The most useful technique I've learnt so far from Holly Lisle's How To Think Sideways and How To Revise Your Novel courses is the idea of the scene sentence.  Essentially, it's one line that describes the key things which happen in a scene. I'm not talking details here, obviously - it's about focusing on the things that really matter. Since everything I write is done in scenes, this has been really helpful for me. It seems like a simple thing, but I've found that it really helps me to focus, at every stage of the novel writing process.

Holly has a great formula for actually writing the sentences, but essentially it's about these questions: what's happening in this scene that's really important? Who does it affect? And how does it move the story forward? You just write one sentence per scene. And the really key thing about it for me has been finding out whether 'scenes' really are scenes or whether they're actually just drivel. I'm recalling this off the top of my head, so apologies if I'm misquoting, but this line from the lessons sums it up perfectly: You have written a scene when something important changes. So if I write my scene sentence and find that there's nothing important going on there, it isn't a scene. This was crucial for the major edits on The Amulet of Sìochàin - there were quite a few 'scenes' that I didn't even try to rework - I just deleted them, because they didn't add anything to the story.

The idea is to end up with one sentence per scene. But sometimes, lots of important things have to happen at once, and in the plotting stages when I'm trying to make sure I remember everything that has to take place, I sometimes end up with several sentences for each scene. (It's either that or one sentence plus lots of notes, and I prefer it all in one place.) When it comes to edits though, those scene synopses will be cut down to one simple sentence (I think Holly recommends 30 words) per scene.

So today I've spent an hour or so writing out scene sentences for the rest of my WIP, which I started for NaNoWriMo. I'd done a bit before I started writing in November, and when I started to run out I'd plan the next few scenes ahead, but that started to get more difficult as I realised that I didn't really know what was going to happen next. So a few mindmaps and helpful lists later, I'd worked out most of the important things which still need to happen in this story. Then it was just a matter of fitting them together into scene-sized chunks and writing my sentences. I've put them in a logical order, but now that all of the important plot points are written down I can easily rearrange them if necessary, particularly with the storyboard feature in Storybox.

As of tomorrow, then, it's back to the first draft. And now that I know where I'm going, I'm excited again. And I used to call myself a pantser...!

Where do you fall on the plotting scale? Any tips for getting scene ideas down?

I sat down the other day with my lovely new diary and a notebook and tried to plan out my writing year. I started out with the list of goals I posted in October, and added and amended a few. These are my goals in a nutshell:

JANUARY - Edits
First and foremost, I need to finish typing up my line edits and get them sent out to a couple of beta readers. I was aiming for the 13th of January, but given that I'm now working most of next week I've moved that up - I want to get this done over the weekend. I'm averaging about 30 pages an hour and have about 270 pages to go, so I guess at that rate I'm going to need nine or ten hours... I'm hoping that I've remembered correctly and that there's less red pen on the later pages in the manuscript! And I have serious incentive on this one - I have a 10% discount for the Festival of Writing if I book before the 15th, and unless I get this done, I'm not letting myself go. At all.

JANUARY/FEBRUARY - First Draft
I need to finish the first draft of my NaNoWriMo novel. I've been working on this intermittently since the end of NaNo, mainly on my Alphasmart on the way to work. My solid deadline is the end of February, but ideally I want it done before then. I was aiming for the end of January, but I don't think that's very realistic since I'm at 58K and probably not going to be able to stick to NaNo pace - certainly not until the edits are done. We'll see.

MARCH/APRIL/MAY - Edits
After that, I want to start editing the novel I started for NaNo 2009, The Bonded. I'm looking forward to that. Needs a lot of work, but I'm hoping three months will be enough to get the bulk of that done.

JUNE/JULY/AUGUST - Short Stories
I'd been considering getting another novel draft in here, but then I thought about it and realised that I really don't want that many unedited manuscripts sitting around at once! So I'd like to spend a couple of months working on short stories, partly to give myself a break from the edits and partly because it's a form I'm still not very familiar with. I think I'll go back and work through some of the stuff in Merrilee's Creativity Workshop that I didn't get round to, and revisit the stories I did manage to write. I'd like to get five short stories ready for submission by the time September rolls around.

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER - Edits
After that, it'll be back to edits, aiming to get the line edits done for The Bonded.

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER - First Draft
NaNoWriMo - the only time of year I seem to be able to sustain a decent writing pace for more than a couple of days, so it will be time to work on something new!

These, of course, are only the bits that I think I'll be able to control. Once I've got feedback from my betas, fixing any problems with Amulet will become the priority again. When that's done, I think it will finally be ready to face the world. So somewhere in all of that, I'll hopefully start querying agents.

The skeleton outline of the year is all very well, but my biggest goal is to make writing a priority. The funny thing is that it already is in many ways - but it's all too easy to let it fall aside from time to time, and that's what I want to avoid. I'm aiming for at least two hours of writing/editing on 'easy' days, i.e. those days when I'm not at work or particularly busy, and 30 minutes a day on busier days. Two hours is a lot, but I think I can do it. Some days, at least. ;)

So far, 2011 is looking like it'll be rather busy!

So... I guess it's been a while, huh? Apologies and all that. Must be time for a brief update...

Creativity Workshop
Sadly, my last blog post was the last time I did anything directly related to the workshop. Other things took over, and although I would very much like to go back and work my way through the last few weeks of the workshop at some point I had to put it aside. That snarky mercenary is still in my head though, and I doubt she's going anywhere! I suspect she may end up with her own novel at some point, but she'll have to wait a while.

The Amulet of Sìochàin
I finished my story bible, eventually. It was useful, I think. I know the name of the town in the novel now, anyway. It may prove more useful in the future, if I ever get round to writing the sequel. Either way, I'm glad I did it, but it did seem to take forever. I'm now (finally) on line edits, and they seem to be taking even longer. But I've sped up in the last week or so - until this week I was having to limit myself to doing 15 minutes at a time, because it just seemed so tedious. This week though I've worked on it every day, taking advantage of extra pockets of time where I've had them, and I'm now on page 228 of 373. I can't tell you how long I've been working on it, but it's been weeks, and yet in the last week or so I've probably doubled my page count. This means that if I can get through nine pages a day for the rest of October I will be done in time to start NaNoWriMo. Talking of which...

NaNoWriMo
I told myself that if I hadn't finished my line edits by November, I wouldn't be allowed to do NaNo this year. I've participated in and completed it for the last three years, so that would be bad. To be honest, I'm not sure I'll really have the time to complete it this November anyway, but I want to give it a shot at least. Apart from anything else, I really need an excuse to write something else. I've been working on these revisions since January. Okay, they were extensive and required lots of new scenes, but apart from a couple of short stories I haven't written anything new since I finished last year's NaNoWriMo book. I have a one-sentence summary of the book I want to write. I'm really really hoping I finish these line edits in time to do just a little bit more plotting though.

Goals
So, goals. I'm never very good at these, but it seems a good time to make them all the same.
Finish Amulet line edits by 31st October Participate in (and win) NaNoWriMo Complete NaNoWriMo novel (this will probably take me through to January) Type up Amulet line edits Do a final read through, put together a decent query letter and start sending it out Start on The Bonded edits (last year's NaNoWriMo book - love the concept, know it's going to need just as much editing as Amulet) and get it ready to submit to agent/book doctor at the Festival of Writing Attend Festival of Writing (end of March) And that's as far ahead as I can bear to look.