This past week, I finished a chapter of Codename: Fairyland. I say “a” chapter because I’m not quite sure where it will fall in the overall narrative. I have what I’d consider a mostly accurate idea of what chapter number it will be, but considering that it changed chapter numbers while I was writing it, I suppose I can’t be one hundred percent on that.
I wrote the first two chapters of the story pretty quickly and easily. This is a story idea that I’ve had kicking around in my head for over ten years, so I definitely knew how I wanted to start the story. But when I sat down to write chapter 3, I hit a wall. I didn’t understand why; shortly after I started working on the story, I did an overview outline of the entire story, telling the story over fourteen chapters. Some I was more solid about, but I also wanted to give myself room to explore on the way.
All I needed to do was follow the outline, right?
I’ve written two novellas and two novels and, each time, I worked start to finish, chapter 1, then chapter 2, etc. So when I hit the wall in chapter 3 of Codename: Fairyland, I panicked a little. Then, I remembered that I hit a wall in chapter 3 of Clean Freak as well. I managed to work through that block by writing my notebook work in crayon, in order to try to place myself in Lucy’s headspace. I tried working in the notebook for Cn:Fl, but the problem wasn’t trying to understand a character’s perspective.
The problem was my brain really wanted to work on chapter 4.
The hardest part about working on a long-form story is staying focused. That seems to have become harder for me as I’ve grown older. There’s always a new, shiny idea to distract me. But I decided that if I wanted to do this writing thing and Take It Seriously, I needed to focus.
It turns out my brain has a sick sense of humor and, this time, the shiny new idea was from the same story, just not a part I’d gotten to yet.
But why should that matter? Then, I realized it didn’t.
I back-burnered chapter 3 and started work on chapter 4. I was super stoked about it because, according to the outline I’d drawn up, chapter 4 has one of the scenes that I’ve wanted to write from the inception of the story. So I started to write the chapter–
–and hit another wall.
Because I wasn’t getting to the bit I wanted to write fast enough. So I decided to skip ahead and write the scene I wanted to write, that I was excited to write. I silenced my inner critic, who was screaming at me, “This isn’t how you write a story!” and just wrote the scene I wanted to write.
It turned out so well and feels so strong and is also of the length that I’m making the scene its own chapter. Which makes it chapter 5, I think. I actually decided to leave it labelled “Chapter __: Subtitle” for now.
And now I’m doubling back and finishing chapter 3, right?
Well, that was the intention.
I reread chapters 1 and 2, read what I’d written in chapter 3, went back to the notebook and tried to identify what had tripped me up. I got that crease ironed out, re-outlined the chapter, then decided to take a break for a couple days so I could enjoy a weekend off of my day job and start a new chapter in a new week, with some room to gain some momentum before needing to write my next post here.
In that little break, I started thinking about chapter 8. Or, at least, what was chapter 8. More specifically, I started thinking about a character in chapter 8.
So I jotted down a couple notes, thinking that that would tide her over until I get to her. After all, I’m writing chapter 3; I’m not there yet.
But I’m learning that that doesn’t matter.
