Writing Out of Sequence
In Today's Journal
* Writing Out of Sequence
* Inkers Con
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
Writing Out of Sequence
This is an awareness post.
You might have noticed I've experienced a little trouble writing my current novel. Everything flowed great on Days 1 & 2 of writing this story.
Then I reported a non-writing day. I did okay on Day 3, then had another non-writing day.
Both of those non-writing days, I was right here at my desk, cycling over a specific couple of chapters of the story and wondering what the hell happened.
The story felt stuck, but I don't believe in "stuck" stories.
After all, if you just write what happens and how the characters react to what happens as you run through the story with them, how can you ever be stuck?
Always before, I've said if a story slows to a crawl, chances are you've written past the end of the scene or the end of the chapter or the end of the story.
But that wasn't the case this time. For one thing, the novel didn't slow to a crawl. It fell off a cliff.
But why?
I'd written everything authentically, the scenes and chapters were good (about 4500 words, so almost half of my writing up to that point), and I hadn't written past any endings.
Crap! So what gives?
So I started cycling back over what I'd written.
After I spent two almost-full days and a few hour of yesterday cycling, it finally hit me.
It wasn't writing trouble at all. It was sequence trouble. This is my 12th novel this year and my 116th novel overall in 9 years, and I've never before written more than maybe a subscene out of sequence.
That's why it took me a little while to figure it out.
But let me backtrack a little and tell you HOW this happened.
You know how I'm always talking about not letting your conscious, critical mind slip into your writing? Sometimes it comes from ridiculous places you would never suspect.
Soon after I started this novel, I got excited about possibilities and started thinking ahead. It was innocent. I had opened my "PubDates.txt" file and laid out the publication dates for my next several novels (all two weeks apart) to keep my publishing streak going.
As I did that, my excitement about this POV character took over. I was thinking, "Goodness, this guy might run all the way through Blackwell Ops 50 (a benchmark, right?) or even BO-51.
Each novel would be titled "Sam Granger |" and then something about the Ghost Trail as a subtitle.
No biggie, right?
But when I went back to the novel, I guess some of that stuff was still in my head. Apparently POV character Sam Granger grabbed onto it and decided to leap ahead. And of course, I wrote what he gave me.
As a result, the segment of the current novel that is composed of the end of Chapter 4 (about 400 words), ALL of Chapters 5 and 6 (almost 3500 words), and the opening of Chapter 7 (over 560 words) were all solid and authentic.
But they encompass an event that happens much later in the novel, and probably even later in the series in a different book.
How do I know? Because in his profession, Sam isn't experienced enough yet to make that leap ahead. As I said above, that will come either later in this novel or, more likely, in another book later in the series.
So once I found that, I came over here to write this for TNDJ, then decided how to handle the word count for my Numbers (below).
To keep the numbers straight, I'm cutting 4437 words from my word count (and my spreadsheet). I'll save them as-is in a separate file, then add them back in at the appropriate time, either later in this novel or later in the series.
So in The Numbers below, "CUTS" corrects the current totals. Then "Day 4" reflects what I wrote yesterday after I figured out what was going on, put a stop to it, and got back to writing the novel.
MAN I hope this never happens again! (grin) But in the meantime, maybe it will serve as a warning to always be watchful for your critical voice.
Just to be clear, the problem here isn't the cuts. The problem is that by not recognizing the critical voice earlier, I cost myself two full days and part of a third of writing.
Inkers Con
From writer Carrie G
Just wanted to pass along info for Inkers Con, a digital writers conference, in case any of your readers might be interested.
Marketing, advertising, and craft seminars oh my. And more. Several seminars piqued my interest. But not sure I will spend the $200 this year. Will see. Price is $250 but Sarra Cannon has a code to save $50. Code is SARRA25.
Of Interest
A True Pulp Convo with Bestselling Crime Writer Franke Scalise!
Full interview: Crime author Michael Connelly
7 Easy Ideas for Authors to Grow an Instagram Audience
First Report On Licensing Expo
The Numbers
The Journal…………………………… 830
Writing of Blackwell Ops 45: Sam Granger | The Ghost Trail 2
Day 1…… 2637 words. To date…… 2637
Day 2…… 3648 words. To date…… 6285
Day 3…… 3483 words. To date…… 9768
CUTS…… -4437 words. To date…… 5331
Day 4…… 3212 words. To date…… 8543
Fiction for May………………………... 80280
Fiction for 2025………………………. 458693
Nonfiction for May………………........ 24510
Nonfiction for 2025…………………… 125600
2025 consumable words…………….. 577783
Average Fiction WPD (May)……...... 2768
2025 Novels to Date…………………….. 11
2025 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2025 Short Stories to Date……………… 27
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………..... 115
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 10
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 297
Short story collections……………………. 29
Whatever you believe, unreasoning fear and the myths that outlining, revising, and rewriting will make your work better are lies. They will always slow your progress as a writer or stop you cold. I will never teach the myths on this blog.
Writing fiction should never be something that stresses you out. It should be fun. On this blog I teach Writing Into the Dark and adherence to Heinlein’s Rules. Because of WITD and because I endeavor to follow those Rules I am a prolific professional fiction writer. You can be too.
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Questions are always welcome at harveystanbrough@gmail.com. But please limit yourself to the topics of writing and publishing.
Interesting! I don't think I've ever written out of order like that before, but that's good information in case it happens to me in the future. :)
I think the third link you have is inaccurate - it redirects to a post about writing multiple novels at once, not a post about writers and Instagram.
Eh, I have at least two chapters of my current fantasy story I’m serializing that are way, way down the timeline. Now I am working to connect the beginning with that very dramatic section.