The writing sweet spot.

I seem to have hit a sweet spot in writing.

Every night before I go to bed, I try to plan out the next days writing.  What's it missing?  What do I need to do to make the story more interesting?  How does it click?

Then I wake up and drink my coffee and read the news. Write on my blog.  I shower and get dressed.

Around noon I start my first writing session. Usually that just takes off on me.   I take an hour or two break, think about what I want to do next, then I have a second writing session..  Then I take three hour or four hour break, get any errands or chores done.   Then I sit down for a third writing session.  I finish up somewhere around early to late evening. 

Then I start the whole process over again.

For example:

Last night, I had maneuvered two of the main character to meet at the scene of the crime, but then -- I didn't have anything for them to do or talk about.  It occurred to me that I need for the more mature voreling to escape.  But I also like the idea of him breaking out of the lab and creating havoc in the the Bend suburbs.

What if I have two of them maturing out of the litter -- 'Six', a female, looks at him one day and he realizes she is maturing too, and he lets her have more food, etc.  She follows him out of the den when they are attacked, but she gets away.  And so on.

It gives me another action character to write -- a femme fatale.  Nice little addition. 

I still have to work out Naorsi's and Forrest's reactions and response.  It needs to be something interesting, besides, "Huh."

But I'm making progress.  The outline is turning out to be very flexible -- but it's still a good starting point.  That plus planning ahead for each writing session, maybe I'll be able to avoid the slow spots.

It's important that the book have interesting momentum, and that requires some thought.  The more I work these things out in advance, the less I'll have to go back and insert them.  To be aware that the story needs to have some strength -- and if it doesn't -- what I can do about it.

One of my favorite things is to ask myself -- "What's it missing?  What would make it work better?"  And then to just let my subconscious work on it for awhile.  Sometimes I need to spur it to action a little -- "what if..." but other times, it just pops into my head.  But first I have to ask the questions.

At the same time, to keep the emotional sense of the story, I need to write it fairly fast, trusting that I can go back and smooth out the rough spots, fill in the blanks, and make it more polished.

For instance, I'm realizing that I need to do research on wolves.  I don't need to be utterly realistic -- these are 'vorewolves' after all, which can be anything I want them to be.  But they have to be wolf-like.

The story has a different tone than Nearly Human.  Not even close to as much setup -- dives right into the story, and just takes off.  Which is good.  Wish I could get Nearly Human to do that too.  But Nearly Human has improved so much, there is no reason to believe that I can't continue to refine it until it works just as well.

I'm now so into this world and these characters, that I can easily see myself writing a series of books.