatever. Part of the issue is that I’m engaging into some major new worldbuilding in this Goddess’s Honor world. I ended up writing more of a synopsis-type outline focusing on the three main beats for the next two-thirds, and then decided I’d work more on it as I reached that point. It was becoming clear that the book had its own ideas about where it was going, and the subconscious was doing stuff I wasn’t aware of.
Well, here I am with the first third more-or-less done. The next third is going to incorporate two significant battles going on simultaneously and may require fast cuts between points of view to make it work. Plus I’m now aware of the parameters of what I need to be creating. Eeek.
That said, today we drove back to Enterprise from Portland. This time around we took the Tundra so that we could haul stuff at hubby’s sister’s house–the Subaru has better gas mileage and hauls a lot of stuff, but gravel and yard debris are somewhat out of its reach. For whatever reason, I can’t ride in the Subaru’s passenger seat without having vertigo issues. Something about the pillar and the curvature of the windshield.
It’s not an issue in the Tundra, though, and while the Tundra is a more expensive drive, it’s also quite comfortable. I drove the first part, and then while hubby drove across the desert I did some major worldbuilding work as well as promotion planning, ideas for future essays, and wildlife spotting (the Tundra is taller and better for spotting wildlife).
I still don’t have the last third of the book together. And writing this next third is going to give me gray hairs because I think there will end up being a LOT of cutting and pasting and moving around of the various POV characters. But at least I have a road map of where I’m going with it…which is more than I have had. Just-In-Time creation…book style.
All goes to show that every book is its own creation.
And then there’s the wildlife. But I think that should be its own blog, because OMG it was a great day to see critters and raptors and other birds, oh my.
