writing without a plot

 I'm working on the twelfth (!!) Aughts Boys book right now (first four are published, if you're interested), and this bitch has no plot.

To be fair, I've been having a lot of fun. The beauty of the Aughts Boys books is that they are a series of interconnected standalones. They skip around so much in time that I really should scrawl out a giant timeline so I don't have to keep skipping back into my drafts of the ones that are published to make sure I don't contradict stuff. One thing that I do really, really enjoy, though, is taking these characters that were in books one through eleven and aging them down and trying to figure out how they got to be the people they are in "earlier" books. 

Book twelve of the Aughts Boys series is called Loser and it follows Benji Holmes (not to be confused with Benjamin Stephens, star of book eleven because I'm some kind of dumb motherfucker) in his eighth grade. His first year in Monticello, so it's a Monticello book. The Aughts Boys books are really split between three sections: the North Dakota kids who go through unspeakable horrors but it's okay because Elliot Roth, Bona Fide Horror Movie Hero is around, the Monticello kids, who have a reason to like hockey, and the Daisy kids, who are the Main Main Characters, just because the first book was about one. If I was fun or interesting or good at planning out a series, I'd make sure that they ebbed in a consistent rotation, Daisy-ND-Monticello, but I haven't. I mean, I could still do this. I'd just have to grab the next ND book (Nick's book; remember him from Camp New Woods?). The problem with this is that Benji's book is the second Monticello book, so I'd really have to get cracking on more of those. 

But the problem with this Benji book is that there is no plot. I don't know what's happening. All I know is that I need to set up a big "these kids really get kicked around" thing so badly that Brian (Benji's friend) kills himself at the beginning of Right or Wrong. I've been having a ton of fun developing these characters that were very minor in Right or Wrong. Maybe that's all we need? Maybe all we need with these Aughts Boys books is to like, peek in at these kids' terrible lives and then leave them alone for several years until they show up in a later book? 

Then again, my first drafts always start slow. Like, they build and eventually I think up a plot. I think one is forming. I think I'm being overdramatic. 

But it is, as always, way too fucking fun.