In Fighting Trim

It’s been quite a while since Rune Skelley was in Writing Mode. For most of this year we’ve been editing various projects, and moving forward we’ll be doing more of the “not actually writing” parts of writing.

The music novel needed a lot of work, which did involve a fair amount of composing new material. It also involved a far greater amount of wrestling with the material we already had: rearranging, streamlining, repurposing, polishing.

The science novel was in much better shape. We’re practically done with the second draft already, and it required very little in the way of new material.

Once we get it wrapped up, we’ll knuckle down and start marketing it. That will require some writing, but not the usual sort. Not the sort we like. We’ll need to concoct the perfect query letter, as well other marketing materials like a synopsis and maybe an author bio.

Then, while the marketing machine chugs away in the background, we’ll move onto the next items on our To Do list, which involve a bit more editing, and then the brainstorming and outlining of the next novel. Again, not much actual writing.

We know that if we stay away from writing for very long at all, the fiction engines cool down and it takes an enormous effort to spool them back up again. That’s where our writing prompts come in.

All those brief and weird things we post on Mondays and Wednesdays are our way of keeping in practice. Sure, they’re often incoherent, but they’re fun and they don’t need to lead to anything bigger. Their only job is to keep the writing parts of our brains from atrophying. When we’re in the middle of writing a novel, they’re not really necessary, although we’ll sometimes use them as a warmup exercise. But in times like this, where there’s no composition of the horizon, they’re life savers.

How do writing prompts work best for you?