I am currently in a strange place. Not for the first time, I admit. And certainly it's no unique experience in the writing world. But it's strange nonetheless. I am hauling myself from one writing state to another, and this time around I am finding it to be a particularly interesting journey.So much so, I thought I'd share it.For the last couple of months (okay, nearer four), whenever people asked me how the novel was coming along, I was able to tell them, "It's going well. I'm chapter planning." At this point of the conversation, however, the more informed would observe that it was a little late to be doing that sort of thing, given I supposedly finished it last year.Yes, well...There's a big difference between getting to the end of the plot and finishing a novel. I have seen this many times through the experiences of my published friends, many of whom are in this group; 'finished' means it's practically on the shelves, and just because your characters have achieved (or failed to achieve) all you had in mind for them and gone racing off into that wilderness that lies beyond the confines of your story, it doesn't mean you're done.The feedback I received, which brings me to the title of this blog posting, was that the plot was cross-genre, and that I needed to go back and think where I wanted the novel to sit - in crime or general fiction (and, believe me, this whole 'cross genre' thing is definitely worth a post of its own.)It was a fair point, and one I was happy to accept, but tackling something as fundamental as genre, and therefore plot, meant... I was back to chapter planning.Now, I happen to love chapter planning. As you can see from the first photo, it starts as a very tactile thing for me, involving whiteboards and sticky notes. I find it helps me think, much as I imagine Rolf Harris used to feel when he was hurling paint on to his bare wall, saying, "Do ya know what it is yet?" It's a very liberating experience. Each scene, each significant event or clue or turning point in the story is captured as a distinct entity (on its own colour-coded sticky, based on which plotline it supports) and becomes free to go wherever it needs, or indeed be cast out entirely, for the purposes of the story.
In terms of process, once the stickies and whiteboards have done their job, I capture it all in a Word document, in a series of 'swim lanes', one for each plot line, transfering all those individual stickies on to the relevant row and column. It worked for me first time around with this novel, and has been hugely useful this time. (In fact, this time, with the benefit of seeing what those editing types get up to on the path to publishing a book, I've added another row at the bottom of each chapter... Hook, telling me what the reader is supposed to care about at the end of the chapter, as well as what mini-hooks I have included earlier on.)So, why am I in a strange place, if it's all gone so well, and been so helpful?Because, as with anything, it's easy to get too comfortable and find that 'means' has nudged itself over into 'end'. Fortunately, that's one of the wonderful things about Wordwatchers; the excuses soon start to burn a hole in your conscience.So, as I said at the start, I am now hauling myself out of the comfort zone of planning and into the actual hard graft of writing, of delivering my book. And, much as I love writing (can't you tell - this was only intended to be a short piece on planning chapters :-)), making the transition from one to the other is not easy. Especially when it involves tearing apart 100,000 words of well-loved, well-structured story in the name of rebuilding something you hope will be even better.But started I most definitely have; one chapter in and moving slowly. Soon the old addiction will kick in, replacing the lure of the plan, and the pace will pick up. Still hard. Still graft. But a much healthier writing state for me to be in.