August 8 – 14, 2022

Hey Y’all,

Thank you for joining me for my weekly planning session. This is what I’m mixing up in the cauldron this week:

Writing Plans

I’m plotting Whining in Wolfland, the next book in THE LARAMIE HARPER CHRONICLES, and I’ll be writing the blurb (book description) to share with you sometime this week. I didn’t plot a jot before writing my first novel, Dying in Dallas, because I had the complete story ready and waiting in my noggin. 

Spoiler alert: I did not.

I rewrote so many scenes and deleted a tremendous number of words, all because I didn’t take the time to plot. The amount I outline has increased with each book I’ve written. For Cheese Louise, I did a general timeline of events and it was a whopping seven pages. At the time, I was pretty impressed with myself. But I think I’m going to plot Whining in Wolfland down to the chapter level. That means I’ll probably have at least twenty-five to thirty pages of outline. 😱

The upside to plotting and outlining that much is that when I sit down to write the actual scenes, I fly through them. The downside is that about a fourth of the way into the book, I usually come up with an overall theme or idea that is better than what I have on paper. Then the book goes in a completely different direction and all the time spent plotting feels wasted. 

I’ll keep you posted on how it works out with this book. 

Not Writing Plans

Things have been hectic around here with the release of Cheese Louise. All the minutiae that has to happen in the weeks leading up to the launch and in the weeks after, is time-consuming and soul sucking.

So I’m taking three days off and headed to the gorgeous small town of Dingle, which is about two hours north of where we live. A friend planned a trip there and I’m tagging along. While I’m there, I’ll be visiting the Little Cheese Shop. I will take pictures of all the cheese I buy.

What I’m Reading

Feel the Fern – OMG! I love this series. 

Radical Confidence – I’m bogged down about 3/4ths of the way through the book. 

5000 Words Per Hour – I’m always trying to figure out ways to write faster.

Analysing the Serve Setup – I’d like to learn to play tennis.

Abby Cooper, Psychic Eye – I have this lined up to start as soon as I finish Feel the Fern

How do you read? One book at a time or several going at once?

That’s it for now. I’m going to pick out clothes for my days away from the desk. 

Happy Reading!