Entry posted by DZ-Jay
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Progress? Yup, we've got some of that.
I started this project about a month ago. Well, actually, I spent a week just staring at the initial page I wrote six years ago. I'd like to say that I was planning the story arc and figuring out my writing style and narrative voice, but I was just staring at the document pretending to be a writer, while I looked for all sorts of other distractions like re-organizing my photos or updating my household budget (yes, I get very productive when I want to avoid work).
Then I spent a few more days picking a font and selecting margin sizes. I must have looked at some 10 different resources online on professional typesetting and book binding and interior design. (I also tend to become a thorough expert on random ancillary topics in order to avoid doing the actual work.)
I chose 11pt Bakersville, on a 7"x10" paper with 0.75" margins from the left, right, and bottom edges, and 1/2" margin on top. The chapter titles are in 18pt Cochin, bold. It'll do for now, until I decide I need a new distraction. It all looks like this:
Finally, after all that important stuff was done, about three weeks ago (according to my Time Machine backups, I had to look it up because it feels like forever ago), I wrote the first paragraph in six years.
It has been six years, really, almost to the day. Indeed, the Time Machine backups attest that the last time I updated the essay was on August 20, 2012. It's uncanny, but the first change since then (playing with fonts and margins) was on August 25, 2018. Weird.
Anyway, so I started the project about a month four three weeks ago. I then took an extra-long Labor Day week-end the week after to work on it, and that's when I became really productive. That's when the story actually took shape. I wrote two whole chapters that week-end. Brief, perhaps two or three pages each (11pt Bakersville is sort of tiny), but complete.
That wasn't all -- during that five day week-end I also wrote an outline for the story, settling on five chapters; drew three maps to help guide me through the geography of the world, including the Ice Cube Caverns; and invented whole new story-world elements such as an explorer who several years ago charted the caverns but did not complete the work on account of the Ghost Of Christmas Presents terrorizing him out of the place. His name was Ed Finnley, but he's a topic for some other time (literally, I'll probably reserve that for the sequel LOL!).
Since then, I've combined the first two first chapters into one and added five more. I am now at 21 pages (in 11pt Bakersville on a 7"x10" that's something -- at least to me) and the outline has grown to nine chapters plus an epilogue.
So, yes, progress.
Based on my ever-changing outline, I seem to be about half-way through the story, but I have to admit that it has taken a life of its own. That sounds like a silly old cliché, but it's weirdly true. I know what I want to include as part of the story and I know how it ends. However, I honestly cannot tell what is actually going to happen in between the sixth chapter and the epilogue. I thought I did, but apparently I am not in full control of this thing.
So far, every time I sit down to write a particular situation as I planned it, it ends up going in some unexpected direction, prompting me to either add a chapter to proceed with that new development, or replace an entire part of my originally envisioned arc. I can't describe how strangely alien this lack of agency feels ... Well, it feels strangely alien, so I guess I can describe how it feels. It's comforting to know that I still retain some command over this writin' thang.
Well, that's it for now. I think I'll include the outline and the maps in a future post.
See, ya'!
-dZ.
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