Reflection
In January, I committed to seriously pursuing writing fiction as a long-term vocation. I’ve written since I was young, and had periodic years where I put serious effort into improving my writing and publishing, but have always set storytelling aside. I’ve struggled with the usual sense of inadequacy, the internalized idea it’s not a “worthwhile” pursuit or that there’s “more important” things I should focus on, and genuinely needing to overcome some challenges in my life first. But I’ve always loved writing, felt compelled to write, and it’s the one thing I know I can stick with for the rest of my life and give my all, so that’s what I’m going to do.
Looking around, I see people develop at different rates, and compared to many of my peers, I have been a slow grower. But, we all start from different places, and life has thrown me a couple extraordinary curve-balls. It took me about 30 years to sort out my priorities, and I used to worry about falling behind, about “proving myself.” But nearing my thirties, something shifted in my brain to perceive, more patiently, a different time scale. Now, I think in terms of being in it for the long haul. My goal is to have written ten novels by 2035, and maybe published one of them. It feels good to be patient with myself and give myself the time I need to actually learn this craft. I’ll be a sloth or a snail, just enjoying the doing—“I wake to sleep and take my waking slow.”
It was a challenging start to this commitment this year, because I also started working two jobs, sometimes 60 hours a week. But I have been extremely disciplined about how I use my remaining time. On work days, I tend to either study a story or writing textbook, or work on a shorter piece or exercise. Fortunately, looking back on creative writing and education courses I took in undergrad, and my own teaching experience, I’ve been able to design what I think is a pretty good syllabus for the year, which I continue to adapt and develop as I learn more. On off-days or days I only work a single job, I write 4-12 hours. Although entering this next half ofthe year, I’m cutting back because I do have a tendency to go too hard and see diminishing gains. Now I’m trying to keep it around 2-4 hours of writing a day, plus study hours. Rest and doing other stuff is important, not just for recovery and strength, but because the subconscious plays such a role in writing and needs unstructured time and space to foment, as well as new experiences to draw from.
I figure that, if I continue to work consistently and keep study widely and deeply, there’s no way I can’t be at least decent at storytelling after ten years. I have reached mastery of only a few things before, not even mastery but just being roundly competent, like getting to the point in tennis as a kid where I could compete for and actually win first place. It felt amazing. Not the winning, but the sheer possession of the craft, the deep thrill of being really very good at something. The special joy you can get out of life when you know something backwards and forwards to the point you can actually begin to innovate in the field. That’s where I want to get with writing stories. The failure for me now is if I don’t follow through, not if I never become a genius or get recognized or rich (ha!) from writing.
Of course, I’d still also love to be recognized, and to make some money from writing. That’s another thing I used to feel embarrassed about admitting, but I’m kind of done trying to impress people, I prefer to just be honest about everything. I write because I have things I want to share with other people. I want to give people a good story, relief from suffering, connection with others, useful ideas, and assistance in noticing certain beautiful things. And my life would be a lot easier and more enjoyable if I could make a living from it too, so that I could truly put all my best hours into production, doing what I love. That’s the dream.
For now, I will do my little writing exercises and write my shabby, deranged little first drafts, and hopefully start to make some writing buddies along the way, because this would be even more fun with company.
2024 Stats – 6 Month Progress Report
+ I got a poem accepted for upcoming publication in my favorite magazine, Strange Horizons (!). While I’m learning to write stories now, I’m still trying to work on poetry while I can.
+ Outlined and completed 8 chapters of a romance novel based on study of a particular niche and market. However, I decided the goal of completing a novel was one I needed to fail for now. The more practice the better at this novice stage. I can complete a lot more short stories in a year and probably learn more from that than from completing a single novel, so I pivoted to short stories starting in February.
+ I finished 8 short stories out of 14 projects. It took me a couple months to learn I needed to focus on finishing everything I start. Since then, I’ve finished everything, even though these endings are predictably abysmal, because… I haven’t been practicing endings, since I haven’t been finishing things.
+ I published 5 blog posts, including 2 book reviews (and this post :P). I also wrote a number of essays/analyses/blog posts for private reflection and learning/practice, but was selective about what I published here.
+ I developed a syllabus and disciplined practice for learning to write stories as well as a 5 year plan for moving forward with writing. This may actually be the best achievement of all, because it’s allowed me to make incremental, actual progress that I can track and know I’m not floundering.
+ I read 40 books, far more books in 6 months than I probably read in the past 3 years (below).
The biggest lessons I ‘ve learned so far about learning to write stories
1. FINISH what I start. No matter how terrible and ridiculous it makes the story, give the story a conclusion. Also applies to study–work through one textbook or story analysis at a time. Embrace that you are a beginner, that this story isn’t going to be good, that everything is practice for a much longer-term goal.
2. Set goals and steps to meet those goals, and reflect regularly (at least once a week) on progress towards the goal.
3. Break down other peoples’ stories and write in imitation of them for practice. I think this is the most effective learning strategy I’ve tried so far. Textbooks can help give you broad overviews of story structure, or different techniques, but the active/constructive learning that occurs when you break down a story yourself, then try to apply it to writing your own story, really sticks and improves your writing the most. Across history, artists learned through direct imitation of the masters. When you read something more than once, break it down and analyze it, and try to write in imitation of it, you really lock in the information and learn in a way you don’t retain just reading stuff passively. Had to learn to read for writing.
4. Similarly, when stumped, study more. Feeling stuck or “writer’s block” is often a case of simply trying to summon stuff up out of thin air, instead of going out and finding the information you need to move forward. When I haven’t known how to proceed, it was usually because I either didn’t actually know enough about the art of writing a story, or I hadn’t fleshed out my characters, concept, etc. enough to project what would happen next (often a combination of both). Here, studying how other authors have handled an issue is again helpful, as well as becoming more knowledgeable about my limits, what I’m actually capable of writing at this level, etc.
5. General technique stuff. Not gonna list it all out here. Just the base matter you have to accumulate as a beginner, a chaotic blend of information and half-baked ideas and dawning awareness of things you don’t yet understand, which the coming years of further practice will refine into something meaningful.
6. A grounded perspective. Working at a book store has been really helpful to give me a humbling, but also encouraging sense of perspective about the business/publishing side of writing, and who readers are. I’ve seen how books come and go on the shelves, with even great writers eventually circulated off to make way for the new big thing, and it’s made me realize that like everything else in life, the world of books is actually in a constant state of change. Just because someone is big right now doesn’t mean it will last forever, and just because someone is small right now doesn’t mean that, after another twenty years or publishing five more books, they don’t become huge. It’s helped me plan the rest of life accordingly, understanding I won’t be able to make a living writing fiction (at least not any time soon), and to stop seeing the options as “failure” or “famous” and instead as “all you can do is work consistently, love the work itself, and hope for good fortune.” Working with a lot of different readers (coworkers and customers), has also given me a better grasp of audiences, trends, marketing, commerciality, and the need to factor these into writing I want to make money from, when I get to that point.
Maybe I’ll check in again at the end of the year and see what’s changed. I feel like it took me this long just to kind of figure out what my process needed to look like, learning strategies and resources, how to organize my time for this, etc. so hopefully the next six months will show a slightly accelerated progress!
Books I’ve read so far this year
NB: Many of these I “read”—listened to, actually—thanks in large part to audiobooks via Libby, since many days I have 2-3 hours of cumulative commute time.
Jeff VanderMeer – Southern Reach Trilogy (while it remains a trilogy), Hummingbird Salamander, and Borne
Tamsyn Muir – The Locked Tomb trilogy (pending book four)
Asimiov – Left Hand of the Electron
A. K. Larkwood – The Unspoken Name
Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows – The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society
Aimee Lim – Spindle of Fate
Arkady Martyne – A Memory Called Empire
Sarah J. Maas – A Court of Thorns & Roses
Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone – This Is How You Lose the Time War
Ted Chiang – Exhalation
Sayaka Murata – Convenience Store Woman
Rachel Harrison – Cackle
Ann Leckie – the Imperial Radch trilogy
Hiron Ennes – Leech
Meg Cabot – Enchanted to Meet You
Mira Grant – Kingdom of Needle and Bone
Lisa Jewell – None of This is True
Catriona Ward – Sundial
Gillian Flynn – The Grownup
Melissa Marr – Remedial Magic
Lana Harper – In Charm’s Way
Larry Brooks – Story Engineering
Gwen Hayes – Romancing the Beat
Thich Nhat Hahn – The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching
Agustina Bazterrica – Tender is the Flesh
Jack Woodford – Plotting for Every Kind of Writing
Kate Wilhelm – Storyteller
Carlo Rovelli – Helgoland
H. P. Lovecraft – The Shadow Over Innsmouth
Ryu Murakami – Piercing
Ralph Bauer – An Inca Account of the Conquest of Peru
Jane Goodall – The Book of Hope
AUSTIN DEWAR 