Episode #309: When The Hard Part Suddenly Becomes Easy

Up until very recently, I always found it really hard to accomplish three particular writing related necessities for my books:

1} A title for the story;

2} Synopsis, both long and short;

3} Tag.

In a timely manner. Didn't matter what I was writing, these particular items always gave me a migraine when it came to actually doing them. At most, I would be able to come up with a title in a reasonable time frame, with the others having to be dragged kicking and screaming. This novella is a prime example of this onerous process.

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With my last novella, for some unknown reason, everything fell smoothly into place: a title, the multiple synopsis and tag took a title of three days to complete. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.

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The reason as to why I'm broaching this headache inducing topic today is that I'm just about ready to publish the third of four projects that I had promised myself to work on during my retirement.

To refresh everyone's memory, about six months after I had retired in 2020, I decided to get really serious about my writing. My jumping off point was republishing this short story collection with a new title and cover. By the summer of 2021, I had four other projects lined up, all of which were rewrites in one form or another: the two aforementioned novellas, my fantasy series (see the tag Hot Mess for further details) and the novella that is the subject of today's post.

Back in the mid 2010s, I had self published a novella that I grew to loathe during the next decade: I didn't like the title; the cover was too cartoonist (I had tried a different graphic designer for this go around) and the story seemed to be a little...choppy.

Fast forward to 2023. I had decides to do a major gut to the story by changing the p.o.v., tightening up the word count (I had fluffed it out by adding excerpts from other books), creating a new title and new long and short synopsis. Surprisingly, at least for me, all of these items I was able to accomplish in about three months.

The p.o.v. went from a 3rd to a light present tense; tightening the word count was ridiculously simple, as cutting the excerpts dropped the word count by almost 50%. But the three items that normally induces a major headache for me became very easy to do.

Since this story was ultimately about vengeance, the title took me about a half hours' worth of doodling on a piece of paper; the two blurbs were basically reworked from what I had originally, so the only thing left to do is the tags, which should not be too difficult to complete.

I don't know about you, but I managed to have two completely different experiences when it came to completing the previously mentioned bullet points with three consecutive novellas. The first one I had the usual headaches: title (about a month which involved a couple of polls); long and short blurbs (again, about a month that involved other members of my now ex-writing group) and the tag (that took about two weeks involving just the windmills of my mind).

Basically about 2 1/2 months were spent on those bullet points, which is actually a little below par, like a birdie, for me.

The next two, I managed to zip through, in an aggregate total of for each of one week. With the former, the one thing that I had going for me was that I was so driven to the point of obsession to get everything nailed, which surprisingly enough I did to the wall and beyond.

With the latter, the one thing that I had going for me, was the fact that this was a previously published novella. So the motivation was that I had a very good idea on what I didn't want for a title, for blurbs or a tag line.

The one common thread that all three of the novellas had, was the fact that they were all rewrites of mediocre stories, none of which I was proud of in their original form. Oddly enough, the first one felt like I was using it to practice writing blurbs, tags and titles. Then with the practice out of the way, the two remaining novellas became easy peasy lemon squeezy.

The other common thread that the last two novellas have as opposed to the first one listed is motivation. With the first novella listed, the motivation was sporadic at best. Sure, it was definitely there when I wanted to get it completed and published, but it started wavering when I had started running into, but not through, the proverbial adobe wall when I was trying to complete the aforementioned bullet points. Once it started wavering, it became increasingly difficult to get it back again. Ultimately I pushed through and gave birth to in 2024.

With the other two, the motivation was absolutely there. I was stoked about each story, so I wanted to do my best to complete those three bullet points in the shortest time possible, which I did with my recently published novella. With the one I want to do this year, it was a little different. I had the new title already chosen back in 2023 when I first started rewriting it, and in 2024, it was very easy to take what I had already written for blurbs and re-edit them into something that fit more securely with the overall story.

What it boils down to, at least for me, is motivation. Motivation is the key to whether that bullet point process gives me a migraine, or gives me a good summer breeze blowing through the patio of my mind.

Have a good week everyone!

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