You Always Need A Map.

It's been eleven days since my last post. ELEVEN DAYS! How could I have not blogged in nearly a fortnight? It's not like I haven't been thinking about it. Practically everything I've experienced over those eleven days I've asked myself the question

"Would this make a good blog post?"

And some definitely would but they'd have taken me an age to write and I simply haven't had that kind of time. I've even been avoiding reading too many blogs too often. Why? Well I'll tell ya ... I've been trying to form good writing habits. In the last eleven days I've finished a short story, written the beginning of a new book (more about that in a second) and I've been doing a lot of work (though not much new writing) on my WIP. I should be declaring this every day on the Public Humiliation Challenge thingy but I have yet to figure out how you quantify in word numbers working on the structure of an MS.

In order to keep writing when I'd hit a plot hole that was halting my progress - I simply jumped over it and continued the story further on. At this point rather than writing a cohesive narrative I started writing scenes that had been bubbling about in my head. These scenes have worked very well. It's the process of linking them that I'm having all the trouble with. I have a tendency to waffle and over-complicate everything. Now I need to clear some dead wood from all that mess so I can make a clear path from part one to part two. So yesterday I started writing what I called a "chapter by chapter plot map". I'm trying to get a visual on what I want to achieve so I can build some sturdy bridges over those gaping plot gaps. It's time-consuming and of course it doesn't add to my word count but it's necessary for me to do in order to progress.

The other thing I had to do - just so I could go forward with my MS - was to write the beginning of a story that's been beating on the walls of my brain for ages now. Instead of knuckling down to "Poppy" my mind kept wandering to this story. Although I kept telling myself - "later, I just need to finish Poppy first" - the darn thing wouldn't leave me alone. So I opened a blank document and wrote the beginning. It's down in print now and it seems satisfied for the time being leaving me the headspace to get on with Poppy. Natalie blogged about a similar thing this week and she posted what she'd written. I won't be doing that as it might be many many moons before I can get back to working on it. Ninja Cyborg - I ain't.

So apologies if I'm a bit scarce right now. I'm trying to be a better writer.

FYI - the working title for Poppy's Book is Guardian. I'll just call it that from now on just so we don't get mixed up between the MC and the book itself.