Back to blogging… maybe ;-)

Published January 21, 2012 | By Anthea

Reading about The Dan Plan has made me think about my own plan for this year, and how this blog might fit into it.

As I mentioned before, I’m trying to get a better grasp of longer forms of fiction than my usual 2000-5000 word short stories, and my chosen method is focused practice. I’m writing a long story each month, and trying to be aware of what I’m learning and where my challenges are as I go. It might be that blogging about that process would be interesting reading, or at least interesting writing.

So I’m going to try to be more consistent about posting – not snippets so much as progress reports, and thoughts on writing as I learn more and play with different ideas and approaches.

For today, for instance, I can talk about some thoughts I’ve been having this week:

Basically, in my usual short stories there is usually one complication in the character’s life, and one resolution by the end of the story. Singular incidents, generally without a lot of context or sophistication.

So for longer stories, there need to be more complications (which I find easy) and more resolutions. (which I think I’ve been missing)

I also tend to lose track of what the story is from day to day. I’m not entirely sure what will work for me to address that, but being aware of it as a weakness is the first step.