A Writer’s Journal - 2021.02.02
The second entry in my new weekly column, “A Writer’s Journal.”
If you want last week’s entry, look here.
Photo by Green Chameleon on Unsplash
Welcome to the second entry in my weekly column, which details the latest events in my writing adventure. This week:
Did I find the perfect book to read? Why/why not?
Feedback on “Knightly Virtues” from my critique partner.
Playing the social media game.
Reading
Fiction
I’m not terribly excited about it, but I decided to finish Sojourn.
Original fantasy fiction frequently fails to capture my interest. I need to find the root cause(s). Beyond the trappings of the fantasy genre, there is little overlap between original fiction and my favorite fanfiction, which I used to read indiscriminately. I've even read and enjoyed fanfiction based on source material with which I’m not familiar. The answer may reside in specific tropes, or perhaps a particular author profile.
Nonfiction
I stumbled upon Chris Brecheen’s blog, Writing About Writing (WAW). The bio (and its two addenda) alone was worth a comment here. His writing is enjoyable and distinctly flavorful compared to my own. He also seems to have a passion for writing that I have yet to develop. Then again, I've only recently embraced it. It's somewhere between hobby and part-time job, now. I don't know how this is going to work when quarantine is over. Hell, I don't know how this is going to work when tennis season comes back around.
I'm having fun curating my Twitter author account, @MerickVaughn. I started following Julian Shapiro (@Julian), who has some concise gems about writing. (Example: A framework for good writing.)
This article by Kathy Widenhouse describes an elegant approach to starting a focused, SEO-ready blog from scratch. It even builds in a content writing strategy.
Fiction
Despite a hump or two, the writing is going well, overall. It helps to write in sprints, rather than allocating hours to the work—it never gets done as quickly as it should that way.
My latest story, tentatively titled Lunar Eclipse, is in progress. Based on the freewriting I’ve done so far, it seems like this will be a much shorter story than the previous one, Knightly Virtues.
Screenshot provided by the author.
Knightly Virtues turned out okay, but needs a ton of work. In particular, there are a lot of elements I brought in from my freewriting session that distorted the continuity of the story. This is probably where a more detailed edit for story structure would have helped. My story hints at a chiastic structure—which was completely unintentional! This structure is probably so ingrained into our collective consciousness (see: Harry Potter, The Beauty and the Beast) that it emerges unbidden as often as it is consciously invoked.
I have a dilemma. Is it unnatural to have a fantasy story with limited emphasis on fighting (when the plot often hinges on said fighting)? I seem to avoid writing protracted fight scenes. I generally skip them altogether, or just the middle of them when they’re critical to the story. Unfortunately, like many fantasy stories, the events are somewhat predicated upon fighting—in fact, I have at most two stories whose conclusions are not predicated upon fighting. I hope to come up with a conclusive answer to this, but it might be the sort of thing best handled in a workshop or another type of group critique setting.
Blogging
I really don't know who or what to follow on my Twitter writing account. (Open to suggestions.) In writing my blog, I originally aimed for a fusion of personal development and fiction writing; they make awkward playmates, I've found. On the plus side, David Majister followed me back AND retweeted one of my posts, so I'm pretty psyched about that.
My upcoming article, "What Writers Can Learn From the Popularity of Fanfiction," got accepted for publication in The Writing Cooperative on the 28th, but it's not going to be published until February 12th! That might be a good thing because it made me realize something: I have a lot of direction (read: inspiration) when it comes to publications, but little or none on my very own blog. Thus far, I've cross-posted Medium articles and posted samples of my short stories. There needs to be a clearer writing strategy if the blog is going to grow.
Meta
I’ve created a sample writing calendar.
Screenshot provided by the author.
The whole calendar is a lie because I am not remotely productive before 2PM. My mornings are best spent exercising (when I’m most likely to actually do it), thus conserving my lucid moments. Having to commute again will blow up the entire thing.
I’ll take a more realistic stab at this another day. In the meantime, tell me what your calendar looks like!
Next Week*
Putting the “free” back in “freewriting.”
The trials of drafting blog articles while writing fiction (featuring voice transcription).
Coming up with an easily-understood rubric for assessing one’s writing skills. (Can it be done? If not, I’ll settle for an arcane one.)
How do I convert views to mailing list subscriptions?
*I can’t guarantee these topics will all make it into next week’s column. I can always be persuaded, however.