Welcome to the seventh writing club update!
Happy new year!!! 🎉🎉🎉 I was just getting used to drawing the “4” in “2024” in my notebooks, and now I have to get used to a whole new number. I always liked “5” though, so hopefully we get along alright.
As always I hope everyone has had a good month (but not so good as to leave nothing to stoke the fires of creativity).
Anyway, on with the important part - the Writers!
- @grrgyle - January goal
- @hazeebabee - January goal
- @JacobCoffinWrites - January goal
- @okasen - January goal
I can’t wait to hear from you all. Your updates no matter how trivial always manage to motivate me for the next month.
As always, anyone and everyone are welcome to comment or share their own work in addition to the club participants above.
My goal proved a touch ambitious for this month.
I said I would complete at least 10 morning-pages-like “writing sessions.” I completed maybe half of that lol. But I’m still counting this month as a win because 1) I dunno I just feel pretty good, and 2) because I did some heads-down work on a short story. This one is brand new so has the advantage of not having been bouncing around in my head for years (poor unwritten stories, I really should treat them better).
I tried to start with a real outline this time, and actually, I kinda love it. Like always, there is the sensation of distaste at seeing your own ideas on the page (instead of in the perfect crystal prison of your mind), but it helped me get off to a decent start.
In the interests of continuing to practice publicly, here’s what I’ve come up with so far. It’s very rough, so please excuse the draftiness. Right now I’m trying to 1) figure out how to story will actually go from scene to scene, and 2) inject some personality, character, and overall detail, into the writing. Right now, I feel like it reads like I’m just hitting plot beats without much flavour (because I guess that’s literally what I’m doing).
Link to early draft of untitled short story: here.
The skill of planning, if well honed, is invaluable in writing works that stand the test of time, I think. I reckon I use my plans like maps who’s traces of roads I use to plan stops in my text. I try to make sure that the reader’s view at each of these stops is worth the travel.
Reading that comment was well worth the travel for me. Yes, I like the way you put that. While I’m sure there’s a place for seat-of-your-pants writing (aka “pantsing”), it’s nice to know what the view, as you put it, is going to look like from different parts of the story.
I really like getting to see people’s early drafts and how their writing process works. The little comments to yourself are fun & i enjoy getting to see that side of the process.
Also glad to hear you’re enjoying using outlines. I tend to be an outline kind of person, though my outlines tend to be very broad then I kind chunk out the bulk of the writing when inspiration hits.
As always thanks for sharing and posting :)