Newsletter October 2024 - The Struggle Is Real
Hello everyone,
Thanks for sticking with me on my writing journey. Not gonna lie, I struggled to write this month for several reasons. A central theme of my story is our climate crisis and how we (humans) often do the wrong thing when given a choice about how to confront the issue. With the election here in the US getting close to the final day of voting, and the huge impact (positive or negative) that the next president will have on climate (as well as many other issues I care about), it's hard to not stress. As a result, I've been spending a lot of my writing time engaging in my preferred form of escapism: video games.
But that's not all! I'm at what's always been the most challenging part of a story to write: the lead up to the climax. When planning, I always spend a lot of time thinking of the setup, the growing action, and the ending. My plan for how to get the characters from the mid point to the end point is always a bit hand-wavey, and it was true this time as well, even though I had done a lot more detailed plotting.
I've written novels before, and I anticipated that I would change things up as I went along, so the further I got into the plans, the less certain I was that what I planned would still make sense when the time came to write those scenes. I wanted the story to unfold organically and to have the freedom to follow my gut when writing so that it would be better than I had planned. But that means that I now have to write this section without a strong plan and with all the constraints that I set up in the earlier sections of the book.
The ending I've planned still makes sense, but getting there will have to work in the context of the story thus far. That's where my analysis paralysis starts to kick in. There are a lot of ways I could do it, and I get stuck thinking about what I should do next. Couple that with the stress levels from everything else, and sometimes I opt for games or reading or whatever else (testing new Linux distros to replace Windows).
I know I need to just sit and write. Something will come to me, and it's just a first draft. It doesn't actually have to make sense at this point. That's what revisions are for.
If you need some escapism right around now, I recommend checking out the PC game Tiny Glade, or watch one of the many videos on YouTube. It's all about building cozy medieval buildings, ruins, and towns. The tools are easy to use and some folks have built amazing things with it. Many of the videos have no talking, just chill music, so give it a shot. I made the cover art for this newsletter with it.
Until November!
Best,
Todd
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