W3 - 1000 Words/Day

Here’s what I’ve learned so far…

Writing consistently every single day is fucking hard.

Now, I know what my problem is…

On one hand, sometimes I open up the blank page without a plan. No plot points. No beats. No outline.

I’m pantsing it in writer talk. And frankly, pure pantsing is kinda a dumb idea. Or it just doesn’t work for me.

Another thing I do (that’s just as painful) is the “seed idea” and write strategy. That’s where I have an image and a vague idea and I just go.

This is what I mostly did in Garage Fiction 1.0.

And this method of writing is slow and tortuous because what I end up doing is writing one or two sentence, hit a wall where I need to research, Google it, go off on tangents, then come back, write another sentence maybe, hit yet another blockade like geography or mechanism or names of things… go and Google that, and so on and so forth.

Back in Garage Fiction 1.0, one thousand words took four to six hours.

I was literally building a new world, plus character, plus somewhat of a plot each and every week.

This is a terrible idea for long term writing.

I don’t think I’m a pure plotter — someone who plans out every event in a story — but the best times where the writing flowed was where I had at least six to eight beats for a scene written down.

And as I work on this longer story I’ve been writing since the first of the year… I’m starting to make a clear distinction of what kind of writer I am.

I don’t think I’m a “Vomit-And-Clean-Up” type of guy. I can do that for copy, journaling and rants.

In other words, I don’t start with a big chunk of marble and chip away to get my David.

With fiction, I think I’m an “Accretive Writer”.

I start with broad strokes. I add spare actions and minimal dialogue. Then I flesh out more interior monologue, description and add micro-tension wherever again.

At least… that’s what I’ve experienced so far in the first fourteen days. Talk to me again in two weeks. Maybe it’ll be different again.

Which brings up something Bryan sent over to Olivia and me after we announced our 1k/d goal. It’s a litereactor article where Annie Neugebauer just pulled the same stunt in 2016.

The biggest lesson I got out of it was this:

“When it became more beneficial for me to break my goal than keep it, I had to allow myself to do that without considering it a failure.”

Now, obviously, I haven’t broken my 1k/day goal in any way, shape or form yet…

But I’m starting to wonder.

What happens when I’m done with this story I’m working on?

Do I randomly pick one of my GFP 1.0 seeds (my old 1,000 flash fiction stories) and run with them? That’s a good idea. But what if I want to do something new?

And I’m starting to think… maybe character studies and draft outlines where it’s half-prose, half-stage directions and half-telling is OK for my 1k/d goal.

After all, I work best when I can create scaffolding to build on.

One of the biggest hurdles both Olivia and I share with our previous fiction writing is a lack of depth in our protagonists and characters in general.

I seem to imagine vast worlds with all the systems, processes and logistics worked out in my mind. I have interesting and sometimes dark and disturbing “what if scenarios”. I have, on occasion, written an evocative turn-of-phrase.

But none of those things, as I’ve learned the difficult way, amounts to a STORY.

Stories are driven by deep, dimensionalized CHARACTERS and their conflict in a plot.

So is it cheating if I write 1,000 words of backstory of my main character and tell the story of how they got to where they are, what their secret subconscious psychological need is, why they act the way they do and all their broken relationships?

I don’t think so.

I’m rambling again. It’s time to get back to work.

Be seeing you… ☣

Signing off,

Jinn Zhong

P.S. Hey, if you got any whatsoever from reading my rambling here, I’d appreciate if you forward it to your writer friends. You don’t have to blast your Facebook or Twitter. Just one friend who you think would find this useful too. (Even though I would appreciate the social media stuff too).

P.P.S. What are you reading? I promise next journal entry won’t be as heavy. I’m halfway through “Girl on a Train” already. It’s great compelling fiction that doesn’t tax me. The total opposite of Thien and Atwood.