The concept of this series of posts is to stop reading craft books, learning from other writers’ chosen examples, and learn from novels, choosing my own examples. However, I had one craft book from the library that I hadn’t finished, Dialogue: The Art of Verbal Action for the Page, Stage, and Screen by Robert McKee. It’s very good, and I noticed examples of some of the things I read in the book while I read this week’s novel, Unspeakable Things by Jess Lourey, as a novelist.
Choosing the Novels
Though I have lists of books and somewhat of a plan for an order of what I would like to read and study, I am already learning the importance of being flexible. One of the main issues for my reading list is availability. My hold on Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng became available so A Widow for One Year by John Irving is getting pushed back another week.
I signed up for the second section of the Wesleyan University course “The Modern and The Post Modern” on coursera.org. The novel for the that section is To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf. I don’t think I’ve read it, so I’m excited to get to that one after Irving.
Reading Novels Like a Novelist (RNLN)
So this week I’ll be focusing on what I’m learning from Dialogue: The Art of Verbal Action for the Page, Stage, and Screen by Robert McKee. It covers a lot more than spoken dialogue. He explores dialogue as three modes of talk: said to others, said to oneself, and said to the reader or audience. He says the three functions of dialogue are Exposition, Characterization, and Action. As you can see, his study of dialogue covers all the aspects of a novel.
Though the book covers more that just dialogue in the traditional sense of quoted speech between characters, I thought I would also focus in on the questions from my original list that have to do with dialogue:
What is the first line of dialogue? What is the main character’s first line of dialogue? Did it reveal the main character’s main concern? Did it foreshadow what was to come? Does it showcase the character’s personality? Do I like this first line of dialogue? How many words is it? Does it have a surface meaning and a deeper one?
Does the dialogue reveal character, support the plot, hit the emotional theme, escalate the tension? Does the main character have a unique voice/way of speaking? How can I apply what I like to my own work?
Is the dialogue in conflict? Does it further characterizations? Does it further the story? Is it fresh and colorful?
Through this exploration, I will hopefully have a whole new list of questions inspired by McKee’s book.
The way Dialogue influenced my RNLN got me wondering if other craft books will influence my reading as well. One of my main goals for this project is to learn how to evoke emotion in the reader, so I think I’ll re-read my copy of The Emotional Craft of Fiction by Donald Maass while I read Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng to see if the craft book helps me focus on finding useful examples in the text that will help me improve my writing.
Learning to Evoke Emotion by Maria L. Berg 2023
It’s All Coming Together
I keep talking about enjoying the synergy of my studies, but this week’s serendipity was pretty funny. Last week I mentioned the fun fact that Henry Mancini wrote the theme song for Remington Steele which I’ve been enjoying on Amazon Prime Video. I didn’t realize when I chose Unspeakable Things for RNLN that it was set in the eighties and went a little nuts with the pop culture references mentioning Remington Steele many times. 😄
Last week I “won” my first physical book (other than a coloring book) from Library Thing. Won is in quotes because it is actually an exchange for my volunteer labor of reviewing the book, but they call it winning. The coming book that will arrive in my mailbox is a poetry collection which I’ll need to read carefully for review, so I thought it would be the perfect specimen for a new segment of this experiment: Reading Poetry Like a Poet. Then I thought what I’ve been doing is more specific than Reading Like a Writer. In Bunn’s essay “How to Read Like a Writer”, he was talking about reading non-fiction more than fiction. No, what I’m doing is Reading Novels like a Novelist. So for the sake of specificity, I’ve decided to change the names of these posts going forward, and thus the new acronym will be RNLN which I found out stands for the Dutch Royal Navy, but I don’t think that will cause confusion.
Choosing the Novels
After playing with all the great note-taking features in Kindle, I thought of all the Thrillers I’ve collected through the Amazon Prime First Readers program that I haven’t read because I have trouble staying engaged with e-books. I thought that reading like a novelist might change that, so instead of moving on to taking notes in an old paperback, I’m going to stick with Kindle for another week.
To pick which one to read, I decided to take my own advice and choose one that may help me in the future by looking at each one for hints that it could be a possible comp (comparison to my novel) and for possible agents that I might want to query.
I chose Unspeakable Things by Jess Lourey because it’s description says it was inspired by a true story from the author’s home town, and takes place in a small community. So it could be a comp. Her agent is Jill Marsal who is the founding partner of Marsal Lyon Literary Agency and represents many bestselling authors. Her webpage says she is actively looking for new projects.
Reading Novels Like a Novelist with Kindle
For some reason I couldn’t get the Project Gutenberg .mobi file to load onto my tablet, so I used Kindle on my laptop to read it. It turned out to be a good thing because using the horizontal format, I could have the notebook feature open at the same time as the text, and search, and also see the function of the flashcards. All fun, simple, and useful tools.
You may already know all of this, but it is new to me, and part of my new processes of reading novels like a novelist, so I thought I would share. Skip ahead, or skim if you already take notes with Kindle.
Above the Library button, if you click on “View,” there are some options. The first thing I tried, near the bottom of the list, was Color Mode. There you have the option changing the regular reading mode from a white page to a Sepia, or more aged, pinkish hue, or to a black page with white lettering. I stuck with black type on the white page.
Let’s go through the note-taking options I found reading in kindle:
bookmarks
Go: location ctrl+g
search
highlighting
color-coding
notes
notebook
flashcards
bookmarks: the bookmark is the small ribbon with a plus-sign in the right corner. To bookmark a page, click on it. I always thought this was just to hold my place when I closed the application, but reading as a novelist it proves to have other useful functions. Under “View” above Color Mode you’ll see “Bookmarks.” When you click on it, it opens the notebook and shows you all of the pages you’ve bookmarked with their location. This gave me an idea: use the bookmarks to mark the expected locations of main plot-points. Madame Bovary has 6161 locations (it’s one of those files that doesn’t show page numbers, but I checked with a different book, and this works for pages as well), so I cut that in half and book-marked it, then cut it in half again to get my quarter, and three-quarter points, and book-marked those. I shouldn’t have been surprised, but they lined up with major plot points of the novel: The big party, the clubbed-foot surgery, and leaving the church for the carriage ride.
Go: location ctrl+g: Next to “View” at the top left of the page is “Go.” And the last thing in that menu is Location. You can quickly open the location window by pressing control and the letter g at the same time. Once there, you can quickly get to any location in the book which comes in handy when you want to review your notes, or go to the different locations that you find when using search.
search: This wonderful function that is accessed by clicking the magnifying glass on the left of the page. You can type in any word or phrase and every instance in the text is listed with its location. Since the abstractions I’m looking at are beauty and ugliness, I searched for them. Searching for beauty in the novel Madame Bovary got me thirty-eight matches to beauty and beautiful. Typing in ugly came back with four matches to ugly and ugliness.
highlighting: highlighting in Kindle is simple, hold the button on the mouse and scroll over the text. Once you have selected the text, a menu appears, giving you four colors to choose from, an option to Add a Note, Copy, look it up in the Dictionary, or Search. If you decide you don’t want to highlight the text after all, click on the white part of the page. If you have highlighted text and want to remove the highlight, click anywhere in the highlighted text and click on the colored circle with the X in it.
color coding: as I mentioned, there are only four colors to choose from: pink, orange, yellow, and blue. Before starting, it’s a good idea to have a plan, because an organized color-code can help with other features. Remember, you can use bookmarks for plot points, so that offers a fifth option.
notes: It’s a good idea to leave yourself a quick note as you go. Click anywhere in your highlighted text and click Add Note. Then type in the box and click save. If the notebook is open, you can type a note under the text in the notebook.
notebook: In the right top corner of the page next to the bookmark symbol is a rectangle that says “Show Notebook.” On the right hand side will now be a list of everything you’ve highlighted organized by chapter and location. At the top of the notebook under the words “Notes and Highlights” it says “Filter by,” if you click on the arrow after All Items, there are options to look at your Bookmarks, your notes, and sort your highlights by color. There are little stars on each highlight, so you can choose certain ones and then sort by Starred. And if you’re connected to the internet, you can look at what most people have highlighted and compare that with your own. You can add notes to each of your highlighted texts if you haven’t already.
flashcards: Next to the words “Notes and Highlights” in the Notebook there’s a rectangle that says “+Flashcards.” This is a fun feature that will take anything you have filtered in your notebook into flashcards: a really great tool for studying for an exam. There’s a symbol of overlapping rectangles under the magnifying glass on the left hand side of the page that brings up your flashcards and will show them to you so you can quiz yourself and mark what you got right and wrong. I’m not quite sure how I want to use this function for reading novels like a novelist, but it’s something to think about. Do you have any ideas for how to use the flashcard function to be a better novelist?
I think you can probably see why I want to read and study another novel on my kindle next week to explore all of the interesting tools and how best to use them.
Reading Like a Novelist in Kindle
It’s All Coming Together
The draft for my novel that I wrote during NaNoWriMo last November came from the idea of incorporating my study of contradictory abstract nouns into my characters. I really like the idea that the big conflicts in life come from the fact that abstractions that all of us think we understand like love, beauty, happiness, wisdom, and truth, are actually undefinable, and defined differently by everyone, and always changing.
My study into contradictory abstractions is helping me see the big picture in a new way. I can see how my interests in music, art, science, history, and philosophy overlap.
By reading Madame Bovary for my modernist class, and as a novelist, I can see that overlap plainly. Like meeting someone you’ve never seen before, then seeing them all over town, the moment I finished the class lectures on Madame Bovary, the novel started coming up all over my other reading.
In ABC of Reading by Ezra Pound he says, “An attempt to set down things as they are, to find the word that corresponds to the thing, the statement that portrays, and presents, instead of making a comment, however brilliant, or an epigram. Flaubert is the archetype.”
Later he says, “If you want to study the novel, go, READ the best you can find. All that I know about it, I have learned by reading:” and in his short list he includes Madame Bovary, though I believe he intends for us to read it in French.
I was excited to find a book called Painterly Abstraction In Modernist American Poetry by Charles Altieri in my library system, but was having trouble getting into it. But after reading Madame Bovary I found it referenced in the fourth chapter called “Modernist Irony and the Kantian Heritage. The second section of the chapter is all about Flaubert and Madame Bovary. He states,”No work surpasses Madame Bovary at defining the demands that eventually led European art to Modernism. Dramatically, Flaubert’s novel affords a keen critical analysis of the conditions that trap desire in the law of heteronomy.” (heteronomy: noun 1. the condition of being under the domination of an outside authority, either human or divine.) Altieri later writes, “An adequate account of the text must indicate the lines of force established by at least three fundamental factors of the writing: its complex rendering of persons, of scenes, and of the emotions they elicit in the audience; its foregrounding of the authorial act as itself a mode of eliciting and playing out desires; and its constant reminders of the artificiality or constructedness of what nonetheless capable of shaping emotions that carry over into the world beyond the specific text.
It’s this idea of art for art’s sake that was discussed in class, and also connects Modernism to Abstract Art. So I’ll talk more about that tomorrow.
I did it! I put together all my 4theWords files from NaNoWriMo into one file, formatted it into one double-spaced draft and did a preliminary spell-check to make my novel draft readable. Then I saved it as a PDF so I’m ready for my first read through on my tablet. So, my focus this week is the big picture, the large developmental edits. As I read as a writer this week, I’ll be thinking about all the possibilities for the best way to tell my story, and The Woman in the Library by Sulari Gentill turned out to be a great book to study as an example.
Choosing the Novels
Now that I’ve read the three novels I had from the library, I had to decide what’s next. One part of learning to read like a writer, is to learn how I want to process different formats. This week for my coursera.org course, “The Modern and Postmodern,” we’re reading Madame Bovary by Gustav Flaubert. I’ve downloaded it from Project Gutenberg for kindle, so this will be my first experiment taking notes with kindle. If that doesn’t work for me, I can download it as a PDF and try it with a PDF editing program.
Next week I’m going to read A Widow for One Year by John Irving. I’ve had the paperback for a long time but never gotten past the first chapter or two. The paperback isn’t in any condition to pass along to another reader, so I’m going to see how highlighting and writing notes in the book itself compares to using the post-its.
While looking at my book lists I saw that The Hours by Michael Cunningham is about another book on my lists Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, so it’ll be fun to read them in tandem.
There are so many things to think about while considering a book list for RLW. (I’m trying to get used to using the abbreviation. It’s going to take a while).
Reading Like a Writer
The novel I read, and will be studying this week, is the The Woman in the Library by Sulari Gentill. It is a meta-novel about writers discussing writing their novels within a novel. It is also partly an epistolary novel using the letters from a correspondence with another author reading and responding to the chapters as they are written.
It reminded me a bit of The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood which has a novel within the novel as well as newspaper reports.
This got me thinking about different elements that can be used in a novel. Last week’s novel, The Madness of Crowds by Louise Penny, used lines from a poem written by one of the characters in different ways throughout the novel.
House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski tells a second story using footnotes and adds to the story with the graphic presentation of the text. Horrorstör by Grady Hendrix is a novel made to look like an IKEA furniture catalogue.
I did a quick search for “unique novel formats” and found S. by J.J. Abrams and Doug Dorst. S. It’s a book about two readers checking out a book called Ship of Theseus from the library. The description says it comes with 22 inserts. I just requested it from the library. I wonder how they deal with all the parts. Should be interesting.
Illuminae files by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff is is a teen sci-fi trilogy told through “hacked documents”: emails, maps, medical reports, interviews.
Can you think of any other novels in unique forms that really added to the telling of the story?
Reading Like a Writer V by Maria L. Berg 2023
The Questions for this week:
My main focus is structure, so I think I’ll focus on the questions inspired by How to Write a Damn Good Novel by James N. Frey:
What is the novels premise? Has the author proved the premise? How is the premise made clear to the reader? What is the main character’s premise? Do I relate to the character? How? Was the character likeable? Why? How do the main characters grow from pole to pole? Is there rising conflict? Is it ever static, or does it jump? Does the story begin at the correct place? Do the events of the story grow out of one another? Is there poetic justice or irony? What is the narrative voice? Would it have been better if told from another viewpoint? Does each scene have a rising conflict? Were flashbacks used? Were they absolutely necessary? Is there foreshadowing? How is it used? Is the dialogue in conflict? Does it further characterizations? Does it further the story? Is it fresh and colorful? Is the writing sensual? What are my favorite sensory descriptions? Is there a good balance of all the senses?
What is the ordinary world? How is it presented? What is the inciting incident? When, where in the book does it occur? What is the MC’s knot (problem)? What will force her to face it, finally take action to unravel it? What is her old way? What is her new way? What decision does the MC have to make at the moment of truth? What is the cost? What is the gain? What are the steps of the escalation: the ever larger bombs? When is the villain introduced? What is the first conflict/barrier the villain causes for the MC? What is the main conflict? Man vs. man, man vs. nature, man vs. self, man vs. tech, man vs. society, or man vs. the supernatural / fate? What are the essential scenes for the genre? What is the plot structure? Map the main scenes
This is the first novel since I started this study that had any romance and sex in it, so I can look at those questions from the original list:
Is there romance, sex scenes? How did the author approach emotional love? How did the author approach physical love? Did it develop the characters’ personalities? Did it further the plot?
Time to Experiment
I’ve narrowed my questions to plot and structure. That doesn’t mean I won’t also learn about characterization, pacing, and emotion, but I want my reading to help me learn the things I need for my novel revision as I do the work.
Do you have a technique for reading like a writer? I would love to hear about it in the comments.
How was your week? Did you try reading like a writer? I noticed I’m already reading differently.
Choosing the Novels
I thought of another way to choose novels to read and study. When my novel is finished, edited, and polished, I’ll be looking for an agent. Once I find some agents that are looking for manuscripts like mine, it’s a good idea to read the books by authors they represent. Why not start now? My first draft done, I know my genre, and what my book’s about, so I have all the information I need to begin imagining who my dream agent might be. So the next step is to look at their website and see what books they represent.
Not sure how to get started? There are lots of great resources online:
Poets & Writers has a searchable database Agent Query has a quick search and also has a great online community for authors Publishers Marketplace tells you which agents have recently made publishing deals Manuscript Wish List on Twitter is a great place to read from agents what they are looking for. Writer’s Digest does a series called New Agent Alert
So instead of feeling overwhelmed by a mountain of books to read when my novel is ready, I’ll find books represented by agents who interest me now, while I’m revising, and also make a habit of looking at these great resources for writers.
Reading Like a Writer
Last week, right after I published my post, I found a blog, Professor Nicolosi, teaching Mike Bunn’s essay “How to Read Like a Writer.” There’s a free download of the essay if you’re interested.In the essay, Bunn says “When you Read Like a Writer (RLW) you work to identify some of the choices the author made so that you can better understand how such choices might arise in your own writing.” Something to think about. For every word, or line, or scene in the novel, the author made a final choice from many, many choices. Would I have chosen something else? What might some of the other choices been?
The novel I read, and will be studying this week, is the Madness of Crowds by Louise Penny. It is the seventeenth book in the Inspector Gamache series. The books take place in a small town in Quebec, Canada called three pines. It’s the first book I’ve read that talks about the pandemic and how it effected daily life. Amazon has recently made a series of Louise Penny’s earlier books in the series. Every two episodes is one story. Each of the novels appears to weave tragic historical events into the fictional murder, showing how evils of the past seep into the present. Because the characters and setting have had such longevity as to keep people reading through seventeen novels and make it to the screen, I though I would focus on character and setting as character while studying the novel. My goal is to find how the author makes her characters so compelling that the reader wants to continue to read about them again and again. I’m going to take a look at last week’s questions and see which ones will help me focus my study.
Reading Like a Writer III by Maria L. Berg 2023
The Questions for this week:
What about the first paragraph drew me in? What do I think the book is about from the first paragraph? Does the first paragraph present characterization, energy/tone. mystery, and emotional bedrock? How would I rewrite it/improve it? What did this novel teach me about beginnings? How can I apply it to my own novel?
*I’m curious to see if the opening of the book makes me care about the characters right away.
How is the main character introduced? How is the main character first described? Is it just eyes and hair? What’s the most interesting/memorable detail? What is a single word to describe the main character? How would I rewrite the description? What did this novel teach me about character introductions and descriptions? How can I apply it to my own novel?
*This group of questions is interesting this week. How does the author introduce that main character for the seventeenth time? How does the author present a character already so well known to the reader.
What is the first line of dialogue? What is the main character’s first line of dialogue? Did it reveal the main character’s main concern? Did it foreshadow what was to come? Does it showcase the character’s personality? How many words is it? Does it have a surface meaning and a deeper one? Does the dialogue reveal character, support the plot, hit the emotional theme, escalate the tension? Does the main character have a unique voice/way of speaking? Do I like this first line of dialogue? How can I apply what I like to my own work?
*It looks like all of the questions that were inspired by The Linchpin Writer by John Matthew Fox are just as relevant when focusing on characters in a series. But now I’m going to skip ahead a bit.
Do any characters die? How did they die? Was it foreshadowed? Did I care?
What is the main character’s premise? Do I relate to the character? How? Was the character likeable? Why? How do the main characters grow from pole to pole? Is the dialogue in conflict? Does it further characterizations? Does it further the story? Is it fresh and colorful?
What is the main character’s core temperament? How does the reader know that? What is the main character’s character arc? What is important in the character’s backstory? How does the reader know that? How do others perceive the main character? How is that presented to the reader? How does the main character speak and move that is unique? What are the main character’s assets? What are the main character’s faults/flaws?
Time to Experiment
I’ve narrowed my questions to character. That doesn’t mean I won’t also learn about plot, pacing, and emotion, but I want to see if having a specific focus helps me read like a writer.
Do you have a technique for reading like a writer? I would love to hear about it in the comments.
Want to up your reading game? Want to know what it means to read like a writer first hand? I sure do. And I think I’m ready. I have read hundreds of books on writing, and they all have something in common: they use examples from a variety of novels as examples of writing techniques. This year, I want to train myself to find these examples as I read novels, learn from them, and apply what I learn to my novel draft. I hope you’ll join me in the experience.
Choosing the Novels
Like me, you may be thinking, No problem. I have a To Be Read (TBR) pile a mile high. I’ll never run out of books to read, but are those the books to start reading as a writer?
There are so many novels in the world, how will I find the ones that are going to help me grow as a writer?
I started my quest by looking at lists of 100 books you should read before you die. Most of those lists consist of the same great books I have read, but I found some interesting books I hadn’t even heard of. Then I looked at the Nobel prize winners for literature, and the Pulitzer prize winners for fiction. I now had a huge list, but I doubted any of them would work as comps for my novel (Comps are books with similar premises, themes, or style to my work that I will use when pitching my finished novel). I definitely want to be reading as many possible comps as I can as I work.
So a new approach to my reading list was to list all the authors I have really enjoyed over the years, and think about where some possible comps might come from in that list. I went through stages in my life when I would read everything I could find by one author. Who were those authors? Charles Dickens, Isabel Allende, Salman Rushdie, John Irving, Kurt Vonnegut, Margaret Atwood, Mary Higgins Clark, Carl Hiaassen, Toni Morisson, Tony Hillerman, and many others.
Half of those authors already have novels on my lists, and I’ll pick one by each of the others to add. The other thing to do is to look over the best sellers in Mystery and Thriller for the last ten years and pick some of them that sound promising. The order of reading will have to do with procurement, but having a prepared list gives me hope that I won’t stray too far from my ideal.
Reading Like a Writer
Once I’ve chosen my fifty-two novels I plan to study this year, how will I approach reading and learning from each of them? What is it I’m looking for as I read each novel that will be different as a writer? How will I learn from them? I’ll have to come up with a system of questions to ask myself while I read.
The best place to start is why am I doing this? What am I searching for? Why do I want to read like a writer? What do I hope to gain by it? What am I hoping to find in these novels?
What am I really trying to learn? I think I’m trying to learn the specifics of the writing I think is good and bad. What makes me keep reading, and what makes me put a novel down? What makes a passage or character memorable, and why do I forget so many books the moment I’ve put them down? I want to find the tricks to creating emotion in the reader, and keeping the reader turning pages. I want to discover how to make my characters relatable, making the reader care for my protagonist. I want to learn how to create interesting twists and surprises. I want to learn how to give my characters unique voices so that the reader can tell who’s talking without dialogue tags.
Now that I have a more specific idea of what I want to learn from the novels I read, what specific questions will I keep in mind while I read to get to the answers I’m looking for?
The Questions
I recently read some really good craft books: The Linchpin Writer by John Matthew Fox (which I reviewed here), How to Write a Damn Good Novel by James N. Frey, and Plot versus Character by Jeff Gerke. I used these three books to inspire some questions to think about as I read.(The links to these books are amazon associate links, if you click on these links to buy the book, I receive some thank you pennies that are greatly appreciated).
Questions for Reading as a Writer
Do I like the title? Do I like the cover? How many pages, chapters? What genre? What format did I read? When was the book published? Have I read anything else by the author? Look up the author, learn something about the author Did I like the book? What did I like most about it? What did I like least about it? What was the book about (brief summary)? What book or movie would I compare it to? What viewpoint was it written in? What tense was it written in?
The Linchpin Writer points out linchpin moments to look for in every novel. It inspired these questions:
What about the first paragraph drew me in? What do I think the book is about from the first paragraph? Does the first paragraph present characterization, energy/tone. mystery, and emotional bedrock? How would I rewrite it/improve it? What did this novel teach me about beginnings? How can I apply it to my own novel?
How is the main character introduced? How is the main character first described? Is it just eyes and hair? What’s the most interesting/memorable detail? What is a single word to describe the main character? How would I rewrite the description? What did this novel teach me about character introductions and descriptions? How can I apply it to my own novel?
What is the first line of dialogue? What is the main character’s first line of dialogue? Did it reveal the main character’s main concern? Did it foreshadow what was to come? Does it showcase the character’s personality? How many words is it? Does it have a surface meaning and a deeper one? Does the dialogue reveal character, support the plot, hit the emotional theme, escalate the tension? Does the main character have a unique voice/way of speaking? Do I like this first line of dialogue? How can I apply what I like to my own work?
Where did I feel an emotion while I read? What in the writing made me feel an emotion? Which technique did the author use to make me feel that emotion? Did I like feeling that emotion, or did I feel manipulated? Did I learn something about eliciting emotion in a reader? How can I apply that to my novel?
Did the book elicit wonder? Was there something that made me marvel? What metaphors did the author use?
Is there romance, sex scenes? How did the author approach emotional love? How did the author approach physical love? Did it develop the characters’ personalities? Did it further the plot?
How did the chapters end? Were there cliffhangers? Was there a variety of chapter endings? Are there examples of the “already, but not-yet” technique? Do any chapters end on character change?
How does the book end? Is the ending satisfying? Was there a surprise or twist? Was there a second ending?
Do any characters die? How did they die? Was it foreshadowed? Did I care? How was the pacing? What moments did the author speed up to good effect? What moments did the author slow down to good effect?
How to Write a Damn Good Novel says every good novel needs a clear premise. It inspired these questions: What is the novels premise? Has the author proved the premise? How is the premise made clear to the reader? What is the main character’s premise? Do I relate to the character? How? Was the character likeable? Why? How do the main characters grow from pole to pole? Is there rising conflict? Is it ever static, or does it jump? Does the story begin at the correct place? Do the events of the story grow out of one another? Is there poetic justice or irony? What is the narrative voice? Would it have been better if told from another viewpoint? Does each scene have a rising conflict? Were flashbacks used? Were they absolutely necessary? Is there foreshadowing? How is it used? Is the dialogue in conflict? Does it further characterizations? Does it further the story? Is it fresh and colorful? Is the writing sensual? What are my favorite sensory descriptions? Is there a good balance of all the senses? Is there humor? Did the author ever make me laugh? What types of specific, concrete details stood out (or didn’t) to make the story more realistic?
Plot versus Character says characters are layered like an onion. It inspired these questions:
What is the main character’s core temperament? How does the reader know that? What is the main character’s character arc? What is important in the character’s backstory? How does the reader know that? How do others perceive the main character? How is that presented to the reader? How does the main character speak and move that is unique? What are the main character’s assets? What are the main character’s faults/flaws? What is the ordinary world? How is it presented? What is the inciting incident? When, where in the book does it occur?
I’m sure there are many more questions this book can inspire, but I want to get started, and my list is getting very long.
Time to Experiment
Now that I have gathered an overwhelming amount of questions and read a novel, I’ll dive back into the novel and see if these questions help me learn from what I read. It may be that only a few of these questions are useful to me, but I won’t know until I try. I’ll attempt to organize the questions for useful study, and create an efficient method as I learn. Expect a post later this week (Thursday) with my first results.
Do you have a technique for reading as a writer? I would love to hear about it in the comments.
Though we are in the throws of National Poetry Writing Month and the A to Z Challenge, the theme this year for Experience Writing is A Year of Finishing Novels, and I need to get back to mine. To rekindle my motivation and hopefully yours, we have a very special guest post from author Jacob M. Appel whose new novel, Shaving with Occam, came out this January.
Jacob M. Appel is an American author, poet, bioethicist, physician, lawyer and social critic. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Medical Education at Mount Sinai’s Icahn School of Medicine, where he is Director of Ethics Education in Psychiatry. He is also the author of novels, short story collections, an essay collections, a volume of poems and a compendium of medical dilemmas.
The Third Priority: Reflections upon Motivation
I have now published twenty books. That places me one volume ahead of the late Joan Didion—if this were a competition—one volume behind Ann Beattie, and some incalculable number of texts short of the prolific Joyce Carol Oates. Some of my books have been reasonably well-received: or, at least, my grandmother enjoyed them. Others have evaporated into that forlorn ether of remaindered novels, shorn of their covers or relegated to the bargain bins that serve library fundraisers. Unlike with my first few novels, which I secretly fantasized might win plaudits from Oprah and Harold Bloom, become staples of cocktail conversation and college curricula, and ultimately alter the course of western civilization, I have now accepted that my twenty-first book is unlikely to outsell Harry Potter. In all likelihood, it will not even outperform the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. And yet I am determined to see my obscure literary brainchild to fruition. Which leads to the question: How does a writer motivate himself while scribbling well below the cultural radar screen?
The easy answer is that I have not fully accepted that my twenty-first book won’t prove the intellectual earthquake that my first twenty were not. This does happen. Some writers, like Kafka and John Kennedy Toole, have to wait for posthumous glory, but many others—including some of our most cherished authors—did not gain significant readerships until midway through their careers. Toni Morrison, for instance, had published two exquisite novels, The Bluest Eye and Sula, before she won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Song of Solomon at the age of forty-six and finally garnered the attention she deserved. Cormac McCarthy’s first five novels, including Blood Meridian, received limited notice—until All the Pretty Horses shattered the nation’s literary icescape when he was sixty. So maybe there is hope for me yet. In any case, it is never too late to publish a “break out” book—as Harriet Doerr did at 74 and Millard Kaufman at 90. Building up a body of work can be a path to making that happen. Edith Pearlman’s brilliant Honeydew offers an outstanding example of how a crowning achievement can be both the capstone of a literary career and a door to recognition for previous work. Nothing wrong with thinking big, and so you should. It’s not as though you’re asking to play shortstop for the New York Yankees or marry the Queen of England; rather, you’re seeking recognition for work in an area where you have developed skills over many years of hard work and commitment. That is not at all unreasonable.
But how does a writer operationalize that (to use the language of the modern economy)? Thinking big is good and well in theory, but much harder when you’re using your first twenty books as doorstops and your children keep asking you why the heat has been turned off and a mattress-sized hole in the roof lets in the snow. My limited wisdom is to make writing one’s third priority in life. Not, I emphasize, one’s first priority. A mistake many writers make is trying to prioritize their writing ahead of other fundamental obligations like work and family. Maybe this works if you’re J. D. Salinger or Emily Dickinson, but like starvation diets, most such efforts succumb to the pressures of daily living. Earning a living and engaging with one’s family are usually the top two priorities for most human beings, although both definitions of livelihood and family are certainly fluid and flexible in the modern era. Embrace that. But make sure writing is one’s third priority—ahead of learning Esperanto or how to play the oboe or binge watching all of the original episodes of What’s My Line? If writing ranks below third on the list of life’s obligations, one is far less likely to complete novel one, let alone twenty-one.
Often, I have discovered, my students believe that they are making writing their third priority, when they’re not. I confess I am often guilty of this self-deception myself. What they are actually prioritizing are the small, mundane tasks—finishing their taxes, sending out Christmas presents—that they believe stand in the way of writing, so that they will then have a schedule free and clear to write. Maybe it is human nature to tackle these minor tasks before large creative ones, or possibly, we’re trained to do this as part of our elementary school time-management education, but in either case, it’s a great skill set for an administrative assistance, but not for a writer. These minor tasks sap one’s energy, so that when one finally has a clear schedule, one no longer has the stamina or drive to put pen to paper. Write first! Then tackle the chores of daily living. I assure you that nobody is going to send you to prison for tax evasion, or refuse to invite you to eat cranberries and roast goose, if you arrive at the post office at 3pm and not 9am. In contrast, sitting down to your novel after a series of errands can prove daunting.
Yet I suspect the leading obstacle to writing, for most writers, is writing itself. What do I mean? Most writers have a number of literary projects in their hopper—as well as requests for book reviews, friends who seek blurbs, colleagues who ask for a clever, short commentary for a newsletter or solicit a human-interest article for the local paper, etc. These offers are often flattering; they can prove rewarding. In aggregate, they are also the novelist’s sworn enemies. It is not enough to make writing one’s third priority. One must make one’s principal literary project, whether a novel or a work of nonfiction, one’s third priority. Otherwise, one will drown under the weight of interesting yet tangential projects.
Which leads us to priority number four: Submitting. If you’re going to make writing your third priority, you owe it to yourself to make sending that writing out into the world your fourth priority. Do not dither, or doubt yourself, or let the perfect be the enemy of the good. None of us may ever catch up with Joyce Carol Oates, but we don’t have to. It only takes one book, and we are all only 54,000 words away from our own Great Gatsby. If it’s not book twenty-one for me, then at least I’m one step closer.
This week was both surprising and challenging. My daily writer’s meditation and novel writing habit almost got me through some very freezing weather and surprise snow, and my feeling of impending doom from world politics. My morning stretching and exercise followed by meditation has really changed my relationship with my body. I’m listening to my body, and feeling like a complete system, instead of an opposing duality of mind and body that I have been for years. However, my mind was eventually worn down by distraction and horrible thoughts of “What’s the point of creation when humans are bent on destruction?” So I took yesterday off.
Set-backs will happen. I feel like giving myself a break was a healthy set-back. But only one day off and I’m finding it hard to get back into my new system. Especially since I feel a need to write more, not less. I’ve had to remind myself to be patient a lot today. Patience is everything when trying to make lasting changes and create systems of positive habits. I just started reading Atomic Habits by James Clear–I enjoyed his email course that I got through the Best Year of Your Life Summit–and plan to talk more about habit systems in my next post.
A Cold Mountain Haibun Poem Interlude
Over at dVerse Poets Pub it is Haibun Monday and Frank has challenged us to contemplate both the work of a poet from the Tang Dynasty and a physical mountain. It’s pouring today, so the mountain is not out, but I know it’s collecting snow behind those clouds.
Cold Mountain Sky
My sky is a giant, cold mountain. Even in summer its glacier keeps it white-capped. It is easy to forget the volcano sleeping inside. Like me, its heat and pressure are hidden, tucked under a thick, calm crust, for now. But it is dormant, while I toss and turn.
You shared your blanket white covering the morning a fluffy surprise
Cold Mountain Sky by Maria L. Berg 2022
Assessment
Last week was challenging. Luckily, the work I’ve done to create a daily writing habit got me through (mostly).
My weekly check-in:
What went right last week? My morning habits are really going well. I added a ten minute vocal warm-up after the full writer’s meditation and before I sit down to write. The cat absolutely hates it. It’s pretty funny. I read a thriller novel from the rather large collection of e-books I’ve collected. I’m finally excited to read one thriller after another until I’ve cleared my kindle. I can already see how I can learn both what to do and what not to do from these books. I used to have trouble finishing e-books, I guess I finally got used to reading on my tablet. I also had one night of (mostly) good sleep without the laptop!! Victory. This week, I’ll hope for two in a row. That would be amazing. But, as I said last week, I can’t try to sleep; I have to let sleep happen.
What didn’t go well last week? Russia invaded Ukraine and I had trouble concentrating on much else. I finally took a day off yesterday, and I’m not upset about it. I’m kind of amazed I got anything done at all last week. A day of distraction watching movies and cuddling with the cat was what I needed. Now, I’m ready to get back to work. I also did not meet my submission goal, but reading thrillers took priority as a novelist.
What small steps will I add this week? This week I’m adding the poetry MFA eight week program. I’ve been reading The Portable MFA in Creative Writing from The New York Writers Workshop and the poetry section interested me. Rita Gabis lays out an eight week plan of writing and reading to emulate a semester of an MFA in poetry. She recommends dedicating forty-five minutes a day to writing poetry. She also recommends breaking those minutes up into small sessions at different times of the day to explore when the optimum time is for my poetic musings. April is National Poetry Month, so I think I’ll start now, fitting the MFA program into my system. Then the second half of the “semester” will coincide with the daily poetry writing challenge. I am also going to try the Sleep Smarter Sleep Makeover again. A lot of Shawn Stevenson’s ideas have stuck with me, and now that I’ve identified some of my deeper issues, and created some good sleep habits, I’m hoping the two week program will be the extra motivation I need to get my sleep habit to stick.
Is it time to increase one of my habits? 750 words each day felt challenging, but I want to get to 1,000, so this week I think I’ll split my writing session into two 500 word sessions and see what happens.
What else did I try? I made a collection of all the thriller e-books on my kindle. There are twenty-seven. I plan to read one after the other until I have read them all.
Accountability
One area that every resource talks about is social accountability. I have found many times in the past that if I share my goals here on Experience Writing, I am more likely to achieve them.
I would really enjoy if you would like to join me in an accountability club. Every week, type your goals in the comments, or leave a link to your post and we can check in with each other to see how we did with our goals.
I tried again to do a Sunday week in review post, and again my work wouldn’t load, so Monday is my Year of Finishing Novels posts day. I am not going to waste time fighting with my internet. My time is for writing novels and reaching my goals. And sharing my progress and what I’m learning with you, of course.
Rewards
As I mentioned in my last post, a habit cycle consists of a cue, a behavior, and a reward. As I began this process of identifying the habits I would like to create, and the habits I would like to change, I found it hard to identify my rewards.
I don’t like shopping. I have everything I want and need, and I don’t have money to spend on things as rewards. I also didn’t want food or beverages to be my rewards. I felt kind of stuck. I wanted to set up these systems to reward my new behaviors, but how?
Then I really looked at myself and thought about times in my past when I was really happy. I went through a period of time when I closely associated with Tigger because I love bouncing. I’m trying to increase movement and exercise, so jumping on my rebounder (small trampoline) became a reward.
That got me thinking that many of the behaviors I enjoy that are not writing could act as rewards for meeting my small goals. With fun activities as rewards I came up with:
Jump on the rebounder
Draw for 10 minutes
Dance Break!
Go take some pictures
Stretch on yoga ball
Put stickers on stuff
10 minute meditation
Play guitar for five minutes
I was also reading Jack Canfield’s Success Affirmations and was inspired to write some phrases to tell myself I am doing great.
I wrote my action rewards and my affirmations on colorful slips of card stock paper, folded them up and put them in a jar, so when I had done my desired action, I could open my reward jar (pictured above), and get a surprise reward.
At first, when I pulled an affirmation out of my word jar and said it aloud, it didn’t feel like much of a reward. Then one day, when I was cleaning out the closet for my meditation, I found an old toy megaphone (pictured above) that has five different voice-altering settings. When I said my affirmation (any of the affirmations out of my reward jar) using the megaphone on either the high pitch, low pitch, or monotone settings, it made me laugh. That felt like a reward.
Celebrations
In Tiny Habits, BJ Fogg takes a different stand on what reward really means. He says the idea of a large reward in the future for achieving your goal isn’t going to work. You need to reward yourself instantly after your behavior (Made me think of training a pet). To do this, he chooses to fist bump and say, “I’m awesome” (Even after he flosses one tooth, since that was his tiny habit that he started with to create a flossing habit).
It’s important to send yourself that little dose of dopamine (pleasure) to get the behavior to stick. Finding what works for you is important. Fist bump and “I’m awesome” didn’t work for me. After thinking about how I respond to happy news and practicing some things, I found clapping three times and saying, “Yeah!” or “Woohoo” in a certain way, gave me a smile and a good feeling of accomplishment.
With my rewards and celebrations in place, I have the tools I need to create and solidify the small changes that will make my large goals possible.
Like the squares of Himalayan Pink Salt I’ve pinched so sparingly for years from the squat jar sitting by the coffee in the cupboard, each word can pack a surprising punch, especially when the salty bite hides in the center of the sweetest treat.
Assessment
Last week was big for me. Some set-backs and disappointments on the sleep goal, but also some break-throughs.
My weekly check-in:
What went right last week? My morning writing habit is going so well. I have started thinking about my novel the moment I wake up. This morning I ran to the keyboard so I wouldn’t forget what I was thinking, and had my daily words before I started my routine. I’m now doing the full writer’s meditation (body, heart, and mind) and getting better at sitting every day. I find that when my mind wanders, it wanders to my novel which is fantastic! I’m moving more and more throughout the day. I have fuller range of motion, and I’m pain free!!
What didn’t go well last week? Sleep is still difficult. The week’s biggest disappointment was a day and night when I felt I had done absolutely everything right, then I got into bed and it was like I didn’t know how to go to sleep. I stared into the darkness for what felt like forever. I tossed and turned and tossed and turned. I gave up and read. It felt like torture. The next day I gave in and slept with the laptop. The next day I read three sleep books. Two of them: Restful Sleep by Deepak Chopra and The Sleep Solution by W. Chris Winter explained why I had been disappointed by my efforts, and they both said the same thing: Sleep is natural; you can’t try to sleep. You have to let sleep happen. I had tried so hard, worked so hard to sleep, I had created an entirely new anxiety keeping me awake. Sounds like something I would do. But no more! This week I will let sleep happen.
What small steps will I add this week? This week I’m adding my voice to the mix. I’m going to do vocal exercises in the morning and sing and play guitar at night after I put the laptop away and before I go to bed.
Is it time to increase one of my habits? I’m happy to say I feel ready to increase my daily writing goal again. This week I’m writing 750 words or more every day. I always said I wasn’t one of those people who writes every day, but that is exactly who I am, and it’s making such a difference in every aspect of my life.
What else did I try? One of the little things I tried last week that turned out to make a huge difference, was a simple Youtube video called Vagus Nerve Reset. The sleep issues and constant state of fight or flight that my poor body has been in both stem from surviving Hurricane Katrina and the the piles of stressors after that. I never stopped being in that survival mode, until now. Since I started these small new habits of motion in the morning and meditation and paying attention to my body, I’ve noticed my range of motion improving and the knots in my back loosening up, but I also had a horrible pain in my right shoulder. I knew it was all that stress not wanting to let go; I’ve held stress in my shoulders since high school, but this was an acute pain that wouldn’t loosen up and was hurting when I tried to sleep. I was almost crying by the time I went ahead and tried the Vagus Nerve video. And I noticed a difference. That same day I did the Full body scan meditation from Jon Kabat-Zinn’s Masterclass and though my shoulder was still bothering me, by the end of the meditation, it wasn’t screaming at me. I did the Vagus Nerve Reset and the Vagus Nerve Exercises again the next day and then yesterday was my first pain free day. I was so happy I was dancing and singing around the house all day. It might be a placebo. I don’t care. I’m going to keep doing it and being so very happy.
Accountability
One area that every resource talks about is social accountability. I have found many times in the past that if I share my goals here on Experience Writing, I am more likely to achieve them.
I would really enjoy if you would like to join me in an accountability club. Every week, type your goals in the comments, or leave a link to your post and we can check in with each other to see how we did with our goals.
My goals this week are to:
Write at least 750 words of my novel every day
Add vocal warm-ups in the morning and guitar playing before bed
One story submission and one poetry submission this week
I wanted to get this post out yesterday for my new habit of Sunday Assessment and Accountability, but my internet was ridiculously slow and not loading the site, then not loading this page, so I stopped trying to force it. There was no point in fighting and making myself miserable when the information is just as relevant today. One of the important lessons I’m learning about sticking with my new habits to reach my large goals is to be flexible.
Goals
When I started breaking my dream goal of finishing my novels into its smaller goals, I came up with:
Finish First Draft
Read and Revise
Get Feedback
Revise
Edit
Polish
Each of those goals can be broken into smaller goals with steps and deadlines. At first, I tried creating some S.M.A.R.T. goals. This mnemonic stands for: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound. Then I read about S.M.A.R.T.E.R. goals which added that the goal has to be Exciting and have Risk.
After breaking some of my goals into SMART and SMARTER goals, I realized there was a fatal flaw in the system for me: Time-bound goals set me up for failure. If I defined my goal around doing things at certain times and then something came up that made me late: I’ve already failed before I started.
Then I read Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg, PhD and his ideas clicked for me. Instead of using a specific time to cue a habit, create a system using the cue of “After.” Such a simple change, but it makes all the difference.
Habits
In The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg, he identifies the habit cycle as:
A cue or trigger
the behavior
reward
To understand and change a habit, you need to identify you triggers, and rewards. This was hard for me at first, and I will talk more about the steps I took in my next post. To get started creating tiny habits, it helps to identify an anchor habit, something you already do on a regular basis. For BJ Fogg, it was going to the bathroom.
Tiny Habits
The idea of tiny habits is to break your goal into the tiniest, easiest thing you can do toward your bigger goal. BJ Fogg wanted to get in shape. The easiest, smallest thing he thought of was doing two push-ups. Every time he went to the bathroom, he would do two push-ups.
For my goal of finishing novels, the smallest thing I knew I could do every day toward my goal was write 500 words. I already had a habit of writing morning pages, but I wasn’t always consistent, so I lowered my morning pages to two pages instead of three, and created this habit: “After I write my morning pages, I will do my writer’s meditation. After I do my writer’s meditation, I will type 500 words of my novel.”
A Tiny Habit System
As you can see, using the word “After” instead of “At 9 am every morning” creates a system of small successes instead of setting you up to fail if your schedule changes for some reason.
Once I knew how my writing habit fit together, then I worked backwards to attach it to the one thing I know I will do every morning which is–Wake up.
Reflection with Diving Birds by Maria L. Berg 2022
Assessment
My weekly check-in:
What went right last week? Last week my morning writing habit continued solidly. The increase to 600 words worked every day. Another group of small habits paid off. I started looking at myself in my tablet camera (back on January 26th) every time I turned it on to do my writing meditation. And over time, I fixed the lighting in the room and where I placed the camera, etc. until I thought it looked like me. Then, on Tuesday, I showed my face to my Zoom writing group for the first time. It was a big step for me. And I did it again on Thursday.
What didn’t go well last week? Though I did sleep two nights without the laptop, my nightly habit attempts are still not going well. My morning pages habit was a good anchor habit to build from for my daily novel writing, but I don’t have a strong night time anchor that leads to my sleep goals–yet.
What small steps will I add this week? This week I’m adding a revision goal. I’ve found that I enjoy printing out my stories as booklets then reading and revising them as separate little books, kind of my own version of the journal “One Story.” I would like to read, revise, and type up the changes of two stories this week. Since the reading and making notes part of that goal doesn’t include the computer, I will add reading a page of my story a tiny habit as part of my night time system.
Is it time to increase one of my habits? Not this week. Last week’s increase to 600 words was good, but was challenging on a couple of days when I was tired. I’ll stay at 600 for now. My daily walk goal last week didn’t stick. I walked four days. And since it’s supposed to rain for the next week, I have changed this goal to using my cardioglide while I watch a Masterclass lesson.
What else did I try? I moved my gratitude journal and my morning movement out of the bedroom and into the office because they are part of my waking up system and I want my bedroom to be only for sleep. I was going to give up on the topical magnesium spray because it felt greasy and sticky, but then I saw Jessica Baumgardner’s article about massaging it into her feet before bed and though it still makes my hands feel icky (I can always wash my hands), I’m going to try to make it a habit.
Accountability
One area that every resource talks about is social accountability. I have found many times in the past that if I share my goals here on Experience Writing, I am more likely to achieve them.
I would really enjoy if you would like to join me in an accountability club. Every week, type your goals in the comments, or leave a link to your post and we can check in with each other to see how we did with our goals.
My goals this week are to:
Write at least 600 words of my novel every day
Increase movement by using my cardioglide while watching a Masterclass
For my year of finishing novels, my first step was identifying where I became derailed in the past. I identified three areas where I would like to make changes: 1. Sleep 2. Hormonal Imbalance 3. Priorities. I read books in these three areas and looked for simple steps I could implement right away.
Mindset Matches Identity
To make lasting changes, I needed to identify why I want to make these changes, and part of exploring my whys is also redefining my identity to match my goals.
When I started this writing journey, I self-published my photo-illustrated picture book Gator McBumpypants Hears a Scary Noise, I also had a short story published in Five on the Fifth. At this point I identified as an author and set my goals and measured my successes as an author.
This, however, is too broad an identity for my main goal of finishing novels. As an author, I submit short stories and poems; I write novel drafts, screenplays, and blog posts. I get excited by every opportunity and find myself writing constantly, spreading myself thin, and finishing the shorter projects, because I need to have pieces to submit for publication.
This year I have defined my identity more precisely to fit my goal: I am a novelist. What do novelists do? They write novels. They revise, polish, and sell novels. They eat, sleep, dream, and breathe novels. They read novels, discuss novels, plan novels.
How did that help me change my behavior? It helped me focus my priorities.
Priorities
In the past, I often found myself overwhelmed. I had a list a page long of all the things I wanted to do in a day and never could find enough time. I often felt like I was failing because I wasn’t revising my novel, or stories and though I was working all the time, I didn’t appear to have much to show for it. My problem was focus. I have so many interests, I would pursue whatever caught my eye, work for a while, and then move to the next shiny project.
Many friends said to choose three things each day, but that made me feel like I was letting important things slide, and I couldn’t choose. Then I landed on Six Rolling Priorities and it started working right away. Each morning, I list what I, the novelist, need to do.
Once I have my list, I spend some time evaluating the importance of these activities toward reaching my goal of finishing novels. Keep in mind that balancing my hormones, and getting enough sleep work toward getting words on the page, too. So my first day of Six Rolling Priorities I wanted to finish the things that already had deadlines, to clear my plate as it was, and my list was:
Watch Today’s “The Best Year of Your Life Summit” presentations
Make The Answer Books and send them
Finish my PAD Chapbook and email it
Work on fairy tale found poetry
Novel
Revise Short Stories
As you can see, that first day, I hadn’t quite stepped into my identity as a novelist, but patience is the key ingredient when making these small changes.
The next step is to break each of these priorities into their smallest steps. Let’s use my third priority as an example. I wanted to finish the Chapbook of the poems I wrote during the Poem-a-Day Challenge and submit them before the deadline. Here is how I broke down that goal:
Revise opening poem
Revise ending poem
Revise re-mix poem
Make word document (it was in Scrivener before)
Create Title page and Index
Print
Read aloud
Make final changes
Submit email entry to Writer’s Digest
Breaking each goal down like this really worked for me. It helped me see very manageable actions instead of one overwhelming demand.
That first day I was able to check off the top three priorities for that day.
So how is that different than just picking three things like my friends said? Because it feeds my imagination of thinking I can do more while being realistic at the same time. It also plans for future success by breaking down the necessary steps of the priorities that will be at the top of the list soon.
The next day’s priorities were:
Watch Summit Videos
Create found poetry
Novel
Revise Short Story
Sew
Read
Look how quickly my novel was rising in the priority list. Now it is priority one, every day.
Easy Wins
Once I started enjoying my six rolling priorities, I turned my attention to simple changes I could make to increase my chances of success. The very first thing I did was clean my room to make it more conducive to a good night’s sleep. That lead to cleaning my office, making it more inviting and conducive to my work as a novelist. Then I cleaned my closet that I use for meditation.
Once I cleaned my environment, I found some simple suggestions that I could implement right away.
For sleep: I put a couple plants in my room. I started a gratitude journal. I changed my breakfast to include a healthy oil, a protein, & leafy greens. I added movement (stretching, push-ups, and sit-ups) first thing in the morning.
For hormonal balance: I color-coded a calendar specifically for charting my cycle.
Look for overlap
I quickly noticed that a lot of the things I was reading for improved sleep, hormonal balance, and goal setting had significant overlap. To make changes, I needed to create small habits, and replace the ones that weren’t helping me toward my goal. There were also similarities in dietary changes, morning exercise, morning sun, increased magnesium, and self-care.
Tools
I discovered that I already had almost everything I needed to work toward my goals. One important change I’m making every day is asking myself, How can I make this habit easier? For example. I want to increase my movement and exercise. I have a small rebounder (trampoline) and like to jump on it, so I put it in the office next to my desk. Now, when I get up I jump on it for a little while, I’m working on using it in my reward system for creating my habits.
I like using Microsoft OneNote for my daily priorities and planning. I created a 2022 calendar in Publisher and copied it into each of my categories, so I have a copy that is my novel planning calendar for my deadlines; I have my Sleep calendar to mark my successes and evaluate what’s working and not working; I have my hormonal cycle calendar which I color-coded for the phases of my cycle. I really like the notebook-like interface for organizing all of the things I’m learning, along with the small steps I’m taking.
Each Small Step by Maria L. Berg 2022
Assessment
An important aspect of successful change is evaluating what is working and what is not working. Every little change I am making is its own experiment in the search for what is pushing me toward my goal of finishing novels, and what is pulling me from my goal. Every Sunday I will set aside time to hold myself accountable, honestly evaluate my progress, and plan the coming week’s course of action.
For this first assessment, I wanted to evaluate my original assumptions before setting up a weekly assessment. So I asked myself:
Was my identification of my three main areas for change correct?
Answer: They appear to be. Focusing my priorities has shown the fastest and most rewarding changes. My focus on getting derailed by my cycle paid off today when I was surprised by cramps a week early. I was able to work through it and adjust to the realities of my body. My focus on sleep is my most challenging, but acknowledging my fear of nightmares and the origins of my bad habits is a good start.
Do I need to change the definitions of my three main change areas?
Answer: I think I will refine my focus of my hormonal imbalance to Perimenopause. I will focus my sleep issues on PTSD and fear of nightmares. I think honing in on the underlying causes will help me with identifying the small, easy steps that I can turn into positive change. The Priorities area is defined by my identity as a novelist.
Now for the Assessment I will be developing for my weekly check-in:
What went right last week? Here’s my exciting news! My morning routine is working. Even through stressful situations, I worked on my novel every day this week. I’ll talk about tiny habits, and my tiny habit system so far in my next post, but the exciting news is it is working! This week, not only did an unexpected computer breakdown make two days worth of work disappear, I also got my period a week early–cramps, fatigue, the works–and yet, I did my morning writing routine every day. So exciting.
What didn’t go well last week? My night time routines. So far, all my good intentions and plans and steps lead to me just saying No, I don’t want to. However, I believe that many of my techniques aren’t working due to the weather–gray days, early sunset, cold, etc.–which will change soon-ish. If I keep working on every aspect I can, and try to concentrate on the root cause and the why for now, it’s possible the systems may fall into place as spring arrives.
What small steps will I add this week? This week I am going to take a short walk after my first writing session.
Is it time to increase one of my habits? I chose the goal of 500 words per day to create my writing habit. I almost always write more than that. So this week I will test 600 words and see how that feels.
What else did I try? I wanted to review what is in my novel draft so far. Really look at my characters, props, clues, etc. and brainstorm an outline for the rest of the draft. I set a goal of “After lunch I will spend one hour reviewing my novel.” It only worked one time. Even though I enjoyed it, I haven’t done it again. So I will try it again this week as “After lunch I will review my novel for fifteen minutes.” That’s something I can definitely do.
Collecting and Organizing
Another priority that I’m adding to my Sunday is a period of time set aside for organizing all my notes and thoughts. I saw this in Welcome to the Writer’s Life by Paulette Perhach. As writers, we make notes. I have so many notebooks all over the house and yet make most of my notes in notepad on my laptop, or on random pieces of paper all over the house. I like the idea of creating a time and a place to organize all the week’s notes and thoughts. They aren’t doing me any good wandering all over the place.
Starting this week, I will create a system for organizing my notes and ideas into ways they can be useful for my novels, and toward meeting my goals as a novelist.
Next Sunday I will set aside an hour (or so, flexibility is important as you experiment), to organize my notes into useful categories and think about how they fit together.
Accountability
I know this has been a lot. I felt overwhelmed trying to figure out where to even begin to talk about everything I’m exploring having to do with finishing novels and motivation. This is a quick overview to share the main areas of my experience so far, and the first steps I took that were successful right away.
One area that every resource talks about is social accountability. I have found many times in the past that if I share my goals here on Experience Writing, I am more likely to achieve them.
I would really enjoy if you would like to join me in an accountability club. Every Sunday, type your goals in the comments, or leave a link to your post and we can check in with each other to see how we did with our goals.
My goals this week are to:
Write at least 600 words of my novel every day
Take a short walk each day
Review my novel for 15 minutes every day
That’s it. I hope you will hold me accountable.
Can you help me with one other goal? I’m trying to create a consistent blogging habit. How often would you like to read these posts about finishing goals? Which day or days are your favorite to read Experience Writing? Thank you so much for taking a moment to type your answers in the comments.
Experience Writing 