The Conqueror, Chapter 12; Writing Out of Order

Total word count: 16,113
Words written today: 1,030
Chapter(s): 12 (written out of order)

That's my count so far today, but I'm going to try to write more later, I just have other things to work on before I move on to chapter 14. Writing out of order can work well, like it did in this situation, but I'm not so keen on it these days. I used to always write out of order, skipping around to write whatever scene interested me that day. At the end of it all, I had these loosely associated points like a scatter plot and I had a hard time trying to find the connections between them and turn it all into a story. This is probably one of the biggest reasons why I never completely finished any novels before Zenith (which I wrote chronologically). With The Conqueror there's more leeway, because the chapters are chronologic, but told from many different perspectives. Chapters 12 and 13 begin a few minutes apart and have some overlap, so writing them in reverse order wasn't such a big deal. Still, when I finished chapter 12 I realized I needed to change something in chapter 13 so that things would make sense, because I had changed the plan as I wrote, something that always happens in my writing. So I try not to do this so often, though there are some days when I really cannot write the chapter I need to and I will jump ahead slightly just to get some words out for the day. I took a chance with it this time, banking on the fact that I could find a solution for chapter 12 later rather than sooner.

And for the record I have absolutely no idea what's happening in chapter 14 and not much else for the rest of the book, either. I really need to sit down and actually plan some of these things out. I haven't needed to do much of that before, so this is pretty rough. I am still mapless in the unknown forest.