The Part Where the Plot Explodes

How do you distinguish between maintaining internal accountability and self-directed emotional abuse?

Spring break was supposed to be a watershed moment in writing my new novel, The Immortal Cobbler of New Palermo. Going into it, I fully intended to reassert the writing discipline I had developed during the Summer Break of 2023.

Alas, that did not happen.

On the third day of Spring Break---if we are counting weekends, which I do--- I generated 1400 words, and entered that figure into my log.

I keep a tracking document for each new major project in a Google Sheets form (that I'd be willing to share upon request), complete with a bar graph representing the projected words for the complete book and how much of it I've already written. A line graph also tracks how many words I write each day. The original purpose of this log was to create intrinsic motivation. Seeing the bar creep higher and competing with my past self to be more productive in the future turned out to be a great self-training tool as I attempted to finish my first full-length novel, Last Song of the Leviathan.

So, 1,400 is within Stephen King's tolerance of a day's work, as he has said he tries to output between 1,000 to 2,000 words on a productive day. When I first began tracking, this was an acceptable metric. At this point, however, I've found that my fast fingers can reasonably output 3,000 to 4,000 on a productive day, assuming about four hours of writing work. I say this to explain the relative disappointment I felt in the relative anemia of that first day's word count.

The second, an extreme reluctance to sit down to write possessed me. I fought it, opened the novel, and wrote 400 words. And that was it. Other impulses took over, and I obeyed their inscrutable dictates.

My internal monologue, even as it was happening, quickly turned caustic. You're giving in to procrastination, it said on the first day. Why are you playing The Long Dark when you should be writing? You're not even doing chores!

So, a kind of double insecurity began to gnaw at my resolve. The first insecurity sprung from. a failure of output, as I perceived it at the time. First, only 1,400 words. Then, a measly 400. What was wrong with me? Why wasn't I powering through?

Without context, it's too easy to side with one or the other of the two compulsions against which I simultaneously struggled.

First, it must be recognized that my own accusations of procrastination are the product of years of honest introspection. In other words, they weren't baseless self-abuse; they were rooted in a very real failure of character against which I have had to struggle my whole adult life. Work avoidance habits that I built as a youth have returned to haunt me as a man. When given a "teacher information" card to fill and post outside of my room, the most poignant there asked, "What advice would you give your younger self?" I answered honestly: "Learn self-management now before tendencies solidify into concrete habits." If we, by any metric, are defined by our impulses, then I am a procrastinator; I've proven it across years of repetition. So, my internalized admonitions cautioning me against returning to the destructive behaviors of my past represent valid concerns.

Alternately, there are factors to consider that I've not yet disclosed. First, I taught a rather intense unit on rhetorical analysis essay writing in my English classes before the break. As a genre of essay, my students had yet to confront, it represented a major hurdle for them. I found myself having to teach and reteach the same material nearly endlessly, not because they weren't listening but because their anxiety often prevented them from easily processing what I'd taught.

Further, with as much as I've already written, the novel is rapidly approaching its midpoint. Every novel I attempted before Last Song died upon reaching the midpoint. In listening to Brandon Sanderson's BYU lectures on Fantasy and Sci-Fi writing, he pointed out that this failure is common.

Now, I hasten to point out that the issues I faced with earlier works that caused this collapse are ones I've dealt with and believe I've largely overcome. Granted, I've only one completed novel to my name at this point and can be sure of very little, given such a limited track record, but what I am seeing with the numbers on Immortal Cobbler mirrors something that did happen with Last Song.

My shorthand for the midpoint of a novel: "It's the part where the plot explodes, and the rest of the book just rolls downhill from there." There's a certain momentum the writing gains from getting past the midpoint. The big thing happened, the problems are now compounding and intensifying, and the protagonist must either overcome or fall by the end.

Getting through the midpoint itself, though, represents quite the speed bump. Twice now, I've slowed dramatically upon nearing the 50% mark. I'm closing in on the BIG THING that will change the plot equation, and I must be careful the closer it gets. As I look back on my log for Last Song, I see that the writing pace slowed dramatically in and around the midpoint. There were days when I wrote only a few hundred words. Looking forward, however, it's obvious that my most productive days occurred post-midpoint.

So, I've been judging my output based on how my last book finished rather than how I was performing, confronting its midpoint. The self-directed guilt trip I've been on is based on an extremely limited view of my performance in writing my previous novel.

A day after my 400, I sat down and wrote another 1,400. It happened so smoothly; it was like tipping water out of a jug.

My point: there is a balance between keeping yourself accountable and recognizing the malleable nature of the creative process. One day's creation is not like another, and many factors govern your ability to output. If you intend to be creative, discipline drives projects; make no mistake. Mental recovery, however, and the flow of the phases of that same process must be recognized and respected. Sometimes a day off is what you need to push forward. Sometimes, your progress will be slow.

Many authors encourage momentum in their advice to new writers. I see no reason to contradict this view.

I would, however, like to point out that momentum absent calculation and control causes trainwrecks.