What's Keeping You...? Part 3
In Today's Journal
* Quote of the Day
* What's Keeping You...? Part 3
* The Numbers
Quote of the Day
"What’s keeping you from finishing—or starting—your story?" Opening sentence of a Writer's Digest newsletter article titled "Five Steps to an Airtight Plot" (Tiffany Yates Martin, Feb 13, 2024)
What's Keeping You...? Part 3
You can read Part 1 of this series
You can read Part 2 of this series
I strongly recommend you read both parts before continuing. I can wait.
Okay, now let's continue....
In the first post of this series, I wrote out the whole 4-sentence opening paragraph that began with the Quote of the Day.
Broken into individual thoughts and annotated (I couldn't help myself), the remaining three sentences of that paragraph are
Sentence Two—
"Maybe all your great ideas get muddled as you’re drafting and you can’t figure out what’s intrinsic to the story or what should happen when."
Okay, first, notice the focus is on the writer, not on the the story or the characters:
"Maybe all YOUR GREAT IDEAS"—Um, ideas are a dime a thousand, and none of your ideas belong in your characters' story anyway. Yawn. And that "great ideas" is a sarcasm-laden taunt.
Either that or they're schmoozing you, saying you actually have 'great' ideas. You don't. I don't. Nobody does. They're only ideas. The characters and the writing render them 'great' in the perception of some readers.
"GET MUDDLED"—Muddled schmuddled. 'My ideas got muddled' is an excuse, a way to allow yourself to bend to the fear and stop writing. Trust your characters and the story and just write what happens already.
"AS YOU'RE DRAFTING"—This insinuates that you aren't serious about recording the story as it happens. You're just slapping it onto the page in a "draft" so you can go back and "fix it" later.
"and YOU CAN'T FIGURE OUT"—Okay, this is horrible. First the almost-subliminal negative reinforcement that "you can't" do something so simple and easy as write a story without outside help.
And what specifically can't you do? 'Figure out.' This invokes the conscious critical mind to 'figure out' what's 'wrong' and 'correct' the characters and the creative subconscious. And all of THAT is specifically to 'figure out'...
"WHAT'S INTRINSIC TO THE STORY"—What? Hey Pal (or Miss), what's 'intrinsic' to the story is whatever happens in the story and how the characters react to it as you run through the story with the characters. You know, exactly like what's "intrinsic" to YOUR life as YOU live it.
Well, Writer's Digest and Ms. Martin believe you need to 'figure out' either what's 'intrinsic to the story'...
"or WHAT SHOULD HAPPEN WHEN"—As my psychologist friend used to say, don't 'should' on people, and by 'people' I mean your characters.
If these same gurus tried to tell their neighbors what 'should' have happened during their vacation (especially while they're conveying some hilarious vacation antic), the gurus would probably limp away battered and bruised, at least verbally. And frankly, I hope they would.
Sentence Three—
"Maybe your outline that seemed so perfectly planned out simply isn’t coming together on the page."
"Maybe your OUTLINE"—This invokes the assumption that you need an outline in order to write a novel, which you do not.
"that seemed so PERFECTLY PLANNED OUT"—More invoking the conscious, critical mind. Sigh....
Um, as you undoubtedly know, life and the stories that make up life are neither perfect nor planned out. They are spontaneous, and even you (and even the gurus) can't 'plan' spontaneity.
"ISN'T COMING TOGETHER ON THE PAGE"—Well, duh. Y'think? Stop being a control freak. Just write what happened as you raced through the story with the characters. Forget all the nonsense and just write the story.
Sentence Four—
"Maybe you just lose steam and are thinking of abandoning the story altogether."
Okay, I'll take that one as a whole, though I don't see the need for the "lose steam" nonsense. "Lose interest" maybe, but not "lose steam." Yeah, I got what they meant. Still, only a steam-powered typewriter could "lose steam" while you're writing. (There were steam-powered typewriters. Look it up.)
And if you 'lose interest' and 'abandon' the story, more likely, the characters jerked it away from you because they don't want you dictating to them and screwing it up with your and others' conscious, critical 'improvements'.
If that happens, I recommend the following:
pull up your big-boy/girl pants,
believe in yourself, and
write the story your characters are living instead of something you attempt to construct or concoct.
Seriously, just write the story.
Write off into the dark and don't worry about it. A story isn't something to worry about. It's only a bit of fun.
Some readers will love your story and some won't, and so what? You'll be too busy writing the next story or novel (and learning and improving your writing and storytelling chops) to fret over it.
So why do I keep my subscription current to Writer's Digest newsletter?
To quote Ronald Reagan, "Well...." [head nod] because it's the best possible source of goofy, false, myth-filled, easily arguable material for TNDJ (see above).
You're welcome. Or Sorry about that (your choice).
When you eventually shove the myths aside and start telling stories without all the fear of zero consequences, I'll say 'You're welcome' then.
One final point—
The next time you hear some smug guru say, "Hey, whatever works," I dare you: Look them in the eyes (or the URL, whatever) and say, "Okay, please define 'works'." Because until they define "works" I see no reason you, I, or anyone else should agree with them.
Maybe "works" for them means "enables me to bend to my fears and still call myself a fiction writer."
Nah, they won't say that. They'll say it has nothing to do with fear. But they'll never even try WITD either, despite the promise of a joy-filled experience. They're just too afraid.
And that's too bad. Frankly, I pity them.
They spend so much time forcing their characters into predetermined molds and forcing their vision of what 'should happen next' on the story, people who bow to the fears and the safety-net myths will never know what really, actually happened in the authentic story.
And they'll never understand why I'm able to write truthfully in the backmatter of every novel I write, "In no part is this story the block-by-block, purloined construction of any sort of generative AI or even the artificial construct of any conscious, critical, human mind, including my own. What you read here is what actually happened there."
Of course, the human psyche is a complex thing. Maybe they don't really want to succeed, and they know if they blindly follow all the gurus' "steps to success," they won't. Just like most who have gone before them.
For every 'successful' fiction writer who has followed the steps, there are literally thousands who threw up their hands in frustration or boredom and failed.
But I'm not really talking about them. I'm talking about You.
If you don't know the joy of being able to write "What you read here is what actually happened there" yet, I hope you will soon.
Talk with you again soon.
The Numbers
The Journal…………………………… 1220
Writing of Blackwell Ops 35: Seldem Dunn
Day 1…… 3796 words. To date…… 3796
Day 2…… 3389 words. To date…… 7185
Fiction for January…………………… 56078
Fiction for 2025………………………. 56078
Nonfiction for January……………….. 15540
Nonfiction for 2025…………………… 15540
2025 consumable words…………….. 71618
Average Fiction WPD (January)……. 4006
2025 Novels to Date…………………….. 1
2025 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2025 Short Stories to Date……………… 3
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………..... 105
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 10
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 274
Short story collections……………………. 29
Disclaimer: Whatever you believe, unreasoning fear and the myths that outlining, revising, and rewriting will make your work better are lies. They will always slow your progress as a writer or stop you cold. I will never teach the myths on this blog.
Writing fiction should never be something that stresses you out. It should be fun. On this blog I teach Writing Into the Dark and adherence to Heinlein’s Rules. Because of WITD and because I endeavor to follow those Rules I am a prolific professional fiction writer. You can be too.
Okay you got me! I went down a rabbit hole for over 30 minutes, looking for your Steam-powered typewriter. Nothing! But, I learned some more about typewriters. And maybe one day I'll write a story that has a steam-powered typewriter in it, as I do like Steampunk, and maybe there is some character out there that uses one that will tell me their story!
And I loved your breakdown on the paragraph! lol I chuckled and grinned.
This brings to mind a Voice question. When it comes to bullshitting with people, I’m an awesome storyteller. I’m not going to be falsely humble. I can take an anecdote and crush its retelling. This makes me wonder whether I should write as I speak? In other words, watch the characters in my mind and write as if I’m emailing it to a buddy or telling it aloud at a party?