Returning to Old Projects

 Today, we’re going to talk about some of the projects that I’m wanting to return to, but I haven't yet, for whatever reason. I’ve put projects onto the back burner for many reasons, and I’m going to explain those to you now. 

The first project is one that comes up into my brain basically once a week. It’s a novel called “Writing-to-You”, which is one of the first novels that I really got into writing. Basically, it’s friends to lovers where she’s a writer, and I know what you’re thinking: no, this is not a true story, but it’s one that I love. In fact, I’ve played around with reworking it multiple times, but nothing has stuck. I love this project, but I lost interest in it when I was writing. This is definitely going to come back to some degree, I’m just not sure how or when yet. I just love the idea of a romance novel where she’s a writer, and he loves her writing, and they have a bit of a history together…you can see why I keep coming back to this. If you read the post entitled “My Favourite Male Characters”, one of my honourable mentions was Kyle, who used to be the main character of this novel. I mean, he still is in the unfinished version of this project, but what I mean by that is I’ve taken his character and used him as a side character in another project I’m working on. All I know is that eventually, you all will get to read Beth’s love story, even if it’s years in the future. 

The next project is what I would call the reason that I fell in love with writing. Look, I’m a writer, I have an eye for the dramatics, just roll with me on this one. Back in ye olde 2015 (I think?), I started writing a love story called “The Love of Chandre”, which followed Charlotte and Alejandre (I like my Latino men, get over it) as they fell in love throughout high school. That project has a special place in my heart, even though, objectively, it’s rotten trash that’s been left in the July sun for weeks (told you I had an eye for the dramatics). Now, I’m sure you’re wondering why I think it’s actual trash, and the reason is that it’s the second novel I ever attempted writing and the timeline was a mess. Granted, this is the first project that I ever did a timeline on, so again, I’m giving myself grace for that. However, I was doing the outline a year at a time, since they got together in their freshman year of high school, and honestly, nothing happened. It was just the main things: birthdays, Valentine’s Day, Christmas, etc. Besides, the chapters were a page or two long, with again, nothing happening. I love the idea of coming back to this project and making it into something that I love and that I’m okay with other people reading, but I have yet to find a way to do that. However, Alejandre was the OG book boyfriend for me, and I will write a romance novel with him in it. I swear it. 

Side note, I’ve actually thought about combining these two projects together, especially after I took Kyle’s name out of “Writing-to-You”, so maybe these projects will see the light of day sooner than you think…

The last project I want to talk to you all about today is “Fighting For You”. If you’re an avid reader of my blog, first of all, hey, bestie! Welcome back. Second, you may remember a few months ago, I wrote about what I was doing at that moment for this project. So, what exactly did I do? You see, this project originally started out as a short story (come back next week for more on that!). However, I fell in love with the main characters, Lena and Callum, and knew that there was something more I could do with them. So, I made a full novel outline, and I’m veering us towards that outline for a brief pit stop. When I decided to make this outline, I thought about doing things with two separate timelines that are intersecting…no, calm down. That idea didn’t pan out the way I wanted it to, so the outline as a whole was honestly a very antagonizing process. I really struggled to write it, and it showed. So, back when I returned to the keyboard earlier this year (there’s another blog post about that), I returned to that outline, and listed out all of the reasons I hated it. Not actually, but I really dug into it and figured out what wasn’t working. Once I did that, I completely redid the outline, and made it into something I felt like I could actually work with. And minus the Chapter Outline, where I decide what scenes are in the chapters and what they’re titled, the novel is completely done. I haven’t written any of it yet, but it’s ready to be written. 

So there you have it. Three projects I want to return to, but I haven’t yet. Writing this out made me really want to disappear to Paris for a few months and write my little heart out at various cafes, and then come back with a bunch of finished novels for you all. But alas, that’s a dream for another day. 

That's all for now, folks!

-C

The Struggle of Always Having New Ideas

Now, I’m sure you’re reading this title and wondering how this could possibly be an issue, but I will showcase to you why this is a problem. Actually, problem is a strong word. It’s more so that I’m constantly battling my mind on what to work on, which is a great problem to have, but is still mildly annoying. And here’s why. 

The first issue that I have with constantly coming up with new concepts for novels, and wondering which one to work on. Because I’m constantly working on so many projects at once, it’s hard for me to decide which one I should be focusing on to write. I’ve tried coming up with a schedule for me to work with, but that was constantly being reworked as I kept coming up with new project ideas. I’ve realized that it’s easier for me to just do my best to focus on one project to write, while simultaneously plotting the next ones. I have a general idea of when I’m publishing my novels, based on how far along I am in working on them, but that too is always changing. A way I keep track of how far along I am on things is honestly just a lot of to-do lists, detailing each step of my writing process. I like having these on paper, since the satisfaction of physically checking something off my list brings me joy, but other than that, I’m mostly at the will of my creative whimsy. 

My next issue is trying to balance the amount of time working on each project. Now, actually writing a novel takes a lot of time, so the project that I’m actively writing on gets most of my attention. However, I like having my next project ready to go, so I still want to be plotting other novels at the same time. This is where the problem strikes up. I want to make progress on everything, but it’s difficult to budget time accordingly when I don’t always have a ton of time to write. For example, November has been crazy for me, so I’m mostly just focusing on getting my writing done for NaNoWriMo. Despite that, I’m trying to work on some other background stuff, but I’m also not done plotting the novel I’m currently writing, so my brain is running in a million different places for what I could work on. Honestly, that’s not a new sensation, but I’m feeling it quite strongly while I’m busy with my November writing challenge. 

Yet another problem I’m facing is knowing where to put all of the ideas that I have. I’m constantly coming up with new ideas, and because I have so many projects on the go, I’m always trying to find a way to work those ideas into one of my ongoing projects. But what happens when I can’t find a place for the scene? Well, I’ve recently started a document entitled “Scenes That Don’t Have a Home Yet”, and that’s exactly where all of these scenes end up. I believe there’s only one in there at the time being, but I like having a place for scenes to go, especially because most of my projects have such a big and full outline that there’s no room for me to add in a scene. That doesn’t mean that I don’t do that, but now that I have a place for various scenes, I don’t have to force scenes into projects. Granted, this might lead to me getting more ideas for new projects, but I’ll cross that bridge if it comes up. 

All in all, I’m really quite happy with the fact that my brain is constantly coming up with new ideas for me. It helps keep me motivated to write, and I’m always going to be grateful for that. The “issues” that I have with it are very manageable, but I thought I’d introduce you to a strange issue that I’ve come across a few times. All of my blog posts are about peeling back the curtain a little bit at a time into my writing process, and this is just another case of that. 

 That's all for now, folks!

-C

Backplotting and Lore Tapestries

 Well, that title sounds like a bunch of gibberish, but I promise that I’ll do my best to make it all make sense. Before I get into exactly what both of those things are, I’ve been working on both of these things a lot throughout the month of December, and will probably continue to do so in January. 

First things first, what is backplotting? This is what I call plotting that I do that happens before the novel’s outline starts. Without giving away spoilers, I’ve been working a lot on backplotting for the “Healing x3 Trilogy”, so a lot of that includes plotting the lives of Nora’s boyfriends before they met her. Truthfully, I have a love hate relationship with doing this. On the one hand, I love plotting lore and figuring out a bunch of stuff about my characters and their worlds that no one else will likely see. And, when things seem to line up perfectly, it’s like getting that one silly piece in a puzzle that you’ve been looking for for hours. On the other hand, trying to figure out an accurate timeline as someone who loves adding random things to her novels is not the easiest thing to do. Backplotting inherently takes a lot of mental power, since you’re wanting to detail things that haven’t happened that can’t change what is canon in the novel, and might I point out that none of it is real? Then, if your characters are different ages, you have to figure out their birthdays to figure out how old they are when certain things happen. That is honestly the worst part, since none of the main characters in Healing x3 are the same age. 

I’m not just backplotting for that one project, either. I’m not sure if I’ve talked about this or not, but I’ve decided to make notebooks detailing the different journeys my chronic illness girlies go on, as well as figuring out how my characters came to find their queer identity. I have special notebooks for each concept, so I’ve been busy figuring all of that out. The thing is, though, is that I’ve decided to do this about eleven novels in. Because I’m a wee bit neurotic, I wanted to do it in as close to chronological order as possible, so I’ve had a lot of projects to go through and backplot. Typing this out is making me feel a bit crazy, so we’re going to move on. 

So, what exactly is a lore tapestry? Basically what it sounds like, but each major plot point is giving an index card with a brief description of what happened and then I tape them all together. I actually did this for a specific part of The Cora Anthology, but those ones were all just taped in a line. When I’ve started doing that with new projects, however, I got really into the idea of being able to drop the stack of index cards and have it unfold into a carpet looking thing, or a tapestry, if you will. 

Here’s the thing, though. I’m not doing this to replace my outlines. This is merely just things that happen before (or between) the novels, and then any big plot points. Not every point in the outline will be in the lore tapestry, just the major ones. The outline still exists, and will continue to exist, regardless of whether or not I decide to make a tapestry regarding the project. However, knowing me, every project that I work on for the next couple of months will likely have a tapestry, since I have no self control when it comes to my writing stuff. 

I have decided that since there’s a lot of backplotting I need to do, I’m going to be getting caught up on it as much as I can throughout the month of January, so unfortunately, there won’t be many writing updates. I would love to share with all of you what exactly I’m plotting, but there’s a LOT of spoilers in it, so I can’t. But just know that although you won’t be getting a lot of writing updates, things are happening in the background right now. And I can’t wait to share them with y’all down the road. 

That's all for now, folks!

-C

About: Cora (Book Two of The Cora Anthology)

 His best friend’s younger sister. The girl that everything comes back to. For as long as Jack can remember, Cora has been the girl of his dreams, yet his loyalty to his best friend, Tai, complicates things. But it’s her, and even when he shouldn’t be, Jack is thinking about Cora. And what the future could hold for them, if anything. 

But Jack knows he isn’t perfect, and wonders if she’d be better off without him. No matter how hard he tries, however, he just can’t seem to get her out of his head. So when the opportunity presents itself, Jack knows he has one chance to make things perfect with the perfect girl. 

Even though things might seem perfect in the beginning, past mistakes and ex girlfriends tend to complicate things. Will Jack and Cora find a way to make their hidden relationship work? Or are they destined to hurt each other, leaving their relationship to crash and burn? 

Truthfully, this novel is a fever dream for me. I actually wrote it with input from one of my close friends, and it completely altered the way I write (namely my outlining process). He became Jack, the male lead, and this was kind of his ideal love story (with a lot of chaos, of course). This book reminded me why I loved writing, and though it isn’t my favourite book in the series, it means a lot to me. This book is filled to the brim with drama and chaos, and I would have it no other way, because that’s what we wanted for it. 

https://www.amazon.ca/Cora-C-Hilts/dp/B0B14M9S3F/ref=sr_1_4?crid=3IZWXAWET2ET6&keywords=cora&qid=1698776811&s=books&sprefix=cor%2Cstripbooks%2C133&sr=1-4