Update and a Game Plan

Since my last post, which I am ashamed to say was about a year and a half ago, I have come a long way in my writing career. I interned at The Oklahoma Gazette and was offered a paid freelancing position. I wrote the first draft of my police procedural novel, which currently stands at 70 thousand words. And I began a second internship at The Chickasha Express-Star, where I currently work.

Despite all of this progress, I still feel like I don't know what I'm doing. Even though I have days at the Express-Star where my brain slides into the familiar speed of writing, it still scares me to think that this is what I want to do with the rest of my life.

Other days, it's like pulling teeth. Phone numbers are no longer in service, sources are on vacation, and there's nothing in all of Grady County to take a picture of for the lead art. It's usually on those days, the days where I can read 100 pages of Anthony Doerr's All The Light We Cannot See, where I question myself.

In my opinion, it's a documented fact that doing new things is scary. As humans, we fear the unknown, even when we perceive the outcome to be positive. So much of journalism, and writing in general, is groping around in a dark attic looking for the pull cord on the single light bulb. And some days, you give up because it's just too hot in the attic. You climb down the stairs, fold them up, and push them back up into their place. And then, you pretend like the attic, it's stupid light bulb, and even the stairs to that annoying place don't exist.

But other days, the pull cord is right where it's supposed to be. And when you touch it, everything comes into focus. The sources call you back and have riveting things to say. You connect with this community on a new level and can come to understand something new about yourself or about humanity as a whole. You can see a difference being made. It's a difficult balance between these two types of days.

Even though the euphoric feelings that come with finding the light bulb give me positive reinforcement, I often pat myself on the back one-too-many times for finally finding the pull cord.

"Go take a break. You've done enough for the day," my inner voice tells me. "You deserve to pretend your finished novel hasn't been sitting untouched on your dresser for two months. It was an accomplishment just to finish it. Continue to revel in that fact, and don't worry about making progress."

For the past two months, I've listened to that voice. I had a lot of major life changes take place around the same time. I started going to the gym, not only to improve my health, but to find a time when my brain would slip into that familiar speed like when I write.

I got on here originally to make a novel game plan with the inspiration of a blog post from my previous teacher, Jennifer Lynn Barnes. In her blog post on revision, she explains that the four most important components of a book are language, world, plot, and character. Then she offers many questions to ask yourself about each of those elements during revision. I've got to start somewhere. So it might as well be here.


Revision Game Plan:
Character

• Develop character backgrounds

Plot

• Make every scene do more than one thing (language, world, plot, character)
• Break up chapters
• Add fingerprinting of suspects

World

• Describe each scene, character fully
• Do a pass to add emotion
• Add nuances of police/medical worlds
• Add presence of guns?

Language

• Remove extra dialogue tags
• Give each character individualized voice
• Make sure Sailor's voice is consistent
• Remove anything that doesn't NEED to be there