5 truths about successful writing projects that I wish weren't true—but are.
The key considerations that make my longform writing projects soar or bomb, and how these truths can help you.
Hello my writer friends, and Happy Wednesday.
This week (and probably next), I want to talk about the problems in our writing that cause problems for us and what we can do about both fronts. (By the way, have you seen the French dark comedy about woke culture called PROBLEMOS? It’s so flipping funny. Highly recommend.)
I am hyperproductive in the making of problems in the manuscripts I write. Not fun and useful problems that create tension for my characters and move the plot along, but existential, mushy, shape-shifting problems that make me feel that my writing is collapsing like a house of cards.
Us writers, we are in the business of making problems for our characters. What puts us out of business is when we make problems for ourselves. When the problems in our narratives hold us back as the work’s creator, that is when the gears wear out and start to grind. Time and time again, especially with fiction (memoir is a little easier because I don’t need to invent things), I commit the following mistakes in my initial drafts that impair my forward progress:
Overcomplicating the plot (Which overcomplicates everything and makes the project virtually impossible to pitch out loud or in writing.)
Cerebral-izing the stakes (I make the stakes too brainy and interior, instead of action-focused and supportive of the plot.)
Getting in the weeds about logistics (You want to hear exactly how a person crossed a room, how many steps it took for them to get there, and what they thought and touched along the way? See my early drafts!)
Moving my characters around too much geographically (In the first draft of my novel TOUCH my heroine was in an airplane every day on a lecture circuit. This made it impossible for her to form connections with anyone, nor could we get attached to a specific location or immerse ourselves into a setting other than the inside of a commercial plane. What was I thinking? I wrote the entire book this way for several drafts!)
These four pitfalls are specific to me, my process, and my particular brand of writing, but they lead to hard, dark places that all creators encounter at some point:
The project stops bringing us joy.
The project finds us more frequently in a state of flux than flow.
The project has limited chances at success. (“Success” in my case currently means selling the project to an editor, but in the past it has meant not placing an essay, not getting a short story accepted, not getting a grant or prize that I applied to, not getting an agent, not getting chosen for a panel, you name it: rejection has many forms!)
All three of these states suck. I have been stuck in the first two quagmires for a month now but glory glory hallelujah I have finally found my way out by unsaddling one of my main characters from a plot line that was doing me—and her, and my novel—far more harm than good.
Do you know how I finally came to the decision that the character arc I’d spent a year building for a primary character was wrong? By pitching the book out loud to someone other than my agent, who’s been my sounding board for problems until now. The person I pitched my book to was my husband, and I could tell from his expression as I got into the wife’s timeline (in my novel, the husband gets one POV, the wife gets the other) that the woman’s storyline was as convoluted and static as I feared.1 Have you noticed I haven’t sent out any posts with prescriptive writing advice recently? Partly it’s because my brain has been sluggish post-surgery, but also it’s because I’ve been quicksanded by WHAT TO DO ABOUT THIS WOMAN’S CONVOLUTED AND LETHARGIC STORYLINE!!!!
While making the decision to burn this woman’s story down (I’m not burning her down, she’s getting a different arc), I was forced to face five truths that I know about successful writing projects, but hate acting on.
I thought I’d share these truths so you can stare them down in the privacy of your own struggles, and decide whether they are something that you, too, need to address.
Before we get to these five truths, I want to mention that we’ll be tackling narrative problems and “stuckness” in my June 5th revision masterclass. Throughout the course we’ll tackle problems that make a project of any genre unsellable, and we’ll have a special section devoted to memoirs, as memoirs are so dang hard to get right! This is the last masterclass I’m teaching under the Turning Points umbrella until the fall. Please join us here. (Scroll down to sign up for the June 5th class and move through checkout to register.)
Can’t make it for the live class? No worries. Video is always available for everyone who enrolls. Want to watch one of our past classes? Email me at thequerydoula (at) gmail (dot) com for pricing.
Without further ado, here are the 5 truths I accepted before demolishing a character arc that I’ve been working on for an entire year; the truths that made me realize that this woman’s storyline was bringing down my entire book.
The 5 Truths about writing that I wish weren’t true, but are:
