I am writing again. The difference is that this time I am serious about it.

What

I am developing a short story of fiction. I have completed what I refer to as “Version 1”—many more are coming. The sub-genre is realistic fiction and, needless to say, is inspired to true life. None of the characters is inspired by somebody I know, and the location isn’t either—it’s also unspecified in the story. The feelings and the events, however, are things that I have seen, or heard. Not word-by-word, of course, and that couldn’t have been otherwise, for the characters are totally made up, but I, somehow, know that the plot has happened, somewhere.

I self-imposed a light schedule on myself: five hundred words a day. I try to stop whenever I reach that during the easy days, and I force myself to reach it during the hard ones. Two memoirs I recently read (On writing, S. King and Novelist as a vocation, H. Murakami) shows one similarity among pro-writers: All of them have a number for their writing pace. S. King goes with two thousand a day, H. Murakami goes with sixteen hundred a day. The figure itself is not the point: the point is, rather, that everybody needs a number.

I chose five hundred arbitrarily. It simply seemed reasonable to me. In fact, the story was already in my head, and had been for some time. I just had to get it out. Thus, five hundred felt little—on most days, it was less than half an hour. I was surprised to discover that five hundred words can be only a bit more than half a page. On the other hand, I believe that if I was forced to write something, and I mean something that doesn’t already exist in my head, or maybe something I don’t care about, then it may have felt much harder. That is why I set the bar low, with a note-to-self to increase it soon. It’s been just two weeks, and if I have learned one thing from running is that it takes time to develop abilities—better to start slow and ramp up slowly as well. That way, the pace is earned, eventually. That means it truly belongs to the writer. It’s not about forcing it one day, seldomly. It’s a habit, and is ingrained deep inside.

Develop the history

One thought occurred to me during the two initial weeks. As I realized that keeping track of the characters’ past is no easy feat, I thought, How did Tolkien do that? Then I figured, although I reckon it is a very arbitrary conclusion, that that is why he wrote so much history, and detailed an entire world’s history. To keep himself in check. Once things were written down, he could always go back and check if a character’s actions are consistent with his history. He needed the Middle-earth history written down, and very extensively so, to be able to check things and correct himself.

My short story doesn’t need any of that: it’s a ten thousand word story! But it felt like a revelation to figure out that the first person who needs history is the writer himself.

All characters into one

Another interesting aspect was that I set off writing with characters’ personalities clear in my mind. I know who was what type, and none was based on myself. During a second week, five hundred words writing session, however, I found myself writing a dialogue and noticed one character was talking like I would do in that situation. Understandable, maybe, but undesired.

The problem with that scene in particular, was that the character made references to his past. I didn’t have his past clear in mind, nor written down anywhere, and therefore instinctively made it look like my past. I am going to have to rewrite the entire scene, and it’s at the top of the to-dos for the next revision. I felt it’s an easy-to-make error and one that I will fall into again in the future, but probably one that experience will mitigate.

Revisions

For the lack of alternatives, I came up with a strategy for making revisions and editing to the story. To be sure, I could have researched and done something others arbitrarily do. Instead, I preferred my own arbitrary choice over equally arbitrary choices made by other people, like I often do. The challenge in the background is that real writers have a team working with them when it comes to revisions and editing. I recently read that H. Murakami makes an indefinite number of revisions before he’s happy with a novel of his, and of course he’s helped by his editors. I am not working with anybody on this, and, even if I was, I probably wouldn’t be able to make the most out of it, since it’s literally the first time I sit down to write a story of fiction.

Thus I came up with a process that makes sense to me. The first version is really, really raw. I jot down some five hundred words, put them all in the same document, and that’s it. I noted on which day every “snippet” was written, so it’s about fourteen snippets. In most cases, these snippets do not blend nicely one after the other. In other words, one cannot read the document as if it was a story, because there are jumps from some of the snippets to the following one that do not make the whole thing a sensible story. Still, that does make about ten thousand words on paper, and I take it as V1.

Very soon after I set this plan, I realized that V2 will inevitably outgrow V1 in size (number of words). The reason is that V1 was written in a hurry—really just to put five hundred words on a page every day. V1 lacks environment descriptions, and characters thoughts, and all the details that make a story a good one. These additions are going to be a lot more writing. Not to mention, the writing needed to join snippets each to the next one. I estimate that maybe an additional 20% is needed just for the latter purpose. With those additional pieces, V2 is meant to be readable. That means that what is V2 in my plan is probably called “first version” for most writers.

With V2 done, actual editing revisions will begin. It’s challenging to preview, at this time, how many revisions there will be. One key step that I included in my plan is that once I will have V3 on paper, that is the first edited version after V2, I will ask someone to read it. I believe at that point I will already need feedback on the characters and the plot, and these can’t wait. From there, the work will depend on the received feedback. Whether to include it or. Whether some of them require major changes. I believe this shouldn’t happen, because it’s a very short story, but who knows how poor V3 may be?

Side effects

It’s often the case that when the brain is involved in a new activity, or in something that it hasn’t done in a long while, it produces some extra. If that doesn’t cause overload, then the extras are usually good and interesting ideas.

Some extras I got while developing V1: an idea for a new short story, an idea for a new software, and ideas about how to organize my writing.

I am looking forward to developing V2.

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