Podcasts, Projects, Transcript
[Transcript] ISBW S17 Ep6: Productivity (Or Mommy and Daddy are Fighting!)
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I’m excited to be able to offer transcriptions of I Should Be Writing again! I’m starting with the new season’s livestreams and catching up as I can. If you want to help this endeavor, supporting the Patreon, the Ko-Fi, or the Jemi would be a great help.
Productivity
(Or Mommy and Daddy are Fighting!)
I Should Be Writing S17 Ep6
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
writing, edits, podcast, book, people, story, stream, outline, goal, words, thinking, rewrites, novella, patreon, fanfic, talk, habits, run, episodes, shel silverstein
SPEAKER
Mur Lafferty
Mur 0:30
Hope y’all are doing well on this Thursday. Just finished your meeting and made it in. Oh, I’m so glad you like the season episode thing. It’s something I discovered Apple wanted. And I don’t have to wonder what number in 500 I’m at. I can just think, well it’s always gonna be season 17 this year and it’s easier to find the number when it’s in the teens and lower. Hello Underpope. Good to see you. I’m still marking somewhere on the file what the episode number is just in case I ever need it. But for now. Yeah, it’s the season counting thing. I just have to figure out how I can go back and edit the existing files, but without flooding everybody’s RSS feed with old episodes. I don’t think there’s a way unless things have changed. Hey HellJack, I’m glad you’re here regardless, good to see you. Anyway this is I Should be Writing. My name is Mur Lafferty if you don’t otherwise know. Right now I’m a chatting and podcast streamer, I want to get back into gaming but it’s not fitting with my schedule right now. So this is a podcast for wannabe fiction writers. I used to say by a wannabe fiction writer but then I published my first book and people told me I couldn’t say that anymore. And while they’re not the boss of me, I guess they had a point. KayKimmy, my cats are disasters and I dreamed and had the worst bus ride ever but otherwise I’m pretty. That’s good. Over the weekend I had two anxiety dreams about the same friends, which was weird. So don’t really want to look too deeply into that. That’ll just be awkward.
Mur 2:43
Hey, do you have any idea why I might be having highly anxious dreams about you? What’s up with our relationship that we need to talk about? Oh no Phasedout I’m so sorry. Well I hope that gets ironed out soon. Or you have somebody in HR, you can talk to you. Although unfortunately, they usually work more for the company, even though they say they work for you. JavaScript will be the death of me. Do not die from JavaScript Underpope. Five person company. There is no HR. Well, if he’s done it before it sounds like a pattern. So, it’s definitely not healthy. I don’t know the situation but I think if he’s done it before, then you know it’s like the parent who’s like I’m gonna count to five. And the kids like what happens when you get to five? And then the parent gets to five and they don’t know because they expected the threat to work. So, yeah I titled this stream ‘Mommy and Daddy Are Fighting’ because I think I’ve hit my limit in productivity books. I was reading Atomic Habits which has been recommended to me many times. And seems to be referenced a lot this year it’s only like two years old. But I seem to hear more and more about it lately. That and the book Compounding Effects, I’m not sure I have the ebook. I’ll look it up. But those two follow the hope that if you improve by 1% and you keep improving by 1%, after a year, I don’t know how the math works out. After a year you’ll be like, 37% better than you were before. I really don’t know how that works. But anyway, looking for it. Come on. I know I’ve got it. The Compound Effect. Yes. And you know it’s that, if you just put in a little bit more effort, then changes will come over time. It’s like the healthy way to lose weight. You don’t want to fad diet. You want to change some habits and watch it gradually come off.
Mur 5:35
But people don’t like that because they like instant gratification. We all do. But The Compound Effect had a good example saying that if you’re in a really cold room and you’ve got an ice cube, and it’s sitting on a cold table. You’re not putting your body heat in the ice cube. This is a metaphor or an example. This is not actual thermodynamics. But you’re in a cold room with an ice cube and you increase the temperature from 28 to 29 and then 29 to 30, and so on, and nothing happens to the IceCube, even though the room is getting warmer. And then once you hit 32, it starts to melt. That’s his example of how we feel when we start making some changes and nothing happens. It’s a gradual thing but once things start to happen, they will happen. I like that. I like the idea of compounding, habit stacking and doing all of that. And the 1% thing, I’m trying to figure out how to add the whole 1% effort to my day. There were examples of the things the British bike racing team did to improve the team. Tiny little things, but they did so many tiny little things that they eventually made a championship team. Does that mean 1% more words written every day? Does that mean more marketing every day? I don’t know. I’m still trying to get that idea pinpointed. I have a goal to increase all of my metrics- Patreon number Patreon income and podcast downloads- by half again, in a year. And I thought that was reasonable. That’s when you break it down into month by month and week by week that’s not that much. But then I was talking to some people in the coaching workshop I’m in. The setting goals workshop. And one guy said, he’s trying to look at it in the 10 times point of view.
Mur 8:19
Now, the 10 times point of view seems to be the exact opposite of the 1% point of view which is, yeah, you could try to do 1% better. But if you shoot for 10%. No, no, not 10%. 10 times. If you shoot for 10 times better, you’re not going to get 10 times better, but you’re going to get more than 1%. Considering how ambitious I’ve been with my projects, I’m thinking that more sets me up to try and fail a lot more, but it is an interesting ambitious concept. Hey Anne. It’s good to see you. Phasedout says had you not chosen to podcast Heaven I would not have discovered the joy of audio books which I now listen to about 30 novels a year. Thank you. That’s really sweet Phasedout. I’m glad. He’s referring to some novellas I podcasted for free back in five and six. Fyrerider says, I guess what you define as failure. Right. Yeah, but I’m thinking if I have on my list of things to do this year, write two books on spec, write an audio drama, and write the things I’m contracted for which includes two projects, no three projects that still have edit passes to do. And then a new book that I’m under contract for. Now I could shoot for all of those that’s really ambitious. And in this concept it sounds like they think well maybe I’ll finish two or one, finish one of the big extras. Or finish two of the big extras even. But what I see is overloading myself, crashing and burning, and failing on all fronts. I do have the book 10 times, I think it’s called 10 times. I remember the cover is just a big 10 and a big X. I’m looking again. Talk amongst yourselves. If you’re aware it’s a process but you set a huge goal, less than huge goal is still a win. Yeah that’s the point but if the huge goal depresses you, it’s harder to deal with. There’s 10% happiness. The 10 times rule. Yes. Now I started listening to this, and admittedly I’ve gotten tired of the productivity and self help books written by white dudes that are just a) I’m awesome and b) you can be awesome too. All that stuff you think is holding you back, isn’t. And I’m thinking, I can think of some women who might argue with you. I can think of some people of color who might argue with you. I can think of some LGBT people who could argue with you.
Mur 11:45
You’ve got a dude over here, and you’ve got a woman over here doing the same job but she’s getting sexually harassed. Are they on an evil playing field, equal playing field. They are on an evil playing field, but not really on an equal playing field because she has an extra level of difficulty, to use John Scalzi is metaphor of playing a video game on easy. So, I got tired of this book because the writer… I was listening to the audio, maybe reading it is better. But the audiobook is very, come on, bros. Let’s do something awesome and not even taking into account class or socioeconomic background. Just saying just fight all your things that you think make you weak. Shut up. Stop whining and, yeah, there are a lot of books like that, and they’re all by white dudes. So it’s just, open your eyes dudes.Anyway but the concept of the 10 times rule is to shoot for much more than you want, or much more than you think you can get, and then you will land further ahead of your modest goal. But I don’t know if my brain works like that because I get discouraged easily. Another podcaster recommends having both an impossible goal and a bare minimum goal. Yeah, I was watching… I wish I could remember that guy. I’m going to try to write this down. Again my practice of taking show notes as I’m doing the show will be more informative when I finally post it but little moments of silence while I write stuff down. There’s a guy who does sort of betterment self help videos and they’re animated and they’re really, really good. But one thing he says is three goals, which is, there’s also one in the middle of what KayKimmy just said about impossible goal, bare minimum goal. Because if you hit the bare minimum goal, you can at least write down that you did it. You did some exercise today. You did a push up. But that correlates to Atomic Habits which says a bad workout is better than no workout. Because you’re still going to get some benefit from it where you don’t get any benefit of nothing. Or you don’t get any benefit from nothing.
Mur 14:43
Literally, he’s got like one jumping jack, and then like a yoga video or a two mile run. If you’re feeling good enough for the two mile run, then go. Actually I think he was equating each one the same thing to do, but different sides. Like, run to the end of the street and back or run a mile or run two miles. If you hit that bare minimum goal then things can look up. Because when you look back, you’re going to see unless you keep a lot of details but if you’re writing it down on a diary whether you did it or not, then you’re just going to see day after day after day that you did it. You’re not going to worry okay there was that one day I did one push up. All of these have habits. Still need to remember to do it, which is often my problem. A lot of my daily habits are so ingrained that it’s hard for me to figure out where I’d put a new one in. I do like the idea of being ambitious and last week I decided I was going to do two books and solidify my writing routine. Those were my goals and then by Thursday, I was feeling low and decided, okay, just the routine. That’s all I want to do, if I get the routine the writing will take care of itself because I’ll be writing, and so the books will happen. That’s not a guarantee. I might write something else. I might spend the whole year writing short stories. I decided to split the difference and go for the one book, and make a writing routine a little bit better. Maybe something like that for goals, a gradual increase. Yeah pretty much. I’m looking down at the stack of notebooks I’ve been using to make my goals. I don’t know. On one hand I feel very new year’s resolution Pollyanna, because all of this is happening at the beginning of the year. But honestly, I’m taking two, well not courses but I’m in a free Patreon group to talk about goal setting and then I’m in the group I’m paying for. So, I’m getting a lot of this goal stuff, which is why I’m passing it on to you. I’m trying not to steal from the actual course I’m paying for. I don’t want to steal from the course leader, but I will talk about how things are going, and how the goals are coming. I have other goals. I have exercise goals. I have a backyard decorating goal. Health goals. And streaming goals. So all of that.
Mur 18:24
Now I feel like I need to give that 10 Times book a better chance but really all I can remember about it is that guy yelling at me. Sometimes that works on people. Sometimes it doesn’t. So my novella I finished on Tuesday, the editor turned it around in 36 hours. Like I turned it in early Tuesday morning and yesterday afternoon, I got the comments. So remember when I said that you need distance from what you write before you start editing it? I’m not sure I’ll have that luxury. So I tried to give myself last night not to worry about the edits. And then today I emailed the editor. Said we can talk next week. So this weekend, I’m going to be planning out the edits. Which y’all know I love to do. If you are new, or if you’re listening, I’m shaking my head. No. I do not love edits. I love writing. I love being a discovery writer. I love taking the story where my mind tells me to go in that instant, which can deviate from the outline. And, editors don’t terribly like that. Hey Wordathon. Good to see you. How long is typically expected to process or respond to an editor’s comments? That depends. It all depends on- yes, words are hard. Thank you, KayKimmy. Yeah, it depends on what the editor’s asking of you. I learned this year or last year, whether there’s a pandemic. So they could be asking for copy edits which could take a couple of days. Or they could be asking for major story rewrites, which would include adding 20-30,000 words to the book which could take two months. Because I know myself, and I know when I get the edit information, I will always bristle, and I will always be annoyed. And then, I’ll give myself time to have that feeling and then I’ll come back to it and approach it like a professional. So, I have not looked deeply into the edits. Just, in general what he was unhappy with. But I’m thinking he’s gonna want a lot of rewrites.
Mur 21:32
Now granted this is a novella, so there’s only so many rewrites I can do, before I take it over 20,000 words. But we’ll see. We’ll see how it goes. I just got to remember that my mantra is show up. And if I can just show up to get the edits done, the edits will get done. I need to make a button in my stream deck to say show up. That’s my mantra for the year, if you weren’t here on Tuesday. Oh you’re welcome Wordathon, I love the questions. You know, if you’ve got a short story, you should be able to turn that around in a couple of hours because if the editor wants to suggest huge rewrites, then they’re not going to accept the story anyway. We’ve had stories at Escape Pod where we love the concept, and we love the writing voice, but there’s something so fundamentally broken that we don’t think we could edit to make it better. So that’s editing, and I hate it. I hate it so much. I think it’s why I don’t like watching my streams either. I don’t like listening to my podcasts. I don’t like looking at myself or watching or listening or rereading. Sometimes I’ll reread old things once I get really distant from them. But editing makes me take this thing that I just made, and start poking at it again. And I’ve said, unless I’m offered Dan Brown money, I will never edit my Afterlife series, the series of novellas that Phasedout mentioned early. Oh, I didn’t see Phasedout leave. I’m sorry Phasedout. Hope you have a good dinner. Hope things turn up for you. Get better. But as Phasedout said, the novellas that I podcasted, readers loved them and agents were very interested in representing them and no editor wanted them. And I rewrote that thing three times. I turned Heaven and Hell into one novel. Rewrote it three times and then I’m finally just like, I’m done. And then my next agent asked me, and I’m like, fine. I told her, I don’t want to do this, I don’t think it’s going to be any good because I’m so sick of this story. And then when she got my edit she’s like, Oh, you really don’t want to do this do you. Yeah, I tried to tell you. I don’t want to touch this ever again. I’m done. I want to move on.
Mur 24:38
And it’s weird because I’m learning as a writer that people, especially when they just discover you based on one thing you wrote a long time ago, they want to know when and if you’re ever going back to that world. And the idea is just no to me. I can’t. No way. It’s hard to do that. I had in my mind some plots that I wanted to do for some old stuff that never got sequels. Hey Sario, good to see you. For old stuff that never got sequels, but now I feel like my writing has evolved, and I frankly don’t want to go back and read the stuff that was existing to work on a sequel. Which is kind of sad because for Playing For Keeps I had a really big Empire Strikes Back type ending. One of the biggest complaints of the first novel was that I made the main character too powerful. And I just wanted to say, if you gave me another book that it was going to address that. Yes, she’s too powerful and she was going to have a nervous breakdown and a lot of bad stuff was going to happen. But I never got a chance to write it. And now I don’t know if I want to. I’m pretty sure I don’t want to. I have other things. Matt keeps telling me to write a space deli story. I don’t even know. He really got it in his head to do the space deli. Hello Truckpoetry, good to see you. I’m glad you’re here. Interesting. My software is saying I have zero viewers and yet people are talking to me so that’s very strange. Oh well, I guess that means I can’t get obsessed with viewer numbers until this is over. So how are people doing with writing this year? Looks like at least 15 in Twitch. Thank you Truckpoetry. I hate to sound like an old woman here but post it notes used to be a lot stickier. At least I remember them. I tried to label my journals, and they’re all- Oh, they don’t like, the chroma key does not like yellow. Wow, okay. I’m sorry, did not expect that. Anyway, yes, all my post-its are peeling away. Sounds like a memoir title. A not very good memoir title.
Mur 27:57
I’m nobody. Who are you? Are you nobody too? Thank you for the Shel Silverstein throwback. That’s nice. That is Shel Silverstein right? I memorized a lot of his poems when I was a kid. I got to perform The Land of Happy on stage. I can still do it. Emily Dickinson? Really? Wow. Alright there’s a Shel Silverstein that’s kind of similar. I guess it’s not, I guess Shel Silverstein is not Emily Dickinson. Hey Indigoquill. Writing 500 words a day. That’s fantastic. That’s great. Are you working on one specific project or are you just trying to get the words down? You don’t have to tell us what the project is but are you working on a novella or short story? And Underpope just finished a novella. Five rejections under my belt so far this year. That counts for a yay. See if that works in this overlay. It does! Hooray! And hooray for Indigoquill doing at least 500 words a day. Well done, folks. And I got to use my yay button so that makes me happy. I realized when I was editing that that applause was really loud last time. I hope it was better this time because I can’t hear it. I think I pulled the, I softened that a lot on the mixer so hopefully the applause was not too overbearing at that time. Okay, good. Thank you, KayKimmy. Yeah, you just got to make the, it’s all persistence. Words are hard. It’s all about persistence. Atomic Habits tells the story of the 10 year old who asked for a job at Walt Disney World the year it opened. And long story short, he started doing performing and he started doing comedy bits, and he would do comedy bits and clubs with very few people and apparently one time he did it where nobody was. He did his whole stage thing and nobody was in the room. It’s kind of like streaming with no viewers, I guess. Except it’s worse because people are actually there with you or not there with you, as the case may be. Turns out it was Steve Martin. And that was the whole perseverance thing. Because there are lots of people who if they’d done a show and nobody, nobody showed up, they would quit. I mean some people want to quit when they have a signing and nobody shows up. And that sucks.
Mur 31:11
Truckpoetry got about 1500 words last Friday and some word wars writing an essay. Not had a ton of creative fiction ideas of late so may need to do a brainstorming session at some point. Well good luck with that. There are tons of prompts around the web or you can do some fanfiction. I appreciate and endorse fanfiction because it’s a mostly safe place to work on your writing skills. And you don’t have to worry about every single aspect of the story, if you’re doing an original one. If you’re not good with setting, then you’ve got the Millennium Falcon or Tatooine. That setting is already done. So place your story on there. If you’re not good with characters well then take-Star Wars is the only thing coming to mind. I don’t know why. Princess Leia and Chewbacca, and you know who they are so tell a story about them. Alternatively you could tell like the story of Harry Potter, but put different characters in different roles. I mean, there’s so many things that fanfic does that’s like training wheels, sort of. And no I’m not saying fanfic is only good for training wheels. I’m pretty sure that eventually someone’s going to hear this and gonna get pissed off but I very much respect people who do fanfic. As long as they abide by the two rules which are, don’t sell it and don’t send it to the author that created the original IP. Hey Frigsdaughter. Good to see you. Fanfic is good period. Yeah, although the reason why I said, mostly safe is I was hearing, I think it was Cipheroftear was podcasting last night, and was talking about, or yesterday afternoon. Anyway yesterday at some point, and was talking about she wrote some Dragon Age fanfic. And someone got bad and wrote her and asked her to change it based on his head cannon of what the character is, which is just so bizarre. The sense of entitlement people get when they read stuff, it’s alarming. I mean that is huge entitlement because, you know, so the characters didn’t do what you wanted them to do. Well, write a fanfic story and make them do those things. Don’t write the author and yell at them. It’s almost like the insurrection two weeks ago. What, literally, what were you planning on achieving there?
Mur 34:32
I am getting a phone call and I’m gonna have to take it so I’m very sorry I’m gonna need to do a BRB screen, but I’ll be back. And I am back. Very sorry about that. I hadn’t talked to my mom in a while and my daughter’s leaving for college shortly so I figured I’d better take it. I was talking about how much I hated editing, but I know people who love it. They really, really love it. The act of writing is awful, but the act of, well, you can say the art of editing and polishing it and making it something into something coherent is wonderful. They love that. Unfortunately, I don’t see it. If any of you are also listeners to the podcast via RSS or my website or Patreon, actually, I got off my schedule big time because of beyond the first two of the year is I streamed them and I stream them on the right schedule but I did not post them in the feed because that was extra work that I didn’t have time to do because I was writing. So, yesterday I got three episodes and two I Should Be Writings, I’ll come in again. Three episodes of I Should Be Writing and two episodes of Ditch Diggers ready to go into the feeds. Patreon should have started getting them yesterday and the regular RSS feed will start getting them today. So I am going to be catching up, because this one should be going out tomorrow to Patreon, today to Patreon tomorrow, I don’t know. It’s for some reason I’m having trouble juggling the you push B farther apart because you’re focusing entirely on A. So you push B into the days where you’re supposed to do something else. So, I’m getting better at prioritizing overall but still, I’m like, so do I put out this episode, when I’m supposed to put it out and double up with one of the previous episodes and then people will get technically a previous episode after that? Yeah, I think I just talked myself into posting it on Tuesday. Okay, That’s good. Redo Evil Mur advice. I have not done that yet. But thank you for reminding me.
Mur 37:12
But I did buy a bunch of fake mustaches on Amazon today. So, by next Tuesday, maybe Monday, we’ll see how early the mail gets here, by next Tuesday I should have Evil Mur programmed, and the mustaches for me to tell you the Evil Mur advice. So, what is my favorite part of the writing process? That would be writing. Daydreaming and brainstorming is easier, because it really requires very little effort. But when I’m writing and I get an idea about where the story is going to go while I’m writing, that’s the best feeling. It’s such a good feeling because it makes me feel confident about the fact that I might be good at this thing that I’m trying to do. Granted, a lot of times I will have that, you know, what I mentioned last time the 35,000 word mark of, oh God, this sucks. But there are still places in it where I’m like, “Yeah, I was pretty clever there.” Sometimes I will put down little clues, and I won’t know what they’re referring to. And later on in the story I almost always figure out where my subconscious was going. For example, I decided, in my most recent book, I decided to reference a character’s therapist and never the therapy sessions, but just what she thought of her therapist. And I didn’t have any plans for the therapist and then, about halfway through, I’m like, “That’s where he goes. Okay.” And those kinds of things are exciting to me because I will be laying little plot seeds, and it’s so easy to do, and if they don’t work, it’s so easy to take out. For example, people are talking and someone says, “Yeah I don’t talk to my father anymore,” Just like in conversation, and then they go on and talk about something else. And then, if there comes a point in the story, your hindbrain will be thinking, “That father, why don’t they talk to their father.? What’s going on in the story that could be connected to not talking to the father anymore?” And you’re not consciously thinking this, you’re just writing. And then later on, something will hopefully hit, and you’ll think, “That’s where the father goes,” And really all you’ve done is you did a throw away of, I don’t get along with my father, I don’t talk to my father anymore. So that’s my favorite part. It almost feels like, it’s so hard for me to say that I have self confidence because I don’t have self confidence in saying I have self confidence. But clearly have self confidence because I am confident enough to build my wings as I’m falling off the cliff. And I’m confident enough to jump off the cliff and still be building my wings and figure I’ll probably catch a draft before I crash on the rocks. That was a very violent metaphor for writing a story and not having an outline but I stand by it.
Mur 41:23
Looking forward to the Evil Mur advice. Thank you Underpope. I’m sorry again, if you’re new-ish to the stream the channel points will unlock various things like hydrate. But they will also unlock, you can get Evil Mur advice and I’ll give you terrible writing advice. Just awful. But unfortunately I haven’t migrated, those pieces of text from one computer to another. So it’s not here and it’s not programmed into my stream deck to be at my fingers, at the tip of my fingers kind of thing. Have I considered getting someone to help with the editing and posting in the podcast? I have. It might work better now than it did because before when I was doing the just any time podcasts, I felt additional stress, instead of a relief of stress because I knew that I had to get the file into my producer when it would be a good time for him to set aside time to work, to do my work. Like me, I could just podcast, whatever I wanted and produce when I had the time, but he had to take my work and plug it into his day. And for some reason, that stressed me out. So I took back the production, through no fault of his own. But now that I’m doing it on a regular basis, a scheduled regular basis, that might be worth looking into again. Thinking about it. What I’d really like is someone to go through and clean it up for YouTube. But that’s so much work. I like the idea of doing it myself but I don’t know if I have that kind of time or capacity because the podcasts are running about an hour now. Twice a week. So, that’s a good bit of content to sift through. I don’t know why my watch just told me to take my medicine when I take it in the mornings and the evenings. Technology, man.
Mur 44:17
You guys really want me to drain this water, don’t you? I will remind people that, if you want to ask me a question and you can’t think of one right now, a good way to ask would be to do it in the Discord if you’re a Patreon supporter. You can learn more about that at patreon.com/mightymur or you can send me one on Twitter @mightymur, or just email me, mightlymur@gmail.com. I like answering questions because sometimes I can’t think of an hour’s worth of content. And it also lets me talk to you guys, directly. So that’s fun. But yes, always open for more questions. What was I gonna do? I had a plan. Crap. I don’t know. I think I should probably close it now because my sleepy brain is starting to shut off. I sent a question via email a few weeks ago. Did you answer it? I missed a couple episodes. Possibly, if you have access to it, can you forward it to me right now and I’ll take a look? I apologize if I did miss it. Oh, I have missed one. I apologize. Dinah writes, you asked about writing groups in your podcast. I’m a member of APEX writers. David Farland runs it. I love it. It isn’t free, but it’s worth every penny. It would be great if I was interviewed, to talk about going from wanna be to published. So I don’t know if you’re saying you want someone to interview me or me just to talk about it. I’m not sure what you mean. So, yeah, if you really like this podcast you can go back into the archives. Also, in the $1 Patreon level, you can go back to the archives and get the I Should Be Writings around that time. I started selling short stories I think in 2006. And then my first novel, I sold at the end of 2011. It came out in ‘13. I’m not seeing it all Underpope, which is bizarre since I archive everything. I may have to look into this, I’ll look into this, and if you do have a chance to re-send it to me do that. And I apologize. That’s not great for me to have done so. Yeah, weird. Okay. Oh there it is. I’m reading it. I finished the first draft of my novel and got great feedback from my crit group. Now I’m really excited about revising it because I think it’s a solid concept and I got some solid feedback. However, it has major flaws that probably mean a complete rewrite is in order. And I wonder if I should re-outline. I’m a fan of the Save The Cat method, or just dive in and start rewriting. It seems that whenever I start outlining I feel like I should write whereas if I start writing I feel like I should outline. Or should I put this novel aside and work on another one for now?
Mur 47:54
I think you should revise it. Now that you’ve finished it, I would not say this to people who had not finished something, but because you have finished it you can go from outline to writing and back again. I mean, one time I got stuck in the middle of a story, and I had an outline at all. So I started outlining it from the beginning and what I’d already written. And that helped me keep going after the part where I got stuck. So I was actually outlining something new while I was writing. And if you get in there and you’re writing and you think maybe I should look at this in an outline, why not switch over? If you’re nervous about, it’s possible that could break up your concentration. If you’re nervous about it then, I’d probably say outlining first and maybe I’m just projecting because that’s what I’m planning to do. I’m planning on taking my novella and outlining it, and then putting it beside my original pitch and seeing where things need to change. But the outline will take you less time for sure. So, either at the same time or I’d say outlining first. But again, whatever works for you. So, give one a try. You can even just flip a coin. Give one a try and then give that, oh no you already said that sorry. You said you tried when you try writing you want to. Okay, I think maybe you’re gonna have to stop switching if it’s not working for you. So, hope that helped. If you have any further questions, go ahead and send me a follow up. Be happy to talk about it. I don’t know why I don’t have your email anymore. That’s distressing to me, so thank you for resending it because I remember I got it. And maybe I filed it in the wrong place? I don’t know. If I filed it somewhere, then search should find it. I don’t know.
Mur 50:18
So I am going to sign off. Because we are almost at that hour mark. Have some thoughts and questions but not really well formulated. What’s the best place to drop for you, email or Discord? Probably email despite what just happened to Underpope’s email. That hasn’t happened before I don’t think. Sometimes if it goes into Discord, people will start talking about it, which might help you immediately. You can also do both, because other people will be able to see it in the Discord and they may offer help before I stream again. But if you want to make sure I don’t miss it, then email is the best way. So what’s really funny is I wrote down my end of stream stuff, and it’s somewhere in these books. So, I’m trying to do another self help book I like is The Checklist Manifesto, where they talk about breaking things down to little bitty steps and making a list of them and going over the list even if you think you know how to do it, is the best way to actually properly get stuff done. And he starts every chapter with a horrific story about people who either failed because they didn’t do didn’t follow the checklist or succeeded through amazing odds, because they did the checklist. So I’m trying to come up with a couple of checklists here, before and after. So I am glad you guys showed up today, and thank you all for dropping by. I have credits I’m very excited about doing. Well that’s not how that’s supposed to go. Will it run again? Nope. Oh there it is. Okay. So shout outs to Jeremy Neander, Eric Morningstar and Todd French. Thank you for your support on Patreon. If you would like us to be a Patreon supporter, that’s patreon.com/mightymur. And as you can see on the ending screen, next stream is Monday, Ask me anything at 12:30pm, Eastern Time. Thank you all very much. It’s always a pleasure. And remember, you should be writing.
You can support I Should Be Writing at Patreon, Jemi, or Ko-fi.
I Should Be Writing’s theme music provided by John Anealio.
Art by Numbersninja and transcription by FyreRider.
January 21, 2021 | Season 17 Ep 6 | murverse.com
ISBW S17 Ep6: Productivity by Mur Lafferty is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
