A writing suitcase

I started packing my writing suitcase today and I have already made my first cull. The storyboard index cards. I don't really need them because I will have the full action / reaction descriptions with me. It was probably a little over kill taking them anyway.

Because I don't have a laptop and will writing in long hand for the next three months, I really needed the room for notebooks. This is why I need to have a first draft of my plot organized before I go. I don't want to come back with books full of jumble of hand written notes and malformed ideas.

That doesn't mean I plan to stick rigidly to my plot if I get a great idea or twist. I think I have reached the stage of writing the story where I need to hone the thesis and tracking the changes I am making. I don’t know how many times at work I have changed an aspect of what I am writing about only to change my mind later on only to discover I have forgotten to keep the previous drafts of the ideas.

I've really got to get moving if I'm going to be ready with my writing by the time I leave. I still have to finish typing up my hand written notes, plot out the whole novel on the action /reaction sheets, capturing what I have about the characters and summarize a reference book.

I should be ok. I can get most of the novel's plot from the brain dump. There are several glaring gaps I need to fill in, but I can do that later or use the freefall workshop in Perth to fill that in if I have to. As long as I have the guts of the book plotted before I go I will be happy.

It's really funny, but one of reasons I chose not to write all these years is because of the amount of work it involves. Particularly, the rewriting and editing. It all looked just too much like hard work. But now, I find the reworking aspect of writing quite liberating. It takes the pressure off getting the story and the writing of the story exact in the first instance. I like that I can just get it down and fix it later if I have to. It makes the process a whole lot more enjoyable.