People who don't write in order are a mystery to me. I start at the beginning with an ending vaguely in sight and a sketched map on a damp cocktail napkin... and if it turns out, in chapter 11, that chapter 5 will have to be completely rewritten, then so be it. I'll fix it in the revisions phase. On to chapter 12.

Just to throw down with sequentialist solidarity.

I'm mostly a sequentialist, too. I have a bad problem that once I've imagined a scene, that's the way it played, it's history set in stone from then on. I write out of order, get a better idea and then I'm having to seriously retcon or get so bollixed up I can't go forward....

People who write in order confuse me. *g*

I'm trying it this once. It's interesting.

I have a bad problem that once I've imagined a scene, that's the way it played, it's history set in stone from then on. I write out of order, get a better idea and then I'm having to seriously retcon or get so bollixed up I can't go forward....

Yes. Yesyesyesyesyes. Oh gods yes.

(I will write chronologically, I will write chronologically, I will write chronologically...)

(Boggling at trying to develop personalities, storyline and plot, in pieces)

Of course, I have no math in me, which almost certainly contributes to that little issue.

OTOH, I finished rewriting Still Life. Bev, do you want to wait for a PDF, or shall I send an atatched word doc? And same for Anne, whom I believe also wanted to read it?

Attached word doc is great (Especially since I'll be here to get it, yay!).

Oh. And silly me, WooHoo you, for finishing it! You are the hardest-working woman I know.

I have a bad problem that once I've imagined a scene, that's the way it played, it's history set in stone from then on. I write out of order, get a better idea and then I'm having to seriously retcon or get so bollixed up I can't go forward....

I've just accepted the fact I'm going to have to do major continuity edits once I'm done. I really couldn't write any other way. I tried, and I never even came close to finishing everything. From the time I was fifteen or sixteen on, I've accumulated stacks of Chapters 1-3. Once I even got as far as Chapter Five. But never anything close to 65,000 words.

The hardest part of writing out of order for my current project is that it's all about the coming of age of my first-person narrator. Having settled into Lucy's woman-voice, it takes some mental readjustment to go back to her maiden-voice when I write earlier scenes.

Boggling at trying to develop personalities, storyline and plot, in pieces

The biggest project I did this with, I *knew* who the character would be (and this isn't totally off topic, because she was an OFC) at the end. Even though, in the parts I was working on in the other timeline, she didn't exist.

It's hard to explain. I went back and rewrote a whole section because I realized she was acting out of character in it, even though it was one of the first sections where we see her.

I just... hmm.

I have no time sense, as a person. I flash to moments, stuck in amber, connected by something I can't feel. It's the same when I write, you know? Moments, connected. A flip book, but the order doesn't matter when I write it, just when I join it. A quilt, really.

Are you talking about a linear piece, Plei?

Because your long Wes-Buffy piece was very linear, and seamless. The characters grew and changed as a result of what we read, what they experienced.

That's the sort of thing I find impossible to write piecemeal. As Susan said, switching "voices" for the characters is difficult--sometimes it's impossible (for me) to find that earlier voice with any authenticity.

But this:

Moments, connected. A flip book, but the order doesn't matter when I write it, just when I join it. A quilt, really.

sounds just as effective as something unspooling through time.

Because your long Wes-Buffy piece was very linear, and seamless. The characters grew and changed as a result of what we read, what they experienced.

If you're talking about Absolution (or anything but the new one) it was written in patches, here, there, everywhere.