What Happens Next?
A Journalist’s Diary
Time for Pleasure Writing has been scarce in recent weeks. When I last wrote about the subject, I shared observations about analog vs. digital writing, accepting the need to work with the pen as much as the keyboard.
My preparations to return to the hunt for new non-fiction stories and images also guided me back to the relaxing pastime of short story writing.
I found food for thought for the non-fictional and the fictional journey, among many sources, some of which I wrote about in the post linked above, in an article that ponders the question that gives today’s post its title — what happens next?
The read propelled my thoughts on designing my story quest and how to balance the need for efficient progress with long-term ambitions.
I’ll leave the non-fiction aspect for a separate post later this week.
Today is about my short stories and personal writing.
I like to think of it as Pleasure Writing, a time to calm the mind by letting it wander, giving in to creative thought and playful explorations of storytelling.
Below, I’ll dive into what those three words mean for me and explain how they tie into the short stories I started working on last year.
Planning vs progress
Jacqui Banaszynski’s The power of flexible focus, published on the Nieman storyboard blog, is a fascinating little read about the “challenge and comfort” of the question of what’s happening next, as the author describes her relationship with this short but important question.
She describes how she uses what’s next as an instrument to focus on what matters in the now without closing her mind to the possibilities ahead, balancing aspiration and flexibility.
I walk away from my time with the article, thinking of it as always keeping my thinking hat on (advice I’ve heard in journalism school before). While the here and now is important, I’d like to keep my thoughts trained on the future (at least partially). It’s the delicate art of balancing short-term and long-term goals, immediate and lifelong needs, day-to-day necessities and life aspirations.
If that’s still a bit too abstract, let me explain with my short story project and a teaser for the upcoming non-fiction part.
It’s been two months since my last writing session. That’s the longest pause since starting the journey.
It was, however, remarkably easy to get back into it. I take that as a sign that my workflow is working.
But I also feel the urge to get some actual writing done instead of adding layer after layer to the universe in which these stories take place.
How can I balance these two?
How can I decide what’s next without getting lost in a complicated web of details and pre-story stories?
What happens next can be the fascinating engine that drives the hunt for (nonfiction) stories. Unchecked, the door is wide open to feeling overwhelmed by choices.
As I wrote in the previous post, those choices are part of the creative challenge of journalism (and storytelling of any kind).
The regulator, for me, at least, is intuition.
But more on that soon.
What happens next in fiction can be even more chaotic and empowering.
Stories need to be rooted in logic and other laws that govern reality. Otherwise, the world one builds loses its appeal. That’s a monstrous task, indeed.
As for my short story project, I’ve been tempted to build a complex web of events and connections, a timeline that takes into account every possibility to avoid boxing myself in later.
That’s a very planning-oriented approach. The danger it has for me is that I might never get to the actual writing.
I realized, aided by my time thinking about the meaning of what’s happening next, that it’s time to fly and let planning be planning.
What’s happening next is still an important part of the puzzle, but the immediate need to make tangible progress is more important.
What’s happening next? Let’s find out organically through writing instead of theorizing for the next six months.
I had initially planned to include a train observation or two that match today’s theme. But I still have to type up the latest batch and see if there’s something in it that fits the bill. Besides, this post is long enough as it is. So, new observations will have to wait till late May, when the next post about writing will drop.
