So It Begins...

I kicked off my project Monday by sitting through the first lecture the Sanderson writing class.  Class number one was mostly a general overview.  He mentioned how writers are generally sorted into two groups, outliners and discovery writers, and that most writers actually use a combination of both approaches.  He touched on the three major aspects of a novel a writer needs to be cognizant of: character, setting and plot, and he talked about which writing approach typically lends itself pest to which major aspect.

So that may have seemed a bit rushed, but that is because I’ve actually watched other lecture series of his before and that is his typical Lecture 1 lesson plan.  So it was kind of expected.  Each year he covers those parts in Lecture 1 and then talks about expectations for the class and what the class goals are. 

These are the cool fresh parts each year.

He announces how long the writing project needs to be in this part.  One year it was a 50k word novel, one year it was a 25k word novelette, and a couple years he focused more on novella length works.  This year with the word count minimum being 35k words, he’s going for the novella again.  I was pretty excited because I was leaning toward a novella for this project anyway.

For those who aren’t entirely sure about what the difference between a novella and a novel is, it’s basically length and depth.  When I mention depth, I don’t mean it’s just a simple fluffy piece.  They generally just skip all the subplots that come in long novels and focus on really intensifying one plot.  There are also fewer characters, so the writer really focuses on making the few that do make the cut for the story as unforgettable as possible.

This is actually pretty perfect for newer writers in my opinion.  I’ve mentioned before that one of the biggest contributors to my massive failures in previous projects was that they got too big and ran away from me.  By doing a novella I can really knuckle down and get some decent practice while I’m working.

Sanderson also frequently compares writing to playing a piano or a sport, and the way he explains it makes total sense.  People don’t wake up and decide they’re going to play the piano and book a concert at Carnegie Hall, and Michael Jordan didn’t just decide he was going to play for the Bulls and be the best basketball player ever.  It takes work, and people sometimes forget that writing is a skill and a craft that needs to be honed.  Sanderson wrote 12 novels before he was ever published.  That’s a lot of practice that has paid off.  He’s pretty damn good.

He also gave a timeline of how long it typically takes a writer to develop enough to make a living writing.  There are “lottery winners” who can do it in less (Sanderson openly admitted he himself won the lottery), but the timetable he gave was 10 years.

It is important to realize that 10 years is 10 years of working at it.  Because I wrote a few blog posts in August of 2016 and started a novella derivative of The Dresden Files does not mean that 40-year-old Sean will be scheduling book tours in August 2026.  As cool as that would be, it’s not realistic.  Ten years sounds like a long time, and that may not be something I really wanted to hear, but it’s something I needed to hear.  Maybe because I started a blog and a fun urban fantasy novella and continued with the blog and continued writing and continued developing new ideas, might mean I hit it big when I turn 40.    I’d be totally cool with that.  And think!  You dedicated followers of the blog could be all hipster and tell everyone that you were reading Sean Schooley way back when he was a cop in Liberal, KS in 2016. 

He also gave the word count minimum for his select few students in his workshop.  They’re going to be responsible for finishing about 2000 words each week.  I’m watching these lectures -- from now on, I’m just going to refer to it as taking the class – every other week, so I’m going to shoot for 2000 words every two weeks for now for a very important reason.  The Day Job.  I still have 12-hour shifts to work, court to go to, on-call schedules and callouts, and other less glamorous work stuff I have to sincerely devote time to.  It’s a fun job and a very valuable resource for cool fiction stuff.  I love and respect my job and the people I work with, and it wouldn’t be fair to allow this project to hamper my performance and reliability.  The good news is, with long 12 hour shifts comes more days off.  And I have scheduled plenty of writing and research time on those days off.

So 2000 words to be completed every other week is totally doable. 

September 5^th is the next day I’ll be “attending” class, but don’t worry.  You won’t have to wait a week and a half for another blog post.  I’ll keep on working on other cool stuff to post along with these class and project updates.  And as the project proceeds I’ll have more to talk about concerning the story as opposed to just paraphrasing class.  Lots of cool things to come.

So What is the Book About? (Big Project Post #2)

Now that we know the content for the majority of the blog will be following along as I write a book, I’m sure you are thinking, “Gee, Sean, what is your book going to be about?”  Well, dear readers, I’m very excited to announce that I’ll be writing an urban fantasy book about a police officer who happens to be a necromancer.

As long as I’ve been making up stories, I’ve gravitated toward fantasy.  I remember being a little kid and sitting next to my older sister telling fantasy stories I made up as she practiced her typing skills and pretending to be a knight as I walked around our farm wielding an aluminum tent pole as a sword and a cardboard shield hunting for dragons.   (For those of you thinking, "But Sean, there are no dragons in the Oklahoma panhandle," you're welcome.)  Fantasy has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember, and I've always dreamed of writing a fantasy novel that I can share with others. 

I have attempted a bigger fantasy story in the past when I tried to do NaNoWriMo several years ago and was quickly overwhelmed by the immense scale of the project.  It was quite an ambitious project and I jumped into it without much planning.  Needless to say it didn’t get finished.

I’ve also done the outlining for an urban fantasy project about a police officer who dies and becomes a guardian angel who investigates demons and other nasty stuff.  I figured that as a police officer, I could bring some interesting things to the story to flesh out that side of the main character while adding the cool supernatural stuff along the way.  The most frequent response I got from friends when I told them that idea was, “Oh cool, so it’s like RIPD?”  I haven’t seen that movie but evidently it wasn’t the cool unique story I had envisioned.  My enthusiasm for that project deflated pretty quickly after that.

A little while later I was listening to a Writing Excuses podcast where several of the writers strongly advocated writing derivative stories when you’re starting out.  As fate would have it, I also just finished the fourth book in the Dresden Files series (which was awesome).  So I decided I’d take the idea of using a police officer as the main character and making him a necromancer.  It’s totally different than a private investigator who is a wizard right?

I was instantly excited about the possibilities that started flying out as I started brainstorming.  I particularly liked the idea that an officer of the law would have to deal with the moral dilemma of being someone who seeks justice and wants to protect people while also using a type of magic that is generally regarded to be unwholesome and evil.

The two main things I am focusing on most as I work on this is finishing the story and creating an engaging main character.  I’ll work on the magic system and world building as I go, but this round I’m really going to work on character creation.  My long-term goal is to actually make a trilogy with this character and focus on making significant improvements each time to different aspects of the writing process.   First, I’ve got to get this book finished, and I’m excited to bring you all along with me.

Big Project (Post #1)

Last post I mentioned a big project I am working on and promised to give more details in another post.  Well, friends, this is that post. 

I will be attempting (again) to write and finish my first novel/novella.  Right now the plan is to aim for a novella, but depending on how things progress I might get a little more ambitious with the project.  I’ve started two different novels and have gotten lost, and I have outlined and brainstormed many, many more stories.  However, I have never been able to put everything together and actually get a large project finished.  This was actually very discouraging and I allowed that feeling of disappointment to fuel excuses for why I haven’t written much in the last couple years.   There were other personal and professional reasons (both positive and negative) that also got in the way to a small degree, but ultimately it was the fact that I allowed myself to believe I wouldn’t finish a project to prevent me from pursuing any over the last couple years.

Well, I’ve told those silly negative voices that they are no longer needed, and the enthusiasm for writing was happy to return to the forefront of my creative mindset.  Now that I got the attitude and enthusiasm back, I needed to sit down and think about ways to set myself up for a more successful outcome.  That is where my favorite author Brandon Sanderson comes in.

If you have read through some of the earlier posts here, you probably noticed that I am a big Brandon Sanderson fan.  Whether it’s his writing or his lectures that are posted on YouTube, I tend to fan-boy out where he’s concerned.  A few weeks ago I noticed his newest semester of writing lectures have started to be posted.  I’ve noticed that each semester his class differs slightly with some new info being presented each time.  I have used incredible will power to keep from diving into that series of lectures.  The plan is to write my novel/novella along with his lectures as if I were a student in his class.

His classes tend to be about an hour’s worth of lecture that he posts online and then workshops with writing groups that are done off camera.  I’ll work on keeping up with his class and meeting the word count requirements that he requires for each lecture.  The plan is to watch the lecture on my Mondays off (every other Monday) and work toward the word count and focus on the content he covers in that lecture. 

That gives me two weeks to hit a very reasonable word count requirement before each new lecture.  Early on in the process that will give me time to get flustered and then recover, gather my thoughts, and power through.  Starting is always a little intimidating, so having time to build up momentum will help a lot.  As I progress with the book and get into a groove, that extra time can be used to go back and work on some revisions or to blaze ahead toward the final word count goal.

I’m planning on writing at least one blog per lecture period about how things go with the writing process.  I’ll give a brief synopsis of the lecture and list a few goals I hope to achieve over the next couple weeks.  The next blog will include the same info plus whether or not I was able to accomplish what I wanted to the previous couple weeks.

I’m excited for this plan.  By following along an actual class and by posting about it, I feel like I can keep myself accountable and also keep with the project all the way through without getting frustrated and stopping to plan a new project.  That typically is where I run into trouble. 

I'm Back...Again

It seems my blog is turning into a blog about restarting my blog.  Let's see if we can keep this one churning out content for a longer streak this time.  Who knows, maybe we'll keep it up indefinitely!

Last time seemed to go a little better than the previous attempts, so I've decided to keep a couple of those posts on the page.  The posts that survived the purge (if deleting two posts can be qualified as a purge) did so because they still fall into framework of what I want this blog to be.  I enjoy writing, and I enjoy sharing my passion with others.  So if I get to meet more cool writers, I'll share that experience.  If I read any books that really taught me something, I'll share my thoughts on those.

I probably won't be sharing any short stories or flash fiction samples this time around, but that is mostly because I'm currently working on one big project that is going to take me a while to do and I want to focus on that rather than stop any momentum I gain by shifting focus back and forth between short stories and the novel.  I will share updates on how the project is going and talk about what I feel is going well and what I feel is particularly weak.

Along with the cool miscellaneous writing/reading adventures I'll post about, the major focus will be sharing the process I go through as I attempt to write my first novella.  

I'll do another post later with some more details on the big project and how I'm going to be bringing you along with me on the journey.  I'm still fine tuning some of the logistics of it and doing some pre-writing, but I'm really excited for it.  I'm looking forward to learning a lot from the experience, and sharing my journey with you.