Back in September, I completed the second draft of a novel I started revising back in early 2020. This is the first novel draft I’ve ever successfully completed and the first one I’ve ever revised, and it’s been a massive learning process. So I’ve been taking a break and focusing on other uncompleted projects.

About a month ago, I finally finished drafting a short story that’s been laying unfinished in my drawer for some years. I plan to start workshopping the story by the end of the year with hopes of submitting to some journals in the future.

And for the last two months, I’ve been knee-deep in planning/outlining a novel I began drafting way back in 2011. I made it about 2/3 through the first draft with very little structured planning, just a very rough sketch. So I have been applying the Snowflake Method and using it to better map out the last 1/3 stretch. This week I finally reached the point of listing all the scenes in a spreadsheet:

My priority here was filling out the scenes for the last 1/3, the climax and resolution, so there’s obviously still a huge gap left to fill. This is a massive novel, much more so than the one I recently finished, so digging into all the scenes and all the characters has been really useful. There is so much more work left to be done!

I’m frankly not a big outliner and always get a bit leery sharing details of the process, but I figure it might help in terms of accountability. Plus it can be helpful for others to see what’s involved.

In the meantime, I am waffling over whether to post older short stories I plan to revise here, or to try submitting them again. With these stories being 10 years or more old, part of me just wants to put those ideas to rest and make them freely available to whomever. Another part of me believes they deserve to be seen in print by a wider audience.

Oh, and expect an article on using research for characterization and creative development before the end of the year.

Stay tuned…