Lands Of Mist Plotting...

Monday was a good day for writing. I did manage to do (with some ease - which was great to see happening) something that I'd wanted to try for a while now: if I could map out a whole book in one go (ie, under a day).

And I did! It took me only a few hours!

Here's the schedule:
8.30-9.30, 1h - Meditation
9.30-10.30, 1h - Emails + Food
10.30-11.30, 1h - tracks recording
11.30-12, 0.5h - Emails
12-15, 3h - NaNoWriM: Lands Of Mist prep + Food
15-19, 4h - Lands Of Mist Plotting
19-20.30, 1.5h - Food + Plotting part 2
20.30-21.30, 1h - Lands Of Mist writing
21.30-00, 2.5h - FILM Land Of The Lost
00-01, 1h - Lands Of Mist + The Hate Bearers

What can I say? Monday was also a good day! I spent a good part of the day typing up the stuff I'd found the previous night (for Lands Of Mist) and then I used up most of the afternoon to type up a semi-detailed chronology of events for the whole book. Some 34 chapters so far - which I aim to keep relatively short.

I am still amazed at how smooth the whole plotting process went. Of course it helped that I already had 9 pages of notes of things I'd like to see on that book - even if most of that was already bits of chapters/dialogue. But I managed to map it all out and insert some new scenes, chapters whenever needed. And, along the way, a couple of nice ideas for the story (to round things more) came through.

That was some 7 pages long so, roughly 3500 words. Then I think I wrote some 2000 afterwards. Still a bit low word count for what I'd like but I think it was a good start - and I can see that the first chapter is already going to be broken up in several others... oh well...

The first chapter deals with Anne-Marie and Thomas going to visit a guy that lives in a swamp on the north pole (don't ask... it works in the book though...), in an area called the Permanent Darkness.

If I recall correctly, this title came about because of Radiohead's track Permanent Daylight. Which, for a period, I was trying to learn how to play and singalong. So, there is also another chapter towards the end of the book (but not really the end) called Permanent Daylight - but that's a whole other journey.

What I didn't know was how those two chapters (in which something is given to the people living there - and yes, I won't tell you what it is...) related to the rest of the book. Now I do a bit more. But I suspect that will become clearer still after I get to that second part of the story.

It's all about building layers and layers and making things reflect one another like in a hall of mirrors (and there's gonna be quite a few things about mirrors on this one as well...) and create so much creative momentum that, hopefully, the reader will take a leap of faith and trust his/hers intuition and see the story for what it is on the big themes: be inspired and feel a sense of wonder, of the cosmic universe looming at each moment all around us.

That's pretty much the main objective of the series. In fact, the whole plot can be seen as simply a device to create this experience (hopefully - I'm still not there yet!). A series of devices created to help the mind transcend the four walls of our rooms and simultaneously perceive ourselves as in our own human space but also as a part of the Big-Bang.

Land Of The Lost was a great comedy - for those of us that love Will Ferrell.

I know, I know, lots of people don't - but the guy's expressions just crack me up. He's so pointlessly obnoxious you gotta yield... The script was probably one of the worst ever but he and Danny McBride amply made up for that. Some really good comedy moments - who cares about continuity?!

Afterwards I wrote a little more but managed to fall asleep lights on and so forth without meditating at all.

The NaNoChaos begins...

Peace!