On Writing (by Stephen King) & Prime Sprints Still To Be! (Patreon)

Hi friends!

Hope you've had a great start to your February! We have one more day of the Prime Writing Weekend with only the 71, 53, 41, 19, 11, and 5 left to go! If you can make it, I'll be streaming at 8:00am CST over on Twitch to finish this event out. :)

Now as February is the shortest month of the year, I wanted to share that we'll be reading ON WRITING: A MEMOIR OF THE CRAFT by Stephen King for our Crafts & Drafts book club pick this month! I'm hoping this will be a familiar, inspirational classic to a lot of y'all and hopefully easier to access if you don't already have a copy. :)

One of the things we talked about during last month's book club chat was alternating between "classic" craft books, "writing stage" craft books (like revision, drafting, outlining, etc.), and "genre-specific" craft books. So for March, I'd like to focus in on a genre.

My hope is that, even if you don't write within the particular genre, there will be something helpful you can glean. Lots of novels revolve around something being a mystery to the reader even if the genre itself isn't a mystery. "Romancing the Beat" can also help to integrate romance as a subplot even if you're not drafting a Romance Novel, you know? And I'm hoping that some fantasy craft books can teach us all how to integrate our world-building seamlessly.

So I'd love for y'all to vote down below on which genre you'd like to focus on first (we'll eventually make our way through all of them) and I'll work to find a good book. As always, if you have suggestions, I'd love to hear about them! Zara mentioned in today's stream that Writing Fantasy & Science Fiction and Writing Monsters from Writer's Digest are good! I'll make sure to share the pick before March so there's as much time as possible to snag a copy.

And finally, I wanted to type up some notes/collective thoughts from January's THE LAST DRAFT: A NOVELIST'S GUIDE TO REVISION by Sandra Scofield for those of you who couldn't make it.

First, most of us WOULD recommend this book to others. The general consensus is that the book is probably most helpful to people who aren't heavy outliners. It's also probably most helpful to people who write more literary fiction (but has plenty of use for genre fiction, too).

That said, we appreciated how she broke things down and almost gave a check list of things to look out for during the revision process. Revision can sometimes feel like an endless, weaving tunnel, and this sort of hands you tools to help you make your way through the maze.

Some things this book inspired me to try :

• Taking a little time at the end of each writing session to journal my feelings about the work I accomplished, any thoughts or realizations, etc.
• Trying not to mention or have a character think back to the past (even for a brief sentence) until AFTER the first chapter
• Reading my draft in a completely different space than the one I wrote it in
• Taking a walk and telling myself my story OUT LOUD. (She recommends doing this often, as that helps you really cement in your mind what you're trying to say)
• Reducing my scenes down to two sentences: what the event was (the thing that happened) and what the emotions were (what the character felt), and then asking how that scene serves the overall story
• Describing the world of my story in a sentence, describing the scope of my novel, and describing the "rules" of my story world as succinctly as possible

She shares both a macro approach to revision (making sure we know who the story's about, what happens, why it matters, etc.) and the micro, scene-level (analyzing the interiority of a scene, how much is response vs. reflection vs. commentary, etc.).

Without having a specific story in mind while reading this, I did have two *aha* moments, a small one for A Closet Full of Cauldrons, and a pretty large, shattering one for Project Death.

My biggest personal complaint is the examples used within the text weren't really my taste most of the time (or I hadn't even heard of before). She still manages to make her points well though.

I read a library copy of this book but I'll personally be buying my own copy. It's a book I'll probably whip open for that first or second big revision, when I'm feeling a little stuck and shaky.

But that's going to be it from me for now! I hope y'all have a wonderful rest of your week and I'll be back soon with our Double Stream Days. Thanks y'all and happy writing!!