Category: writing process (Page 2 of 18)

“The Length of a Season”

November 24, 2025 /

So Stephen King said about how long it should take to write a rough draft for a novel.

I can’t begin to count how many times I’ve failed at this. I always take too long.

Before anyone starts in and says, “The story takes as long as it needs to take,” let me explain that while this may be a helpful maxim for other people, it is not for me.

I know because I’ve let novels take longer than the length of a season and always–always–it has hurt the project. I lose the heat. I lose the thread. I’m at a different place as a writer and my voice has subtly shifted.

Speaking with one of my students today, she had the exact same experience. She started a draft a few months ago but never wrote a proper ending. She added the ending recently, and she and I both agreed it lacked that certain oomph the earlier portions had. It didn’t have the same voice, the same energy. She’d taken “longer than a season.”

This happens to me constantly. I’m not saying this happens to everyone, nor that it necessarily happens to me all the time (I’ve had a few short stories where the break/pause ended up helping me work out something that was missing). But it happens to me often enough that I’ve got to actively fight against the fear and blockage that keeps me from riding the momentum of a project to its completion. Especially for novels. Both my interest and my ability to conceptualize the story dissipate the longer it takes me.

I want to get better at riding the wave. I have too many stories I want to write for things to linger on like this.

And thus my pact. My commitment. I will finish my next book in a season.

The Backstory:

I started writing a novel for my children earlier in the spring. They had brought home a book about dragons from the Scholastic book fair and it left me cold. Generic. Trite. Also, a bit too mature for my first and second graders.

I sprung into action and started writing a dragon fantasy novel using some of their ideas. I wanted it to be more in the tradition of books I remember loving as a kid. Something similar to the Prydain Chronicles, or Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH.

This, remember, was in the spring. And now it’s late autumn and I’m on chapter seven. About ten thousand words in. Not very far. And much longer than King’s “season.”

Nevertheless, I will persist, and in the spirit of King’s advice (and my own inkling about how my creative process works), I intend to finish the novel before the end of this season (this season meaning November/December).

To do so means writing 50-60k in a month (so, sorta like the NaNoWriMos of old), which comes to roughly 1600 words per day. I’m not going to hold myself to a strict word count quota (another quirk of my creative process: as soon as word counts come into view, I get the hives); instead, I’m setting a time quota: sixty minutes per day in the writing studio. A bit more on weekends to make up for slow days.

I’ve already built up a tiny bit of momentum because I’ve been working on the book for the past week or so, but I need a more formal commitment to really push myself and write with more urgency and gusto. Not urgency in the panicked sense, but urgency in the sense that this story will be best served if I get it out into the world without delay. In delay there is doubt. There is that changing of voice and squandering of energy. Like my student realized: taking “time off” from the writing didn’t help it; it just made it flatten, like a tire leaking air.

Why do we take that time off? Is it really to make the piece “better”? Or is it fear, resistance, tension, doubt? It’s worry and perfectionism. It’s a defense mechanism. If we keep going, we might end up somewhere “bad.” We might flub it. We might not know where to go next and make a “wrong turn.”

But I would say the more harmful thing, from an emotional and intellectual standpoint, is to let a story idea taper off, to let a novel die on the vine, to never finish the piece. Losing the energy, wiping out from the wave: these are the bigger troubles. A tough, wild wave is easier to ride if you don’t intentionally jump out of it. Better to stay on and ride it out than to jump off and tread water, hoping for a new wave to come along.

I’m going to keep riding the wave. I’m excited, in fact. There’s a thrill here. A high-wire act (okay, now I’m mixing metaphors). But the idea that I can build my own momentum, that I can accelerate myself to the end of a novel: it’s exhilarating. It’s fun to think that in six weeks’ time I’ll have a rough draft novel to share with my children. I’m hoping this experiment shows me a new way of working, of approaching my creative projects. In the length of a season, I’ll have something new and complete.

“Rule 6: Nothing is a mistake. There’s no win and no fail. There’s only make.”

October 21, 2025 /

I want to believe this rule. I want to live and make art and teach within the bounds of this rule. Like a mantra, I want this rule to be a constant refrain within me.

But this is a hard teaching.

I want badly to win, whatever that will mean. Maybe it means more readers, or more money, or more accolades. Maybe it means being happy with my output, with the finished product.

Instead, I fail. I don’t get the readers, or the money, or the accolades. I am unhappy with my output, doubting its quality, hating it. The finished product is an embarrassment. A mistake.

But nothing is a mistake. Like Yoda, this rule is saying either make or don’t make. Those are the only two sides to the dichotomy. Those who make, make. Those who don’t make, don’t make.

Winning and failing are not the opposed forces. Making and not-making are the opposed forces.

It’s the fear of mistakes, of wrongness, of failure that keeps us from making.

This is against the Rule.

Failure is an illusion. As are mistakes.

There is only make.

If you make, you are making. If you don’t make, you are not making. This is the only choice. Everything else–everything–is outside of your control. It doesn’t even exist according to the Rule.

“Nothing is a mistake.” That means you can’t possibly make a mistake. Only Nothing is a mistake. Only not-making is a mistake. It’s a mistake because we are called to be makers, to be sub-creators. If we don’t make, if we let Nothing into the world, then we have ceded ground to the mistake. Only by making can we prevent the Nothing.

This is why there’s no win or fail. A different kind of rule would say, “If you make, you win.” But that’s not this rule. This rule isn’t false positivity. It isn’t false praise. The whole concept of winning, of making something that “wins,” is the thing that’s false.

Making has nothing to do with winning or losing. Making has to do with making. There is only make or not-make. The win/lose is a paradigm of competition. Making is not a competition. A lot can happen if we make, and a lot can’t happen if we don’t make, but winning or losing are not part of those options.

If we make, we add to the world. We imitate God.

If we don’t make, well, we don’t. We go along with our lives doing other things, I guess, but those things are not making.

Right now, I am making something. These words are my making. They can sometimes feel like a mistake. I can start to worry that I’ve failed. I can yearn for the “win,” the high praise, the big bucks (though this is unlikely to happen for a lowly blog post!). I can fear the failure, but none of this–the wish to win, the fear of failure, the worrying about mistakes–is part of the actual making. The making is me putting words to the page. The making is stringing sentences together into a whole. The making is the act of making, and that really does exist outside of win/lose, success/fail.

I am making right now. Each letter typed is an act of making. Good/bad, win/lose: these are not involved. The only thing that is happening right now is the making.

And when I’m done, I’ll have a choice. To make or not-make. If I choose not-making, if I choose nothing, then, yes, I have made a mistake.

But I wonder if it’s even possible to choose nothing. Every moment is a moment of making if you think about it in the right terms. Every moment involves thoughts and actions. Those are part of making. Making decisions, making breakfast, making a joke, making a smile. We cannot help but make.

So there’s no fear when I sit down at the computer or with my notebook. I’m already doing the making. The making is already happening.

I don’t need to worry about believing in this Rule. Believing in it has nothing to do with it. Winning, failing: those are immaterial. Those are beliefs. Whether they are false or true is outside of this Rule. I don’t need to believe in either of them.

I only need to make. And I’m already making.

Goal Update: October 2025

October 12, 2025 /

It’s been awhile. I’m going to try and be as upbeat as possible, but the results speak for themselves: I haven’t achieved most of my goals.

And yet! I’ve achieved some, and that ain’t nothing. Failing to success, right? Would I have achieved even these small things if I hadn’t set myself the goals?

Some may argue that yes, I would still have achieved these few things. And perhaps that’s true. Doing small actions every day does tend to add up to bigger things. My students who are writing for five minutes at the beginning of every class are seeing that happen in real-time. Their notebooks are filling up and they can’t quite believe it.

But there’s a part of me that thinks the simple act of articulating the goals helps me understand what my small actions are in service to. For my students, the daily writing added up to a class party (which we just had last week). For me, the daily/regular actions have added up to the completion of a couple of goals and slight progress on a few more. Again: that ain’t nothing.

What This All Means is precisely that it’s good to have some end goals, but it’s also good (better?) to keep plugging away. Achieving the goals isn’t the measurement; doing the small actions is. And not giving up. That’s important too.

Which is all to say that I’m writing this to self-assess, yes, but even more so, I’m writing this to remind myself that I must keep going. Even in a year’s time, I’ve accomplished things. Not much, but some.

And some is better than none.

  • Finish writing Norse City Limits (urban fantasy novel): I must admit that I’ve dropped the ball on this. I’m in that messy middle part in which I loathe every choice I’ve made thus far and feel utterly unsuited to the task of writing a novel.

I’ve taken a pause, honestly. Partly because I need to go back and reread and take better notes on what’s happened, but also partly because I think I need to do more reading/research. The Idea Well has run a bit dry. Problems of output are problems of input, and my Norse mythology/film noir input has been anemic these days (months?). I need to get back in touch with that part of myself.

The difficulty? I’ve started a few new projects and those are vying for my time. I feel the heat to work on them, whereas NCL has grown a bit cold.

I was worried about this, especially over the summer, when the novel was really stalled, but I’ve since made peace with it. This feels like how I work. I’m a multi-book reader, and I’m seeing how I’m really a multi-book writer too. It’s not the most efficient way of doing things, and maybe I need to retrain myself to write with white-lightning heat to finish a novel in a month or two or something, but for now, it seems that my process is more meandering.

It’s not like I haven’t been writing.

Maybe not as many words per week as I’d like, but I’m still writing. I’m finishing stories, I’m starting new stories, I’m writing Substack posts, and blog posts. I’m writing almost every day. Maybe not consumable words, but words that could turn into something later (I use my notebook/morning pages writing for ideas all the time).

I’m trying really hard to stop making demands on my Creative Voice. Instead of saying, “I must write this next chapter of __________,” I sit down at the computer, open a few documents (again, intuitively without deliberate thought), and I start cycling back through a story or start with a fresh page and new words, and I let the Creative Voice do its thing.

In fact, that’s precisely how I started this blog post. I let myself start writing what I felt like I needed to start writing, and an update on my writing goals is where Creative Voice led me.

It takes a great deal of trust in this process to operate like this, but I’m trying to trust it.

A bit like my insight on “inventing the process”: I need to stop prescribing the word count (or the work that “must” be done) and simply do what my Creative Voice wants to do. A story doesn’t have to be x-number of words long. I need to stop even thinking about stories as being “short,” “novella,” “novel,” etc. before I start writing them.

Maybe that’s the trouble with NCL? Maybe I committed to “a novel,” before I really had any idea what my Creative Voice wanted to do with this particular character in this particular world.

Well, anyway, I’m almost 50,000 words into the thing, so it must be something longer than a short story. What that thing is, though, I’m not sure yet. Maybe my idea that it must be 100,000 words long or whatever is getting in my way. Or maybe it’s shaping up to be 200k words or more… I certainly have enough story threads going and no idea how to weave them to a satisfying conclusion… It could end up being a door-stopper!

I’m somewhat tempted to throw a bunch of words out. Partly because I feel like certain choices bug me and I don’t like where they led me, but at the time, I didn’t have the courage to go back and redraft from those (seeming?) missteps. Do I have the courage now? Or is this just a way to avoid finishing?

I don’t think it’s a way to avoid finishing. I think it’s my intuition telling me that maybe I need to trust my gut and not keep putting lipstick on a pig.

Maybe I need to do that process reassessment after all and write with lightning heat…

What would that look like?

  • New Goal: Write an epic fantasy for middle grade readers/my kids (a novel about dragons): This came about because I wanted something for my kids to enjoy that went a little deeper than the dragon books they were bringing home from the library/Scholastic book fair.

I wanted them to have something like I had as a kid, a fantasy series that was epic and archetypal that also didn’t feel watered down. I’m a bit inspired by Katherine Rundell’s thoughts on children’s books and her novel The Explorer in particular, which we listened to as a family on audiobook.

This new dragon fantasy is partly why NCL is on hold.

As I’m typing all this out, I’m thinking I need to heed my own insights about writing one thing with lightning heat… I started this novel (working title: Shards of Stolen Breath) over the summer, and now it’s October and I’m only on Chapter 5. Maybe I need to write with white-heat and finish it as quickly as possible. My boy Thoreau always said, “Write while the heat’s in you.” Don’t let the fire die (hello, dragon pun, I see you).

What does it look like, for me, to write with white-heat?

Does it look like finishing a chapter a day? Write for thirty days, you got yourself thirty chapters. But what if Creative Voice doesn’t want to write a chapter a day? What if she wants to work on that other story that’s been brewing over here for a bit?

Okay, well, I just got done saying I wouldn’t boss my Creative Voice around, but I also wonder if Creative Voice would want to work on Shards every day if I actually, you know, thought about Shards every day. If I wrote about it in my morning pages, and took notes on it throughout the day, and dreamed about it at night.

I have a problem with daydreaming. I’m not doing it enough. I’m crowding out my thoughts with worries and a million other things. I need to schedule some daydream time.

Like, deliberately sit down (or go for a walk) and think about the story. Think about Shards.

I’ll admit that I’ve always been intrigued by guys like Moorcock (and Sanderson too) who can write something in a few days/months. Sanderson has spoken about this before. Write the novel as fast as you can, before the fire dies.

I like systems. I’m tempted to make this system for myself. The daydream about something, write it as quickly as possible, don’t let the fire die. Keep daydreaming so the fire stays stoked. (I swear I’m not writing all these dragon/fire puns on purpose.)

Isn’t it funny how writing all this out has led to insights? I hope they’re insights.

  • Finish writing Ysbaddaden and the Game of Chess (second book in Merlin series): Similar to NCL, this one is on hold. Perhaps it’ll be faster to redraft from word one on this as well. I’m tempted, mightily tempted to redraft from word one both NCL and Ysbaddaden.Do I have the courage to try it? Enough of a fool?
  • Finish a short story set in my sword and sorcery world: Not yet.
  • Finish a short story about a mother who learns a terrible secret about her son: Not yet.
  • Finish a short story set in my Children of Valesh universe: Not yet.
  • New Goal: Finish a short story set in my magical music academy world: Not yet, but almost! I started a story called “Bronwyn Harper” a little while back and I’m getting close to finishing it. Between this story and Shards, I’ve been writing steadily. I also finished a random short story about a dragon egg and submitted that to Writers of the Future, so I need to remember that I haven’t been idle simply because I haven’t finished one of my big novels.
  • Finish a novella in my City of Ashes series: Not yet. Maybe never? This was a thing my Creative Writing students challenged me to do, but I’m not loving it. Time will tell.
  • Blog every day: I am not blogging every day, but I am still blogging. I like that this is a place I can continue to return to. I still aspire to blog every day, but it’s okay if I don’t.
  • Send out Substack newsletter every two weeks: Not yet, but I’m getting better. I’m prioritizing it a bit more. I’m looking through my notebook each week with an eye toward what can go on the Substack, and I’m loosening up my internal “rules” for what I should write about. The topics and essays are a little more wide-ranging, and I find this suits my personality and writing goals better.
  • Play more role-playing games with my kids, my husband, family, and friends: This is happening and I couldn’t be happier! I just played a one-on-one session of Caverns of Thracia with my eight-year-old son the other day, and it was glorious. And now that my Dolmenwood stuff has arrived, I’m ready to start up campaigns with family and friends. As a family, we’ve been playing Mausritter, Hero Kids, and DnD 5e. I’m also playing in a regular Shadowdark game, and I’m running Thracia as an open table at a FLGS This has been an unqualified success.
  • Create some RPG modules for Norse City Limits and Merlin’s Last Magic: Not yet.
  • Make a “Saturday Morning” zine series and publish an issue every month: Not yet.
  • Make other zines: Not yet.
  • 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): I was doing this, and then we stalled, and now I’m ready to make this a priority again. I think we need to force our kids a bit on these. They are sometimes reluctant to listen to these older books, but we think it’ll be good for them. First up, NIMH and A Horse and His Boy, then a retry with The Hobbit.
  • Start naalbinding again (finish the hat I started for my son and make another one for my other son): Ugh, not yet. I want to prioritize this. My son’s head will be too big if I don’t finish soon!
  • Practice my cartooning/comics drawing (for the zines): Hmm… a bit? Not much, though. Need to do more daily drawing.
  • Start a podcast: This is a new goal, but I have an idea I’m excited about and which I think my readers will really like. New goal for 2026 is to actually record the episodes and maybe even launch.
  • Write essays, poems, and fiction that will serve as models for my students next school year: Not much, and I’m wondering if I want to keep this as a goal. I’m not saying I never do this, but I don’t think I need to set it as a goal for myself. I can write things as needed and dictated by the students I have each year. But making it a personal goal feels like an unnecessary step. I’ll do the work if I need to as part of my day job; no need to “focus” on it here.
  • Bonus achievement: The dragon egg story I wrote on a whim and submitted to WotF. I was using a writing prompt, thinking it would just be an exercise, and then it turned into a whole story. Just goes to show that “practice” for writers can turn into real work (as is true for nearly all artists). Who knows if it’s any good, but I had fun writing it.

Inventing the Process

June 28, 2025 /

“Part of the work is figuring out how to work.”

(Kevin Nguyen, from Counter Craft interview, April 8, 2025)

I’m abandoning old ways of thinking and doing. For too long I’ve clung to “identities” (think: Plotter versus Discovery Writer) and methods (“Writing into the Dark”) that are gumming up the works of my actual, functioning brain and the way I process and express my ideas.

I’m not abandoning certain aspects of these methods and identities, but I am abandoning the framework that makes me think in these terms. That framework often works as an inner monologue as I sit down to write, telling me how I should be doing things before I’ve actually started doing them.

Inner Monologue: “If I’m a discovery writer, then I shouldn’t ever make any kind of outline before I start writing. If I follow a writing into the dark methodology, then I shouldn’t ever plan ahead before I start writing.”

And also, the inner monologue has some things to say about speed and word count quotas and all the rest: “To be a real writer, I need to hit a certain word count each day/week/month/year. I need to be more disciplined. I need to apply Butt to Chair.”

On the whole, these inner voices DO reflect something important about my process. I do tend to get bored if I’m writing from an outline, so I prefer to discover as I go. I do tend to write by “cycling” instead of burping shitty words onto the page with the promise that I’ll “go back and fix them” later. I hate “revision” in the traditional way we mean it. It’s tedious, I get confused and frustrated, and in the end, I don’t think the writing is any better. So I like to “revise as I go,” i.e.: cycle through the previous sessions words and tweak or change things.

It’s not that I’m abandoning these techniques and methods.

But I need to abandon the thinking behind them. That I must adhere to a “method” at all. It’s almost like I’ve created an ideology for myself and must fit everything into that ideology. That’s what I need to abandon.

I making this a conscious thing because I’ve started to notice that my creative voice often has A LOT to say, a lot to express, but instead of just letting the words fly upon the page, I start my writing sessions by doing my “method.” I follow the cycling procedure like a ritual at church. And sometimes that cycling procedure IS what my voice wants.

But sometimes it isn’t.

Sometimes I have a line or an image that’s sticking in my brain, and I need to write that first. I need to follow that thread. It might connect to what I wrote yesterday, it might not, it might take me some time to see the connection, it might never connect (meaning it might be for a different story).

I am really good at putting words on the page. I really love putting words on the page. I can write in my notebook and fill three pages often in less than twenty minutes. I can write a paragraph or two in minutes. When I stop worrying or don’t “care” if the words are “important,” then I can write at the drop of a hat. No block whatsoever.

So if I’m good at it and love doing it, why is it so hard for me to put words on the page when it’s time to “write my fiction”?

It’s because I’m trying too hard to follow a method, to fit an identity. I’m looking at what works for others and trying on their shoes, almost in the way a child tries on her parent’s shoes and walks around comically with giant clown feet. I can walk, but it’s awkward. It works until it doesn’t, until I trip on the cat’s tail and fall.

Writing is easy for me. It’s only when I say, “Alright, time to stop fiddling around and write that FICTION,” does my hand freeze up. Because now I’m caught in the methods, in the process I’ve prescribed for myself.

But what if each new time I sit to write I acknowledge that it IS a new time, that what worked yesterday might not work today, and that trying to adhere to something that worked yesterday might be more of a fly trap than a way forward?

The only way forward is, well, forward. To do the work that is in front of me at this moment in time, not the work of yesterday or last week. What worked yesterday might not work today. Part of the work is seeing where my Creative Voice wants to go today. But that means letting go of systems or ideologies about how to do the work.

I’m not arguing against discipline. Or methods or procedures. There’s a great section in Bayles and Orland’s Art and Fear where they talk about Chopin and his Mazurkas as the way he gets his work done. Something about the Mazurka as a form allows Chopin to do his work. It’s an entry-point, a doorway that allows him to enter into his work and get things done. So having those doorways is good. I’ve got a few of them (my writer’s notebook and morning pages, for instance), and they often take me into my work. Cycling does too. Sometimes.

But sometimes the morning pages don’t take me into my work. Sometimes the cycling system fails. And what I’ve been trying to do is conform myself to the system in order to create, instead of saying, “Okay, today the system failed. Now what? Well, I want to write this line about a woman jumping down a manhole to chase a giant worm.”

Instead of pushing that woman and her giant worm to the side, maybe I should roll with it. Ride that worm. Who cares if it’s not part of my “normal” process? Who cares if it’s not part of my current work-in-progress? Maybe it will be. I don’t know. But I’ve been trying to tell my Creative Voice, “No, don’t play over there. Play over here. With these toys,” and that’s looking like a pretty destructive thing to do. Creative Voice sulks and doesn’t play at all.

So which is worse, following a random tangent but still getting words written or trying to follow the system and getting nothing written?

And yet, in saying all this to myself, am I just creating another system?

Yes.

Which means, there may be times when I will force myself to cycle and write the next line, even if the heat isn’t in me at the moment, even if I have visions of subterranean worms riding the sewer waves, even then, I will cycle through and push those words out and tell Creative Voice to be patient, it will get fun again.

Because there is no system. There are many systems and none.

There is each new day at the desk, each new embodiment of myself at that desk, each new moment where maybe I’m a bit hungrier today than I was yesterday, or I’d just read something that stuck in my craw last night, or I had a funky dream, or something came out in my morning pages and I like it and I’m gonna follow its thread, or I don’t feel like typing so I’m going to handwrite a few lines of dialogue, or I’m going to skeleton-scene something that just popped into my head even though I’m not sure I’ll use it in the story…

Each new day means figuring out how to work. Yes, there are systems and Mazurkas to help us, but sometimes they don’t help us and we have to figure out something else. Sometimes we don’t have to “figure” at all; we just have to do. The old Bradburian saying about jumping off the cliff and building one’s wings on the way down.

Each day is a new invention of the self and the work and the process. One system, many systems, no system.

Whatever gets the art out.

Word Counts and Critical Voice

May 26, 2025 /

I never realized how much my consideration of a project’s word count could invite my critical voice to make an appearance. After all, if I’m writing a novel, don’t I have to make sure it hits a certain word count (ballpark, anyway)? Same for short stories, novellas, etc. How can I write anything without considering word count?

Here’s another case of me not heeding my own advice. I tell students all the time that page counts and word counts are arbitrary when it comes to prose. Teachers tell students to write five hundred words (or a thousand or two-fifty or whatever) not because the word count is intrinsic to the piece of writing, but because of other factors: we don’t have time to read twenty-five eight-thousand-word essays this week, or we want the students to learn brevity, or we simply follow convention by giving students their beloved “How long should this be?” question an answer.

The real answer is, “However long it needs to be.” But students hate that answer. We teachers sometimes hate it too.

If we were printing a magazine or a newspaper, then column length would matter. There’s only so much space on a page.

If we were publishing books, then length would matter too for something pushing against one thousand pages.

But students aren’t usually writing for publication in a print newspaper, and novelists aren’t usually pushing against one thousand pages for their novels.

The answer is, “However long it needs to be.”

And yet here I am, sitting here week after week, scribbling and typing away at my stories, constantly checking the word count to see if it “fits” the prescribed type of story I’m writing. Not genre, not narrative. But: Is it a short story? A novel? A novella? Better make my “short story” the right length. Not too long, not too short. Better make sure my latest novel is between 90k and 100k words. Better work towards a “length,” because how else will I know I’m done?

Idiocy.

Despite what I tell students, I’ve internalized the “How long should it be?” question for my own writing, and it’s opened the door to Critical Voice. Instead of spinning the yarn and letting it go where it may, I’ve decided ahead of time what “type” of story it is, and I’ve been writing to that length and structure.

Who is to say what I’m writing is a short story? Even if I set out with an idea I think will be a short story, what happens if it starts to pick up steam and becomes something more? Am I open to that possibility, or am I stuck in “short story”-mode, trying to fit an oversized foot into a glass slipper that just won’t hold it?

For Norse City Limits, I decided that it needed to be a “proper” length. Fantasy, after all, is a genre that welcomes the longer book. Readers expect a hefty tome.

But what if my story isn’t fit for hefty-tome-dom? What if NCL needs to be 60k or 70? What if it needs to be ultra-hefty? 300k? Or more?

I am not trusting my Creative Voice here. I am working towards something arbitrary instead of something that comes intrinsically out of the story itself.

Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad.

I never realized how much the “publishing” side of things was intruding on my creative process. I thought that since I always write what I want and never to “market,” that I was immune from the business side interfering with Creative Voice.

Gah! I was so wrong!

Sneaky, that Critical Voice.

If I were writing for a print newspaper, things would be different. If I were writing a sonnet, obviously, the form demands a certain length.

But I’m writing fiction and nonfiction on my blog and as an indie publisher. Length doesn’t matter.

This is wildly freeing. Today, as I worked on a “short story,” I realized that there was no reason it had to be bound by the term “short story.” I mean, maybe it will end up being a short story. Chances are it will. There are only a few characters and one setting. It’s basically the story of a brief affair. I don’t think it will be more than a short narrative.

But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe this is only the first chapter of a longer story. Maybe this little May-December romance will become something larger in scope.

That’s not for me to decide at the moment. All I have to decide is what the next sentence will be. And the next. Until the story finds its ending.

That’s the key: The story must find its own ending.

Not a word count or publishing consideration. Those don’t determine the ending. That’s Critical Voice thinking.

What does the story need? Where will it end?

That’s Creative Voice talking. I’m just along for the ride.

I finally realized today that I’d been trying to backseat drive, trying to route the way only to discover that there is no fixed destination. Not yet, anyway. The route, the journey, my Creative Voice will decide the destination, not me.

And not my word counts.

Thoughts on The Motern Method

March 15, 2025 /

I liked it. Well-worth reading and owning.

However, if anyone has spent any time at all reading Heinlein’s Rules or exploring corners of the internet where these Rules are being lived out, a lot of the concepts in The Motern Method will sound familiar.

Which doesn’t mean it’s not worth reading. IT IS.

But it wasn’t particularly revolutionary for me. Parts of it reminded me of Make Art, Make Money: Lessons from Jim Henson on Fueling Your Creative Career. Parts of it reminded me of Ray Bradbury’s long-standing advice on quantity over quality in one’s art-making. And parts of it reminded me of Heinlein’s Rules.

One thing it also reminded me of is my previous desire to be an independent filmmaker. If The Motern Method was anything for me, it was a reminder that I once wanted to make movies and felt like I didn’t have the resources, and that maybe I need to let go of such thinking and try to make a movie no matter the lack of money or equipment.

I’m not saying I’m going to start making independent films. But… maybe?

The other thing I like about the book is that it collects a lot of advice into one place. Sure, there are Heinlein’s Rules and the books and authors I referenced above, but when I need a quick pep talk, The Motern Method is right there, with all the stuff.

For instance, I got a rejection the other day from a short story market. And yeah, yeah, rejections are part of the deal, right? I’ve had many rejections before, so you’d think I’d brush it off and no big thing.

But I was bummed. In a funk.

And that rejection was followed by another rejection (different story, different market). So again, you’d think, “But that’s great! You’ve got two stories out for submission and even with the rejections, all you need to do is send them out to two more magazines and keep going!”

And that’s exactly the right advice, but my brain doesn’t always operate on logic. My brain sometimes spirals into depths of self-doubt and loathing that are like the black pits of Tartarus, just roiling under the surface waiting to bubble up.

I know rejections are part of the gig, and I know all I need to do is send the stories out again. But knowing and believing are two different things.

Enter The Motern Method.

I remembered that Farley had a few chapters on rejections and getting your work out into the world (again, very Heinlein-esque), so I flipped to those pages and started reading.

It was basically a pep talk, and it worked. My brain stopped its death-spiral, and I felt renewed. Getting my work out into the world is what matters. Getting your work out into the world is what matters. Can’t let rejections stop that. Gotta keep going.

Sure, I could have gone online and googled Heinlein’s Rules again, or tracked down similar publishing advice, but having Farley’s book right at hand, its minimalist, indie-punk black and white cover reminding me that artists can work outside the mainstream system, made it easier to read what I needed to read.

I love the book’s aesthetic. No author is mentioned anywhere but on the spine. No introduction, no table of contents. The book just starts, each section indicated by bold-font titles, and then it ends, with Farley narrating his creative journey, explaining how the Motern Method was developed and how it helped him write the book.

Some sections are ones I quibble with a bit. “Read the comments. Read the reviews”? Maybe for others, but for me, this is DEATH. Both good comments and bad, good reviews and bad, tend to hurt my Creative Voice. It doesn’t mean I’m not an idiot who sometimes reads the reviews, but I always hate myself afterward.

Farley’s larger point — that reading the reviews will toughen you up, show you that taste is relative and not to worry if people don’t “get” your work — isn’t a bad one, but I know for my own ego, reviews can get inside like brain worms and infect my process.

But overall, the book is a rallying cry, a manifesto.

And it is very punk. Which I dig.

I’ll be keeping The Motern Method on my writing desk. When I’m stuck, when I’m down, when I need a kick in the pants, it will be my go-to.

« Older posts Newer posts »

Original header artwork

Copyright 2015 Chloe Bensinger

Bookshop

I am an affiliate of Bookshop.org and I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.

© 2026 Jennifer M. Baldwin

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑