It’s been a very, very, long time since I’ve done a ‘Writing Progress Report,’ but since I’ve returned to drafting THE GILDED CAGE I thought I should start this up again now that I’m trying to get back into blogging. Plus, I enjoyed going through my old WPR’s for DIAMOND QUEEN and am hoping I’ll enjoy these for TGC in the future. Reflection is good for the soul, right?
So, if you’ve followed my blog, you’ll know that back in 2018 I started on this YA Courtship Fantasy (last post on it can be seen here). I’d gotten about halfway done drafting when I had put it aside to work on an R&R for another story. When I’d finish the R&R though, instead of returning to TGC, another story idea caught my attention so I spent the rest of 2019 on it. Unfortunately, that story, REMEDY, needs some time and space for me to ruminate as I think on its next steps. Honestly, I worked so hard on REMEDY it’s hard to detach myself emotionally from it which isn’t allowing me to think clearly revision-wise, so to the back-burner it goes. With only two months left of 2019, I was smitten with a ghost story idea and tinkered with it a bit, but in the end, I decided to go back to TGC for two reasons. The first, if I go back to my 2019 goals post here, finishing TGC was something I always intended to do; it seemed appropriate that I finish. The second, was the ghost story needed more staying power in my mind. I was smitten, but I didn’t know if it would take me to ‘The End’ whereas TGC has always been lingering in my mind enough that I still felt connected to it.
Which brings me to a very valuable writing lesson I’ve learned this week that was articulated perfectly by author Adrienne Young on her instagram story about drafting. She mentioned how when she gets a story idea, she writes it down, but doesn’t even begin to write it until the story fully forms in her mind which could take about a year. The reason for it is because ideas (as well as your own attachments to it) can change and with time you may find that the idea is no longer viable. Her advice struck a chord with me, because how many times has that happened? I catch onto inspiration and chase it only to find out it wasn’t inspiration that propelled me forward, but a snowball effect of chasing a word count for the sake of progress. Because increasing work count means progress, right? No, it doesn’t as I’ve learned from writing lesson number 2.
WPR log from ‘TGC’ Scrivener file
Writing lesson number 2 came after reading Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad by Austin Kleon. I don’t know at what point lesson 2 hit me while reading, all that I know is after I’d finished reading I realized I had made some creative faux pas. The first being my art—or my writing—was making me unhappy. Why? I was focusing more on the results (or lack of it) instead of enjoying the actual process of writing. The second faux pas was selfishly using my writing to fulfill my egotistical needs instead of thinking about how my writing can contribute to art that’s already out there. There’s a line in the book that talks about how art should ‘resonate and repair’. It needs to resonate with someone in order to make a connection. And it needs to ‘repair’ meaning the person who connects to it must gain something from it. I’d been so hung up on publishing, I forgot about the writing experience as well as the reader experience. So writing lesson number 2 I learned this week was to stop chasing word count because it does nothing for the writer or reader experience. What matters is the story. Word count is not the only metric for progress. Case in point, I crossed 20K in TGC this morning, but I’ve also had to cut a POV, rewrite and tweak chapters 6-8 multiple times, and I allowed myself to write this blog post instead of feeling guilty for not using this time to add more words to my manuscript. That, my friends, is progress. That, my friend, is growth. And that adds to my writing experience which hopefully makes me a better writer so that you, dear reader, can have a better experience with my work in the future.
