The New Year is a good time to think about organization. For writers, organization is essential and it's easy to get sidetracked, waylaid, distracted, and otherwise off task, when a plot is plodding instead of prancing along.
That's where I am right now. STUCK. Oh sure, I've been thinking about the wip a lot:
Before I fall asleep
While I'm doing laundry
Making dinner
Driving anywhere
As I'm ripping out inches from my pullover as I find another goof as I knit.
Essentially, my plot is dragging and it's dragging me along with it.
Solution
Going to shorten the timeline. I printed out a calendar and blocked off ten days. That's going to be the extent of the timeline for the plot. Before, it was this amorphous (?) thing with no borders. No sides. No trim edges. Now, at least, I've got some basic outline for the action.
Some authors have all their action take place in one day - Dan Brown's Lost Symbol occurs over the course of one night, for example. Right now, though, I'm feeling better about the shortened timeline.
Next job is to think like the Mafia.
What's going to happen to Frankie? That's today's job.
