You know how, when you reflect on your life, there are a few key insights that stand out as true game-changers? Only a few, mind you. Not many things make that lifetime list. But I think I've found one recently.
Writing Adventures
The Prisoner’s Apprentice took me a whopping 20 years to write. After its publication, I realized that I needed to significantly improve my writing process if I wanted to release another book this decade.
So, in the past couple of years, I relied on my core strength: learning. I delved into over a dozen books on plotting and structure, enrolled in at least as many courses on writing process and revision, and explored almost every article and YouTube video available on the subject. I believed that by filling my mind with as much knowledge as possible, I would eventually find the optimal solution.
However, the outcome felt more like the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy providing the nonsensical answer of 42. Stuck in the labyrinth of attempting to replicate everyone else’s approach, I lost sight of my own.
Last January, I sat down hoping to finish a draft of book one in eight weeks. It took me eight months instead. Worse, I only reached the end through sheer grit, forcing myself to show up every day and make words.
Now, don’t get me wrong, resilience and dedication are key parts of any long-form writing project. Just like you wouldn’t expect to run a marathon and love every mile, sadly, writing a novel is not all cute coffee shops and fountain pens. But if I couldn’t enjoy at least some of the miles along the way, I also knew I wouldn’t be a marathoner for long.
When that draft was finally complete, I was relieved but not elated. I knew there was the core of a great story in there, but I also knew it was still so much stronger in my head than on the page. And I had a feeling that grit alone was never going to produce anything better.
So I tried something pretty radical. I let all the learning go. Bye-bye Save the Cat Writes a Novel and Story Genius and The Story Grid and many more besides. Every one of them is a truly great book that I recommend highly. Every one has a useful way to dissect a story’s structure. But every one of them was teaching the analytical side of my brain how to approach a story, not the creative side. That meant I was neither trusting nor leveraging my deeper, darker, more chaotic, more compelling, and shockingly smarter subconscious.
I stopped looking outside for the answers and looked inside.
Instead of editing chapter one, I started over. From scratch (!) This time, instead of forcing an agenda, I gave my mind the chance to tell me where we would go, to take what time it felt we needed, and to indulge whatever process it asked for.
It told me it didn’t care what Anne Lamott said. It didn’t want to write a sh*tty first draft. So I let it eschew all the prevailing wisdom and (gasp) edit as it went, merge writing and research phases together, and to consider time spent thinking equal to outputting words. I gave it the option to follow the outline, but not a hard requirement.
The result was the most fun I’ve had writing in years. I was able to sink so deeply into the scene that I could feel the bitter cold of Marblehead in January, and hear the crunch of snow under my button boots.
And when I compared the new chapter one with the earlier draft, it was ten-fold better. No—more than that. It was a whole different universe better. I was super proud of it even in first draft form.
So I tried the same for chapter two. Then three. And now just four weeks later, I’ve finished a 40,000-word novella that I truly love. I’ll still plenty of editing and publishing prior to publication, but that’s only to add icing. The exciting thing is, I feel like the cake could stand alone.
So there it is. One of my very few lifetime insights, but one that feels truly game-changing.
Slowing down allowed me to have more fun and massively improved the quality of the work. But totally unexpectedly, slowing down also sped me up.
Finally, finally, I feel like I have the right process foundations for me, in alignment with my particular brain structure. It’s not the best way for other people to write. It’s probably not the best way for you to write. But it is the best way for me to write.
I think of it a bit like how I finally realized in my forties that at 5’2”, I was never going to rock a maxi dress. No matter what might grace the cover of Vogue this month, I decided I’d wear what my miniature legs were built for instead: mini skirts. Same for writing. There’s no single right way to write any more than there’s one outfit that looks universally good on everyone.
I’m still glad I read all those books. I’m sure they’ve fed my subconscious well, so I’ll call it a long-term investment in my writing career. But at this stage, I won’t be looking outside for answers nearly as much as inside.
Now I’ve got some more fun fiction to work on!
Fair winds,
Cheyenne
P.S. The full list of novel plotting books I tore through in the past two years just to prove the depths of my obsessive nature: Save the Cat Writes a Novel, Take Off Your Pants!, The Story Grid, Wired for Story, Blueprint for a Book, Story Genius, Anatomy of Story, Anatomy of Genres, Story Shapes, The Snowflake Method, W Plot, Save the Cat Writes a Young Adult Novel, and Writing Into the Dark.
0 comments