I am trying to hit my word count quota today so I’ll keep this post somewhat brief (actually, not, there’s a lot in here).
For reading, I started Vol. 3 of IDW’s TMNT comics.
For data analysis, nothing. My promotion campaign got pretty similar results to yesterday.
For marketing, my promotion campaign for Shadow Deal continues. You can grab it for $0.99 at https://www.michaellaronn.com/shadowdeal.
It turns out my results for my promotion campaign yesterday were better than they looked when I went to bed. I netted enough sales yesterday in the wee hours before midnight to make a profit on the book promo site that I paid for yesterday. So far, I’m breaking even for my campaign. That’s great news. Usually with big ad-stacking promos like this, you lose money and then make it up in sequel sales. If I get to Saturday and am still breaking even or losing just a little, I would consider that a major marketing success.
For production, I am sitting at around 1200 words today so I need another 1000 before I go to bed. I’ll definitely get words in, but I may just short of my quota tonight because I identified an issue during my looping session today that required me to go back and fix some things in a few prior chapters. I didn’t have as much writing time today as I would have liked, so that put me behind the curve for tonight. But overall, if I finish within 75% of my goal (1600-1700 words), I will still consider today a win mainly because the looping session was so productive and it knitted some important threads together that I hadn’t realized when I was writing the earlier chapters.
Anyhoo, there is another topic I wanted to talk about because I had a realization today during my writing sessions.
There’s a concept I talk about in my book The Pocket Guide to Pantsing called “story visibility.” This is how far you can “see” into the story from your current point.
There are three categories of visibility: clear, cloudy, and stormy.
On clear days, you can see for miles. You have very good visibility into what will probably happen in the story. On days like this, you enjoy it and write like hell. You can often see three or more chapters into the story, often further. On days like this, you also have a lot of confidence in where you’re headed.
On cloudy days, your visibility suffers somewhat. You may know what will happen but things are starting to get fuzzy. You may know what will happen in Chapter A, C, and D but not B. Or, you may know what happens up to a point but then things get impossible to see. Or, there’s a nagging plot point that you just can’t see how it will resolve. On days like this, the confidence you had on clear days starts to wane.
On stormy days, you have no idea what is going to happen IN THE NEXT SENTENCE let alone the next chapters. You have no visibility and the confidence level drops fast. Only the most focused and disciplined writers survive stormy days. Most people, when they start writing without an outline, they experience their first run of stormy days and they go crawling back to outlining.
But here’s the thing—stormy days often last for a few days or a few thousand words. They don’t last forever, even though they seem like they will. It’s an illusion.
The secret is actually that clear visibility days lead to cloudy days and cloudy days lead to stormy days. Then, stormy days generally lead back to clear days. It’s a cycle. Most people just want to have clear days all the time but that’s like having yin without yang. It’s just the creative process, and it’s good for you because it keeps you curious, keeps you engaged in the story.
You just have to recognize the pattern and then don’t get caught in the emotional struggle. Writing without an outline can especially be an emotional rollercoaster.
Anyway, I share that because I recognized that I am currently dealing with clear skies in my novel. I think I can see into the story for at least another 10,000 words, which will put me squarely at the 2/3 mark, somewhere around 66%. Somewhere between 66% and 75% is usually the final rough spot.
The 2/3 mark is similar to the dreaded 1/3 mark in that it’s usually where things slow down creatively. Whereas the 1/3 mark is a traffic jam, the 2/3 mark is the homestretch. The big difference is that you’re now dealing with stamina. You want the thing to be done already. Maybe you already know the ending and you’re bored. The key is to pace yourself, stay connected with your why, and keep going.
The final third of novels usually either writes itself or makes you exercise your patience until the very end. I’ve written novels where I blinked and the next thing I knew, I was writing the end. I’ve written other novels where reaching the end felt like a big slog. In the end, it probably took the same amount of time, though. It’s just that some novels feel different than others. Again, this is a game of illusions. Your mind will play tricks on you if you let it. The most important thing to do is to keep sitting in the chair and keep those fingers on the keyboard no matter what, even when you don’t feel like it.
Anyway, I know that, if I write 2200 words per day, sometime around the middle of this week I won’t be able to see where the story is going as well as I can now. Around the weekend, I’m almost sure to hit a storm of some kind.
The good news is that once I make it through the storm, I will very soon know exactly how the novel will end. And once I know that, finishing is just a matter of sitting down in the chair over and over until I’m typing the end.
This post is just to help people understand what goes through a writer’s head after publishing almost 40 novels. I don’t think about it much—I just do it. But when you’ve only written a few books, you question yourself a lot.
Don’t question. Have fun and keep writing.
Me? I’m off to write some more words.
Have a good night.
