A Writer's Self-Analysis

Just because a person declares himself to be a writer, though he possess a college degree's worth of training, and even if he is invigorated by a vision of an idea to be shared in glorious literary form--the writing itself is not necessarily going to come easily for anyone. From my experience, the bigger the idea, the more I brainstorm without pen in hand, and the more complex my variations become, and the more pucilanimous and totally overwhelmed I become about actually starting a writing project that seemed like a wonderfully exciting personal adventure idea before I spent so much time thinking about it.

Writers write. That's what we do. Either by pen and paper or keyboard, we mold and mound multitudes of words to share some mountain of fact, or perhaps a narrative with a point. I began writing poetry at age 16. Years of fiction reading pleasure has enticed me, and beckoned me to the beyond.

My portfolio contains lots of short story size fiction, as well as a couple of novellas that have stretched to novel length. If you're looking for a story with a great finish, you won't find it in my portfolio. My longest effort "Ghetto Gandhi: the Urban Legend"  is completed in my head. I know what happens to my young American Gandhi, his sister, and his friends. With the passage of a few years, finish it editing areas are more obvious to me, and the work is close enough to complete that I could actually have a finished novel. My final editing will be done offline, so that my completed manuscript is mine to publish and market if I can.

That string of chapters is my longest to date, but historically I have a problem finishing what I start. This includes activities other than writing, but I'm painfully aware that the longer any given narrative of mine goes on, the less likely I am to finish it. I will go back and edit, and edit again, and continue to work with any given passage until it's exactly the way I want, or until I'm sick of dealing with it and just consider it good enough to go on for now. In my world there's always another edit to be done, hopefully to include improvements to the piece before its deadline passes.

Before I begin a content article, a bit of brainstorming and a large dose of research has always been a productive way to approach a new topic. However, I'll admit I have a tendency to over-research, over-produce the word count, and spend excessive time cutting information before my multiple drafts are culled, cut, and pasted down to the final form.

Coming from a background in education and academics, I find it difficult to write a fully researched and developed article in less than 1,000 to 1,500 words. If I run across a paying freelance gig for writing articles to be posted as web content, I realize the size of the article is dictated by the size of the anticipated reader's attention span. Web content articles also require SEO (search engine optimization) strategies, and keyword placement requirements and usage percentages. One employer gifted me an SEO program which I do use as an SEO editing tool which I use as a check after I write language for human communication. I don't create web articles for Internet bots and spiders to analyze and classify as to their search worthiness or reading merit. However, I acknowledge that ever-expanding challenges to basic commmunication do exist, especially on the Internet, and dealing with them as an additional challenge when writing web content articles.

With a comfortable topic, I can relay the basics plus in 500 to 750 words. Most of the web content projects I run across require articles of 300 to 400 words. The "project" listing usually entails a commitment to produce five to ten articles per day, six days per week until the job ends. I haven't applied to projects like this because I know such a requirement would be very difficult for my style.

I won't produce without some research. I feel the need to fully develop and explore the topic, and I'm in the habit of letting my work sit a day before I edit. It's not that I can't change. It's just that changing my style in the direction of brevity for a short-term job, paying next to nothing, isn't going to improve the writing skills that I prefer to relish and embellish. I've fallen into a period of non-fiction content writing because I can earn a small income writing academic articles and content that allows 1,000 words, incorporating SEO strategies, to get to the final word. I'm experienced in trial by fire, and am confident in my non-fiction writing ability.

For about the past 15 months I've had a novel bouncing around in my head. From this novel has come a character--first in my head, but now somehow evolved. He has become a part of my daily life my invisible conversational muse.

The original plot has become a conglomeration of three stories, too much based on the life I lived and the emotions I've felt. For over a year this idea has been my reason for rising in the morning, the cause of an unrelenting uneasiness that intensifies each night when I crawl between my covers until I fall asleep. My character, and the story he taunts me to share, will not leave me alone. I have to write this, even if I end up writing it for no one but myself. However, this unique story is compelling because it's so full of mysteries, and because it's based on fact.

I've never tried writing historical fiction, which is the genre into which this project will fall. Fifteen months of brain planning, supported by perhaps twenty pages of one chapter. I also jotted about half a dozen chapter titles in Marks-a-Lot on my bedroom wall. This inspiration runs deep when it strikes me. Unfortunately, I'm having a hell of a time finding the first word to start the first sentence.

I subscribe to "the Writer Magazine," and Jess Lourey had the article for exactly what ails me in this month's publication, February 2011. "The Pyramid Approach" demonstrates a bare bones organizational strategy that will get me started writing, keep my writing organized without constricting any creativity, and direct me to dealing with characterization and setting without impeding the flow of the plot.

With a brief summary of the article--which I'll be referring to regularly--I'll leave a link to its online location for any interested readers further reading.

Still need to work on summary of pyramid