Happy almost Halloween & Samhain!

Guess who is writing to a deadline and thus doing a lot of what this headline says!

So let’s start with a writing update: last time I posted an update was mid September in my sneaky preview to a secret thing post. At that point, I’d finished and temporarily shelved my draft of Quiet Walkers and had just embarked on a new work in progress. That secret wip is now at 65k of a predicted 150-160k.

Oh crap, I just realised there’s another update. A BOOK-SHAPED one! This is that I have a new novella – my hopepunk with bloody fingernails A Lake of Small Fires – coming out in February with the lovely Luna Press, who were the first wee indie press to open the door to publishing for me. I owe Francesca Barbini at Luna so much, and it’s a joy to be able to return to her again with this strange wee book. I have previously alluded to A Lake of Small Fires on this blog (newsletter? idek what I’m meant to call it) but here’s the official announcement and I’ll follow up with a fuller ‘the story of…’ soon too.

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Today though I wanted to talk about writing goals – how I approach them, stick to them, and sometimes abandon them. This has been on my mind recently given the considerable task I am in the middle of – drafting a chonker of a book in a brand new (to me) genre in about four months. In early September, as I was finishing up Quiet Walkers and preparing to launch into Secret Book, I was feeling incredibly daunted by the entire affair, if I’m honest. This is my first time selling ‘on proposal’ i.e. with just a pitch rather than a fully written book, so my first time needing to draft a book from a standing start whilst under a contracted deadline (The Salt Oracle, the second book on my previous contract, was already drafted by the time Ghosts entered the publishing cycle so I was ahead of the game there).

This is also my first time writing in this particular genre space (man, it’s hard avoiding spoilers. The sooner this thing is announced, the better!), and my first time intentionally setting out to write a hefty chonk of a book. I have been striving to aim for the 100k threshold for years, so the instruction to aim larger in scope is bizarre!

SO, lots of new things. And by the time I was ready to leap into this book, it was all looking rather terrifyingly unachievable. Fortunately, I’ve faced tasks that look insurmountable before, often when faced with a big developmental edit letter and the burning desire to yeet my book into the sea.

The strategy…

Just as I did when tackling the big edit of The Salt Oracle then, my first instinct with this book was to break the challenge down into less-scary chunks.

• It’s not a 160k word book, it’s four 40k novellas (for each of the point of view characters).
• It’s not a 160k in four months timeline, it’s 40k a month, which is 10k a week, which is an average of 2k a day.

Not quite so terrifying when it’s put that way, is it? Though 2k a day is still a tall order for me – my norm is around 1-1.5k a day, so consistently delivering more is a steady strain on my health.

Next step was to lower the intimidation levels a bit:

• That four month deadline isn’t fixed, it allows for a 6 week edit pass before the actual deadline. So you’ve room to overshoot.
• And actually, ha, let’s factor that in, to lower those weekly/daily targets to non-scary levels. Now I only really absolutely have to average 1,700 words a day, with 2k as a stretch goal. MUCH less scary.
• Hey, guess what? If I need longer, I can ask. No one’s going to condemn me for it.

Step three was to clear the decks.

• Plan no more events for the year. I also pulled out of one that was going to cost me several days and a lot of money for no real tangible benefit.
• Minimise life stuff*, and schedule time off for Xmas so I don’t panic about needing it.
• Pause beta/blurb reads for now.
• Shift other writing admin work (e.g. pre-pub work on A Lake of Small Fires) to the weekend (I normally keep weekends pretty writing-free to give myself rest/recovery/family time).

*I’m actually heading off on a week’s solo writing retreat tomorrow, to immerse myself in nothing but words. It will be divine!

And lastly, I tentpoled the book, so I don’t have to headlight it.

What? I hear you say. Honestly, this is the fun bit. Bear with me, we’re getting writing crafty…

My normal approach to plotting a book is to ‘headlight’ as I’m writing. Which means I roughly plan about three chapters ahead, write those chapters, plan the next three, write those, etc. It means I’m never staring at the page lost for what happens next, but also that I don’t have to know specifics about the book’s climax and ending before I get there. It’s a system that suits my desire for a balance between plan and flexibility.

The downsides of headlighting is that I do have to pause every few days to plan next steps, and that the plot of my first drafts can get a little more meandering than intended. I can’t really afford either of those things in this case – I don’t have time to pause every few days, and I need this beastie to have a fairly healthy plot structure. It needs to be pretty presentable after the single edit pass I’ve got time for.

So I tentpoled instead. (is this a verb? idk, but it is now). Tentpoling is where you identify the main plot points that the story hangs on, and then write towards each of those points as you draft organically. For example, you might know what event is going to kick everything off, a fun turning point or two, what the midpoint of your book is, the action climax, or the resolution. Knowing a few of those simple points can be enough to keep a draft moving in the right direction.

I don’t tend to do this because it feels a little too tied to traditional screenwriting story beats, which I don’t love. BUT I realised it could be a useful method in this case, to ensure I was never lost for what to write next & could keep my drafting momentum (and plot momentum) up.

Luckily for me, I’d written a fairly detailed synopsis as part of the proposal for this book, so with the help of that, this is what I did:

• For each point of view character, what are their start and end points (at ~5k and 160k)
• Where do they need to be at the midpoint (at 80k)
• Given those three plot beats, where do they need to be halfway between beginning and middle, and middle and end (at 40k and 120k)
• And given those, where does each character need to be between each of those plot events (at 20k, 60k, 100k, and 140k)

Obviously these are vague numbers and the events are incredibly scantily outlined. A plot beat isn’t going to happen exactly on 40k for each character, that’s impossible and weird. It’s also not all detailed, only the main bones are in place. But I now know, for roughly every 20k words of drafting, what should be happening with each character.

And given that I have four point of view characters, that’s actually every 5k words spent with each character. Which is roughly two chapters (I’m leaning short chapters in this book).

So for a very vague tentpole plan that is sketched across one page of my notebook, I now know what events need to be unfolding every time I sit at the laptop. It has taken a huge amount of pressure off and enabled me to maintain my planned drafting speed despite a bunch of Stuff requiring time away from writing.

There’s an important aside here, about health, sustained efforts and protecting yourself.

I cannot write every day. Sometimes I manage an hour before the pain levels get too high, sometimes I don’t manage anything. Other days I feel like I’m on a roll, but if I don’t stop at a reasonable time the next day will be a wash out, and maybe the day after. Maintaining this level of higher-than-normal effort depends very very much on me regulating my health as much as possible. That means not forcing myself to write when I can’t. It means stopping even when the words are flowing. It means, most importantly, forgiving myself those bad days and not turning them into a source of stress.

So that’s my process (for this book), what are more general suggestions?

Some people’s brains need the adrenaline of a deadline to kick into gear, some freeze, some are like me – I love a structure, and a plan, but it has to be gentle enough that the stress of the deadline does not make my health crash. A lot of setting writing goals for yourself starts with understanding your own brain and circumstances, and finding the structure that works for you. But a few strategies I’ve seen other people benefit from are:

• Don’t break the chain – for 50 or 100 days, try not to break the writing chain, whether you write one word or fifty or 3,000, put something down each day. The simple act of beginning generally means more than one word will materialise, and the practice of finding ten minutes a day can build into a habit.
• 100 x 100 – like the above, but aiming for 100 words a day.
• Time not words – rather than focus on word count, perhaps focusing on time spent writing is more useful for you. Whether that’s 20mins before work, an hour after the kids are in bed, three hours every Saturday… the amount matters less than the decision to demarcate that time off from other responsibilities & activities, and devote it to words.
• Accountabilibuddies – whether you have a formal critique group, a friend willing to nag you if you don’t email, or anything in between, having someone waiting on your next instalment of words can be a really good motivator for some people.
• Prompt challenges – these are less for getting a big project done, more for just getting the words flowing. Various places online offer regular writing prompts (or you could generate your own as I did here), which you can use to set yourself a challenge of, for example, writing a short story a month, or a flash a day.
• Not-NaNoWriMo – the month long writing challenge that was NaNoWriMo is no more, officially. But you and your writer friends can run your own. My writing community does this a couple of times a year, and people join in with their own targets – not everyone aims for the 50k words in a month original challenge. But by sharing daily progress, taking part in group sprints and cheering each other on, the communal push to write can be highly motivating and fun.
• No goals, just vibes. This article has been about setting goals because that’s what I need to do right now. But it’s absolutely okay not to set yourself goals. We all have a lot of other things going on, and unless you’re extremely lucky, writing has to fit around the margins so it doesn’t always help to make it yet another thing to do on the endless list of tasks. Sometimes you just need to let the words come when they come, and that’s okay. Unless you’re under deadline…

Whatever your goals with your creativity, good luck and may the inspiration be with you. And when I next return, I hope to report that I’m over the hill of Secret Book and well into the second half. Maybe I’ll even get to talk properly about Secret Book too!!

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Thank you as always for reading. Because accessibility in publishing is important to me, I keep all my craft and publishing posts free, so any shares or tips are greatly appreciated. And if you want to help me continue writing these things, please do also check out my paid subscriber tier, where I share behind the scenes book diaries. Wishing you a fabulous weekend.

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