Progress

It's been weird working on my novel lately. My writing processes have evolved significantly over the past several months. I'm writing out of sequence a lot these days—even more than I was before. I often start a writing session by reading through notes until I find something that really grabs my attention, and then I go off on a weird tangent, just scribbling ideas frantically in a notebook, or recklessly typing on my laptop (I lost a shift key the other day). Now, almost every time I read through my notes, it inspires something completely unexpected. And even though I know how the story is going to end, I'm still not completely sure what it is about.

I have completed twelve entire chapters (although, in reality, they probably aren't really complete), and I have the rest of the plot outlined. But the characters in the book are still continuing to evolve. And as I continue to flesh out each point and sub-point in my outline, not everything is fitting together in the ways in which I expected, or intended. The characters in the book wouldn't do, or say, some of the things the outline wanted them to do.

The characters and plot line are developing somewhat independently of each other. It's weird. I didn't anticipate this. But, I have never written a book before. It's hard—harder than I thought it would be. As I continue to read and re-read, edit and over-analyze everything I write, it's forcing me to reconcile all sorts of unexpected issues within the story, and this is more of a challenge than I anticipated (to be honest, I didn't anticipate this at all).