Compartmentalizing goals | #126
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Hi, this is Celeste. I have been writing poems since 2017 and my low-fantasy crime novel Project Dylan since 2022.
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Two weeks have passed since the start of the new year. I have set ambitious goals, then I panicked and got overwhelmed. Typical of me. But I will try to solve that in this week letter.
Compartmentalizing goals
Finish Project Dylan draft 1
The problem with writing Project Dylan is that there is now version 2, 3 and 3.1. (And now I have got rid of version 3 because I was done solving some particular problems). But I still have half of the manuscript that I need to outline until I can proceed to finish the manuscript.
It was the meh feeling that got associated with the draft that keeps me not working on it. But we all know that the book does not write itself. So I am the only one who can do it. Nobody can do that for me.
I can try to use 15-minute writing sprint to get the ball rolling. Then I can try 30-minute and 50-minute ones to keep the momentum going.
If it still doesn’t work, hopefully my Project Dylan playlist will help.
I am going to use TrackBear (join me for the LFC 2025 Q1 100K challenge) to keep me accountable.
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On being stuck in the draft/revision
George Saunders has some suggestions on getting stuck in the draft.
I have something to direct my energy towards and am able to put in an hour of work on my writing every day, rather than just feeling stuck. Which is brilliant.
I'm finding, though, that I tend to simply produce very smooth and refined versions of whatever I happened to spew onto the page initially. That is, I write some little story or scenario then I go through and make whatever changes leap out to me. The sentences get better, the characters' voices gets more consistent, the images become clearer and more efficient. But the meat itself never shifts.
You used the metaphor of getting some lump of clay onto the table. I keep getting a lump of clay on the table and then painting it with a fine brush.
This question is essentially what I am dealing with now. This fellow writer keeps refining or revising what a sentence would look. It can take them forever to find the right verb or phrase to describe the scene or what is happening, which may lead to them (or me) never finishing the draft.
George has addressed the question with some suggestions:
To pick up on your metaphor – the missing step might involve something like micro-examining that (smoother) lump of clay (that you’ve polished so well).
What are we looking for, as we do this?
Well, for me, it’s imperfections….any place where I feel even the slightest tug of dissatisfaction.
This can be: a place of illogic; a place where the language is banal or lumpy; a place of weak signification (an under-specified place).
It’s really by feel (and this is where all my talk about the P vs. N meter originates).
(A small interruption here: Imagine you have to feel through the entire manuscript for imperfect language and weakness in storytelling. That takes a lot of time. So I think it is best if I limit myself to do that once before I proceed to the next draft. God knows when the book can be out if I keep going in circles.)
But the idea is that such places are not defects, but clues – these are the places where the story is trying to tell you about a direction it would prefer to take.
Just as one example – I’ll sometimes have a swath of pretty clippy dialogue, that I like, but one place within it just…sags, slightly. I have to look pretty closely at my reacting mind to find, or feel, that “sag” but if I read that swath often enough, the sag starts to become undeniable, by way of the very smallest “meh” feeling.
That sag tells me…that the characters might want me to take this dialogue exchange in a slightly different direction. Practically speaking, this just involves trying out some new combinations of lines. A new line might be needed, or there’s one line too many, or this line needs to be run-in with that one. I can usually “hear” a possible change. There’s also a certain quick mental rearranging that goes on - I sort of rapidly imagine the different ways that that particular swath of text might be rearranged or restated (or compressed or eliminated).
Or I might feel, as another example, that there’s a little hitch in this bit of physical description – the analog of a slight tripping motion as I “walk along,” reading it. If I fix that (smooth out the thing that tripped me up), it often turns out that the physical world of the story changes, thus presenting new opportunities - both in terms of language and in terms of the fictive reality.
As you have figured out the direction of the story, I think that it is best that you keep going in the same direction with a outline. Otherwise, you know what would happen. Endless possibilities can be there for you to explore even if it is the same story.
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See you in 2 weeks,
Celeste
Hi, it's me, I'm bagobago from the leaderboard haha. Just want to say thank you for all your wonderful writing, reading your Substack helped me to motivate myself so I could pursue writing professionally! Hoping that you can achieve all your 2025 goals while still taking care of yourself.