< start pondering >

I've written 5 novels (1 trunk novel, 4 WL novels), 3 manga, & a number of short stories.  No experience is exactly like the others. It seems illogical that this is so. There are overlaps, of course.  For me, these are

*multiple narrators
*folklore of some sort
*non-linear writing process.

Tonight, I admitted aloud that the 6th novel--Graveminder--is not writing for me in my familiar non-linear way. It still has multiple narrators & folklore, but my non-linear process was upended for this one. It's a peculiar feeling.

I have, of course, expanded between chapters already written, but that's simply part of the drafting process. It's not odd. 

What is odd--to me, at least--is the fact that I'm seemingly cursed to need to write the freaking chapters in order.  I had to finish Chapter -- before I could go on.  I know events that will follow later, but writing them out of order is not working. It's unnatural in feeling.

OTOH, it's working, so I'm not bitching . . . I am puzzling over it though.

In other Graveminder corners, I also admitted tonight that I'm not at all sure what genre the book is rightfully going to be classified as. It's folklore based, of course, so I guess we can call it a fantasy. It also has a bit of violence, some monstrosity, some corpses, & a bit of darkness that might make it properly a horror novel by some definitions.  I've trusted two readers to read it. The first said, "I expected it to be a romance. It's not." The second reader said, "I didn't know it was a mystery with a romance."  Umm. I don't know what it is either. I'm going with "book" bc that is pretty much the best answer I've got. ;)

Once upon a time, when I wrote the first book, I thought I had a plan, a grasp of how MY process worked.  For that first book, which was a MG fantasy, I had an outline. I had a board with colour-coded post-it notes.  It was all very orderly.

Then I wrote Wicked Lovely. For it, I had no outline, but I did have a short story that was the basis for the novel. I switched narrators throughout the process, & I didn't write it in order.

Then I wrote a second novel--which turned out to really be two novels tangled together. I ripped a big chunk out (about 30k) which ended up being the core of one of the narrators' part of 3rd WL novel. Then I wrote the 2nd WL novel (Ink Exchange). Then I went back & finished the 30k story that began the 3rd novel (Fragile Eternity).

By then, I thought I had a better grasp on what I was doing. I'd figured out better focus, and the 4th WL novel (Radiant Shadows) wasreally a concise story, not two novels tangled together. I still had multiple narrators; it still wrote in a non-linear way.  A-ha! I have figured it out. I have a system. I have figured out How I Write.

. . . except I didn't.

Graveminder isn't unrolling at all like any of the books thus far. . . which, yanno, didn't unroll like each other either so why this surprises me, I don't know. It does though.

< /pondering >

Back to my oddly linear experience . . .