Progress Report 2025 Week 17

I only had one (major) Real Life Family Event (RLFE) this week, and its timing was about as good as I could have hoped. How much impact did it have on my output? I’ve moaned and complained how hard it is to write about Nazis. Turns out that’s not the whole story. A combination of community involvement and reflection made me realize what was really going on. Before we get into any of that, let’s take a look at my progress this week.

Last Week’s Progress By the Numbers

Finally! A week where I wrote more than 10,000 words!

I wrote more than 10,000 words last week. That’s the first time in three weeks I’ve hit that mark! This week, my RLFE happened on Thursday. I don’t write Friday nights, so I could use that time to recover. The timing was as good as it gets.

I’ve had to adjust the outline for the next few chapters, which is normal at this stage, if my previous novels are any guide. The small plot and character details accumulate momentum, and sometimes, they make me adjust the plot. So far, at least as far as I can tell, the changes improve pacing and deliver a more powerful impact. So, that’s all good!

The Deeper Reason for The Difficulty Writing Conventional Forces

In last week’s post, I mentioned that I discovered that I didn’t have a clear enough idea of where Wayland’s Hammer Book 2: Resistance Movement was going. I had a good idea of Wayland’s Hammer Book 3: Lines of Operation. But I lacked clarity of vision for Resistance Movement. That’s a bigger problem than I admitted to myself: if that book’s going to hit the way I want it to, I need to foreshadow some of those developments in Wayland’s Hammer Book 1: Conventional Forces.

Ages ago, back when I was first writing novels, I remembered experiencing terrible doubts. I called them my “inner demons,” and they drove me away from writing for decades. Only recently, after starting Evolution’s Hand Book 1: Executive Action, do I realize that my subconscious uses those feelings to let me know that it found holes in the plot, or inconsistencies in the characters.

Why my subconscious couldn’t just come to me in a dream and say, “Dude, your plot has holes here, here, and here,” I’ll never know. But being a human means I don’t have an Owner’s Manual, so here we are.

Yes, writing about Bilskirnir and its Nazi civilization is draining. But that’s not the only reason I’ve been writing slowly. It’s because I’ve ignored my subconscious warning me that I wasn’t laying the foundation for Resistance Movement. Once I realized that, once I began identifying where I needed to make changes, the words began to flow more quickly.

I saw how the chapters seemed to bunch up. There wasn’t any flow. In retrospect, I recognize that as a sign I was in “default” plot mode. Not a creative place to be!

The experience of writing for Gerhard Wimmer (the prisoner) and Moritz Lehner (the SS officer) are still painful, but it’s a kind of pain that tells me I’m conveying either their despair or their arrogance. That’s good for the plot. If I want to feel revitalized, I just write another chapter about Owen Payne.

I hope this helps me finish the book soon. I’m ready to get started on Resistance Movement!

Learning Is Great, Even If It’s Painful

Community’s important. I’ve gotten a lot out of the Facebook group 20BooksTo50K. I’m trying to contribute myself now that I’ve gotten some experience. But social media isn’t the only place where we can find people who share our interests.

I virtually met Lynn through his anime web site. Turns out, he’s a writer, too! We’re at similar stages of our journeys, and we often exchange ideas. In a couple of recent posts, he mentioned Robert McKee’s books Story (affiliate link), Character (affiliate link), and others. I have no idea why I had never heard of Robert McKee. No idea. But I’m glad Lynn introduced me to him (thanks for that!).

McKee didn’t present any given fact that I didn’t know. But he wove those facts into an inter-related fabric that, when I gazed on it, deepened my understanding of my craft.

Here’s a profoundly obvious example: beats combine into sequences. Sequences combine into scenes. Scenes combine into acts, and three (usually) acts makes a story.

I knew that flow. I felt it as I wrote my scenes. But my lack of precise terminology hampered me. I didn’t think in terms of building up from one component to the other. I didn’t think in terms of balancing the components. So, my plots so far have lacked the kind of precision my readers expect.

This was a major contributor to me figuring out the source of my difficulty writing Conventional Forces.

That realization hurts. It means I haven’t delivered the kind of works my readers deserve up until now. That understanding is very, very painful.

No Pain, Well, You Know the Rest

Don’t let anyone kid you. Growing older has its benefits, and I’m not only talking about compared to the alternative! I mean if you reflect on your life, if you try to learn from your experience, you begin to see that few events, however painful they seem, are fatal.

Dean Wesley Smith, in his book Killing the Top Ten Sacred Cows of Publishing (affiliate link), talked about this. He discussed how writers think that any typo, plot hole, or negative reviews means the end of their career. His advice on the topic is refreshing — basically, readers don’t really care, as long as your next story captures their imagination. He has more to say than just that, and he’s a lot more eloquent, but that was what I took away from the death of that particular sacred cow.

I’ve had nine books published (eleven if you count the compilations). I can’t go back and rewrite everything as I get better at writing, or I’d never have time to write anything new!

I’ve gotten a lot of positive reviews on my novels so far. At least some readers enjoy them! My hope is that my shortcomings as a writer didn’t mar their enjoyment. But more importantly, I have to keep in mind that I’m always learning. My next book will (ideally!) be better than my last book. That’s just the way it goes.

So rather than lament what I didn’t know before, I’ll just remind myself that at least I know now. That’s a good thing.

Progress against Last Week’s Goals

Here’s how I did compared to last week’s goals:

1. Write Gerhard Wimmer’s Pinch 2 Part I: Done!
2. Write Moritz Lehner’s Pinch 2: Done! It split into at least two parts, and I finished Part I.
3. Write Owen Payne’s Plot Turn 2: Done! It split into two parts; I finished part I.
4. Write Wimmer’s Plot Turn 2: Not done! It’ll be replaced by his Pinch 2 Part II.
5. Explore a human narrator for my lead magnet for The Sword of Sirius, which was the short story Fallback Position: I explored it. It would cost almost $900.00. I can’t afford that.

Goals for the Week in Progress Report 2025 Week 17

Here’s what I hope to accomplish this week:

1. Write Gerhard Wimmer’s Pinch 2 Part II
2. Write Moritz Lehner’s Pinch 2 Part II
3. Things get hazy here; I’ll either write a Wimmer and a Lehner chapter; or I might insert an Owen Payne chapter here. Or some combination. It’s getting close to the end, and I’ll need to interleave things.
4. Explore options for an audio version of my lead magnet The Sword of Sirius Short Story: Fallback Position.

What Do You Think?

Do you find that as you get older, it’s easier to admit that you still have a lot to learn? Or does it get harder? I’d love to hear about your experience in the comments!