The dog very graciously waited until 6:30am on Friday morning before waking us up the first time. He went straight back in his basket and slept for another hour. Then he was up again, but this time he wanted out. We’d said he was probably shattered the night before and might sleep through, and we were right. The bonus was, we all slept through, and we were all up on the alarm, although the dog would have preferred to stay in bed.
I spent the morning doing boring finance stuff, including 2 lots of admin for my pensions that were due on 9 March. For one I had to complete the several-page-long application form. For the other, I had to send them proof of my bank. I did a few more banking things before cracking on with that cosy mystery template on Scrivener.
I’d done the guidance notes for a few more chapters when I decided to add something to the pre-writing section, a ‘before we begin’ prompt to remind me to recalculate the chapter lengths depending on how long the overall story was likely to be. The whole thing was slow going, but I ploughed on with it, only breaking to have something to eat.
Over dinner, I carried on reading G IS FOR GUMSHOE. I got so far along with it that I didn’t want to stop reading and go back to work, but I had to force myself to do just that. I was less than 10% from the end, but I promised myself it would be a treat when I’d finished doing what I wanted to do.
After dinner I did my weekly tech scan and backup. And I worked on the diary for this week, moving a few things around to accommodate the work I did with Scrivener last week. I removed one of the stories I was going to write for the weekly market. I didn’t have any idea what to write about and couldn’t think of anything suitable I already had that could be revised.
Then it was back to my template. And reader, I finished it!
I’m going to work with this template for a while, see how it goes, and if it’s successful, I’ll look at creating one for the Save the Cat process. I’m hoping it will act as a kind of workbook, while keeping everything in the same file. I’ll still use an A5 notebook to jot things down, brainstorm idea, plan things out. But as I’ve been creating direct onto Scrivener for such a long time, once I start writing, I’ll move onto the template.
I’ve borrowed heavily from HOW TO WRITE A COZY MYSTERY: STEP BY STEP by Natasha C Sass for this template, amongst others too, so I wouldn’t be able to make this template available.
I’ll also be borrowing heavily from SAVE THE CAT WRITES A NOVEL by Jessica Brody if I get around to making a template for that. There are STC templates available, but they don’t include the 5-point finale, as far as I can tell.
And I’ve borrowed heavily from WRITE NOVELS FAST by Shéa Macleod for the A5 journal, but I’ve also added in a lot from the above mentioned books and others.
I love processes, I love trying out processes, and I love creating processes or amalgamating several. If they work, then why the hell not? They’re usually a lot of fun and they usually save me time in the long run.
Anyway, I’d just finished work when the poet whisked us all off to the seaside for tea. It was a lovely surprise. What a great start to the weekend.
Sounds like a good day!