I got lost in the spanking wilderness while writing the sequel to Weekend Plans. Not that it’s a terribly bad place to get lost, but if you’re writing a choose-your-own-adventure story, it can be difficult to find your way out.

As I previously mentioned, I use a spreadsheet to keep track of all the pages and decisions when I write one of these. However, when I wrote Weekend Plans the scope was much smaller, and I was able to keep everything straight in my head. This time, not so much.

I freely admit that I reuse sections when writing books like these. Sometimes things that happen in the mornings happen in the afternoons, and sometimes decisions are made that affect those “repeated” scenes. At this point, I’ve reached the “let’s go to dinner” part of the book, and I have (so far) five different paths for dinner — some top, some bottom, some switch. And I realized that I got completely lost as to what is happening when and how.

So now I’m going to have to play the book — go through every page, every decision, make notes, and figure out exactly what is happening and when so that I know which “let’s go to dinner” is appropriate for each path. It’s going to be extremely time-consuming.

But I guess those are the pitfalls you face when you write something complicated.

If I’m not back in a few days, send help.

Oh, and by the way, the outline is up to 550 lines, 423 of them already filled up. I need at least 15 pages for each “big Sunday morning scene”, so that’s another 75 (or more). Plus I’m saving one for the ending. I’m really worried that this is going to be an unwieldy doorstop by the time I finish it. I’m not even sure where I could start cutting, because everywhere you turn there’s spanking, and isn’t that the whole point of the book?