Who Wants to Jump Off a Cliff Today?

Why we look before we leap. Or try before we trust. Or nibble before we gobble.

Would you dive into a dark lake without knowing how deep it is?

Would you stand on a cliff, with loving but ignorant friends and family cheering you on, and jump? To see how deep it is on the way down?

Into the Rapids, generated by author using Midjourney.

Your body smashing into the icy water. Holding your breath and waiting to hit the rocky bottom, or fingers crossed, not?

It’s a viscerally visual example, with a touch of melodrama, but every time we start a big complex (software or writing) project we have a similar choice.

Do we go big?

Do we dive in?

Or do we find out more first?

Some of us know that hesitance and over-researching can lead to paralysis by analysis. So we’re predisposed to action.

To doing. To jumping in and swimming.

With software it’s more obviously a bad idea

In a software house with large cross-functional teams of multiple different roles all piling their hours and costs into a project from day one.

Building the wrong thing is eye-wateringly expensive.

But as an authorpreneur it’s easy to discount our time and commit a similar crime.

I’ve done this more than once and I’d like to suggest a different route.

I’ve written six novels for Nanowrimo

None of them have seen the light of day. Although one was reviewed by a friend, who shall be canonised for such unthinking self-sacrifice.

I didn’t know you weren’t meant to share your first draft!

In short, my Nano novels didn’t work, the characters were flat and the action contrived. I often felt like I didn’t know what story I was writing until I was done.

I ended up with a fifty-thousand word outline, that looked like a mountain of glass to climb. The fun of writing gave way to the procrastination of the revising.

I didn't know if it was even worth the effort reworking over and over.

• Was the story good enough?

• Did readers like the characters?

• Did they like the actual idea?

• Did they want this story?

I was certainly writing enough but I wasn’t learning fast enough. The reality is we learn in loops. The longer the loops, the slower we learn.

We need short loops to learn fast

Try something specific, get feedback, reflect and iterate, and test again.

Over and over again.

Those are the steps to mastery or a solid software product.

When you're a new(er) writer, one that doesn't quite know the technical fundamentals of fiction (like me according to my editor), you want the shortest loops possible.

Novels are not the way to go.

Diving off a cliff is a costly test, it's going all in and over-investing.

A novel is a fifty-thousand word long loop with a very low chance of real feedback.

But…

Nearly every writer wants to write a novel. That’s the dream, the deep psychological need to have a book behind your name. It’s a mountain we all want to climb. And we should.

But let's not die in the foothills trying to workout which end of the trekking pole to stick into the ground. When I have the basics down I'll scale that mountain.

More than once.

That's why I turned to Flash Fiction.

It’s short, focused and it should help me learn faster right?

Almost.

I've written hundreds of microfiction stories

I created a publication for microfiction (I'm sure most of you know of it 😇) and wrote stories with a warm friendly community of new and old, but all passionate writers. Having a blast in the process, and getting great feedback. I even made a few friends.

But what did the feedback mean? Was I improving? Sure, definitely maybe. But on what exactly? What was I trying? What was the question I was even asking?

I was learning. But was I progressing systematically with each story?

No. There was a vague rising tide of competence but no lazer-focused trajectory.

But, why not?

I’d forgotten the deliberate part of the process

Even when I started the 100 Story Challenge, in January I implicitly knew I wanted to try things and experiment and see what I learned.

But this was too vague.

I wrote 75 stories, burned out a little and mostly got distracted.

A clear sign that my priorities were not aligned. My deep psychology didn't match my intentions nor feed my dopamine reward cycle.

Flash Fiction is a great way to prototype as a writer. Making small story prototypes and testing often is essential. There’s even science to back it.

Because ten thousand hours is not enough

You also need four key things:

1. Valid environment with knowable rules, and predictable outcomes (like publishing on Medium)

2. Many repetitions (how about say a 100 stories?)

3. Timely feedback to learn if our performance is improving (yay for comments!)

4. Deliberate practice on things outside your comfort zone. (Oh…)

I had the first three in publishing daily flash fiction within a public Medium community.

But not the last. Possibly the most important.

Deliberate practice is one step in front of another

This is what I missed. And while refreshing my design theory for this newsletter, it became glaringly obvious why my learning had slowed down. To the point that it burnt willpower to continue.

We need those dopamine bumps to keep our motivation up.
To keep pushing on knowing things will get better.

If we don’t get them we use up all our willpower and burn out.

So even though many writers have finished the challenge I started, I was stuck on 75 stories daydreaming about doing other things.

If we don't feel like we're progressing, we abandon our progress.

But a community helps

As I chatted with Shanice another challenger who got stuck, I suggested to her, that maybe she got stuck because she had conflicting priorities. Her deep psychology wasn't aligned.

Maybe we both needed to overlay our goals:

1. I want to write longer fiction (those damn novels)

2. I want to master my craft

3. I want build a grand persistent world

4. I want to finish what I started

I needed to overlap all of those to prime my psychology to continue.

Reframing my problem I realised I needed to

• Experiment toward a larger goal. Not in isolation. (#1 & #3)

• Experiment deliberately, testing a craft hypothesis. (#2)

• To write 25 more “stories" and wrap up this challenge

It should be clear, now, why we prototype

But honestly, why bother? It seems like far more effort than simply starting and getting on with the project. It is more effort up front. In the short term it without a doubt adds more work.

But over the long term it saves weeks and months of wasted misdirected effort. And if your intention is to develop as a writer and a lifelong learner it's essential.

It's also the true (and faster) way to mastery.

And it's very important part of the non-linear Design Thinking process. Non-linear because we often bounce around the five steps illustrated below.

© Interaction Design Foundation, CC BY-SA 3.0

1. Empathise is getting to know the problem-space of our readers (how do I, as a reader, find good stuff to read that makes me feel better or help me fix things?)

2. Define is when we create our personas (coming in issue #005 early Sept).

3. Ideate is brainstorm solutions to solve reader problems.

4. Prototype is when we create small, quick, minimally viable versions of those solutions. To test before we invest.

5. Testing is sharing those prototypes (building, writing or practicing in public) and gathering feedback.

This is the high-level process those trillion dollar companies follow.

Simple but effective.

Ok, so what is 100 Story Challenge?

It's a writing challenge to write 100 stories, 100 words long, in 100 days.

The 100 word limit keeps the stories short and the daily or frequent publishing helps us avoid getting too precious and stuck over-investing in a single story.

Because momentum matters. Daily practice compounds.

On a deeper level

The challenge is clearly an exercise in rapid prototyping. Sharing (and testing) new ideas in the form of microfiction stories.

• Do my readers like an unbalanced romance?

• Or is this idea about AI being the new slave race interesting?

• If I start a story like this will people get it?

It's experimenting with styles, characters, dialogue and any other story element.

It's an invitation to deliberate practice. Practicing specific elements of story to improve your skills by getting feedback with every story you publish on Medium.

Some of you may know about it, or have even finished it

We'll hear from one challenge winner next week, who is also the owner of rising Fantasy fiction publication, Kraken Lore). If you haven't I invite you to take a look and consider using it to level up your writing, build and audience and discover your preferred genre.

I'll share next week what Bradan learn during his challenge.

And for my own challenge?

I'm going to be a lot more intentional about my own last 25 stories using them to write:

1. Character sketches (using the free Persona template I'll share in issue #005),

2. Origin story serials (answering the Imposter Syndrome prompt from Jann) for my main characters

3. Sharing the history of the world as fables and myths told by a wandering Teller.

And I'll be using those shiny new AI art generators for character faces, world concept art and publication branding.

I'm doing all of this to World Build in Public as an experiment that aligns all of my deep psychology goals and provides a case study for us to pick apart.

I hope you'll join me in that journey. I'll share everything I learn along the way.

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Takeaways

1. I hope my own story and example has shown how important prototyping is for writers, but how easy it is to prototype poorly.

2. That practicing without focus and testing vague ideas leads to much slower progress. And even burnout.

3. If you haven't already tried the 100 Story Challenge to start testing your ideas. Try areas of writing craft where you may be rusty and experiment deliberately.

4. Like these handy prompts from Aigner Wilson (judge for the NYC Midnight contests) Also her weekly Write Better Right Now is ideal for deliberate practice. It's what I'll be working through.

Want a list of deliberate practice exercises?

Let me know in the comments and I'll start work on one — free only for subscribers of the Reader Experience.

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