Thursday Thoughts

I finished my outline for Scylla and Charybdis this week - comfortably under the deadline I had chosen in a goalsetting group, which was a pleasant surprise. However, I won't be able to hang it on the wall as the length meant I had two size options: massive and sprawling or too tiny to read from a distance. I went with the smaller version - it's actually more manageable than the Journal outline, even though there's a boatload more text. An ocean liner, I tell you. Maybe the Titanic.

I was surprised how little emotional elaboration there was in the first few chapters, considering that Anaea's thoughts chase around themselves ad nauseum later on. I've been jotting down notations to add stuff, which is not how I wanted to start considering I want to get a minimum of thirty thousand words out of the draft (!) by the time I'm done. I've got to keep perspective, though: a trimmer manuscript is important given publisher preferences, but not if I cut out sense and substance.

In the opposite direction entirely, I've almost finished my worldbuilding for the reality TV project. I am concerned I've erred too far in the direction of making the countries and their real-world influence recognizable, but I do want them to feel familiar. Conversely, I feel as if every time I sit down to work out a setting, the result is more nuanced and granular, taking into account more of the elements that shape nations / people. That can't be a bad thing.