Time to get honest. And bitchy.
I did a free write recently to warm up for a good writing session, and I ended up complaining about my perceived inability to plot for almost a thousand words. It started as a stream-of-consciousness brain dump, but as you’ll see, by the end of it I realized this is exactly the kind of thing I should be putting here.
It’s the low side of the writing process, the second-guessing everything about yourself and your writing because you feel like you’re locked in a room just shouting into darkness. There’s no paid beta readers (aside from family, hi dad), there’s no editor telling you your middle sags too much, no agent telling you your pitch is garbage or has been done a million times. You just exist in this space between thinking your writing is shit and overconfidence.
And, as I say at the end, I feel like knowing other writers have these worries would make me feel better about my own insecurities. So, to be someone I needed, here’s a thousand words of self-doubt and complaining.
Enjoy.
Time to warm up with a freewrite. I have a couple different things to pick from that I can work on- I haven’t given Kaja nearly enough love lately, but I’m intimidated by it. I’m worried it’s going to just be a cycle of the same thing over and over. I need some sort of middle lifting-off point, some big plot that happens while the killings and such are there in the background.
I’m having lots of fun with Malthea lately, probably all the Dragonsteel stuff- I’m stuck in fantasy right now. It is fun to build the world and then feel like I’ve already got rules and background to follow. I’m a little worried that Verrin in Cursed Sword is too much of a crybaby, but I really wanted to show how deeply draura feel, going against gender norms and all that. This is why I wish I could have someone read it and just tell me if they think he’s too whiny- it’s hard to step back and see it like that. (Note from the future: yes, I know I can give it to my dad to read, but I’d like to have more of this one fleshed out before letting it out of the cage.)
That’s the problem I’m having with Father Cruz. I didn’t touch it for a few months and now that I’ve gone back and read it over, it feels so juvenile. I don’t know if I’m just being too judgmental but it really reads like a YA romance. Maybe it’s the dialogue, I don’t know. I’m thinking maybe I’m just bad at writing romance. Or at least that attempt was bad. Because I feel like I’ve got something really good with Romantasy. Maybe Father Cruz was really just my queer romance warmup, and with Romantasy I’ve finally figured out how to make these vibes work.
I feel like I really need more plot with Cursed Sword- I love my characters, specifically Verrin and his Circle, I just need to get them from point B to point D. Ugh. I also feel pressure to deliver on scares for that one- it is supposed to be a horror fantasy. But what’s really sad is I’m starting to feel like I can only write good horror in short form. Otherwise I feel like scares just get repetitive. I don’t know. I know I want the Umul invasion to start and I want them to destroy the Blue Spire Palace, then have Verrin and his Circle be gifted the four powers of Manipulation by the Old Ones just in time to save Malthea.
I don’t know, I’ve always felt really insecure about plot and lengths. I got lucky with The Silverwing where the plot finally came to me after long periods of writing way too much boring shit, but evidently that was one-off because Father Cruz isn’t even 50,000 words and I’m basically at the end. I know it’s getting more common for publishers to take short horror (Eric LaRocca, The King in Yellow, etc) but I don’t know. Maybe I should spend more time in the middle, specifically having Kellan and Ezra spend platonic friend time together, but I worry that would get boring fast.
I wish plot wasn’t such a weak point for me. I feel like I’m pretty good at making characters that tug on emotions and feel real, but coming up with at least 60,000 words of plot sounds almost impossible. I know The Silverwing grew itself like a mushroom in a basement, but I can’t count on the plots just coming to me like that one did. And, look, I understand that a lot of people use tools to plot. But the thing is, those are only good if you have the pieces already and just don’t know how to put them together. For a lot of my stuff, I only have the first few pieces. Sometimes the last piece.
I’m jealous of the people who can plot and plot and only have trouble creating characters or dialogue. Because the problem with fantasy is that it’s very reliant on plot. Good characters are important, but you can’t have a riveting fantasy story without a large-scale, exciting plot, unless you’re doing cozy fantasy, which I’m not. I feel like when I write fantasy it’s a weird mix of King-influenced horror-style narrative with worldbuilding and characters that are great but have nowhere to go.
And yes, before you start recommending me Saves The Cat and all those other tools, I’m familiar. Again, the problem with those is that you need to have at least the broad strokes of your plot to fill in those blanks. A great example is the notes section on my phone with all my notes for Project Name Clown.
It’s literally All Vibes No Plot. Which is actually a trend that I enjoy reading, but I’m not literary enough to do it myself.
Then I have stuff like Space Cowboy, an actually pretty well-plotted out idea that has a climax and satisfying end with actual high stakes, but as I’m writing it I’m just horribly aware that it’s not going to reach full-novel word count. (Note from the future- here’s my actual outline for Space Cowboy. Also, don’t make fun of my outlining style- it’s the way my brain dumps most effectively.)
It’s got a somewhat developed plot with a clear beginning, climax and conclusion. So how am I already on section two and I’m only 9,000 words into the thing?
Something I try to tell myself is “don’t worry about wordcount as you write, just get the story down and address that later”. But if I don’t even have enough story to get down, how am I supposed to ever write anything that has a chance to be published?
I know this sounds like bitching and moaning and despairing, but I still really have fun writing and I have hope despite all these worries. Whenever I get discouraged and try to imagine stopping, it just feels wrong. Feels like this will happen for me, I just have to keep going. That’s what everyone says about success in any form of entertainment. It took Chappell Roan ten years to get big. Pretty sure it took at least five years for Jenna Fischer to land anything substantial. I’m not even considering giving up, I’m not an impatient child who thinks success happens randomly overnight, and I’m realistic enough to know that achieving any of this will take years. I know I will get better at plotting the more I do it, and I’m probably just being pessimistic- The Silverwing came to me as I kept writing, and I think I really just need to shut up and write. In all likelihood, the same thing will happen again, even though it didn’t with Father Cruz. But I think that story has a lot of issues besides lack of plot, the main one being how unintentionally juvenile it is.
This has been great. It’s like getting pissed at work and writing a bitchy email just to delete it. You know what’s funny- this is exactly the kind of thing I should be putting on Pen & Sword, not an endless parade of book reviews and discussions on Stephen King. The actual worries and insecurities that fill my free time as an aspiring writer. If I read a post like this from another writer, it would really make me feel better. Sometimes having these problems, you convince yourself you’re the only one in the world who has them, and that’s just not true. I think I will post it. Time to go back up and make sure I didn’t say anything too weird…
Hopefully that made some of you aspiring writers commiserate and feel not as alone. Also, I recommend writing an “email you can’t send” to yourself about the things you’re insecure about in your own craft. It felt pretty good to get those insecurities down in actual words. Try it!
December Writing Goals Update #5
What a week.
I felt so inspired all week and even had a lightbulb moment for a piece of flash, but literally didn’t have the time to do any writing until today (12/29). I guess that is an issue with the holidays- I always get crazy busy and with the conjunction of my birthday, there wasn’t a single moment I could spare to get any of this stuff out of my head.
Finally, I had a slower day on Monday and forgot all my course notes at home, so I finally had no choice but to write. And it felt so good. I vomited out that flash piece in an hour, then worked on Stasis the rest of the day. I forgot how much I loved that story, even though it’s still in infancy. It’s a really fun voice to write in and it’s got so much potential for good horror. I ended up getting over 7,000 words down for that one in two days.
My last goal left after last week, when I finally finished draft one of Father Cruz and finalized the formatting for Losing Air: Dark and Strange Tales, is the goal of 30,000 words across all projects (not including finishing Father Cruz). I am delighted to say that I slid into home just in time with this one, for a total of 31,709 words written during the month of December. This is insane, and I honestly wasn’t expecting to actually hit this one. That’s, like, half a novel’s worth of words. Yay me!
Anyway, stay tuned for next week’s post, where I dig deep into this goal and what it’s done for me over the past month.
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