Three Years Ago Today
This popped up in my memories this morning. This was a historic moment for me–I’d already had my mind blown about the importance of knowing your Content genre but I hadn’t yet had my mind blown about applying the correct genre to my climax. Reading the Story Grid changed the way I thought about writing. Taking the Story Grid class and meeting all these fine people changed the way I write and my novel has borne the fruit of some excellent training, great mentorship and collaboration, and lots and LOTS of hard work.
![](https://silentvanitye.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/D90045D7-6EA5-4E5D-8DED-F6C127FA03DD-1.png)
Dipping my toe into SG has opened my eyes to other tools. A year ago I worked with Story Grid Certified Editor Danielle Kiowski and have been doing a page one rewrite based on her feedback, I’ve been having a blast with the Pages & Platforms group (Anne Hawley, Rachelle Stewart Ramirez, Sue Campbell), I’ve been taking the webinar classes from Robert McKee, and I found a SHEG (editing group) who I meet with weekly (Don Elliott and Karen Schoch McDaniel), and which has had a profound impact on the quality of my work. I used to write when the Muse visited and now I write every day, and have done for the past 164 days in a row.
Since this picture was taken, I’ve written eleven drafts of my novel THE BLUE GOLEM. My plan is to do a quick prose pass for my 12th draft, finally share the novel with a group of Beta readers interested in my fantasy / noir golem detective novel, and I hope to have it out by the end of this year, give or take. All of this started three years ago, and I couldn’t be happier with where I am in my writing and the different extensions of my larger writing tribe.