Category: Craft of Writing (page 3 of 4)

In late July of 2004, I was in Copenhagen, Denmark on the tail end of a 10-week backpacking trip of western Europe. I had been traveling with two friends, but for the eighth week of the trip, we decided to go our separate ways. John went to Paris for the week. Stephan went to southern France. And I went to Copenhagen and Amsterdam, where I wrote my first flash fiction.

Struck with a Writing Idea

After having been with my two friends consistently for eight weeks, it was really nice to be alone. And since 2004 was a world where cell phones were really just phones and I didn’t have one with me anyway, I was truly isolated. The only method of communicating with my friends about how we would meet up again in Paris was for me to log in at an internet cafe to check my email.

With all this time on my hands, I wrote a lot. More than usual. I had been journaling at every stop along the way. I had written a number of poems during the course of my travels. But as I sat beside one of the small lakes in Copenhagen, I was struck with a different sort of writing energy. Unexpectedly, I had an idea for a story.

I pulled the gray spiral notebook out of my small messenger bag that I’d picked up in an East Berlin army surplus store. And I started writing. I didn’t know the term flash fiction at the time. In fact it’s not a writing style I’d even become aware of until more than ten years later. But what I started writing was flash fiction.

My First Foray Into Flash Fiction

I wrote the story out by hand in my notebook. I’d never written anything like it before. I didn’t really know where it came from or quite what to make of it. But I enjoyed writing it.

Over the next few years, I wrote a dozen or so other flash fiction stories. I’m going to share this first one with you, not because it’s good — it isn’t — but because it exists. In some ways, it is in the lineage of writing that has become the novel I am writing and the future novels that I hope to write.

I find it difficult to read the poetry and fiction that I wrote in my teenage years and early 20s, because it is so much different than how I write now. But I do have some appreciation for it as it is part of my writing evolution.

So without further delay (albeit still having some trepidation), here is my first flash fiction, “Children the Grass Grew”.

Children the Grass Grew (July 28, 2004)

The dog was barking. The dog never barked. Jim didn’t worry because the dog had never been a collie before either. The house was the same except for the plums on and around the tree; they hadn’t been there when he left for the institution one hundred seventy-one weeks ago. The leaves had just been budding then.

The doctor always worried because once a week another tick mark appeared on Jim’s arm signifying that another week had passed for Jim in the institution. The doctor often asked Jim about the marks, but Jim never seemed sure where they came from. This did not at all reassure the doctor. The doctor had any sharp objects removed from Jim’s room, but the marks continued to appear.

The green door was the same, and the shutters that matched. The grass seemed to have grown children who played in it. They seemed like such nice children. The grass must be very proud.

The boy and the girl watched Jim with as much wonder as he did them. Their games stopped as their memorization drew all their concentration.

No one had told Jim he had a problem. It didn’t seem to be important that he knew; the doctor was not even certain he was capable of understanding had he been told. Jim was very simple, simple and pleasant, mostly.

The shrubs were the same; maybe bigger, but definitely the same shrubs. What could the dog be so upset about on a day like this. It’s a very nice day, no day for a dog to be barking.

The day was an exceptionally mild eighty degrees Fahrenheit for east Texas in mid-summer. Boys were drawn to creeks as much as mosquitoes were drawn to the boy’s susceptible, uncaring bodies. Chasing grasshoppers and running from snakes were all part of the day’s agenda. The boys’ only concern was whether or not the cattle were lying on their sides, which according to all grandmas was definitely prophetical of rain. So goes an east Texas summer, the kind Jim remembered so well, so vividly.

Jim let himself into the yard through the waist-high wooden gate, remembering first to unlatch it from inside. Jim noticed that the grass-grown children continued to stare at him. Upon opening the front door by its brass-plated handle, Jim noticed that one of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons was playing. Jim loved Vivaldi.

The doctor always played the Four Seasons during his and Jim’s sessions. It had a way of soothing Jim while the doctor tried to open the recesses of his vaulted mind. He had yet to find the combination to that particular safe. Jim always became confused when the doctor asked questions he didn’t understand. And these questions were always asked.

Jim could never remember what happened after he became confused, but he always woke up in his white sheet-covered bed in restraints. The straps didn’t bother Jim because he could see out the window, and the hummingbirds were often on the feeders contending with wasps for the sweet red nectar.

Jim followed the music into the kitchen where he found his mother. Only, she didn’t look or smell like his mother. She had similar features, but she seemed different. And his mother had never screamed before when she saw him. His mother grabbed a kitchen knife and a nearby telephone. Jim was suddenly very confused and tried to stop his mother so that she would understand that he was her Jim.

The doctor was always kind to Jim and never became impatient at Jim’s inability to remember so many vitally important things when he seemed to remember every detail of other seemingly less significant things. When Jim occasionally inquired about his family, the doctor always avoided reminding Jim why they could not come to visit. Jim got along well with the other patients and was generally free to roam his ward. What the doctor could not understand is how Jim had walked out the doors without the staff noticing.  The doctor was frantic to find Jim before something happened.

The screaming sirens brought Jim to. He was in restraints again but this time in the back of a car rather than his bed. Red and blue light danced off the front of Jim’s house; he was enthralled in their beauty. Jim noticed the children, who were no longer staring at him, were not playing either. He thought they must be asleep; they were very still.

An ambulance arrived, and the crew, already informed of the situation, descended the vehicle hopelessly.

The front doors of Jim’s car opened. People climbed in. The doors closed. Jim smiled because he liked people, but the men in the front did not smile. The dog was still barking. Jim wondered about that.

About 75 minutes after my plane’s wheels had touch the ground in Denver, I was standing on top of a mountain. Clouds were spitting rain at me. Thunder clambered from storm clouds to my north and south. I had determined to put in a few miles of hiking, but the weather was determined not to cooperate.

Why was I in Denver in the First Place?

To properly tell this story, we need to go back to 1940. The United States was in the throes of the Great Depression. Europe was engaged in a war that would eventually entangle much of the world. And my 20-year-old grandfather, unable to find work in Iowa Park, Texas, enlisted in the Civilian Conservation Corp. He was sent to work at a camp near Golden, Colorado, about 20 miles west of Denver. While there, he helped build what would become Genesee Park, a part of the Denver Mountain Parks system.

Over the past couple of years, I’ve done some research to uncover all this information and dig up some documents that were in the National Archives. So while I was in Colorado for my conference, I wanted to see the park he helped construct.

Not just to satiate my curiosity and walk on the trails that my grandfather may have blazed, although that would have been enticement enough. But to add depth to my writing of his story. I wanted to walk where he’d walked, see what he’d seen, touch things he might have built.

What was the Purpose of My Pilgrimage?

I am writing a novel about my grandfather’s story. I’ve been working on it intermittently for the past couple of years. There’s far more to it that just his time in Colorado, and it’s a truly fascinating story. But I’m finding it very difficult to write. For many reasons, not the least of which is that I’ve never written a novel before.

I thought that traveling to one of the locations where the story unfolds would help add depth to my writing about it. It was certainly necessary to add authenticity to the events that occur at the CCC Camp. But what I was hoping for was a deeper connection, some emotional catalyst that would jump-start my writing.

Now I Have to Face a Hard Truth

Well, I got half of what I needed. Going to Genesee Park was helpful for filling in details about the landscape and the camp. It also forced me to mentally fess up to the truth that the reason I’m having such with writing this story is fear.

Fear that I can’t write fiction. Fear that it won’t be good enough. Fear that it won’t honor those who came before me. And the only antidote is just to write the story and let come what may. But that’s proving a lot harder than what it sounds like.

I had thought that traveling to Denver would add depth to my writing of this story. And I was right. I now know the sights, sounds, and smells of the places where my grandfather walked 80 years ago (except that I’m pretty sure he couldn’t hear I-70 in the distance). But I had also thought traveling would be the catalyst that pushed me to continue writing the tale.

About that, I was wrong. There’s more to overcome. It wasn’t a lack of knowledge holding me back; it was fear. And that is proving a little more difficult to overcome.

Over the last few years, I’ve discovered there are significant correlations between what it takes to succeed as a writer and a runner. Here are a couple of running principles to your writing practice to increase your likelihood of success.

Before going to law school, I was a high school teacher. During the fall, I coached football. In the winter, I helped with the basketball program. In the spring, I went to a lot of baseball games. And when on summer break, I framed houses or hung gutter for friends of mine. I was active. I was in my 20s. It was easy to stay in relatively good shape even though I didn’t do any real exercise.

Then I went to law school, where I became sedentary. I sat for endless hours, listening or reading. My weight started to creep up. By Christmas after my first semester, it was noticeable. I was self-conscious about it and unhappy. I started going to the gym with my wife to work out. It helped some, but I loathed working out at the gym. After several months, my wife mentioned she wanted to run a 5K. Neither of us had ever done any running before, but I decided I’d run with her. Anything to be out of that gym.

Little did I know I had traded one form of misery for another. We printed a couch-to-5K regimen and began our training. Going from no cardio to running 3 times a week is hard. Even when those initial runs consist of little more than running for 1 minute, walking for 30 seconds; running for 2 minutes, walking for 1 minute, and so on as you slowly build up your endurance. I did not enjoy learning to run … at all. But I did prefer being outside to being in that dreaded gym.

By the time I was able to run 3 miles, I had decided that I liked running. In fact I decided I wanted to run a half marathon. And 5 months later, I ran the Mercedes Half Marathon in Birmingham. Then I ran a few more races. The next year, my wife ran a half marathon with me at the Talladega Superspeedway. Running became an important part of my life over the next few years.

Then we had a kid, and I haven’t run regularly since. But I learned some important things along the way that I’ve found applicable to my writing practice.

Muscle memory is an asset

When you first start running, or even when you stretch yourself to run new distances, you don’t know what to expect. You hold back on your tempo and exertion levels because you don’t know what 3 miles or 6 miles or 13 miles feels like. But eventually you do it enough that when you set out to run a particular distance, your body knows what’s coming.

When I was conditioned well, I knew that running 3-4 miles at an 8:00 minute mile would give me a pretty good workout. I could cruise through 6 miles miles at a 10:00/mi pace and feel good afterward. Even though I haven’t run in … a while, I could go out right now and run 3 miles because my body still knows what that would take.

Writing requires the same training. If you’d told me in 2016 at the outset of my law blog, that I would write a 45,000 word book, I’d have found that hard to believe.

But I didn’t have to write a 45,000 word book all at once. I had to write 800 words on one topic, 900 words on another topic for months on end. It took me a while to find my writing voice, but once I did, everything fell into place much more easily. I trained my brain how to think in a particular way so that now, when I sit down to write about a topic, I have muscle memory I can rely on.

Even on days when I’m not feeling particularly inspired or nothing seems to be falling into place well, I can push through the resistance and get through the writing I need to do. This applies to legal writing, blogging, and creative writing. If you make a practice of writing regularly, you’ll find your brain is a finely tuned muscle that will respond upon demand.

Pacing yourself is the key

In 2012, I started running with my golden retriever. She loved it! Whenever she saw me getting my running shoes out of the closet, she would run around in circles, nipping at her tail and barking at nothing. But for all her love of running, that dog was terrible at pacing herself.

If we were going on a 4-miler, for the first half she was straining at the end of her leash, dragging me along with her. The second half of the run would find her lolling behind me, also at the end of her leash, but this time serving as an anchor rather than a propeller.

If you’ve got a big writing project ahead of you, whether it’s a short story or a novel, you need to allot plenty of time to get it done. Unless you’re well organized and in the regular practice of writing, you’re not going to be able to write multiple thousand words in a day like Jennifer Romig (of Emory Law School and Listen Like a Lawyer) did recently while working on her book.

Would like to announce: I wrote 7000 words today. #mybrainhurts

— Jennifer Romig (@JenniferMRomig) June 10, 2018

I can’t say that I’ve ever written 7,000 words in a day before. But a few weeks ago, I wrote 2,000 words on a travel day while bouncing around from one airport to the next. I felt pretty good about that.

When I proposed my book Building a Better Law Practice to the ABA, I pitched it as a 28,000 word book. They replied that they were interested in the book and liked the format, but would only publish it if it were 40,000 words or more. They wanted to know if I could do that within the next four months. I replied that of course I could do that. Never mind that it had taken me a year to come up with the first 28,000 words.

That conversation occurred on November 28. Knowing my January schedule was looking fairly rough, I figured out how frequently and how much I needed to write to meet my deadline. Then in the early mornings on weekdays and during nap times on weekends, I wrote. I had plenty of ideas in my queue, where I drop ideas as they come to me. And I knew that my schedule does not allow large chunks for writing time, so I had to be prepared and organized. And I had to pace myself.

Not only was there the additional 12,000 words (that become 17,000 words) to write, but there was also proofreading, editing, and re-writing to do … multiple times. I had a long row to hoe, and if I didn’t pace myself appropriately, I’d be lolling at the end of my leash, but with no one to pull me along.

The next time you set about on a large writing project, you’ll find it much easier to accomplish if you’re already in the regular habit of writing and you plan appropriately to get your writing accomplished.

In the summer of 2004, two friends and I backpacked Europe for ten weeks on a shoestring budget. Knowing this opportunity wouldn’t come again, I carried my camera with me everywhere. I burned through dozens of rolls of film. In fact, I only remember going out once without a camera. I remember it well because it haunts me.

We were staying at a cottage near Chamonix, France. Early one evening, as the light was beginning to falter, I began walking from the cottage to a pay phone a mile or so up the road. The day had mostly been rainy, but the sun had broken through and the clouds were beginning to dissipate. As I looked up at the mountains, a rainbow was reaching from one peak to another through the backlit, dusky mountains. It’s the greatest photograph I never took.

I hadn’t put myself in a position to take advantage of that opportunity as it presented itself. Likewise, if we don’t write book ideas down as they come it us, we risk losing the ideas altogether.

Write book ideas down or risk losing them

Last week, I had a dream in which I was writing a book that was a spy/private investigator thriller. In the dream I had written most of the book, I recall that I knew the entire plot. I woke up from the dream in the middle of the night, and I thought, “That’s a really good idea. I need to write that down … I’ll just write it down in the morning.” Then I rolled over onto my belly and went back to sleep.

By the time morning arrived a few short hours later. The details of the dreamed up book idea had left. In fact, I can remember nothing more specific than what I wrote above. Nothing has ever come back to me.

It’s unlikely that the book idea was as great as I thought in my sleepy state. But I’ll never know, it seems. Just like the photograph I didn’t take in Chamonix, this one’s going to haunt me for a while. If I’d just taken a minute to write my book idea down and make some notes on my phone, the tenor of this post could have been different. I may instead have been telling you about a great, new idea I’m working on.

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Photo by Pimthida.

I wrote recently about how we can use historical weather data to write more accurate historical fiction. But that is just one of many resources. For my project that is set in Texas in 1940, I’ve also used data from the 1940 census that the National Archives has released. And let me tell you, it is invaluable.

Historical Census data tells its own story

My project is based loosely on a terrible event in my family history – my great-grandfather killed his estranged wife and himself. In what will be a surprise to no one, this isn’t an episode that is readily discussed by members of my family. In fact, I don’t remember having even heard about it until I was an adult. The byproduct of that is that any details of the murder-suicide and surrounding events have been lost in the intervening years.

Fortunately for me, in 2012 the National Archives released the 1940 census records. Because of this available census data, I was able to learn who was living in the household within months of the tragedy, everyone’s ages, and the occupations of the adults. Below is an excerpt from the page that shows the data about my paternal family.

But not only that, there are also maps available that show the townships and other details relevant to the census. Particularly important is that the maps identify the census pages on which the data for various districts can be found.

You’ll have to be patient and have a good idea of where to start geographically to navigate the available information. It’s not always easily searchable. But it can be very rewarding.

Using Current Census Data to Inform Your Writing

Using census data from the U.S. Census Bureau can be an effective way to supplement your knowledge. The Census Bureau maintains available data about every city, county, and state in the country. And they make the information available to us on their website. Navigating this website is much easier than using census data from the 1940 surveys.

I haven’t yet used the modern census information in my creative writing, but I use it fairly regularly in my legal work. While the present-day census information is not at all personalized, it is valuable for other reasons. You can access data about populations, relative wealth, racial demographics, education levels, and much more about any state or municipality in the country.

Using census data for your writing becomes practical when you need to write about areas that you may not be intimately familiar with. For example, if you are writing about events that occur in both Madison County and Bibb County, Alabama, it would be important for you to know that Madison County (in which Huntsville is the county seat) is one of the fastest growing areas in the country and is relatively wealthy. Meanwhile, Bibb County has a stagnant population and is comparatively poor.

Accurately portraying distinctions like this can be difference is your writing being authentic or inaccurate. I am an advocate of using as many resources as possible to improve my writing. Of course, I’m accustomed to doing this for my historical and legal writing, but I’m still learning about all the ways historical records can improve my creative writing.

Having a new book idea is much like the kindling of a new romantic relationship. It usually starts unexpectedly and sometimes blossoms into something special.

Like with relationships, a new book idea starts with flirting

You’re sitting at a coffee shop doing some work between appointments. You’re minding your own business. Suddenly, you’re interrupted with a new thought. Maybe it’s amusing or entertaining or even darkly fantastical. You take some time to explore it and get to know it. This is the part where you’re just flirting with it, getting to know your new book idea. It’s new and fun, and it’s not long before you are searching for chemistry between you and the idea.

You know from past book ideas that (like new personal relationships) most aren’t going to be around for the long haul. So it’s not long after the idea initially strikes you that you begin to consider its viability. Is it an idea that has some real legs to it?

Then things start to get serious

Next, you and your new book idea are dating regularly. You know each other fairly well. You’re spending most of your free time together. Real quality time too, not just surface-level engagement. It’s here that the relationship is made or broken. You are undoubtedly going to find yourself dealing with psome rocky times. Do you love the idea enough to persevere? Is there a deep level of commitment? Or is it an idea that you’ve spent enough time with now to know it’s just not going to work out between you? And you cast it off to move on to the next idea.

If you decide at this point to overcome the obstacles you’ve run up against, your determination will likely result in a completed book project. The kind of relationship that exists for a lifetime.

Only time will tell whether it’s going to work out

I’ve had this cycle happen to me numerous times. It’s resulted in two booms that I’ve published, a few writing projects that are in various stages of production, and a few abandoned ideas.

A couple of years ago, I was struck with an idea to write about Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black’s extensive contributions to advocating the Bill of Rights. I had an angle on it, knew how I wanted to compile the information. I even started the research and spent hours gathering the documents I needed, finding additional sources to reference, and even mining the resources for content. But somewhere along the way, the spark went out of the project. I haven’t touched it in … a long time. I still like the idea. I’d like to write the book some day, but it’s not a priority. 

I have a half dozen other ideas that are more intriguing and pressing. Other ideas that came along afterward and drew my attention away from a project I’d become disenchanted with and wasn’t committed to any longer. 

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Photo by cloud.shepherd.

For a ten year period (from ages 16-26), I wrote a lot of poetry. For the better part of the last ten years though, that work has gone mostly forgotten and unread by anyone. That seemed like kind of a shame for all the time and energy I’d put into it for a quarter of my life. So I began toying with the idea of compiling and publishing all those poems.

Then last week, I went back and read a half dozen poems I wrote in 1998. I cringed at them, all of them. They were so full of teenage angst and melodrama. Oh, and they were terrible. So, so terrible. This shouldn’t be surprising (although it was – no one ever told me my poetry was terrible, but clearly they should have) since it was among the first poetry I’d ever written.

The immediate effect it had on me was more surprising: Is all my writing that bad? Will I look back at my first book, Building a Better Law Practice, in ten years and wish someone had just put me out to pasture? I have important messages to share with lawyers about having a successful law practice, but am I saying it in such a way that people wish they’d never learned to read in the first place rather than have to be subjected to that tripe?

I am not often plagued by self-doubt, but in that moment, there was a sudden and unremitting barrage of it. I’ve recovered … mostly (but man, was that some bad poetry. I feel like I need to send a letter to my high school literature teacher questioning why she never told me to stop subjecting her to such bad writing.).

Be careful before you go back and read your old writing. It may well be a minefield that does lasting damage. And if you do go back and discover to your horror what you’re responsible for creating, just operate under the assumption that the intervening years and experience have improved your output. That’s what I’m doing.

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Photo by Yaffa Phillips.

Fairly regularly, I’ll have an idea for a blog post, article, or even another book idea. But I’m not always in a position to act on it in the moment. Or maybe I’m too lazy to do so in other instances. When I can, I’ll make notes in my notebook I carry everywhere or in the Notes app on my phone. But I’ve found that if I don’t write while the muse is stirring, my opportunity is almost always lost.

There are times when what the muse sends me is a particular phrasing for something I’ve been writing. If I don’t immediately stop what I’m doing and write it down (or because I’m often driving to depositions and court appearances, dictate it into my phone), the wording will be lost and never recovered.

Elizabeth Gilbert wrote about this phenomenon in Big Magic. She tells the story of a poet who literally runs to her notebook and writes and entire poem backward, from the last word to the first, dragging it away from the muse, because the poem almost escaped her. It afflicts artists and writers of all walks. If you don’t strike while the iron is hot or write while the muse is stirring, she may take that idea elsewhere or allow it to dissipate into the ether.

I have blog posts sitting in my Drafts folder that have been there for months or even years. Some are partially drafted. Others have only a title. Here’s a peak into the Drafts folder for my law blog; I’ve worked on some of these articles within the last two months. The most orphaned of them has not been touched since November 2017.

When I set about writing them, they seemed like good ideas. But I stooped writing them for one reason or another. Usually, the interruption can be attributed to either work or family, as both require a great deal of care and attention, and receive a higher priority than writing. But then I didn’t immediately return to the idea. I allowed it to grow stale. And when I eventually got back to giving it some attention, the trail had gone cold. I couldn’t figure out what made it interesting in the first place.

There are times when you can power through. Recapture a bit of the magic that the muse had bestowed upon you. This is often necessary regardless – writing yourself into inspiration rather than waiting for it.

Then there are the times that you can never recover the initial idea. The spark has gone out of it. So the blog post or scene for a novel just sits there partially drafted, an indictment of something you abandoned and left to wither.

Make sure that when the muse does visit and offers you an intriguing scene, phrase, or big idea, that you act immediately. Do everything you can to preserve it, to protect the gift you have been given, and to fashion it into its best form. Write while the muse is stirring, or else she may take her wares elsewhere.

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Photo by David O’Hare.

At the urging of James Scott Bell in How to Making a Living as a Writer, I started keeping a word count log. I don’t need much encouragement to make a new spreadsheet, because that’s the kind of thing that speaks to me in a weird, nerdy way, so I did it.

And it has had an unexpected consequence. Guilt. When I go a few days at a time without having done any creative writing — it’s important that I distinguish between creative and legal writing, because while there’s no shortage of writing for work, it doesn’t count for these purposes — I feel a sense of conviction coming over me.

Make time for creative outlets

It can be difficult to make time for creative outlets when it’s only a hobby or a side hustle. I don’t anticipate that my books and writing projects will ever yield enough income that I can walk away from lawyering. Knowing that, some days I have a hard time forcing myself to engage in creative writing when I could instead be doing work that leads to additional income.

But I know the importance of making time for my creative outlets. I need to force myself to disengage from my billable work and recharge my batteries with some creativity. Even if I’m writing about some aspect of managing clients or improving my law practice, doing so activates parts of my brain that doing the work does. Creative writing reduces my overall stress levels and gives me a sense of fulfillment that work cannot.

We all need to step away from our jobs to participate in hobbies and creative outlets. Whether that is running, painting, or building model airplanes, our bodies need creative time to recuperate from the other daily activities of our busy lives. So when I’ve gone a few days without writing and start to think about how my word count log has gone a while without an entry, I know it’s time to put away my timesheet and open up a writing project.

Keep a word count log spreadsheet

I really wish I’d started a word count log three years ago when I first started my law blog. I could always go back and re-create it based on the blog entry dates and word counts, but that would be more time and effort than I’m interested in putting into it. I started tracking my word count on April 15 with a simple 3-column spreadsheet that tracks the date, word count on that day, and which project I wrote for. Here’s what the last three months have looked like for me (excluding the names of the projects since some of those are still in the early stages):

• 4/15 – 1238
• 4/17 – 1205
• 4/19 – 700
• 4/20 – 375
• 4/22 – 178
• 4/26 – 233
• 5/04 – 378
• 5/07 – 210
• 5/09 – 502
• 5/10 – 191
• 5/27 – 478
• 5/29 – 557
• 5/30 – 911
• 6/03 – 542
• 6/04 – 428
• 6/05 – 364
• 6/06 – 868
• 6/12 – 1270

You may have noticed, as I have, that my writing periods tend to cluster together. I’ll have several days within the 2-week period that I write fairly consistently. Then I’ll have a couple of weeks where the creative writing is sparse or non-existent. That’s been a fairly consistent pattern for me over the past three years. It is, of course, its own form of consistency. But it’s a far cry from the 500 words a day or myriad other daily writing habits propagated by Jeff Goins and other successful writers.

I console myself with the half-truth that this is the best I can do for now. But my word count log now stares at me, emotionless. Awaiting the next entry. So today, I get to add another 579 words to it.

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Photo by Ak~i.

When I started writing a novel, I began with the impression that I would be writing dialogue, action sequences, and the like. But I didn’t even get through my prologue before I realized my error.

Researching weather events may be important for your story

My novel is set in a specific time and place in the past. If I were going to have my characters traveling 130 miles by horse-drawn wagon in the winter of 1929 in northern Texas, I needed to make sure they could actually make that trip then. I found myself firing up the Google machine and researching weather to see what was happening. And it turns out a hard freeze and historic snowfall blew through Texas on exactly the dates I would have my folks traveling. Which is great! No sense letting your characters have any easy go of things.

Here’s what the National Weather Service tells us about that winter storm:

Snow began falling in western portions of North Texas during the afternoon hours of December 20.  Lightning and thunder accompanied the snow throughout the following night.  By daybreak on December 21, several inches of snow had fallen across Central Texas from Junction to Lampasas, northeastward to Palestine and Athens.  Clifton and Hillsboro had already accumulated 16 inches of snow by daylight that morning.  The heavy snow continued through much of the day, before tapering off during the late afternoon and evening hours.  By late evening on December 21, the snow was confined to far East Texas.

The storm lasted barely 24 hours, but the storm totals were nothing short of extraordinary.  A swath of snowfall in excess of 12 inches was 2 to 3 counties wide.  Along the axis of maximum depth, totals exceeded 24 inches, on par with the heaviest snowfalls in Texas history.

Weather events can provide progressive complications

Story Grid tells us to have progressive complications that keep things interesting for the reader. So I’ve decided to punch mine in the face right at the beginning with a death in the family and a major weather event. So I guess we’ll see how they respond. Mike Tyson is quoted as saying, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”

I got punched in the mouth when I started researching weather for the setting in my prologue. I had to adjust my plan for how the novel begins. My characters are getting punched in the mouth, and I don’t know yet what they’re going to do about it.

When I write my non-fiction, I expect to do extensive research. When I set out to write about Alabama’s anti-miscegenation laws and the prosecutions that resulted, I knew what I was in for. When I started writing the novel, I knew there were some things I was going to research, mostly places I haven’t been or what certain things were like during the Great Depression. But I hadn’t anticipated weather being one of my research topics. Maybe I should have. It just didn’t occur to me.

What I learned is that research can provide interesting wrinkles and obstacles for our characters to overcome, that we may not otherwise have thought of or had an opportunity to write about. Lean into the research. Embrace your findings, even if it throws you a hook when you were expecting a jab. Make the necessary adjustments, and keep plugging away at your story.

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I took this photograph on a stormy night in Lewisville, Texas in the summer of 2001.