This post is a follow-up to my thoughts and struggles with the writing process, found here.
 
I’m working on a longer piece, titled “Crystal Grove,” — a story about a family in Middletown, NJ that finds and struggles against a force in their new neighborhood.  This will be my longest piece so far; it will either be a novella or short novel in the 50,000 word range.  I’d like to self-publish Crystal Grove, following the well-worn path of offering the first book/act gratis, and charging a low $1.99 for each of the following books.
The inspiration for this work were crystals my wife hung in our backyard in April.  She is studying Reiki; crystals are part of the practice.  Hanging them outside allows them to capture energy from the sun.  My writing room faces the small patch of trees they hung from, so I’d watch them shimmer and glow in the sun each morning.  They seemed especially vibrant in the spring sun, before any leaves sprouted.  I enjoyed watching them capture and reflect the light, and played with an idea about how they would react to the opposite of sunlight, some negative energy.  And I went from there.

While working on my previous short stories, I found I needed to outline.  I previously used a scaled-down version of an online template for Unfair Advantage and went back to it to outline this story.  It was more challenging than expected; basically, I had a vague idea what would happen in each act, but not a firm sense of how the story ends.  I outlined the first book and followed it with my daily morning writing, but the writing lacked cohesion and urgency because I didn’t know where we were ultimately going.  Luckily, I remembered reading (or hearing on a podcast) that one “trick” is to write the ending scene (or, in this case, set of scenes) first.  I did that last week, while on our family Covid 19-summer-vacation to a cabin in the Catskills; now I know how the story ends.  New rule: I have to know how these stories end before I write them.  Else, they just wander.

Another discovery was I don’t find it helpful to add a lot of detail to the outline.  My outline for the first book was ten rows deep and nine columns wide… which seems nice, but I never referred or edited the outline.  For Act 2, I put basic scene information on stickies and arranged them in order.  I already knew how the act ends, so this was straightforward.  When I write these scenes, I lay out the beats to start.

The second part of my feedback loop is on-demand editors at reedsy.com.  For the two stories I’ve put out for publication consideration, I did a developmental edit (big thoughts on the piece, what works and doesn’t, overall) followed by a copy edit.  There are other types of edits, but for cost and sanity reasons these seem like the bare minimum.  Now I want to have a relationship with an editor, to have a professional voice to talk through story items and help me become a much stronger writer.
There is a middle ground; alpha and beta readers.  I haven’t approached and friends or family for works in progress, although there are a few avid readers I can ask.  I wanted to be better, tighter, smoother, more creative before I showed the work to people I care about.  But that’s nonsense; creating something and keeping it to yourself is useless.
I also joined a group on Facebook (heaven help me), a forum to ask for beta readers.  The plan now is lean on a set of F&F for alpha reads, then a combo of people on scribophile.com and FB for beta reads.  Then find a developmental editor, hopefully one that I can have multiple passes with (reedsy is one and done).  That’s a lot of feedback.  Neil Gaiman said it best, “Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.”
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I have two stories in the can.  The first, The Inspector’s Legacy,  was written for Into the Ruins.  I followed the system described above; had the original manuscript critiqued on scribophile and worked in feedback.  After a few rounds, I submitted to a reedsy developmental editor.  His suggestions, like “work on this relationship” or “build up this character” are very tough.  When I submit these pieces to these editors, it reminds me of when I submitted papers in school.  I feel like I’m done, so it seems hard to rip things up and do a major rework.  Another skill that needs work.  Then I put those revisions back on scribophile, then submitted for a copy edit. 
The other story is Unfair Advantage.  Similar journey, and I just got the copy edit back.  I will submit that story, starting this week, to a wide range of publications.  It’s a decent story; most people who read it have a positive reaction.  It doesn’t fit nicely into a genre though.  That’s been an eye opener, and a piece of advice I wish I’d internalized earlier.  Know what audience you’re writing for.  UA is sorta workplace fiction, sorta a thriller, sorta…well, something.  And, it’s an awkward length.  Eight thousand words is long for a short story and short for a novella.  I’m bullish about this story, and might expand it to a two to three part, 30k published work on Amazon.  The part I have done now expand and be an entire act.  The tricky part would be a clever ending, but I’d love to work on that problem.

Learning Process:
The amount of writing books is overwhelming.   I stuck to the classics, the one’ recommended again and again.  The first one I read was “Creating Short Fiction”.  It discuses all the elements of a short story.  The most useful part is a breakdown of one of Knight’s stories; line-by-line notes of what he was doing in the story, and why.  Every single element moved the plot along, ratcheted tension, built character, with a regular cadence.  This is my bible.
The other classics are King’s On Writing, Bird by Bird, Draft No. 4, Eats, Shoots, and Leaves..  I’ve picked up a lot from them.  Other, non-standard sources are Hugh Howey’s online (his blog and videos) guidance, The Poet’s Handbook, and reading about famous author’s writing process in The Paris Review.  These sources are helpful; the hard part is to stop reading and do the hard work.
I don’t have trouble sitting down to write; I have trouble trying to improve.  For example, I know I need to develop more of an ear (and fingers) for rhythmic writing; hearing the beats in a sentence and using them. Iambic pentameter.  I don’t have this ear yet, and may explain why I couldn’t stand Shakespeare in high school.  But, I’m willing to go back and try to understand it more.  
My writing isn’t tight.  In fact, when a critiquer said I had a good story but the writing wasn’t tight, I didn’t even know what the term meant.  He was right, though… I am too wordy, use too many filler words, don’t express myself as succinctly as possible.  Recently, another critiquer said never use the word “that”, which kind of blew my mind.  But, I took her suggestion and removed it from my non-dialogue parts in the piece.  And it made the writing better.
One of the first things I learned on this journey is the importance of feedback. I need thoughts on plot, interest, realism/calling bullshit, weak areas, strong parts… and a lot of help on word-smithing.  I didn’t show my first story to anyone until I sent a manuscript to an editor at Reedsy.  He, gently, pointed out all stories need some conflict.  Important, life or death, love, power type conflict.  My original story followed a guy through his day, doing fairly boring things.  I internalized his advice, and the next two stories (The Inspector’s Legacy and Unfair Advantage) had clear plots and conflict.  And came out okay.  The following two stories, though, including my first attempt at a novella length story, are lacking.  There was/is plot and conflict, but just barely.  Not yet.  Made the same mistake with a short story contest I just finished; only 2k words, but I focused so much on the contest ask (show how an incident in the character’s past influences them today) I literally forgot to have something interesting happen in the story.  Right now it’s a flashback by a banker in a meeting.  A real page turner!
Scribophile.com has been helpful.  The quality of the crit varies; sometimes you get the grammar person, sometimes a gentle reader who just likes the story.  I appreciate the grumpy ones who point out big issues.  One critiquer highlighted every paragraph started with a character’s name and thought the piece read like stage directions.  I’ve never read stage directions, but I’m sure he was 100% correct.  Every paragraph started with Eileen said, Punit looked, Chen whispered.  Yikes.

*I wanted to document where I am in the “writing journey”, what I’ve done and how I’m feeling. *

Goals:
My goals have grown over the past six months.  Originally, I wanted to publish one story.  Or, more exactly, create a story that was publishable.  Writing a short story about a futuristic world seemed very reasonable.  With Creating Short Fiction as my guide, I tried write like a pantser.  The piece was a disaster; it had a mildly interesting character in a near-future world.  But no coherent plot, or tension, or believable secondary characters.  And the writing was loose,  the opposite of tight, very loose.  When I wrote that first story, I hadn’t even heard of “tight writing”.
Now, I want to be a better writer, a better storyteller, a creator of worlds and characters.  To write honestly and without fear.  And share these stories and worlds others.  I don’t have illusions of grandeur; my conservative goal is for a hundred people to read my stuff, not counting friends and family. 
Routine:  
We are coming out of the Great Quarantine of 2020 (or at least trying).  When I started, I still had my old routine; commuting to the city four days a week, working from home one day a week.  My daily goal was to write five hundred words every morning.  I did this four to five times a week but there were days when I couldn’t find the time.  Starting in March, however, I’ve been writing every morning.  Haven’t missed one day.  Now, the routine is an entry in the 5-minute journal, then my 3 pages of longhand Morning Pages.  After the journaling, I meditate for 20-30 minutes, make a carafe of French Press coffee (from Monmouth County’s own Fair Mountain Roasters) and sit in the sunroom with my iPad to write.
This is the 500 words-don’t-worry-if-it’s-any-good part.  Some days it flows; some days 500 words takes a full hour.   I considered increasing this count, maybe to 750 or 1000, but I read an interview with Hemingway (a fantastic interview, done by George Plimpton for the Paris Review-Hemingway is cranky but still discusses interesting stuff) where he writes for four to five hours every morning, first thing… but only puts out  5-600 words.  I’m not obsessed with word counts, but that was eye opening.  He puts a lot more thought into what he writes than I do.  I’m not Hemingway, though, and I never will be.  I can strive to be like Hugh Howey; his work is excellent, an expert at a world building, good plots, good enough characters, rhythmic wording… but it’s not literary or high end. 
Then I edit.  I dump the first edit into the ProWriter tool, which finds my obvious issues.  After cleaning and tightening it a bit, I read it again like a reader.  This is where the real editing happens.  My attitude toward these sessions makes all the difference; if I think the piece is good before I start, I see the flaws, the horrible writing, the tremendous gaps in character development.  If I think it’s terrible going in, I am usually drawn to the better parts.  I enjoy the tinkering part of editing; tightening, cutting ruthlessly, etc.  Making big changes, like committing to rewriting entire scenes or chapters, or even trying to work something into an existing passage, is very hard.