Monday, December 18, 2006

Plotting, Christmas & Vacation

I spent Friday typing up my main characters history and backstory. I know I need to use that and work it into the plot. I just don't know how yet, although thanks Anne for the Donald Maas suggestion. I'll keep that in mind while I'm beating my characters into submission.

My plan for this week -- to brainstorm ideas to fill in the holes of my plot. I hate this not writing business. Don't get me wrong, I love plotting, but I feel like I've been away from this story for weeks now without actually writing and I'm starting to feel like I'm spinning my wheels. I know it's necessary -- not much point in writing if I don't know where I'm going, but I get anxious when I'm away from actually writing for this long. I find it hard to settle down because I just want to be telling the story, not trying to figure it out. Argh. Anyway, back to the plotting.

As for Christmas...yeah...the knitting projects are getting a bit more desperate. I think I've realized there is one that is simply only going to be half done. One I will definitely finish and the other is still in question. It's the best I can do. Que sera. I'm not stressing over it any more. Other than that, the rest of my Christmas shopping is done and I've even started wrapping. Maxx and I did our gift swap last night at Chapters, but we're not allowed to open the stash until Christmas day.

And speaking of Chapters, today at work, we're doing our gift grab again. If any of you were with me this time last year, you may remember me writing about the mental strategizing it took to keep one step ahead of everyone in order to end up with the Chapters gift card at the end. I wonder if someone will wrap up one of those for this year...

Meanwhile, I cannot wait until 5 pm this Friday. I will be off for 5 days straight. I'm in desperate need of a vacation. Granted the first two days of that I'll probably be frantically trying to finish the knitting projects but the last three should be smooth sailing, I hope. Then the two days left that week I'm at the office where only 5 of us are in. No management. The inmates are running the asylum...

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Kudos to you for sticking with your story. Mine is shelved while I work on a new idea. I hope when I go back to it, I'll be able to figure things out then. Right now, I keep going in circles with it. Argh!

Okay, here's what I do: if I don't have the gift in time for Christmas, I cut a picture of it out of a catalogue (or take a picture of it) and wrap that up. You could do that with your afghans. I have to do that with one of my daughter's presents this year. Wacky, but it usually turns out okay.

LOL Good luck with the gift grab. Hope you end up with a Chapters card. :-)

Maxx said...

I had to send the gifts home with Papa to keep Haley out of them. If I heard 'But WHY do we have to wait til Xmas?!' one more time I was gonna lose it. This way temptation is removed.

Anonymous said...

Good luck with the writing. Once you get your other writing stuff done, the actual writing should be a breeze.

I'm done with shopping although I have this insane notion that I want to find a Nintendo Wii. My son wants one but I think my desire to attain the impossible is even higher. I barely missed it yesterday, I'm going to bet I can get it next weekend. I will feel so cool if I do.

Enjoy your vacation.

Melissa Amateis said...

I'm actually very excited to get started plotting on my next novel. Can't wait to dive into my characters and see what they're like. :-) But I do know the feeling of wanting to start working on the writing part.

Bailey Stewart said...

I'll keep that in mind while I'm beating my characters into submission.

Problem is, my characters like beatings ... *vbg*

And I've done the same thing as Annette - sort of a preview present.

Tess said...

Good luck with the brainstorming! And with the knitting. I finished one scarf yesterday and started another last night.

Hope someone puts that Chapters card into the mix again :-) And I don't blame you for looking forward to a five day vacation!

Anonymous said...

I hear you on brainstorming Kelly. The most I can spend plotting my book is a weekend. After that I have to start writing or else I'll loose the thread/image of the story I have in my head. I take a closer look at plotting when I'm in the revision stage. Which explains why I don't enjoy revising as much.

Enjoy your time off!!

Anonymous said...

Oh, I hear you on the five days off. So needed. I'm off Friday and part of next week and I can't wait.

Good luck with the knitting! Last year, I was doing a lot of crochet projects for x-mas gifts and everybody's gift was late!

Anonymous said...

Oh, I hear you on the five days off. So needed. I'm off Friday and part of next week and I can't wait.

Good luck with the knitting! Last year, I was doing a lot of crochet projects for x-mas gifts and everybody's gift was late!