Um, okay, this is a bit different for me. Maybe for you it’s perfectly fine, but I’m a bit surprised at myself.

I am currently writing the first draft (or trying to anyway while LIFE keeps smacking me in the face) of the second book in the ’Cosm Series. There are several new characters, but I’m having just as much fun as when I wrote Life in the ’Cosm. The only thing is that I sort of wrote the first book in a straight line. At least I did for about 23 chapters, and then I came up with the ending. But I sort of continued in a straightish line after that.

With Book, Too (not the title, I promise), I wrote three chapters and then the last chapter. Then I wrote some more and went back to beef up the last chapter. Then I wrote yet more and then scenes kept popping into my head, so I jotted them down. Then I wrote the second-to-last chapter. I’m not sure if I’m writing the same way that Lady and the Tramp ate spaghetti, from both ends, hoping to meet in the middle.

And with these extra scenes randomly spewing from my brain, I wonder if this book will be coughed out like hairballs. Oh well, I do like puzzles. Even sopping wet hairball ones.

Perhaps this is why some authors use tools like Scrivener. I hear it’s great for organising scenes and characters and such. However, I am stubbornly sticking with my Google Docs and a table of contents that helps me remember where I’ve put stuff. I’m barely organised as a creative writer and I sort of love that. After forever as a tech writer, it’s nice to be so wheeeeeeeee about writing. Yes, that was the appropriate amount of e’s for that word.

With all my editing assignments in the next few months, I’m not sure when I’ll finish this first draft, but I’ll steal moments the way I did with ’Cosm. I’m in no rush, and I loathe the thought of pushing something out for the sake of an imaginary deadline. I want to create and not fret. When you write as silly content as I do, being stressed is not a good place. Being chill leads to the silly.

So, off I return to the spaghetti eating!

Gosh, I love pasta.

I should make pasta for lunch.

And maybe watch Lady and the Tramp.

/cg

Cait Gordon is an Irish-Canadian warrior princess and author of Life in the ’Cosm, a space opera about a little green guy who’s crushing on the female half of his two-headed colleague (Renaissance). Cait’s also the editor of the Spoonie Authors Network, a blog that solely features writers who manage disabilities and/or chronic illness. She might make pasta for lunch.