Adara VS June 2022
In today’s video I look back over June, including rearranging my file of notes into a series bible, reminding myself of how I create characters & a change in English law effecting YA character ages.
Visual description: Opening scene is a lilac tree in bloom. Then, footage shows Adara leafing through and rearranging pages in a large file. I then goes on to show a computer screen with an extensive list of character traits. It ends with a close of a notebook, with Adara sticking gold stickers into it for the time she worked that month, before starting a new page ready to fill in times at the end of July. The ending image is the black silhouette of a forest against a purple starry sky. Two links appear: one on the left to her last video, and one on the right to subscribe to her channel.
Transcript
Welcome to the Canopy; a place to write my story one day at a time.
Hello and welcome to the Canopy! In today's video: Adara versus June. Planning overhaul.
June was a month of entering competitions, sending queries, then reacquainting myself with my original novel notes which were five revisions behind; and then I transformed it all into a series bible.
In the process I discovered a couple of characters that I never got around to writing, and I had to bring my current biographies up to scratch. It was fascinating going through my old notes, as I start to re-learn my process as I head into planning book two.
Here's a glimpse of my character planning sheets.
It's pretty extensive, but then again there's a reason it took me six months to plan my last novel. Hopefully this time, now that I have a structure in place and the world is already built, it could go a bit quicker.
Even at the end of all this work I had a nagging feeling in the back of my head. Looking back through my notes I had originally written my main character as 19 to avoid school and clashes with education. Through my revision process I'd lowered it to 17, because I thought that fit YA a bit better, with characters discovering the world and entering a new stage of life. But that nagging feeling kept pulling at me, and now I know why.
Since I've left school, English law has changed, requiring people to stay in some form of educational training until 18. At some point I must have heard of that in the news a couple of years ago, I don't remember when, and it's been nagging and nagging and nagging away in the back of my head until I looked it up.
So now my characters are aged 18 due to necessity. My main character works on call 24/7 so they can't have college hours, and that would lead to a huge rewrite. Thankfully another character was much easier to explain away as having started an apprenticeship at 16 which counts.
In other news I read five novels this month, not counting fan fictions, manga and graphic novels which are endless.
In terms of competitions I didn't get long-listed for the Bath Novel Awards, but based on the number of entries from last year the chances of that happening were around 1.5%. I've also revised the beginning of my novel since then, so if I had been long-listed it would have caused me a lot of inner panic, turmoil and questions about the changes I'd made afterwards.
So, let's see how I got on in June. I'd set myself a rewards tariff that for every 20 minutes worked I'd receive one gold star, and for every 10 gold stars I earned the right to buy myself a new book.
This month was full of medical appointments, for myself and household members. It was tough to juggle it all with my energy levels, some trips to hospital, some home visits multiple times a day. So instead of doing a little bit of work every day, I jumped in when I had a spare day and the energy to do as much as I could.
In the end, my time was an incredible 870 minutes, which works out at 14 and a half hours worked. That amazes me, because with so much else going on, I genuinely thought it wouldn't even have reached half of that. But by this point I think my writing habit is quite strong, and my work ethic to get book two going... it may be slow to some people for me anything is better than nothing, and it all adds up, and it clearly has here.
I'd be lying if I said that this star count also wasn't something that motivated me as I was going on through the month, because who isn't motivated (if you're a writer) with the temptation of buying yourself new books at the end of the month?
That's 47 stars and four new books to me. I'll take that thank you! Very pleased! And that's a 7 star count head-start for next month.
That rounds off the first half of 2022 nicely. Now looking forward to the second half.
My goal for July is to continue in the query trenches until we reach the six-week holidays where the kids are off from school. I've been told the publishing industry shuts down around then, so I'll see how far I get and then shift my focus to plan book two until the kids return and people return to work. I would love to get an agent by the end of the year, but regardless, I'll keep on planning with book two. Who knows? I may even tackle NaNoWriMo for the first time to make a draft of it.
That's all from me today. I have to go now as I have character biographies to finish updating and queries to send, as I continue to write my story...
...one day at a time.
Credits:
Thumbnail and ending image created free using canva.com
Music credit 1: opening and ending theme – Adara Spence
Music credit 2: Beloved - Sakura Girl https://soundcloud.com/sakuragirl_off...
Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0
Free Download / Stream: https://bit.ly/3ji1zZc Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/omTgn4GQcKA
