100 Days of Novel Writing

A few days into using Campfire to write my novel, and I kind of hate it.

Earlier I said I was trying it out to help me keep track of my worldbuilding elements — sort of like a wiki to keep track of magic system notes, maps with pins and labels, how different plotlines weave into one another...and from what I can tell, that's working great!

My mistake was using it to actually write. When I dumped the prologue into Campfire from Ulysses, the formatting fell apart, and I had to redo it all. I didn't think this would be an issue until I wrote three and a half more chapters and tried exporting it. The formatting was gone again.

The worldbuilding features are really nice though, so I'll keep using those for now.

+ 687 words

It's one of those days where I wish I were rich with a butler who could take care of my apartment for me. Spent most of the day practicing jiu-jitsu, running errands, and cleaning, with a pocket of time in the evening to write.

Since this is a story about witches, most of my characters are women. One of my teenage witch characters is a competitive jiu-jitsu fighter with a crush on one of her teammates; I wrote his introductory scene today:

The boy yawned and flung his gangly arms over his head, one wrist covering both eyes as he heard his bedroom door being nudged against carpet. He’d been awake for a few minutes, but he knew better than to try to quell the inevitable; he felt the foot of his queen-sized bed bow under the weight of a large, panting Saint Bernard.

His dog plodded up the bed, briefly stepping directly on Tai’s sternum before stopping just short of his shoulders, dribbling slobber as the kid fidgeted beneath him.

“Get off me,” he groaned futilely, tucking his chin to glare at Bentley. The dog closed its mouth, his beady eyes looking well and truly devoid of all thoughts whatsoever, before dropping his entire bodyweight on the kid, knocking the wind out of him. He adjusted his massive paws on either side of him, then resumed his panting. It almost looked like he was smiling. Had he not moved his arms beforehand, Bentley would have trapped him there with no exit strategy.

Every morning, Tai’s dog was kind enough to help him practice some basic Jiu-Jitsu. Planting his left hand on the bed, he flatted his right against the scruff of the dog’s neck, then bucked his hips upward until the dog flipped over like a pancake and he was on his knees above him.

I wish I trained jiu-jitsu earlier in life! Having a dog to practice with doesn't sound bad, either.

+ 813 words

People write long-ass chapters all the time, but chapter one seemed a little much, so I divided it up into three.

In retrospect, I suppose you don't necessarily need to take readers through an entire heist scene right from the get-go. I guess that, as a reader, I unconsciously understood chapters as a natural rest spot. I'd probably want one or two of those if I were taking in a brand new setting, tech culture, magic system, cast of characters, and pulling a heist, all in one go...

Live and learn!+ 1,294 words

I'm almost done with chapter one. It's wild to me that I'm still here some 11 days later, but when I think about it, that kind of makes sense that the first chapter would be this involved. Introducing the setting, magic system, each character in an ensemble cast, their collective stakes, the heist...it's a lot.

Organizing some of the basic worldbuilding elements helped the writing process feel less chaotic. This book is set in San Francisco in the near-ish future, so of course I needed a map. Technology is slightly different, and cultures have adapted to accommodate supernatural experiences, which means I can't just slap a witchy vibe over the city and call that worldbuilding.

So I opened a Campfire account, hoping I can turn that into my "world wiki." It lets you create and label maps, and keep track of character arcs throughout the story. I've been using Notion for this, but I'd love to commit to a one-stop solution so I can just focus on getting the story down. We'll see how it goes.

+ 4,329 words

Not really, but I'm having a blast writing it.

It's between pair of teenage twin girls: one reserved and scatterbrained, the other type-A and self-obsessed. The quiet one's specialization as a witch is manipulating time and the other's is gravity, so when they fight — and they often do — their loved one's fabric of reality sort of hangs in the balance.

+ 1,239 words

Big moment today! Didn't clock a lot of words — but I did work through this infamously hard first heist scene.

I rifled through six or seven different openers, exploring different tones before one finally stuck. Halfway through this process I realized I was overthinking it. While my story starts off with a decidedly darker tone than, say, Baby Driver, the most iconic films start out with something high-key silly for a reason. If the situation isn't giving "completely unserious" at least once, are you even doing it right?

Speaking of unserious, I watched Snatch tonight at my kickboxing friend's request. I'm a couple decades late to this banger, but I'm obsessed.

+ 283 words

I slept on it, and woke up to an epiphany about how to make this first heist scene happen: just lie.

Eight days ago I had an idea for a pretty good setup: intercept a van full of trafficked women before they reach their destination. I have six characters to position, and an impossible amount of risks. It all sounded really cool in my head...until the "clever plan" part was supposed to happen, and I realized I had no idea what I was doing. I tried having the team flounder and throw shit at the wall to see what sticks...but who would want to read that? A super specialized heist team that doesn't know what they're doing?

Some of the best heists, thrillers, and dramas start with a completely asinine lie. If you have a character whose job is to manipulate, forge, and obfuscate...she can just make shit up! So instead of scrambling, I picked a lie for her to build a ruse around, and poof — all the other characters' roles fell into place.

+ 604 words

I'd already written about 30,800 words when I decided to do this 100-day experiment. Most of those words have been moved to much later chapters, so technically I've been writing this novel for two months and am only just starting the third scene of Chapter 1, haha.

Currently attempting to write the actual preliminary heist that introduces you to the main characters. I have no idea what I'm doing, but you can't get good unless you put in reps, so here goes nothing.

(A friend at the kickboxing gym recommended watching Snatch — might make a night of it.)

+668 words