The Joys of Plotting

About a month ago, I found an article written by an author who had just had her first baby. Now, reading this article changed the method behind the madness that is my writing, and I really wanted to provide the link here for it, but I have a horrible memory and I can't remember her name or where I found the article. So, the only thing I can do is explain her method.

So she writes novels and is under contract with a publishing house to do a novel every six months. After having her baby, she found that not only did she have limited time to write, but that when she sat down at the keyboard nothing came out. She figured it was because the time once spent brainstorming was instead going into changing diapers, cleaning the house, feeding the baby, etc. So she decided to take five minutes every day and write out her ideas on a notepad before beginning to write. She found that the small brainstorming session increased her productivity by a lot.

So two days ago, I sat down to write a basic summary of the book I'm working on and ended up with seven typed pages of notes. Yesterday, I sat down at the keyboard with my handy-dandy list of notes, and 5,000 words later, I'd gotten out the first two chapters without having to stop to reform my thoughts or fix the plot. It was wonderful.

My challenge for you is to take five minutes before you write the next time, jot your ideas down on a piece of paper, and see if it helps you to organize your thoughts before jumping in.

Okay, well, I ended up spending the last month and a bit writing instead of editing, but I did finally send an erotic piece into Every Night Erotica two days ago. It was just a quickie, so I'm not sure how it will do, but I'm hoping!

I started a new novella yesterday, and so far it's going really well. It's a bit harder than what I'm used to writing, and I'm having a ton of fun trying to figure it all out. I'm finally using a master/slave couple with a touch of BDSM, and whatever else I think of as I go. One thing I did realize yesterday was that my writing style has changed a bit over the past few months. I suppose we go through those small changes every so often. I just hope it's for the better.