Notion for Noveling
Hello. I’m Alex Knepper, your friendly neighborhood writer. Here, I like to talk about the writing process, share the things I’m consuming that keep me inspired, and hopefully you get inspired too.
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So, I have a massive epic fantasy story rattling around in my head— do I know how to finish it?
Nope.
After spending the Summer throwing myself up against a wall with the novel. I realized I needed to take a step back and re-evaluate.
I had just listened to an interview with Matthew McConaughey and he said:
“Sometimes it’s not about persistence. Sometimes we’re just banging our head on the damn door and what we need to do is pivot and back up and go: Oh shit, there’s the key. I’m just going to unlock the damn thing.”
I worked hard all Summer on my novel— I hit a block. I tried to keep going, I tried to throw myself up against the problems I was facing and when I heard this interview I thought:
Holy shit. Is there a key just laying around?
I thought that perhaps the reason why it was so difficult to write my novel is because I had never done it before. I mean writing is hard. (*cue positive affirmations*: writing is fun. Writing is fun. Writing is fun.)
So maybe I should try my luck with writing smaller, more achievable projects. Maybe I should write a short story. Or you know what would be better? A collection of short stories. Oh boy, now this is exciting. Let’s do it in 30 days— hell let’s do a NaNoWriMo-esque challenge writing short stories and by the end of the month, I’ll have a collection of short stories.
Nothing could go wrong, right?
A Smaller Project
So I decided to work on smaller projects for the time being. But of course, I needed a framework to help me get started! *sweats profusely in prefectionist*
So after reading half a dozen books on short stories and how to craft them I decided to jump in and write a short collection of short stories tentatively called “Squall’s End”.
There will be six, I believe. Because I do nothing in halves. And it is about a haunted bookshop and its mysterious connection to the curse on the town of Squall’s End.
Harley Woods thought she was out running her troubles when she agreed to take ownership of the historic bookshop, but when characters from books start knocking on her door to help them defeat their enemies, Harley finds herself in danger in her own reality. There’s a defunct lighthouse. Some vampires. Ancient Curses that need breaking. But also some tea and cozy armchairs backset to a sleepy New England shore town.
I think each short story in the collection will represent one of the books that “comes to life” with the last story being a big climactic conclusion.
To write this story, however, I had to create a template:
Notion for Outlining
Notion is a beautiful tool, and I wouldn’t be able to stay sane without it. I wanted to create something where I could actually write my novel— plan it, outline, keep metadata (Like Character motivations, setting notes & themes), Writing Process information (Like how long I think the book will be, my daily writing goal, deadlines for when I’d like the book to be finished, a place to reflect on my progress), and Word count so that I wouldn’t have to create yet another separate document to record how much I was actually writing.
And guys— I did it. I made the tool that can do all of those things:
Organize your novel
Track your word count
Brainstorm ideas
Create a Mood Board
Organize a scene list
Create templates for Characters, Outlining, & Structure
AND have it all in one spot
You can check it out here:
xx
Alex
P.S.— McConaughey’s book Greenlights is really good and speaks to the value of being a life long journaler.