At the beginning of this year an assignment was due that included a synopsis and blurb of my novel. One result of doing this assignment was that the planned ending of my book was changed entirely, and since then I haven't written a single new word of it.
But after a tutorial I realised the problem wasn't that I had changed the ending, it was the fact that I was thinking about the ending at all. I had figured out that it was over 60,000 words away and I had no idea how to fill that much writing space. So yesterday I sat down and spent a good two hours working out what could and should happen between the start and the end. Here's the result:
Isn't it pretty. The colours represent the importance of the event, so I made sure I had at least one amber or red event for each day. Friday looks a bit frantic doesn't it!
And this prettiful chart helps in two ways. Firstly I can start writing again because I know exactly what's going to happen next, and after that, and after that and so on. Secondly the entire 80,000ish words have been broken down into 16 little chunks. I can think about it as writing 16 short stories, which I already know I can do because I have around that number of short stories to my name. Even better is the fact that I've already written a few of the chunks so I only have 10 or 11 to go.
Suddenly writing a whole novel doesn't seem like such an impossible task.
xXx
