Mischa Fox

Not bad for a Monday!

I managed to complete over 1300 words today. Typically, on average I finish twice that in an evening writing session, but this was PHENOMENAL for a first draft of a brand new book.

Part of the evening I spent ordering my thoughts. I made a list of ideas I intended to explore in the second installment, so first I typed those up (they were in a notes app in my phone), then began categorizing them. After about an hour, these scraps started to crystallize into the backbone for a rough draft plot, arranging themselves into an approximate order.

Things never go as planned in writing, and this ended up being an excellent example.

Not only did some of the ideas popping up surprise me as they fleshed out in my head–with expected gaps where I’ll explore later–I wasn’t expecting to sit down tonight and organize these notes or begin to structure the backbone of a first draft.

If you hang out with authors, you’ll hear the terms “pantser” and “plotter” a lot. A pantser writes by the seat of their pants. A plotter is the opposite, and structures their ideas (to varying levels of intricacy and detail) before typing a word.

I tend to be somewhere between, depending on the project. (At the last conference I attended, I think most of us were calling this “plantsing”–which made me happy, since I’m also a plant enthusiast.)

SING THE BONES had surprised me because it was the first time I ever pantsed a first draft. Poetry comes to me like this, not stories.

(Poetry, I’ll argue, I should maybe call channeling, since what happens to me is more like entering a meditative state, spewing lyrical imagery while playing with the musicality of language… and then it shuts off like a faucet. I never edit it. It just flows out like water from a tap.)

I mostly expected this sequel to begin the same way, letting the main character show me where we’re going through her eyes.

I had unique writing blocks with her I never experienced in other stories, where she stopped moving forward in my head, and I couldn’t imagine what happened next unless I could get her physically moving to physically see around the next corner, so that I could follow in my mind’s eye. It was fascinating.

Nope. This one wants to be plotted.

Loosely, though. She still wants room to breathe and explore. She still wants me to stumble through the woods (or wherever we journey) together for shocks and surprises… but this time, this one has a plan.

I suppose that makes sense.

In SING THE BONES, my main character is jolted and shocked over and over out of her daily life. She’s fighting to stay alive.

By the time we rejoin her in book two… she’s got an agenda.

The fun part of being a writer is that I have no idea if she’ll achieve it anymore than anyone else reading it the first time. I think that’s the best part about writing–you think you’re in control, and you never are. The story tells itself, the characters surprise you–and it ends up better than what you first had in mind.