Having played around in Scrivener for the past couple of weeks, and having worked out how the new bits of my story fit into my original synopsis, it’s time to set some goals and timelines so I can plan work out over the next few months.

There are two things to do:

1. Complete the full chapter breakdown

2. Write a 100,000-word novel

Now, I have a head start on both which forms a good foundation for the rest of the project, and as I said I’ve pretty much mapped out the changes to the plot. These were introduced because the original idea ran to an 80,000-word novel, but the story needed more weight. A couple of strands that were touched on only briefly in the original synopsis are now fully expanded sections of their own.

Weaving the new strands into the existing plot takes a fair amount of doing, so even though I have the beginning, middle and end all worked out, there is still some polishing to do to ensure it fits together seamlessly. So step one is to finish the revised chapter breakdown – let’s set a deadline of May 1st for that.

Step two is to write the actual book! Currently there are about three chapters done, which again is a good start, and with luck the new story content doesn’t affect them much. In terms of a deadline, I have to be realistic rather than optimistic and consider how many words I can get down in a week. Ideally an average of 1000 words per day would be great, which would give a round 100 days to the first draft. However, I’ve got a fair chunk of holiday time coming up in May and June, which means I’m going to be away from the keyboard, and rather than beat myself up over the fact that I’ve fallen behind I need to accept that 100 days isn’t going to work.

With this in mind, a deadline of September 30th seems better. This gives me the 100 days – more or less May, June, July, a bit of August – plus an extra month and a half to make up for time away and maybe even to allow for a second draft to be started.

So what am I waiting for? I’ve got six days to finish the chapter breakdown for Dark Heart. Away with me!

Two years and one month – almost to day, if my ancient notes are to be believed – since I first started scraping the synopsis together of my voodoo steampunk novel, I’ve discovered its title.

No doubt some writers will say that the title is the least of your worries, and indeed this may be the case for some. For me, the title is something that, preferably, I unearth early on. A good, satisfying title gives me peace of mind. During writing downtime, when I’m at the supermarket, when I’m on my morning walk around the park, when I’m waiting for the tea to brew, my brain can roll it around at its leisure. The brain is really a wonderful thing. As any writer of fiction knows all too well, the brain continues to work on the story well after the computer is put to sleep. Next time you’re hard at work, getting the words on the screen, a character will do something entirely unexpected, or a new facet of the world will reveal itself, or the plot will take a new twist. All of which may be entirely unintentional, surprising, and (hopefully) pleasing.

The title is the same kind of thing. When you discover the title – and I use the word ‘discover’ deliberately – it all clicks into place. The story now has a handle. Not that it really makes that much difference, but if I’m pleased with a title, I get a real comfort. Suddenly it all has more zing. My story is called ‘do-de-doo’. Great, on with chapter seven!

It’s not called ‘do-de-doo’ by the way. Bear with me here.

So in contrast to discovering the title of your work, there is possibly nothing worse that deciding on the title. And by that I mean sitting down and going ‘hey, my story is called “Zombie Polonaise of Death”‘ and typing that at the top of page one. Sometimes it works, usually it doesn’t. Of course there’s a whole host of writing games and challenges you can play by setting, or being given, an arbitrary title and trying to write to it, but that’s something else entirely. Actually, and I can’t be the only one who has a folder full of titles with no plots, and a folder full of plots with no titles. Perhaps some of them even match!

My novel suffered this problem from day one. It wasn’t so much that I decided the title, it was more I had written enough to get someone to read it, and it needed one. It’s clear now that the story wasn’t ready for a title, it hadn’t been uncovered in the narrative yet in some obscure form of literary archaeology. So I had to decide on a title, and I did, and for the last two years it’s been at the back of my mind that the title, well, sucks. Ok, it was temporary and bound to change, but it bugged me. It didn’t affect the writing, thankfully, and nor should it, but there was something not quite right. And no, I won’t tell you what the title was!

But now it has one, and its the right one, and it feels really good. So I look forward to telling you all about Dark Heart as I work on it, right here.