Months ago, I posted this article about writing every day. I have kept with it pretty consistently (missing only a day or two), and while that regular practice hasn’t resulted in many posts here, it has resulted in an 86,000 word manuscript for a novel. The current title is The Seer and the Silver Key (unless I change something between now and whenever I’m actually ready to publish), and it’s looking like it’s going to be the first in a series. Probably a trilogy. Exciting!
So in short, this daily writing thing is going swimmingly! At this time, I’m letting the novel rest for a week or two (I’ve had my fill of that story for now) and I want to work on other things. Things like this blog, for instance. Or maybe some story completely unrelated to the book I just poured my heart and soul into for the last several months. I have had some ideas come out of my regular freewrites, so I might be able to work with one of those for a while. I’d also like to attempt a couple of completely insane things, such as posting here with alarming regularity.
In addition to the lessons about creative effort I shared in my initial post about daily writing, I’ve learned some things about myself and how my regular practices affect my work.
Take care what you report…
In particular, I tend to fall into routines, often to the point where become a slave to habit. I serve the daily writing quota I set for myself, likely because that’s what I report on social media. My daily freewriting was not meant to be a goal unto itself. Rather, it was meant to produce ideas and content to stitch into more comprehensive written works.
Unfortunately, I didn’t do much to make myself accountable for the rough draft itself. For that reason, my efforts in that area became lackadaisical. I might have finished a month or two sooner if I had centered my daily writing updates on that, but here we are. My daily practices didn’t serve the ultimate outcome I was shooting for, and I ended up serving the daily writing updates instead.
How long does it take to clear your throat?
Another thing I’ve found that I usually need about 800 words of stream-of-consciousness writing to get some real ideas going. On occasion, I don’t even get anything worthwhile out of the practice, and instead use it to clear my head, which is still helpful. Ultimately, the freewrites are a sort of dumping ground where I can do whatever I want, and that’s one of the things that got me writing at all this year. So it’s fine, really.
After I started working on the first complete draft of The Seer and the Silver Key, I shortened my daily writing to 500 words in an effort to give myself more breathing room for the novel. However, it’s pretty easy for me to dilly-dally my way through that word count, and it was often useless in practice as a result. Shooting for 800 words tends to force me to create something with more substance, so I think that’s going to be the standard I set for myself moving forward. Your mileage may vary, of course. Find what works for you.
Keep going forward!
As I’ve worked on the manuscript, I’ve learned something about drafting a novel. It’s easy to get lost in unimportant details, and I find I have a tendency to try mapping every step of the journey, including inconsequential stuff like moving across a room. Basically, this is filler that only serves to give context to whatever action happens next, but if that subsequent action is also inconsequential, then there’s no point. Ultimately, it’s boring, both for me and (I should think) for readers.
If you have action, it must serve some purpose. Reveal something or increase tension. I had to force myself to skip ahead a little or swap perspectives to keep things moving, and I think I’ll be somewhat more adept at it in future works. In the meantime, we’ll see how this edit goes for my current manuscript.
I want it as weird as possible.
I’ve also found (unsurprisingly) that I like incorporating weird cerebral stuff into my stories, but I’m not sure I really illustrate those things very well. As I head into editing this manuscript, I’m curious to see how often my grand reveals end up being little more than confusing.
“And then he did this amazing reality-bending stunt where he’s standing in two places at once!”
“Uh… he wut now?”
For me, I like to think that fantasy (especially fantasy with mythic scale vibes) involves taking the abstract and making it concrete. The villains in fantasy aren’t just bad guys, they are the immortal evil that plagues the consciences of all human beings. Heroes are incorruptible paragons of goodness. Conflicts in the fantasy world reflect those of the human psyche. That sort of thing. So really, I should take this abstract stuff in my story and find ways to concretize it.
So what now?
Now it’s time for the edit, and while I work on that, I want to do something ambitious. During the month of November, I intend to post here every weekday Monday through Friday, excepting holidays. Do not expect high quality content. Some of this stuff is likely to be gibbering nonsense (which isn’t really new here).
In the meantime, I wish you all the best in your own endeavors! May they be fruitful, and may that fruit be delicious. Or at the very least, may it be passable fodder for your more grand constructions in the future.
The Astral Wanderer is brought to you by the countless tales that are not yet old enough to be told, but not young enough to be considered new. Comment and share, and consider throwing a buck or two into my Patreon to support more of this content. All proceeds go toward attempting to puzzle out how an individual can stand in two places at once. Really.