*sighs*

1: try to write it shitty anyway

2: if successful, proceed as far as possible, preferably all the way thru the draft

3: if progress is clearly being held back by how shitty the work that's already done is, go back and refresh it.

4: don't beat yourself up. Just pick the option that will help you feel good about what you're doing

lol so I was talking to one of my coworkers today about writing and like. he's not a writer, but he was doing his best to relate, so he was all like "yeah it really sucks when you sink, like, 30 hours into something, and then you realize you still have to do more. Like, I play the guitar, and sometimes I'll play that long and then realize that I haven't even gotten any better."

And like, putting aside the apples to oranges comparison there, it got me thinking about exactly how much time I do sink into a singular writing project, if we put aside all the time I spent getting to my current skill level to begin with, or the time invested in reading so I can stay inspired.

If I've got a consistent writing habit, I can reliably do 5k words in about 7 hrs of work, spread out throughout a day. My average manuscript comes out to about 120k words in total. Plus, I've so far always done at least two revisions by re-writing the majority of it from scratch. That usually goes faster--maybe more like 12k in 7 hrs if you average out with the sections that don't need to be re-written.

So. 120k divided by 5k is 24 total 7hr days of work. Meaning, the first draft is worth about 168hrs of work, assuming progress is happening fairly easily the whole time. The next two drafts will be 10 7hr days each, so 70 hrs. 168hrs+70hrs+70hrs is 303 hours in order to get a draft that can now enter the beta stage, assuming I'm satisfied with the third draft. My day job is 35hrs/week, so if i was doing this like it was my job, that would be about 2 months.

And tbh my math is absolutely insane now that I look at it, because if you assume those numbers that means you can get a 120 page manuscript to the beta stage in 44 continual days of work and ffwehrhwegv what. Never in my life. Most likely I wouldn't be in a good flow for most of the drafting process. My words per hour could be half that number part of the time. This also isn't including the time spent planning, daydreaming, and worldbuilding for the story. Sinking 600+ hours on a single project before anyone even sees it in its entirety is the most realistic situation tbqh. This really is what they mean when they say that writing is a lifestyle and a labor of love and not a job.

Anyway I cackled in my coworker's face

I just remembered that the most life-saving hack I learned while writing essays in college was to change the color of the text for each argument so I could rearrange and mark transitions more easily

And now I'm wondering if perhaps I could keep track of things like the Chekhov's gun moving around by coloring places where it's mentioned it in the draft? Or, color-coding dialogue for each character if I'm having a hard time with consistent characterization?

Idk, possibilities seem endless

My thing is I'm definitely going to write the self-indulgent garbage but I'll also almost definitely get bored or annoyed by it during revision, so. It'll be gone before you see it.

But it was there at one point and that's on my word

GMC: What it is and Why it Helps You Write

Not me suddenly remembering I wanted to make this post like 3 months later, lol. GMC is very much going to be a familiar concept for y'all, but the vital piece to remember is that each of the three elements are equally important and one should never be prioritized over the others. If you've ever found yourself not quite getting the mileage you were hoping for out of tracking these elements, it's probably because you were only focused on one at a time.

(Credit where it's due: if you want the original you can still find Debra Dixon's book "GMC" from the 90's for sale second-hand.)

To business. GMC stands for:

G: Goals.

M: Motivation.

C: Conflict.

So obvious, I hear you say. Who has not heard someone say your story needs conflict? Who has not heard that characters need motivation? I agree, it's both talked-about and intuitive. I'm not making the case for why goals, motivations, and conflicts are important, because you can easily get that elsewhere, or just reflect on it yourself. I have but one simple ask: if literally anything goes wrong in your story and it appears to be 1. bad characterization, 2. bad pacing, and/or 3. you have no idea wht the fuck is wrong, make all 3 elements together (goal, motivation, conflict) your very first consideration. Go through all 3 for each of the characters who are most involved as well as overall scenes until you find yourself satisfied. The way you can save time worrying when fixing the foundation makes other elements fall into place--I TELL you.

But here's the kicker, and the tidbit that nobody likes to agree with: every character in every scene and sometimes characters who are NOT in the scene but are acting on it need pat GMCs. That is three different elements that have to be coherent with each other and individually satisfying in thousands if not tens of thousands of instances in just a short novel, as well as working over arcs and over the span of the story.

"Jesus," i hear you say, "fuck. That is way too much effort. Absolutely not." I hear you. Can you imagine if Brandon Sanderson put that kind of time investment into his books? Just sat down and thought through every instance where GMC is at work? Good thing he doesn't need to--in fact, the quality of the work is probably better if he doesn't waste his time like that. Same goes for you.

Do I sound like I'm contradicting myself? I am not. Hear me out.

Simply by following the guiding light that is "make it engaging and interesting," you are intuitively pursuing good GMC. As in, if things are going well, you don't need to think about it at all. However, because you recognize that some sort of goal, motivation, or conflict is in question at literally every moment of the story, that provides you with a starting point to work from in any instance where you're unsure or dissatisfied while plotting or revising. Even problems that are genuinely issues with pacing or characterization are often easier to address from the perspective of GMC.

(I can do another post on how to prioritize which elements to look at first in a given scene if y'all want, but in general terms I start with the MC or most acting/acted-on character or the antagonist and I go thru their goals/motivations first and conflict second. Works for me across scales.)

If all three elements are not only logically coherent, but also interesting and nuanced, that is when all the other rules can be bent and broken. People who rely on heavy dialogue will forgive little to no dialogue. People who usually don't read your genre will be more likely to like it anyway. There's obviously things you can do to turn the readers off even when your GMC is shiny, golden and perfect, but you give yourself a lot of latitude when you have a well-formulated story. And you lose people who should adore your other elements if the GMC doesn't make sense. GMC are the three legs on your chair and they WILL make or break the readers' experience.

TL;DR: if you can tell something is wrong and it's hard to tell what, odds are high that going through the G M and C one by one will get you on the right track. Just don't prioritize one over the others.

What's that kind of writer's block where you're having a perfectly normal day and then u think about ur wip and it feels like you're slowly being crushed by the force of gravity at the bottom of the ocean. And then a week later everything is fine again. What's that called

sucks when you're a writer who prides themselves on having good rhythm. you're on draft 4.3 before you can tell if you're still a writer or if you've already devolved into an ant on stilts

Ok i got it. I'm so bothered by writers saying they had their experiences as readers negatively impacted by learning the mechanics of writing because 1. my experience is the exact opposite and 2. this yet again reveals a bad default relationship with writing "rules."

Because if you've learned that something is BAD (i.e. using adverbs), and you are now bothered whereas you had completely glazed over it before, that shows that the rule is wrong. You weren't bothered until you were TOLD to be bothered.

And that's why this whole thing is actually a net positive for so many people--because identifying a widespread "flaw" across different texts and genres means validating discontent that already existed. Further, it should identify why that thing results in discontent.

My example: accidental head-hopping. It's generally a source of annoyance because it causes confusion, and it causes other things to bother you more because now you've lost trust in the author. If it happens and you as the reader would've glazed right over it, then there's no issue, just keep having a good time. If it DID bother you, you don't end up feeling like you're the one who isn't reading carefully enough. It's a known slip-up. Your response is reasonable and expected.

That's also why prolific readers who have no intention of ever writing their own book start analyzing too, I think. It's basically self-defense against the habit of invalidating your own discontent.

On Mental Barriers (Again)

A thing that's often bombing around in my head every time I read books is this whole mentality writers get into sometimes where "this thing has to happen," usually for the plot or maybe for character development or the theme. And as a reader, I end up being like, yeah, well, the author had a need to write that thing happening. But they're assuming that I will persevere through it, and I don't have any obligation to do that, do I?

I think on some level being a writer and sharing the results involves a lot of trusting that some readers will get past whatever they don't like. Sometimes the "this thing has to happen" scene just isn't that problematic and the story can tolerate a little boring or stressful segment, no need to overthink it. Readers will DNF your book at whatever point they didn't like for any number of reasons outside of your control and mostly you should avoid taking it personally. It's fair to trust that a story with lulls will still find an appreciative audience.

...But other times, you just get this strong feeling that everyone involved is being dragged through a segment by their teeth, and why? When you think about it--like, really apply some unteathered creativity to it--it totally could've been replaced by something better.

I'm someone who puts a lot of stakes on the themes in my stories, and that puts me up against "it has to happen" scenes a lot. It's dangerous. Without realizing it I find I've started saying "X character has to have this evilness arc," but when I think about it, that turns out to be ridiculous. I picked for X to have that arc because I thought of it randomly midway into the planning process and it sounded fun. I could also have chosen to make Y be evil, or they could learn the lesson by observing the antagonists being evil. I could fuck around and pivot the theme a bit to better accommodate a more entertaining arc for X. So, if I go to actually write X being evil and it's a horrible experience, no more evil X. It's time to find a different option.

The main insight is that the reader shouldn't be getting dragged through the mud in a not fun way regardless of how much it makes the plot make sense, but my takeaway is freedom for the author, too. Does it really have to happen? Or are you just putting fake restraints on yourself?

Love it when I call it quits because I can't figure out what needs to happen next and the next morning I come back like. Nothing happens next this is obviously the end of the chapter. We're done here. We can move on.

The way I suddenly find I’m capable of writing 1k words in half an hour just as long as it’s my characters explaining the magic system through dialogue. And no other time

My flat characters aren't cardboard flat, they're more like... embossed leather flat. Like a book cover. Flat because they won't be getting much airtime, but you can kinda tell there's a little something inside that book, if we ever stopped to read it.

I'm not trying to write a mystery here it's just that there is NO possible way I could've revealed all that information at the front of the book.