I’ve had some time this weekend to sit down and work on my WIP for a bit. It actually felt pretty good considering how last weekend went. It helps that I’m feeling a bit better. What has vexed me lately is that I have two really good story arcs, but I can’t seem to place them in time relative to each other. I’ve tried spreadsheets, drawing out timelines, printing calendars, but I can’t seem to figure out where and when these two tracks intersect.
Being a tech guy, I figured, “well, there must be an app for that.” Turns out, there are many, so I grabbed a trial copy of Aeon Timeline. Wow, is there a can of worms built in here! It syncs up changes with Scrivener, which is a cool feature. It’s also terrifying, though, because I’ve been cultivating that binder for months now. If this thing goes in and radically alters it all, can I even find anything anymore? So far, I think I’m getting the hang of it, but this morning, it got me thinking. For those of you who have followed this blog for long, you know how dangerous that can be.
When I started my first book, I had little but an idea and LibreOffice. It was just me pouring my little open-source soul into something with no real direction or plan. It just felt good to write it down and watch these characters come to life on my screen. With the first one published and a level of seriousness thrust upon my writing, I feel almost buried under the tools. I have Scrivener for writing, organizing, and compiling. I’ve used ProWritingAid as my co-pilot, because it seems I still have not gotten the hang of commas. I’m also apparently a very big fan of passive voice, so it calls me out on that. Adding a timeline app, shiny as it is, has made me wonder if I’ve gone too far in a way.
What it all adds up to is that I did the first book without a process to speak of. I wrote when time allowed, spewed words onto a page, and didn’t really think much about it otherwise. It was easy, because I was still mostly just transcribing and elaborating on the dream. Things like Scrivener and PWA came in at the end to help me better organize and edit a mostly finished product. It feels much more deliberate this time, though not forced. Starting with these very powerful tools in my quiver is almost daunting. I guess the biggest question I’m asking myself lately is whether all of these tools are actually helping my writing or weighing me down.
For now, I choose to believe that they are helping. I can think of at least 2 or 3 occasions where the ability to move scenes and text around instantly in Scrivener would have lost me a full day in Word or LibreOffice. PWA has really made me think differently about word choices and, in many cases, has encouraged me to “show, don’t tell.” I could say pretty honestly that I think it has improved my writing quality. Time will tell (see what I did there?) if Aeon gets me unstuck. If nothing else, it’s made me think about my structure and that’s probably a good thing.
As the great philosopher, Strong Bad, once said, “No two peoples are not on fire.” This is to say, there’s no one right or wrong way to do this, and no one tool or set of tools that’s perfect for every writer. If you have a tool that is indispensable for your process, let me know in the comments. If you’re one of those purists who prints everything and uses an actual, analog red pen for markups, let me know that too.
OK, brain dump over, back to the timeline!
