Category: writing process (Page 1 of 18)

Free-writing for hours?

August 7, 2026 /

Peter Elbow’s strategy by way of the This Might Work podcast: Set a timer for forty-five minutes and free-write the entire time, then spend the next fifteen minutes reading what you just wrote and writing a summary that distills everything into one sentence. This sentence becomes the prompt/starting point for your next forty-five minute free-writing session, etc. Continue the process twice more, then on the third time through, what you’re writing is a kind of clean-up or final draft of the piece. And voila, your piece is done! (Without all the frustration of staring at the blank page and not knowing what to write.)

I’ll admit, I use Elbow’s free-writing strategy in shorter bursts (his recommendation is to start with ten or fifteen minutes), but I’ve never tried this longer, more intense version. I want to try it, and yet…

I think what holds me back is that I don’t trust it. I worry that after three sessions of forty-five minute free-writing, I won’t be any closer to a finished piece than if I’d just gone about struggling to write the piece in my “normal” way. Yes, I might get over the hump of not-starting–free-writing does indeed lower the bar for starting–but what if those forty-five minute sessions don’t result in anything but a mess?

Of course, that’s what the fifteen-minute rereading and summarizing is meant to address; it’s designed to help you refine your ideas so you’re getting a sharper and sharper definition of your thesis each time you start another free-writing session. But still, I’m skeptical. What if I can’t summarizing my free-writing into a tidy sentence? What if I can’t even identify a particular central idea or motif? What if I hit upon one neat idea in all that free-writing, but it’s not enough to build on for another forty-five minutes?

All these doubts are precisely what Elbow’s method is designed to overcome. He’s anticipated all these worries and questions, pointing out that by simply following the method and free-writing, we’ll get to something new, to insights and ideas we could never have gotten to if we’d done it the “traditional” way. The skepticism about his method is precisely why it’s needed. By simply starting–by free-writing without worrying or thinking–we get to places we didn’t know we could go.

But we have to trust the process enough to actually begin it.

I can see how this might work with non-fiction, but I’m honestly flummoxed with how this might work with fiction (strangely, I can totally see this working with poetry). It’s in the realm of fiction that I’m most curious to try Elbow’s method and also the most reluctant. You mean I’m going to write all those words and not end up using them in the final chapter or scene?

And yet… what wondrous stories and scenes might emerge if I did try this method? Where might my fiction go if I could trust in this free-writing process and iterate a scene without judgment until finally striking upon something surprising or new that I never could have come up with in my “normal” method of composition?

If I could spend four hours writing one chapter, but in the end, have a chapter that is original, polished, and somewhat “effortless,” wouldn’t I take it? By the numbers, a 2,000-word chapter should roughly take me two hours, so Elbow’s method is technically less efficient, but in fact, I often can’t write a 2,000-word chapter on command because I’m frozen by Critical Voice and it ends up taking me several days to get over the blocks and fears. What Elbow’s method removes is the fear. I’m going to write for forty-five minutes even if most of what comes out is pretty terrible. But I’ll be writing, and by writing, I’ll be thinking and creating and unlocking things my conscious mind couldn’t get to on its own. It’s a way of circumventing Critical Voice. If, after four hours, I knew I would have a great chapter, without all the self-recriminations of Critical Voice and the usual writer’s blocks that stop me, wouldn’t those extra two hours be worth it? Especially if they are fun? If there’s no worry or self-doubt? If it’s just spilling words onto the page with “gusto”?

Getting over the doubt is probably why this method is so effective. Once the writer overcomes their doubt about the process, lets the process take over, lets the words flow, then things happen. Words build upon words, and before one knows it, an idea takes shape, a story forms, a something appears where once there was nothing.

Can I overcome my doubt and take that first step? Can I set the timer for forty-five minutes and trust?

There’s nothing stopping me, really. What’s forty-five minutes in the grand scheme of things? Surely I can find forty-five minutes in which to free-write, and then, if I can find those minutes, I can find fifteen more to read what I wrote and write one sentence that distills it down to the most interesting idea. Surely, if I can do it once, I can do it a second time, and a third. Maybe not consecutively, but over the course of a day or two? And by the end, I’ll have something interesting, won’t I? Something I didn’t have before.

All I have to do is trust.

And start the timer.

Goal Update: June 2026

June 17, 2026 /

Since October, I’ve further modified my writing goals. Norse City Limits has been put on hold (as mentioned in October), as have all my other fiction writing projects. I’m focusing solely on Shards of Stole Breath (the middle-reader dragon book I’m writing for my children).

This decision came about because I was sick of juggling so many projects and feeling like I never made progress on the “big ones” (aka the novels). My children won’t be young forever, and they won’t necessarily like dragons forever, so I figured finishing Shards was the top priority.

I once considered myself a “promiscuous writer” in the same way I’m a promiscuous reader (i.e.: I read multiple books at a time, flitting from one to the next as the mood suits me). But this kind of flitting in my writing has led to shorter things getting completed while longer things would fall by the wayside. I like writing short stories, but it started to feel as if my short stories were giving me cover to avoid working on the longer, more complex novels.

So in October, I put my goals related to NCL, Ysbaddaden on hold while my Shards of Stolen Breath goal was pushed to the top. However, what’s new here in June is that I’m also putting all my short story-related goals on hold too. Non-fiction, Substack, blogging, etc. are different enough to not compete with Shards, but until I finish Shards, I’m looking to hold off on any other fiction goals at the moment.

Okay, now, on to the goals!

  • Shards of Stolen Breath (middle grade novel): I guess my idea of writing books in “seasons” (stolen from Stephen King) hasn’t quite worked out. Winter has turned into spring has turned now into summer and Shards is still a work-in-progress. I’m about 30k words into the thing, and while I originally thought it would be around 60k, I’m not putting any definitive number on length just yet. If I start thinking it’s a 60k book, I’ll start shaping the story to fit that length instead of letting the story be the length it wants to be. I’m also revising several of these middle chapters because I had a better idea of who some new characters are and what will happen when they try to restore the dragons’ magic.

  • Blog every day: Not even close. Until this week, I haven’t blogged since April. This is partly due to putting more focus on my fiction and Substack, but blogging uses such different writing “muscles” that I could still do it more frequently than I have. My idea of delving into my writing notebooks and “stealing” stuff to put on the blog is probably how I’ll get more blogging done.

  • Send out a Substack newsletter every two weeks: Nope. BUT… I have been more consistent with sending out a Substack each month, especially since I’m doing my Dolmenwood book club. This is where the “fail to succeed” comes into play. I have a goal (perhaps too ambitious) of sending out a Substack every two weeks, and while I’ve failed at said goal, I’m trying to achieve it, which means I’m sending out a Substack every month, give or take. I want to continue striving for every two weeks, but for now, I’m proud of this year’s Substack efforts.

  • Play more role-playing games with my kids, my husband, family, and friends: I am rocking this one! At least when it comes to family and friends. I’ve been playing at game stores consistently for several months, at least three times per month, and on Sundays, I’ve started GMing a Dolmenwood game for my husband, brother, and cousin. The one area where I’m not making progress is playing with my kids. Now that it’s summer, I think I’ll get some games out and cajole them to join me, especially on rainy days. For the kids: Mausritter, Hero Kids, and maybe some Cairn 2e.

  • Create some RPG modules for Norse City Limits and Merlin’s Last Magic Dolmenwood: I’m amending this goal partly due to some ideas I’ve had since starting my Dolmenwood book club on Substack. I realize that with all this reading I’m doing related to the game and its inspirations, that I kinda want to start making content for the game itself. Perhaps a “Goblin Market” module, or something inspired by “Mrs. Mabb”? I haven’t really done much with this goal other than think about it, but if I’m going to dip my toe into making RPG stuff, Dolmenwood feels like the right way to go.

  • Make a “Saturday Morning” zine series and publish an issue every month: Not yet. Have sketched out some ideas for what each issue might be about, but other than that, I’ve not worked on this goal.

  • Make other zines: Not yet, but I did do some brainstorming about possibilities. I want to get my kids involved as well, particularly as illustrators. A family-made zine, if you will. This has me quite excited, but the ideas are all embryonic at this stage and need more fleshing out, thought, experimentation, discussion, etc.

  • Read more books with my kids (Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, Half-Magic, James and the Giant Peach, the Hobbit, the Silver Chair, Horse and His Boy, Magician’s Nephew, Last Battle, more Little House books, How to Train Your Dragon series, Harry Potter): Yes!!! We finished NIMH, Silver Chair, Horse and His Boy, Magician’s Nephew, The Book of Three, The Black Cauldron, and we’re about to begin Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. This has been going very well, and in addition to the above mentioned books, we’re currently reading The Phantom Tollbooth, Skunk and Badger, and The Castle of Llyr. At some point, I hope to return to The Hobbit as well.

  • Start naalbinding again (finish the hat I started for my son and make another one for my other son): No, and I’m sad about it. I see my little bag on its hook that has the yarn and naalbinding needles, and I always pass it by. I’m worried that I’ve forgotten how to do it. I think I’ll need to start a little beginners loop and get the hang of it again before I jump back into my son’s winter hat. Maybe by this coming winter I’ll be able to finish it…

  • Practice my cartooning/comics drawing (for the zines): A little. We bought a box of blank greeting cards so we could make cards for people instead of buying them, and I’ve done two homemade cards using cutesy little creatures I copied out of this book: How to Draw Cute Woodland Friends. I also created two possible characters to be my zine mascots: a pillbug named Pillburt and a preying mantis named Manty.

  • Start a podcast: Nope. Haven’t really thought or worked on it either. I feel like I’m in such a “finish Shards” mode that starting a big project like this feels impossible. Maybe that’s the wrong attitude. Maybe I need to keep pushing on this so that I build momentum. Small daily actions build to big things. I need to remember that (for this podcast goal but also for my fiction writing and everything else).

  • Write essays, poems, and fiction that will serve as models for my students next school year: No, and I think what I need to do is not write these ahead of time but write them alongside my students. So, for now, I’ll not be working on these, but when school resumes in the fall, I’ll get back to writing more model texts and drafting in the classroom, in front of my students, so they can see how a writer does it. Both the good and the bad, the ease and the struggle.

This list of goals is much less ambitious than in previous iterations (only 12 items this time), but I’m okay with that. I still stand by having big(ish) goals and “failing to succeed,” but I also realize that when it comes to fiction especially, the number of goals was more a procrastination technique than a productivity one.

Jane Yolen, one of my GOATs, just passed away at 87, and I’m reminded of why she’s such an inspiration: She wrote every possible kind of genre and type, from picture books to novels to non-fiction to poetry, and she wrote with incredible gusto. She was beyond prolific.

I always admire the really prolific ones. Yolen, Bradbury, Sanderson.

But I’m not prolific. For whatever reason, I can’t seem to write at the same volume as my heroes. In the obit I read of Yolen yesterday, she was quoted as saying that there are often two types of writers, the mule team drivers and the horse and buggy writers. The mule teamers can handle several projects at once, whereas the buggy writers finish one thing then move on to the next.

I want to be a mule team driver, but I think I might be a horse and buggy person. Yolen wasn’t critical of the horse and buggy writer, she was simply describing these two types. Sanderson, from what I can tell, is more of a horse and buggy guy, finishing one thing at a time and then switching gears to work on something completely different after each project is completed.

I think I need to experiment with this and see if I’m right about my type. If I can finish Shards this year, and if I can keep going without getting blocked or too bogged down, then perhaps I am better suited to the horse and buggy style. After I finish Shards, maybe that’s when I go back to one of my unfinished short stories. Then, when that’s finished, move on to maybe Ysbadadden. Etc., etc.

But if I stall out, if I find myself struggling and not writing at all, then perhaps I need to reconsider that I may be a mule teamer after all. I’ll know more at the next goal update.

Some Ideas to Beat Procrastination

March 29, 2026 /

You may also call it Writer’s Block.

  1. Write ideas, sentences, words, images, etc. on note cards. Small space and limited commitment. Bar is lowered. Easier to begin.
  2. Sit down at your writing desk, get everything ready to go and then offer yourself a real choice: Write or don’t write. No guilt if you choose “don’t write.” It’s a free choice with no shame attached to either option. There will legitimately be times when “don’t write” feels right, and there will also be many times in which “write” feels right. Don’t fight yourself. Writing creatively is fun. Let it be fun and not an obligation.
  3. Identify the negative thoughts that are the real cause of the procrastination. Here are some of mine: “What if I write something crappy?” and, “I’m just wasting my time. No one will want to read this,” and “I’m too old to be successful,” and “I’ll be bored.” Evaluate–really evaluate–these thoughts. Do they make sense? Redefine things like “success” and “failure.” Make success the accumulation of words (like scoring points in a basketball game). Failure, then, becomes zero points/no words. No more fear of writing something bad; good/bad are irrelevant to success. Or take “I’m just wasting my time,” and consider what “wasting time” really means. Isn’t stewing about not writing and sitting around looking at distractions the real waste of time? How would you like the next five minutes to go: adding words to a piece of writing or scrolling on your phone/stress eating/reading blog posts about procrastination? Which is truly “wasteful” and which isn’t?
  4. Test these negative thoughts by beginning to write and see what really happens. Consider it an experiment. Think you’ll be bored? Experiment by writing for five minutes and check to see if you really were bored. If you are, then try the experiment again but write about something else. If you aren’t, well then that is proof your negative self-talk is false. Keep these experiments short. Do them for five minutes. Keep doing them to see what factors impact your feelings and experiences. Change methods and behaviors to achieve greater impact. Make the whole thing into a kind of game or research study on yourself.
  5. Embrace your slowness. Slowness can be playful. It can be dreamy. Sometimes you need a dreamy, slow writing session that meanders. It still counts. In fact, stop counting. The writing still happens even if we don’t measure it. Which means it doesn’t help to treat writing like a job. It’s supposed to be fun (even if it is your job). Let your body, your mood, your mind, your whole self have fun and play. Even if you only have ten minutes to write, embrace slowness. Maybe you only get ten words in those ten minutes, but those are ten wonderful words that didn’t exist before. Savor them, enjoy the experience of writing them. You won’t always be this slow, so there’s no use beating yourself up about it.
  6. Don’t ever beat yourself up AFTER you’ve written (or before or during or…). That kind of negativity will linger. It’ll infect your next attempts. Here are the ways I beat myself up after a session: “That was crap,” or “Only one hundred words. Pathetic,” or “You’ll never finish, so why bother?” This is that negative self-talk again. Turn it around, stop it before it starts. Remember, success isn’t good/bad but words. Words written means success. Even if it’s only a few. By any measure of logic, even if someone only wrote one word per day, they’d still finish at some point. The only failure is to give up. So, “You’ll never finish,” is nonsense. Utter nonsense. If you’re writing–even one word–you will eventually finish. “Crap” is irrelevant. The measure of success is words. Instead of beating yourself up, celebrate. Even if you only wrote one word. Even if you sat at your desk and decided you didn’t want to write that day. Celebrate. Feel good about how honest you are with yourself and how you don’t want to make your writing into drudgery. You love to write too much to make it something that sucks the joy from your life. Celebrate every word you write. Not with a big party or anything, but internally. Allow yourself to be happy for who you are and what you’re doing. Even those ten words are an accomplishment.
  7. If you journal, use it for material. Maybe not word for word (especially if you write fiction), but use it for ideas. I’m often stopped/blocked because I think I don’t have any ideas. But I’ve been writing three pages in my notebook every day for years. That’s hundreds of pages of ideas, ready for the taking. Instead of putting pressure on yourself to invent the next scene on the spot, dip into the journal and read for a bit. Find a word or phrase that sticks, that excites, that surprises, that is usable for something and put it into your story/poem/essay/whatever. You don’t have to start from scratch.
  8. Make a list (and keep adding to it as needed) of all the things that excite you about your current project. Start your writing session by rereading and adding to this list before you do anything else. Let the items on this list remind you of why you’re doing this in the first place. Anyone can read or add an item to a list. If this is all you do in your writing session, celebrate. You’re getting closer to discovering all the things that inspire you. That will keep the fuel going throughout the process.
  9. Switch up the tools. If you’ve been writing on a computer, switch to writing by hand in a notebook or legal pad. Switch to those note cards mentioned in Item #1. If you’ve been writing longhand, go to the computer or a typewriter. Try dictation for a bit, just to see. Try sketching out ideas or using word webs to make things more “pictorial.” Use prompting tools like RPG random tables, story dice, prompt generators online, or flip open a dictionary, pick a word at random and then see how you might incorporate that word into your next paragraph or scene. Do a writing exercise without any expectation that it needs to go into your WIP.
  10. Read a book. Consider it R&D. Reading is just as important to a writer as writing, so you’re not really wasting time, are you? Tell yourself you’ll try again tomorrow (or whenever you have another chunk of time for writing), and that in the meantime, the reading you’re doing is helpful and productive. It’s refilling the well, feeding the muse, adding more words to your word hoard. Reading is a metaphor machine, an incubator, a compost heap. No shame in reading. Never ever. It’s the twin of writing, the other side of the coin. If words won’t flow out, flip the coin over and let some words flow in. And then celebrate your success! You are doing the very thing a writer needs to do. Reading is fun, after all, and so is writing.
  11. “Lightly, child, lightly.” “Don’t go about it in a serious way.” Play, play, play, play, play. If you’re playing, you’re living.

Juggling is lesson in art

January 25, 2026 /

With juggling, you drop a lot of balls. You drop so many, so often, that it stops mattering. You are so bad for so long that your ego dies completely, leaving you free to keep going.

An art practice is a way of moving through life (hat tip: Andy J. Pizza). A juggling practice teaches you that this movement is full of failures, drops, frustrations, and that the only way to get past these failures is to pick up the balls and try again.

Again, and again, and again: This is the lesson of juggling, and the lesson of art-making. Even though I can juggle now without dropping the balls–can juggle one-handed, can switch between one-handed and two-handed, can juggle without stopping for a long time–I still need to practice. I still need to keep going, and I still drop balls every once in awhile. I sometimes have a false start. I sometimes throw too high or too erratically. Sometimes lose the rhythm.

But to juggle means to pick up the balls and try again.

Making art is not a one-and-done. It’s an attempt at continual motion that often involves losing the rhythm, dropping the balls, throwing too high. But the only way to make art is to try again. Moving through life means life happens: failures and frustrations. At some point, we drop the ball so many times, we either give up or die to self, realizing that failure is forward motion, that letting go of our ego (“I’m so bad at this!”) is the only way to keep going.

Yeah, you’re bad at this. This is what juggling teaches when we first begin. You’re bad at this, and yet you keep trying anyway. You WILL fail. The humility that comes from facing this truth and persevering anyway is the engine that drives the juggler and the artist. At some point, we laugh at all of our drops. Even now, when I can juggle without much difficulty, I still sometimes drop a ball. And I laugh it off. I shrug because of course. Of course I dropped a ball. That’s the way it goes.

Those of us who make art would be well-served by this attitude. Of course. Of course I wrote a clunker of a story. Of course I lost the thread in that essay. Of course I couldn’t find the right word and used an almost-right one instead. Of course no one liked that Substack post. Of course I got another rejection letter from that magazine.

Of course. That’s the way it goes.

And the juggler knows you simply bend down, pick up the balls, and start again. Drops happen to everyone. They are as much a part of juggling as keeping all the balls in the air.

The same goes for art.

On Keeping and Not Keeping My Pact

December 2, 2025 /

In the spirit of Stephen King’s advice to finish a draft in the “length of a season,” I’m trying to finish my children’s adventure fantasy, Shards of Stolen Breath, before January 1, 2026. As such, I made a pact with myself last week to write for seven days, an hour-long chunk each day, to see what I could get accomplished.

I followed several procedures, namely, keeping the writing time flexible (to account for my unpredictable schedules), counting down the hour in twenty-minute chunks (to keep myself more accountable and not get lost in the weeds of distraction), and using the “skeleton scene” method of writing down scene ideas on note cards immediately before writing the draft. I also made a commitment to not focus on the number of words written but on the time spent in the chair.

It’s been seven days (the length of my pact to myself), and I’ve learned a few things about myself, my abilities, my inabilities, and what I need to work on going forward.

First, what worked.

Skeleton scenes were excellent. They gave me a road map but a loose one. When I started each writing session, I had a few previous cards to look at and gather ideas from, but I also had the option to sketch new scene ideas on new cards. Both sets of cards–previous ideas and new ideas–put me at ease and let me know that when the timer starts, I’m not committed to furiously rushing into the manuscript. Instead, I can think a bit, daydream a bit, let my imagination awaken, before writing. Even though I wasn’t focused on word counts, I ended up writing about 1,000 words per hour. This is a great pace for me, and it was almost effortless, which is what I want.

Storytelling should be a flow-state activity, and using the skeleton scenes to spur my imagination put me into that flow state.

The other thing that worked was the twenty-twenty-twenty timer regime. There were a few times when I got off track in my twenty-minute chunks, but the buzzing of the timer reminded me of what I should be doing, and thus, I refocused for the next twenty minutes.

Finally, I think focusing on time and not words helped me feel less anxious. It reduced the pressure and made my writing time feel more like leisure and less like work.

However, the caveat to this is that I couldn’t quite manage to ignore the pressure of writing more words. With a deadline of January 1–and an ability to do basic math–I know how many words I should be writing each week, and the fact that I did NOT manage to hit those words means I’m in danger of not achieving my “length of a season” goal.

Maybe the problem is in setting such a goal in the first place, but I wanted to experiment with writing more urgently (with a little more fire in the belly, so to speak), and the six-week time frame felt appropriately pressured without being too much.

But now, on the other side of seven days, I’m wondering if it is too much. I like the idea of finishing this novel by the end of midwinter, but maybe that’s not possible.

What is the “length of a season” anyway? If I’m following a four-season year, then that’s roughly three months per season. I’ve already written about 10,000 words of Shards, but I have many more words to go. Perhaps I should give myself two months to finish instead of one and some change?

This seven-day pact has definitely taught me that I can comfortably get about 500-600 words written each day–without limiting or straining my other responsibilities–so perhaps my season for Shards needs to extend into January. Even if I were to finish mid-February, that’s still setting me up to begin a new project in the spring and finish it before June.

But in order to do that, I’ll need to bump my words up from 500-600 per day to closer to 1,000.

The other lesson I learned from my pact is that I tend to stall out after 500 words. I never quite made my one-hour chunk any of the days. I’m curious to know why that is and what I might do about it. Is it a matter of needing a break? Splitting up the writing time into two different sessions? Or do I need to find a new tactic to get my spark back and finish the session?

Skeleton scenes worked well for getting me started, but perhaps there is another tactic for pushing me into my second set of 500 words.

Or maybe I need to recommit to focusing on my time in the chair and not bother about words at all.

Or maybe I need to use that second half of BIC (“butt in chair”) time to do other creative work. Maybe it’s time to do a writing exercise or creative daydreaming.

These are questions and experiments for another day (another seven-day pact?).

Now for what didn’t work.

I was not able to keep my pact for two of the seven days. Both Wednesday and Friday were traveling days (to see family for Thanksgiving), and I found myself completely unable to get anything done other than morning pages on those two days. I don’t know if it would’ve helped to schedule my writing time in the morning before departing, but the mornings were busy with packing, so I don’t think so.

Trying to write in the evening after a long day of travel proved too much. I’m not very happy about my failure here, but I did learn that perhaps I’m just not able to do much on a travel day. The stress of traveling is too heavy for creative work.

Going forward, on these kinds of days, I should be content with writer’s notebook time in the morning and focus on other ways to connect with my creativity later in the day. On both traveling days, for instance, we listened to Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire while we drove, and that was a good way for me to stay connected to fantasy fiction and be inspired. Perhaps on these sorts of days, that’s all I can ask of myself.

In some ways, despite failing to stick to the pact for all seven days, I’m glad that I had those two “missed” days because they allowed me to see that my creative work is never going to fit perfectly into each day; instead, I can enjoy the creative, imaginative moments that do crop up without worrying too much about perfect adherence to the “plan.”

I certainly wrote a lot this past week, and that’s mostly because of my tactics and commitment to the pact. I also learned about what works and doesn’t work for my creative life, and I’ve got new questions to explore, new experiments to try. (Namely, how to keep my energy and focus going for the full hour.)

I’m not sure how useful this information is to others, but perhaps some of these tactics could help a writer who struggles with critical voice and distractions. Maybe skeleton scenes or the twenty-twenty-twenty timer method could help. Maybe the focus on time in the chair instead of words written could help. Maybe the flexible scheduling (doing it day-of and being open to changing it once the day gets going) could help. In a lot of ways, all of my tactics were designed to take the pressure off. If I feel pressured–if the writing feels like a “job” or an “obligation”–then I shut down. My tactics for this experiment allowed me to feel at ease without sacrificing my commitment to my art and getting the novel written.

I know that I’ll continue to experiment and tweak these tactics as I go. I’m thinking for my next experiment, I’ll do a second seven-day pact but try to address that 500-word lull spot I always run into. Maybe the answer is to try a writing exercise. Step out of the manuscript for a bit and see where it goes. I can always add it into the draft later (if it works out).

Artists need to balance flexibility with commitment and habits. I’m learning every day how I work best, while remaining open to change and flux. Ultimately, the storytelling I did last week was fun, fruitful, and energizing. Couldn’t ask for more from this seven-day commitment!

Pact and Procedures: Shards of Stolen Breath

November 29, 2025 /

The Pact: For the next seven days, I will work on Shards of Stolen Breath (working title), a fantasy novel for children.

The Procedure: Schedule a one-hour chunk each day and write during that time.

(I’m not going to specify a particular time until the day-of. My schedule varies too much to commit to the same time each day. For instance, on Mondays, when we have dinner with my parents, writing after dinner won’t work. Also, on Tuesday of this week I played in an online game of Castles and Crusades after dinner, so that also didn’t work. Wednesday through Friday, due to the holiday and traveling, were not predictable either in the time or the energy department. Etc. etc.

Basically, picking the One True Time each day is hard and ends in failure more often than not. For this experiment, I’m trying the day-of approach to see if that works better.)

More Procedure: Use note cards to write “skeleton scenes” before actually writing.

The idea here (and I can’t remember where I first heard the term “skeleton scene”… this might necessitate a trip to my archives…) is that by sketching out quick impressions or possible details for the scene, I won’t have to stop too long to think them up as I’m writing.

This is, perhaps, a form of “outlining,” but since it’s right before I start adding words to my manuscript, and it’s very much a whatever-comes-to-mind exercise in free association, and it’s not using any parts of my critical voice, therefore it feels much more “creative voice” than not. I don’t have to write the skeleton scenes either. I can simply reread what I wrote yesterday and jump right in.

But skeleton scenes allow a gentler “on-boarding” where I don’t have to feel like the words “matter” yet. I can let ideas come to me (without editorializing) and that makes the first words I type into the manuscript less “precious.” Basically, the fear and resistance is broken down. Skeleton scenes are like stretches before a run.

More Procedure: Set the time for twenty minutes (when I really plan to write for sixty).

Twenty minutes is doable. I can write quite a bit in twenty minutes and it doesn’t seem overwhelming at the start. Also, after twenty minutes, the bell goes off on my Time Timer and I can check in with myself: Have I really been writing, or have I only been “gearing up” to write?

If I’ve only been gearing up, I can get down to brass tacks in the next twenty-minute session and “open the document and stay in the document.”

And after that session, I know I only have to push through one more twenty-minuter and I’ll have met my pact agreement for the day.

If I set the timer for sixty minutes, and I start with some journaling, skeleton scenes (or blogging… heh), the time might quickly get away from me. I’ll feel like I’m writing fiction and adding to the story, but I’m really not.

Twenty-twenty-twenty means I get a little audible check-in every twenty minutes to make sure I’m doing what I want to be doing, which is writing fiction.

More Procedure: Do not, repeat, do not focus on words written (but keep track anyway). I’m not setting a words-per-day quota. This is a time-based pact only.

But I do want to see how many words I can get written in these twenty-minute segments because I’m somewhat hopeful that my procedures here will actually engender MORE words-per-minute than I usually achieve. I don’t know why I think that, but I’m partly doing this experiment to see if my hypothesis is right.

If it is, then perhaps the secret to writing faster and getting into flow-state is buried somewhere within these procedures.

I’ll have more to report when the pact is complete.

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