Friday Fricassee

Happy Talk Like a Pirate Day!

I toyed with writing my entire Friday Friday in Pirate--for about seven seconds.  I'm not fluent enough to make that exercise remotely comfortable, so let's just settle for a nice, fat

Arr!

(And perhaps a bottle o' rum.)

So, lots going on around here!  In case you missed yesterday's post, submissions for our first Logline Critique Round will be open on Monday from 9 to 5 EDT.  As in previous years, the illustrious Holly Bodger will be critiquing all of the entries.  For those of you who aren't in the know:  Holly is a logline goddess.  No, really.  And she's got a fabulous book coming out next year.  You'll hear more about her on Monday.

We're only doing 40 entries per logline round, so if you don't get into this round, try again!  There will be 3 rounds total.  I know that only accommodates 120 people, but that's all we can squeeze into the schedule.  Be extra nice to your critique partners in the next month so that they will look at your loglines!

Oh, and I've just got to say this:  The bot lets me know whenever there's a duplicate entry.  So please don't try to be all sneaky and enter from alternate email addresses.  If this happens, and if your entry gets chosen, I will delete it.  The rule is one entry per person.

The Bot rules.  Almost like the eye of Sauron.

As for me--I've had another Strange New Development in my writerly journey.  Nothing huge, but definitely different.  In short, I seem to have planned my story in 3 acts.  Not that I haven't been aware of this technique--it's common and it's effective.  In fact, sometimes I've read novels that were obviously broken into these 3 days (like, "Part 1", "Part 2", "Part 3"), and I didn't like the blatant obviousness of it.  (As in, do you want to just include your plot outline at the end of the book so we can see the cleverness of your structure?)  But it works.  It's solid.  I've just never constructed my stories that way.

Until now.

It happened naturally. I've been in the planning stage of my Shiny New Story That Not Even My Agent Knows About Yet for a few weeks, and just yesterday I finished planning what is clearly Act One.  I knew it deep inside my gut-parts as soon as I finished writing the list of events.  "Great googly, this is Act One!" I exclaimed (not really).  And though I haven't got the plot entirely worked out yet, I can already see in my mind the delineations for Acts Two and Three.

Interesting!  I'm not sure why this happened, but I'm feeling pretty comfortable with it.  And, of course, I keep opening Scrivener, reading my "Act One" rough outline, and feeling all giddy.

"How was your day, Authoress?"

"Oh, fabulous!  I've planned Act One!  My very first Act One!  Do you want to see it?"

So, that's me.  Reveling in this new Thing that seems to be working.  Writing novels is such a fluid thing, is it not?  The farther along we go, the more we change and grow.

(Wow, I just wrote a spontaneous couplet.  Feel free to share that with your friends.)

Anyway--here's the the beauty of words!  And the wonderful way in which our brains work to our advantage in often unexpected ways.

Now get t'work, me buckos!  Dead men tell no tales--so we'll do it for 'em.