Progress Report No. 3

It's been a while since my last progress report. My progress slowed down a lot this past month, mainly due to all the traveling for interviews in October. Things have settled down a bit, so I've been trying to get back into the writing. After bumbling around, I've decided that I am definitely not a pantser, but an ultra-plotter who needs to outline everything before I feel comfortable about writing. So I've gone back to the drawing board and literally mapped out scene by scene on post-it notes. I thought I'd challenge myself with NaNoWriMo for the first time in my life this year, but it's already the fifth day and I'm still outlining. We'll see what happens. In the meantime, I just finished reading Phantom Variations -- a literary criticism book on all the incarnations and retellings of the Phantom of the Opera in literature, film, and theater. It gave me a great deal of insight on the themes I'm trying to layer throughout the story.

Rory's storyline is completely mapped scene-by-scene. Sometimes when I write vignettes or short stories, there's a moment when all the pieces seem to click together into something beautifully coherent. I got the same feeling when I finished Rory's part this weekend, so I think it's crystal for the time being. Charlotte's storyline is still being patched up, given that I've encountered a bunch of holes I have yet to figure out how to cover. I'm hoping that will be finished up by the end of this week, so I have no more excuses to actually start churning out the darned thing.

In other news about my life -- something very K-drama-esque occurred during my trip to New York two weekends ago, and I was originally planning to write a funny post about it, but I've lost interest in the idea. I did see Phantom on Broadway in the orchestra section that weekend, which was AWESOME. TOP-mas was yesterday (heh heh), and I am psyched about his new solo album coming out this month. Other dramatic things are still happening around me, but I really just want to filter all of it out, live an ascetic life in my little apartment, and focus on my pet project. In regards to my previous rant, the issue is still not resolved, but at this point I've adopted a "kill-them-with-kindness" mentality, and if they're still throwing a hissy fit, I'm honestly all out of fucks to give.

Toodleloo.