THE MIDYEAR UPDATE ON MY MYSTERY NOVEL
My current writing set-up, described below
THIS POST WAS ALSO RECORDED FOR THE OH! MURDER PODCAST
Prefer to listen? Click here.
It’s been a while since I shared an update on my writing process on the podcast, so in this episode I discuss:
The current status of the novel draft
My new goals for the next couple of months
How I’m staying accountable to these goals
What’s coming up next with Oh! Murder and other events I’m offering.
It has been quite a while, hasn’t it?
I thought this was the best way to update you on everything that's been going on and where the blog and the podcast are going next. Whenever we get to the second half of the year, I'm realizing that I like to take time to check in and that it isn't just a New Year's thing for me anymore.
Over the past few years, obviously tons of things have changed.
things have gone in different directions, and a whole year feels like a much longer time not to check in with progress and goals and how I'm feeling.
This is my “Second Half of 2023” Check-in
It's a time for me to think about:
My writing
What I've done so far
What I'm happy with
What I'm not happy with
What I want to do next.
I invite you to do the same at this point in the year, if that feels right.
You can take the questions I'm asking as inspiration or jumping off point, but as always, shift it around and make it your own.
You may laugh.
I certainly am laughing, but originally I was in conversation over email with a friend's agent who had some interest in the story I'm working on, back in November or December and…
I said, “Oh yeah, I think I can have something to you by the end of February.”
And here we are at the beginning of July. And the book is not finished. However, it is much further along than it was.
And while I would like to be the sort of person who could bang it out in a couple of months, I'm realizing that I'm not that person and that the process I've been undergoing is the one I enjoy.
I'm okay with how it's gone.
But I did have to deal with the critic giving me a hard time
That's just something we all have to struggle with. The critic is always going to have a problem with something, so I'm just going move on knowing that that's life.
With that in mind, here's where the novel is now:
I have typed up everything that I've written on it so far.
I wrote a proto draft, and this seems to be the way this book is happening, as in small, incremental drafts, like building up the layers of a pearl
Each time I go back through the circumference or the size of the story is larger, but it requires what came before to build the next layer
I had been writing something every day in March, at least a few pages by hand, sometimes more, sometimes less.
I had about 150 handwritten page, and the past couple of weeks I typed them up. It actually went actually faster than I thought because…
I left the house.
Being in the house is way too distracting. The desk that I have is very connected with work: this podcast, other podcasts, clients and students etc.
It wasn't enough of a separation to work on the novel at that desk. I've been going to various cafes and that was a really great way to change scene.
I switched to using my iPad with a keyboard attached instead of my computer that I use for work, and that was really great as a separation as well.
[See this set-up pictured at the top of this post]
I got that all typed up and that draft, I had about 25,000 words. I thought it would be more, but I'm okay with that. I finished July 1st.
Next steps:
Now I'm reading it through and making notes.
I had that dread before starting. I finished the type up and exported a copy on Thursday planning to start reading on Friday.
There’s always this. dicking around that happens. I didn't want to sit down and read the thing. I wondered,
“Oh God, is this going to be any good? Is this gonna be a disaster?” Etc. etc.
I'm sure you're familiar with this kind of thought process. When I sat down on Friday, it took me ages to read the first 12 pages. I couldn't settle.
I was seeing all of these things I wanted to change, but I was also seeing opportunities for scenes I wanted to include.
That felt good, but I only got about 12 pages read with notes on Friday.
When I came back today, I set the somewhat ambitious goal of 20 pages. The current draft is about 77 pages, and I want to read it through by the end of this week. So I figured, okay, if I get to 20 or 25 pages, I'm almost halfway, so that's not bad.
It was actually much easier this time.
I felt like I was moving along. There were moments that I really liked. I saw things I could change and add, but I felt pleased with the book as it was looking, so that was great.
This week’s plan:
Read the rest of this draft
Make notes on things to change and add
Make a new proto outline plan
Then I’ll do another coating on the pearl. Expand the story by adding to current scenes as well as adding extra ones that continue the story or deepen the existing plot and character.
I'm hoping this next pass will get it to about 40,000.
My current goal is to finish the draft (what I had hoped to do in February)by the end of August.
I'm saying that here to have some accountability. I encourage you to hold me to it.
My recent kick in the pants moment
Katherine May, who wrote Enchantment and Wintering, who has been on the SLP podcast, runs day long retreats in the UK.
I was fortunate enough to be able to go to one and to spend a day resting and stepping away from obligations and work. That was such an incredible relief.
I realized on that trip how much I was pushing myself, how much I was expecting of myself, and how truly tired I was from generating content for so many sources.
When I got home at the end of May, I had to accept the fact that the terrible insomnia I get during Berlin summers had wiped me out. [I took June off from Substack as a result]
Taking June off really helped. But I also ended up taking a break from the novel, which felt less good.
Katherine also does Q+As Crowdcasts for her Substack. She chose my question for the last session and I got to chat with her.
It was: “If I get to talk about writing all the time as part of my job and I love my job, how do I stay connected to my own writing and how do I prioritize it?
She responded in the kindest way, I’m paraphrasing here:
Maybe it's up to you to decide right now if your writing is your work at the moment, or if it is a hobby for now.
It could have gone either way. I could have had a reaction like, “Oh, what a relief. I don't have to pressure myself so much.”
But instead, my reaction was like a kick in the gut and the thought was,
“This is my work. This is 100% my work.”
Part of the reason that I created the business that I have was so I could focus on my own writing. So to not do it and have it relegated to a hobby, even though I do love my work and the business felt like, a big change of direction that I didn't wanna make.
I was so used to writing being shoved into the corners for so many years, while I did some other job. So I had to have an honest conversation with myself and say,
“Hey, look.We've succeeded. You can spend more time on this. Stop habitually putting writing at the bottom of the list. It's not helping you. It's not helping the book, and it's leading to feeling really frustrated.”
That is what started me going out to cafes, leaving the house, working on the book every weekday.
So if you are at a point where the amount of time that you're writing feels like there's a disconnect between your goal and what you want writing to be; if you're writing all the time and you feel resentful and want to spending more time with friends and family, or you just feel exhausted.
It isn't just that there's gonna be this sudden awareness, “Oh, I need to give more time to my writing.” That's just the one that I had.
You might be in a place where the you of five or 10 years ago madea decision about what your writing life would look like, and you're still following that plan.
Have you checked in with yourself and asked, does this still work?
Does this still fit? And there can be many, many options in between.
We're at the midpoint in this year, I recommend that you check-in and ask yourself:
Is the way I'm engaging with writing satisfying?
Does it match to the way I want my writing to feel?
That's something I think I'm gonna be doing far more regularly into the future. I was living the writing life that me of 5-7 years ago believed was possible.
I wasn't allowing my writing self to take up any more space with it, even though that was the whole point.
It's like my unconscious had taken the wheel.
Recommendations that Can Help:
Having an accountability check-in group
In my writing community, the Manageable yet Meaningful Writing Lab, we have an ongoing group chat, so anybody can go in and say, “Hey, I'm gonna write right now. I'm gonna try to do X, Y, and Z.”
I've been taking advantage of that feature more and been posting for everybody.
Earlier I was self conscious about sharing too much of my process as the group leader, to be honest. But I've decided that's ridiculous. It was just the critic shutting me down.
I'm now being really transparent about my writing plans on there daily, and then following up with whether or not I did it.
Using social media as accountability
I'm also posting pictures of my writing spots to Instagram and sharing what I'm working on as another accountability tool.
I've made it public there that I want to get a solid draft done by the end of August.
Coming Soon:
I am planning to release a training on Creating Killer Characters.
Mystery as a genre is uniquely skilled in creating really engaging characters.
Whether you write standalones or series, they're often completely new casts of characters that need to be created for each installment.
Just because you have the same main character or a few regular characters doesn't mean that all the characters are the same.Otherwise, over the course of a series, they'd all die.
We need to generate new casts quite frequently. There's a lot to learn from how characters are created for mystery.
If you haven’t yet joined Footnotes, that’s the best place to get the details on that workshop.
More soon, and in the meantime, you enjoy reading and writing mystery.
A gift for you:
If you click through and grab this free gift, you’ll get a Footnotes subscription, too. Hooray!