Happy Friday, Geekly Gang! Kyra Kyle here with another writing brain dump. I didn’t do one last week because July has five Fridays. I had to skip the 17th or the 24th. I decided to skip the 17th because of familial obligations. Anyway. What have I been doing this past month with my writing practice? In short, I’ve been honing the novel based on Rustbucket Riots.

The novel still doesn’t have a name. I’m getting there. Rustbucket Riots is a working title; the events of the novel take place well after the Rustbucket Riots, so the name can’t possibly work. I’ve used the robot Shakespeare short stories to flesh out the world. The Shakesbot stories do take place during the Rustbucket Riots, by the way. Working on this project also gave me a little bit of distance. It’s not the same as a sequel; I don’t even know if I’ll seek publication for these short stories. But I was able to find the shape I wanted the novel to take. I’m going with multiple timelines.

In last month’s writing brain dump, I mentioned ten shapes a story can take. I’m linking that post here. The more I worked on the Rustbucket Riots novel, the more I felt the story needed a time jump, similar to the one found in Freida McFadden’s The Housemaid. I may need to reread The Housemaid. That novel has its issues, but I can’t deny McFadden deftly used the multiple timelines form. Sometimes, writing requires reading. So, I’ll attempt to read McFadden’s The Housemaid as a writer, taking note of how the two timelines build off of each other. The Rustbucket Riots novel sees a severe change between the protagonist and antagonist. I’m hoping the multiple timelines work to show the difference in these segments. We’ll see.

I don’t have much for this month’s writing brain dump. Last month’s writing brain dump was rather long. And I’m in the thick of rewriting. Fingers crossed that something useful comes out of this draft. Thank you for reading. Good luck with your writing, and wherever you are, I hope you’re having a great day.