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.