Back in the day, I was a short story writer and online role-players. The type of online role-play that was more of a story that evolved over play-by-post where you just develop the story with one or more fellow writers. When I took on the NaNoWriMo challenge for the first time ever, I had an idea and needed to learn how to write a book.

The experience was transformative, and I realized I could do this. I was able to crank out 90k+ words in one month. And they are probably the worst 90k+ words I would put in that specific order, ever again. It was like the stream of consciousness writing version of “Sorted Food” where three chefs have to prep a meal, then swap kitchens every eight minutes. The new kitchen also has a different layout so who knows what the previous chef was planning because what you might think was meant to be the focus might have been set aside because it was useless. They can’t talk to one another, so each time they go into a new kitchen they have to figure out what was going on and continue the meal.

If you’ve ever played the kid’s game “Telephone” you can only imagine how this ends up going. Someone is caramelizing pears next to egg yolks, so the new chef is trying to figure out if these are two different dishes are meant to go together. It’s beautiful chaos that makes my 1st edition Chaotic Neutral Edition Half-Elf Fighter-Thief-Mage happy. Yes, I was playing a Bard before there were Bards.

I’m sure you had NO IDEA that was how I played D&D.

Back to my NaNoWriMo book.

Each chapter seemed like the previous chapter was written by a different author and now we’re going to make this new chapter work based on what just happened. Characters were created, forgotten, while plots were introduced, then abandoned. Names were forgotten so they were changed, characters showed up and were never seen again.

In hindsight, it was as if AI had written the book but only back when a shows like Firefly were on the air, for about three weeks. I just kept putting in what I thought should go next to explore this story concept, without really considering what was done before or where I was at the time. I needed words, so I put down words.

Obviously that book was a mess, so I thought I could fix it. After the month was over, I spent a long time trying to fix things like remove elements I didn’t know how to expand anymore. “Who is this Dion guy, and why don’t I ever reference him again?” Or things that made me ask “Did I say my main character was Egyptian all of a sudden? While not sure why, should I at least change his name from Chad to something, Egyptian?”

So, I “fixed” it and still hated it. I spent more time trying to fix it again and when that was done, I put it in my trunk. The trunk I have of all the books no one will ever read. Which was the first time I felt physical pain from my writing. I had spent year, and I do mean years, trying to fix this mess of random ideas.

I then decided to take the core characters from the trunk novel. I liked them, so I wanted to still use them. I started re-writing the entire book and halfway through, decided the main character would be better as a different character and changed the name.

At this point I’m going to fast-forward:
Edited the book – changed the story – changed the character – trunked the book – New book – changed the plot – change the gender of the main character – re-wrote the whole book from scratch – trunked the novel – started a new book – decided everything about the new book should be changed so I re-wrote the entire book – changed everything in the re-write – trunked the novel and started the same book over with different character, different plot, different POV – changed everything again – then added world building elements – got an editor to read it – changed everything based on those notes WHILE adding in a bunch of world building.

I finished my first book.

OMG I don’t know how based on all that. But then I relaxed and thought about all I learned, all I’d done, and how I’d gotten here. I knew I should have been a plotter from day one. NaNoWriMo taught me to write a book, but it didn’t teach me to write a book the way I was meant to write.

So I started outlining the second book. And changing the outline. I’d wake up with new ideas and add them to the outline. I’d be outlining and think of something that would make a chapter better and outline again. I feel the excitement I got from that first book writing, knowing nothing, and just pouring my ideas onto a page. Only know, I AM exploring. I’m developing and changing things on the fly.

And the best part is, I don’t have to look at 3k words on a page, realize 2k of them don’t work, but I should still add another 500 to smooth it out, which now means I should include another chapter to tie together what is about to happen in the next chapter.

Outlining has re-invigorated my love of storytelling. It’s brought the Bard back, and now I’m almost afraid I won’t be able to stop.