Not to jinx it, but I think my break from fiction is coming to an end. I’m not ready to make that official yet, but I have been excited about my novel and characters again pretty consistently over the past few days.
One interesting thing that’s helped, I think, is channeling Tanith Lee. I’ve mentioned here and there that she’s one of my favorite writers and what I want to write is similar to her work. Just dumber, more self-indulgent, and more explicit, haha. I love her prolificness and though she never went into great depth about her writing process, it was pretty clear that she was a “pantser” or discovery writer. She clearly wrote for the joy of it.
I also recently reread Dean Wesley Smith’s book, Writing Into the Dark, which emphasizes not just discovery writing, but writing for the sheer joy of it.
I’ve been thinking about that a lot during my break—reconnecting with my intuition more, keeping my outlines sparse, and how I can enjoy writing as much as possible. I still think I need to know, generally, where I’m going and what kind of book I’m writing, but trying to decide the finer details ahead of time has never worked for me. My brain seems incapable of doing it.
Anyway, my plan for the third quarter is pretty simple:
- Do Preptober, preparing myself to take another crack at my Losing Control novel with a new, more intuitive writing process.
- Spend more time reading the kinds of dark, erotic, speculative, gothic, story-focused, well-written stories I crave.
- Actively work on my novel draft—not through NaNoWriMo (I’m sure you’ve heard about the controversy)—but through Sarra Cannon’s First Draft Challenge and the Ninja Writers’ SloWriMo event (focusing on prioritizing your writing consistently).
I have an intimidating amount of freelance work staring me in the face this quarter, which is great for my finances, but still leaves me with less time and energy to devote to writing than I’d like, but even if I never make serious money from this, I do want to treat my writing like a priority. Because it is. I may not make my living from this, but I am an author and a writer.
As for short stories, most of my newsletter respondents said they’d like to see super short work from me more often. I don’t think I’ll have time to do that this upcoming quarter, but it would be nice to release something. We’ll see.