{"id":331,"date":"2011-08-24T21:04:10","date_gmt":"2011-08-25T02:04:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bojnberry.ca\/~berry\/blog\/?p=331"},"modified":"2011-08-24T21:04:10","modified_gmt":"2011-08-25T02:04:10","slug":"methodology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bojnberry.ca\/~berry\/blog\/?p=331","title":{"rendered":"Methodology"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m in the midst of a new story now. My usual technique, discovery writing, has left me with three novels in the trunk with only two that have a solid enough foundation to re-rewrite into something viable. This time I’ve tried something\u00a0 a bit different. Ideas swirl around in my head all the time, and I’ve had a couple of characters that I have the voices for, but haven’t been able to stick into a story. I’ve discovery-written with both of them over the last few months, but kept dead-ending after a few thousand words; the stories didn’t go anywhere interesting.<\/p>\n

Enter the shower (I believe I don’t actually have male pattern baldness. I believe I get stuck on ideas while showering, and proceed to rub the hair right off my head). I had an Archimedean moment a few days ago: towel wrapped around my waist, still dripping, office curtains pulled for modesty’s sake (big picture window right next to my computer chair), I pounded out a rough four-page outline for a story that combines both of my characters in a satisfying way, saves some of the groundwork that had come before – including a fairly well realized civilization – and gives me a way to extend the story into more than one book. Go the shower!<\/p>\n

I’ve never really followed an outline though, so it concerns me a bit. Will I get bored with the process, since I already know how it’s going to end? I don’t know. I hope not though.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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For the interested, here’s some info about the three novels in the trunk. Two of the stories stand up to re-reading (at least by me), but need enough polish that I’ll likely abandon them: one time-travel SF\/mystery set along Hadrian’s Wall, the other a “Hunt for Nazi gold” thriller with some spectacularly cheesy dialogue but some decent (so says I) action sequences. I just looked at number three and half the chapters have zero bytes. I don’t know how I feel about that. I admit that it is an auto-biographical piece of dreck written more to quell old ghosts and to get my hands moving, but still, I wrote<\/em> it, dammit! I’m not terribly worried, though, it’s backed up somewhere.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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I’m in the midst of a new story now. My usual technique, discovery writing, has left me with three novels in the trunk with only two that have a solid enough foundation to re-rewrite into something viable. This time I’ve […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[20],"class_list":["post-331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-amwriting","uentry","postonpage-1","odd","post-author-berry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1HpGK-5l","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bojnberry.ca\/~berry\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bojnberry.ca\/~berry\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bojnberry.ca\/~berry\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bojnberry.ca\/~berry\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bojnberry.ca\/~berry\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=331"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/bojnberry.ca\/~berry\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":337,"href":"http:\/\/bojnberry.ca\/~berry\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331\/revisions\/337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bojnberry.ca\/~berry\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bojnberry.ca\/~berry\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bojnberry.ca\/~berry\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}