If you’ve had half an eye on my blog of late, you might know that I’m currently working on a new book called Fairway To Heaven. It’s my contemporary golf romance (though they don’t seem to play much golf).
This weekend, I hit 34,565 words after having two good writing days on Saturday and Sunday. Writing days are gold for me. I have two young boys and a husband who aren’t great fans of me locking myself in a writing cave for extended periods. Lucky we don’t have a dog as well. Or a cat. Lucky too my family copes with things like sausage rolls (homemade – thanks mum) for dinner (x2); and soup, and baked beans on toast (plus leftover red sausages from the previous weekend’s birthday party) for lunch!
If it hadn’t been for the two preliminary football finals (AFL), I’m sure I would have racked up a few more words!
But here is the interesting bit. I’m a pantster. And if the jargon isn’t familiar to you, that means a writer who doesn’t plot out their books… but just flies by the seat of their pants.
I’ve seen and read blogs from other authors who have wonderful whiteboards and reams of post-it notes with ‘three-act structures’ and ‘plot points’ and ‘conflict boxes’… arrows running everywhere.
That is not my style. Arrows and flow charts and diagrams make writing seem too much like math. (Did I mention I hate math?)
Now please don’t get me wrong. I always have a basic plot in my mind before I start. A sense of what will happen in the beginning, how it’s going to end, and what might happen as we go along.
In His Brand Of Beautiful, I did at least fill a couple of diary pages with notes about what might happen in each chapter. The Goodbye Ride was a novella, so it already felt short. I can’t remember making notes for that story at all. And definitely with Fairway, not a dot point got jotted down anywhere.
Last night, that changed.
At 34,565 words, I finished Chapter 11. What I then did is kind of unprecedented for me.
I wrote chapter heads for 12, through 20, with a Chapter 21/epilogue at the end, and then for each heading I’ve written a very rough synopsis of what’s going to happen.
See: Plotting for Dummies, and nothing mathematical about it!
Now I get to see how it works. Wish me luck.
If you’re interested in a learning more about Fairway, please click here.
Lily Malone - Author 
Good luck!
Do you know how refreshing it is to hear someone say their family aren’t supportive of you locking yourself away? I thought I was the only one!
Unfortunately, no Kerrie. It’s my biggest barrier to surmount. Maybe when I’m rich and famous (ha!) I’ll be ‘allowed’ to have time to write!