They tell us, “If you get knocked down six times, get up seven times.” Well, this stupid thing is what it looks like to do that.
I’m not going to claim to know what I’m doing. It’s probably quite clear I don’t. So, I want to take a moment to go over how things are going, where things are, what’s gone wrong, and what I’m trying to do to fix it, because things are still a mess.
You think that the enemy is is that other person. Or that group or culture or instance that is out there fighting against the very thing you care about. Or the idea that is the antithesis to that certain thing you believe in and carry with you. Or maybe the enemy isn’t something so black and white. Maybe it’s the absence of the thing you’re striving for, the gaping hole where joy needs to be brought, or the pitch darkness that guards over the ignorance. The place where, when finished, the very thing you’re living for fits in and fills, as if it had always been there.
Maybe you think you can win, and maybe you think you can’t win. Those are powerful forces arrayed against you, you say, and only the luckiest of you are fighting wars that can even be won. After all, what can you do against the onslaught of real terror, real violence, real hate, on any scale beyond a grumpy turtle with a gummy overbite? Any real danger, hate, violence, maybe you can forestall it, escape it this time, but if it faces you head on, sooner or later it’ll getcha. The greatest soldiers still fall in battle, the most intelligent still get stumped, and those of us of the greatest virtue can still be dragged through the muck by any schmo off the street given enough reason to and a little luck. Compared to the greats, what are you?
But, sure, let’s go with it for a moment. You are facing real challenges. You don’t have to justify it this time. Because you’re thinking, whether or not it is the greatest challenge to the world, it is your challenge, and you are taking on an enemy out there. Win or lose, you’ll fight against them.
You fucking numbnuts.
Let me repeat that.
There is only one real enemy, and it is the same for you as everyone else.
You.
You, the weak part of you.
Your exhaustion, your ignorance, your self-devotion, your lack of courage to face actual danger. Your weak side is your enemy, and whatever else you face, whatever else in the world rises against you is nothing compared to this. You will never move mountains, let alone molehills, without defeating that.
That is your enemy. Fight it. Every day, every hour, every moment, with everything you have. You must be good, not contemptible. You must be virtuous, not lazy. You must push, instead of drift. You must open yourself up to the dangers of the rest of reality, of being wrong, of failing, of being insufficient, of death, of life, or — even worse — oblivion, to crush the weak you before it uses those dangers to shut down anything of value you actually have to give.
That you in the mirror is your foe. It will grant you no quarter, it follows no international agreements, and it will do anything but give up. Fight it with tooth and nail, pen and sword, concentrated fire and a cold shoulder. Whatever it tells you, even when it is telling the truth, it is a fucking liar. Because it’s telling the truth to kill you dead, because it’s found a way to even make the good of the world hurt you.
At least you have one ally. You. The good of you is there too. Use it, and beat your own weaknesses. When you’re tired, keep going. When you’re sad, keep going. When you’re struggling, keep going. When you’re winning, keep going. When there is nowhere else to go, keep going. When the path is leading you to a cliff, and the weak you is screaming for you to stop, keep going the right way. You won’t understand that at first. You need to really know your own side before that last one will be clear. But once you know, it’ll be clear. And the real mountains and valleys of difficulty will truly be in view. It will hurt. But once you get there, it will be so much clearer.
You are not one side of a coin, and the weak you the other. you are simply the coin, and it is one side. You will never escape it. You will never achieve final victory. You will never put it in the ground hard enough to keep it from coming back. It will always come back. But that doesn’t mean you must lose. You can win the battles, and you can even win the ones that matter. Never let that thought go.
That will lead your true enemy to ruin.
I’ve been thinking about what to do to speed up my writing. Every writer does, I’m sure. My own plans, as ephemeral and unstated as they are, involve a lot of speed, but more than speed, we cannot waste time. As per our previous criteria, of course.
If we are going to do some design work on the story before drafting (more soon), it is best to start with the ending.
That doesn’t necessarily mean write the ending first or know exactly how it ends. Instead, we should know what the end is and, most of the time, why it ends that way. What will be the final climax, what will be the general resolution, and when will the story stop? We need to know that last one most of all. Unless we begin at the creation of the universe and end at the last gasps of entropy, there is always more before the start and more after the end. There may be more before and after even then.
What we want to know is where the goal post is. Our job is now to reach that spot. In the first story I’m preparing to publishing serialized, I know what the final battle is. I know who is fighting, who will win, and why. How, I don’t know yet, and considering the contenders, it will be one insane pile of ridiculousness. But that’s the end of the story. That’s the final climax before things come to an end. I would hope it’s at least entertaining.
I know what the stopping point is, and despite that distance (god help me it is very, very far off), it feels real. I can imagine stories about what happens afterwards, and other things that could be said, but the narrative as a whole has a nice, clean, final moment there.
Knowing the the ending means I know what the arc of the people involved in that ending will be. After all, I have to bring the two combatants to that point, and if I have any idea what they are like, I know what kind of events and ideas will have to strike them to get them ready for the showdow.
And now, knowing that arc tells me where I need to begin it: I need a point where all the interesting parts of the arc come after, but as much of the boring stuff is before. With that, I now have the whole story. To end here, with this arc, starting at this point. The middle may be mushy and muddled, but that’s going to leave room to grow.
One could also work the other direction, and after starting with the ending, first decide the beginning. We want to reach that climax: where is the most impactful and emotional moment where we could start from? What starting point gives us the most to work with to drive home what we want to say to get to that ending? With that, we simple draw in a path between the points that seems interesting.
I’ve said before we’re not here to be literary, but a good story involves themes, foreshadowing, and grand ideas implied and explicitly shown through metaphor and symbolism. Hey look, foreshadowing involves knowing where the ending is, and then putting in moments earlier on that reference that. We can do that now. Themes and ideas and symbolism? If we know where to end, we know the climax. That will almost certainly push forward some ideas. Why this person wins the final showdown over the other really does capture a lot of what I want to say. So I will say those things a lot. We almost look literary.
Of course if we wrote the whole story first, we would be in the same boat. We could include all those things knowing full well where we’re going. But serials don’t have that luxury. We need to get the first section right before even thinking about writing the fifth, let alone the last. Besides, why not save ourselves more revision work? Build the ideas in earlier.
I know this works for me, and I understand how that isn’t exactly going to work for everyone. But there is another, small scale value to this. To use a fighting example again, I never want to sit down to write a conflict anymore without knowing who wins. It’s a failsafe: if I know the winner but they can’t pull it out, that’s going to set off warning flags immediately. Did I overlook something? Is the reason they’re going to win not powerful enough? Or does what I think happen in the story conflict with my more subconscious understanding of the story? Sometimes I’m wrong. But deciding first, and then watching my own reactions turns my unconscious from bias to tool.
More on that, too, in a bit.
This is the eighth time, because I’m getting frustrated at this very opening, and it got silly. Along with six other failures besides.
It’s probably been almost two months since I wrote consistently. I wish I had some epiphany to share, or something that would make the entire idea more palatable. There’s not. All there is is the same as every time before.
I’m not here to hate myself, or to complain. I have to actually remind myself about that, which is pathetic in it’s own way.
At the same time, that is part of the lesson my life is trying to teach me. This is hard. We will fail. Get back up, get back to work. I’ve had the misfortune at being good at a lot of things I hate doing, and struggling with the things I love. I become enamored with whatever I find difficult and choose that path because the easy one is boring. While I loved making stories, I didn’t get interested in writing until I got my teeth kicked in four English papers in a row. I am more desperate to learn Japanese because people were doubtful it would be worth doing.
Perhaps that is why I want to learn to be an independent writer. Getting published normally isn’t easy, but it’s simpler. Write the greatest possible thing you can, send it to dozens of people, and keep doing that over and over until it gets published. Certainly not easy, I know. Here, though, everything is on me. (Or maybe I don’t want to talk to other people.)
So, what to do? Even if I’m tired, even if I’m lost, there is nothing else to do but move forward. At the moment, a few things come to mind.
First of all! Write and post consistently. Every week, at least, on the same day, at a quality level I have to push to achieve. No more time off. No more evasions. I need to get back in and get going.
I am here, and I want this to be something more than a hobby. That means I need to convert this writing skill into something which can earn me money, and I need to position myself so a business based around it can thrive and grow. Showing up every day is central.
Second, fiction. I am not a non-fiction writer. I am a fiction writer, though it would be hard to tell from this place. It is time to correct that.
My plan calls for at least two: a weekly, shorter, highly serialized story, and a monthly short-story series. It may not be clear what the difference is, but I’ll try to explain quickly. The weekly series does not need to settle the narrative arc that it covers in a single issue. The monthly one will have complete stories, while characters and situations carry from issue to issue. A better explanation is forthcoming.
I almost know which story to use for each one. Expect the weekly to start up first, though it’s more drawn out than that. Also expect a thoroough description of this to buy myself time to build up enough fiction to publish.
Third, knowledge and skills. I don’t have a ton of research for the stories I want to write at this point, byt there is a lot to learn and implement for this blog. Better writing skills, search engines, emails, publishing, editing, guest posting, standards, legal requirements, and god knows what else. I have plenty I want to talk about, but I need to know more before I have something worthwile to say.
…Sometimes, it feels like there is too much to do. But the other side is, if there is too much to do, then I better start now, or nothing will ever get done. When there is too much, pick what has to get done and finish it. Maybe the momentum will solve things, or maybe it will all fall apart. But inaction is only making the problem worse.
[Editor’s Note: The short of it is, we’re not done yet. No real explanations below, just philosophizing, navel gazing, and vague plans. But we’re not done yet.]
All right, we’re writing, we’re reading, and we know why we are here. It’s a good start. So lets jump into something else.
Track your numbers.
You want to write faster? You want to publish more? You want higher quality? You want better control over your ideas? Sure, that’s great. Can it be measured? Because if we can measure it, we can see it change over time. And if we can see it change over time, we can experiment.
That’s the whole purpose of this exercise. Numbers don’t tell the whole story, but as long as they remain reasonable and honest, they can be useful. As always, this is not the silver bullet, this is the next tool in our toolbox to make things better. As for things like “writing was pleasant today,” I have serious doubts if it’s worthwhile for testing or experimenting. It’s too fuzzy.
(Quick caveat: I think personal observations can be good, too, but more for stress/mood management. If you are quite the #artiste#, critically important, but not what we’re looking at today.)
Remember our goals: quality, consistency, and sustainability. The numbers we track have to have meaning, and they need to be recorded over and over and over. That sustainability is the most important, as missing them will devalue the entire project.
So start small. We’ll examine a whole bunch today, but just choose one, especially at the beginning. Get used to it, get the systems for it in place, and then add on more. I am no savant; I have a whole stack of data I want to start collecting, but just can’t handle right now. Fewer, reliable numbers always outweigh a stack of unreliable ones.
The most important and the easiest is #word count#. When we sit down to write, at the end, we should record how many words we have written. Accuracy counts, but depending on circumstances, it can vary slightly and often does from any particular “true” count, especially if we use different systems to count at different times. But if we keep consistent, and we don’t fret about a +- 20 word spread, it’s accurate enough.
We only compare counts to ourselves.
Let me repeat that.
We only compare counts to ourselves.
Some of the greatest writers of all time are famous for tiny word counts. Hemingway, as one of my English teachers reminded us #with pride#, wrote 500 words a day on average. There are numerous writers, both past and present, of all levels of literariness, who hit between 5000-10,000 a day.
It doesn’t matter.
I write faster than most people, but I’ve got a high 70s wpm typing speed. And I ramble. I end up with too much, mostly garbage, which makes editing hell. Hemingway did five hundred good words a day. I don’t agree with that idea, but it clearly worked for him, so I can’t really say anything.
The word count to does a few things: we know how many days we actually sit down to write. We can see the zero days, and counter them. If there is a day where the count is particularly high or low, we can look for causes. And, if we are training to write faster, graphing the averages can show us if the training is actually working.
Next, I’ve been tracking the #starting and ending editing word count# going in and coming out of editing. I want to cut a minimum of 10%, if not 25% or more, whenever I sit to edit. Knowing where I started and where I ended keeps me aware of that.
That’s me, however, and I have years of knowing how I write to look back on and see how my drafts always turn out. I try to cut back, but in some cases we need to add in to thin spots. The first few times, record it, but don’t think about it. Focus on what makes better writing, and then, see if that has a pattern. If we’re doing multiple edits, another good strategy I’ve learned recently is to do a primary edit by cutting as much as possible, and then backfill with more detail as needed.
I’ve started #dating# whenever I sit down to do work on a draft, edit, or prepare it for posting. It’s quick, it helps me keep track of the numbers above, and there’s editing styles where knowing when we wrote it is useful. That one time I’ll need to know when I worked on a piece? I have that information now. I do multiple edits, each dated with start/end counts, as well as dating it when it’s posted.
One more quick one is #tracking what I’m listening to while writing#. Music and background sounds seem to affect my writing. I think we all have that sense, and I want to start building a data set for it. If I don’t listen to music, I list what I hear around me, even if it’s silence or people talking, to keep in habit.
And the last one, which I have been failing at — including during the draft and first edit (but not the second! [or the final, yay!]) — is to track #time spent writing#. If we know how long each stage takes, we can better schedule time. It also gives a powerful tool with our word counts: words per hour (WPH).
WPH standardizes our word counts, across days and across different writing session lengths. Some days, we only have ten minutes to write; seeing a count of 120 words surrounded by 1000 counts is frustrating, even knowing we had less time to do it in. If it took an hour to do 1000 words? 720 instead of 1000 is much less bad. And if the 1000 took two hours? 720 v 500. That’s worth investigating.
WPH can reveal lots: days we get distracted, or can’t really write fast, or passion suddenly knocking out a couple thousand words at once, or pressure pushing us past our normal limits… WPH and word count and time, all together, gives a much more nuanced view of how we write. It doesn’t tell us why, but it tells us something happened. WPH is also very sensitive; if there is a change, it will tend to show up. That can also make it hard to find the cause of such changes, so deliberate experiments and tests are more important to us when looking for changes here.
Most of all, having a large data set, for any of these, will help give us insight. That’s why we should start tracking , even if we aren’t working on “serious” projects yet. It takes time for the database to get built; start now.
I already know I’m not going to be happy with how this post turns out. Part of me will always think it could have been better with more time, more work, more editing, more, well, anything.
I was supposed to have a post ready for today, but now, two hours before my deadline, I’m writing this instead. To be fair, a whole slew of things have happened, and while I was able to mostly maintain writing, I never got to editing anything to put here for Tuesdays. I’ve maintained the most important aspect — continuing to write — but I left all the other important parts aside.
When I try to figure out how I ended here: writing a post and throwing it up on the blog just to say I made my deadline –it feels the root cause is lack of planning. Yes, I had to deal with a whole slew of paperwork for my personal life, as well as some overtime at my regular job. But I came home and had to ask myself, every night, what should I do tonight? Mostly, think of something interesting to write about, and if I can muster the energy, do some editing or something.
That’s not sustainable. Not only that, it’s not going to produce anything good, either.
Of course, a plan only gets us as far as we’ve planned. I can sit and make whole lists of ideas and posts to create, but the moment things veer off course, well, the plan needs scrapping then, doesn’t it? That’s the danger of over-planning: either wasteful with all the changes when the ground shifts, or running into a wall because we decided not to adapt.
This probably isn’t an important moment, but I know I want to think it is. I want to tell myself, oh, this is the time when I changed from this kind of person to that kind, and always the new person is better.
Enthusiasm and grit got me this far, but doggedness and professionalism will carry me through the harder days. Or, sometimes, just enthusiasm carried me here, and sheer grit will solve it. Or, other times, grit got me here, but now, lacking the joy and exuberance of earlier times, I need to remind myself why I want to do this whole project and use that to drive me onward.
It all feels like so much thinking, and so little substance. Maybe I need a plan, but I only have to look back three months ago to the endless plans which got shitcanned before the blog ever started. I feel the lack of energy, and the lack of passion, and the lack of will to fight through the troubles, but I have been tired, I have been struggling to keep on top of things, and I have forgotten some of the reasons why I want to do this. Then I get a good nights sleep, or read a book I enjoy, or finish a little draft despite barely feeling like moving at all, and suddenly it all comes back, for one fleeting moment.
I have no intention of quitting. More than anything, I want to keep my promise of last week, and have something real to share during the week after next. I still have faith I can pull it off, somehow.
So, what am I writing this for? To feel sorry for myself in public? That seems childish and dumb. To try and show my vulnerability and lack of confidence, that even the people who can stand up and call out to do the right thing still face such demons every day? I haven’t really said or done anything noteworthy to deserve sharing that.
No, I think I want it to be something else: to raise the question of how to best balance this whole thing. I really do believe my crazy projects are doable and sustainable, but physically accomplishing them is not simple or easy. I’m already struggling with the basics, after all. It feels dishonest to hide that, though, so bringing the question to light? Will that help?
I’m not going to edit this post. I’ll clean up some spelling mistakes, take a read through, and probably cut the egregious waste, but I’m going to leave it as it is. Maybe to reach back for that middle idea, that I want to show more of what it’s really like doing this work. Maybe to just get this whole piece over with, so I can rest and relax tonight instead of doing the work I’m supposed to do. Perhaps to be edgy, different, from other people — look at me, I don’t bother putting up quality content! Or maybe, just to plant a flag in the road.
A flag, someday, that I can look back to, and say if I’ve learned anything or not. I don’t think I expect to. But, if I do, here’s a nice marker to look back on.
There’s more work to be done, and I probably need to form a real plan for what to write about going forward. Actual work, actual knowledge, actual skill to obtain and share here. Maybe, though, this can serve as a beacon: the worst, most idiotic thing I’ve put up on the blog. It wouldn’t be so bad to get that out of the way early, if nothing else.
This is not a dumb question. So let’s answer it: Why would we write a serial?
Yes, a movie or a book or a music album could be any length, but the two to three hour movie, two hundred to four hundred page book, or half-hour to hour length album are conventions for a reason. People expect that, and while different sizes can be good, the audience needs to adapt more to them. A three hour album isn’t something I would ever just put on to listen to, even if I really like it. I’d have to be in the mood, be ready, and have three freaking hours to spare. Can we break convention? Of course. With a good reason.
Yes we need to make our story hard to put down. Yes we need there to be drama and conflicts ripping about page after page. Yes we need to have hooks to pull readers from one piece to the next. And there are plenty of massive tomes that sell fantastically well, and are better because they are massive. But readers also want respite, and reader’s won’t just jump in to a thousand page book from someone they don’t know. Assuming we’re still starting out here, that is important.
More important than that, though:
If we make a thousand page book, great, but we also need to have as much polish and care on every single page as a two hundred page book. We don’t get to faff about just because we have more words. Try and get that done in a reasonable time frame.
If the story has grown so large we cannot make reasonable deadlines, we can try breaking it apart. This is part of the reason serialization used to be popular: it funded writers creating long novels by letting them sell it piecemeal in newspapers over a length of time. Of course, this also led to longer novels, as they got paid more if the story was longer. (Unrelated note: Fuck you, Charles Dickens.)
Yes, we are writers, and we have taken on this large work. Writers are responsible for doing it well and completing all the necessary tasks. We can still make it more bearable. Breaking it into pieces, piecemeal publishing it, and building from one to the next is one way to do that. I mean, that’s a series, too, in a way. That certainly isn’t something to look down on.
Probably the best theory I’ve ever been told for writers to learn how to write well is to write short stories, publish them, and then transition to longer works. It’s a great way to learn, fail, improve. Stephen King, almost every classic SF writer you can name, and a great number of other writing luminaries from the last hundred years until recently almost all started this way.
Two problems: It was a good idea in the past because we could actually earn a meager living from publishing short stories. Really talented short story writers could feed a whole family on it. Stephen King’s first sale was enough to pay a couple bills with money left over to go out for a nice dinner with his wife, according to his book On Writing.
Things have changed. More writers, fewer readers, less money available. Many places, at least a few years ago when I still bothered picking up a book on places to publish, will often just offer free copies of the magazine if our work is published. Not nothing, but not great. I’ve stopped caring, though I wouldn’t say it’s a bad idea to do it this way.
But, and we’ll go into detail on this, a properly done story is a series of smaller stories, made up of tiny stories. Serializing, in one sense, can be seen as a string of short stories tied together. If we’re starting out, and working from amateur to pro, the differences between serial and short story are more minor than major. And besides, we’re getting ourselves in the game. How we actually publish this as a serial, well … we’ll get there. Suffice it to say, short stories can be written exactly like serials, even if they don’t meet the definition we set out earlier.
Oh, and the second problem: Some people hate short stories. I do. I can’t fucking stand them. I like reading them: they’re quite interesting and fun. But my brain does not do short. Why would I think of six characters, set them up in some situation, create this whole conflict, and just write eight to ten pages about it? I would rather write fifty. Wait, now I can’t ever use them again, too? No.
There are more reasons, and we’ll cover them as we come across them. Don’t be upset, either, if none of these apply. Perhaps this is the wrong format. I have plenty of stories that I don’t think should be serials, and have no intention of writing them in pieces.
Consider these ideas carefully. Is it going to get us where we want to go? Independent authors are not an outright goldmine, they are a way, with different rocks in the path, rather than more or fewer these days.
It’s one thing to write. It’s another thing to write consistently.
There will always be temptations. Today you are tired. Perhaps the ideas never showed up. There’s been a power outage, and you can’t use your computer to type.
You’re going to look at them and say, they’re valid reasons, and so I really just can’t write today. Writing when tired means you won’t be writing at peak skill. Not having ideas means racking your brain at every sentence, which is brutal. And without notes, let alone writing on paper by candlelight, it’ll be a mistake riddled stinker that will take twice as long, which also has to be retyped later. All fully valid, honest, understandable reasons.
And it doesn’t matter, sit down and write anyway.
Sometimes you are tired. Sometimes you are not tired. Being tired doesn’t change the fact that you need to sit in the chair and write to the best of your ability.
When there’s a blank page in front of you, you fill it with words. It’s hard when you don’t have ideas, but you sit and do it anyway. You’re a writer, and you know what that means. Besides, if you knew you needed to have ideas ready beforehand, why haven’t you sat down and collected a whole pile of ideas so you always have something to work on?
As for the power outage, who cares? Writing is cerebral, and you are literally ninety five percent of the tools. Surely you have something you can scribble out.
If you’re going to be a writer, don’t skip it. Would you call out of your current “real” job for this? The bossman doesn’t care that you have a hangover from a crazy party Sunday; take some aspirin and get to work. For that job and for your real one. If you’ve got the flu, then yeah, maybe you can skip that day — then again, stuck in bed all day is a perfect time to type, or at least read, which means you can edit or research.
Maybe you’re too busy. Let’s be fair, it is possible. Maybe your friend is also starting some new business, but it’s crunch time. Three days until it opens, and you’ve offered to help, twenty-four seven, getting things ready. You are, in fact, too busy to write, for a good reason, too. Fine.
Unless you find a few minutes to check your phone while waiting for the microwave to finish making lunch. Japan has a whole genre novels specifically written on a cell phone. You can find the minutes here and there to get something down. Keep up the flow.
You can’t do great work? That’s why you edit. Nobody’s first drafts are good. But every writer who ever did anything at all still had that first draft. What makes you special?
So, we have a core idea for what a serial is supposed to be, but we need to establish some ground rules for ourselves.
This space is for getting better at writing using a specific high-level format: a serialized piece of fiction (or non-fiction, you all are welcome too), as opposed to a novel, a short story, or a non-serialized series. But what does it mean to get better? It’s vague. Each one of us could have a different opinion on this; we need something we can use to judge our progress.
I have three points, for now, that I use.
We are writing and publishing at a relatively faster pace. Nothing in that says low quality writing. Now, there’s a difference between quality writing and metaphysical literature, so don’t confuse the two. Tarzan was published extremely rapidly for its day, and other than horror, Stephen King is most known for his massive output of books. We may disagree on their narrative and linguistic impact, but both of those had “good” writing. Besides, this isn’t a lit class. It’s a shop class.
Spelling mistakes, poor plots, bad characters, and all around shoddy writing are not acceptable. We can aim for quality on the level of Souseki, Rushdie, Austin, or Wolfe, just as we can aim for quality the likes of Christie, Poe, King, or Takahashi (Shin or Rumiko), just as we can aim for the quality of harlequin novels, pulp fiction, or that perennial bugbear, Charles Dickens.
We simply must maintain a level of quality for our audience. There is room above that for technique and literariness. However, going lower than that, having poorly designed or poorly written stories, is unacceptable. Any speed we gain from publishing poor writing is worse than wasteful.
As we rambled on in the definition post, the central focus is a speedy and regular publishing schedule. Work starts, is developed, and then gets published, often and consistently.
If we find a technique that makes the writing “legit super good,” but either takes forever or is wildly inconsistent, it must be discarded. We are making an implicit promise to our readers: this will be here often, on time, for a long time. Things will happen, sure, and please understand we’re moving along a little fast, so we may slip up; but that’s the exception, not the rule.
Mostly this means speed and reliability. Any useful technique must do both, or at least improve one without harming the other. Knocking out 8000 words in a day, occasionally, isn’t good enough. Getting six words down every day without fail isn’t worth it either. Both are vital.
It still must be quality. Effective, while being quick and consistent.
If this kills me, well, what will I do next week?
I’ve spent a lot of time trying to get things organized, ready, put in place, and that left me with nothing to show for it. No, get going, and get good. I have a plan I am working towards right now. A publishing schedule which sounds partially insane. I want that as my baseline, with side projects and other things on top of it. It shouldn’t kill me. But I can’t risk that, either.
Any technique or skill which gives consistent, fantastic results by destroying our health is worth knowing.
It cannot be used regularly, nor can it be our standard operating procedure.
Where the answer is: fuck, I got to write a 20k word draft in a day? Those days, pull that trigger. Pull out all the stops and let loose, and do everything to do quality, fast work. Do not slow down, do not hold back, and just hammer that thing out.
If that’s every weekend, we will burn out and die before getting close to anything worthwhile. It’s still work, it’s still a job, it’s still the long haul. Some of it will feel like it’s killing us, but actually, we just need to adapt. Get used to it as training. But sometimes it is killing us. If in ten years, I can’t still be doing this, then it doesn’t work.
It still needs to be fast, and it still needs to be good. But it also needs to be a weight we can bear.
I feel like this needs to be pointed out, even though it’s not exactly related to this post. I’m not here for fun. I’m not here to while away my time during commercial breaks. I’m not sitting at this desk because I have nothing else worth doing, and it papers over the ennui.
Sure, I might fail. No, that’s unrealistic: I will most likely fail and die aware of that. This whole project is probably a great show of effort to accomplish nothing. And I accept that; that’s not why I’m here.
I’m here because I want to be, and it is my reward to deal with all this. Writing this is my privilege, my vocation, and, if everything works out, the way I continue to eat.
Readers, I do not expect all of you to follow this. I have no problem with people who are not so serious, who want to be hobby writers, or who just enjoy reading and learning about things. In fact, if you aren’t interested in the blog, but like the stories I tell, fantastic. Thank you.
Some of these things will be more than you think are necessary. Some of them may appear to be overkill. As long as it meets the first three points, however, I don’t think there’s such a thing as overkill. Maybe it’s not required, but better is still better.
But remember, I wake up and think, “Hell yeah, this is what I get to do.” If I get a little overzealous or lose my perspective sometimes, forgive me. If it’s a hobby for you, take what you feel like and leave the rest behind. If it’s a job, treat it like one.
If it’s your dream, or your goal, then we will get to work. I know I’m still a dumb newbie, and you should know that too, but we’re in this together then. It’ll be a ride.
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