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In this issue:
Dismantling those Pesky Blocks
Another Thank you for Supporting Subscribers
Writing Prompt
WWT Tool Kit Craft Card
Dismantling those Pesky Blocks
So I’ve been doing another round of paying attention to what I’m thinking when I all of a sudden step away from the project I’m working on when I actually want to keep writing.
I write those thoughts down and then work through them (like this) when I’ve got some down time. Usually right before bed. Lately I’ve been drafting, walking, classing, revising, jumping, another-classing, and by the time all that’s done it’s past my bedtime. So the working-through-them part has been elusive.
But.
I did work through one of those pesky blocking thoughts the other day, and it seems to be making a difference.
If you’ll notice in that schedule up there, I’ve been revising—revising, something I generally don’t particularly enjoy doing because I’m not particularly efficient at it—in the late afternoon. We’re talking between 1:30 and 4:00, when I feed the pug. In previous months, back when I was working on bolstering my energy levels, this time of day was more commonly known as my nap time.
And now I’m using that time to revise. My, how a person can change.
So what was the dismantled blocking thought?
I’ve written down several over the past week or so. They’re probably embarrassing, but we’re all writers here, so how about I just share them anyway.
Why did I show up every day at 8am and stay at my desk until 4:30 for someone else’s dreams, business, and dollar, but I don’t show up for me and mine? [Haven’t worked through this one yet, but I think that might be because the dumbness of this choice is evident on the face of this statement.]
Why am I choosing to internet instead of revise? What does interneting actually do for me? [Cause, really, even intending to hope-scroll eventually turns into a doom-scroll.]
I fear that I can’t get the results I want on my own without a publisher, that only a publisher can make an author a household name—so why bother. [Haven’t worked through this one on the page, but I think about it now and then and I hear things and I read things, and I’m starting to think that, actually, I have a better chance of becoming the kind of author I want to be, doing the kind of authory stuff I want to do—and nothing I don’t want to do—by captaining my own ship. By covering my own book? It would be really cool to have a book metaphor for that sentiment. By publishing my own books is a little on the nose. Anyway…]
For some reason, even though I’ve deliberately been trying to modify my process to increase efficiency (not to mention fun), I fear that I might be writing/revising too fast and I get up and wander off after each scene because I don’t want to plow on to the next scene right after finishing the one before it. Why is that?
And this last one was the one I worked through. Pages and pages that looked somewhat like this. But I’ll spare you the pages. Here’s the abridged version.
Somewhere along the way, I internalized that fast writing = bad story and that slow writing = good/successful/profitable story. But is this true?
Sure, The Help took five years. Harry Potter took seven. The Name of the Wind took fifteen.
But Twilight took three months. The first book in the second-bestselling vampire series, Vampire Academy, took six weeks. And Rocky took three days.
Meanwhile there are plenty of books that took decades and didn’t sell and plenty that were written in a week and didn’t sell. (I’d list them, but… they didn’t sell.)
There’s no correlation. None. Speed has nothing to do with quality or critical success or profitability. Not a thing.
A correlation with fun, on the other hand? There might be a correlation between speed and fun. And for you, Meg, I think it’s a direct correlation. I know you’re not getting up (early) from writing feeling great. If you were, you wouldn’t be complaining. You get up feeling angsty. (Which, I know, is why you’re doing this work. Good job, Meg.)
But what if my brain needs the break?
Your critical brain maybe, because it’s feeling out of control, what with you having fun and writing at a fast clip and it not knowing what coming next at all. But your creative brain? The brain actually doing the writing? Huh-uh. It does not need a break. That’s why you’re feeling the anxiety: Your excitement to write is being hampered by beliefs that you should be writing slow, not fast; that you should be taking a break even though you’d prefer to continue.
So what are you afraid will happen if you just stay in the chair and keep writing?
My butt will hurt. My desk isn’t set up for ergonomics. I’ll write a bunch of books and still not improve my income status.
Ah-hah! I think we’ve found the block.
So, let’s follow this thought to its logical consequence.
Let’s say you write slow and carefully, write one book a year. You won’t know if it’ll be good/successful/profitable, because speed doesn’t guarantee that, as we’ve already established. But still, you’ve now got one more book out.
One new chance at discoverability. Anyone who finds the book and likes it might sign up for your newsletter and next year, when you finish another book, those subscribers will hear about it.
But Google says only 5% of readers convert to newsletter subscribers. So everyone else who read your book and liked it will probably forget all about you and your book by the time the next one comes out.
You know it’s true, Meg. It’s happened to you as a reader. You read and loved the debut novel Alice I Have Been in 2009. You forgot all about author Melanie Benjamin until 2016, seven years later, when you randomly picked up at the library The Swans of Fifth Avenue—her fourth book (her second being published two years after the first, in 2011)—liked it, flipped to the Also-Bys and saw that Melanie Benjamin had also written—O_o—Alice I Have Been.
😕
OR…
You relax and stay in the chair and keeping writing—because you like it and it’s fun and all the blocks are being dismantled (good work, Meg), so there’s less and less contradiction of energies.
You’ve been averaging about 550 words an hour lately. That’s actually on the slow side for pros, but that’s okay. The more blocks you clear, the faster you’ll get. And you’re clearing them, so you’ll get there.
At even 550 words an hour, and if you’re putting in a full day . . . which we’ll call 6 hours, because let’s be real: even though you were at work for 8.5 hours, you surfed the internet a lot. So we’ll call it 6 hours. Six times 550 is 3300.
Lets say your books are 80k. Or 75k. That’s how long your last one was, and it’ll make the numbers more impressive, so let’s go with that. And you did it clean, in one draft. (Good job, Meg!)
Seventy-five thousand words divided by 3300 words a day is a 75,000-word book in twenty-three days. You want weekends? Fine, take ‘em. That’s still twelve books in one year.
Twelve chances at discoverability. Even if you only write half that much: six chances at discoverability. And each new book will be close enough to the last one published that you can let readers know in the back matter that you’ve got another one coming soon. Even if only 5% of readers sign up for your newsletters, 100% of your readers who finish your book will know about your next book.
Now, which scenario gives you the best chance of improving your income status?
—
Well, this kind of math may not work for you, but it seems to have worked on me. I’m up at 5. I’m making the time to continue drafting my next project even though I’m still wanting to prioritize finishing my revision project. I’m working at a time when I used to be napping.
And I’m feeling excited. There’s a map. And I can see it.
Another Thank you for Supporting Subscribers
I’ve got some loglines and back cover copy to write, and I figured I could write it in real time and post it here in case it might be interesting or even helpful to people. These logline/blurb posts (among others) are in addition to the weekly newsletters. There’s no set schedule. It’s just whenever I have a project to write sales stuff for.
Given that they’re for my real-life projects, I feel better not completely broadcasting them . . . and I like the idea of having another way to say thank you to supporting subscribers (❤️) . . . so the logline/blurb posts are behind a pay wall.
You can find the first two here:
I don’t want to bombard you with newsletters more than once a week, so when I do a new sales copy post, I’ll make a note of it in the Wednesday newsletter.
Thank you again for reading (and supporting!) Writes With Tools.
Writing Prompt
Character: CHILD: ORPHAN
Light Attribute: Independence based on learning to go it alone. Conquering fear of surviving.
Shadow Attributes: Feelings of abandonment that stifle maturation. Seeking inappropriate surrogate families.Setting: A grotto.
Object: A spiral, wind chimes, a flower petal.
Emotion: LONGING. Yearning, wistful, homesick.
WWT Tool Kit Craft Card
As mentioned before, I’m making a deck of craft cards to quickly remind myself of techniques while also having a convenient place to keep track of elements like character, conflict, and theme specific to each story. This week’s card is a reminder that small victories are more meaningful than they seem.
Thank you for reading!
I hope this helped you, and I hope your writing goes well this week.
Keep at it,
Megan
WritesWithTools
site: writeswithtools.com
ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/writeswithtools
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