Hello Everyone!

Welcome to my new blog series…Monthly Journal

I decided to do this for several reasons.

1) To let you know what I’m doing every month, and how…plotting my book series is going. Plotting is not easy for me. I feel like a square peg being shoved into a round hole. It’s not quite fitting yet and I’m definitely not comfortable with it, but I’m working on it. I’m a plotser…not a plotter, or a pantser, and definitely not a planner…not yet anyway. I usually take a few notes, then start writing, and somehow those notes seem to get lost in the piles and piles of notes I have. So, I’m working on getting organized. I write like I’m driving down a dark, and twisted road, in the rain. I can only see what my headlights show me. The further I go, the more I see. However, when I got to the middle of my first book…I stopped writing. I realized that I didn’t like not knowing where I was going. That’s when I knew my husband was right. Crap!!! He bugged me about outlining all the time, and of course, me being an ENFP, Scorpio girl…I didn’t listen.

I don’t like outlining

FYI…I just bought my very first planner today.

2) I’m hoping that this will make me more accountable.

3) I’m hoping that this might help someone else, who might be going through the same thing.

4) I’m hoping that this will help me get more organized, and help me to keep track of what I’m doing. I even bought a notebook, so I could write everything down each month ( well, almost everything. I forget to write in it sometimes )…baby steps.

5) And last but not least…to give me something to blog about.

Okay, here we go…This is what I did this month

I organized my secret boards on Pinterest. Made new secret boards. Deleted what I didn’t need and moved stuff that I wanted to keep, to a different board.

I worked on some character photo pages, especially the new characters that are showing up for future books. I like to know and see what my characters look like. I need to see their faces.

I worked on my series bible. Here’s a sneak peek inside my series bible.

Every character has a photo page. Sorry, I can’t show you his face…it’s for my eyes only. I have a page with information on where each character lives, their birthday, hair and eye color, height and information about them from this awesome book I have. The Power of Birthdays, Stars, & Numbers The complete Personology Reference Guide by Saffi Crawford & Geraldine Sullivan. I’m so glad I bought this book…years ago.

I love this book

Each character has a page of Zodiac Traits from my Series…Character Development using Zodiac Traits. I also added three small photos of them at the top, but you can’t see that either…sorry!  https://melindamariealexander.com/character-development-using-zodiac-traits/

Each character has a character archetypes page. I covered up this characters name. I can’t give away all my secrets. Each character also has a character quirks page.

I have a section for maps. I’m using a real town, but changed the name in my book series. Each character has a real address. I know this town, I grew up not far from here. So, I can walk down the streets with my characters. I know where their houses are, where the school is, and the library. I also sketched the main streets, where all the shops, stores, bakery, book store and places to eat are. This section is fictitious.

I have a section for character development

There’s a section for plotting info, like Beat Sheets and info on Villains

And I have a worksheet section. Got these from Pinterest. I’ll let you know when I add more sections or more information to my series bible.

And last but not least…I’ve been reading. Here are all the books I want to read. Right now, I’m reading Writing the Fiction Series. I really want to read, The Juggling Author. I haven’t finished Save the Cat. I probably need to start that book over. I need to read, Creating Character Arcs, just got that one and the workbook. I also want to read Plot & Structure for the 4th time. It’s my favorite writing book, my go-to-book when I feel lost. Oh, and I really want to read Writing About Villains. I need all the help I can get in that area.

Okay, that’s about it for January.

Hope you enjoyed my first monthly journal and I really hope you come back every month.

Thanks so much for stopping by, and spending some time with me.

Feel free to leave a comment

See you next month