I procrastinate. A lot. A few months ago Jinn linked me to this blog post about writers who procrastinate. And whilst I’m definitely guilty of watching YouTube videos and surfing Reddit instead of writing, I usually avoid falling into the trap of doing things I consider non productive. Things that you should only do after all tasks are done: gaming, Netflix, Reddit etc.

However, writing brings self doubt. Am I good enough? Are these words worth being written?

And when I’m not sure I’m good enough, instead of not writing and staring at my office wall for several hours while weeping, I finish every task on my to-do list.

It’s mostly things I’m good at. Things I know I can do in my sleep. Everyday things. And they have to be done eventually, so it doesn’t matter if I start writing a bit later in the day, because at one point or another I’ll have to get up and do these things anyway. Right?

First come the important things. I’m good at cleaning. I know what to do with a dirty bathroom or a carpet covered in dog hair. Cleaning is not hard. Fiction writing is hard, so when in doubt, clean.

I’m good at training the dogs. Lola is a stubborn Cocker Spaniel but it’s easier to teach her a new trick than to write a book. Since the dogs need their daily walk and play-time and mental stimulation, may as well invest some time before I write.

I’m good at cooking. Sometimes I spend over two hours perfecting a stew or a chilli, just letting it simmer over a small flame and infuse with flavour.

I slowly tick off all tasks from my to-do list. Every now and then I sit down in front of the computer and try and get an hour of writing in. But the self doubt is lingering and the to-do list still has things to offer.

I haven’t baked in a while. Upstairs needs vacuuming as well. The bookshelves need dusting.

Once I’m done, it’s sometimes too late to start writing fiction, or so I tell myself. And I should feel good about myself, after all I was productive. The dogs are happy. The house is sparkling and dinner is on the table.

But I didn’t write. And I feel like I’ve not put in the work I promised myself I’d put in.

I rarely just surf the Internet. If I spend time on the Internet, it’s to research how much fuel a plane needs or how fast a body decomposes. Or to read how-to articles. On writing. On publishing. On editing.

I’m learning Greek, because my partner is half Greek and speaks the language. Learning vocabulary is never easier than when I should be writing.

All of this is productive. But all of this is not writing fiction.

I asked myself: what is my main problem, why do I avoid writing? Why do I run away from it?

Self doubt. Fear of not being good enough.

I hand myself excuses like: I’m unable to outline and I really need an outline or I’ll just lose myself in the middle of the story again, never quite managing to tie everything together in the end.

Or: I keep coming up with new settings and premises but never an actual story.

My biggest weakness is coming up with actual characters that are layered and have depth. Characters people will care about. Characters that have lives, hopes, dreams, and adventures. I’m good at coming up with the technology they use, and the world they live in. I have ideas for settings. Not ideas for actual plots to set in those settings.

But. As I said: these are just excuses. They’re excuses I’m handing myself to not write. To not create those characters and make them have adventures.

I did it though this week. A thousand words of fiction a day. Most of the time I did all my tasks before sitting down to write but even if it was after dinner, I always did write the thousand words. Every day.

The words aren’t very good, at least not all of them, but I do think I got two ideas for a bigger story out of them. I’ll try writing the first for now and then move onto the second.

Hopefully, it’ll be something worth reading.

In the meantime I really enjoyed this article on how these 12 contemporary writers revise their work.

Check out our Pinterest boards here. Especially the one about writing and the one about character creation.

Our Facebook page can be found here.

See you next week,
Olivia

There’s a writing philosophy that floats and meanders through online groups, forums and as advice from veteran writers to younger ones.

You may have heard of it. It goes something like this…

One million words. Your first million is junk.

It’s there for you to practice, hone your craft and find your voice.

After that first million, your writing is now possibly decent.

The first time I heard about it was from Michael J. Sullivan, indie self-published fantasy author of Ryria fame.

This was back in March or May of 2014. I forget when. It was during Michael’s Kickstarter for “Hollow World” which I backed, and when later surveyed after it was funded, I flat out asked on the form if he’d be open to an interview. I’m unconsciously gutsy like that.

Frankly, I didn’t think he would. But his wife (and ersatz assistant) wrote me a week later he was game.

During that thirty minute call, I was asked a lot of seemingly basic questions about my fiction writing but was stumped and speechless on. Questions like, “What do you want to write about?” (No idea at that time.) And “What have you written so far?” (One novelette back in 2007 rejected by “Science Fiction and Fantasy” and nothing else.) And “What are you reading?” (Surprisingly, not enough fiction.)

In short, I felt like I wasn’t taking this fiction writing business very seriously.

Or in three words: I felt inadequate.

But that’s OK, I like being the underdog with a big mountain to climb.

2014 was the year I took the idea of telling stories seriously again. I was in a home-study screenwriting course and that summer I was talking with Dogwood about writing fiction together as partners. We had a lot of great premises and concepts. Many I’d still like to see come to fruition. Others I’d love to see Dogwood write.

But frankly, that year I was reading way too many “how to” books and not doing enough of the nit and grit of practicing my craft: actually writing fiction. Which is, obviously, athwart to the goal of getting one million words of fiction under your belt.

That’s why I proposed the idea of a writing group to Dogwood and Nicholas in the December of 2014 when the three of us were in West Palm Beach, Florida. I needed some accountability partners so I could, at the very least, pump out one thousand words a week. Get my chops in. That’s what eventually led to becoming Garage Fiction 1.0 with Monsieur Brack finding the great Dave Grohl quote that graces our name today.

(In my opinion, the live episode we did two months later in Orlando is still the episode that fully explains everything we were trying to do and is the great seed mother of this whole project. You can listen to it here…)

By the way, you can get the latest episodes downloaded to your phone or player when you subscribe on iTunes, GooglePlay or Stitcher.

And yes, Garage Fiction 1.0 was a great start to a catalyzing journey. But still, at that pace, I’d be far from one million words for a long while.

And if I had to estimate how much I’ve done so far with Garage Fiction 1.0… and my one novelette, “The Icarus Remix” back in 2007… I think I’m sitting on maybe sixty to sixty-five thousand.

Let’s be frank here. That’s a long way from one million.

It didn’t help that Garage Fiction had that long sabbatical between October 2015 to October 2016 when we all threw in the towel until I rebooted the group/podcast. (Tangentially, there’s another story to be told on how Garage Fiction 2.0 started. It starts with a girl named Senna. Another time, maybe.)

So it’s been bugging me. A lot. All talk and no walk for so many years now. Decades even.

If I’m going to make 2017 count, I need to pick up the damn pace.

Now, when it comes to “practicing the craft” and art in general, you probably shouldn’t be whipping out your dick and measuring it against others. It leads you to becoming vain and bitter as Max Ehrmann once famously wrote.

But unfortunately, I’m gracelessly competitive. I just had to ask the more veteran members of Garage Fiction 2.0, Bryan and Olivia, what their word count for fiction was.

(600K and 500K, respectively.)

Again, that feeling of, “fuck-I-gotta-get-my-shit-together-and-catch-up” burned through me. I mean, I turn 36 in ten days. I’ve been wanting to be an author since kindergarten. I can’t keep putting this off.

That’s when the goal of writing 1,000 words/day began to feel concrete.

I first heard about this crazy daily goal from a post on Reddit. It was written by /u/moebius23. This guy had just completed his third year of writing 1,000 words of fiction a day. You should check out his post on “lessons learned” here. It’s pretty fucking awesome.

But anyway, this sounded like a great goal. Something to aspire to. And frankly, this seemed like the perfect way to “catch up”. It’s ambitious but not unrealistic. And apparently, this is a thing that a lot of writers do. Committing to daily writing. Shortly after committing to the goal, I found a private Facebook group who does this.

So here I am on January 1st writing this at 2:44 AM in the morning: My dual 2017 goals that will dovetail with each other:

1. Write 1,000 words a day, every day, of new draft fiction. This excludes my work in the copywriting world, a media/blog website business I have in the works, journaling and anything else. Only new draft fiction will count. Not editing, revising and rewriting.

The ultimate goal is to write a 5,000-7,000 word short story each week so I can have more post-mortems on my work and hone the whole craft of telling stories.

But I think a softer, more subconscious goal is to build a habit and fall in love with the process instead of struggling to write each time I have to… as I have somehow haphazardly ran my copywriting business successfully for eight years now.

(I’d like to stop that procrastinate-and-panic-last-minute cycle now please…)

Secondly, because I’m inspired and frightened by Olivia’s reading speed of two books a week… (check out her absurd GoodReads list here.)

2. I’m going to read one fiction or history book a week. As long as it tells a story. The key here is to read, read, read, because as Stephen King once said very bluntly, “If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.”

I have a long list of books on my Kindle and on my bookshelves ready to go. I’m not saying I fall short in this department. I think I managed at least 25 or 30 fictional works this past year. But I can pick it up.

Oh and I guess there’s a third goal that’s a bit of a hanger-on…

3. I’m going to blog/journal about these two goals every week, right here on Garage Fiction.

I figured if I’m going to train for my year-long marathon of 1k/day and 1book/week… somebody out there in our universe would be interested in seeing the entire process unfold.

Those are my 2017 resolutions and goals. And I am officially announcing it here on the Garage Fiction website.

Signing off,

Jinn Zhong

P.S. There might be a little cheating on the a book-a-week for the early parts of the year. I have a ton of unfinished books. I’m going to knock those off and count them as my book of the week.

P.P.S. By the way, Olivia has committed to the same crazy goal as I have. This should be interesting.

P.P.P.S. Oh, if you want me to keep you posted, you should subscribe to our newsletter below.

Be seeing you… ☣