An Update

I'm still outlining - my schedule got away from me a little bit, so I'm not quite finished (but of course outlining is never really finished, per se).

I'm also trying, rather desperately, not to let myself go back and edit everything I've already done. This shooting through to the end thing is not what I'm used to, and it's HARD. But I know it's necessary, and I have to do it if I ever want to complete anything, ever, in my life, so I'll push through to the end. I just wish I could somehow lock up all previously worked on files until the end of July, to keep my pesky editor-brain from poking at them.

Pre-Plotting Day 1

I did most of the pre-plotting on Dollmaker today. And get this - I actually got something from asking my characters questions and having them answer in first-person for the FIRST TIME EVER, which was very exciting. I quite like this villain - he's much better developed and more sympathetic than any other villain I've ever written or thought about writing, while still being... well, y'know, evil. This is rather nice.

Since I said I'd talk more about this project... here goes: The Dollmaker is shaping up to be a 40,000 word dark fantasy short novel. The idea originated months ago, but when I found out that Holly Lisle, one of my favorite writers of books about writing (though I've never read any of her actual novels beyond samples), was going to start an e-zine... well, I wanted to submit something, and I had this idea that wasn't quite complex enough to make a full novel, but a short novel? Well. Everyone needs a summer project, right?

Eheh.

So, here's my summary sentence of this project:

"An adolescent orphan boy becomes apprentice to his city's Dollmaker, unknowing of his master's specialty: making human dolls."

I've done all the pre-plotting. Generating scenes and outlining comes tomorrow.