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Writing Update

So far this week I haven't gotten too much done, I've mostly been outlining. Book 1 was fully outlined in basic one sentence form, so I have been going back through the outline and tightening it up, by removing things that impede the narrative flow, and expanding the areas that help it progress.

 I want to make sure that I don't have anything outlined that is just "filler" or something clearly thrown in just to pad the word count a bit, I hate it when authors do that. The goal is to get each one sentence outline expanded to a full paragraph. Then I'll do a scene breakdown, then and only then will I write the story. My hope is that this will not only keep the books feeling cohesive, but will also help me use my writing time more effectively.

The outline for The Pyongyang Incursion is twenty-one points currently, and I have expanded nine of them to a full paragraph in the last week. I also have the first three outline points done on the sequel, The Vladivostok Penetration. It's not huge amounts of progress, but its progress forward and keeps me moving in the right (write :D) direction. The ~8000 words I already have done are actually fitting in nicely with the revised outline and only need minor editing so far, so that's encouraging.

 I am doing all of my writing in Google Docs currently. I have Scrivener on both Windows and Mac (and iPad/iPhone) and that's what I used to write Rise to Revolt in, however I have noticed that I am just as productive in just a basic word processor and I am less likely to get distracted by rearranging things on the corkboard or expanding scene descriptions, or renumbering, relabeling, or recoloring things, Scrivener just makes it too easy for me to spend an hour and get nothing done. Perils of being easily distracted and diverted :)

I love Scrivener and it will definitely be a part of this writing process, just not until I have the rough draft done and need to move into editing. Editing is really where Scrivener shines for me, as you can load your chapters in and easily work with one chapter at a time, or just work with one characters arc, or rearrange chapters easily as needed. Or at least that's the sort of thing I hope to do, once I get the rough drafts done. Until then, I'm trying to minimize distractions as much as possible. 

And now back to the writing board!
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