5 Acceptable Online Time Sucks for Writers
Time sucks. They’re everywhere online. Nobody is immune to them. Anybody with access to the internet will at some point lose productivity by falling into a whirlpool of memes, videos, celebrity gossip, Candy Crush games, or all of the above. It’s the nature of our species these days.
It starts out with you double-checking where in Africa a country is located. You want to be accurate. An hour later your browser is a garden of tabs relating to the mummification process of ancient Egypt, and how extra terrestrials may be involved. Meanwhile, your project has fallen by the wayside.
Time suck.
So if you’re a writer, and diving headlong down the slippery chute of internet distraction is at times inevitable, may I present five types of time sucks that, though still a distraction from your W.I.P. could at least prove useful in an indirect fashion over time.
1) Customer Book Reviews
I tend to read these by the dozen when I have finished reading a book, especially a book I didn’t like. Some of the most entertaining things I read on the internet are the thoughts of people who hated the same book I hated. They’ve been there. They know why it sucked. I am not alone.
Potential Usefulness: Honing your sense of what the average reader is looking for. Helping you better define what it was about the story you’ve read that just wasn’t working for you, hence helping you avoid similar things in your writing.
2) Blogs and Articles on Writing
Not always a time suck, but it certainly can be. Reading about writing, and actually doing it are worlds apart. Yet it almost feels important, doesn’t it?
Potential Usefulness: Obvious. Getting pulled into a writing discussion on a message board, or devouring an author’s blog at least keeps your mind on the subject of writing, even while you are not putting it into practice.
3) “Legitimate” News Items
Yes, I went there. I don’t consider Kardashian adventures and other such topics legitimate news. Sue me. What I do consider legitimate news is still wide-ranging though. You can guess what I mean: government, economics, diplomacy, science, arts, even local town events so long as they effect the well being of people, or the advancement of humans in some way.
News articles almost always have links to other news articles, that link to others, and so on, thus the time suck nature of news-reading.
Potential Usefulness: Other than remaining an informed, knowledgeable citizen? News is people, and people are stories. What is much of the news, after all, but people accomplishing or failing to accomplish things? Seeds of future works can be planted by way of the news.
4) History Articles
These can be some of the most powerful time sucks online. Much like news items, articles about history from legitimate academic sources often link to other such articles and so on. Even if they don’t, they have a tendency to send you off in a million directions. You read an article about King Whoever II who is believed to have been murdered by his brother. You look up his brother. Then their father. Then other sad stories of kings who were killed by brothers, and you end up on a page talking about the Christmas song “Good King Wenceslas.” You whistle that tune in the middle of July, as you look up the origins of all your favorite Christmas songs.
Potential Usefulness: Like news, history is very much about people. Again, people are stories. The word even has “story” in it! Knowing history means knowing good stories, many of which are not well known, depending on how deep you dig- a virtually inexhaustible material and inspiration for future use in your work.
5.) Movie Trailers
I have talked about these before. One of my most frequent time sucks. I go on Yahoo, Apple, Hulu, anywhere I can find movie trailers, and I have been known to spend an hour or more doing so. I enjoy trailers for movies I have no intention of seeing. I consider them if not an art than at least a spectacle unto themselves. One could argue that because I do not choose to see the majority of movies for which I have viewed a trailer, that the trailers have technically failed. Yet they are fun to me, as that previous post explains.
Potential Usefulness: Again, as I say in that previous post, they combine emotions and the barebones of story telling in a way that can inspire one’s own story telling. Really, read that post, I explain it all there.
So anything can become a time suck, depending on your personal interests and your level of discipline. Even when you know you should be writing, there you are, not doing it. Hopefully you can “waste” your time on some of these five when you should be working, so as to at least, albeit in a round-about way manage to stick with story telling.
Go Set a Watchman: I’ll Pass.
I haven’t read Harper Lee’s new/old novel, Go Set a Watchman. I will not be reading it.
I don’t think you have to have read it, however, to be troubled by not only the reported content of the novel, but the alleged nature of its discovery and ultimate publication. Just about everything regarding this manuscript that actually predates Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird bothers me.
To begin with, much of the media, as they so often do, is sensationalizing aspects of this release story, and in the process, many facts have been lost in the shuffle for what publishers are calling the biggest preorder and midnight purchase extravaganza since the final Harry Potter book.
Actually, I’m not sure facts are being lost so much as ignored or pasted over with the more interesting headline. Otherwise respectable news sources repeatedly refer to Watchman as “the sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird.” It isn’t, and one need only observe the facts about the manuscript, available even before the publication, to understand this.
Yes, Watchman is set about twenty years after Mockingbird. This alone, however, does not make it a sequel, and the book’s own cover does not in fact identify it as such. Harper Lee has called it a “parent” to Mockingbird, whatever that might mean.
So it is not a sequel. A second volume, perhaps, under normal circumstances, though these are far from normal circumstances. Yet it’s far sexier to say that one of the most beloved stand-alone novels in American history now has a sequel. Even sexier still when the author has for decades been a fame-shunning recluse who repeatedly stated she had no further plans to publish anything ever again. We’ll get to more of that in a minute. Back to the concept of sequels.
A sequel, according to Mirriam-Webster as well as to general understanding, “continues a story began in another book, movie, etc.” Much has been made over the fact that Watchman was actually written first. This is in fact quite important, but not in regards to its supposed status as a sequel. The completion date alone does not disqualify it from being a sequel. Authors write things out of narrative sequence all the time. Content determines a story’s status as a sequel. As per the free first chapter released last week, and the information about the plot made public in advanced reviews of Watchman, we know that many events in Mockingbird are only mentioned in passing in Watchman, or are not mentioned at all. Those stories could hardly be said to have “continued” in this so-called sequel.
Worse than that however, crucial aspects of Mockingbird have been erased. Or to be more correct, aspects of Watchman were drastically altered in Mockingbird, namely the Robinson rape trial, wherein Atticus Finch is the counselor for the accused, a black man. In the much beloved Mockingbird of course, the innocent Robinson is found guilty by the white jury; this is a key sequence in the novel.
In Watchman, it appears only the briefest of references is made to this pivotal rape trial, as characters look back on it. Only, surprise, the black man in that rape trial is acquitted. I somehow doubt we are intended to believe Atticus Finch defended not one, but two black defendants wrongfully accused of rape in the same time period, going on to lose one trial and win the other.
While it is true that the Robinson trial is not the exclusive focal point of Mockingbird, one could hardly argue that such a discrepancy between Watchman’s recollection of the event, and one of the most iconic moments in one of our most iconic novels has no bearing whatsoever on how one should approach Watchman. In short, change the Robinson trial, and you have changed the very reality of 1930’s Maycomb, Alabama.
Watchman, therefore, not only takes place 20 years after Mockingbird, but it also takes place in an alternate Maycomb, with a significantly different town history. “Scout” and “Atticus” may be there, but they have arrived in Watchman by way of a very different history than “Scout and Atticus” from Mockingbird would have experienced. (I promise, this is not a Back to the Future review.)
It’s no secret that Watchman was a draft that Lee’s editor requested she revise drastically. (So we are told, anyway.) She did, and we got Mockingbird. This bears constant repeating, as I don’t think the general public latches on enough to this important fact; Watchman is an earlier, different draft of Mockingbird.
I don’t expect the whole world to understand every nuance of a writer’s process. In fact, every writer has a different process. But as a writer myself, I can promise you that every writer, sometimes just in their head but usually on paper or on screen, has a draft or two or nine of their work. Some change their drafts little, and some change them a great deal, but they get changed. Even when an author believes a work to be complete, an editor in the traditional publishing model often requests changes to improve the book and/or to make it more marketable. The fact that Harper Lee originally completed and presented Watchman to a publisher decades ago is in no way proof that it was meant for public consumption today or that anything we find within can be accepted as Mockingbird canon. In fact, as I have already said, it cannot.
When viewed in this light, and not as the “long awaited sequel to one of the greatest novels in American history,” much of what has been made of Watchman’s contents dwindles in significance.
For example, Atticus Finch being a racist in Watchman. So much weeping and gnashing of teeth about that. The great hero of so many who fought for justice and equality and due process for a black man in the South, reduced to someone who attended KKK meetings, and supports segregation. The horror! The heartbreak!
Yet as I said, that is all a literary red herring, given that one should not interpret Watchman as a true “sequel” to Mockingbird. It was a novel that a publisher did not think would work, except for the flashbacks. So Lee wrote an entire flashback novel instead, not as some odd prequel to the already rejected Watchman. Stuff changes during rewrites, folks. It sure did for my novel. Things obviously changed quite a bit between Watchman and Mockingbird.
If a racist Atticus and other such discrepancies are red herrings, so are the ever so helpful and condescending explanations from apologists for said discrepancies that have inundated the conversation.
“People have dark sides. People change. This is how a white middle class lawyer in the South would have really been. Don’t confuse Atticus Finch with Gregory Peck, now. Liberals hijacked Finch for their own purposes long ago.”
Yes, people have dark sides. Yes, people change. Timelines however, do not, outside of science-fiction. This isn’t Doctor Who, though. Atticus either got Robinson acquitted, or he didn’t. In Mockingbird he did not. In Watchman, it seems that he did. Both cannot be true at the same time, ergo the tone, characters and plot of Watchman should not be evaluated in the light of Mockingbird.
In any event, flawed though he may have been, Atticus Finch in Mockingbird became iconic to so many people over the decades because he doesn’t behave in a typical way for a white Southerner in the 1930’s. Such a “typical” man would have probably beaten the shit out of Boo Radley and told him to get a job, but the Mockingbird Atticus doesn’t do that. Neither, as far as I know, does the Atticus in Watchman. Yet we are to believe that the Atticus we all know and love changes in such a drastic, repugnant manner because of Brown vs. Board of Education?
And no, I am not confusing Atticus Finch with Gregory Peck. The concepts of movie adaptations and actor portrayals are not at all difficult for me to grasp, thank you. And yes, of course, in the movie there is more time spent on the trial, pound for pound, than there is in the book. That doesn’t mean, however, that the Atticus Finch we think of today is solely the result of Gregory Peck’s performance. He made the role his own, yes, but he didn’t exactly invent Atticus out of whole cloth, either.
As for liberals hijacking Finch, all I can say is, some of the same people that say this blame gay marriage for earthquakes and hurricanes. Hardly worth discussing.
Maybe instead of liberal leanings, many people embraced the character regardless of their backgrounds, because he was well written, and stood for something of moral importance to many people. Maybe that’s why so many readers lament the “fall” of Finch, when in fact, as I have demonstrated, it isn’t even the same Finch to start out with, forget the 20 years later.
The idea of changing the established arc of an existing set of characters is known as retconning. It’s done most often in comic books, and in science fiction in various media, though not exclusively. Perhaps one of the most famous examples of retconning comes to us from fantasy author J.R.R.Tolkien in The Fellowship of the Ring.
The events described in The Hobbit we learn eventually, are not accurate, but rather the result of the One True Ring corrupting the memory of Bilbo Baggins. Those books deal with magic and fantasy, and they can get away with it. But unless we determine that in Mockingbird Scout somehow falsely remembered the trial from her childhood, or just plain lied about it in Mockingbird, this sort of retconning doesn’t excuse these discrepancies.
Could it come to light that it was Lee’s intention all along that Mockingbird be seen a child’s hagiographic whitewashing of her memories of her actually racist father, Atticus? I guess that could happen, but if it did, quite frankly, that tanks just about everything we know about Lee as an author, I would guess. Such a Bobby Ewing maneuver would almost certainly ruin Mockingbird forever. But let’s not delve into the deep end of the absurdity pool just yet.
So at best, Watchman, which supposedly Lee did not allow to be altered this summer before publication, (save a “very light copy edit”) is a stand alone work, which according to some reputable sources is a bit of a mess.
All of this hype and mis-categorization, as well as my personal understandings of the nature of drafts would be enough to keep me from reading Watchman. It should not have been published, even if that were all there was to it.
Yet I have more, probably better reasons than this, the welfare and intentions of Harper Lee herself. I am not convinced she intended this to be published, or that she remains fully aware of what has happened with this manuscript.
Let’s say for a moment, though, that she is now, and has been 100% aware of everything happening with the Watchman manuscript, and has approved of all of it. What we have, at best, is a much loved, though reclusive and sometimes prickly author deciding to push a seemingly undeveloped novel, (as per many reports) on the public, and doing so at the risk of confusing or even ruining the unique reputation and esteem of her historic work. Assuming again that Harper Lee is 100% lucid, 100% of the time, the woman is not beyond reproach for her decisions. All of the sudden deciding that yes, she would change her long standing position against publishing anything else, but no, she would not allow anybody to make changes to it is both a money grab and a power trip at this point in time.
She absolutely has the right to do it. It’s her material, and nobody is going to say no to Harper Lee this time. Yet if she has no problem throwing a monkey wrench into the well oiled machine that is the Mockingbird mystique while still refusing to grant any direct interviews or statements to clear up her intentions, that is more disappointing in some ways than a racist version of Atticus Finch. I’d want no part of Watchman out of protest for her taking such an attitude.
Yet the laziness, presumption, and overall about-face required to present Watchman to the world now without having read it in over half a century doesn’t gel with the Lee persona. Intensely private, yes. Reclusive, of course. Even crabby when not left alone. (She has given no interviews since 1964.) But arrogant? Manipulative? Greedy? Litigious? If these traits represent the true Harper Lee, she has done a fantastic job fooling the whole world all these years.
Yet, Occam’s Razor comes to mind. The simplest explanation for all of this to me is that Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird, recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom and national treasure had no independent desire to publish one of her long locked-away drafts. To be more blunt about it I, like many, suspect that the woman is no longer consistently in her proper mind, and has been hoodwinked.
I’ve considered how Lee’s actions and behaviors, at least via legal proceedings have changed since the death of her sister and lawyer, Alice in 2014. I’ve considered previously documented incidents wherein Lee seems to have signed papers unwittingly, or at least without knowing the consequences in the last few years. I’ve considered her abrupt change of attitude in regards to the stage version of Mockingbird. I’ve considered the increasingly small circle of people who are permitted to be in Harper Lee’s presence, as well as the fact that even those allowed to see her are now escorted into and out of Lee’s home by her sister’s successor, the lawyer Tonja Carter.
I consider that all statements from Lee for several years have come only through said lawyer or associates.
Perhaps most of all, however, I have considered the so called elder abuse investigation by the state of Alabama, (launched as the result of a tip from a currently unnamed medical doctor). This investigation was conducted not by medical or psychological personnel, but by members of Alabama’s Securities Commission, who usually deal with financial fraud. Those unqualified people found Lee to be lucid based on conversation with her, and closed the investigation in April.
Really? Financial fraud experts determining the mental health of an elderly (and wealthy) stroke victim? No doubt Carter, Lee’s lawyer, was present at all times.
Not that Carter is known for accuracy. She seems confused, or possibly elusive as to the provenance of the Watchman manuscript. What should we believe? We could ask Carter, but she grants almost no interviews. When she does agree to be interviewed, the subject of Harper Lee is off limits, as though anyone is worried about her thoughts on anything else.
But don’t worry; a bunch of financial fraud guys confirm that the author is 100% lucid, all of the time.
Not to put too fine a point on such a sad possibility, but if Lee is mentally impaired now, she could be very willing and aware that she is publishing Watchman today, and tomorrow not have the slightest idea that it has even been discovered. Had the Watchman manuscript come to light, say, 15 years ago, before her stroke, when her mind was not in question, she may have been totally opposed to publishing Watchman, a position she may have again now, between days when she is “happy as hell” to have it published.
Which means, of course, that an encouraging video of a joyful Harper Lee from earlier this week does not settle the issue.
So, have I proven that Harper Lee is not mentally competent? Of course I have not. I certainly don’t know what is going on inside Harper Lee’s mind, or if that mind is still in tact. I’m not a doctor, after all. (Nor an Alabama Securities Commission investigator for that matter.) Yet this is not a trial, or a hearing. This is me, Ty Unglebower, writer and indie-publisher assessing a situation of profound importance not only to the world of writing, but in regards to how we treat the elderly, and how much we allow money to talk. As such, I can consider a preponderance of the evidence, as they do in a civil trial, and determine that Harper Lee is not in a position to make major decisions on her own, and furthermore never intended the book to be published. I want no parts of paying for it and reading its contents.
My boycott will of course mean nothing. Tens of thousands of copies were sold in the first few hours. Millions will eventually be sold, no doubt. Many if not most will still love it, despite everything I have mentioned in this post. And of course the launch celebrations went on, and will continue to go on in Lee’s hometown and inspiration for Maycomb, Monroeville, Alabama. (A veritable midway of Mockingbird tributes and kitsch.)
A recently reopened restaurant in Monroeville, the Prop and Gavel, has been and no doubt will continue to serve as a focal point of many of those celebrations, as hungry tourists pore in to be part of it all. The restaurant is owned by Tonja Carter…Harper Lee’s lawyer, spokesman and brainchild behind the discovery and publication of Go Set a Watchman. (As well as a potential third Lee novel…)
If I may be so bold, though a lawyer she may be, Atticus Finch (Mockingbird edition) she is not.
Avoid Obsession With Your Writing
During some interview a few years ago, (I don’t recall with whom) country star Dolly Parton mentioned what she thought was a key to a strong marriage. I don’t remember the exact quotation, but the gist of it was “staying away from each other.” She was being sarcastic to an extent, but she wasn’t only joking. She went on to mention how she spent half of her time on the road performing, and so she and her husband had plenty of chances to miss one another, and fewer chances to get on each other’s nerves, and fight about things.
It makes sense. If you are in constant company with another human being, even one you love, chances are you will eventually want to strangle them. You may be obsessed with them and their presence for a while, but if you are never apart you run the risk of resentment. As with most advice, it won’t apply to everyone, but my guess is that most people, especially married people, can relate on some level to Parton’s sentiment.
I think we can apply this approach to writing as well, making sure we put some space between ourselves and what ever our WIP (work in progress) is at any given time.
I don’t just mean after a rough draft is completed, either. Many people put a rough draft of something, especially a novel, in a drawer for a month or two before beginning edits and revisions. Yet I think we authors also need some space from what we are currently writing.
Yes, there are those people who live up in every way to the stereotypical crazed author, who eats, sleeps and breathes their WIP. People on TV morph into their characters, everything someone says to them is potential dialogue for their work, and the very clouds and stars seem to position themselves in such a manner as to project aspects of the author’s work back down upon them from the heavens.
Then there are those of us who are mentally stable.
Okay, that was facetious to some extent, I know. Any author can find themselves for a time wrapped up in their work to such a degree, and it doesn’t mean they’re insane. However, if this is how they always are…
Give yourself a chance to fall in love with your work all over again, or to at least find it freshly baked each morning, like donuts at Duncan used to be in the good old days. (before they started serving sushi, or whatever it is they do now.) I realize how popular the “butt-in-chair” same time every single day method is in regards to productivity, and without a doubt it has its benefits. But if butt-in-chair makes your own work stale to you, and you begin to resent having to deal with it each day as you would a girlfriend that is never more than six feet from you all day and all night, you’re going the wrong way.
If you have an office for your writing, great. Write in there, and when you leave the office, leave it. Scribble down an idea that may come to you outside, but leave it at a scribble until you return to your office. Let you WIP become like an old friend you only see once in a while, so it is more special when you return to it later on. Allow yourself to rediscover your WIP each time you sit down to it.
If you have no office to write in, keep yourself at a distance from your work in other ways; write in a cafe that takes you at least a short drive to get to, so there is some build to the session. Refuse to write in your WIP during the last week of the month. There are a million ways to obtain this same end, which is to enjoy dancing with what you are writing, as opposed to hooking yourself up to receive it as a constant IV drip 24/7, or worse.
Or something else. As with any advice, what I say here must be applied in your own way, if applied at all. This may not be for you, I’m not arrogant enough to think I have all the answers for everyone.Yet beyond a certain point, obsession, with anything, even our own work, leads to darkness of some kind or another, and that is a human psychological fact. So, don’t be obsessed, whatever that means to you.
Write Two Words.
I was writing at the library yesterday afternoon. The session started off slowly, as it often does. I had just finished a paragraph on my piece, and wasn’t sure what the next paragraph would bring. Believe it or not, I knew the first two words of said paragraph, but i wasn’t sure where to take the rest of the opening sentence, and therefore the rest of the paragraph.
I played with ideas in my head for while. I brainstormed. I relaxed and looked around the (unusually quiet) library. All the while I kept a mental note of those first two words I knew I was going to open the next paragraph with. My thought process at this time was something like,
“Okay, I’ll start with those two words, and then what? Those two words followed by a list? Could those two words be a sentence, or at least an understood fragment? All right, sit back and take a breath for a few minutes. You’ve got the two words for now at least.”
Then I realized, I did not have those first two words I’ve been going on and on about. I knew them, but I had yet to type them on the screen of my laptop. They had just been sitting there in some kind of antechamber of my imagination, waiting for me to put them to some kind of use, or to dismiss them. At that point it struck me: I could either sit there and not do any writing at all until I knew what the next paragraph was doing, or I could literally put down the two words I knew I would use, and honestly say I had written something. After all, those two words were going to be on the screen at some point, why not now?
So I did. Just those two words. Nothing magic happened, but once i did type those two words, I was no longer waiting to write, i was actually doing so. That little bit of further progress mattered. It was still a few moments before I knew what came next, but no I had something put down in words that I didn’t have before, and you know what? Those following few minutes of pondering didn’t feel as strained as the pondering and thinking I did before I wrote the two words.
Before I left the library, I had written a few more paragraphs. It was such an enlightening and satisfying moment, I tweeted about it.
As a writer, you won’t always know what’s next, and that’s fine. Yet if you know even a fraction of what comes next for now, write it down. Write one sentence, or write two words, if you know they’re next. The door for the next few words, sentences or paragraphs may open more quickly than it otherwise might have. Even if it doesn’t, two more words on the page or screen is better than zero while you try to determine the entire next page in your head. Two words put down works. It’s progress. It’s writing.
Reading and Writing a Series
As a reader, I avoid starting a series of novels. Multiple adventures with the same set of characters that each exist as a stand alone novel? Fine. I can handle that. Yet I have rarely touched a series of novels that must be in sequence, wherein you’ll not have the “grand” resolution until you read all of them. Harry Potter is a notable exception to this, and I am not as wild about those books as most people are. They are easy (though usually too long) reads, that I got started on because a girlfriend at the time insisted. My reading of the series lasted far longer than the relationship, but I was too stubborn to not eventually read all seven novels.
Like I said, I enjoyed the Potter series. Moderately. Once was enough though.
At least I knew they were a series when I went into them. (Or I should say allowed my arm to be twisted to begin them in the first place.) Many novels, particularly of the fantasy/adventure genre are part of a series. The stand alone fantasy/adventure novel is rare. Not only is a stand alone rare, a mere trilogy is rare, from what I have gathered. Five to ten novels seems to be the average number of series installments, and there are plenty that go beyond that range.
If it came highly recommended from a trusted source who understood my tastes, as well as being very readable and/or engrossing I could perhaps be coaxed into a trilogy again at some point. A series larger than that would have to be one of the greatest things I’d ever read in order for me to finish as well as begin.
Yet for the most part when I finish reading a novel, I want to feel satisfied, and I don’t if I know the end of the book means that it only represents a tiny scratch in the narrative surface.
Plus, I get the sense I’d get weary of the same characters for that many books. It happened with the Potter books for me, i in fact. After about book four, I started to think, “Okay, Hermione’s smart and arrogant, Ron’s a goof, Harry continuously finds out he knows nothing about the wizarding world in which he was born, I get it.” Yes, there were some arcs to them, but not seven long novel’s worth of arc, in my opinion. I can’t image how an author keeps characters fresh for ten books plus. (At least George R.R. Martin kills people at a regular enough clip to shake things up, from what I hear. I’ve not read that series either.)
But, would I ever write a series of novels?
Strictly speaking, most people would probably say I should not. After all, we are supposed to read a great deal of what we plan to write, and as I just said, I don’t read a series very often. I have never totally bought into that, though. A bit of research, and some honest reading of a genre is to me enough for an author to “earn” the right to create something in that genre. So my lack of reading a series isn’t a stand alone reason to not write one.
Yet I still don’t see it happening, even though series writing is the true money maker of writing fiction, so they say. Never say never of course, but I think many of the same things that turn me off to reading a series of novels would turn me off from writing one. I wouldn’t like stretching a character’s arc out into infinity. (Or fifteen volumes, which would certainly have the illusion of infinity from my perspective.) I can’t say I’m a genius when it comes to arcs, but I do feel what i can accomplish should be accomplished within the course of a single novel. I have an idea, draw it out, rough draft it, revise it a few times, and, for the moment, I publish it. Even if I didn’t, I would shop it to an agent, maybe, some day. But knowing me, I’d want that process to feel complete for its own sake, as opposed to a stepping stone to something I may have already half written.
I’ve played around with the series idea for short stories, wherein there is an overall narrative linking them together, even as the individual story unfolds within a given story. I haven’t mastered an idea for that yet, but I can see myself continuing the experiment as time goes on, because in a short story, there is always a greater amount left out of the narrative than is so in the novel. “What happens next?” is a question I’m a bit more willing to invest in answering than I would be for a novel, which in general I want to be a journey, not a stop, for the reader.
Boredom is poison to the reading experience. But if you think being a bored reader is bad, try being a bored writer. Writing may not always be effortless, and in fact rarely is for me. It takes some discipline. Yet so does playing football, and that would hardly be a boring thing to do. Yet if I become bored with my own material, I am likely to never offer readers what they deserve, especially when there are many other ideas out there waiting to be explored. A series of novels, I feel, would bore me as a writer way too early in the process. I marvel at the epic scale of some author’s vision for their series of a dozen books, but I just don’t think I can ever embrace something so far reaching as that, either as a reader or author.
So far with writing novels, I like to dance with someone for a number, as opposed to rave until dawn.
It takes all kinds of authors, and as usual, I am not declaring my approach the best one. But the question often comes up as to whether I am working on a series, and this post is a current answer to that FAQ of the author community.
Ty Unglebower 