A new adventure for 2024!

Because I only ever half know what I am doing

Reading time: approximately 4 minutes

{DEC 28 2023

I can’t believe how at loose ends I feel with the year drawing to a close. All my new systems not quite in place yet. But having to make do anyway.

Regarding Substack—and my idea to explode open the novel process. But how to do it on Substack? Because people like getting the email. Not videos. Not picture carousels.

But what about Bo Burnham's Inside? He showed the process while he made the art as part of the art. Not every single take. But it was weaved right into the final piece. It was the character arc of the story, actually.

What if I write myself into the story?

What if I am the character that changes?}

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Hello, my darlings, from the tail end of 2023. I hope the year has been good to you. I hope these days in the deep dark of winter find you cozy and rested and warm, and with all the light you need to see you through.

(And to those of you in the longest days of summer, may they find you cool, relaxed, and full of sweet drinks, with blackout curtains for sleeping.)

I had some thoughts about an essay to write in this limbo between holidays, but it slipped away from me as I traveled back and forth to a relative’s house, where I ended up in charge of making a patchwork faux Christmas dinner. As I randomly discovered a health condition which might explain my years of chronic fatigue. As the patchouli-scented laundry detergent I had to use while away won’t wash out of the clothes I cleaned and has spread to everything else. And as I rearrange my office to something more workable.

It would have been something about Cory Doctorow’s The Lost Cause and how it’s kind of the fiction version of his book Chokepoint Capitalism, and how powerful it was to see the actionable ideas in the nonfiction work being acted out in fiction. And then I would have talked about my grad school work—using a Jungian psychology lens to create new knowledge by art-making—and the differences and similarities between qualitative and quantitative research, and how we need both, so like maybe let’s not kill off the humanites just yet?

Lovely essay. Let’s pretend I wrote it while instead what I did was work on some 2024 writing goals.

(First I looked back on what I accomplished in 2023. 90,000 words written—about 30k on this Substack, 30k journaling, and another 30k on story rough drafts. I am rather proud of 2023-me!)

My big goal this year is to work on longer stories set in the City. What writing those “story seeds” during NaNoWriMo made very clear is that I can’t move forward on any more City stories without worldbuilding. I need to know when the story is happening, and how exactly Tehama is laid out, and the cultures of all these different human hybrids.

And so I’ve started:

{WORLDBUILDING

There are lots of worldbuilidng aspects I hadn’t thought of. The step-by-step worldbuilding books are helping.

HISTORY OF THE WORLD

The big events that happened to everyone in the lower 48.

HISTORY+CULTURE OF EACH NATION

How did the Four Nations become the Four Nations?

Then how did each Nation progress, each with their own history and culture?

HISTORY OF NEW TEHAMA

How did the City come to be, and what events happened that only affected it?

CULTURE OF NEW TEHAMA

With the blending of cultures, it will become distinct, like NYC.

HISTORY+CULTURE OF OSSUARY

Another split, a distinct subculture that is separate from everyone else’s.}

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You know how people say that writing a novel is a lot of work? I mean, I knew that. But now I get it. Viscerally.

I’ve been trying to figure out how to fit Substack in to this staggering amount of work. Because when I started this Substack my thought was to write a short story a month. And instead I wrote a bunch of essays exploring the fiction writing process because up until this year I’ve never quite understood what I was doing when I tried to write a story. And now that I do (2023-me really kicked some serious ass), I began creating this world that I’m excited to explore.

So I guess…let’s do that?

I am unsure how this is going to work, because I want to keep it e-mail friendly. But I’m going to try to bring you along on this story-making adventure. I hope that sounds good to you. And if you have any bright ideas about how you would like this magic carpet ride to work, let me know!

Many many 💖s to you for an excellent New Year, and see you in 2024 with love,

Elnora