A Good Problem to Have

Greetings from the 12th Floor, where it is not any less hot, but I’ve been too busy to be cranky about it.

A plan came together last month, and I’m as surprised as you are. Two months ago, I wrote about Jane Friedman’s Business of Writing workshop and the group of highly motivated writers who attended. After the 2nd event - a discussion on writing and AI - I passed around a notepad, inviting others to connect. I ended up with a group of nine writers interested in establishing an informal group for networking and resource sharing.

We had an introductory call in June and our first official meeting in July, and 8 out of 9 people in the group showed up. I’ve never achieved 89% participation in any event I’ve put together in my entire life, so I was somewhat taken aback when faces kept popping up on Zoom. I could invite 9 people to my funeral and not have 8 show up.

We are a journalist, a data science expert, a memoirist, a speculative poet and fiction writer, a fantasy writer, a contemporary fiction writer, and a writer of historical fiction, and whatever it is I do. A few of us have not published full books yet. Some have published in smaller venues or with small publishers. A few of us have self-published some novels. A few of us have established careers but are looking to share their expertise in non-fiction writing. We are an eclectic, motivated bunch.

The high turnout foiled my plan to experience a dramatic let-down but resulted in a robust conversation about some of the challenges of building a platform around creative work.

We left the meeting feeling energized and with homework. Homework at our ages! I’m not a fan of cold marketing lingo - platform, branding, marketing - applied to art, but at their core these activities support what I do value - community, conversation, and connection. In this light, branding is less about selling out than it is asserting who we are. Marketing is not selling a product someone doesn’t need, but finding people who are looking for what we have. And platform - as I wrote in a recent blog post - doesn’t have to be a stage for a single person hollering about how great he is. It can be a dance floor where everyone is welcome. Your work is simply whatever music you play.

I’m glad to have found these writers. I’ve grown so accustomed to going it alone, I’m not quite sure what to do with all these people yet, other than be grateful for small miracles.

Also in this letter:

• Posts from July 2025

• WIP News

• A Parting Song

Monthly Posts
A bit of scaling back this month, as the blog has to take a backseat to my novel-in-progress. I’m not leaving it by the side of the road, but it’s not driving my creative time for the moment.

This month, I ruminated on the freedom of not caring what other people think - about me or about anything at all. I checked in on my progress on my writing goals for 2025, and found I’m not doing half-bad, even if I’m slightly alarmed that the year is half-gone already. How did six months of my writing life go by so quickly, while six months of Him 2.0 has felt like two years? Pondering the latter, I began to wonder if popular culture would start to reflect a collective appetite for human decency and along came Superman, right on time in more ways than one. And I closed out with my favorite recurring topic, a call to authenticity.

A Post-4th Thought About Freedom
Midyear Reflection
Are Heroes Making a Comeback?
Amplify

WIP News
Progressing on the novel-in-progress. Some chapters are going faster than others, which is to be expected. A few have taken more than a week to polish so they feel sufficiently finished, and some need just a day or two. I’ll be nearing the quarter point by the time you read this, on track for an October finish, if all goes well, or November if it doesn’t. The slight break from the heat has helped tremendously. And I used to like hot weather.

The novel-in-outline is also going well. I hit the 22,000 word mark, which sounds like a lot but it’s actually 22,000 words over a book that’s likely to run about 90,000, so I have no more than a few paragraphs of any single chapter and lots of space where “something” happens and I have to figure out exactly what. This is how my brain works: I start with the barf draft, which results in an unpalatable mess that nonetheless shows what I’ve partially digested. Then will come the flesh draft, which will take me to the 60-65,000 word mark, so the story will be mostly done but not well done. And then the writing-writing will begin. Novel 1 is in the writing-writing stage, which has it’s good days and bad. Barf draft is the most fun.

Ideally, I’ll finish the barf draft of Novel 2 around the same time I finish the writing-writing on Novel 1, and then I can work on the flesh draft of Novel 2 while I start the barf draft of Novel 3, while Novel 1 ferments for a few weeks until I come back to it with fresh eyes.

I’m sure I’m not the only writer who juggles multiple projects at a time. In this phase of life, I’m getting better at finishing, so I’m not juggling a half dozen barf drafts that never go anywhere. The outlining is also new, and I’m so much better at spotting weak or go-nowhere scenes before I waste time writing them. I’ve put in the hours studying craft and it’s showing. I’m late hitting my stride, but maybe that means I’m finishing strong.

Or my books could suck. But a bad day writing is still better than a good day doing anything else.

A Parting Song
As I’ve been working on my Authentic Writing Self (ie: Branding), I’ve grown comfortable with the idea that my protagonists aren’t all good people. In fact, most of them are downright ornery and a few stubbornly adhere to their way to living long past the days it works for them. And yet, I still find myself rooting for them, even when I know how their story ends. Maintaining the theme if not the tone, here are the Ting Tings channeling Fleetwood Mac. Watch below or listen on Spotify.