A Writer’s Journal - 2021.01.26
The first entry in my new weekly column, “A Writer’s Journal.”
For next week’s entry, go here.
Photo by Green Chameleon on Unsplash
Building upon my first “writing checkpoint” article, I decided to write a weekly column detailing the latest events in my writing adventure. It's an exercise in reflection and accountability. I hope to derive from it the same benefits that my general journaling habit has afforded me.
Reading
As is often discussed, reading is part of the work of writing. It fertilizes the ground from which ideas sprout. Reading familiarizes writers with the conventions of their target genre and the number of references from which to get inspiration. I also get transient boosts in motivation from reading blog posts about writing. Seeing fiction written well and reading accounts of other authors overcoming difficulties in life and writing inspires me to do the same.
This month, I’ve triedTerry Goodkind’s Chainfire, which I started reading after dropping Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn: The Final Empire. I like Chainfire well enough, but it doesn’t grip me the way my favorite books have. Last year, I got into R.A. Salvatore’s Legend of Drizzt series, specifically the the Dark Elf Trilogy. I enjoyed the first and second books, but fell off early in the third book. I may revisit that book in light of the resistance I’ve encountered with other authors.
I will attempt to deconstruct my difficulty with original fiction in a future article. It may simply be a matter of perseverance, or a change in tastes. I proposed the goal of reading 1 book per month this year, so it is important to identify the impediments as soon as possible.
I read an article this week, written by Lynda Coker, that distills the exact sentiment I want my blog to capture in a single document. One of the article’s salient points is that writing serves as a mirror to the author’s mind. As someone who writes to challenge negative beliefs about myself, this article resonated with me. In fact, it helped motivate me to start this column.
Another article, written by David Majister, discusses an approach to writing that, fully assimilated, should ease the perceived burden of writing for those plagued by self-doubt. The idea is to treat writing as a mechanical process, like flipping burgers. I find this much easier to implement for blogging than fiction, but there is noticeable crossover between the two.
Fiction
I recently published a snippet of my first story on my blog. This is noteworthy because I had developed a slight complex about it. Many writers worry about their ideas being stolen. I don’t think mine are unique or compelling enough to warrant theft. In fact, I worry that some of it is too derivative. Others worry about making their stories ineligible for publication. I have publishing aspirations, so the latter concern is very real to me. The solution: just post a snippet, like I did.
I got my first and second drafts of story #2, Knightly Virtues, written. I think this is the shortest turnaround time I've ever had on a story. I largely owe my success to the writing tracker I created in Google Sheets. As I discussed in my article about emotional metrics, what gets measured gets managed.
Screenshot provided by the author.
To this effect, I set my daily word count goal to 1,000 words. Each day I provided my total word count. The tracker calculates my target word count, based upon the previous day’s word count and the number of words remaining to meet my goal. At the end of the day, I press the green button to add this value to the sheet shown below.
Screenshot provided by the author.
This sheet calculates my average word count for the days that I’ve written and my total word count. I differentiate between the word count for my freewriting sessions and the word count of the final piece. I did not have this tracker while writing “Savage Politics,” so there is no data for it. For “Knightly Virtues,” I figured it was time to move on to assembling my first draft when I became unable to write more than a page for 2 consecutive days.
Blogging
Blogging was great in the earlier half of this month. I got a few articles published at Medium in The Writing Cooperative and The Innovation. I have slowed down significantly since then to focus on my fiction. I think having a regular column will balance my efforts.
As I read more, I am slowly shedding my scarcity mindset when comes to blogging ideas. I wrestled with this earlier in my blogging venture, but have tabled most of those ideas since then. I haven’t deleted anything, since I might be able to put a unique spin on those articles later.
I want to promote my blog better, but I’m struggling with it because I didn’t do enough research early on to develop a system. I’m currently trying to engage others by responding to posts on Medium and sharing responses to what I’ve read on Twitter. More reading is required to expand my social media approach. For the system problem, I’m building a writing calendar. I need time dedicated to each of the following activities:
fiction reading
fiction research
fiction writing
blog reading & responding
blog writing
marketing research
I have implemented the fiction-related routines, sans research. The blogging is currently done “ad-hoc,” which will not suffice for long-term growth.
Next Week
Did I find the right book, yet? Why/why not?
Feedback on “Knightly Virtues” from my critique partner.
Learning more about social media engagement.