Day 676: Almost done outlining Hawaii book

I’m still working on outlining the Hawaii book. I remembered how it was useful for me to look at my Book Creation Process and figure out which steps had been done and yet still needed to be done for my Regency books, so I decided to do the same for this Hawaii book.

Unlike for other books, this time I was rewriting an old book, Year of the Dog, so I had already done stage 1 in my Book Creation Process, which is developing the characters. I also had already done stage 2, which was doing the Snowflake steps for the original book, but since I was adjusting the plot, I spent the past few days altering my 1-paragraph summary (Snowflake step 2) and 1-page synopsis (Snowflake step 4).

I also had already done stage 5 of my Book Creation Process, which was to create a scene spreadsheet (Snowflake step 8), and in working on the 1-page synopsis, I ended up revising the scene spreadsheet at the same time.

I also already had done an expanded synopsis of the book (Snowflake step 6), and normally I’d spend time revising that because I use that as my basis for when I do blocking later, but in this case since the book is already written and I’ll be revising the original text, I didn’t bother. I didn’t yet use blocking notes when I first wrote the original manuscript, so I’ll need to make new blocking notes, but I’ll do those just before I revise each scene.

Next I’ll be doing stage 3 of my Book Creation Process, which is adjusting my romantic and spiritual arcs and revising my 1-page synopsis and my scene spreadsheet. I would normally also adjust my expanded synopsis at the same time, but as I mentioned above, I’m not going to do that now.

While I’m adjusting the romantic and spiritual arcs, I will also do stage 4, which is filling out my hero’s journey worksheets for the characters. I already had it filled out before for the original book, so I’ll only need to revise it with the new plot line.

After I finish the romantic and spiritual arcs, the next step is stage 4 of my Book Creation Process, which is to fill out my hero’s  journey worksheets for the characters. I already had it filled out before for the original book, so I’ll only need to revise it with the new plot line.

After doing stage 4 and finishing the hero’s journey worksheet, usually I’d go to stage 5, which is making the scene spreadsheet and doing blocking. As I mentioned above, I already revised the scene spreadsheet, and since I’ll be revising original text rather than writing new scenes, I’m going to hold off on doing the blocking right now and instead do it just before revising each scene.

So that’s the plan for today: revising the 1-page synopsis and scene spreadsheet with the romantic and spiritual arcs, and then moving on to revising my hero’s journey worksheets. I wonder if I could do that all today? I guess I’ll find out.

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Yay! I finished both the romantic and spiritual arcs, and I adjusted the scene spreadsheet and 1-page synopsis. I also finished the hero’s journey worksheet for my hero, but not for my heroine. I wanted to push through and get it done today, but my brain is just too tired. I think I’ll do it tomorrow. I don’t think it’ll take very long tomorrow, so I might go back to working on the Regency tomorrow. And then I can write/revise about 100-200 words a day on the Hawaii book. I’m thinking I’ll post about 3000 words once a month, and that way I’ll have something for my Contemporary readers to read while I’m working on the Regency series.

Regency series:

Editing: Time spent: 1 minute

Writing: Time spent: 18 minutes

Writing: Total number of words: 189 words

Writing streak: 155 days

Blocking: time spent: 14 minutes

Blocking streak: 149 days

Hawaii series:

Outlining: time spent: 5 hours, 23 minutes

Time spent doing other writing-related business: 4 minutes

My takeaway for today: Remember to go back to the Book Creation Process to figure out what steps you have and haven’t done yet, so you know what to do next.