Dispatch #2

the slog. the muddy middle. the farthest I've ever gotten!

word count

as of May 26th: 45,677

what’s working

1. mary g.
   ’s Prompt #68 riffed on the line about fiction that goes: “All great literature is one of two stories: a man goes on a journey, or a stranger comes to town.” It occurred to me that my novel might be a version of a stranger coming to town story, though I hadn’t previously thought of it that way. Mary explains that “…because of the stranger’s arrival, something in the status quo of the situation shifts, changes, explodes, spirals, pivots—whatever.” This idea created some cohesion for me in a couple of existing plot lines that I was having trouble tying together, and led me to write a new scene in which one character is grappling with the changes in her own status quo that were brought on by “the stranger.” I loved that just reading the prompt gave me some needed inspiration — without even doing the exercise. Good craft prompts can be like that, I think.

2. I’ve written a bit of character backstory on the days I’ve struggled to get words on the page. These sections may well get taken out later, but doing this is helping me to get to know certain characters better.

3. Showing up often (definitely hasn’t been every day), even if all I end up doing is reading a section and tweaking a couple words. Keeps me in the story at least, which leads me to the first snag…

snags

1. I spent about a week, maybe a little more, not writing the novel¹, and that made it very hard to get back into it. In fact, I don’t think I’ve fully got back into it yet. I was avoiding it for a bit after that break. It felt like I had been away long enough to be intimidated by the incredibly unwieldy nature of this draft-in-progress. I do not plot or outline, so the draft is all over the place and a lot will need to be connected or reordered later. This felt like freedom back when I had a lot less words — right now it feels like a mess.

2. I have been down with some sort of nasty cold for the past week. While there is a storied tradition of writers who wrote while battling illness or chronic disease or otherwise convalescing, and I had the fanciful notion that I might produce a proliferation of words in my bed/couch-bound state (not much else to do), the reality is that I have mostly only been able to read. Writing more than 150 words has acted as a sedative — and led directly to some of my best naps during this period of malaise.

3. I’ve said before that I’m not a plot person, and my plot seems to have stalled out. Frankly, I’m just not sure where the hell it’s all going. I’m also questioning whether a certain subplot might be too much for the story, one too many threads to manage, but I’ve decided to leave it in for now. Lately my writing sessions have been short; like I said, sometimes selecting a scene I’ve already drafted and adding or changing a few words. Just to keep getting words on the page. Hoping to experience some aha moments soon…

inspiration

1. In the spirit of getting words on the page,

   Jami Attenberg
   ’s 1000 Words of Summer is starting soon! (1000 words a day for two weeks.) In the meantime, I’m going to be brainstorming how to make the best use of that time — I think the main prep for me is going to be listing the scenes I know I need to write but have been avoiding. Here’s a post on how to prep, in case you’re interested in participating.

How to Prep for #1000wordsofsummer

2. I have recently had the bittersweet pleasure of finishing

   Ben Wakeman
   ’s beautiful serial novel, Departures, published here on Substack. The care with which he created this story and its characters, the dedication and passion and perseverance it must have taken to make this thing (the pacing, the plot, the beating heart of the story! the audio quality! the music!) — I am just astounded by it, and moved to step up and follow through on my own novel (not the audio production part though — that is just way beyond me.)

   Ben’s story deserved that kind of care and dedication, and he delivered. My story deserves the care and commitment to see it through, and I don’t want to fall short of what it deserves. Your project, if you are working on one, deserves that care and dedication too, so keep showing up, don’t let it down!

   And if you haven’t read it yet, here’s Departures — go see what Ben made. (A little birdie, by which I mean a public post on Substack, told me he’s already working on another novel!)

Table of Contents

Until next time! Much love, from the muddy middle.

Photo by Andreas Vonlanthen on Unsplash

This dispatch is part of an occasional series on the process of writing a novel. If you’re already subscribed to me, you will need to manually turn on Notifications for the “Work in Progress” section of this newsletter in order to receive these updates in your inbox. You can do that in your subscription settings. Or you can just DM me and I can turn on this notification for you. Thanks for following along!

1. During that time I was working on short stories, three of them, and it was so much fun. Two are more or less done, a third is perhaps halfway through the writing.