I’d like to think that my experience with writing has led to some useful insights about it. But even “knowing” what I’m doing, it never occurred to me to do something radical, something daring, something I’ve never tried before…
For the first time in my career, I’m writing a story out of order.
I’ve always written linearly. That is to say, I start with chapter 1. Even if I jump around in a story’s timeline, I write the chapters in the order in which they’ll be in the book. I’ve never really put any thought into this. It’s just the way I always assumed you should write: one word at a time, one chapter at a time.
Writing in chapter order can have a lot of benefits. You learn the story along with your characters. You write the story as your audience will read it. So you can kind of tell if this part is taking forever or if that part doesn’t get the pages it should. After all, you are your story’s first audience.
So why am I changing my approach?
In the beginning of the novel writing process, my brain seems to work more off inspiration than discipline. That is to say, I’ll write a chapter in a couple days, then my brain will take a month or two to cook up the next chapter. Then, I’ll write that chapter in a couple days and the process repeats itself. I never liked to call what happened to me during those fallow months “writer’s block” because the phrase felt scary to me and not something I wanted to apply to myself.
But a rose by any other name… is just as thorny.
The first two chapters of Codename: Fairyland came pretty readily. But Chapter 3 is being stubborn. I kept poking at it from different directions, but it refused to budge. Doubt started to creep in, even though I fought against it. Now that I’m in a healthier place mentally, I talked it over with some folks and someone asked me, “Well, do you have to writer chapter 3 next?”
And boom went my brain.
Because no, no I do not.
So I decided to skip ahead to chapter 4. It has one of the scenes that I had an idea for when I first started developing this story idea, which means I’m super stoked to be writing it. That excitement blasted my self-doubt away, which was an added bonus. And as I continue to stay engaged with the story, I continue to get ideas that I jot down in my notebook for exploration in other parts of the story. Nothing for chapter 3 yet, but I’m less worried about it now.
It’s interesting to me that we create these rules for ourselves, which can turn into obstacles if we let them. So I’m breaking free.
