Hello! My name is Todd, and I’m a writer in progress (the other WIP). I’m still developing my creative writing style, writing process, and finding my voice. Here’s a peep into my writing journey.
About a year ago, I decided to level up my writing and challenge myself to write a longer story. Before this, I wrote mostly flash fiction and short stories, with story lengths generally between 1,500 and 4,000 words. So, something longer was going to be a more earnest endeavor.
Before we proceed with this blog post, I’ll share some decisions I made before starting this work, what I’ve accomplished so far, and what’s left to get this work to the final draft finish line.
Some Pre Work Decisions
Before starting, I needed to decide on how long of a story I wanted to write. Google showed me the story lengths for both novellas (17,500–40,000 words) and novels (40,000 words or more). Since my stories so far have been on a more micro scale, I decided to try to write a novella. I do want to write a novel one day, but with this being my first long-form attempt, I figured 40,000 plus words might be a bigger bite than I could chew.
The key structure and timeline goals of this novella writing included the following:
- Hit a 20,000 word goal
- Write twelve chapters
- Post a chapter each month of the calendar year 2024
- Complete the novella by the end of the calendar year 2024.
Then once all that boring stuff was sorted, I needed to settle on a genre, pick a setting and title, develop a main character (MC) and rough synopsis blurb:
- Genre: supernatural fantasy
- Setting: Charlotte, North Carolina
- Title: The Shadow Elm Memoir
- MC: Larry Byrd
- Synopsis: Larry Byrd is his alias for his upcoming Shadow Elm Memoir. A collection that chronicles the supernatural phenomena and entities he helped save lives with, almost got murdered by, worked with, and even dated.
My Work in Progress Progress
Right now, The Shadow Elm Memoir is 91.7% complete. I’ve written eleven chapters and still have the ending to write.
The novella without the twelve chapters is 23,132 words, so when completed, it could be 5,000 words past my 20,000-word goal. “Yippee Ki Yay!”
Ten of the chapters were posted to this blog in 2024. I missed the months of May and December. The eleventh chapter was posted a week ago at the beginning of the new year, so I didn’t complete the novella by the end of 2024.
Here are the draft chapter names and word count in the order I wrote them:
- Prelude to the Shadow Elm Memoir (1,441 words)
- The Girl from Brown Mountain (2,338 words)
- A Game of SEAHORSE in the Rain (2,092 words)
- Larry Byrd is Gone in November (1,714 words)
- Enter the Kilt Cat Man (2,301 words)
- Broken Horses (2,953 words)
- A Few Incidents Inside the Earl Grey Wolf (1,499 words)
- The Legends, The Natty Neighbor, and the Introduction of Isabelle (2,140 words)
- Robots and Skateboards (2,346 words)
- The Immortal Elf (1,833 words)
- My Birthday in the SKY (2,475 word count)
- Unnamed Conclusion (TBD word count)
My final punch list to finish my first draft
This section is the absolute reason I needed to write this post. I have a bunch of stuff to do to complete my novella, and I’m giving myself until the end of March to do so.
- Write chapter twelve (aka the damn ending)
- Decide on a Chapter twelve name (name it something better than “The Conclusion”)
- Revise and edit chapters (I know this is a given)
- Look for places where I can add more dialogue
- Add more description to characters and places
- Reorder chapters if necessary
- Rename Chapter titles if necessary
- Redesign chapter graphics because in case I end up using them in the book (there’s at least one that I need to trash)
- Come up with a book cover concept
- Improve book summary or blurb (geez, my current one needs help)
- Write a decent author bio (Hello, my name is Todd, and I want to be a writer when I grow up.)
- Whatever else I think of between now and the end of March
Yes, I still have a lot of work ahead of me to complete my first draft, but I’ve really enjoyed writing The Shadow Elm Memoir. I’m having a lot of fun. Well, that’s the point, right? Write?
I’ve learned so much about myself as a writer and my writing process. I should probably write a future blog post about what worked and didn’t work for me.
I wrote this novella without an outline, and while I can see how an outline could be handy, I didn’t write entirely without structure. I knew what I wanted to accomplish in each chapter, but I freestyled and fumbled most of what I wrote.
But we will see.
I would love to hear your author tips or advice. Please email or message me with those.
You can find me on Instagram and Threads: @stromstrouper. Social media is the best way to get updates about my writing and me.