Here There Be Promises: Writing Goals for Q4 2023

That time of year, again. Sharing more good ol’ goals. And, actually, if you look at the date on this post, it’s a little past that time of year, but the Post Your Goals On Time Police rarely patrol these parts, so we should be safe.

I’m not sure if I’ll continue to post goals in 2024, but I’ll likely continue creating them in the Reminders app. I have thoughts after four quarters of sharing them in this journal, and those thoughts should come early next year here.

For now, let’s take a look at last quarter.

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If you remember, I decided to focus on fewer goals and wholly concentrate on writing. I mostly succeeded, although I chatted with friends and jotted notes about some design projects, but that was about it.

My main goal was to complete the third draft of the LS (formerly TLS) novel manuscript. I did, but I was a little behind the deadline. I landed in mid-September rather than on August 31. I then jumped into the fourth draft, because there were enough spots with new content that I wanted to edit, before shipping the story to beta readers.

I also spent a bit of time sending stories to publications and queries to agents. I usually send one, sometimes two, a week. The amount of time spent researching where to send manuscripts and tailoring queries still surprises me. Maybe there’s a more efficient method, but from what I’ve heard from others, it seems par for the course.

As to my goal of connecting with more writers on social media, that one is in a weird place. Twitter was my go-to, but I’m finding it harder to stumble on posts from writers and other creators I follow. Plus, my posts feel like they’re barely registering with the new X algorithm gods, which is frustrating. Imagine a shrug emoji here.

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For Q4, October, November, and December, expect more of the same from last quarter with slight variations:

• Finish the fourth draft of LS by December 15.

• Send the fourth draft to beta readers by December 31.

• Start a short story or nonfiction piece by December 16.

• Send stories and pitches weekly to new publications and agents.

• Connect with writers on:

  • Twitter / X / Whatever it’s called when you’re reading this.

  • Discord

  • Writing Meetups

• Reassess the social networks I’m interested in using by December 31.

Again, for reference, here’s how the goals look in the iOS Reminders app. I track them there. Some missing from this screenshot are related to personal health and other life goals.

Feel free to share your goals for the quarter, too, if public declarations help you hold yourself accountable.

Happy storytelling.

Here There Be Promises: Writing Goals for Q3 2023

Apparently, Squarespace has an AI feature that helps people write. Always curious to toy with new tech—even if I don’t intend to continue using it—of course I tried it. I asked it to sum up my goals from Q2. And according to AI, I spent a lot of time “taking online courses and attending webinars, which significantly enriched my knowledge base.” I absolutely did none of these, so my guess is the AI is summarizing another me from the multiverse, and this other me has a much vaster “knowledge base” than me. Go, other me.

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Y’anyway, time to look at how Q2 panned out, and where I’m heading in Q3.

If you ignore some of the deadlines, I hit a number of my goals.

• I journaled about writing with a CDA in mind.

• I wrapped query edits with an editor.

• I restarted sending the novel manuscript to agents, along with a picture book manuscript.

• I wrote an unplanned sci-fi/fantasy poem and sent it to publications.

That said, I missed my big goal. I failed wrapping the third draft of my TLS novel manuscript. There are a few reasons.

• The query edits took longer than I expected.

  • I stressed about the query and overwrote it, which took a lot of time away from working on the newest manuscript.

• I began work on some of my design stretch goals, which often sent me down rabbit holes of research.

  • And I did not finish these stretch goals, once I noticed how much time they were eating up.

• See the “unplanned sci-fi/fantasy poem” note above.

I am a little bummed about not finishing the third draft of the novel manuscript, but I understand why, and I don’t regret putting extra time into my query; the query is often your first interaction with someone you hope will fall in love with your story, and you want to ensure the write-up best represents your work and youself. I do wish I had pushed off some of the design work, but at least I better understand the scope of those projects, and I am not making them stretch goals this quarter.

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This quarter is all about wrapping the third draft and sending stories. So my goals for July, August, and September are:

• Finish the third draft of TLS by August 31.

• Start the fourth draft of TLS or a short story or nonfiction piece by September 1.

• Send stories and pitches weekly to new publications and agents.

• Connect with writers on:

  • Twitter / X / Whatever it’s called when you’re reading this.

  • Discord

  • Writing Meetups

And that’s that. I’m focusing on fewer things this quarter, and every focus is about writing. In theory. I’m sure I’ll get distracted by the odd design idea here and there, maybe another unplanned writing project, but as long as I enjoy them, I won’t be too upset.

For reference, again, here’s how the goals look in the iOS Reminders app, where I track them—minus some of the personal health goals, which are mostly about stretches, biking, traveling, and dealing with some chronic pain.

Feel free to let me know if and how you set goals for projects—and share them if public declarations help you hold yourself accountable.

Happy creating.

How to Tell a Story With a Central Dramatic Argument

If you read my goals for this quarter, you know this entry is a few days late, but life (and other writing projects) happen. On we go.

Some time back, my favorite writing podcast, The Bestseller Experiment, mentioned writing with a Central Dramatic Argument in mind. The concept comes from writer Craig Mazin (Chernobyl, The Last of Us, et cetera). On Scriptnotes, the podcast he hosts with John August, he dedicates an episode to discussing how the Central Dramatic Argument (referred to as CDA hereafter) works, and how story structure actually stems from CDA.

You can listen to Mazin’s thorough explanation on YouTube, and below are notes from my listen. Let’s get into it.

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The most basic tl;dr version of writing with a CDA in mind goes like this:

Hero believes something (the opposite of the CDA). An incident occurs that makes Hero question that old belief with a new belief (the CDA). Hero fights to maintain old belief, while more incidents occur that challenge the old belief. An incident occurs that makes Hero mostly give up on old belief, but Hero cannot accept new belief. Hero feels lost. Another incident occurs that will allow Hero to reclaim old belief, but Hero leans into the newer belief through action.

The end.

Now, for a Choose Your Own Adventure moment, if you would like additional notes on Mazin’s talk, read on; if you feel you learned enough and want some music to write to, check out the playlist I put together for my current manuscript.

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One of the most important quotes Mazin gives is, “Structure is a symptom of a character’s relationship to a Central Dramatic Argument.” Said another way, a story’s structure is dictated by how a character views the CDA, and the structure is only there to enhance that relationship.

So what exactly is the CDA? You could also call it the theme, but it’s not just a broad word like love. It’s an argument that answers the question: What is the story about? The answer to this does not need to be earth-shattering. It can be a universal truth, but it must be an argument. Consider, instead of “love,” a story might be about, “If you love someone, set them free.” This is Mazin’s example, and it is a statement that you can argue for or against; you might also call this a thesis.

Side note: CDA typically comes after your idea, not before. You will likely get excited about an idea, and then need to figure out what it’s about, maybe even writing a full first draft to reach a final realization.

With the CDA in mind, Mazin says the purpose of the story is to take a character from ignorance (believing the opposite of your thesis, aka the antithesis) to embodying the thesis through action.

Here’s a traditional story structure that might form from writing with a CDA:

Act 1

1. You begin with a main character (MC) in their usual world and life. Their life exemplifies the antithesis. They are actively trying to maintain their antithetical belief and not progress their life in a new direction (toward the CDA).

2. An incident related to the CDA/thesis disrupts the MC’s life. This incident essentially destroys the MC’s current, static life in a meaningful way.

3. The MC strives to get their old life back, because the MC has real fears about losing that life—the MC has done a lot in life to avoid experiencing the fears brought on by the CDA. The audience will empathize with the fears.

Act 2

1. The MC reinforces their antithesis by struggling against new and worsening incidents that represent the CDA. The MC is fighting their fears, wants their old life, their “security blanket,” back. The world should seem to oppose the MC.

2. Something related to the CDA happens that causes the MC to doubt the antithesis. Perhaps the MC does something, or sees someone do something, that makes them experience the CDA in a good way.

   1. Remember, your MC is rational. They can see value in other ways of life.

3. Midpoint: the MC questions their old beliefs, even if they do not fully understand the CDA.

4. Dramatic reversal: the MC leans into living the CDA, but then their fear about it comes to fruition (as a writer, Mazin says, you’re lowering the MC’s defenses and then punching them in the face). This should be one of the worst things to happen to the MC, and it should be seen as ironic that just when the MC leaned in, they are punished.

5. Low-point: the MC now doubts antithesis and thesis. They feel trapped and lost.

   1. The MC’s goal to return to their old life is gone, but they fear going toward the new goal. The audience should be able to empathize with feeling lost.

Act 3

1. Defining moment begins: the MC has the chance to face their worst fear, the fear that made them want to stay in their old life. This moment will prove, or disprove, if the MC can embody the CDA.

2. Right before the defining moment happens: the MC has the option to return to their old life. This allows for temptation (if you watched The Last of Us, you can see Joel plainly experience this). If the MC can, they will reject the temptation through an extraordinary action.

3. Defining moment ends: the MC either succeeds or fails, but they hold onto new belief (unless you’re writing a story about failing to change).

4. The ending: to show a meaningful contrast, the final scene should mirror how the MC was introduced, but the MC now lives and acts based on their new belief (again, unless you want to show a failure to change).

And a last note: to create the most tension and empathy, Mazin recommends regularly asking where your MC is on their journey between the antithesis and thesis (CDA), and then doing the meanest thing you can to the MC in that moment, until the MC is left with no belief. That will make the story that much more engaging, and the ending that much more impactful.

Ever used the CDA or plan to? I’d love to hear about it on Twitter or in the comments.

A Writing Interview With a Manuscript Pitch

I recently had the privilege of chatting with author Mark Stay on one of my favorite writing podcasts, The Bestseller Experiment. We briefly discuss why I joined the Bestseller Academy for a spell, how it surrounded me with a much-needed creative community, and we talk about my finished novel manuscript. He also reads a pitch for the manuscript that I’ve begun querying, which is beyond thrilling to hear. The chat happens at the end of episode 417, but I recommend giving the entire episode (and all of them) a full listen. The podcast is filled with gems of writing advice, inspiration, and welcome ridiculousness.

A Note About the Time I Failed to Quit Writing

This entry turned out longer than expected. I had planned to write about a small piece of good writing news, but I found that the backstory was relevant, and important for me personally, to jot down. So here we go.

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Once, before I understood query letters and the amount of effort required to edit a novel manuscript, I wrote and sent a manuscript to agents. Unsurprisingly, I received rejections and few responses. That was well over a decade ago.

Time passed. I learned more about the craft, and I wrote short stories, poems, novel manuscripts, and picture book manuscripts. A handful of short stories and poems were published, and about nine years back, an agent showed interest in one of my queries. While I was thrilled to be chatting with the agent, my life outside of writing was less than stellar. I had been making small-sized, medium-sized, and glorious-sized mistakes, as one does, and after a particularly glorious mistake that left me quite sad, I decided to quit writing. Cold turkey. I closed all of my files—almost deleted them—and I stopped sending the agent work. I believed writing was distracting me from dealing with my troubles, even causing them in some instances, and I became determined to build a stabler life of fewer mistakes.

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Before I quit writing, I had followed the misguided idea that, if you wanted a career as an author, everything else in life—work, relationships, travels—had to be secondary, and a distant second at that. It did not matter if you found yourself living paycheck to paycheck and emptied your savings, as I mostly did; it did not matter until it did, and I wound quitting one of the things I loved most.

So, when I decided to build the aforementioned stabler life, that primarily meant finding steady work to support myself. I devoted myself to this endeavor, and having little experience in anything but making things up, I applied to nearly 100 openings. This earned me a handful of phone interviews and two in-person interviews—one of which I followed up with by mailing a Thank You postcard, except I mailed it back to myself, and the second of which I forgot my umbrella at. Perhaps because of a successful George Costanza maneuver, the latter hired me as one of two customer service agents at a travel tech startup. The entire application experience became a great reminder that, despite rejections, it only takes one yes.

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I succeeded at not writing creatively for a year. Yay, me. However, ideas for stories and the desire to write never left, so I eventually allowed myself to restart—more like caved into restarting—but not without restrictions.

No longer would I write daily; no longer would I write for more than 30 minutes a session; and no longer would I write when friends invited me to events. I would have complete control over this creative outlet that I “once” loved, that had felt innate to me since I discovered it, and I set off, believing that I was happier when writing took a backseat to everything else. Having hindsight, I guess I enjoy spinning yarns to myself about my life, as much as I do about my characters’ lives.

Unsurprising to most reading this, my restrictions crumbled, but the breakdown was slow. Writing every few days became writing every other day became writing every day. A half hour of writing turned into an hour turned into two. Accepting most invites dwindled to accepting several dwindled to accepting some. What prolonged the collapse was my job. Focusing on building a career at the startup provided a wonderful distraction.

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I enjoy my day job, and as mentioned earlier, I had little “professional” experience when I started. Since finding stability remained important to me, I dove into the work, treating the startup like college courses: I asked questions about everything, sat in meetings I barely understood a word of, asked to read business proposals, and worked nights and weekends to brainstorm and pitch my own ideas for the company. I heard, “No,” a lot at first, but thankfully I stuck to the notion that it only takes one person saying, “Yes.” Through all of this, I learned customer service, social media and email marketing, business development, partner relations, coding, product design, and more. My intense immersion lasted for about five years, before my body forced me to listen to my inner voice, the one telling me to write more; I say “forced,” because I developed a few physical health issues from stress, rarely allowing myself time to relax and do more of the things I loved—whereas I had once sacrificed too much for writing, I was now sacrificing too much for work.

Moving with the speed of the Tortoise, I began rebuilding my writing habit and confidence. After I had some shorter works published, I set myself the goal of writing another novel manuscript. This was in 2019, and in the blur of a month and a half, I hammered out the first draft of a story that I had been afraid to write; some of the themes frightened me, as they were too related to past mistakes, small-sized through glorious-sized. Typing, “The End,” was cathartic, and I believed I could rewrite, edit, and finish the novel within six months. Three years later, after typing, “The End,” on the final draft, talk about over promising and under delivering. What I failed to take into account were all of the bad writing lessons I had to unlearn, how many good lessons I had to learn, how much doubt from inexperience would impact me, and let’s not forget the pandemic, which really strong-armed me into focusing on my health.

All that said, while the project took longer than expected, I am overjoyed to say that not only did I wrap up the manuscript, I also queried a handful of agents last week. It feels surreal. It feels like I set out to climb a dragon-infested mountain, took numerous detours out of fear, but ultimately scaled to the top, because that is who I am. A writer. Since I first began writing, a few people in my life mentioned that I was a writer first, and whatever else I was doing second—even at my current job—and I am willing to accept that, again, albeit by also recognizing that I can be and am other things too; balance is a quality I’m constantly trying to improve. I will be packing all of the lessons I learned into my writing backpack, as I climb the mountain of my next novel manuscript, one I am excited to begin this week.

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As to why any of this matters, why it was important for me to write a shortish retrospective, one of the newer, most important lessons in my backpack is to not fear failure. This includes not sweeping failures and mistakes under the rug. Whenever my confidence sank while writing the novel manuscript, I found myself emboldened to continue by listening to other creators discuss the struggles they overcame—many of these conversations can be found on The Bestseller Experiment podcast, which I will endlessly plug. Their stories reminded me that we are all human, sometimes orderly, sometimes messy, and for every beautiful thing we make, there are often beautiful disasters in their wake. Success is simply fewer mistakes, is simply perseverance, is simply a single yes away. I hope to add my voice to this conversation and inspire other creators, who find themselves stuck or beginning to stray.

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Thanks to everyone who supports and supported me, directly or indirectly. I hope you enjoy the stories to come.

200 Words a Day Challenge

If you follow me on Twitter, you might have seen me tweet with the hashtag #200wordsaday. This comes from The Bestseller Experiment’s 200 Words a Day Challenge.

The basic premise is this: the best way to learn to write is to write consistently. Consistency builds habits, making what can feel like a chore—such as forcing yourself to sit in front of a screen and poke at a keyboard on a nice day—more like an everyday routine. So, if you’re struggling to build a writing habit, set a smaller writing goal that takes less time to complete, such as 200 words a day—which typically takes around 10–20 minutes, give or take, depending on your draft.

What a lot of people see from setting this goal is that they often surpass it; they unexpectedly end up sinking their teeth deeper into what they’re writing, and they become oblivious to opening their jaws and letting go. And on days when they do the bare minimum 200 words, they still feel good, because the challenge helped them with one of the most important parts of writing. It got them closer to finishing.

Back to the hashtag. Part of the 200 Words a Day Challenge is using the official website to document how much you write each day. This helps you stay accountable. Once you add your word count—I set a daily reminder—the Challenge recommends you tweet how much you wrote. This celebrates the work you did, encourages others to do the same, and it promotes the challenge to other writers—a hat-trick of benefits.

You can learn more on their site, or by listening to the Bestseller Experiment’s podcast, where they regularly mention the wins writers had from the challenge.

Happy writing.

A Smidge of Writing Advice

“Write what grabs your heart. Write what you care about.”

That’s it. That’s the advice. If you want to stop reading there, know that’s one of the best pieces I have, and the following is general thoughts on writing advice.

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There is a bottomless well of writing advice out there. A lot of it good, but a lot of it contradictory. Here’s why.

What works for one person may not work for the next. Tell one writer to write every day, and they will form a habit. Give another writer the same guidance, and watch them freeze up from stress. Tell a third to write in bursts with extended periods of non-writing between, and they will give you a novel in weeks. Give a fourth that same guidance, and watch them lose interest to a world of distractions.

No single piece of advice exists to improve everyone’s writing. Your best bet is to consider most that comes your way, try it for yourself, and figure out what makes you more productive and, hopefully, what makes you enjoy the work even more.

Regarding “Write what grabs your heart. Write what you care about,” this works for me, because no matter what happens with the writing—whether it’s published, sits in a forgotten file, inspires more ideas or none—I never feel like I wasted a word. And more often than not, that can be enough.