Thursday, December 7, 2023

Welcome, I’m Mary Louisa Locke, the author of the USA Today best-selling Victorian San Francisco Mystery series and the Caelestis Science Fiction series. In this daily newsletter, I reflect on my life as an indie author trying to age gracefully, including my struggles to maintain a balanced life, what I listen to, read, and watch for entertainment, and occasional bits of information I’ve gleaned from doing the research for my novels.

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Daily Diary, Day 1192:

Yesterday, my husband and I spent about an hour choosing things for the bathroom remodel. Basically, this meant choosing for the master bath, which they will do first, There were lots of decisions for the first bathroom (cabinets, door pulls, vinyl for the floor, quartz counter, mirror, lights, sink, fixtures, medicine cabinets, then for shower, the floor, the tiles, where niche to hold shampoo would go, locate grab bars, towel racks, etc. Since the other two bathrooms are going to use same basic choices of materials, the other two bathrooms went very fast, just some discussion of where to put towel bars, grab bars, what kind of fold down seat in the shower.

My husband and I are very compatible in both having similar tastes, not being too fussy, and not second guessing our decisions, so the whole thing went fast, and the designer exclaimed at the end how easy we were! 

Home in time for the Asbestos/lead tester to come. He said no lead, but they were going to have to test the original linoleum that was under the linoleum that I put down twenty years ago for asbestos. Would save some time and money if they don’t find any!

Then about an hour to write after lunch before scheduled phone call, then walk, then dinner, so I only got about 160 words written.

The remodel process got me thinking about the similarities to the work I did the day before yesterday, plotting out the whole rest of the book. With the remodel, first I talked with my husband to see how he felt about changes, letting him add what he was looking for. Then we went through the bathrooms with the designer, telling her our ideas, and getting input from her. Then she gave us 3-D drawing based on that discussion, and we made a few tweaks. This last meeting filled in the actual details.

With my writing, it’s a similar process. I tend to start out with a big picture, listing the general themes I want to cover, what character arcs I am going to develop, and main plot points in terms of action. Then I divide up all this into 3 Acts, figuring out which parts of character arc and plot points I want to cover in each Act.

Then, when I am ready to start to write, I will do a very general sentence outline scene by scene for one of the acts (dates, setting, which characters in the scene, main plot points covered). Then I will do a more detailed sentence outline for about 3 chapters, write, then start to do more detailed outline for the next chunk.

At the end of one of the acts. I will review what I have written, before doing the scene outline for the next act, sometimes deciding to drop something going forward (like a minor plot), or add something that I unexpected developed in the act I just wrote that I need to continue, or in some casesmove something around (have a scene come first that in the original I put second.)

Where I am at this point in this novel, is starting the last act, and I have done that general of character arc, plot points all the way to the end. Once I have finished these last two chapters in Act 2, I will start to do a scene outline for the last act. So, like remodeling, start large, keep filling in details as I go along, and of course with the writing, the draft will then be refined further.

Anyway, I feeling optimistic about this last 1/3 of the draft. Before this week, I had things like “complete the mission”, “resolve question of shared partnership” “crisis with father,” written down, not much else. Now I have a broader understanding of how these are actually going to play out. For example, I know when and generally how the mission will be completed.

So, I am pleased at the stage we are at with the remodel and I am at with the writing, although at this point we have no idea at all about when the remodel is actually going to start (and therefore end), nor do I know how long it is going to take to finish writing this act and have my first draft done!

Here are two photos from my walks, the first is a tower with poinsettias in the morning, the second is the same tower all lit up at twilight. I am so enjoying the two walks to see the decorations this way, because they can have their own beauty in the daytime, and be transformed as night comes on.

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