Chronological Order is Way Overrated

Well, I’ve been stumbling along on the wip, at first eeking out 500-700 words per day for the last few days, which I was not happy with. Part of the problem is this constant reweaving and smoothing thing I’m doing, trying to graft two old drafts together, as well as add new stuff to make it work. I sometimes wonder if it would easier to just toss everything out and start fresh. Except I just can’t toss out 65,000 words. The mere idea of it makes me break out in a cold sweat. Especially since there is quite a lot of it that I’m very happy with.

So instead I’ve been stumbling along, trying to weave everything together and making only small inroads into new page territory.

Until Sunday, when I woke up and gave myself permission to jump ahead two acts to a scene I wasn’t even sure would be in the book—it certainly wasn’t on my outline--but it was calling to me. Vividly.

And Bam! 3,000 words came tumbling out, just like that. And it’s an absolutely pivotal, critical scene. There’s no way it couldn’t be in the book. I just didn’t know that until I wrote the darn thing.

Which reminded me of two important lessons.

1) It’s perfectly okay to write out of order. I know that, I preach that, and yet, I also forget that. ::le sigh::

2) I often outline or jot down upcoming scene ideas just so I can be moving in a forward direction/momentum. And the thing is, I can only write these new scenes because I’ve spent so much time reimmersing myself in the story. There’s no way I could have started out there. BUT, I am always happy to cheerfully disregard that when my muse leads me down a (seemingly) random garden path. Always follow your muse, or at least, that’s been my experience. I can honestly say I’ve never regretted it.

So now what I’m doing is jumping forward and writing a new scene from later in the book each morning, then turning to the grafting/revising part. Seems to be working well. But for how long? That’s always the question. What works today, may not work tomorrow.