50th Post Extravaganza

Confession: Yeah, I didn't do any writing this morning. Or exercising.

Reading:

• Someplace to be Flying, by Charles de Lint
• Dark Force Rising, by Timothy Zahn

Writing:

• "Ferian Fetlock Cures a Horse"

Revising:

• "Cora and the Sea"

This is my fiftieth blog post. And you know what? It's working.

Never before have I thought about writing for such a long period together. I've always reached the low point in the sine wave, and abandoned it until I hit the next upswing. That's not to say that I've accomplished a lot over the last few weeks, but at the same time, I haven't been entirely unproductive, either.

I feel like I need to learn more about the craft of devising plots, and to do that, I want to go in-depth into a book with a very intricate plot. Maybe intricate symbolism as well, something that I can really sink my teeth into.

I have a couple of possibilities. The first is Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. Another is Harry Potter. Both are books for which it is clear that a plan existed from the very beginning, and it was carried through to the end. I think I like the writing style of Strange a little better, although the plot in Harry Potter is more intricate, the characters more varied in a way. Of course, there's nothing to say I can't do both, eventually.

So here's the plan. Instead of blogging about Strange, I'm going to do a wiki of it. It will start with a chapter by chapter analysis, but that will also begin to include information on the characters and personalities of the characters. I want to see how and why I build up a certain image of them in my mind, and how that arcs through the story. There's no better way to do that than a wiki.

Of course, it's a big project. I'll have to work on it gradually, and set a schedule so I keep working on it. But that is a task for another day.