I've spent much of the last month plotting the Fae book I'm writing thanks to a Creation Grant from artsnb. Plotting, for me, tends to jump around and explore into the nooks and crannies of an idea. It makes me think of puttering more than plotting, so I find myself referring to it as 'plottering,' hence the name of this month's newsletter.

It's not fast work. It feels like solving the mystery of what a story wants to be clue by clue, only the clues are determined by my gut reaction of whether or not they belong in the story. Plotting stories by intuition seems ridiculous when I say it out loud, but it's honest. It very much feels like I'm using some secret writer power to see if the future story has these elements I'm considering as clues. 

Then I collect all my clues and brood over them for however long it takes until the next clue I'm missing becomes clear. This happens ten times faster with a pen in hand or fingers on the keyboard than it does dreaming away in my head. Which is how I end with a writing journal that looks like this at the end of a year:

I'm pleased to write that I've broken ground on The Fae in the Machine. Yes, I'm still plotting, but at some point in the last month I plotted out a short story that I spent a few weeks denying was the beginning of this book.

"No," my inner marketing manager (IMM) told myself. "Absolutely no experimental story structure allowed."

A rather defiant novelette that would naturally follow the short story in sequence immediately unfolded in my mind.

"No," said my IMM, their voice raising to a shout. "You need to give people a normal book, the kind of book that an average reader expects!" Which is a valid point, I want people to read this book, after all. So I listened.

And... I immediately got writer's block, which led to depression. I floundered for a bit until I finally caved and went back to that short story plot. The block and the depression evaporated.

Now that I've surrendered to what the story wants, my pulse starts quickening when I think about it, a smile tugs at my lips, the ideas are flowing, and the clues coming clear. This is the good stuff writers live for. 

As a bit of a newsletter treat, I'm letting you in on an easter egg I'm writing into the first short story/chapter of The Fae in the Machine. The main antagonist in Fae is the status quo as represented by various mirror antagonists as the story progresses. The first of these is an old wise woman the locals have learned they ignore to their peril. I've named her "Meg Owens, mother of nobody" as she likes to advise parents when their children play too close to the Veil. The easter egg is that this character is actually an homage to two of my favourite writers and their works.

The first is L. M. Montgomery, whose books practically raised me. In her fictional Avonlea universe, there's a hermit character named Peg Bowen who turns up a few times to frighten and surprise the younger protagonists. Meg Owens deliberately rhymes with Peg Bowen a fellow strangeling existing on the fringes of society.

The second allusion is to Neil Gaiman's character Nobody Owens, or Bod, from The Graveyard Book. One of the things that has brought me back to reread The Graveyard Book again and again is it's own experimental story structure. There are short story side quests happening right in the middle of The Graveyard Book and Neil makes it work because he knows the reader is there for Bod; they're not reading the book for the story structure, they're in it for the characters. Meg Owens, mother of nobody, is going in Fae to remind me of this and to act as a sign post of where to look I start going off the rails. 

Fair warning, this month's imaginary writing desk may not be appropriate for us mortals. If I found this desk deep in the woods, my first instinct would not be to sit down on the non-existent chair and get some writing in. Not at all. I'd probably offer it a bit of ink, maybe a few notebook pages in hopes we could be friends.

In fact, I'm pretty sure this desk is sentient and the moment we look away from the image, some of those vines on the legs are going to reach up and start writing stories of their own. I've never had the pleasure of reading stories written by a sentient desk before, have you?

Come, scroll downward so it's off your screen, we don't want to keep such a single-minded creature from its stories and I certainly don't want to exert any mortal influence upon it.

That's it for this month, side questers. Feel free to share this newsletter with folks who might enjoy it and if you're not sure how you got here but you want more, you can subscribe here. Stay wild and I'll see you next month with more Fae side quests to share.

Sincerely,