Day 2: Making decisions, getting caught up in details

Like an idiot, when my computer said it had to restart for a software update, I hit “Restart,” and now I’m stuck waiting for it to update. It’s been a long time but I’m not sure if there’s a problem or if it really is supposed to take this long. If it continues another hour, I’ll do a hard reset.

Luckily I have my other laptop, which is connected to my Dropbox account and has Scrivener, so I can continue to work even though my main computer is offline.

I’m working on fixing the plot problem I came up with yesterday. In actuality, it’s a blocking problem, not an outline problem, but like I mentioned yesterday, my slight OCD tendency won’t let me continue outlining my series until I fix this problem first.

I admit I feel terribly inefficient when I’m stuck on fixing a problem, because I spend a lot of time just thinking and not typing anything. But problem solving is not my strong point and always takes me longer than other aspects of writing. It’s why it took so long for me to come up with proposals for my editor at Love Inspired Suspense, because when writing the outline, I would find these plot problems—which I knew she would ask about anyway—so I would spend time trying to fix them, and it would take a really long time to fix each one. Other Love Inspired authors can come up with a proposal within a month, but it always took me several months to come up with a solid proposal I wasn’t ashamed to send to my editor, with all the plot holes and problems that I could find already fixed.

So that’s where I am today—brainstorming what small, not-obvious clue the villain leaves behind to lead my protagonists to the next hideout.

***

I figured out the clue I needed and then started writing my more detailed outlines for the other books in the series.

I already knew this, but I’m terrible at making decisions quickly. I had to make a decision about whether to keep a new character I’d introduced or save that character’s introduction for a later book, and it took me forever before I finally decided. I had to go through the plot point by point until I finally decided that without the character, the plot is more cohesive.

Also, while I’m doing the outlining, it’s hard for me to not get caught up in details and not do blocking when I see a plot question I haven’t answered yet. I have to remember to just flag it so I’ll figure out an answer later. While outlining the series right now, I have to maintain a high-level point of view and not get bogged down by little details that I can always fix later when I’m doing the blocking for the scenes.

***

I got some outlining done on volume 3, and I wasn’t too distracted by the details, I only I ended up realizing and correcting a continuity error in volume 2.

However my IBS flared up and I was too uncomfortable to continue writing, plus it was the end of the day so I checked email. My translator asked about some formatting issues in Sushi for One, so I spent about 40 minutes battling with Microsoft Word and searching the internet (and let me just say, I have CRAPPY internet search skills) to finally come up with a solution.

Time spent writing: 5 hours, 30 minutes.
Time spent doing other writing-related business: 1 hour, 12 minutes

My takeaway for today: I have a tendency to get caught up in details when I need to keep my perspective at a high level for outlining. I need to watch out for that.