WRITERS: ARE YOU MAKING THIS COMMON BOOK-PLANNING MISTAKE?

image: under drawing of van Ruysdael's Landscape with Deer Hunters, infrared image and tracing prepared by LACMA conservation center

Why blueprints bite you in the butt when planning novels

Thinking about outlining as if you are building a house is a reasonable metaphor. After all, a book is somewhat like a building, in that you must lay your foundation (write your first draft) before you start decorating (polishing your prose).

However, if you outline your novel like an architect creates a blueprint, it often ends up causing huge headaches halfway through the draft.

You’re not dying, Cameron, you just trapped yourself with your outline

Architects have constraints that writers don't:

• Gravity needs to be accounted for with load-bearing walls

• Changing partway through construction causes disaster

• The result must match the original model precisely

Writers, however are more like painters, and shifting your mindset in this direction makes planning your draft much more enjoyable, and useful.

Lithograph of pencil study for “Before the Class,” Degas.

Novels come into focus more like paintings.

When an artist begins working on a painting, they make a great number of sketches to try out various composition options. Once they're ready to begin on the canvas, the first step is a sketch.

In pencil.

Unlike architecture, painting plans are made to be flexible and changeable. A painter knows that once color begins to fill the canvas, new insight may mean changing the picture.

In painting, you learn as you work, and what you learn may lead to a more satisfying result.

When writing your novel, placing your characters in scenes and watching them interact over time is often the best way to clarify questions in the plot. Novels don't collapse like buildings without bearing walls if you move a scene somewhere more satisfying.

And most helpful of all, the sketches painters make live hidden underneath the final result. It takes special equipment to peer under the layers of paint to see what the artist thought at the beginning, as the LA County Art Museum (LACMA) conservation department has done above.

Blueprints can be referenced later and are often kept on file, and architects need to adhere to them. As a writer, you don’t.

Your plans can be your secret forever.

Is the dancer on the left sticking out her tongue now? Hmmm. That wasn’t in the sketch

What if your novel plan was a living document that could breathe and move and evolve as you wrote?

Stalling out in the middle is just as often the result of a suffocating plan as with anything else. If you're struggling, ask yourself if you're trying to force your book to match a plan that needs updating.

You don't need to know everything about your story from day one.

Leave room to learn and discover along the way - that's part of the fun of writing.

If you knew no one would ever see your plans and you could change as you went, how would that shift your process at the moment? Start there.

Ready to write without a blueprint holding you back? I made this guide for you.

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.

I would love to hear what your current goals are in the comments on the Oh! Murder podcast post here.

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!

STARTING WITHOUT CHOKING

I have many only once looked this smooth while running. Sadly, not that day.

HERE’S AN EMBARRASSING STORY

In my early 20s, I did my Masters in San Francisco, and one day toward the end of my degree, the urge to go for a run took over.

Let's be clear: athletic was not an adjective anyone had ever used about me. In gym class, I was always last when we ran the mile, with everyone forced by the teacher to clap until I reached the finish.

If anything could cement the story that running was not for me, it was struggling over that line just as the boys got out of class to witness my red-faced misery.

But, by the time more than a decade had passed, I had forgotten this humiliation and the idea of a run somehow sounded good, so I put on the only sneakers I had and burst out the front door, pounding down the sidewalk toward Mission.

A view much like on my run in Noe Valley.

I was going to make it happen this time. There was no stopping me. I was going to be an incredible powerhouse at last! I was -

Going to collapse.

Less than three blocks from my front door, I had nothing left.

Wheezing and humiliated, I shuffled back to my apartment, hoping to slip by my roommate unnoticed. I didn't run again for years.

Now, if we take out all references to running in this story and replace them with writing, I must ask...Have you ever started a project this way?

On fire, all your tools out and ready, despite not having achieved success before? Feeling like willpower was what you needed to get through to the other side, only to run out of gas and flop?

Years later, I transformed my relationship to running. I went from a frustrated and miserable runner to successfully complete a half marathon.

What made the difference? I switched to the Manageable yet Meaningful approach. I followed a plan made by an experienced runner, and which broke the process into small steps I could manage, even as a beginner.

A novel is much more like a marathon than a sprint.

If you've been hurling yourself into an intimidating word count and believing that the result is proof of whether or not you're a writer, please let that go.

If you're not achieving your writing goals, the structure of the goal needs to change, not you.

You won't finish your novel bursting out the door and running top speed without preparation. It doesn't have to be this painful and exhausting.

Going the Manageable yet Meaningful way means asking yourself, "What can I reasonably accomplish, given the schedule and commitments I have?"

"What can I say no to for the moment in favor of this goal?"

Build the writing plan into those windows.

Start small and greatness will follow.

---

IF YOU’RE AFRAID YOUR BOOK IS SHIT

I know what you've been up to. (I’ve been there, too)

I know how the momentum of the year has plummeted and as we are about to hit the summer solstice, that trailblazing version of you that was going to write that book this year, once and for all, is hiding under the bed, sweating from the heat.

Maybe this hiding takes the form of scarfing chocolate, or checking out that new show everyone is excited about instead of sitting down to write after dinner, like you promised yourself you would.

You may have even started writing and gotten a good momentum going only to hit a brick wall when this beautiful thought popped up:

"My book is shit."

Oh, man. This is a dark hour. The hope that was trumpeting and the light that had come on to say "I might actually be a writer" gets slammed back into the darkness with this one.

I know, because I have thought this thought myself. This week even. Have I written 500 words every day like Scott Carney once suggested on the podcast? Hell, no. I’ve done it once.

I talk to writers all the time who have made it through to publication time after time and this belief, “my book is shit”, never goes away. You know what that tells me?

Thinking that your book is shit is not a reason to stop writing it.

That's why we call them shitty first drafts. You get to write this draft as horribly as you want to. In fact, you should write it horribly. Because then you've gotten past the biggest hurdle there is: the blank page.

I like reading something inspiring in the morning to get me going. I don't get to it every single day, but sometimes, I read something that feels like it has been waiting for me for ages.

Recently, I read an entry from Caitlin Matthews' The Celtic Spirit. It begins with this Welsh saying:

"The plow must go five times over the site of a wood before it can become a field."

Matthews goes on to talk about that point when you feel like you've been working so hard on something, yet you barely see any signs of progress. She then says that now is a good time to prepare the ground for your projects for the coming year.

I love this because it got me thinking about how you prepare the ground for planting. Remember what you do?

Mulch. Mulching to provide nutrients to the soil is necessary if you want anything to grow. You see where I'm going here?

Your shitty draft is the mulch for what will grow your book.

So keep going. Keep writing shitty line after shitty line and when that nasty critic perks up and makes a comment about the quality of your work just turn to it and say, "I'm mulching."

And keep writing.

You’ve got this. I've even got an episode for you this week all about how to take good care of yourself along the way.

I'm getting back on my 500 words train today. Who's with me? Post your commitment to your writing in the comments below.

---

HOW TO RESET YOUR WRITING LIFE

What starting again looks like in my house

Who else has had a wild ride the past few months?

In my experience, January lasts about three months, February takes five minutes, and March and April blend together before we're suddenly in summer. If you're like me, there's been a mix of stretches where writing happens and periods where nothing seems to happen at all.

Our long-overdue trip to the east coast last month meant I did absolutely no writing for nearly a month, even though I'd thought this trip would be different. There have been countless trips where I lug the laptop and never touch it, yet each time the optimism returns and I dream of returning home with a huge amount of work accomplished.

In your world this might look like moving, or school holidays, or house guests, or suddenly having to find a new job after a layoff. The possibilities are endless, and they aren't necessarily negative things either.

The only guarantee we have is that interruptions will come.

​We strive to create writing routines that withstand the craziness that is life, but I believe there is something far more essential to create: the "returning to writing" routine.

There are so many books out there that talk about creator's schedules and practices, as if they never changed and went on perfectly for years. I doubt this very much. Even the most protected creative gets sick once in a while.

When you get pulled away, the best tool to have is a reliable way to get back to your writing.

• Step one is something to overcome the stress and anxiety about having taken a break, likely not deliberately. I tend to spend days, if not weeks fretting "How did I let myself get so behind?"

  • Spoiler alert: This is not useful. It's more productive to start with an acknowledgment.

Science shows self-flagellation is ineffective in creating change

A friend who is a neuroscientist told me about the method of therapy she's recently learned to deal with chronic insomnia. I've struggled for decades on and off, so I perked up right away.

Turns out, the crucial thing is not to stress about problems that occur when we don't get enough sleep. She told me the most helpful thing to say to yourself after a bad night:

"I haven't slept well, and I'll be ok."

None of the "Oh god, if I sleep less than five hours a night for several days, it's as if I'm going around drunk," and other catastrophizing. Better to acknowledge the situation, and also acknowledge that we will get through it. No one has ever gotten a better night’s sleep by beating themselves up for sleeping poorly the night before.

Our return to writing could feel like this instead: "I didn't mean to skip writing the last [x time], but it's happened and that's ok."

We can't change the past, so let's get on with next steps.

​Having acknowledged the break and recommitted to writing, the next important step is to re-engage with the project. The thing that's most likely to cause issues when we don't write for a while is that we aren't as connected to the characters and story.

I find the best way back in is to review my notes in my process journal. I know, I know, I keep bringing that up, but hopefully you're seeing all the ways it's helpful so you are inspired to keep your own.

If you don't have a process journal, per se, reading through any notes you have about the story or any character information is a good start.

And then, I go to the tarot.

It's often not just my fiction writing I get disconnected from when traveling, or sick, or otherwise out of my usual routine. I also lose track of journaling and other practices. Once I get out a deck of tarot cards and start shuffling, I know I'm coming back to myself.

Here are the steps I take:

• I pull cards for my main character, a simple three-card spread:

  • One card for what we were working on when the writing break occurred

  • A second card for what's most important to focus on now

  • A third for the next step I can take to reconnect

This is an intuitive process. I look at the image on the card and see how it makes me feel. Free-form associations come up and that's often enough to get the juices going again.

Is this the only way to dive back in? Definitely not. But it is the way that reliably works for me.

Next steps for you to try:

If you've been away from writing longer than you like, think back to times you've reconnected in the past. What did you try? What worked? See if you can revisit those practices again now. (These observations would be extremely useful to have in a process journal as well.)

Because if you have a solid "coming back to writing" routine, then these breaks are less scary when they happen.

A writing routine that only serves you when everything goes perfectly according to plan isn't very helpful in the long run.

Better to plan for life to be the wild ride we keep having, and to know how we can come back when things settle down.

What's your favorite way to reconnect with writing after a break? Share in the comments.