A Writing Experiment
I want to be good at…well, probably everything if I’m being honest, but what I was going to say is writing. Articles, books, scripts, and quotes impact me regularly. I want in on that. I want in on being able to impact the world. Even if it’s just a tiny way. I want to be able to write something that at least one person uses for a positive behavioral change. Something that doesn’t vanish like my voice does when I stop talking. Something that can be there when I’m not.
But I don’t feel like I know how to write. My writing skill is so bad I don’t even feel like I know if my writing is decent already or not. Oh well. I’m just gonna practice.
The method I’m using to practice is to write a children’s book (I was also thinking I’d illustrate it. More on that in a bit). I read my son this book about a volcano and the words didn’t form sentences, there felt like no point, no passion in it, no lesson. It was probably that moment of befuddled rage that I decided writing a kids book was something I had to do. I guess that time is now.
The plan is to commit one to two hours per day to writing the book. I’m heavily leaning on ChatGPT for guidance. I set a constraint for myself that I would just write out, very quickly, a story of something that happened to me recently and asked GPT for a kids version of it. I then used that as my outline to write a draft. It was pretty bland. With feedback I slowly improved vocabulary and pacing. It felt pretty good…until I started looking into illustration.
This whole time I was thinking maybe I could use AI to illustrate the book so I was writing knowing that I would illustrate it. But then I learned that illustrating is hard. I know, big surprise! Maybe I’ll attempt it at some point, but I decided to just focus on the writing, but that meant if I ever wanted this to be published I’d have to give it to someone else to illustrate and it’s almost a disconnected project from the writing.
What this meant was that I had to rewrite everything for several reasons. I needed to be thinking about the story in spreads (two page scenes). I needed to describe more of the emotions of the characters and let the illustrator work more on the scene. I think I realized my story doesn’t have a low enough low. And I think that the way I reveal information was out of order.
So I rewrote it. It felt…less bland. It had fewer problems. It did have a few good things too, but it was just ok.
Then I asked GPT to be a hard-ass newspaper editor style of coach and give me feedback. lol It yawned at me and said things like “meh” and “weeksauce”! One thing I’m highlighting in my story is holding two feelings at once. Here’s what the hard-ass editor said,
Leo’s ‘two feelings’ – Overplayed.
You’ve said it, we get it. It’s warm, cozy, and there’s guilt. Don’t keep hitting the same notes. Show me the mix of emotions, don’t keep narrating it. Leo’s got a real struggle, so show that inner tug-of-war, but don’t spoon-feed me the emotional ride every time.
So I’m rewriting it again. I feel like I learn each time I do. I find more ways to use fewer words to say more. I try to show emotion rather than telling the reader about it and use punchier dialogue than normal since it’s for kids. One thing I want to focus on improving is my ability to hold a bunch of parts of story in my mind at once so I can know what to reveal and when. It seems like I keep having to rewrite later pages because I think of a better way to say something earlier.
