Master of Death, Master of Nothing

It's been a while since I've written anything here, and I suppose there should be an explaination forthcomming. First, I am actively writing again. If I'm writing here, I'm not writing my book. It's exceedingly hard to write good literature during every second of spare time I have, and then to squeeze yet more time out to write a 500 word blog article. To blame it all on my book and my time restraints isn't entirely fair, or honest, for that matter.

I have been decidedly distracted lately, though I haven't really been forthcomming about it. The issue has been plaguing me since I was 12 or so. At that point in my life I experienced, for me, the most tramatic thing I could have then, Death. My grandmother died, and she and I had become increasingly close during the last year and months of her life. I'll never understand it but the death haunted me, in ways that I can never really explain.

I've tried to explain them, in thousands of poems and free writes and pieces of verse, I've tried. I've tried to understand death, and in this I lost myself I think. What I had thought was my grieving process was, I think, just an obsession with death. Or perhaps more apropriately at that time the pain that death inflicts in the fallout of it's merciless grasp.

In my poetry I saught to conquer this pain, to overcome it, so that I never had to hurt that badly again. But the scariest part I'm only realizing now, is that I succeeded. And in what then I would have seen as my greatest accomplisment, I now see as my greatest failure, my dramatic flaw.

A year later my great aunt died, and a year after that my great grandmother, then my grandfather. Each time it hurt less, and less, and less. The deaths kept getting closer and closer and the pain kept fading. I didn't take much notice then, I just kept writing, working. It was like every emotion that pained me, I could, I would, find the words to describe it on my pad, and in doing so lock them away forever.

It's only now that I understand exactly what I've done. It took the death of a great woman, someone I admired and respected deeply, to help me understand. When a friend's mother passed away and I felt nothing, not sadness, not regret, nothing, some part of me questioned it. Why doesn't this feel bad? And it bothered me. Shook me, really, shook me deeply and I began to wonder how well I really knew myself, how well I understood myself.

I've been kind of lost lately, spending more time trying to understand myself. I've spent a great deal of time analyzing my past, trying to discern the turning point, trying to find the way back. I don't know, I do know that I've gone numb in a sense and for some reason the pain in the painlessness hurts that much more.

How Do Authors Keep Ideas Organized?

One of the biggest issues for writers is keeping all the plots they construct organized, along with the flow of the story and the way the characters develop with the plot. For every author it's different, and I struggled while I was working on my debut novel, Majician's Journey, “TheProphecy,” and it shows, at least to me. I'm told though, that people are very critical by nature of their own work, but that's another matter entirely.

I'd tried to outline, like we'd been taught in my English classes in high school, and it always felt too refined, too finite. When I used an outline, I felt too restricted and often ended up diverting entirely off topic. The basic plot would rarely change but the details I'd imagined and jotted down almost always did. I think it was more in part my initial brainstorming/epiphany being flawed than with the way I was writing the story. Outlining in the standard sense just wasn't going to work for me.

Before I started working on my current book, I had a breakthrough. One day I got the urge to start working and I was curious as to how some of my favorite authors planned their work, so I started with the most obvious, Joanne Rowling, whom I respect and admire greatly. I ended up clicking on a Google search result that led me to a photo of a page from her notebook laying out her plan for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix in which she'd set up a grid, kind of like an Excel sheet (this is probably what I liken it to most), that laid out the time of year, the times, the chapters and the individual chapter plots among other things.

When I saw it my brain whirred, and started building it's own version, making changes that began to fit perfectly with how I write and the way I approach the writing process. I'm use a very free-style way of writing, so-to-speak, preferring to let the words just “come-out,” rather than thinking too much about them. I I've found that with me, if I think too much about the story while I write, everything begins to feel forced. I eventually came up with what you see below ruled onto a legal pad:

Month	Characters	#Days	Plot	Title	Narrator	Notes
Apr-May	Mattes Kai Mica	Flashback <1	Intro main chars minor back-story; the tattoo; build maerick's emotional connection for later	Gathering	Mattes	Maybe start with the tat spell? Kinda solemn, serious tone, an older mattes reflecting

With this, I can keep track of what time of year it is, the characters I'm working with and where they are, as well as approximately how many days need to be covered in that chapter, there is a place for me to write down the gist of the plot, I also know the chapter title (or a list of contenders at least, although sometimes they're blank (shh!)) and there is a spot for my notes or thoughts about the chapter. In the above example I used the first chapter of The Prophecy for example, because I can't exactly use a current chapter, now can I?

This method of outlining keeps me on-track, but allows me the freedom to create the story more fluidly. I've also used time lines a lot throughout, mostly to lay out the back-story for events that happened a long time ago but I still may need to reference because they're important to what is going on now. I need to keep everything aligned so that the dates and times are consistent throughout the series. I recommend time lines enthusiastically to anyone who has similar needs.

Keep in mind that, as I mentioned in the beginning, there is no de facto method for outlining or planning that works for everyone. Having a good understanding of how you think and work will make finding a method that works for you so much easier. The easiest way to figure out how you're working and thinking and what your “process” is could be by listing exactly why a standard MLA outline doesn't work for you, or what's wrong with it, along with other things you try. Experiment. After all writing is an art-form, and even though art isn't a science (though science can be art), at the heart of every artist needs to live a scientist because experimentation is so important in our work.