Blue & Gold

If you follow me on Instagram you know I recently boxed up RynRaven along with all associated notes, research and scrapped scenes.(And if you don’t, why not? :p ) I have to box up any manuscripts I’m not currently working on, and since Ryn is with my editor, I’m letting her rest in order to switch gears. Now, I’m pulling out the started manuscript from my 2017 NaNoWriMo session. (If you don’t know what that is, here is a link, it’s quickly become one of my favorite times of the year: National Novel Writing Month )

I thought I might share with you my process of getting into the headspace for developing a story. Avenging Angel (it’s a working title) is going to be a novella, I plan to release her in the first quarter or second quarter of 2019, – depending on the beta process, keep an eye out for beta requests this fall across many of my platforms – and she is roughly half finished. The very first thing I do, is gather together all the elements I need to get into a story:

Stories have colors – to me. All my stories evoke a color in my mind when I think about them. Each story has its own color scheme. Avenging Angel is blue and gold. What that means is while in the development stage I have a compulsion to write in and take notes in specific colors, so the binder, paper, notebooks, sticky notes and pens all match the blue and gold color pattern. It all helps me stay in the right mind frame of the story. That way, as soon as I pick up the binder I’m immediately back in the story and I can begin writing.

RynRaven was red and gray.

This time around, I’m adding to the process and I hope it really kicks my creativity into high gear – I’m now including scents as a part of the process, because the olfactory is such a powerful motivator. The reason being, I’ve given myself a new challenge: I’m giving up my role of pantser for the remainder of 2018 to take on the role as planner. So instead of just writing and seeing where the story takes me, I’m going to plot out the entire story beginning to end and follow the structure I built once the outline is complete. I no longer have the luxury of allowing a story to grow over years and years. These babies of mine now have deadlines, they may be self imposed, but since they are ultimately for you, my audience, these deadlines have taken on new meaning.

You have given me new purpose. And for you, I will rise to the challenge!