#keep it simple

A common pitfall that writers fall into is this idea that they have to tell a story of a given length or style.

“I’m going to write a series”

“I’m going to write a 50,000 word novel for nanowrimo”

“I’m going to retell Cinderella!”

No! Bad! Don’t do that to yourself. Don’t set some expectation for the form that your story is going to take. Instead, focus on the story itself. Focus on the scenes you want to tell. Don’t know where to start? Don’t worry about it! Just start writing the scenes you think you want in the final piece. I’ve yet to write a story in chronological order.

My writing process normally goes like this:

“Oh, that’s a cool idea for a scene/character. Let’s write that down and see if I can think up other stuff in the same world/story.”

“Okay, this is all very interesting to me, but it’s mostly irrelevant backstory…. Whatever, I’m having fun! I’ll get back to actually writing things that will be in the final story eventually. Maybe…”

“Hmm, I think that I want this to happen at some point, better get notes on that scene down now so that I don’t forget.”

“I guess that doesn’t work, does it? Oh well, time to make a deleted scenes file!”

“Hey, I think I know how to get from scene A to scene B, let’s see if this works…”

“…how did this thing end up being 60K words long?”

That’s not how it used to be, of course. I used to get these lofty goals for what the final work would be or do and then I’d lose sight of the project. I’d get so focused on the theoretical final product that I would get overwhelmed with the task ahead of me and have no clue what to do next. (Okay, I still do it, but I’m working on it!)

The times when I’m most productive are the times when I just work at telling my story and, if it ends up as a 50 book series, it ends up as a 50 book series. If it ends up as a two page short-story, then maybe that’s all that it ever wanted to be.

Minimalist vibe today. Leather boots and shorts with a plain tee, plus nipples, and we’ve got ourselves a low cost leather look. Doesn’t need to be complicated to be sexy.