Tag: #writing

Story Stains: An Idea forms

For the last month or so I've been working on Story Stains, an app to help analyze stories and find out how they tick.

The past year or so I've been attempting to write my own stories and in this journey I've learnt the necessity to understand how they work. First, from a course on writing I took from Faber, and secondly from multiple 'how to write books'. I've written freeform reviews, structured reviews with template headings of 'Characters', 'Setting', 'Theme', 'Mood', 'Pace', and attempted to make a questionnaire: 'What are the main themes?', 'Do any of the Characters of objects represent a concept?', 'Who is telling the story?'. None have the techniques have quite stuck.

I often also lose patience for journaling. For a month or two, I enjoy writing long monologues on my thoughts and feelings, but at some point I usually get tired of it and find myself unwilling to face the blank page again. Something I've been more consistent with is Daylio. A mood journal and habit tracker. It has a cute interface for quickly noting what you did and your mood. It's restrictions are helpful to pigeonhole your thoughts.

Another 'How to write book' is 'A Swim in a Pond in the Rain' by George Saunders where he takes you by the hand in story analysis with Russian masters. In his newsletter he continues this vain, if you're into reading or writing I wholly recommend it. The structure of analysis is: He will publish a story and close comments to have a first impression of the story. After we write how we felt during the story, but don't write why. A second impression, we try and figure out why we felt that way. That he admits himself is it, that is how you learn to write great stories.

That's the inspirations behind Story Stains, and what I hope to accomplish. A way to get a first impression of a story with a simple mood tracking interface, which you can then try to understand why you felt like that.

Sit in the chair

You've got to sit in the chair.

For the past year, I've been trying write a good book. At first, I tried without external help. No teacher, no course, no writing group. Me and the blank piece of paper. I found it gruelling. I got better. I wrote four or five short stories and the first twenty thousand words plus of two books, which sounds like a lot to me now. Now that I realise how hard it is. But back then, it felt like failure.

So I relented, I let go of my ego and looked for a more structured form of learning. In the end, I went with an online writing course run by Faber. I learnt a lot. I wrote a lot. And I met people in the same situation as me. I'm still looking out for books written by my course mates, especially you Nicholas (get writing!).

Before taking the course, I thought writing books were all self help pseudoscience. However, the course instructor recommended quite a big list. Some of them are self helpy, a little more focused on the motivation, but others are about craft. Such as Steering the Craft by Ursula K. Le Guin, The Writer's Journey by Christopher Vogler, Save the cat! by Jessica Brody, Sin and Syntax by Constance Hale and loads of others. Now I understand that writing can be seen as an art, but also as a trade. You can construct stories from old ones or life experiences and use different techniques to polish them or completely reimagine them.

But in the end, motivation and discipline are a big part of writing. During the writing course I found it easy to write every week, edit every week and make something I'm proud of. When that support dropped, it got a lot harder to push myself. For instance, right now, I hate reading my writing. The cringe is real. I don't even think that what I've written will be terrible, instead I worry about how many drafts I'll have to read.

I'm very lucky to have a wonderful partner willing to support me, both financially and with discipline. I asked her to give me a deadline, and when I got it, all I could think about was the quote:

You've got to sit in the chair.

Of course, it's a metaphorical chair. It doesn't have to be at a desk, or at a set time, or using a fancy computer or pen or notebook, or even be a chair. But you have to sit in it, because otherwise your story won't be be told, your app won't be be made, your photo won't be be taken, your picture won't be painted. You have to do the work.

So go sit in the chair.