As my feedback comes trickling in for my novel first draft, I’ve been putzing with this new story and I have to say, it is fun to write disconnected snippets and see what comes out. I don’t really have a “plot” yet for this maybe project which means I can kind of write whatever pops into my head and watch the threads connect or fall apart. I have three main characters and a loose setting but I’m fleshing it out only by messing around.
I did this for years with Jack’s story — in between the novella version and current novel — and it helped me understand the voice, tone, and work out what (I hope) is the right plot for the story.
I don’t know if I’ll be putzing for years on this new one, but if I do want to dive into it I need to do some more serious planning. Realistically I’m going to keep playing around with it until I dig back into edits on Jack’s story.
Once I’m done actively working on that I’ll move on to another project. Maybe it’ll be this. Maybe I’ll write that runaway lives in a treehouse story. Or that one about another runaway (apparently a trope I like) who flees to New York after an accidental family tragedy, enlists to fight in the Spanish-American War and finds a queer relationship in the Philippines.
Does that last one sound as cool to you as it does to me? I think I need another decade of writing developing my chops before I attempt it but I am pumped.
In the meantime, here are my last sentences from this past week:
- 9/10: On the third day, she found the bodies.
- 9/11: Here, Al was useless.
- 9/12: How could Del forget?
- 9/13: When he walks, I think of the wind.
- 9/14: What do you plan to do?
- 9/15: Prayers were to be whispered, not answered.
- 9/16: “Don’t scream,” Al warned.
With Love,
Natalie