On Traveling

Sorry about the delayed post - that is, if you actually count on this post being there on Wednesday mornings (which, for my own personal deadline-driven-self, I hope you do).

Anyway, as mentioned this morning, I am traveling.  Oftentimes, when I travel, I get just about nothing done with regard to writing, no matter how ambitious my plans may be.  I end up going to dinner with coworkers, and then I have email and work to catch up on, and then I may grab a late night beer at the bar with folks to finish it out.  Result: no writing work completed.

Every once in a while, though, I manage to get some writing stuff done.  I generally look at a few days in a hotel, secluded and with limited interruption, as a sort of "mini-writing-retreat," and on the occasions where I have traveled for work in November, I have definitely utilized that time to get my NaNoWriMo words in for the day.  Outside of that, though, I always have some ambitious goal to achieve.  This trip: Complete outlining Seven Doors. Usually, though, my grand plans are derailed by work or post-work activities.

This trip, though, was a little different.  Most of the people I know and work with frequently will not be showing up until the Friday meeting, which means I am here a full two days' prior.  On top of that, I had some time on the plane that I might have been reading a novel that I spent reading my own novel and making notes on my legal pad.  As such, I am almost done with the high level outline of the novel.  I should complete the last two chapters either tonight or tomorrow, at which point I need to start identifying the major holes.

During this process, I have already learned that I probably want more information the next time I try this activity.  I tried to do "POV character" does "XYZ" format to my bullet, but in some instances I have already forgotten what my chickenscratch notes mean, and in some instances I needed to add more.  As such, I started another page (which will be useful on second readthrough) to keep track of characters (many of whom I have discovered need a clearly defined motivation to develop as a character and still remain in the story).  I also may want columns for POV character, and some notes about things to fix in the next draft.  I may create a quick spreadsheet to copy my outline to and add these things, only to do a quick re-skim and fill in the blanks.

Next up: figuring out how this detailed outline is broken into blocks.  What's missing?  What's perfect?  The answers to those questions start feeding in as I determine what the major issues with the story tend to be.

In other writing news this week, I got asked to write a non-fiction essay sort of article for a friend's publication.  I'll be scoping that out and will let you know its status if it proceeds.

Hope all is well with you, reader-friends, and wondering:  if you don't use "work travel" as a mini-writing retreat as I do, is there something you do to "get away from it all" for a brief moment to get some writing work done?

Cheers!