It All Adds Up

Hi everyone,

This is a short blog today. I identified 2 micro-tension pages (2/10) and deleted 550 words. I’m still reading novels and identifying micro-tension in them in the hopes that it will help me develop an instinct for identifying and writing it.

I can’t think of a more important skill than developing an instinct for tension so I’m willing to put a lot of time into it.

It’s nice to see sudden and huge progress but writing sometimes is chipping away at something a little every day. I think it’s important to know this and be okay with it. Writing a sentence a day, or a paragraph or deleting 20 words or even just reading back your work to figure out where to go next—it’s all progress. It’s all worthwhile. It’s not a race.

Writing, for me, is about consistency. Showing up everyday, even if that is writing or revising one word. It’s a habit and keeping the habit is progress.

I say this because doing a micro-tension draft is slooooow and it’s important to know this going in, and to be okay with it. Rushing it will only result in pages that don’t have micro-tension being skipped over. Micro-tension takes time to think up because it must be organic to the character. If it’s fake, then it isn’t micro-tension. That’s what’s hard. The digging deep.

That’s it from me tonight.

My brain is exhausted. A combination of writing and life.

Talk to you tomorrow.

Happy writing,

Joanne.

Micro-tension draft: pages 110