“I hate writing. I love the process of having written.”
My apologies to whoever said that, first that I don’t remember the source, and second, that I may have mangled the quote.
Maybe I didn’t remember it exactly, because I don’t precisely agree with the sentiment.
Parts of the process I love. Researching, reading, coming up with the story, even getting that first draft on paper in a mad frenzy of marathon typing sessions.
It’s the revising and editing I just despise. I’ve been bogged down in that part of the process on my novel for longer than I care to admit.
Sure, life got in the way this year, but I could have done better. I just felt like I was disorganized and uneven in my attempts. Or maybe just a little lazy. Need to stop taking after my cat!
And now I’m thinking about trying National Novel Writing Month again. It’s coming up next month. It’s a great way to get a draft written. So to get ready, I’m working on my next novel outline.
Then
I stumbled onto this handy resource called One Stop for Writers that I think will not only help me get some outlining and plotting down, but also with worldbuilding and details. Which means the revising and editing tasks won’t be quite so monumental.
What is One Stop for Writers? It’s a website developed by the authors of The Emotion Thesaurus, and the guy behind one of my all time tools for writers, Scrivener. The idea is to have a place that contains a library of resources and a way to organize notes.
So there is the full collection of descriptive thesauri: emotions, colors and patterns, positive and negative traits, physical features, setting, shape, symbolism and motif, texture and weather.
For example, in the Physical Feature thesaurus, under the entry for “fingernails”, there are 42 words that can be used to describe someone’s fingernails. Then there are lists of action, gestures, similes, metaphors, clichés and more. Using this resource can quickly help create fresh ways of describing something as simple as fingernails.
And there’s more.
There’s an Idea Generator if you get stuck, as well as templates and worksheets for developing characters, settings, symbols and motifs, and more.
What I love about this resource is you can add your own notes, download them, even print them.
And just as a disclaimer: I have no connection with One Stop for Writers other than I have a subscription to the site. But it’s already clear to me that using this site will take some of the pain out of writing. Well worth the small price of the subscription.
Anybody else try it yet?