Monthly Archives: December 2014

Organizing Olivia Plymouth

Introduction

The two Olivia Plymouth International Traveler and Fashion Consultant books and one story have been my best-selling series to date. These were originally created in the early 2000s and sat on the shelf until 2012.

I  always envisioned writing four books for the series. This blog concerns the effort to create and distribute the last two books.

Challenges

The challenges being faced are:

  • Planning two books at once.
  • Capturing continuity across the series.
  • Developing the overall story arc.
  • Organizing the book bibles.

This is the first time that I have planned two books at once. I just recently completed the following process and started writing.

Planning two books at once

This was fairly easy to do because

  • It is one continuous story with two distinct phases and emotional feels.
  • There is a logical break in the story to end the third and begin the fourth book.

Continuity and story arc

Fortunately, it is fairly easy to resume work. There are some things that greatly helped:

  • An “odds and ends” idea list for both books.
  • 3000 words of Book #3 written between 2004-9.
  • A Book Three Bible that had the chapter names revealing the plot direction.
  • The prophecy from the Story that told what was to happen.

The next step below also helped as well

Organizing Olivia Book Bibles

Since creating the last Corporate Intent and Saving Eddie books, I use Wikidpad to build a story bible and track the creation/publication progress.

The software can be downloaded here:

http://wikidpad.sourceforge.net/

I re-read the above works and then created a wiki of key characters and places. This is invaluable for these reasons:

  • Capture key sentences from previous works to be reused or rephrased.
  • Note items to be added to the last two books for continuity.
  • Unanswered questions or topics from previous books to be explored.
  • Key hyperlinks and research topics are organized.
  • Handy to use as a project planner and tracker.
  • Got me quickly into the “Olivia Plymouth mindset.”

The amount of storage for this information — 400 K.

Did the above make a difference? I will know when the books are completed in 2015.

References

More on the series can be found at the link below.

Olivia Plymouth Series

https://www.smashwords.com/books/byseries/1730

http://wikidpad.sourceforge.net/help/

Encountering and Overcoming Writer’s Shanks

Introduction

There seems to be a lot of articles on overcoming writer’s block. But I see next to nothing on overcoming writer’s shanks. A shank in golf is a bad mishit. The same thing can happen to writers. They undergo a dark night of the soul where everything written seems wrong, bad, forced, or some other means of being unsatisfactory. I went through this briefly while creating In Small Doses 3 (a collection of short stories).

How I Overcame the Shanks

It took awhile. But the following things helped me return to “the usual level.”

Have faith in yourself

You alone know what you are capable of. Things are always changing and eventually inspiration will come back. This is not the time to get depressed or angry.

Throw nothing out

At a later point of time, you may see that your content was not really that bad or just needs some minor changes. This is what happened with ISD3.

Keep writing

Try writing on something you are comfortable with. Soon you should regain your confidence to tackle again the challenging topics.

Rest and Recharge

Take a walk, watch a movie, plant some seeds. Whatever it takes for you to rejuvenate. You may have been pushing yourself too hard.

Celebrate every small victory

Be kind to yourself. For every time you get one step closer to being on track celebrate. It will keep reinvigorating you.

Remember

And once again you are happily writing full steam, briefly write down your “shanks period” and what you did to overcome it. So there is no next time or it occurs for a shorter duration.

Please share if you have encountered the “writer’s shanks” and how you overcame it!