Burndtree

It only seems that I've forgotten this blog. Really -- the same old complaint -- Much to do and not time enuf in which to do it. I am writing, just for now not here (uh...Yeah, apart from this).

On Protagonize: branching Daybreak (Safe PigeonHouse); and three for Ah, Cubicle Life!; two for Monster Hour; and just done one for Things that Go Bump in the Night -- All in the past two weeks!

Could've all too easily posted here what I'll call craplets: sorry shorts announcing "Oh I've just done this over on Protagonize -- Go see! -- Just done that too!"

Those would've felt like cheats -- just the same as scribbling up what I had for breakfast -- and calling that a post!

I'm still not sure if I'll ever get what Blogging in the popular sense is supposed to be about. I know what I intend in mine. To explore -- and have fun doing it. And to exercise what skill I have, and better it, so that folks might wanna read me in time.

Recently dug up an article that I thought should come in handy -- NoteCarding: Plotting Under Pressure, by Holly Lisle. Using up a stack of note-cards -- and only the concise notes on them: truly an aid to plotting out a bigger story, Holly Lisle suggests, when a book's gotta be underway in a hurry (and all the bits fitting). My every day is a clockwatcher's ugly race: I'm seeing NoteCarding as a simplifying way to create order from chaos.

Almost a tips sheet rather than tutorial -- Tutorial sounds so like work --and Ms. Lisle's NoteCarding feels more fun than work -- even with estimations required re story length and number and lengths of scenes divied among the point-of-view characters (Agreed -- some work) -- however, in anyone's book, creation of a world and peopling it and thinking up their story just IS more fun than work! And apart from the mental...uh, work -- at the end of the exercise, here's an organized stack of cards, orderly notes, the bones and enuf meat on them, as useful as an outline!

And I have been fitting together the pieces of a puzzle I will be posting here. A story. Just as soon as the puzzle resembles the outline and the first chapter is born!

Holly Lisle, Writer and Tutor, can be found at http://hollylisle.com/.