Even though I’m an editor for hire, I firmly believe in self-editing. Each month I’m going to drop a tip for developing your ability to edit your own work or identify things to look for as you edit. Make sure to check out all the DIY Edit Tips to improve your self-editing.
04 Narration: Self-Referential Language
One of my writing professors always marked our stories for what she called “self-referential language.” This syntax plagues first person and close third person point of view by calling attention to the fact that the reader is an observer of a character.
Phrases like “I watched…” or “She looked…” or “He heard…” shift the focus from the POV character’s observations (the purpose of first and close third narration) to the observation of the character.
Consider the difference in these sentences:
From the window I watched the valets pack the carriage.
Outside the window, the valets packed the carriage.
In the first sentence, the reader is focused on the character watching the valets through the window. If this image were in a movie, the screen would include the window frame and the character in front of the window, looking out on the valets.
In the second sentence, it’s still clear that the POV character is inside the house, but this version of the sentence focuses the reader on watching the valets through the eyes of the POV character. As a movie, what the character is watching fills the screen, and the reader is fully immersed in the point of view of the first person narrator.
Editing out self-referential language can make the point of view more immersive and bring the reader closer to the characters and action. It can also help eliminate weak and overused verbs. Here are some combinations to look out for when trying to strengthen your point of view narration:
I/he/she watched
I/he/she saw
I/he/she looked
I/he/she heard
I/he/she listened
I/he/she touched
I/he/she smelled
I/he/she tasted
Watch out for other verbs and sentence constructions that put the emphasis on the character observing rather than on what the character is observing.
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My first attempt at National Novel Writing Month began with my hard drive crashing two days into the challenge. Sometimes NaNoWriMo is like that—full of obstacles and challenges and complications. I wasn’t very motivated to write while my computer was sent off for repairs, so when I got it back on November 18th, I had a decision to make: was I done with NaNo or did I try to write 43,000 words in twelve days?
Everyone who signs up for NaNo surely has a moment in which they think they’re crazy. It’s a huge goal to accomplish on a tight deadline, and it takes some serious determination to finish, even in the best circumstances. In 2005 I was not looking at the best circumstances. But I didn’t want to throw in the towel.
I started by changing my expectations. I knew I couldn’t blow through a novel that quickly, so even though it would be a rebellious act in my first NaNo, I decided to work on short stories and not worry about connectivity or using the same characters or even following the same ideas. I was going to write 50,000 words of something and not worry too much about what I was writing, so long as I was writing.
That still left me writing 43,000 words in just twelve days. I wasn’t the steady writer then that I am now, but I was very good at sprinting. The first two days of my attempt to catch up had me writing about 8,000 words. It took me four more days to write another 10,000 words because—as it turns out—sprinting can leave you creatively exhausted. I learned to be motivated by count downs (“just 400 more words to go!”). I honed in on ideas that were easier to write and I clung to inspiration. Ultimately I did it. I wrote 43,000 words in twelve days. I’m proud of that accomplishment—amazed by it, honestly—and it’s something I never want to do again.
Even though I could binge write my way to 50K, I discovered it wasn’t the healthiest thing for me to do. The act of churning out so much in a single day left me drained, and it was much harder to preform the next day. In the last year and a half of writing every day I’ve discovered exactly how much I value consistency over high word counts. Knowing that I will write every day without it being a struggle is more important to me than writing 6,000 words in a day.
NaNo is still a sprint—I don’t normally write 50,000 words in a month—but pacing myself for the 1,667 words a day is a lot easier than stumbling to catch up at the end. Even if I get behind (which I have many times in past years), keeping the gap small is a good way to keep the NaNo goal in sight. After my first year, catching up 10,000 words could look like a breeze, but I know better. Sprinting is possible, but pacing myself is healthier.
NaNoWriMo is on my mind this month as I’m preparing for this year’s challenge. Stick with me to check out a series of posts on the writing lessons you can learn by participating in NaNo. If you’re a writer, you should really consider signing up.
National Novel Writing Month is just around the corner! For those who don’t know, NaNoWriMo is a yearly challenge in November to write 50,000 words of a novel. It’s an event that brings together thousands of writers from around the world to practice their craft and talk about writing for a month.
I first participated in NaNo in 2005, and then took a break for several years because I was too busy to write. You know what month is incredibly busy every year? November. You know what excuse is a terrible one for not participating in NaNoWriMo? Being busy! Here’s the deal, writers: you will always be busy. Life will always get in the way of your writing. There will always be a responsibility you think you should be doing instead of writing. You may even feel guilt because you are writing instead of doing something else!
Stop it.
One of the great gifts NaNoWriMo has given me is the perspective that I can make writing a priority. That was a lesson I re-learned every year for the first few years in which I participated. I wasn’t prioritizing my writing life at any other time of the year, but during NaNo, I set aside 30–60 minutes every day to write. (Okay, maybe not every day because there was a year when I wrote 8,000 words one day because I had written 0 words for a whole week.) The only thing standing in my way was myself.
I had responsibilities chomping away at every hour of my day, but with a little extra planning I found the time to write for NaNoWriMo. One of my most productive times to write was on my lunch break. Instead of going out to eat every day, as was my usual routine, I brought lunch at least two days a week and got 30–45 minutes of writing time. I also made use of my weekly writing group (1–2 hours per week). And, sacrifice of sacrifices, I woke up 15 minutes earlier during the month of November. Some days I used that time to make lunch, but other days I got started with writing for the day. Starting my day by writing 15 minutes made me feel ahead all day. Since I was looking for a minimum of 30 minutes per day, I was halfway there!
At the end of the month I was less surprised that I had achieved the 50,000-word goal, and more surprised by how easy it was. I had never before consciously thought about prioritizing writing. I had prioritized projects in order to meet a deadline, but I had never tried to make time to write daily (or semi-daily) for a month. I had thought it would be an impossible task, or that I’d be either exhausted or behind by the end. But when it came down to it, finding the time was much easier than I thought it would be. It took a few years before those lessons really stuck and I stopped being so surprised, but now I never question when I’ll find the time to write, I just find it.
NaNoWriMo is on my mind this month as I’m preparing for this year’s challenge. Stick with me to check out a series of posts on the writing lessons you can learn by participating in NaNo. If you’re a writer, you should really consider signing up.
Even though I’m an editor for hire, I firmly believe in self-editing. Each month I’m going to drop a tip for developing your ability to edit your own work or identify things to look for as you edit. Make sure to check out all the DIY Edit Tips to improve your self-editing.
03 Blank Slate: Setting
When an editor or a reader engages your manuscript, they are a blank slate regarding the details of your world. Even the best synopsis will still leave the reader without the full depth and scope of your character and setting. Putting yourself in the role of the blank slate is a great way to make sure the world you write is as vivid and detailed as the world you imagine.
Picture each setting using only what is described on the page. All other areas should be black in your mind. For example, when a character enters a room, pay attention to how much of the room is described. Do you have a sense of the space the character will be navigating? What about the obstacles the character will have to move around or interact with? Do you know what the room is used for? What does the room tell you about the owner (rich/poor, extravagant/practical, neat/messy)?
As you continue reading, think about what questions arise, and then make a list of what details you need to add. For example:
- Your character winds around the whole room, but on initial introduction you never mentioned the furniture was crowded. Add that.
- Your character shuts the drapes, casting the room into darkness. Add that the only light is from the window.
- Your character notes several scenes later that a couch is just like the one in the last room they were in. Add the couch in the previous room.
- Your character turns down the radio, but has been having a conversation throughout the scene. Add how loud the radio is at the start of the scene.
After you have built the mental picture of the space from what’s on the page, consider if there are any important details you see in your writer vision that are missing from the written version. Don’t forget to engage senses other than sight—what is the temperature of the room, what sounds are there, is there a smell drifting in? Building your written locations as though you’ve never seen them in your mind’s eye is a great way to figure out what other details you need to include.
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One of my favorite things every week is going to writing group. Even though I write every day, there’s something special about meeting with other writers to write. But attending a writing group—especially a weekly one—can be a big time commitment in our busy lives. Finding the right group, a group that will be productive and help me achieve my goals, has taken some time. I first had to figure out what I wanted from a writing group, and then I needed to find a writing group that provided those things.
In my experience, writing groups tend to focus on one or more of the following:
- offering time to write
- networking or socializing
- critiquing or feedback
When I first started attending writing groups, I was working a full time job (with frequent overtime) and had a calendar full of family and social obligations. I needed a writing group that would emphasize productivity over all else since often the time I spent at writing group was the only time I had to write all week.
The group I found was full of passionate, wonderful writers who participated in NaNoWriMo every year and who were seeking agents or publishers. Their attitude matched mine—aspiring to publish novels—and their experience writing query letters, self-publishing, and working local conventions formed a foundation of what it meant to be a working writer.
Over the years the group membership changed, people moved away or new writers joined the group, and the dynamic slowly shifted. If I arrived early, I could get a solid hour of work in before the meeting turned into social hour. The problem wasn’t socializing—I liked these writers!—but this was the majority of my writing time for the week, so having that time taken over by socializing was frustrating.
It took me awhile to admit it, but my writing group was no longer providing what I needed. And that’s an important thing to remember—if the group dynamic changes, it’s okay to leave.
I’m currently active with two writing groups. One group meets weekly and the other group meets monthly. Both groups are focused on productive writing tasks (which can include things like promotion, presentations, or managing author websites) and are patronized (primarily) by writers who have a goal to publish. The weekly group has the laid back style of the first writing group I joined, in which writers are encouraged to be self-directed. We poke writers who seem to be staring off into space or who appear to be off-task (we are all guilty of checking Twitter or Facebook), but we mostly chat as we get settled or when we’re packing up.
The monthly group uses twenty-minute sprints to get writers to focus, and then allows chat breaks in between sprints. I wouldn’t be happy writing like that on a weekly basis, but for a monthly group, I know to come prepared because I will be getting a lot of work done. (That monthly writing group is usually my highest word count day of the month.)
I have yet to be in a critique group outside of the MFA program, but based on my experience there, I know a critique group would have to be very special. Critique groups require a lot of dedication from all participants. The group itself needs to be big enough that if someone is sick one week, you haven’t lost the whole conversation, but small enough that you’re not piling on a ton of extra work. Also it helps if everyone is familiar with the genres being submitted for critique. While writing is writing and stories are stories, being familiar with the rules and tropes of a genre can greatly improve the confidence of the readers and the quality of the critiques.
Knowing what you want out of a writing group is the best way to find the right group. I’ve been very lucky to find such amazing writing groups, most of which I found by participating in NaNoWriMo. If you’re struggling to carve out time to write or lack motivation once you sit down, consider finding a writing group. And if you can’t find the right writing group for yourself, maybe you should just start your own.
Even though I’m an editor for hire, I firmly believe in self-editing. Each month I’m going to drop a tip for developing your ability to edit your own work or identify things to look for as you edit. Make sure to check out all the DIY Edit Tips to improve your self-editing.
One of the trickiest things when editing your own work is achieving objectivity. There are a number of ways you can go about creating objectivity in relation to your own work. Keep an eye out for tips on “Creating Distance” if objectivity is one of your main obstacles to being your own best editor.
02 Creating Distance: Time
Giving your story some time to rest before starting an editing pass is one of the best ways to distance yourself from your work. Time allows your writer memory to fade and helps make details hazy, giving yourself a fresh set of eyes. While you previously could recite all of chapter 12 from memory, after a month away, you may only be able to roughly recall the events and your favorite lines. For the purposes of self-editing, this is a good thing.
As you create distance from your work, it allows your editor brain to more easily identify when something is missing (from a plot hole to missing words in a sentence), and it makes it a little easier to catch unnecessary repetitions. From the plot and structure to the sentence construction, taking time away from your work allows your eyes to rest and you can start seeing your work from a new perspective.
For novels or novellas, my preference is to set aside the story for two months. For short stories two weeks is usually sufficient. Sometimes deadlines or other complications demand a shorter cooling-off period, so, if that is the case, I put the story down for as much time as I can allow. Waiting to edit helps me shift from being a writer to being an editor, and generally lets me gain a little perspective before acting as my own reviewer. Give it a try and see if it works for you.
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Figuring out what makes up a story and how to make those elements speak to each other can be one of the more elusive aspects of craft. While elements can be developed and adjusted in revision, it’s important to understand how those ingredients work together. In one analogy, you might think of writing a story as making a sandwich. You know that at the end of the process you’re going to have a sandwich and, before you start, you have to lay out your ingredients. The same is needed for writing a story.
Every sandwich starts and ends with bread. Like a sandwich, frequently the beginning and ending of a story show the same image so the reader can see how the protagonist has changed from the beginning to the end. This “image” might be the protagonist’s home or it could be a theme on which the protagonist now reflects (for example, in Back to the Future, Marty finally stops being baited when his bravery is called into question, or in a series like Harry Potter, it starts with Harry unable to do magic and without a family, and ends with Harry as a powerful wizard with lots of friends and support). Bookending the narrative with similar scenes can show the character growth or how the world has changed as a result of the story events.
Condiments go on the sandwich next. Personally, I like mustard on most of my sandwiches, but I prefer mayo for turkey. You may prefer honey mustard to yellow; I like deli mustard or a nice spicy brown. All this talk of condiments and preferences is really a lot of talk about flavor. Just like the condiments, the voice and atmosphere provide the flavor for any story. A narrator who is sarcastic is going to speak very differently from one who is literal or innocent. The atmosphere that voice helps evoke is going to steer the course of the story sandwich—is it spicy? Mild? Tangy? Sweet? Bold? Understated? The voice and tone of the story can influence and direct the reader’s experience.
The meat is your plot, and in making this sandwich we need to lay it on thick to put meat on our reader’s bones. Here’s the important thing to note about plot: plot is derived from characters. The protagonist’s decisions make up the plot. So while the meat is the plot, the meat is also the characters. When Katniss volunteers to go to the Hunger Games instead of her sister, she propels the plot forward. When Harry, Ron, and Hermione decide to go after the Sorcerer’s Stone instead of getting an adult, they propel the plot forward. When Luke Skywalker leaves Tatooine with Obi-Wan, he propels the plot forward. The meat—the characters and the plot—are what make the story and the sandwich.
When I make a sandwich I’m going to put cheese on it, so this story sandwich gets cheese. Cheese is known for being a little fatty and a little caloric, so it makes sense that in the story sandwich, the cheese represents the subplots. Subplots are the delicious bits of a story that further character development and often complicate the main plot. Ideally the cheese and meat work together. Both contain protein—exactly what puts muscle on the story—but they’ve got different tastes and textures and nuance. One thing I will warn, if you like a stinky cheese that distracts too much from the meat, your sandwich may be a little lopsided, so use a strong cheese sparingly to keep the story sandwich balanced.
A good sandwich—I’m talking a really good sandwich—is going to come with lettuce, tomato, or other veggies. Veggies are good for you, and in a story sandwich that still holds true because veggies represent the conflict and tension. Conflict and tension are good for stories. Stories without conflict or tension are bland and often unfulfilling. Conflict gives a story crunch. Tension makes things juicy. Both are good for helping a reader digest the story and get something satisfying out of it. A hero overcoming, a romance defying all odds, the underdog winning—all of those satisfying and cathartic beats come from the conflict.
This may sound like a simplistic way to describe a story (honestly, it is), but thinking about the necessity of these story elements when creating a delicious story sandwich will hopefully help you think about how these elements work together and consider what each brings to the finished story.
Receiving constructive criticism can be as difficult as giving it. It can be challenging to divorce personal feelings—and all the hard work put into the previous draft—from someone else’s opinion. But when I put my story out there to receive constructive criticism, I need to be open to it. I have to put aside my feelings and understand that these comments aren’t about my quality as a writer; they’re about the execution in this one specific piece of writing. Even if I think it’s my very best work, it’s only my very best work so far. Think of all the ways it can be improved! So, starting with a deep breath, constructive criticism can be the best thing for my work, especially if I’m open to change. I have a three step-method for taking in constructive criticism that includes listening to what is said, evaluating how that critique fits with my plan for the story, and then getting excited to revise!
Listen
When I get feedback from a critique, I start by reading each comment as though I’m another evaluator on the manuscript. I’m not the author when I first read a critique. I’m another objective party, taking in someone else’s comments to get the big picture of the feedback. I start by reading the summary comments and then all of the in-line comments before making any decisions about how to act on those comments.
Evaluate
Now that I’ve listened objectively, I get to be the author again! It’s important to keep some objectivity, after all the purpose of constructive criticism is to identify ways to strengthen the writing. Now, though, I start deciding how to address each comment. Should I keep the exact suggestion a reviewer made? Should I accept that something’s hinky but enact my own solution? Should I ignore the comment? Ignoring a comment is a perfectly legitimate way to respond to a critique. Someone might not “get” what I’m doing, and it’s okay for me, the author, to decide that I know what’s best for my work.
One method I use for evaluating comments is to have the comments and my story side by side in separate documents. If I disagree with a comment outright, I don’t move it to my story document. If it’s an easy fix (a grammatical error or improving word choice), I immediately do it. If it’s a trickier one or one that I’m not sure I want to make, I summarize the feedback as in-line comments on my story document and add my thoughts. At the end of the evaluation, I have all the comments I will or possibly want to respond to on my story document.
Get Excited
After every critique I walk away feeling excited to work on my story. I’ve thought about the feedback and, through evaluation, have come up with at least a few solutions to strengthen some of the weaknesses of the manuscript. Yes, I might have a lot of work ahead. Yes, someone might not have seen all of my brilliance. But I now have ideas for making the story better, and that’s a pretty exciting thing.
I had dinner with a writer friend last week and after gushing about the novel I’m currently developing, I asked what he’s working on. After a long awkward pause, he finally confessed that he didn’t want to talk about it until he had a first draft.
I subscribed to this methodology once upon a time, holding my ideas close to my chest and trying not to “spend” them too soon. I once talked myself out of writing a novel because after outlining it and explaining it to a friend, I grew bored with the idea and eventually shelved it. I have completely forgotten what the idea was, which is further evidence that the reason I shelved the idea wasn’t because I’d talked about it too much, but because I wasn’t actually all that interested in writing it—or, rather, that the idea wasn’t strong enough to be a novel.
I believe that’s the case for most writers who lose their ideas in talking. I worked on the novel I’m querying for roughly three years. That is a long time to spend with the same characters, in the same world, going over their problems and relationships with a fine-tooth comb. If I had been able to “talk out” this idea, to talk about it enough to essentially “ruin” it, I assure you I would have. A year and a half of that development time included monthly meetings with my thesis supervisor where we did nothing but talk about the novel for hours. I couldn’t talk out this story because I was invested in it. Because the idea had legs and it needed to be a novel. Yes, there were days when I was sick of those characters because I had been living with them for so long, and there were days when I tossed out chapters or followed the wrong path, but I never wanted to shelve this story. In all this talking, I never lost the idea.
One of the best ways for me to work through an idea is to talk about it with trusted friends. Aside from figuring out if I actually want to write the story, articulating my ideas to someone else helps me discover plot holes, character weaknesses, and other areas that need development. Even better, once I describe a story to someone, I have a cheerleader who has insight into the idea. After that conversation they don’t just ask how the novel is going, they’ll say things like, “How’s my girl Eve?” or “Did you figure out what happens on the train?” Honestly, there’s no better motivation than having people who are invested in your story.
All of this is probably the same reason I’m part of a writing group, discuss writing with my friends regularly, and wanted to be part of an MFA program. Talking about writing (and about my writing) is motivating. But that’s not the case for everyone. Are you a talker or do you keep your ideas quiet like my friend? Every method has a benefit, what do you see as the benefit for your method?
In 2016 I stumbled into my current habit of being an every day writer. It was a goal for a number of years, but one that I could never make stick until I discovered I had written every day for a week and then through sheer stubbornness continued to write every day. (I’m currently on day 585.) I’ve recently seen a number of posts suggesting that you don’t need to write every day, and I’ve given people the same advice when they’re fighting against intense schedules or suffering from chronic or mental illnesses (depression devours your ability to write, I get it), but I’ve benefitted from writing every day, so I want to offer a few reasons you should reconsider if writing every day is right for you.
(1) Build a Writing Habit
The greatest benefit I’ve gotten from writing every day is that I write every day! I never question when my next writing session will be because I know it will be tomorrow. There are days when my schedule is cruel and I don’t find time to write until just before bed, but writing every day is such a habit now that I can’t fall asleep until I’ve written. (True story: I was gone 12 hours, worked an event, got home after 11, got in bed, and even though I was exhausted, I got up when I realized I hadn’t written.)
(2) Build Writing Confidence
Because writing every day is a habit, it’s now easier for me to get words on the page. Just yesterday my writing group watched me struggle to write a blog post. I had brainstormed a few different topics and wrote on each one until the idea petered out. I didn’t finish any of those posts yesterday, but now I have starts for three more posts. I wasn’t afraid to travel down the “wrong” path or to just put words on the page and see what I like later because I was confident that at the end of my writing session I would have something.
(3) Build a Defense Against Writer’s Block
I still come up against blocks, but it’s easier for me to break through the blocks because writing is a habit. The first fifty words of the day are usually the hardest, so I decided that even on a bad day—on the busiest day, the day when I’m feeling super sick and uncreative—I have to write one hundred words. It’s harder to stay blocked when every word I write contributes to achieving a goal. And within one hundred words I’ll usually find an angle (or identify two angles that aren’t working) and suddenly I’ve hit two hundred words, then three hundred, etc. It’s also harder for me to throw in the towel since I’m not only trying to check a box that says I’ve written today, but I’m also trying to check a box for a word count goal.
Those are the three ways I’ve benefitted the most from writing every day, but truthfully there are times when you just cannot write every day. My previous job was demanding to the point of being overwhelming and was a contributing factor to why I wasn’t an every day writer until 2016. But it didn’t stop me from having goals and from benefitting from those goals.
If you’re in a situation wherein you absolutely cannot write every day, try to set a weekly goal for yourself, like to write three days a week. You could decide that any day counts, or you might set aside specific days (like a day you go to a writing group). I used to write for 15 minutes on my lunch break—I didn’t do it every day, but on the days I did, I returned to my desk feeling better about life because I had taken the time to be creative before going back to the grind.
Any writing goal you make and stick with gets you closer to building a habit, building your confidence, and building your defenses against writer’s block, so even if you aren’t writing every day, making a commitment to writing any days is a good foundation.
Even though I’m an editor for hire, I firmly believe in self-editing. For one, it helps you develop your skills as a writer because it forces you to learn to analyze your own work. For two, you’ll get more from a professional editor because if you’ve already caught simple mistakes, an editor can spend more time on complicated issues. For three, if you decided to hire me, it makes my life easier. 😉
Because I’m a proponent of do-it-yourself editing, each month I’m going to drop a tip for developing your ability to edit your own work or identify things to look for as you edit.
01 A New Hat
Editing your own work can be a tricky thing, but it is not impossible. When editing your own work, one of the most important steps is to create distance between you and your work. One of the best ways to create distance is to recognize the difference between your role as a writer and your role as an editor.
The Writer is the person who has lovingly nurtured the manuscript into its current state. Every sentence makes sense (even when words are missing) and typos and grammatical errors disappear in front of the writer’s eyes. The writer loves the characters, understands the plot innately, and can perfectly see every aspect of the setting and character description. The world is completely alive for the writer because the writer is the creator.
The Editor is the person who is going to dissect the manuscript to highlight the strengths, illuminate the weaknesses, and identify as many typos and grammatical errors as possible. The editor comes to the manuscript as a blank slate. Everything the editor knows about the world is from the words on the page. An editor will read slowly and carefully to catch errors both in the language and in the continuity. The editor’s job is to identify what the writer needs to do so that the manuscript will translate more easily from the page to a reader’s imagination.
Switching between these roles can be difficult, but the more you distinguish the tasks, the easier it will be. Keep the jobs separate and don’t preform writer tasks on an editor day. When you’re editing you must look at the work objectively. You have to distance yourself from the mental images that already exist and build those images from the words on the page. The key role of an editor is to find what needs to be strengthened, changed, or even rewritten. After you finish analyzing the manuscript as an editor, then you address those issues from the role of the writer. Keeping these roles separate is a great way to start learning to edit your own work.
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Almost every week I meet my friend for dinner and we go to either Barnes & Noble or the library. We spend an hour walking through the books, reading titles, touching covers, and expanding our to-read lists. In addition to an ever-increasing to-read list, I also have an ever-increasing library. And of those books there are a good many that I haven’t read. This year I decided my reading theme would be Read Your Damn Books. I made a whole plan for how many books I wanted to read, how many of them should be books I already own, how many audio books, how many graphic novels, etc. And then I proceeded to the library website and I ordered a bunch of books for home delivery because I apparently like usurping my own plans.
But aren’t all plans really just guidelines? I mean, when I made the original book list, I knew I would swap out books if I wasn’t particularly feeling a title, and that I would make new discoveries over the year. My primary goals were to read thirty books and to spend about half of my 2017 reading time consuming books from my home library. I also wanted to read at least five books borrowed from my local library and to listen to at least two audio books.
I had no idea that I’d get so invested in audio books. I’ve been listening to them while I take walks and so I’ve so far been through seven audio books. (Can I count one as “reading my damn book” since I already owned it?) My guideline of a plan obviously involves some spontaneous revision since I now have to decide how upping my audio book intake affects the number of physical books I read. Do I still need for half of my 2017 books to come from my bookshelf? Can I revise that number to just twelve? (Or ten seeing as how we’re over halfway through the year and I’ve read a whooping total of six books I own.)
I also had to scrap and revamp part of my plan. I had planned to start researching for a time travel story in the latter half of 2017, but in starting to draft my pirate novel, I realized I need to do more pirate research. So it’s back to the high seas, air, and steampunk for me. All the time travel books have been relegated to 2018—at least I already have the start of next year’s guidelines.
The main thing about plans is that they have to be flexible. Rigid plans often prevent productivity. If I said I had to stick to reading my physical books and ignored that I was enjoying listening to audio books on walks I might not have finished as many books as I have, or I might have stopped walking so I could add that time to my book reading time. Sticking to my original plan would have ignored my natural inclinations and that frustration would have easily made me stagnant.
Strangely this reminds me of writing my last novel. I had an outline laid out—an excellent guideline, indeed—but I got caught in the middle, trying to force the main character to read books when she just wanted to listen to audio books (at least in this analogy). Once I let her listen to audio books, things started coming much easier. I had to refigure my plan and change a few expectations, but finishing the first draft became much easier when I stopped fighting against my plan, just like how reading over thirty books in 2017 will be much easier if I let myself continue listening to audio books. Going with the flow isn’t so easy if you’re a planner, but learning to find my own rhythm and accept that as a new plan is key to staying productive.