I’m two weeks into Preptober and so far I’ve worked on outlining the novel (getting the skeleton down) and pulling together all of my character information.

I have extensive worldbuilding for Dual Wielding that I’ve been working on since 2010 but I’ve just discovered that a lot of it has been scattered around because of the various iterations I’ve made of the series and characters (ᵕ—ᴗ—)

I have a lot of handwritten notes that I need to dig out and I think much of the seemingly lost updated version notes are in there. I was able to write with pen a lot more back, my concurrent wrist injuries having made it difficult to do so now without it hurting after a couple of paragraphs. It will be interesting pulling out all of those notebooks and folders. They’ll probably be dated between 2010 and 2023.

In the coming week, I will be working on my power week for plot, so taking the beats that I’ve laid out in my structure building week and making sure they’re all hit and all connect. The reason I do structure first and then fill in the plot is because it seems to be what’s best for me. Plotting out the structure gives me guidelines and goalposts that making filling in the flesh a lot more easier and allow me to run away with writing without realising tens of thousands of words later that none of it works. I’m the kinda person who hates being boxed in with structure but if the box lines are made of ropes to guide me as I do my thing, then it stops me from running away from the initial focus point (ᵕ • ᴗ •)

It’s two weeks left until Writvember! I have the plot focus week and research focus week left. Research week is a bit of a buffer week, combined with ideas that I know I’ll need to look into. I’ll know more about what I need to know when I start writing, but it helps to start thinking about that during the preparation phase so that I’m constantly thinking of them when writing.

Happy writing!