What Saturday Night Live Can Teach About Failure

By

Scott D. Parker

Failure sucks, but failure isn't all bad.

After rehearsal on Thursday night, I came back home (with McDonald's food!) to find my wife watching a new four-part documentary on the history of Saturday Night Live. I missed the first episode and most of the second, but I ended up watching the last two.

The third episode is an entire deep dive on the Cowbell sketch. That was fun. The fourth, however, was brand-new to me. Entitled, “Season 11: The Weird Year,” it details the new-to-me saga of that year. And there was a lot I didn't know. Randy Quaid was a cast member?!

Full disclosure: I didn't start watching SNL regularly until my college years. Thus: the late 1980s and early 1990s. I was either too young for the show or didn't know it was on or whatever. 

This episode fascinated me. Everyone interviewed for this documentary talked about how they knew, in real time, that the season wasn't good. It wasn't connecting with the audience or even the folks working the show.

Yet they had to keep going. What other choice was there? 

By the end of the 1985-1986 season, rumors were rampant that SNL would be canceled. They even aired a semi-cliffhanger as the season finale, which is pretty interesting. 

The conclusion of the documentary episode has the same folks talking about the changes that were made for Season 12. They hired new writers, brought in new cast members skilled at sketch comedy, and, with an eye to what went wrong in Season 11, they moved forward.

And never looked back.

What Can We Learn?

We creatives not working in front of a camera like to hide our failures. Especially writers. All of us have drawers full of finished manuscripts that may not deserve to see the light of day and that's fine. 

But what about those completed stories that we're just too scared to share? What's holding you back? Fear of failure? 

Get over it.

Unless you are in the business of just writing and never selling stories, get your work out there. Get it out in front of readers. Let them read it.

Yeah, they may hate it and you'll have to deal with their reviews, but how else are you going to learn? Those same readers also might love what you wrote, and how good would that feel?

The Writer's "Five Minutes"

Episode 1 of the documentary features cast auditions. My wife said it was fun to see the younger versions of these actors we've come to know and love being given five minutes to prove themselves. Five minutes. In front of Lorne Michaels and others. Could you do it? 

You can, and you should. The writer's version of those five minutes is the preview chapters, the book description, and the cover. Make them the best that you can, get it out to the public, and then move on to the next project.

And if one of your books turns out to be like SNL's Season 11, suck it up, figure out how to fix it, and move forward. 

The Perennial Appeal of The War of Art by Steven Pressfield

By

Scott D. Parker

(This is a rerun, originally written in 2022, but this is a perennial reminder that Resistance is always present and we need to keep it at bay.)

Where has this book been all my writing life? Well, right in front of me, the entire time.

I’ve known about Steven Pressfield for a good number of years. In fact, I have his blog feed in my Feedly app and I am a subscriber to his email. But in all that time, I had never sat down and read his most famous non-fiction book: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles.

I guess I just wasn’t ready for it. I believe that there is always a time and place for certain things to occur, and the first quarter of 2022 proved to be especially difficult for my writing life. So difficult, in fact, that I stopped and questioned whether or not I should keep going. Somewhere in that miasma of thoughts and feelings and doubt this book popped in front of my eyes. I had already started back on the upswing via my own journaling but I shrugged and thought why not.

Wow. This book opened my eyes, wide, to see that not only was I not alone in my struggles (we all struggle), but Pressfield laid out a definition of my challenges and a roadmap through them.

Most importantly, perhaps, was this: Pressfield gave the challenge, the obstacle we all face, a name: Resistance. That is the focus of Book 1 of this short but powerful book. Resistance: Defining the Enemy. Pressfield then goes on to list all the things that Resistance is, such as Internal, Universal, and Insidious. He points out that Resistance is strongest right near the finish list, it often makes you unhappy, and carves a place in your mind for self-doubt and self-rationalization.

Very quickly as I started reading the print version of this book I grabbed a pencil and started underlining key passages. I kept underlining all through Book 1, seeing myself in the words.

Book 2: Combating Resistance: Turning Pro serves as the antithesis. It is the writer/artist as hero. Key to this section is in the sub-title: Turning Pro. It is the light bulb moment when a writer decides he is no longer just going to write for fun, but to be a professional writer. Pressfield lists many traits of the professional mindset. Personally, I found I already do many of them—is prepared; we show up every day; we are patient; we demystify the writing process—so it made me question why I was in such a state as to even think about quitting.

But, as Pressfield states, “The battle is inside our own head.” It always is. Always. It can be frustrating to be in a profession where dwell-doubt is constant, but there you go. The mountaintop experience of a writer/artist is also very high.

The last book, Beyond Resistance: The Higher Realm, makes the case for the power of an artist’s way of life. He lays out the evidence that there exists for artist a sometimes magical place where our imaginations and our physical efforts to find our dreams connect. He divides artist into two camps: those that think hierarchically and those that think territorially, using the animal kingdom as an example. By the time I reached the end of the book, pencil tip well worn for underlining so many thing, I smiled. So many of Pressfield’s comments seemed self-evident, and yet I struggled. We all struggle. It is part of the artist’s way of life.

But a book like The War of Art clears out the cobwebs of doubt and shows us a way forward.

I ended up dictating all the underlined passages into my phone and created a 14-page file. It is my own outline of this important book. I know that I’ll encounter Resistance again. It is inevitable. But I also know a means to overcome it. And I’ve got my own printed set of pages to remind me how.

If you are struggling—and even if you’re not—I encourage you to read this book and see if you can turn yourself around.

I want to leave you with one of my favorite passages of the entire book. It explains why it is important to create and maintain a writing habit.

Someone asked Somerset Maugham if he wrote on his schedule for only when struck my inspiration. “I write only when inspiration strikes,“ he replied. “Fortunately it strikes every morning at 9 o’clock sharp.”
That’s a pro.
In terms of resistance, Maugham was saying, “I despise resistance; I will not let it phase me; I will sit down and do my work. “
Maugham reckoned another, deeper truth: that my performing the Monday and physical active sitting down and starting to work, he set in motion a mysterious but infallible sequence of events that would produce inspiration, as surely as if the goddess had synchronized her watch with his. He knew if he built it, she would come.

Recharging the Excitement by Talking Shop About Writing

by
Scott D. Parker

It is rare that we constantly sustain the excitement of what we do. We writers can love the writing process, but after, say, you hit 50,000 words, sometimes the work is more like work than magic.

The same thing applies to the publishing side of things. When we’ve finished a manuscript, now comes the more mundane aspects of our jobs: editing, copy editing, proofing, cover design, and uploading files for publication and distribution. After you’ve done it enough times, it becomes routine. A little rote. You know you need to do it, but you might look forward to it the least.

That is until you get to talk to someone who is a little behind you on the journey.

This week, I had lunch with a former day job co-worker. I hadn’t seen him since February 2020, pre-Covid. We had conversed off and on via emails and texts. We’re both writers and we talked about our day jobs and the kinds of things we do. But then the conversation shifted to the fun writing. Fiction writing.

He was keen to learn the ins and outs and processes I use to write, edit, publish, distribute, and market my books. I have internalized all this information and actively keep learning new ways to streamline processes.

I’ll admit something: I was a little tired on Thursday morning, so I kept downing green tea all morning at the office and made a point not to order a heavy lunch that would have made me sleepy. Seeing my friend was a nice jolt to the system, but the more powerful jolt was talking shop.

Literally, I could feel myself becoming more and more energized about the tools, the processes, and all the resources I used to get where I am today. I was able to talk about going to “Indie Publishing School” with podcasts. I pointed out authors like Joanna Penn, who are farther along the path than I am that he should study. Also veterans like Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch who have completely changed the way they get their stories to readers. I talked tools like Vellum and Draft2Digital.

It was so exciting.

I’m currently in the stages of readying my next book for publication next month so I’m in the thick of doing the mundane things. But you know what I told him? I said that I actually enjoy all the steps that takes a story from my brain to readers. It really is magic.

I was so jazzed that the rest of the day, I didn’t really need any more green tea. What I wanted was to get home and get back to fixing up my book.

It was good to have an unexpected recharge just by talking shop.

Y’all ever experience that kind of jolt?

Two-a-Day Writing Sessions to Speed Up Your Writing

By Scott D. Parker

For those of us with a day job that is not fiction writing, we have to choose to carve out time in our day to write our stories. But there’s never enough time, is there?

Optimizing one’s time becomes crucial in our day-to-day writing experiences. You want to ensure you are making visible progress despite wanting more time to write and not having any.

I’m pretty sure most of us know what a writing sprint is. You set a timer for any length of time and then you go, go, go and write until the timer sounds. Fifteen minutes is cited as a good number, and, depending on how fast you type and how quick your imagination is, you can reach 500 words.

I fell out of the timed-sessions habit mainly because I type fast and my imagination’s on the ball. But I’ve been bumping up against a number of obstacles recently and decided to return to the sprint. With a new wrinkle.

Okay, so it’s not really a wrinkle, but it sounded good in my head so we’ll just go with it, okay?

Two-a-days is a concept usually associated with sports. The athletes practice in the morning, wait hours and then practice a second time in the afternoons. It’s designed to give the body rest and, when it’s time to practice, you give it all.

This past week, I’ve been doing two-a-day writing sessions. In the weekday mornings, I know I can get at least fifteen minutes of writing done before I have to stop and get ready for and commute to work. In nearly every instance, I am not finished with a scene, but the timer’s beeping and the clock on the wall’s telling me I have to get ready for work.

So I close the laptop and do that.

Then, later on at my lunch hour, I open the laptop up again and do another fifteen minutes, picking up right where I left off.

But here’s the actual wrinkle to this process: even at my lunch time, when I have an uninterrupted hour to write, I still do the fifteen-minute bursts. When that timer sounds, I stop typing, stand up, and walk the conference room. I look out the window and soothe the mind. Sure, I might mull over the next line but for the most part, I don’t. That’s the rest time, usually a three-minute span. What that three-minute timer goes off, I sit back down, reset the phone for fifteen minutes, and go.

With this concentrated focus time of three writing sessions in a lunch hour, I can get 1,000-1,400 knocked out in an hour. For my work-from-home day, I do this process in the morning before my work day.

The progress I made this week was eye opening, so I think I’ll keep on this “workout” until this book is done. Our imagination is a muscle, so give it a good workout twice a day and see how far your book will go.

 

What the Number Three Meant Last Week

By

Scott D. Parker

Three.

I want you to keep that number in mind as you read this post. (And yes, it’s a magical number…)

Last week I posed the question about the best way to measure progress in a story. Specifically, if word count was the best way. Every writer differs and every writer has a way to determine progress, as Dana King commented on last week’s post.

Well, for me, I use word count. Always have. And starting on New Year’s Day, I had written at least 1,000 every day.

Until last Friday.

The day job part of last Friday made it feel like a Monday. Lots of meetings, lots of quick turnaround projects. Even though I worked from home, the day just kept consumed by the demands of the day job. Nothing wrong with that at all—better to have a Monday on a Friday than the alternative.

On the days I work in the office (Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday), lunch is my fiction writing time. I take my Chromebook and write in an empty conference room. On the days I work from home, I use the fact that I have no commute to work in writing before the day job duties start. But last Friday when I woke up, I was still feeling tired so I opted to sleep in (something I rarely do, even on weekends). It was okay, I told myself, I can pick up the writing at the end of the workday. It’s all good.

But it wasn’t. You see, my early morning sleepy self forgot that the wife and I were heading out to see singer/songwriter Jeff Crosby at Houston’s Mucky Duck. The responsibilities of the day job were going to take me up to and a little beyond five o’clock. The show started at seven. Oh, and I also had to write my post for this blog.

What to do?

Well, I wrote the post y’all read last week and got it posted before we departed for the concert. With that done, I opened up my story and started writing some fiction.

I wrote three words. They consisted of two sentences and, after I hit the return key, an entire paragraph.

I looked at the screen, willing some words to make their way from my brain, through my arms and fingers, and onto the screen. They weren’t happening. That tiredness I woke up with was still with me, even more so with the day job’s activities. I knew I would return from the show and want to keep that one-on-one time with the wife, something that remains an important part of daily life. I also knew my 1,000-word writing streak was in jeopardy. The everyday part of the streak remained alive, but would the thousand-word streak?

Nope.

I chalked up a notch in the main streak and called it a day. There are more important things than getting a daily word count. It was a stumble, but you know what you’re supposed to do after you stumble, right?

Get up.

The next day I clocked in 1,172 words.

That’s the key takeaway I want to leave you with today. There will always be days in which you won’t or can’t write. A streak might be broken. As irritating as it may be—and after 55 straight days of 1,000+ writing days, it was a bummer—don’t let the break go on longer than a day. Get right back in the groove the next day and start a new streak or habit. Your future self will thank you.

Is Word Count the Best Way to Chart a Novel’s Progress?

by

Scott D. Parker

Words, pages, or scenes? What is the best way to measure progress when writing a novel?

When I wrote my first novel, I had zero idea about word count so I just stuck with scenes. They were as long as they needed to be.

After I met some fellow writers online, I learned that word count was also a method. In fact, it was often the preferred method publishers used to solicit stories and novels. So I switched and have been using word count as my standard ever since. I still let scenes do what they want.

 

Streaks

 

Writing streaks are a great way to maintain momentum when you are on a project. I use them all the time as well. Since 2022 was a disastrous year of (non) writing for me, I resolved that I would start a brand-new project on New Year’s Day 2023 and keep going everyday until I completed the book.

I have written everyday this year. Yay! The book is coming along nicely, and its serving to remind me about the power and excitement of actually creating a story out of thin air.

During every writing session, I have managed to write 1,000 words or more. That’s kind of a doable benchmark I use that is a nice round number. It has enabled me to reach 64,000 words in the book as of yesterday, Day 55 of the year, so that’s really nice to see. Plus, it’s not as aggressive as the 1,667 words per day you need to write, a la NaNoWriMo, to get a 50,000-word book done in 30 days, but it is usually an achievable threshold, especially when I’m in that flow state.

But is it a good one?

There have been a few days this year when I’m writing a particular scene and I half wonder if I’m writing more words just to reach 1,000 words. I cannot consciously say yes, but the nagging splinter of that idea that I’m just padding the word count remains.

I guess that’s what editing is for.

What about you? How do you measure progress on a book?

Mary Robinette Kowal and the Five Words That Sold Me a Novel

by

Scott D. Parker

She had me with five words: The Thin Man in space.

Still, I hadn’t read the book yet so I honestly waffled over whether or no to attend Mary Robinette Kowal’s author event promoting her new novel, The Spare Man, at Houston’s Murder by the Book. I ended up saying ‘yes’ and I’m so glad I did. Not only was the event one of the more entertaining I’ve been to, but the writing advice—and the personal advice—was more than I could have expected.

Knowing next to nothing about Kowal other than she wrote The Calculating Stars (a book I’ve not read but know it won multiple awards), one of the questions I was going to ask if I got the chance was how she came to be the narrator of her own books. Well, that question never needed asking because soon after her event began, she did a reading. Or, rather, she performed a passage from her new book. She had a narrator voice, a female voice as her main character, and then a good male voice as that character’s husband. Not only was she reading, she acted as well as she could holding up her laptop. Moreover, unlike some narrators who are challenged when speaking for the opposite gender, Kowal does a great male voice. Now that I've started listening to The Spare Man, I can say that not only does she do good male voice, she does multiple ones. I know I'll have a lot of great listening time as I consume her audiobooks.

(Speaking of the audiobook of The Spare Man, literally as I'm typing this post (on Thursday), Kowal just posted on Instagram that Audible has named the book one of the Best of the Year.)

The folks in the audience were clearly existing fans of Kowal because they asked specific questions almost as if it was a continuation from an earlier speaking event. A curious one was about her cat, Elsie, who, evidentially, can communicate with her. At the live event, Kowal described a panel of buttons in which a word (spoken by Kowal) is activated when Elsie presses the button. It is a fascinating idea and I had to see for myself. There are multiple videos on her Instagram page (MaryRobinetteKowal) and it's so fun and cool to watch. The funniest story she told to those of us gathered at the bookstore was a time when Elsie pressed the buttons to say "lie down, sleep" and Kowal interpreted that as Elsie wanted a nap. When her cat hadn't joined her on the bed after a few minutes, Kowal investigated and discovered Elsie eating Kowal's sandwich.

But this is an author event and the focus turned back to books, the writing of books, and how her experience as a puppeteer helps her create good prose. Using a small stuffed dog--to represent Gimlet, the little dog the two main characters in The Spare Man own (modeled after Nick and Nora Charles's dog Asta in the Thin Man movies)--she explained how puppeteers create emotion with only movement. Her ingrained knowledge of that craft permeates into her fiction as she breaks down the body language her characters show and reassembles them into words.

When I rose my hand, I asked her how she came up with the concept of The Spare Man. After all, I told her, she sold me the book in five words. She revealed she often has an elevator pitch to describe her current writing projects because it gives her more focus on what the story's DNA is. Too often, we writers, when asked about a book we've written, start to blather on and on about this character or that setup. It happened to me just a few weeks ago. Having the story's idea condensed to a few sentences at the beginning of a project can sure streamline the writing. I've actually got that in mind on my current work in progress and I'll admit, it's a great idea.

If these pleasantries were all that Kowal offered, it would have been worth the trip. But what I wasn't expecting was some excellent writing insight, and it was prompted by a question about NaNoWriMo.

Kowal was diagnosed with ADHD at age 49. Like many folks with ADHD--I likely have it although not formally diagnosed--there are moments of hyper focus and then there are other moments when you just can't get things done. One of the reasons why Kowal mentioned she enjoyed NaNoWriMo so much was of four factors: Novel, Interesting, Challenging, and Urgent.

In this case, Novel is both the literal novel someone is writing as well as the other meaning of the word, 'new.' Typically, writers who do NaNoWriMo start a brand-new novel in November. Thus, we're all excited. Interesting is self-explanatory. You have to be interested in your story for you to actually write it. Challenging is also self-evident. It is challenging to write a book, but it is even more challenging to do NaNoWriMo which is 50,000 in the 30 days of November (that's 1,667 words per day). I've done it numerous times but I have also failed so I know what it's like to be on both sides. But when you hit the groove, boy is it something. And Urgent. Again, with the 1,667 words-per-day threshold hanging over your head, if you miss a day or two, it can be daunting to catch up. Thus the urgency embedded in NaNoWriMo is a motivating factor.

When Kowal mentioned these four things, a light bulb went off in my head. It helped to explain, in part, why I've been so challenged this year in regards to writing. There are other major factors as well, but her short list helped me see myself in a different light.

It also made me wish I'd have started NaNoWriMo this year. But there's always next year.

In my research on Kowal, I found two immensely helpful posts. One is an interview on the Strange Horizons website entitled "Writing While Disabled" (2021). In this lengthy interview, Kowal uses her own experiences and diagnoses to explain how she works through her challenges and produces the award-winning works she does. I ended up printing it out and highlighting multiple passages.

The second is from her own website (and it's referenced in the interview). In a 2015 post called "Sometimes Writers Block is Really Depression," Kowal describes how her depression knocked her away from writing and the tools (both tech as well as interpersonal) she uses to overcome her challenges. The links she provides might be helpful to some writers who might be struggling.

To top off this wonderful author event, in each chair were the best handouts I've ever seen. Here's what she provided.

That's a "brochure" for the inter-planetery cruise liner the characters in The Spare Man are in. That's Gimlet, by the way. The laminated card on the left is a "baggage tag" while the center one is a "boarding pass" (the number on which was used for a drawing to give away the plush of Gimlet). And, of course, an actual "do not disturb" door hanger (with "service requested" on the back). Seriously, how cool is that? Plus check out the design. It is so 1930s.

Mary Robinette Kowal has been on the peripheral of my radar for a few years now, but with The Spare Man, she is firmly in my sights. In fact, I already have my next selection for my science fiction book club already picked. Have a look at her website. I bet there is something there that you'd like to read. For mystery fans, I'd recommend starting with The Spare Man.

I mean, why not. She sold me in five words.

How about you?

Do You Ever Think About Quitting?

By
Scott D. Parker

What keeps you going? What keeps you writing? Why bother publishing?

I’ve had numerous thoughts on this subject throughout the summer as I wrestle with my own work. Every now and then, I’ll come across articles about the real data concerning the publishing industry: actual number of books published in a given year, average number of copies a given book sells, etc. It’s the usual stone cold reminder than if you want to be in this business, you’d better steel yourself for constant obstacles and challenges

Then I read posts like the one Dana King published yesterday on his website. In “A Cautionary Tale,” he describes how he was inspired to write a short story. He submitted the story to a mainstream magazine and received the happy news that it was accepted. Bravo, Dana! Then, like most of us writers, he waited for the issue to come out with his story in it.

What he discovered after contacting the publisher was that the story was already published earlier this year. Like six months ago. And here’s the kicker: he wasn’t even notified of the publication, the issue, the date the magazine hit the stands, nothing. Turns out the magazine’s staff doesn’t have the capability to communicate with authors—those who got stories accepted and, presumably, those who were reject.

The point of King’s post was to remind writers that we are, usually, at the bottom of the industry hill. This would be the hill down which shit rolls. I mean, think about it: having a story published in a magazine is a big deal. For writers who wrote decades ago, they would have received a letter informing them of the story’s impending publication and the check for said story. Now, that’s not even a thing (at least for this unnamed magazine). Seriously? Where’s the common courtesy? Where’s the professionalism?

Are you ready for a reality check? King—who has been nominated for Shamus Award twice—lays out the reality of a writer, the cost it takes to, say, maintain a website vs. the money received back in return. It ain’t pretty. The joy of writing a story vs. the “frustration endured.” He all but says that there is a marker on his road of being a writer where he might quit. “I’m not there yet,” he writes, “but I can see if from here.”

Sober reality, folks. That’s what King’s post from yesterday was. Read it for yourself, especially if you are a writer, then ask yourself if you have the constitution to continue. If so, why? And for how long?

I have my answers. Do you?

How Kevin Smith’s Storytelling Turned a Famous Quote on Its Head

By

Scott D. Parker

I watched “Clerks III” on Thursday, and it’s a great example of a storyteller allowing his characters to age, grow, and mature. It’s also an example of a storyteller taking a famous quote he wrote and changing it’s meaning.

“Clerks III” is Kevin Smith’s latest film, coming twenty-eight years after his debut movie, “Clerks.” Being the pop culture geek that I am, folks are surprised to learn that I only started watching Smith’s films 2019. Up until then, he was only a podcaster (and that only since 2012). So, in 2019, leading up to the release of Jay and Silent Bob Reboot, I watched all of Smith’s films, reviewing and ranking them all.

What makes my viewing of these films interesting is that I am in my early fifties rather than the younger person I was had I watched these movies in real time. As a result, they strike me differently (just look at my favorite Smith film). I have a much longer review of “Clerks III” on my own blog, but

I have a much longer review of Clerks III on my own blog, but I want to touch on one aspect here. It’s a storytelling technique I found incredibly brave that yielded an incredibly emotional reward. But to do so, I have to spoil the ending. You’ve been warned.

The Origin of the Famous Quote

A running gag in Clerks was that Dante, one of the two main clerks, came into work on his day off. Played by Brian O'Hallaran, Dante just seemed to sigh and roll his eyes as he had to deal with annoying customers who came looking to buy whatever crap they wanted. To just about everyone, he kept lamenting that “I’m not supposed to be here today.” To all of us who had to work jobs like, boy could we relate.

In Clerks II, it’s one of the closing lines of the movie. As Dante and his best friend, Randal (Jeff Anderson) stand behind the counter of the very same Quick Stop convenience store they now own, Randal says, “You’re not supposed to be here” in an echo from Clerks. Dante replies with “It's the first day of the rest of our lives.”

The Clerks III Version

The main story of the movie is that after Randal has a heart attack, he decides to do something creative with his life and make a move about his life. Basically, he decides to make Clerks. But it’s not all sunshine and rainbows, despite all the in-jokes and winks and nods to the actual movies Clerks and Clerks II.

With the latter two Clerks films, Smith broadened and deepened the love and friendship between Dante and Randal. They are, to use Smith’s term, hetero lifemates. Randal finally realizes how much Dante means to him after Dante himself succumbs to a heart attack. Unlike Randal, however, Dante doesn’t survive.

I’m not sure how many of the folks in my theater were crying when Dante died, but I sure was. Heck, my voice broke a couple of times when I later told my wife the events of the story. Yes, I cry at a lot of things, but these movies and these characters, even over just three years, have come to represent something. I think lots of fiftysomething folks, guys especially, find pieces of themselves in the lives of Dante and Randal.

Now, in Clerks III, at Dante’s funeral, it’s Randal looking down at his friend’s coffin for the last time and he laments that he [Dante] isn’t even supposed to be here [at his own funeral] today.

No one will be able to watch any of the Clerks films—or wear the quote on a t-shirt or see it on a coffee mug—without thinking of how this one simple sentence has had its meaning changed after nearly thirty years.

That’s a fantastic piece of storytelling.

Getting Through The Writer’s Drought

by
Scott D. Parker

Remember back on Memorial Day when I wrote a post about The Great Summer Writing Season? I said that in the 97 days between Memorial Day and Labor Day 2022, if you keep up a decent writing habit, you can get a book written or a number of short stories.

How’d you do?

Better than me, I hope, because I failed. Badly.

And the thing is, I’m not sure why, but there were a number of factors, the primary one is the change in the house. My son moved out of the house in July, heading out for his junior year in college. I was not prepared for the emotional wallop that event delivered. In the days and weeks before he moved out in late July, our family centered on being together and a series of Lasts. In the days and weeks since, we’ve experienced a series of Firsts. All of those things churned through the emotions and the end result was a shift of focus.

Then there was the reading (and listening) of books, comics (and audiobooks). I don’t know about you but I have seasons (not the best word but I’ll go with it) with my reading. I’m always reading something but sometimes, the desire to read more and more things consumes my attention. Couple that with the limited amount of time I have to write and/or read and as the summer progressed, I found myself opting to open a book a read in those precious minutes before work rather than writing. The thing was, I didn’t mind.

The reading material was not all fiction or comics either. I ended up on a run of self-help, creativity books. Having read the first Steven Pressfield creativity book, The War of Art, I kept going with Turning Pro and Put Your Ass Where Your Heart Wants To Be. Both short volumes had great nuggets that subtly began to shift some of the ground beneath my feet and started edging me to getting back into a writing habit. I mean, the title of that third book pretty much says it, right?

But it was the concepts and philosophy behind James Clear’s Atomic Habits that really did the trick. I’m a latecomer to Clear’s book but I picked it up in July and began reading it, annotating it, and compiling my own set of notes and takeaways from this excellent book. I highly recommend it (a couple of folks in my office are now reading it). It’s kind of put some guidelines around this new life my wife and I find ourselves in: empty nesters. It’s a big change, to be sure.

One of the crucial ideas Clear makes, um, clear, is that to start a habit, you have to make it easy. If you leave the dental floss out on the counter next to your toothbrush, then you’ll be more likely to floss when you brush. If you have a desire to become more physically fit, start with something so easy—like one push up—that the barrier is basically nonexistent.

This applies to writing as well. And, truth be told, I pretty much wrote the same thing back in May, but somewhere along the summer of 2022, I forgot it. That is write whatever you can in the time you have per day. Don’t get hung up on striving for a certain word count—at least if you are getting back into the habit.

That’s where I am now: getting back into the habit. I have a project I’m actively working so that’s a nice on ramp to the writer’s superhighway and I’m taking it.

I hope your summer writing season was productive, but here’s an important thing to understand: if it wasn’t, that’s okay. We can’t always be on all the time. Droughts happen. I’ve been through a few myself and I’ve come to learn that they will pass. It’s better to just get through them—enjoying whatever it is that’s taking you away from writing—so you can be supercharged on the other side and hit the writing with a renewed sense of optimism and excitement.

The Epiphony of The War of Art by Steven Pressfield

By
Scott D. Parker

Where has this book been all my writing life? Well, right in front of me, the entire time.

I’ve known about Steven Pressfield for a good number of years. In fact, I have his blog feed in my Feedly app and I am a subscriber to his email. But in all that time, I had never sat down and read his most famous non-fiction book: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles.

I guess I just wasn’t ready for it. I believe that there is always a time and place for certain things to occur, and the first quarter of 2022 proved to be especially difficult for my writing life. So difficult, in fact, that I stopped and questioned whether or not I should keep going. Somewhere in that miasma of thoughts and feelings and doubt this book popped in front of my eyes. I had already started back on the upswing via my own journaling but I shrugged and thought why not.

Wow. This book opened my eyes, wide, to see that not only was I not alone in my struggles (we all struggle), but Pressfield laid out a definition of my challenges and a roadmap through them.

Most importantly, perhaps, was this: Pressfield gave the challenge, the obstacle we all face, a name: Resistance. That is the focus of Book 1 of this short but powerful book. Resistance: Defining the Enemy. Pressfield then goes on to list all the things that Resistance is, such as Internal, Universal, and Insidious. He points out that Resistance is strongest right near the finish list, it often makes you unhappy, and carves a place in your mind for self-doubt and self-rationalization.

Very quickly as I started reading the print version of this book I grabbed a pencil and started underlining key passages. I kept underlining all through Book 1, seeing myself in the words.

Book 2: Combating Resistance: Turning Pro serves as the antithesis. It is the writer/artist as hero. Key to this section is in the sub-title: Turning Pro. It is the light bulb moment when a writer decides he is no longer just going to write for fun, but to be a professional writer. Pressfield lists many traits of the professional mindset. Personally, I found I already do many of them—is prepared; we show up every day; we are patient; we demystify the writing process—so it made me question why I was in such a state as to even think about quitting.

But, as Pressfield states, “The battle is inside our own head.” It always is. Always. It can be frustrating to be in a profession where dwell-doubt is constant, but there you go. The mountaintop experience of a writer/artist is also very high.

The last book, Beyond Resistance: The Higher Realm, makes the case for the power of an artist’s way of life. He lays out the evidence that there exists for artist a sometimes magical place where our imaginations and our physical efforts to find our dreams connect. He divides artist into two camps: those that think hierarchically and those that think territorially, using the animal kingdom as an example. By the time I reached the end of the book, pencil tip well worn for underlining so many thing, I smiled. So many of Pressfield’s comments seemed self-evident, and yet I struggled. We all struggle. It is part of the artist’s way of life.

But a book like The War of Art clears out the cobwebs of doubt and shows us a way forward.

I ended up dictating all the underlined passages into my phone and created a 14-page file. It is my own outline of this important book. I know that I’ll encounter Resistance again. It is inevitable. But I also know a means to overcome it. And I’ve got my own printed set of pages to remind me how.

If you are struggling—and even if you’re not—I encourage you to read this book and see if you can turn yourself around.

I want to leave you with one of my favorite passages of the entire book. It explains why it is important to create and maintain a writing habit.

Someone asked Somerset Maugham if he wrote on his schedule for only when struck my inspiration. “I write only when inspiration strikes,“ he replied. “Fortunately it strikes every morning at 9 o’clock sharp.”
That’s a pro.
In terms of resistance, Maugham was saying, “I despise resistance; I will not let it phase me; I will sit down and do my work. “
Maugham reckoned another, deeper truth: that my performing the Monday and physical active sitting down and starting to work, he set in motion a mysterious but infallible sequence of events that would produce inspiration, as surely as if the goddess had synchronized her watch with his. He knew if he built it, she would come.

That Was Perfect, Do It Again

You finished your book. You even revised it a few times. A beta reader (or ten) gave you notes, so you revised it two more times for good measure. This is no first draft, my friends. You have a novel on your hands. A piece of art. The craftsmanship alone - the use of adverbs even!

You have a lean, mean, story-telling device that you have an intense love/hate relationship with. You know exactly on which page and paragraph the climax begins. You know this thing better than any spouse or friend or child.

So, the next step is to hand this bad boy off. Maybe you're querying an agent. Maybe your agent has waited patiently for you to hand this goddamn thing in so they can start querying editors. Hell, maybe an editor is dying to get this thing in their hands because you're sprinting towards publication.

In all this, though, there's a very easy to make mistake. You might have spotted it above.

You're never fucking done until you're done.

There will be notes. There will be anger and tears. The sick dread of opening that manuscript once again to revise, rejigger, or even discover whole new problems you missed the last time (the 381st time you read through the forsaken text).

The long and short of it: until that book is physically printed, you're not done. Hell, it may not even be done then. See edits done to paperback releases or future editions. The work can always be refined and revisited. For me, it's the most difficult part of writing because you're not necessarily the owner of the decision to stop all revisions. 

Which leads me to the broader point: we, as writers and people really, always have to be open to change. There needs to be a balance between confidence in your skills and the ability to know when you're not quite hitting the mark (honestly, the two should come hand in hand), and while you may have worked harder than you ever have on your book, the idea that it can always be better has to be accepted. This means you take notes, criticism, and comments in stride. You understand that people willing to give that feedback to you are not enemies - they are your biggest allies.

And you grow. 

Writing, like all art, is a craft. Craft is meant to be bettered and to change. What worked for carpenters a thousand years ago may not necessarily work the same way now. There's evolution and nuance. New tools to bring to the metaphorical table and all.

So, think of yourself as a crafts-person. Someone who not only works to produce, but to be a better producer with every iteration of your product.

And then drink on your downtime, because sometimes this shit is hard to accept. 

But also, go revise that project again.

 

 

 

Whole Mess of Scared

There's that bit of writing advice: write what scares you.

It's nothing new and honestly, the advice is solid, but I think writers often get a little too focused on the macro fears than they do the actual issues that stifle.

Me, for instance, I'm scared of being my parents. A lot of my work reflects that and explores that fear thoroughly. As a matter of fact, I've explored it so often that I'm not entirely sure that I'm as afraid of it as I used to be. Maybe fascinated. Definitely still disgusted with those people. Afraid? More like worried. Not necessarily pants-shitting afraid.

So what do we do then? What happens when we process those broad issues with our art? 

I began to realize there were fears creeping in the periphery. Things I would ignore; that were easy to ignore. There were moments where those fears crept in, but I did a good job avoiding them until I simply couldn't.

I couldn't be comfortable anymore. Comfortable to write the same stories. Comfortable to coast on what I created before. Comfortable to explore the same themes. See, fear, well, what we fear, can evolve. It can worsen, lessen, and change. My fears shifted. I wasn't afraid of content anymore, but I was afraid of risk. As a writer, it takes so long to find a rhythm, to find a sense of belonging, whether that is within your work or within creative circles. Complacency is a major risk, but it's a hell of a comfy security blanket.

And that complacency was strangling me. It was making me question whether I had reached my limits and whether it was worth taking a step outside of them. This led to a decision: do I go beyond writing what scares me by doing scares me or do I simply remain where I am?

Fear made me choose the latter for far longer than I care to admit, but now things have changed. I've realized that the only way out is through and that facing the fears I have :whether I'm good enough to try other genres, styles, subjects or good enough to leave the work I've created in the past fully behind, and take the risk of failing again. I've often joked about being a professional failure and while it's important to remember that writing is littered with failure with brief moments of triumph, it's super easy to avoid the failures that are super obvious.

So instead, I've mustered the nut to jump head first into those new patches of failure. 

I am writing while scared. I can't pretend it feels great all the time. I can't even pretend it will be worth it, but I do know I'm somehow happier, more passionate about the work I'm putting together. I'm more open to collaboration and to exploring themes/elements I never believed I had to ability or right to explore.

Even afraid, I know this will be worth it and I know I'll find new things to fear. But when that time comes, I believe I'll be more ready to tackle those fears than I've ever been.

So yes, write what you fear, but remember to write scared as well.

Ignore the Scoreboard: A Writing Process

by
Scott D. Parker

The NFL season kicked off on Thursday of this week, but I was already prepared because of Peter King.

For many years now, a NFL weekend is not complete until I read King’s Monday column. And they are long. Wonderfully so. He covers the weekend’s action, what he’s reading, what beer he likes, tales from the road, and other non-sports pieces as well in a segment he dubs “10 Things I Think I Think.”

On Monday, King commented on a recent article with Nick Saban, the head football coach at Alabama.

“I think I learned something about Nick Saban in his enlightening interview with Alan Blinder of the New York Times. Saban’s a lot more malleable as a coach than I thought. Listen to him about how his approach to coaching has changed:

“The biggest thing that has changed for me — and you might be shocked when I say this — is that I’ve actually become, through the years and through the experiences, a lot less outcome-oriented and a lot more process-oriented. I think that approach carries over to the players because then they become less outcome-oriented, and they’re more focused on process, they’re more focused on one play at a time, exactly what do I have to do and how do I have to do it, what’s going to help me be successful here, and they’re not looking at the scoreboard like we’ve got to win the game. They’re focusing on one play at a time.”

King then continued:

“I think that reminds me so much of what Drew Brees told me a couple of years ago, when I asked him what advice he’d have for your quarterbacks. In effect, Brees said, Ignore the scoreboard. Think about making every play the best it can be. Worrying about the scoreboard distracts from the only thing you can control—the next play. Great advice for football, and for life.”

And great advice for us writers.

The scoreboard for us is when the book is published and some of us might obsess about Amazon reviews or how our book is doing with readers. All things we cannot control and over which we have zero power.

To keep the football analogy going, the next play for us writers could be something as small as the next chapter or as large as the next book. Keep your focus localized to your own work and let the scoreboard take care of itself.

Because every now and then, you’ll fumble the ball and produce a book folk won’t enjoy even if you loved it and poured your heart into it. But at the same time, there will be those days when you publish a story everyone loves and the confetti will cascade down from the rafters.

Be mindful of both moments.

Once More With Feeling

Writers out there know the feeling of finishing the first draft. A sense of exhilaration. You did a thing! A pretty remarkable thing at that. From flash to thousand page epics, finishing a piece is an achievement.

Until it isn't.

You know what's next. Revision. Revision. Revision. All the work that turns a jagged piece of metal into a blade.

But what happens if the blade still isn't quite right?

What happens when the revision's shitty big brother shows up? The dreaded rewrite.

I've found myself in that pit a handful of times since being published and each time has been equally difficult and exhilarating. Here's a few things that have not only kept my sanity, but made the process just a little easier.

1) Darlings? What darlings? 

It's all fair game, my friend. ALL OF IT. I don't care if you're in love with Supporting Character C or with your A plot. It can all go and you need to make peace with that. You're building a new story from the ground up using ELEMENTS of what came before. Now, can those elements be entire chapters or passages? Sure. You still need to remember that a rewrite means this should be a whole new book. Changing POV, tense, themes, etc are all in play. The good news is the book you're tearing apart is effectively the best working outline you've ever written. Lean into that and you'll write an entirely new book in just a little over a month (fueled entirely by alcohol, self-loathing, crippling imposter syndrome, an a chip on your back the size of Tallahassee, but I digress...)

2) This is still a first draft. Act like it.

An extension of the themes from above. You're not beholden to anything, not even yourself. If you have wild, new ideas, go for it. Entirely new characters? Now is the time. Discover a theme you never saw before? Sprint head first into it. Don't treat this as another revision. You're doing something new and it can be used to draw that enthusiasm out of you that the revision would normally crush into a fine powder.

3) Learn how to take editing notes and turn them into collaborative opportunities.

I LOVE notes. Seriously, whether it's from a friend, my agent, or an editor, notes are not knocks. Every single one is an opportunity for me to talk about my story and my perspective with others willing to provide me with their precious time and perspective. In my mind, a note means there's something that needs to be addressed in the story. Even if it's simply a clarifying sentence, it's important to remember notes aren't negative. Get past your ego and talk things through. I've taken notes, bypassed them, and come up with entirely new ideas with the note giver in minutes simply because I've recognized the value of collaboration and taking criticism in stride.

4) Know your limits.

The bad news: sometimes the rewrite doesn't work either. The good news: you did not waste your time. Take the lessons you can into your next project or next rewrite. You've learned so much from the work whether you realize it or not. Use those lessons to key into opportunities for improvement. Did the project suffer because of multiple shifts in perspective? Were the story beats not quite working right? Try to see where you faltered and work the weaker muscles in other ways. Write a short story to help improve word economy. Write monologues to help with dialogue rhythm. A rewrite is a massive chance to really improve your craft, even if it only leaves you with a clearer perception of your weaknesses.

So, as I move into revising this entire novel rewrite I started back in April, I keep these things in mind. We're never quite done, but it doesn't mean we have to let the hard parts beat us up. 

Get back to writing.

The Art of The Promo

This week's rant will 100% NOT be about selling your books. Sorry, we all know the best way to do that is to spam strangers via DM. That's how King did it and that's how all of us should do it.

Moving on.

No, what I'm talking about is something I learned from professional wrestling: the promo. In wrestling, a promo is short for "promotional interview", a dialogue or monologue used to advance a story line. For anyone unfamiliar with wrestling, but familiar with guys like Hulk Hogan, these were the segments where all his veins popped out his neck and he called everyone 'brother'.

The promo, while entirely about conveying a story as broad as humanly possible (and really, just to sell tickets) is still a storytelling tool. That said, it is an incredibly POWERFUL storytelling tool. That broad scope. The simple to understand motivations, the very distinct line between the good guy and the bad guy - all vital tools to help you build out not only your own stories, but mostly importantly, your characters.

Now, I know a lot of folks look down at professional wrestling and at times, rightfully so, but I'm the type of person that not only enjoys the medium, but I've found opportunities to help my own writing via the use of storytelling within the medium (the violence itself is a big help for writing action, but that's for another rant).

So why is the promo helpful (to me)? Think about a promo as sort of a character sheet. Quite often, these performers need to leverage these shouty speeches as a means of not only selling the show but selling their character. Each iteration of these promos needs to not only be as accessible as possible, but they need to somehow carry a story along with them. At it's very base nature, the promo is both extremely simplistic but can become nuanced enough to build an entire character from.

Take our 80s icon above. You might remember the Hulkster was all about prayers and vitamins and all that junk, but beyond all the jingoistic nonsense and corporate morality, you can gain a pretty quick idea of who our hero is supposed to be. Is it cliche? Holy shit yes, but it's still a character sheet and the character is telling the story.

Which is why I'm a fan of using promos when I'm building characters. It's one thing to write out a background for a character, but it's another thing to let them speak for themselves. A monologue conveying my characters' motivations and emotions about the story they are about to embark on can be immensely helpful not just in giving the character depth but in discovering their voice. Trust me; you haven't lived until you paced in your office and read off three paragraphs as a character simply stating what they want, why the want it, and what they will do to get it - loudly. You'll spot contradictions, find the seeds of larger motivations and character arcs, and opportunities to explore headier concepts.

Just don't work yourself into a shoot, brother.

Google it.

Angel Luis Colón is the Derringer and Anthony Award nominated writer of 5 books including his latest novel HELL CHOSE ME. In his down time, he’s edited an anthology or two, hosted a podcast, helped edit the flash fiction site Shotgun Honey, and has taken up bread baking during the pandemic because why the hell not?

Keep up with him on Twitter via @GoshDarnMyLife

What Is Your MVWC?

by

Scott D. Parker

How do you keep going?  On anything. 

If you're a runner, you lace up the shoes, don your favorite running clothes, maybe grab your phone for some music, and head out the door. If you're a student, you keep studying. If you're lawyer or doctor or just about anything, you just keep doing the thing you either trained to do or are getting paid to do.

So why do we writers and other creative types fall off the wagon? 

There are countless posts--like this one--talking about how we writers get thrown off our game. Sometimes the forces are external and uncontrollable. Often, however, they are self-inflicted. We sleep in and miss that 5am writing time. We might always write at night, but the day job took everything out of us and we'd rather just watch TV or do nothing. No brain use tonight, thank you very much.

It happens. It always happens. It's like Houston summers, New York winters, and rain in London. The thing you expect always, always happens. 

What To Do About It?

Okay, so it happens. We writers lose our mojo for whatever reason. How do you get it back when you've been thrown off the horse. Get back on the horse. 

Ah, but that's easier said than done. Why? 

One reason might be that we remember how the mojo felt on our last project. Remember that feeling, when everything was aligned and your fingers could barely keep up with the images in your brain? I've had that feeling and it is like a drug. It's intoxicating. What we always forget about that project were the slow times, the beginning, the part where you had to pause and sort out plot points, and when you struggled with that one stupid chapter.

But you got your mojo back and sailed across the finish line to The End. And, most likely, we celebrated with something bubbly and decided to take a break. 

That's not what I'm talking about today. I think breaks are a necessary part of the creative life. Angel said the same thing on Wednesday. What I'm talking about is getting back your mojo. And that brings me to MVWC.

What is MVWC?

I think we're all familiar with the concept of a Minimum Viable Product. It's the phase in the development of a product or service where the inventor can start selling the thing even though all the bugs are not yet ironed out. The MVP can also be called the 1.0 Version. Early adopters love this stuff because you can say "I  was there when X was just out." Same is true for the early careers of actors, musicians, writers, and other creatives.

When it comes to us writers, we can use the same concept. What is the minimum word count I need to get back my mojo?

[Keep this bookmark right here in mind. You'll need it at the end of this post.]

The Minimum Viable Word Count, the MVWC, is the word count you can easily achieve without even breaking a sweat. The kind you can type in fifteen minutes or thirty or an hour each day you are working on a project. Because, as we all know, words on a page are words out of your head. We can fix them later, but forward progress was made and the momentum builds. When that happens, we have our mojo back and we can soar through the clouds and get to The End.

I think the MVWC is a key metric you'll need when you get back on the writing horse or after a break or when a project's really thrown you for a loop. You're irritated, you don't know where the story's going, you don't really know how to begin. So you reach for your MVWC and do the bare minimum. It is forward progress. You will feel better. And, soon, the MVWC will rise and grow and the mojo takes over and you hold on for the ride.

But the MVWC itself. That's what you have to find for yourself. For some, it might be 250 words. Maybe 500. If you do NaNoWriMo in November, that daily word count is 1,667 words per day to achieve 50,000 in a month.

A lot of times for me, it's 1,000 words per day. I often keep track of a story's progress by using a spreadsheet. I have it coded with a baseline number and it automatically color codes the numbers green (if I achieve my goal) or red (if I fall short).

That’s all well and good for when you are in the groove, however. What about getting started? Ah, that’s for you to determine. What’s your MVWC you need to reach each day you’re writing a story so that you’ll feel a sense of accomplishment? 

Whatever that number is, make it reasonable, easily achievable, and sustainable. Some writers might up their MVWC to a higher number, a goal they can’t reach consistently unless everything goes right. And, come on: how many days do we live through that are perfect? 

Keep the MVWC sustainable or you’ll burn out and then you’ll start back behind square one.

Remember that bookmark earlier in this post? I wrote the start of this post on my lunch break, in a conference room, with just me and my Chromebook. I was time-limited after eating so I set a stopwatch and timed myself. In 15 minutes, I wrote 477 words, give or take. So roughly 500 words in 15 minutes. One could extrapolate from there.

Now, when I’m getting back on the writing wagon, it’s always slow going. And I’m almost always time-limited be it part of the 5am writing session or the lunch hour one. I rarely have a long stretch of dedicated writing time so I have to adjust my MVWC.

Now that I’ve been writing this piece, I think my MVWC is around 500. That’s easily achievable in 30 minutes or less. I can blow way past it when I’m flying yet I can struggle to get there when the story’s mired in molasses. But it is consistently achievable and sustainable. When I log off at 5:55am or after lunch, I can always walk a little taller and with a smile on my face when I’ve hit my MVWC.

The Big Pause

A writer always writes.

That's a crock of shit. 

I'm a big fan of taking breaks. It's something I learned to do when I got into running - knowing when it's time to let the muscles and tendons relax and heal up. That rest prevents injury or burn out. It helps you bounce back for the next big run in a better way. 

I'm coming off the longest time I've ever spent without writing in nearly decade - three weeks - and you know what?

It feels good. 

Not to write again or to find the rhythm I miss, that's obvious. It simply felt good not to write. I read. I got my affairs in order (of which there were many). I concentrated on everything but writing and it was a relief. That relief, as I sit here typing about it, translates to a better mental state. I'm not feeling stressed as I type these words. I'm not thinking about other projects or items in the pipeline that I need to be patient about because its simply not time to deal with them.

We need to be allowed to stop. To understand when we're reaching a breaking point and take the time to ensure our health, be it physical or mental, is taken care of. Especially relevant with recent Olympic and tennis headlines, no? If even the elite among us can be hurt by overworking; shouldn't we begin acknowledging that NOT writing is just as beneficial as the act of writing?

If you know me, though, you know I'm also not the biggest fan of catch-all advice. If grinding away works for you, by all means, grind. I'd just consider giving yourself a day even. A little time to simply not write. To be the anti-writer. Go read. Take a walk. Rest those muscles.

Then come back and grind away again. No time to be lazy.

100 Days: The Summer of Productivity

by

Scott D. Parker

Here in the US, every new president is judged by what he does in his first one hundred days. It harkens back to 1933 when Franklin Roosevelt entered office in the midst of the Great Depression and accomplished a dizzying amount of laws and regulations in a little over three months. Every subsequent president is measured by that same yardstick even though most haven't experienced the dire circumstances FDR faced. Still, everyone does it and it has become standard. In fact, it shaped President Biden's early agenda, with his administration's efforts all focused on that date.

For us creatives, having bookends by which to measure our creativity is also a good thing, but how often do we start something on any given day and then have to mark a calendar at our desired end point? Often, we literally count days on a paper calendar and do the math in our heads.

But summers provide us with obvious an obvious beginning and an obvious ending. Memorial Day kicks off the summer vibe while Labor Day concludes it. What happens in between is defined as 'summer.' It doesn't matter that summer's heat extends--at least here in Houston--into September and October. What matters is a codifed set of days that counts as perhaps the best time of the year. Yeah, the holiday season is great, too, and it is the most wonderful time of the year, but over the past decade or so, I have really started to enjoy summer. The low-key vibe, the refreshing cocktails, the grilling of anything, the summer movie blockbusters, the beach reads. It's just a great time to kick back and just take it easy.

It is also a time to work and be productive.

For those of us for whom their creative job is second to a day job, our productivity is parceled out among our day job responsibilities. It's why I wake in the 5am hour on weekdays to write and, when I'm at the office, write during lunch on my Chromebook. While doing the creative thing isn't that different during the summer than any other time of year, with a definate beginning and end, the summer season has, by default, a running clock. A countdown if you will. Labor Day can be your deadline. It's real and set in stone and everyone knows it.

So that's why I have, in the past few years, used summer as a time of greater productivity. Often I start and end something fresh. This year, however, I'm still laboring over my current work in progress, so the primary goal of summer 2021 is to complete that manuscript. And publish my next novel. 

Those are my tentpole objectives in the Summer of 2021.

What are yours?

Note: You get a 100 days if you start today. It's 99 if you start tomorrow and 98 if you start Monday. I'm not counting Labor Day as a work day. That'll be a day of celebration for completing that which you accomplished this summer.

A Different Kind of Writing Block

by
Scott D. Parker

How often do you restart a novel you’ve set aside?

I am an obsessive saver of things when it comes to my writing. I’ve got paper and digital notes all over the place. Most of the time, I date them so that I can have a record of a novel’s progress. Perhaps it’s the historian in me who wants to catalog every step of a process.

I keep abandoned drafts as well, again, both in paper and digital. Sometimes, I return to these fragments and pick them up to see if I can use them. For the ones that get a second life, there’s generally two philosophies on new usage: edit what you wrote or write the entire thing from scratch.

It’s a safe assumption that however long the document has remained unused, you’ve become a better writer. There have been times in which I’ve returned to a piece, read it, and was shocked that my Younger Self thought it was good. Other times I’ve re-read something and nodded my head having been reminded I can string some words together in a nice manner.

I’ve been thinking about this most of this month as my first writing project in 2021 is to restart a novel I’ve set aside more than once. Back in 2013, I wrote the entire novel that summer. It was a bloated affair, but it was complete. In fact, it was the second manuscript I ever completed, but it needed work.

In the past few years, I picked it up and created a 2.0 version but it didn’t pan out either. I had an amalgamated 3.0 version consisting of about 23,000a words and that was what I started with on New Year’s Day 2021. I nipped and tucked, tweaked and expanded the story until I reached about the 19,000-word mark. That’s when things went off the rails.

What the heck had I written? Seriously, Scott, you call that good?

No, it wasn’t. It needed some serious work.

That work was not easy. I had the actual prose printed out in front of me. I had the revised story structure via notecards next to me as well. How to reconcile?

My 5am writing sessions are limited to about 60-70 minutes. I have a hard stop where I put aside the fiction writing in favor of getting ready for the day job. I also don’t return to the fiction until the next day’s 5am writing session.

This particular section tasked me for about four days. Originally, I tried to simply read and edit and add in new words in and around the old words, but that proved too slow. My 2021 brain and writing chops would start going off on tangents I didn’t expect.

That was when I realized the 2021 Writing Brain was taking over. And I let it.

In the end, I ended up rewriting most of the chapter from scratch. It is a much better chapter than before and I’m pretty jazzed about it.

This particular section was a hurdle for me. I kept banging my head on it and it wasn’t until I allowed the skill and experience I acquired in the years since I first wrote the original prose to take over that the hurdle was surpassed.

It was a wonderful relief.

Do you have experiences like this? Do you give way when your more experienced self intuitively knows what to do to fix and old piece you wrote?