Yeah, Write

I signed up for an online writing seminar. FREE 7-Day Book Writing Challenge! An hour-long Zoom meeting every day for seven days in which your real obstacles are discussed and strategies introduced for getting around them. 30,000 people logged in the first day. I didn’t catch how many were on by the fourth day. Today’s will be Day Five. I’ll be sure to check that number for you.

Why did I sign up? Don’t we constantly get invitations to these sorts of things? Aren’t they scams anyway? Yes, yes. But it was sent me by my closest friend (and lover and housemate) (Point 1) and it was set at a different time each day (Point 2) and it was about writing a book, which is what I’m focusing on these days (Point 3) and I knew I needed outside influence and so here we go. Yes, Point 2 matters, because I seem to have a real problem with setting clock-based routines. I see this going back as far as I care to remember. That doesn’t mean I can magically fix it just by deciding to. That’s not how brains work. Certainly not mine. I find it easier, indeed possible, to do the homework and prepare for the next meeting because it’s NOT at the same time it was the day before. If they were all at the same time each day I’d have quit by now. Yeah, I’m weird, sue me.

Homework? There are two presenters and thirty thousand participants. Who’s going to look at homework? Well, obviously, no one but the doer thereof. If you have to rely on someone else to check your homework, what the hell are you doing writing a book? I know that’s obvious but for whatever reason I did find it necessary to ask myself that rhetorical question. Fortunately, the answer was, as I say, obvious.

So. What have I learned?

I don’t know if it’s coincidental or not, but I’ve learned my book as envisioned a week ago is all wrong. The plot is changing radically from the vision I carried for many years. This is a good thing. Some chapters will need rewrites or to be discarded. That’s par, the important thing being that it makes more sense as a product.

At the same time I’ve learned the book as envisioned originally is exactly right. Being a First Novel, it is about Me, and thereby has to include some version of some of the experiences and lessons I’ve had in this life, and this part of the vision has been completely validated.

See (no, I guess it’s not coincidental), this seminar is put on by Hay House, which means 98% of the participants (a number I have accurately invented) are writing books about how their life experiences can help other people on their journeys. Everyone wants to write the next Eat Pray Love. As a mere storyteller my concerns are a little out in the cold. But I have in fact learned a few useful techniques and have indeed validated the main purpose of my writing the damn thing.

Which is? Vague. In fact, I’ll leave it vague. I just edited out a bunch of high-falutin’ bullshit that after a day’s reflection I couldn’t stomach. So. Yeah. Right. Day Five, and onward.