Wednesday, July 5, 2017

Insecure Writer’s Support Group (July)

The first Wednesday of every month is officially Insecure Writer’s Support Group day. On this day we post about our thoughts, our doubts, and the fears we have conquered. We discuss our struggles and triumphs, and offer a word of encouragement for others who are struggling.

Every post opens with a question (a blogging prompt, if you will), and this month's is: What is one valuable lesson you've learned since you started writing?

Can you really distill the experience of writing down to just one lesson learned? I learn something new with each draft, each publication, each review, and each discussion with other authors. Some lessons are bigger than others, but they all help me improve. I guess the biggest one (lately, at least) would be to keep the focus on the characters, and build up their personality layers to drive the story.

I did not get a lot of writing done last month - packing and moving kind of dominated my time - but we set a theme and deadline for the follow-up to our first anthology, and I am starting to accumulate some reviews, which is very encouraging!

8 comments:

  1. Congratulations. Progress is progress. I think you are doing great.
    ' Juneta @ Writer's Gambit

    ReplyDelete
  2. If you were in the middle of a move, that's understandable.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I will be quite happy not to repeat that experience for another 15 years. Whew.

      Delete
  3. Characters are important. I often to back through my manuscript to check each line of dialogue to make sure: would this character say this? Is that how they sound? Are they being true to what they want?

    http://www.cdgallantking.ca/2017/07/strangely-funny-iv-release-iwsg-july.html

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I find the dialogue flows easily, but I need to work on building personality and incorporating backstory. Flesh them out and make them human.

      Delete
  4. The biggest thing I've learned recently is that I got very lucky with my first book, in terms of the writing. The outline came to me very quickly, as did the characters, and even though some things changed between concept and execution, it really stayed pretty close to what I imagined that first night.

    Like I said, I was lucky.

    Now, I've got detailed notes on several short story series and a couple of novels, but the scope is actually what's slowing me down. One of the series is over two dozen stories that link up into a few different narratives, and it's so big that I barely know where to start. Same problem with the next novel; it's so complex both physically and psychologically that putting all the pieces together is a monster. In both cases, I know how they start, where they end, and several of the points along the way... but I'm having trouble getting that one handle that lets me put fingers to keyboard and write story instead of notes.

    And yeah, C.D., I completely feel you on checking all the details. My debut novel averaged about 5K words per chapter, and the final edit pass gave me 75-100 little changes for every one of 'em. Usually they were little things, like swapping one word for something just a little more *right*, but there were some dialogue and narrative fixes in there, too.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Scope can be a bitch, can't it? I keep going back to my full-length novel, which I love, and can see an audience for, but it is a lot of work. On the short story side, it doesn't help that my current FM storyline is at least 3 books that build and expand on a mythology, so I've had to outline them all at once to ensure it all works.

      Delete