RW1 Progress Report: Initial Outlining Complete

Some good news to report: As of this past weekend, I have finished primary plotting work for my first Riftwalker book (RW1) — huzzah! I actually wound up doing a lot of worldbuilding in parallel with my outlining efforts, which was an unintended but ultimately helpful development.

The deeper I dug in to the world, the easier it was to connect formerly isolated plot points and other must-have events throughout the story. I'm told this is called flow, but the major takeaway for me was simply that increases in my own level of immersion directly and positively impacted the quality of my creative output.*

I was able to fill in some of RW1's most glaring plot holes in almost shockingly quick succession. These sticking points were all major impediments to either moving the story along or justifying the state of the world in which it occurs, all of which came together far more readily when I really got down into the narrative weeds for several hours straight. For example:

Dangling unknowns involving the nature of the protagonist's magic and her lineage, the basis for two integral non-human races and their role in the narrative, certain geopolitical considerations that I was still fuzzy on, and a more refined understanding of some of the historical events that effectively set the stage for the larger story to come were all clarified or otherwise addressed.

That's all a very big deal for me, above and beyond the obvious benefits of addressing continuity issues.

I'm positively bursting with ideas most of the time, but can have difficulty linking them up in a sufficiently coherent and organic fashion. And for me at least, even small-scale success in this domain has a way of creating self-fulfilling momentum all its own.

I fully expect this outline to become quite a bit larger before writing commences in earnest, both to account for subsequent books and as I drill down even deeper into the minutia of scenes and their transitions. I imagine that I'll need a general timeline as well, to ensure that character actions, locations, and knowledge are kept in alignment, although I can't fathom ever approaching the likes of, say, GRRM or Steven Erikson in this regard (careful: beyond those links be spoilers galore). 

This is admittedly only a small step, but one that I am really excited about nonetheless. I have "wanted to write" for pretty much as long as I can remember, but consistently failed to do anything meaningful about it. It feels very empowering to finally start changing that.

*I don't yet have performance metrics in place to determine if it had a measurable impact on the amount of work I was getting done as well, but that is something I'll look into as I standardize and settle more of my overall process.

Site Upkeep: Google Analytics

Just a quick one tonight, but I finally got around to setting up Google Analytics for this site. (Huzzah!) These directions on wikiHow were pretty easy to follow, and I had the whole thing up and running in around ten minutes. There were also instructions in there on how to convert classic Blogger templates to the newer and presumably shinier variants, but none of that applied in my case.

The next step in the Master Plan should probably be to generate enough traffic to justify the inclusion of analytics in the first place, but for the moment I'm satisfied with being able to discern my own pageviews from those of the occasional wayward soul that finds their way here. And, you know, all the pretty bars and stuff.

Oh, and in unrelated news, entering this text into the address bar seems to actually prevent Blogger from tracking your own pageviews in Chrome:

www.yourdomain.com/b/statsBlockingCookie?action=SET&callback=__gwt_jsonp__.P2.onSuccess

I can't speak to Firefox, IE, other Chromium-based browsers, or any of Apple's stuff, but this did the trick for me with the x64 flavor of Chrome.

Site Upkeep: The Sequel

...and I'm back.

This whole Office Web Presence™ thing is a new frontier for me, but the domain transfer was actually pretty painless. Google's support docs were very helpful, and the how-to materials for my old registrar were pretty instructive.

Victory, Team RTFM.

Site Upkeep

I'm going to be transferring my NLA domain this weekend, which will leave the Orbital HQ inaccessible for an indeterminate period of time. I'm envisioning a day or two of total downtime, but hope to be back up sooner than that.

In the event that things go seriously sideways, I'll temporarily revert this site to www.nickloweryauthor.blogspot.com while I get things sorted out.

This change should greatly simplify site management for me, as well as address some DNS configuration issues that I've been having with my current registrar and the redirects to Blogger's hosting platform.

I'll report back in once the transfer is complete and we're up and running again.

The Riftwalker Project

So I want to talk a little about my current story, whose working title for the moment is simply the Riftwalker (RW) project*. I envision it as a series of books, likely a trilogy, and have a pretty firm idea of both a beginning and an end to the tale. The protagonist and other major POV characters are largely known at this point, although fleshing them out fully will necessarily entail seeing exactly where they fit into the overall story. I'm (obviously, I think) really big on planning and outlining, but I still recognize that the story will dictate at least some of the terms as things evolve.

For the moment I'm spending most of my writing time on plotting, and am hoping to have a proper outline of keystone events nailed down by the end of the month. Once done, I can start connecting the narrative dots with a more finessed touch – get myself down in the weeds, and all that.

I don't want to be too specific yet, but the world will likely be familiar to fans of darker, trending-epic medieval-fantasy fare. There's also an undeniably post-apocalyptic undercurrent to things, which is both super fun for me personally and serves as another angle for thematic exploration. Put differently, two of my three favorite genres of fiction are getting together, with every intention to create something worth reading.

I'll do some brief write-ups on the tentative backstory of the RW universe when I have more time, so stay tuned for that.

*To be clear, there is no relation to this Kickstarter or any of Raymond Feist's books, although I am admittedly envious of the names of several of his trilogies.

Mission Statement: The Wordsmithy

Welcome to my tiny corner of the blogosphere!

This site is presently a work in progress, but I ultimately aim to do a few things here:

• First and foremost, I'll be talking about my various writing projects. What they are, where I'm at with them, related ideas and insights, and the guts of my process (such as it is). As my stories begin to take on a more concrete shape, I'm also planning to share excerpts from my drafts and worldbuilding materials when applicable.
• My hobbies and other diversions are fair game as well: PC and board games; my feeble efforts at fitness; building computers and other IT work; and Eva, my wrinkly wrecking ball of a dog (to name but a few).
• Engage my (future) readership, for my own sake as much as theirs. I have a lot to learn about establishing myself online, and that seems to be a thing best accomplished by actually doing and then adjusting course as-needed. My hope is that those efforts – fuck-ups and successes alike – will prove entertaining and perhaps even instructive as I make a go of this big, scary self-publishing effort.
• I want to give you pause. Make you think. I want you to be more than simply entertained by what I write. I want my stories to connect with you in both visceral and intellectual terms. I want you to worry, to care, to believe in the same things that my characters do. To examine the gravity of their decisions, the implications of their world. The burden of their choices. Just because their stories aren't "real" doesn't mean that they can't affect us in a real way – both writers and readers alike – and that is what I want you wrestling with long after the final page.

I consider storytelling that touches both the heart and the mind in equal measure to be the pinnacle of the craft. That is my ultimate goal, and something I hope to hone in part through what I publish here. 

If you like, stick around and enjoy the show.