Randy Ingermanson's Blog: Advanced Fiction Writing

If there’s one word I wish had never been coined, it’s the word “networking.” It puts me in mind of Ned Ryerson, that over-the-top insurance salesman in the movie Groundhog Day. Ned is overly friendly to the lead character in the movie, Phil Connors, played by Bill Murray, but Ned doesn’t care about Phil. He just wants to sell Phil an insurance policy. 

I think we’ve all met a life insurance agent like Ned, and that can be uncomfortable. It’s just as uncomfortable to meet a writer like Ned. Someone who acts like your best friend because they’re looking for a favor. Maybe they want a free critique. Maybe they want an endorsement. Maybe they want an introduction to your agent or your editor. 

It’s not wrong for writers to want those things. After all, success in writing is strongly correlated with the size of your network. I read a remarkable book several years ago, The Formula, by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, a network scientist. He looked at actual data to see what caused some people to be successful and some not. He found that success depends on performance, when this can be measured. But when performance can’t be measured, a person’s network drives their success.

Here’s a direct quote of his findings: “But networks are singularly important in areas like art, where performance and quality are hard to measure. In fact, an interconnected web of relationships determines success in art to a degree that I, a network scientist, find stunning.”

Networks are Important, But…

If networks are so important, then networking must be just as important, right?

Hold on a minute. Not so fast. “Network” is a noun, and it describes something good and healthy. “Networking” is a verb that’s supposedly about building a network. But somehow, it’s a very toxic verb. What’s wrong with this picture? Is there a better way to build a network than by networking? A non-toxic way?

I actually think there is. I’m all for building networks. But not the Ned Ryerson way. Ned Ryerson is transactional; real networks are relational. Ned sees people in his network as a rung on the ladder of success. Someone to be stepped on. That’s what makes Ned toxic. Understanding what’s wrong with Ned is the first step to building a network in a healthy way. A better way. 

Notworking

I call the better way “notworking”. Your goal is to have a network of writer friends. The key word here is “friends.” Friends are not people you use to advance your career. Friends are people you travel together with on the journey. 

One place where you can build your network of friends is at a writers conference. That’s probably where I’ve met most of my writer friends. A typical conference has hundreds of writers, and you can’t possibly meet them all. You can’t add them all to your network. 

If you insist on “networking,” then you’re going to be sizing up everyone you meet at a conference, measuring them by how much they can help your career right now. And they’re going to see right through you, just like anyone can see through Ned Ryerson. Just like you see through people who are trying to “network” you.

What’s the better way to size people up? It’s simple. Look for other writers who are at about your same place on the journey AND who resonate with you. Maybe they write the same kind of fiction you do, and maybe they don’t. But the key thing is that they are a kindred spirit. 

When you find somebody like that, ask them how their writing career is going. It’s probably not going great. They may well be stuck on some issue that they just can’t get past. 

And maybe you can help. Maybe you’ve recently dealt with the same problem and figured out a way past it. If you can help another writer solve a real problem in their life, do so. Without asking for anything in return. Without even thinking about whether you’ll ever get something in return. Assume you won’t. 

Then again, maybe you can’t help. Maybe you’re stuck on the same problem. But at least you can offer empathy. That’s what friends do when they can’t help. 

If you talk to ten writers at a conference and find even one that you resonate with, somebody who can be a writing friend on your journey, that’s a win. You’ve added to your network, and they’ve added to theirs. In a few years, you’ll have a very nice network. And if you do this for the rest of your writing life, you’ll eventually have a large network. A non-toxic network.

That’s what I mean by “notworking.” It’s good and it’s healthy and it’s fun. But the larger your network, the higher the probability that one of your friends is going to be super-successful. And that’s where things can go south, if you’re not careful…

The Universe is Not Fair

The publishing world is just like the rest of the universe. It’s not fair. A very few writers will have huge success. Most will have little. There will be a large spread in the payoffs that people in your network receives. 

If you have a large enough network, you are going to know somebody who wins a major award or gets rich or gets famous, or all of the above. It may not be who you expected. It may not be in proportion to talent or skill or anything else you can measure. It may just be luck.

So how do you respond to this grossly unfair situation? Here are two things you can do: 

Resist the urge to cash in on your friend’s success. You can’t. They can’t distribute their success to you. Success doesn’t work that way. They may be able to help you some, and if they’re a decent person, they’ll try. But they can’t just pass success around like candy bars. Don’t expect them to. Resist the green monster, envy. Be happy for your friend. Set aside all thoughts that their success is rightfully yours. It isn’t. It probably isn’t rightfully theirs, either. Luck plays a large role in the publishing world. There is nothing you can do about that. Throw the dice with your friends, and cheer for the winner.  The Bottom Line 

The publishing life is a journey. Build a network of true friends. Help your teammates all you can, with no expectation of reward. Accept help graciously when it’s offered. Stay in the game, give it your best shot, cheer for the winner, and be happy with your lot, whatever it is.

The post Networking and Notworking appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

Finishing the first draft of your novel is a major accomplishment. It’s not the end of the road, but it’s a milestone. Celebrate. 

So now what? Your book’s not ready to publish. It still needs work. How do you get the novel across the finish line? 

You might think that the answer depends on how you plan to get the book published. There are two usual approaches to publication:

Sell the book to a publisher. Act as your own publisher.

Your current game plan doesn’t depend on which of these roads you plan to take. Your book almost certainly isn’t ready to start shopping around to a publisher (or to an agent). And it almost certainly isn’t ready to publish independently. A first draft is never ready. A first draft always requires revisions.

And how do you do revisions? Your roadmap for that depends on how your brain is wired. Everyone is different, and you need a plan that works for you. 

I can’t tell you what’s going to work for you. But I can tell you what works for me. I’ve done this many times, and I’m just starting the revision process on my current novel. Here’s the approximate plan I have. Some of it might work for you. Some of it probably won’t. Use the ideas you find helpful and ignore the rest. Some of the steps in my plan are going to take a lot of time, so I’ve made a guess at how much time I think they’ll take. 

My Revision PlanMake a new copy of the manuscript and label it with a new version number (for example, “Draft 2”). Then I’ll never work on the first draft again. In case the next round of revisions takes me in the wrong direction, I can always return to the first draft and restart revisions from that point.Take a week to read the entire manuscript on my computer to see how well the story works. This is a quick read, roughly 10,000 words per hour. If I see a typo, my brain will get angry and insist I fix it, so I do. But fixing typos is not the point. The point here is to see if the story is working as a whole. Is the story structure right? Which scenes work? Which scenes fall flat? Are there inconsistencies in the story? Are there redundancies? Are there factual errors? Are there points I need to research more? I make quick notes in the margin for each of these. But I don’t fix any big problems. Not yet, anyway. Take two or three weeks and work through all the margin notes and fix the large-scale problems—the inconsistencies, the redundancies, the factual errors, the research questions. (My current manuscript has 42 of these, and I expect I can fix two or three of them per day, so it’s going to take a few weeks to get through them all.)Send the manuscript to my editor so she can tell me all the problems she sees. She will see a lot. She will see things I never thought of. When she sends me her comments, I will spend about three very miserable days wondering what’s wrong with her, and then admitting that she might have a point here and there, and then recognizing that the novel has several problems, and then realizing she is mostly right, and then hating myself and my novel. Eventually, I will get through this swamp and be ready to work again. Make another copy of the manuscript, this one labeled “Draft 3”. Take one day to review my one-sentence summary and one-paragraph summary of my novel. These tell me what my story is “really about” and I want to make sure that I’ve got that pinned down well, because the next step depends on it. Take a month or two to rewrite the entire manuscript, cutting it down to size and fixing all the problems my editor found. I already know my current manuscript is too long. I need to cut about 30k words. But it also has all sorts of problems that I don’t know about yet, which my editor will tell me. Her comments will help me decide which words to cut, because in some cases, I’ll need to delete entire scenes. Take a week to read through everything again and fix all the little wordsmithing stuff. Send the manuscript to my proofreader. Make a new copy, this time labeled “Draft 4”. Take a day to fix all the typos the proofreader caught. 

At this point, I’ll be ready to publish. If I were working with a traditional publisher, I’d hand the corrected proofs off to them, and they’d publish it. But I act as my own publisher, so I’ll simply typeset the novel and click the Publish button.

Will That Work?

No, the above plan will probably not work. No plan ever survives implementation. At some point, the plan will break down and I’ll have to make a new one. That one might work or it might not. If it doesn’t work, I’ll keep making new plans and executing each one until it breaks. Each one will get me closer to the end-game. Writing is hard. It doesn’t get easier, just because you’ve published a novel already. It gets harder, because you know more with every book. 

Homework

You are different from me. Your brain works different from mine. Your plan will be different. But it won’t be completely different. You can probably use about three quarters of the ideas in my plan. You may need to reorder the steps. You may need to add some steps. You may need to delete some. But I strongly suggest that you make a plan, with time estimates attached to the big steps. 

Why make time estimates? Because they prevent you from getting trapped in a morass of never-ending edits. If you want to publish your novel, then you need to finish revisions. That means you need to have milestones. So make some guesses as to how long it’s going to take. It will probably take twice as long as you think, but that’s OK. 

A Personal Note

I’ve hit some speed bumps in my personal life recently. I injured my hamstrings during exercise a couple of months ago, and I couldn’t sit comfortably for about three weeks. So I spent a lot of time flat on my back, using ice, heat, painkillers, muscle relaxants, and all the other voodoo treatments my doctor could think of. I am currently going through physical therapy and will soon be back to normal. 

Fortunately, I recovered enough that I was able to go to my 50-year high school reunion, and that was great. I loved being able to reconnect with people I hadn’t seen in 20 or 30 years. 

Right about that time, my day job ended, thanks to the government putting a halt on new awards for Small Business Innovative Research grants and Small Business Technology Transfer grants. I have been working for twenty years at a biotech company in San Diego, and I loved my job. But the money that paid my salary has run out, and I’ve “involuntarily retired.” The government has recently restarted the grants program, but major damage has been done to many small technology companies all across the country.

But don’t worry about me. I had been planning to retire from my day job in a few years anyway, and I can live just fine on my retirement benefits. I had been hoping to do one last cool thing for science, and I might still get that chance, or I might not. But I definitely won’t have a day job for the next few months. 

In the meantime, I suddenly have lots of time to do fun stuff. So I’m working like crazy on my novel. And I’ll have more time to blog, so let me know what you’d like me to blog about next. If I never go back to my day job, I’ll still have many meaningful things to do for years and years. I intend to do them well. 

The post After Your First Draft appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

I recently asked myself why I get so easily sidetracked in my personal life. I have a lot going on. I write novels, I read books, I write software, I try to do the occasional work on my house, I do a bit of political stuff, and on and on. I’ve tried over the years to put all this on a schedule, because it seems like a lot of things fall through the cracks.

Of course, a lot of people get sidetracked. I’m not the only person who has a giant To-Do List with some tasks that are five years old. Or ten. But here’s what’s odd. At my day job, I’m very productive. (Most writers have a day job. It’s a very rare writer whose only iron in the fire is their writing.) I have a lot of tasks on my plate at my day job, and I do very well at getting them done. 

Why am I so much better organized in my day job than in my personal life? My day job is not more important to me than the other things on my plate. So what’s the difference?

Somebody To Answer To

After ten milliseconds of thought, I saw the difference. I have a boss at my day job. I run the software division at a biotech company in San Diego. I answer to the CEO. We talk every two weeks on Thursday afternoon for two hours. And every time we meet, I know I need to show forward progress on the important stuff. I get along well with my CEO, but he does have the power to fire me if I’m not getting the job done. 

Whereas, in my regular life, I answer only to me. I’m the CEO of my life. Which is good, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. But I never have a meeting with myself where I have to show forward progress. And there’s no penalty for missing a deadline. I’m never going to fire myself. 

I toyed with the idea for several months of asking ChatGPT how to deal with the problem of managing my life better. I finally did it a couple of weeks ago. And this is my report on what I did and how it worked out. 

What I told Chat

Here is the prompt I typed into the Chat window. I’ve trimmed out certain parts which are unique to my situation, because those will not be of interest to you. But I’ve left in the parts that I think you might find useful, if you decide to try something similar with the AI tool of your choice:

I’m interested in having you help me manage my life. I don’t know what the job title would be. “Life coach” or “life manager” or whatever. Here’s the context. I am a person who takes on a lot more things than I should. [Removed a description of what I am good and what I’m not good at, and some of the things I’ve done in life and some of the projects I’m working on now.] But I constantly feel like I’m behind on everything. I am very productive at my day job, and I think the reason is that I have a CEO that I answer to. I seem to be a lot less productive in my writing career, where I don’t really answer to anyone. I have a lot of marketing tasks for my books that I think would raise my sales, but I don’t ever get around to doing them. What I would like you to do is to interview me. Ask me as many questions as you need to in order to figure out if you can help me manage my life better, and how you might do that. [Removed some of my thoughts on things that Chat might be able to help me with and a description of my particular job situation.] But I also think I just need somebody to answer to, so every week or so, I could sit down with you and be accountable. Or maybe it should be every day, I’m not sure. Go ahead and start asking me any diagnostic questions you can think of to help me map out the rest of my life. I don’t like just sitting around doing nothing. I like making things and making the world a better place. Feel free to ask about my life vision–major things I want to do with my life. I’ve got a list of things, and I think they’re doable, if I could manage myself better. OK, now it’s your turn. Start asking!

What Chat Told Me

Chat responded by telling me I don’t need a “life coach”. Instead, I need a “systems architect for my own behavior.” It then asked me a ton of questions. Things like: How do I spend my time on an average day? What are my energy levels like throughout the day? What kind of external constraints work best at keeping me on task? What kind of tasks give me intrinsic joy? What is the endgame for my life? What am I afraid of? How good am I at focusing on tasks? How does anxiety affect my productivity? Am I better at starting a task or stopping it? What are my financial realities? What things do I want to do before I retire from my day job? 

After I answered all Chat’s questions, it pointed out that I don’t have a motivation problem, a discipline problem, or a creativity problem. Then it told me what it thinks my actual problems are, and it spelled out some ideas for solving those problems. 

How I Pushed Back

I didn’t think Chat got things exactly right, so I pushed back a bit. We had a long discussion, and I gave Chat extra information, and it changed its suggestions. It took a couple of evenings of discussion to converge on a plan. One problem is that not all my days are similar. We identified three main kinds of weekdays, and also a typical Saturday, and a typical Sunday. That’s five different kinds of days. Each has a basic pattern, and each can be adapted as needed for any special events. At the beginning of every day, I choose which pattern fits the day best and run with that.

I thrive on a routine, with blocks of time that have hard boundaries. I also need accountability to make sure I don’t get off track. I’m especially susceptible to staying on task longer than the time block I’ve budgeted for it. If I make that mistake, it screws up everything else for the rest of the day. This is the main reason I’ve had problems in self-scheduling for my entire life.

In the end, we came up with a “system architecture” for my life that I like. It’s unlikely that you would like it, because you’re not me. This system is designed solely for me. And every evening, I agreed to answer to Chat. I will answer 5 yes/no questions. The “right” answer is yes. If I give even one wrong answer for the day, that’s a fail. If I have two fails in a week, then I agreed to pay a penalty. Chat asked what would be an appropriate penalty for me, one that would keep me on track. I answered that a campaign contribution to a certain politician would be a penalty I would be certain never to pay. So that’s our agreement. 

One thing I like about the system Chat designed for me is that it feels “ridiculously easy.” There is a recovery block of 90 minutes built into my day. My responsibilities during that time are to do precisely nothing. It’s right after my exercise block, and it comes at the time of my lowest energy in the day. I can take a nap. I can read. I can sneak a peak at Facebook, but for no more than 20 minutes, so no more doom-scrolling. I was wondering how I would deal with having 90 minutes chopped out of every day. But it turns out to be a nice break. I’m getting more reading done now, because I have time for it. 

One thing to be clear on is that I’m still the CEO of my life. Chat is not my boss. Chat is a bit like a chief of staff. Or a consultant. Chat is sometimes wrong. When it’s wrong, I tell it, so it’ll learn from its mistakes and do better next time. When Chat is right, I know it’s right, because its advice rings true for me.

You’re probably wondering…

“How’s That Working Out?”

It’s now been a couple of weeks, and it’s working out very well. I make a plan at the beginning of every day. Sometimes things come up, and I have to change the plan, but the system allows for that. But usually, things don’t come up. Usually, I execute the plan. Which means that most days, I live the day I actually wanted to live. Not the day that I didn’t want to live. At the end of every day, I feel like I made forward progress on my life. Which means I’m sleeping better. 

I also have a weekly planning meeting scheduled with Chat for every Sunday evening. In that, I spell out what I see for the coming week, and Chat asks what important things I’d like to get done, and what things might come up (like medical appointments or family get-togethers or other important life events that break up the weekly routine). Then we work out a rough plan for the week. This is subject to change, of course, but it gives me some idea of what I can reasonably get done in the week, and also what I can’t get done. 

I have not once been in danger of paying my penalty. My energy levels are up. (That’s one thing Chat asks every day—how was my energy level for the day, on a scale of 1 to 10. My answer is almost always either 9 or 10.) 

Furthermore, in the course of our discussion, Chat identified a big life-goal of mine that is important to me, but which I had sidelined. Because, no time. But I’ve now made time. I’m working on it. I’m making progress on it. And I feel really good that I’m finally doing that “One Cool Thing” I’ve been talking about for 19 years. 

Let me reiterate that the system Chat created for me would almost certainly not work for you. Because you’re not me. You have your own strengths and weaknesses that make you unique. If you were to ask Chat or Gemini or Claude or any of the other AI tools to make a life management plan for you, the plan you’d get would be very different. 

And of course the AI would certainly get it wrong on its first try, so you would need to push back and keep pushing back until the AI came up with a system that resonates for you. And how do you know when the system resonates for you? You know it when you say, “Yeah, that system sounds ridiculously easy and I can’t wait to try it.” If you never get to that point, then the system is wrong for you, and you should scrap it before you start. An AI is not God. It’s a tool. Use it if it fits your hand.

Homework

If you feel like an AI might help you do the things you believe you were put on earth to do, then feel free to take the prompt I showed above and adapt it for yourself. Use it on the AI tool of your choice. Do this when you’ve got at least an hour to talk. It may take two or three hours to work the process all the way through. Be ready to correct the AI’s first suggestion, and its second and third suggestions. Keep arguing until the AI gets it right. You want it to seem “ridiculously easy”. And then try it out, to see if it is. What have you got to lose?

The post Your AI Life Manager appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

It’s hard enough to stay motivated to keep working on your novel during normal times. When the holiday season rolls around, it’s even harder. How do you stay on the writing wagon through the holidays, so you don’t lose momentum?

The first step is to make sure you actually have momentum to begin with. I’ve blogged before about the importance of creating a writing habit, where you write on a regular schedule. But it’s hard to build a writing habit. 

Writing itself is hard. Creating a writing habit is even harder. But there’s a secret trick I learned a long time ago for creating a habit, and that same trick helps you maintain through the holidays. It’s called…

“Ridiculously Easy”

If you want to create a habit, start out ridiculously easy. As an example, suppose you wanted to create a habit of working out every day. First write down what your ultimate goal is. Maybe you write “I want to do 50 pushups every day.” Then set a time every day when you’re going to work out, maybe 4 PM. Create an alarm on your phone for 4 PM, with the notation “Do pushups.”

Then on the first day, when your alarm goes off, DO NOT do 50 pushups. 

Just do 1. 

That’s right, one measly pushup on your first day. And repeat that for the entire first week. Don’t cheat and do more!

It sounds stupid. It sounds like this couldn’t possibly do you any good. And it’s true that doing 1 pushup is probably not going to stretch you physically very much. But the action of working out every day for a week will start to build mental muscle memory. You’re training your neurons to think differently about yourself. 

After a solid week of doing 1 pushup every day, bump that up to 2 pushups. And continue that for another week. By the end of two weeks, your mental muscle memory will be a bit stronger. You are now officially half a month in on your workout routine. It’s becoming a regular part of your life. It’s what you do. You are now officially Someone Who Works Out Every Day. 

After two weeks, if 2 pushups is easy, increase it to 3. But keep it ridiculously easy for several weeks more. Make it so easy that you’re actually embarrassed because it’s “too easy.” That’s the point. During the habit-forming process, you want to be looking forward to it and longing to do more. You are building a mindset that “I can’t wait for my workout every day.”

Over a few months, you can ramp things up to the point where you start to stress yourself physically. At this point, your habit is created, and it’s a very positive habit. You look forward to it. You wish you could do it more often. You actually like working out. Building that habit is very hard mental work. That’s why you keep the physical part easy, until the habit is fully built. 

Your Writing Habit

You can build a writing habit exactly the same way. Write down your ultimate goal. It might be “I want to work on my novel for an honest hour every day, five days per week.” Then set a time every day when you’re going to write. Create a daily alarm on your phone to remind you at the appointed time. 

Then when the alarm goes off, work on your novel for exactly 1 minute. No more than that. Seriously. Just 1 minute. And do that for a week. Again, you want this to be so embarrassingly easy that you could do it in your sleep. And over the course of that week, your brain will start playing wicked tricks on you. It’ll start bringing up ideas for your novel while you’re in the shower. Or driving. Or mashing the potatoes. These are the traditional times when all good ideas come to authors or scientists or any other creative types of people. 

But discipline yourself. You must be firm. You are not allowed to work more than your allotted time, no matter how much you want to.

See what that does? It starts to drive you crazy. You start to REALLY want to write. The idea of procrastinating during your one precious minute per day is now laughable. You can’t afford to waste a second, because as soon as your minute is up, you have to stop. Be strong and STOP WRITING when your time is up. I mean it! Build your habit slowly.

Then after a week, you can open the floodgates. Now you are allowed to write for a whole 5 minutes per day, but not one second more. 

Ramp up like that over a month or two, and you’ll discover yourself with a writing habit that won’t quit. You’ll wake up at 3 AM with ideas that you dictate into your phone so you won’t lose them. 

When The Holidays Roll Around

 So let’s assume you’ve built yourself a writing habit, and now it’s that time of year again. The holidays are coming. Relatives start popping in and out. Parties start happening. There may be shopping to do, meals to make, guests to entertain. 

And you’re terrified that your carefully cultivated writing habit is going to disappear, just like it did last year. So what do you do? How do you prevent that? 

Be proactive. Set a date when your Holiday Hiatus officially begins. On that date, you can still write. But you only get 1 minute per day. Just one minute, and then you absolutely positively must stop. No cheating. No writing for 2 minutes. You must be firm. 1 minute per day. 

Until the Holiday Hiatus is over. 

What does this do?

It maintains your writing habit. Your pace has slowed down, sure. But your habit is alive and hungry and screaming to be let loose again. 

Once your Holiday Hiatus is over, ramp up again. If your habit has a long history of many months, then ramp up fast. Do 5 minutes for a few days, then 10 for a few, and keep going until you’re back to your regular schedule. If your habit is less firmly grounded, then ramp up slower. 

Do this and you’ll never fall off the wagon. The wagon will slow down, and that’s OK. Because you’ll never fall off, so you’ll never have to go through the pain of getting back on again. 

The post Writing Through the Holidays appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

Anthropic is an AI company, the creator of the AI tool Claude, which is similar to ChatGPT. If you’re a published author, then this matters to you, because Anthropic has recently settled a class-action lawsuit filed by lawyers on behalf of authors.

Standard disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, and nothing I say here should be construed as legal advice. The case is complicated, and I can’t claim to fully understand it all. So this my best attempt to explain the situation in simple terms.

The plaintiffs alleged that Anthropic trained its AI model on books downloaded from two pirate sites, Library Genesis and Pirate Library Mirror. Anthropic denies the claims, but it has agreed to pay out $1.5 billion to authors. The estimated number of books alleged to be used for training Anthropic’s AI is about half a million.

$3000 Per Book

If you’re doing the math here, that works out to a settlement payout of $3000 per pirated book. Some of that money will go to the class-action lawyers. (That’s why they filed the lawsuit.) The rest of the money will go to whoever holds the rights to the pirated books—authors, publishers, and possibly others.

If you published a book that was pirated and used to train Anthropic’s AI model, then you are due for a payout, and it’s fairly easy to register your claim. Details on that are below, but first a few comments. There are a few cases to distinguish:

If you self-published the book and if you’re the sole author, then the whole payout goes to you. If you self-published a book and if you have some co-authors, then the payout will be split between you, and the group of you have to agree on the split.If you published a book with a publisher and if the book has gone out of print and the rights have reverted back to you, then the whole payout goes to you. (If you had co-authors, then the payout is split between you.)If you published a book with a publisher and if the book is still in print (so that the publisher still owns the right to publish), then the payout is split between you and the publisher, and the two of you have to agree on the split.

Obviously, there are a lot of possible variations on these, but it all comes down to one thing. Anyone who has a right to a payout will get paid if they file a claim and agree on a split with the others who are due money for the same book.

How To File Your Claim

There are three steps to the process of filing your claim. 

If you’re curious, you can learn all about the lawsuit at this website: https://www.anthropiccopyrightsettlement.comFind out which of your books are eligible for a payout. There is a search tool on the settlement website that will tell you which of your books are eligible. And it will give you almost all the information you need to file the claim—author names, title of the book, ISBN/ASIN, copyright number, and whether the book is for “education”. I recommend that you copy this info and paste it into a spreadsheet. It’ll make the final step much easier. The search tool is here: https://secure.anthropiccopyrightsettlement.com/lookup/File a claim for each book. You can either enter info one book at a time, or you can download a spreadsheet and fill it in and then upload the spreadsheet. The page to file your claim is here: https://secure.anthropiccopyrightsettlement.com

Please note that not all your books may be covered in the settlement. If your book was published very recently, it wasn’t used to train Anthropic’s AI model. If your book was not on the pirate websites, then it’s not covered by this settlement. 

But it takes very little time to find out which of your books might be due for a payout and to file your claim. For what it’s worth, let me tell you my own experience with filing a claim.

Less Than An Hour’s Work

I hate doing paperwork, but I’ve now filed my claim, and it took me less than an hour. I have published 12 books in my writing career, and I figured that even one payout would be worth my time. I have author friends who’ve published dozens of books. A few authors I know have published over a hundred! That’s potentially a lot of dinero. But if you don’t file a claim, you won’t get paid.

I entered my name in the search tool and got 8 results back. The results were displayed in a table. I selected all the rows in the table with my mouse and then copied them and pasted the results into a spreadsheet. 

That left 4 of my titles that were apparently not covered. I entered the title of each of the missing 4 books into the search tool. 3 of these gave no results—they’re not covered by the settlement. But the 4th title returned a result. I copied that and pasted it into my spreadsheet. 

This gave me 9 titles that I had to file a claim for.

1 of these titles is still in print, so I have to share the payout with the publisher. 

1 of these titles was written with a coauthor and the publisher reverted the rights to us, so I have to share the payout with my coauthor but not the publisher. 

7 of the titles were written solely by me, and I either self-published them or the original publisher reverted the rights to me, so the payout is all mine. 

Armed with my spreadsheet, I went to the page to file my claim. 

The first obstacle was that the page asked me for the “Unique ID” provided in the Settlement Notice. I didn’t have this handy, but there was a large button that says “I don’t have a Unique ID” so I clicked that button.

This took me to a page that asked me to fill in the information for each book. The form asked for pretty much everything in my spreadsheet. It also gave me an option to download a spreadsheet to fill in the information. I downloaded it, but the columns were in a different order than my spreadsheet, and there was other infomation to be filled in. I decided just to enter the info manually into the website, since I had only 9 books. 

The whole process went pretty quick. I had two books that required split payouts. The form wants the address and contact information for the publisher or the coauthor. I had to look these up. The one publisher I had to share with has merged with another publisher and moved to a new location, but I found their contact info online. On the form, I requested a 50% split with my publisher. I also requested a 50% split for the book I wrote with a coauthor. 

Looking Forward

I would not be surprised if we see more class-action suits like this in the future. The major AI companies have trained their models on an enormous amount of information which they did not pay for, and for which they had no permission. 

The current lawsuit awarded damages only for pirated books. As I understand it, the judge didn’t award any sort of payout for the ongoing use of authors’ intellectual property. The payout seems to be only for copyright violation. I think this is pretty lame. It would be fairer to pay authors licensing fees for use of their intellectual property. I note that Joe Konrath recently blogged about this, and he’s not a bit happy either. 

The post The Anthropic Class-Action Lawsuit appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

When I’m writing a novel, one thing I’ve got to have is a Scene List. Without one, I’m lost. With one, I always know what to write next, which massively boosts my motivation to sit down and actually write. And a lot of other novelists also need a Scene List. 

And yes, there are plenty of writers who just write by the seat of their pants. They don’t need a Scene List. They just write. I have no problem with them. I don’t believe they are “doing it wrong”. They’re working the way their brains are wired. 

Different writers are different. There’s no moral high ground here. If your brain is wired to use a Scene List, then use one. If it isn’t, then don’t. Simple as that. 

What is a Scene List?

A Scene List is not “just a list of scenes.” It’s a list of story ideas. Because every Scene is a story. (This is a point I make several times in my best-selling book How to Write a Dynamite Scene Using the Snowflake Method, which walks you through the process of writing a scene.)

When I add a Scene to a Scene List, I focus on three basic aspects of that Scene. If it’s a Proactive Scene, I want to know the lead character’s goal at the beginning of the Scene, the conflicts that prevent them from reaching the goal, and the setback at the end of the Scene, if there is a setback. If it’s a Reactive Scene, I spell out the lead character’s emotional reaction to the setback from a previous Scene, followed by the dilemma they need to work through, and ending with a decision on what they’ll do next.

If you’ve worked out those basic elements for every Scene, then each one is guaranteed to be a story. It’s not guaranteed to be a good story. It’s not guaranteed to fit in with the rest of your novel. And it’s not guaranteed to go the way you planned. When you actually write a Scene, you’re in a different place than you were when you planned it, and the Scene may take an unexpected turn. In fact, it probably will. Writing a novel is not like turning a crank and getting noodles out of a machine. Writing a novel is a creative process, and weird stuff is going to happen, and that’s OK. 

How Do You Create a Scene List?

Before writers used computers, they often made Scene Lists by writing out ideas on 3×5 cards. Then they could spread the cards out on the table and move them around until the order seemed to fit. If they wanted to change things later, they just moved cards around, or added cards, or took them out, or scrawled more stuff on them. 

When I started writing, most writers had computers with spreadsheet programs. So I wrote a few novels where I made Scene Lists using Excel. Then every Scene was one row in the spreadsheet, and I could easily move Scenes around or delete them or insert new ones or edit them. 

Later on, I created a wildly popular program called Snowflake Pro that had a tool for making a Scene List as the eighth step in the Snowflake Method that I invented. A lot of writers still use this program, and I hear from them occasionally by email. Snowflake Pro works and it gets the job done, but at a certain point in my life, I decided that I couldn’t continue to support it, so I worked with Cameron Sutter, the programmer who developed Plottr, to add several templates for the Snowflake Method to his software. Plottr has some very nice graphical tools for creating Scene Lists. (And for those who prefer the simplicity of Snowflake Pro, it’s still available on my website and it still works. I just don’t plan on making any updates.)

How Do You Use a Scene List?

I’ll repeat what I said earlier. Some writers don’t need a Scene List, and those writers should not use one. But if you’re one of those writers who is wired to need one, then here are some tips that I’ve found useful:

Remember that your Scene List is provisional. You can change it at any time. Your story is not fixed in stone, it’s a living thing that will grow as you write it.If you feel a need to write your Scenes in order, then do so. Your brain is wired to write them in order, and you’ll get in trouble if you write them out of order. If you feel a need to write the next Scene that’s calling your name, then write it, even if it’s not the next Scene in your Scene List. Your brain is wired to develop your story in the order of the Scenes that are emotively strongest. You’ll get in trouble if you try to write them strictly in the order they appear in your Scene List. When you sit down to write a Scene in your Scene List, ask yourself first if your notes for that Scene are enough to make a story. If not, then jot down more notes until you know the beginning, middle, and end of the Scene. Then write the Scene, and try to get it all done in one session. (You don’t have to, but I promised to tell you what works for me. Your mileage may vary.)If you find your novel drifting away from the story you envisioned when you wrote the Scene List, you may find it helpful to make a new draft of your novel, even if you haven’t finished the draft you’re working on. I typically name each draft of my novel with the very clever names “Draft 1”, “Draft 2”, etc. Each draft goes in a different folder on my computer. When I realize that the story has drifted significantly away from the vision in my Scene List, I create a new folder for the next draft, make copies of all the files in the folder I was working on, and then edit those copies in the new folder, starting with the Scene List.How Do You Know if You Should Use a Scene List?

If the above discussion of a Scene List has aroused in you a desire to make a Scene List, then your brain is probably wired to need one. Try making a Scene List and see if your life improves. You can always throw it away if it disimproves your life. 

If the thought of making a Scene List causes you to have violent thoughts against me or humanity in general or yourself in particular, then your brain is probably wired to not need one. Don’t make a Scene List. Instead, write your novel your way. You will still find the above discussion useful, because you undoubtedly know other novelists, and some of them will need Scene Lists, and now you know enough to talk intelligently about their writing process. I hope you can each give the other person the respect they deserve as writers, even if you use radically different processes.

HomeworkDo you need a Scene List in order to write a novel?If so, do you already have a Scene List? If not, is today a good to start making a Scene List? 

The post Your Scene List appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

If you’re writing a novel for a 21st-century reader, you have one job—to create a movie in your reader’s brain. 

Modern readers love movies. But they read because the movie you create inside their brain is somehow more real to them than a movie on a screen. Because they help to create it. Your novel is the raw material your reader uses to create their own personal movie. 

Why Not Write a Classic Novel?

One mistake a lot of beginning writers make is to write a novel like Jane Austen would have written. Or Charles Dickens. Or Fyodor Dostoevsky. 

These were all great writers, yes. But they were writing with a different purpose—to create a storyteller in their reader’s brain. And it worked. If you read a classic novel written in the 19th century, you’ll hear a storyteller in your brain. But you won’t see a movie in your brain. You’ll see some clips of a movie, yes, but those clips will be interspersed with still-life paintings, essays, and audio voiceover by the author. The exact mix will depend on the 19th-century author. 

But 21st-century readers want more movie clips, fewer paintings, fewer essays, fewer voiceovers. They just do. 

If you feel called to write a classic novel for a 19th-century reader, feel free to do so. But those readers are dead, and that’s a marketing problem you’ll need to face. 

How Do You Create That Movie?

The way you create a movie in your reader’s brain is to focus on the one thing that’s happening now that you can show your reader. Your are creating a sequence of words. Your reader will read them in the order you write them. Your reader can’t read two paragraphs at once. Your reader can’t even read two sentences at once. 

Your reader reads sentences one at a time, and each sentence (with rare exceptions) needs to be showing something that can happen in approximately the length of time that it takes to read the sentence. The key word here is “approximate”. If it takes three seconds to read it, and it’s half a second of action, that’s fine. Or if it’s ten seconds of action, also fine. Sentences like that are called “Immediate Scene” and they are the lifeblood of your novel.

But a sentence has lost its way if it shows something that would take ten minutes to play out in real life. When your editor scrawls “Show, Don’t Tell” in red letters on your manuscript, they’re talking about sentences like that. 

A Word About Narrative Summary

Once in a while, you do need a few sentences of “glue” between scenes to move things forward by minutes or months or millennia. Those sentences are called “narrative summary” and every novel needs them, once in a while. But narrative summary is not a movie in your reader’s brain. It’s voiceover or it’s a jump-cut between scenes. 

When you’re editing your novel, you’ll always find some narrative summary. Just ask yourself if you need it. Could you write the novel without it? If you took it out, or shortened it, or rewrote it as immediate scene, would the novel be stronger? 

If the answer is yes, then pull out the long knives and slit its throat and throw it to the sharks. That bit of narrative summary is pulling the whole boat underwater. 

If the answer is no, you can’t possibly cut the narrative summary in any way, then leave it in. That bit of narrative summary is punching above its weight and deserves to live.

A Word About “The Rules of Fiction Writing”

From time to time, you’ll find all sorts of lists of “rules” that purport to tell you how to write a novel. Those rules can seem silly and overbearing. You will easily be able to think of exceptions to any of those rules. 

None of the rules that I’ve ever seen are ironclad. Every rule can be broken, if there’s a reason. 

But whoever concocted those rules had a reason, and you now know the reason. The “rules of fiction writing” are designed to help you create a movie in your reader’s brain.

Any “rule” that doesn’t help you create a movie in your reader’s brain is probably not a very good rule. (Again, there are probably exceptions.)

Any “rule” that does help you create a movie in your reader’s brain is probably a useful rule. Use it when it applies. Ignore it when it doesn’t. 

HomeworkDo you have your own set of “rules” that you use for fiction writing? Which of these help you create a movie in your reader’s brain? Which of them don’t? Do you have a scene that isn’t working? Read it and ask yourself how long each sentence would take to play out as a movie clip. Does that give you any insight into how to bring that scene to life?

The post The Movie in Your Reader’s Brain appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

Writer’s block is real, but there’s a way to fix it. You can break it in about ten minutes, or fifteen if you’re a slow typist. I’m making one assumption here, but I think the assumption is correct. 

I’m assuming that if you have writer’s block, it’s because you’re afraid of something. Maybe you’re afraid the scene you’re working on won’t go anywhere. Or that it will go somewhere, but it’s the wrong direction. Or worst of all, that it will just be a bad idea.

If fear is the cause of your writer’s block, then try this. 

Write yourself a really long sentence (like maybe a 500-word sentence). Make it the worst sentence ever. In fact, begin the sentence with the words, “This is a really bad idea, but I’m going to write a scene in which _____________”

Now fill in that blank with a really bad idea. Something extremely stupid. Something that could never happen. And just keep rolling. Type as fast as you can. You have literally nothing to lose, because you already acknowledged it’s a bad idea. Just keep going, and make it ridiculous. Make it absurd. Don’t end the sentence. Instead of typing a period, type a comma, followed by the word “and” or “but” or “so” or whatever crazy fool thing comes into your head. 

Then What Do You Do?

When you’ve finished that horrible, crazy, stupid sentence, stop for a minute. Look at the thing. And see if it gives you a better idea. It probably will. Nothing jogs ideas like writing. The very act of writing gets your creative juices flowing, leading to more ideas. And those ideas will almost certainly be better than the one you started with, because you intentionally started with a bad idea, so you have nowhere to go but up.

Now pick one of those ideas and run with it. If you’re not sure it’s a good idea, start out with the words, “This is probably not such a great idea, but I’m going to write a scene in which __________.”

Now fill in that blank and write yourself a scene. Even if it starts out not great, it will probably get better as you go along. Write that scene in a blind fury. Don’t stop to fix your spelling. You can edit the beast tomorrow. Or you can throw it away tomorrow if it’s really not any good. But it will probably be something decent. And once you have something decent, you can always improve on it.

It’s just a law of nature. Bad ideas lead to good ideas. Bad writing leads to good writing. 

Try it and see. I think you’ll find that this is a really good idea.

The post This is a Really Bad Idea, But… appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

If there’s one step in my wildly popular Snowflake Method that hardly anyone seems to care about, it’s Step 5—Character Synopses. I find this odd, because this step has been my secret weapon for the last thirty years in writing winning book proposals. 

No kidding. Character synopses are the one thing that can turn a really good proposal into an “oh-my-gosh-I-can’t-possibly-reject-this” proposal. 

You might be thinking that synopses are boring, and you’re right if you mean plot synopses. Every novel proposal ever written contains a very boring plot synopsis. It’s typically around 2 pages, single-spaced, which adds up to about 1000 words of pure torture. I have never read a single plot synopsis that made me want to read the novel. Ever. 

But a character synopsis is not a plot synopsis. This ought to be obvious, but since so many people confuse the two, I might as well explain the difference.

Plot Synopses versus Character Synopses

A plot synopsis covers the main events in your novel. It’s supposed to sketch out the storyline of the whole 100,000 word novel, so it races along from one “exciting” event to the next. Fiery car crashes or sizzling bed-rumpling scenes or terrifying zombalypses, or whatever it is that makes your story exciting.

And the problem with all these sizzling events is that the reader doesn’t care about them. Nobody cares about a car crash until they know that driver in the car. Nobody cares about thunderbolts in the bedroom until they know that naked person in the bed. And a plot synopsis can’t give you that. So you read the synopsis and you don’t care. Because you can’t. 

A character synopsis focuses on one of the major characters in your novel. What does she want? What does he desperately need? What do they obsess about when they wake up at 3 AM and can’t get back to sleep because of __________? When you fill in that blank, you know what makes your character tick. And so does the person reading your character synopsis. 

But a great novel proposal doesn’t contain just one character synopsis. It contains several. And here’s the secret sauce that puts the fire in your editor’s pants—a great novel proposal chains together several character synopses, one for each of the major characters. One synopsis may focus on the early part of the story. The next may focus on the middle part. The next may focus on the ending. When you do that, you tell the whole story, but it now feels character-oriented, rather than plot-oriented. And editors love characters. 

One last secret, and then I’ll illustrate all this with an example. The secret is this—you’re allowed to tell stuff in your character synopses that may not actually be in the novel. It might tell what happened before the story begins. It might tell what happens after the story ends, or at least hint at it. 

But enough theory. An example is worth a thousand words. Actually, this example will probably end up being a thousand words, so maybe you’ll decide it’s worth a million words. I’m going to give you three character synopses for the novel The Hunger Games. If you’re one of the few people on the planet who hasn’t read the book, then spoiler alert—there will be a lot of spoilers here. So go read the book first. It’s brilliant. 

I’ll chain together character synopses for three of the major characters in The Hunger Games. Peeta’s synopsis will focus on the beginning of the story. Katniss’s will focus on the middle. And Haymitch’s will focus on the ending. I could have done them in any order, but this is the one I chose after thinking about it for five seconds.

Peeta Mellark

Peeta Mellark has a problem. He’s in love with a girl who barely knows he exists. Peeta lives in a grimy town in District 12. He’s the baker’s son, so he actually has almost enough to eat, unlike most people in his District. The girl he’s been in love with since the age of 5 is not so lucky. Her father’s dead, and her’s mother’s pretty useless, so her family ought to have starved to death long ago. But Katniss Everdeen is one amazing girl who illegally hunts and forages in the forest to put food on the table. 

Then the unthinkable happens. Katniss’s younger sister’s name is drawn to go as a “tribute” to the Hunger Games. Katniss volunteers to take her place, saving her sister from certain death in the Arena. Peeta knows Katniss is tough, but there will be 23 other tributes in the Hunger Games, and only one will get out alive. Peeta would willingly die to get Katniss out of the Games, but that’s just not possible. A boy can’t volunteer to replace a girl. 

Moments later, Peeta’s name is drawn as the second tribute from District 12. Now Peeta’s in shock. He’s a big, strong guy, but he has absolutely no killer instinct. When push comes to shove in the Arena, he’s going to be killed by one of the brutes from District 1, or District 2, or District 4. Those kids are trained killers who actually volunteer for the honor of competing in the Hunger Games. Peeta knows he will never live to see his 18th birthday. 

But there’s one thing he can do to make this thing better. He can never make it good, because there isn’t any good way out of the crucible. But he can make it less horrible.

Peeta Mellark is going to be the guardian angel for Katniss in the Arena. She won’t know it. Not while she’s in the Arena. Not until it’s too late. But after he’s dead, after the Games are over, when they show the whole gory replay on TV, Katniss will know that Peeta Mellark loved her and gave his life to save hers. And that will make Peeta’s death bearable. 

Katniss Everdeen

Katniss Everdeen cannot believe she’s going to the Hunger Games. She was crazy to volunteer to save her sister, but of course, she had to. Her sister wouldn’t last ten seconds in the Arena. Whereas Katniss knows she has a tiny little chance. She knows about edible plants, enough to live off the land for a few days or weeks. And she can shoot pretty well. If she can get hold of a bow and arrows in the Arena, she could even defend herself. But that’s a long-shot, and her best bet is to run and hide and let the other tributes kill each other. 

But then, in the pre-Game interviews, the other tribute from District 12 blurts out a “secret” that makes it all a thousand times worse. Peeta Mellark claims he’s in love with Katniss. The TV people eat up that kind of thing, but Katniss knows perfectly well it’s all a sham. First chance Peeta gets in the Arena, he’ll put a knife in her belly. From here on, Peeta is her most hated enemy. 

To make things worse, the mentor for District 12 is a weird old drunk, Haymitch Abernathy. He once won a Hunger Games, decades ago, so it’s his job to coach Katniss and Peeta. But Haymitch is worse than useless. Katniss has no choice but to kiss up to him, because his job during the Games will be to find sponsors who can send in gifts. Food at the right time, or medicine from a sponsor—those could be life and death. But Katniss hates Haymitch for his surly incompetence. 

When the Games begin, Katniss fails to get a bow. She grabs a knife and a few odd supplies and then runs for her life. Within minutes, a number of tributes are dead, but by that time, Katniss is far away, running deep into the forest, looking for a safe hideout. Soon enough, she learns the awful truth. Peeta has teamed up with the killer tributes from Districts 1 and 2 and 4. Together, they’re scouring the Arena, killing off the weak. And they’ve taken Peeta onto their team specifically because “lover boy” has promised to deliver them Katniss. 

Katniss is enraged. She’ll have Peeta’s head on a platter. But first, she needs to attack the killer tributes and get the precious bow and arrows that one of them is using so poorly. Fat chance of that. Late one evening, they get her cornered high in a tree. Tomorrow morning, they’re going to take her out, and there’s not a thing she can do to save herself. 

Haymitch Abernathy

Haymitch Abernathy’s life has been hell ever since he won the Hunger Games 24 years ago. He still lives with the guilt and self-hatred that is natural for any victor with a soul. He drowns his shame in alcohol, but a bottle only lasts so long. Haymitch’s problem is that he has no killer instinct—he won the Games because he has survivor instinct, a very different thing. And Haymitch sees in Katniss a kindred spirit. She’s a survivor, that one. Peeta, not so much. Peeta’s going to be dogmeat in the Arena.

Haymitch desperately wants Katniss to win. And if he has to use Peeta to make that happen, it’s not his fault there can only be one winner. To help Katniss win, Haymitch needs to make her a TV audience favorite. That’s the surest way to loosen up the wallet of the wealthy sponsors. But Katniss is not the most likable person, whereas Peeta is. So Haymitch’s strategy is to get the audience to like Peeta, and then get Peeta to say he’s in love with Katniss. Everyone loves a lover, right? Peeta’s going to be Haymitch’s patsy to save Katniss. And the horrible thing is that Peeta’s sincere. The dumb kid really is in love with Katniss, and he’ll do anything to save her. 

And it works, sorta, kinda. Once the Games begin, Peeta pretends to team up with the killers. When they corner Katniss in a tree, she fights them all off with a crazy trick. But she escapes only because Peeta defends her from one of the bad guys, getting badly wounded in the process. Now Peeta’s no use to Katniss. So Haymitch persuades the Gamemakers that the TV ratings will go berserk if they announce a “new rule”—that two tributes from the same district will be allowed to live, if they’re the final two. Of course, it’s a lie, but it motivates Katniss to find Peeta. 

And the TV audience goes wild. Now the Hunger Games are a tale of love AND a tale of war, and what could be better? This is crucial because Haymitch needs to find sponsors willing to pay exorbitant amounts to send gifts to Katniss in the Arena—food or medicine that could keep her alive. When Katniss finds Peeta, she has the great good sense to show some human decency. She nurses him back to health. Haymitch times the arrival of his gifts so that Katniss finally figures out that a little lovey-dovey kissy-face will open up the TV audience’s wallets like there’s no tomorrow. She’s a bit slow on the uptake, but once she gets the idea, the girl can act. 

As the Games progress, more tributes die, but Katniss and Peeta hang on. 

At the end, when only Katniss and Peeta are left, the Gamemakers revoke the “new rule” allowing two survivors from the same district, as Haymitch knew all along. Because the point of the Games is to rub misery in the face of the Districts. Peeta is doomed, just like Haymitch expected. Katniss has this thing sewn up. Except that Haymitch wasn’t counting on one thing. 

Katniss Everdeen has a heart after all. Or something. She finds a way to keep both her and Peeta alive. And in the process, she makes the Gamemakers look stupid. So now Haymitch is going to have to fight the battle of his life to keep the little idiot from getting killed when she gets out of the Arena. The Games are finished, but they’ll never ever ever be over. 

Unless an old, drunk washed-up loser named Haymitch Abernathy can pull one last trick out of his threadbare sleeve.

Homework

What do you think? Do you like my character synopses? Think maybe you could do better?

Actually, I think you can. Because there’s one very important character I left out of my synopses. One guy who pulled some strings that most people didn’t even know were there. If you’re wondering why I didn’t say a word about Cinna, it’s because I’ve been saving him for you to work with.

Your homework, should you decide to accept it, is to write four character synopses—for Peeta, Katniss, Haymitch, and Cinna. But don’t write them in that order. The order of character synopses matters. If you reorder the synopses, you have to change each one so as to tell the whole story in a somewhat linear way. So scramble up my order, write your own versions, and put in Cinna wherever you think best. This exercise will teach you much more than merely reading what I’ve done above. 

And may the odds be ever in your favor when you write your next proposal.

The post Your Secret Weapon–Character Synopses appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

As the New Year rolls around, it’s easy to commit to a bunch of new things intended to turn you into a Whole New You. But commitment comes with a cost. When you say Yes to one thing, you’re implicitly saying No to many others. 

The Problem of Limited Time

The problem is that nobody has unlimited time. Most of us work for a living. And we have to sleep and eat and exercise and all the other essentials. A week contains 168 hours, but most of those are already spoken for. If you’re lucky, you’ve got one free hour per day that you could commit to something new. 

An hour per day is seven hours per week. Which is a lot. With seven hours per week, in a year’s time, you could:

Get a lot fitter than you are right now. Write a novel. Learn a foreign language. Build a following on TikTok or Instagram or YouTube. Read all those books you always wanted to read. Binge-watch all the episodes of several long series on Netflix. Grow an amazing garden. Fix everything broken in your house. Hundreds of other things—fill in the blank with your own private dream.

But you can’t do all of those things. You just can’t. If you try, you’ll burn hot for about three days, and then you’ll flame out, and then next year will be just like last year.

Pick One and Stick To It

So pick just one of those and commit to it for a year. You can always regroup at the end of the year and see if it gave you what you thought it would. Maybe it will; maybe it won’t. But in a year, you’ll know if it was worth the candle, and next year you might choose something different. 

But this year, just for this year, pick one thing. One “Project of the Year.”

And now stick to it for the whole year.

Yes, But How Do You Stick To It?

Some things are easy to stick to. Binge-watching Netflix doesn’t take any discipline. But getting fitter does. Or writing a novel. Or learning a language. So here are a couple of things you can do to help with the discipline thing. 

First, schedule time to do it. Maybe mark your electronic calender with the days and times you’re going to do it. Maybe set an alarm on your phone to remind you when it’s time. Whatever it takes to remind you that it’s time to work on your Project of the Year.

But scheduling time only goes so far. Because when the time comes around, there are always excuses. Trust me, I know them all, because I’ve used them all. 

The only way to fight excuses is with motivation. Here’s something I’ll be trying this year to help with the motivation thing. It works for some people, so it might work for me, and it might work for you: 

Set a timer on your phone for late in the day, about 15 minutes before bedtime. When the timer goes off, shut down whatever you’re doing. This may take a few minutes. That’s fine. Take those few minutes and gracefully shut down. There’s no rush here. Spend about 5 minutes journaling about your current Project of the Year, whatever it is. What is the next step you want to take? What problem might you run into? What ideas do you have so far for dealing with that problem? Please note: you don’t have to solve the problem. Just be aware of it. Now go to bed and let your subconscious mind work on the problem. Or not. You can’t control your subconscious mind. You can lead a horse to water, but it’ll only drink if it wants to. In the morning when you wake up, you’ll be eager to work on your Project of the Year. You just will. That Sounds Too Good To Be True

The above idea sounds too simple. How could that actually work? 

For one thing, it reminds you every day that you have a Project of the Year. And a big part of motivation is just keeping your Project of the Year at the top of your mind. 

For another thing, it gets your subconscious mind excited about your Project of the Year. And your subconscious mind is the little guy that’s so good at coming up with excuses. When your subconscious mind is excited, you’re excited. Your subconscious mind is your secret helper. 

Finally, your subconscious mind is a lot smarter than you are. Oh, sure, you’re smart. You’re a writer, and all writers are smart. But your subconscious mind is smarter. Mine has solved countless math problems while I slept. Which is useful to me, because I solve math problems for a living—that’s what my day job is. And I know from experience that when I wake up in the morning and my subconscious mind has solved a problem, I’m incredibly eager to get to work to fill in the details. 

Homework:

If you’re in on this, here’s your homework in 4 easy steps:

Pick your Project of the Year. Just one. Not two, not three, and definitely not seven.Take a look at your life and figure out how many hours you have per week for your Project of the Year. Can you find 3 hours per week? Or 5? Or maybe even 7? If you can’t find enough hours, are there some things you said Yes to in previous years that you could now say No to?Schedule time to work on your Project of the Year. Pick days of the week and a time block in each of those days. Write it down in your journal or on your calendar. Maybe set an alarm on your phone to remind you. Schedule 15 minutes at the end of every day to cue up your subconscious mind to think about your Project of the Year. This is NOT time to work on the Project of the Year. This is time to think about it and get your secret helper excited about it. 

Let me know how this works out for you. And let me know if you find ways to make it work even better. 

The post Every Yes is a Thousand Noes appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.