Discipline and Laziness

I admit it, at heart I'm an extremely lazy person. The kind of person who spends more time figuring out new and brilliant ways to luxuriate in doing nothing productive than it would take to finish a task. Unfortunately, this type of behavior isn't conducive to writing books. It can lead to whole tangents of distraction as my brain tries to escape the herculean task of putting words on paper. This is why I've developed a process designed to prevent or delay my worst trait from derailing my progress.

The first step in my process, and the one that I've finally managed to bring to a close today after two weeks of work, is rereading the previous book and taking notes on all the characters and world devices I created. You would think that as the writer I would remember every detail I put down, but that is far from reality. Many times I've come across passages or nuggets of information that I've totally forgotten about. Sometimes that forgotten passage lays the seeds for future plot threads. 

I do this by creating note cards of character sketches or details on the world and putting them up on my magnetic wall. Right now my wall is papered over with the notes that now need to be sorted through, and these are only for Pathfinder's Way. I can't even imagine what this wall is going to look like once I get a few books in the series.

Oh man, I just gave myself the chills thinking about it.