A Writer’s Journal - 2021.02.09
This week:
How a logline can reveal weaknesses in your fiction
Top speed article drafting
Why writers need to have marketing skills
If you want last week’s entry, look here.
Photo by Green Chameleon on Unsplash
Reading
R.A. Salvatore's Sojourn is getting interesting. Perhaps I've just gotten more patient. I'll still have to either spend a day on TVTropes.org or comb through a best-sellers list to queue my subsequent reads. As with any habit, having contingency plans readily available makes pivoting easier. I would love to get recommendations for contemporary fantasy fiction if anyone has them. As far as my preferences go, I love the deeply introspective prose that appears in Speaker for the Dead and other books in the Ender's Game universe.
Writing
Though you are all in varying stages of your writing, it may be productive to think about loglines and query letters for your work. As described here, well-written loglines expose the flaws of the work they describe. Trying to write a logline or a query letter may help you identity weaknesses in your own work. Performing the exercise revealed my lack of clarity regarding the main conflict of the novel (in which the initial stakes are compounded—but not replaced—by the mission later assumed by the main character.)
Blogging
As discussed last week, I ended up using voice transcription to write an article this week. The salient aspect of this methodology is enforced focus--it's just me and the recorder. I usually pace in the hallway while I speak. Ultimately, I find it a superior method for getting words onto a page. I can tinker with them later, as is typically necessary. I was inspired to try this method again by David Majister. Here, he provided an interesting perspective based on the prolific Medium writer, Tim Denning. Tim famously writes his articles in a single 12-hour period at top speed. One of the secrets to his speed: he just lets it fly without a filter. As someone who proofreads his own text messages (albeit poorly), I could use such freedom from inhibition.
Marketing
This article by Emilina Lomas breaks down the skills she employs to generate six figures in professional writing income. Notably, half the work items in her list are marketing tasks. My favorite part of the article is the emphasis on SEO optimization. It's not a sexy topic for writers--especially fiction writers--but it is a necessary talent for freelancers and self-publishing types. My web host, Squarespace provides a SEO checklist for new websites. I'm interested in finding out how in-depth it actually is.
Meta
They say it takes 21 days or more to create a habit. What I don't see much info on is how long it takes to break a habit. It's one thing to create a new habit and quite another to replace old programming. The question is important to me because, despite wholeheartedly embracing the writing journey, I sometimes still find myself procrastinating. I now tend to procrastinate in writing articles rather than in writing fiction.
In last week's newsletter, I discussed my attempt to make a writing calendar. But I didn't provide a time slot for writing articles. It may be the case that I need to develop a daily writing goal for my articles. If I write articles on Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday, then I should be able to generate two new posts each week—in addition to this newsletter—easily.