The most exciting part of writing Glorious Incorporated… and the most frustrating.
The thing I liked most about writing this first novel was the storyline and the way it evolved. The idea for a corporate setting had always been there. I wasn’t sure at the time of conception how I was going to weave in the “supernatural” elements, but I knew I wanted them because they were a necessary part of the story. Hence the word, “glorious”.
When I started writing, I developed a storyboard for the overall structure. I’m more of a visual guy than anything else, so I created index cards. They held some of the key themes of what I wanted to write about. After about 20 to 30 cards, I started putting them in the order of what I thought was a good flow. Different layers of the story started to emerge. Some of the cards blossomed into additional sections; some went bye-bye. The whole process was very dynamic for me. As I built out the storyline, I began the actual writing. I knew how I wanted to begin the book so I was good to go. As I worked through the story, the sections became bigger and the index cards grew to show even more layers. Some of them went beyond what I wanted for the first chronicle, so those are tucked away for the next. As I said, it was very dynamic. I kept thinking “how in the world am I going to converge these threads.” Bringing the relevant layers together for book one to hit the climax was a huge thrill.
A rule of thumb for me (#23) was not to be tied down to the specifics of the index cards. Whatever came out during the writing for a particular section is what I went with, even if it changed some of the storyline. When the inspiration hits, you just kind of want to go with it. I didn’t get crazy with it though. I mean, come on…
Some of the best advice that I ever heard was from an interview with Brad Pitt who validated that process.
“You never want to preplan a scene, you’ll just screw it up.”
Okay, just to recap… The content of the index cards was important for setting the scene. The details were whatever my imagination came up with at the time.
The most frustrating part was… and still is, finding the time to write. Another rule of thumb (#51) is that there is never any free time to do anything, you have to make time for everything. Easier said than done with a busy life. All these ideas and thoughts swirled around in my head at any given point during the day. If I didn’t carry around my iPad constantly to capture them, I would’ve lost most of the cool stuff in this book. In fact, I wrote the entire book on it.
You write when you can…
