The
Insecure Writer's Support Group (IWSG) is a monthly support system for
blogging writers in need of finding other writers to connect with and
share our deepest insecurities in a safe environment. Created by the
clever Alex J. Cavanaugh with the expressed purpose to "share and encourage."
This month's question: As you look back on 2017, with all its successes and failures, if you could backtrack, what would you do differently?
What a loaded question! (For me, at least.) There are just too many things I wish I would have done differently this year, even limited to writing. I'm not perfect enough to look back and be so proud that nothing needs tweaking. I won't air out all those grievances, but I'll cough up one or two of the best (worst) ones.
It's like I imagine authors would say on their death beds, like how most regular people say they don't wish they'd spent more time at the office because they wish they'd have spent more time with loved ones. Maybe authors say they wish they'd written more. I definitely wish I'd written more this year.
I spent some time learning a lot about how to write, and while that was not time wasted at all, I did end up spending time getting sidetracked by other non-writing projects just because they had been looming over my head for months and years needing to get done. I wanted to get them done before fully launching myself into writing a couple of novels I plan on writing afterwards, which is now something I still need to do starting early next year.
The next thing is I wish I'd gotten more outlines planned/mapped out for my stories because they take such a LONG time to outline. I'm finally outlining the best way for me, which means long, detailed outlines, but, man... they take forever to get done! It's worth it, though. I need all that hand-holding when I write a first draft because I got lost in the forest of my long stories very easily. Guess I need to learn to speed-outline.
I suppose that's enough from me. Any more, and I'll be writing a novel-length blog post that will need to be outlined before I can even attempt to write it!
Would you do anything differently from this year concerning your writing? Just me?
