❬Baby Steps
Before you can write a good book, you have to learn to write a good 500 words. And before you can do that, you need to write 500 words consistently, period. And you have to learn to finish a book before you can focus on writing a good book.
Great point by Chris. I spend way too much time tweaking, editing and re-planning already-written longer work that may never be salvageable (to my taste), rather than trying to create something new based on what I’ve learned.
Project for the year: force myself to write, regularly, in manageable ~500 word chunks, whether those turn out to be completed flash-fiction or just individual scenes or portions of scenes. I’m going to randomise the contraints for each to see if it shakes me out of my rut.
I’ll try to post those experiments regularly and maybe even add a shame counter to the site to track how badly I fail at it.