A Writer's Retrospective: April 2021
As new life flourishes around me, I find myself finally in the possession of viable creative seeds, but struggling to find good soil.
Photo by Jorge Caetano on Unsplash
As new life flourishes around me, I find myself preparing for some churn in my personal life. Consequently, I have been running mostly on autopilot, rather than appreciating what is good in my life. In some ways, my current rhythm makes sense. I started the month by finishing my first revision of novelette #3, Lunar Eclipse. The critiques I supplied to my writing group have remained substantive.
In addition, I have made appreciable progress in improving my body composition. I have discovered the pleasure of running—though I will not soon admit that to any of my offline acquaintances. I am making incremental progress in my fiction-writing efforts. Yet, I feel behind the curve in that and in my career. My blogging efforts has been non-existent. Even this very retrospective comes days later than it should have.
Last Month's Action Items
Amid these complaints, I must admit that I have piddled away dozens of hours this month on “relaxing.” That usually entails gaming, aimless web surfing, reading fanfiction, or in my worst moments, eating. My previous retrospectives have been mostly focused on my writing—and this one will be no different—but my recent choices warrant some additional introspection.
Revisit my goals weekly.
I forgot to put it on my calendar, so it didn’t happen. It’s on the calendar now. Still, my top priorities were clear enough: finish Lunar Eclipse, draft the rest of Amateur Synthesis, and outline my first novel. I needed no reminders for them.
Finish editing Lunar Eclipse; request critique.
My offline alpha reader, who sees my work before anyone else does, received my revised draft of Lunar Eclipse soon after the month started. According to him, this story was more cohesive and required fewer major edits than my previous efforts—a concrete indicator of progress. I will find out what my critique group thought of the first half within two weeks.
Finish drafting Amateur Synthesis; perform first-wave edits.
I made some progress, but I didn’t finish drafting Amateur Synthesis. The reasons for this:
I abandoned my daily habit of writing.
I found my outline template distasteful and refused to work until I had a better one.
Outline the novel.
I decided to spend the majority of my writing time outlining my novel. This turned out to be a good decision because:
1 book ultimately became 2, then 3 books. I now have a potential duology or trilogy on my hands.
I haven’t even fully outlined the first book because I’m still wrestling with the snowflake method.
The time spent outlining thus far has been extremely informative and moderately enjoyable.
Find out how to get my stolen article taken down.
A number of ostensibly reliable writers have said this isn’t worth pursuing. I’ll get around to eventually, just so I can write about it and know what to expect if I need to process to its full conclusion.
Draft 4 articles.
I have more article ideas, but I have yet to implement them. Complete fail.
Pitch an article to 3 publications.
Another scary prospect that I conveniently haven’t gotten around to. This is one of those things where dipping a toe into the pool seems relatively inferior to diving in. I don’t know what it’ll take to make the plunge.
Draft 1 short story unrelated to my current project.
I started a short story last month—didn’t finish it or look at it this month, of course. I might find this task more appealing if I simply commit a set amount of time each step of the process: 1 hour this week to coming up with ideas, two hours the next week to outlining the best three, and so on. I get paralyzed by large projects (especially those lacking the appeal my potential novel has).
Reading
I’m not sure if I’m reading the wrong books or my junk reading habit is making it harder for me to read real fiction. It’s probably not unlike curating a healthy diet; consuming junk food frequently increases one’s craving for it, rather than the reverse.
Writing
I would be remiss to discuss writing without giving thanks to my critique group. Thanks to them and our system, I have some consistent, additional external motivation to keep up with my writing when internal motivation won’t suffice. I also participate in the weekly check-in at r/FantasyWriters. I enjoy communing with other writers (in a more controlled fashion than on Discord, which consistently ends up on mute after mere minutes).
I spent most of this month attempting to outline my novel. Several weeks ago, I went through the exercise of writing a query letter to see if I could articulate the central conflict of the story. Still, I could not outline the story based on that work.
The Snowflake method
Every writer I have encountered knows of Randy Ingermanson’s Snowflake method. Few have tried it or found it viable. (It bears mentioning that of these online writers, I only know two to be published in any fashion.) Yet, a smattering of published authors regard the Snowflake method highly. Having started working with it, I can see why many writers disregard it.
The Snowflake method poses a significant challenge right off the bat: it demands a one-sentence summary of the story. Much like writing a pitch or a query letter or a blurb, there is an art to the one-sentence summary. I wanted to give up because the example given in the book, How to Write a Novel Using the Snowflake Method, seemed impossible to replicate.
Without going into excessive detail, I settled on this: a young man seeks a home while being hunted by the empire that trained him for war. Not exactly riveting and possibly off-center, but it’s good enough to start with. I can always come back and adjust it after a later step. Never mind that I don’t expect the story to match the outline exactly—any gardener will tell you that plants seldom grow in the desired direction.
Step two of the Snowflake method is where I got stuck. I needed to create a one-paragraph summary of my story, consisting of: the setting explanation, three disasters, and the ultimate resolution. This is where I got stuck. I knew of at least 4 events that I’d already planned well in advance of this exercise—one of which features a character I created for this story. The solution? Split the events across two books. The new question: does each “midpoint” disaster complement the sub-story it’s in?
Writing my novel from the middle
To answer the questions about my new duology, I had to read more reference material. This time, it was James Scott Bell’s Write Your Novel From the Middle. Therein, I was introduced to the concept of the Golden Triangle. It consists of the mirror moment, a moment of introspection at the midpoint of the book; the protagonist’s pre-story psychology; and the protagonist’s transformation. The mirror moment is central to Bell’s philosophy, but any point on this triangle can be used to derive the other two.
Ultimately, I discovered that my protagonist’s journey could not be completed in the two books I’d started planning in the Snowflake exercise. Now there are three. I can’t wait to see what the Snowflake method yields next.
Blogging
As stated when I first began blogging, the exercise was meant to supplement my fiction writing efforts, not supplant them. I think that halting them altogether might have impeded my fiction-writing efforts, rather than give me more time.
Marketing
Though I have put exactly the same amount of effort toward marketing as I have blogging, I am pleased to see that my Tumblr following has grown slightly. Even better, some of the connections I’ve made through Medium have resulted in new Twitter followers! This reinforces the value of networking and making substantial connections with other writers. Still, I’m not sure how to reach the audience that I hope eventually buys my book. A project for another day.
Achievement Summary
Read How to Write a Novel Using the Snowflake Method.
Read Write Your Novel From the Middle.
Updated my short story and novelette outline templates.
Edited and received critique on my third novelette, Lunar Eclipse.
Re-outlined my fourth novelette, Amateur Synthesis.
Started outlining my novel—now a trilogy.
Reflection
It is often said that work expands to fill the time allotted for its completion. This past month has been a perfect exhibition of that aphorism. I intentionally pared down my goals to account for the reduction in availability. However, I ended up accomplishing very little in comparison. I need to set more aggressive goals for myself if I am to accomplish anything noteworthy.
It wasn’t a calculated decision to stop writing daily, but when I stopped tracking my word count, I stopped caring. I had good reason to ditch the word count in March: I didn’t have a clear concept and wanted to practice developing a concept without extensive freewriting. That is no longer a concern for this story, so I should have committed to and written a minimum number of words each day. If 1,000 was too much to ask, then 250 would have been reasonable.
As for the outline problem…that was 15% procrastination and 85% legitimate inability to use the outline template I had available to me. Making another was not only a good way to clear the immediate ideation hurdle, but to invest in the long-term improvement of my storytelling.
Action Items
Rather than give myself a month to do everything, I should divide my work into weeks upfront, which will give me less time to procrastinate.
Week 1 Goals
Finish drafting Amateur Synthesis.
Outline the subsequent novelette (story #5).
Draft 1 article.
Generate 7 new story ideas—not related to current project.
Week 2 Goals
Edit Amateur Synthesis; submit for critique.
Draft the first 3500 words of story #5.
Outline the subsequent novelette (story #6).
Edit week 1’s drafted article and post.
Outline 3 of the 7 new story ideas.
Week 3 Goals
Draft the next 3500 words of story #5.
Outline the final novelette (story #7).
Draft 1 article.
Draft 1000 words of a newly-outlined story.
Week 4 Goals
Draft the first 3500 words of story #6.
Edit story #5; submit for critique.
Edit week 3’s drafted article and post.
Draft 1000 words of a newly-outlined story.
Final Word
I’ve created an aggressive, but ostensibly realistic set of goals for the month of May. I hope that decomposing them and shortening the deadlines will improve my productivity. I don’t want to slave over what is essentially a hobby, but I don’t want to languish, either. Writing provides consistent intellectual challenges sans the politics that plague my job.