Serafima Malachit

So, in Chapter 1, at the bottom of the file, I write [[2]] to link it to Chapter 2. At the bottom of Chapter 2, I make a link for [[3]], and so forth. This creates a chain in the Graph View.

These are literally just your scenes / chapters / whatever units of story you prefer to analyse. Looks like this:

You don't have to write a chunk of chapters before doing the next step, you can do it as you go, but to make it easier I'm showing you this way.

For this vault, you wanna toggle Tags ON in the Filter section of the Graph View's Settings.

We will using #tags to represent things like plot elements, world building, people, and so on.

For example, in this WIP, I write #tags whenever I mention or show something new, or when I repeat it. In a second you will see how this method helps me keep information relevant to the current segment or arc.

Let's say that Chapters 1-8 is the set-up for the story. Chapter 1-2 we see how character 'Gar' meets character 'Lag' in Lag's village. Gar is a warrior, and they're passing the village now and again because Gar has some quests and training to be done nearby.

What is this training? What kind of warrior? Where are they from? Who is Lag? What's their village like and why does it matters? These are elements that we start exploring during the first few chapters.

If every chapter is connected to the same #tag you're obviously overdoing something. Like, we get it, develop other aspects already! At the start, your chapters might look like a braid as you add and then reinforce new ideas down the line.

One thing this helps me with is tracking show versus tell. Like here, I realised I've been talking a lot about warriors, but I haven't shown much action! If I were writing this as I go, I might use this observation to insert more action.

I won't do this for the whole book whenever the is a battle though, because the point by Chapters 8+ will not be to battle just for the sake of SHOWING how the fights or magic system works, but to have those battles mean something. By Chapter 10, for example, I won't use the tag #warrior-show because I'm done showing. Now the point is, for example, that two characters fight! So, it's more like #gar-v-kay to represent conflict between Gar and Kay.

Why that matters is because each complete and self-sufficient Arc or segment, if well done, must eventually curve ant become a knot, like this:

For a second, this looks chaotic, but it's actually good!

THIS IS YOUR FIRST KNOT.

That's a round turn and five half-hitches right there.

This is how you know you're doing well.

This means that your segment or arc is literally tight and stitched together. If it doesn't look like this, that means the reader is waiting too long for any kind of pay-off.

In the above case, Chapters 1-8 represent my first Arc. While there's a lot of world-building and exposition to be given, that alone CANNOT be the point of an arc. So, I have added tags that represent Character Driven elements. Such as Lag and Gar bonding, or showing their individual motivations and goals, and reinforcing them repeatedly. We explore Lag's values like his love for his village, and Gar's dedication to his goal... and the growing feeling they have for each other.

Which is why, the final Chapter of this arc clearly shows those elements coming together:

Chapter 8, highlighted in blue, tells us everything we need to know. Lag and Gar bonded. Each showed their separate motivations in life. Lag loves his village, Gar is from the far away capital. They understand they cannot be together, and we as the reader also understand because we've seen these separate elements weave into each other, until we have that final pay-off and release. Gar will go back, and Lag will stay, but both of them have been changed by the experience. They go their separate ways... for now.

Chapter 9 marks the start of a new segment or arc, and it will have its own tags. You will also notice that some tags are literally loose-threads. It's for me to decide if that's good or bad.

For example, I mentioned a character named Vinji. Then, we met them. I'm cool with that because that's a set-up for later.

I will NOT link these tags later in the story because the tag isn't #vinji, it's MENTIONING them without seeing (telling) and then MEETING (showing) and now they are known. That bit is done.

Here, however, the #warriors-tell is OUTSIDE of the circle (notice how the arc literally curves into a ball, the tags ending up on the inside) meaning I just info-dumped for 3 chapters straight. I think I'm going to edit that and change it later.

When dealing with plot-lines that are long term.... we don't want them on the graph. We want the major plot-lines divided into stages.

So, one overarching major plot-line in this story is Gar x Lag love over the years. I don't just tag #gar-x-lag every time their relationship progresses because again, I would end up in one big hairball. What we want is a series of clusters (or, knots, if you will).

So, every stage of Gar x Lag can be #gar-x-lag-bonding for their first encounter, #gar-x-lag-tension for when they meet again under very bad circumstances and can't talk yet, #gar-x-lag-closer for when they're both making timid steps towards each other, #gar-x-lag-conflict for when, you guessed it, they push each other away... and so forth. Heck, each one is a perfect under-line for each arc.

Next section, or the next knot, has its own build-ups and pay-offs! Keep making those knots as you go, and each part of your story will feel rewarding to the readers and dare I say un-put-down-able.

He does that sometimes. His way of taking control over our financial situation: getting me back into work. The job was another one of those high-paying, high-burnout middle-management positions I've been avoiding like fire.

I didn't leave that kind of work just to get back into one again. I took this part-time, remote night-shift with on-call duties because it was anything I really wanted to do. I thought it would buy me time to write during the day. Slow mornings. Put my night-owl rhythm into use. Be an easy, low-effort position with just the right minimal salary to technically keep us afloat, while getting my family off my back.

Three months have passed since the new job, almost a year since I quit my last full-time position, and I haven't written much at all.

I spent the next two hours rewriting my CV and cover letter, only to realize the position required a portfolio I don't even have. I swore out loud and sent the application anway, just to say I've done it.

Fuck this raw. This took so much time. Why do I try this fucking hard for something I don't even want?

Wht don't I try this hard the shit I actually want?

Afterwards, I decided I deserved to push cleaning for a bit and write. I stared at the screen, writing nothing. Flashbacks of all the previous times I have made my "grand return" as a writer spiral in my mind's eye, only to result in me inveitably abandoning it all once again. Instead, i type a short blog post: WRITE YOUR NOVEL AND TELL NOBODY, as a way to process whatever was stopping my fingers from typing: my fear of being seen, my need for validation, the strange pressure I've attached to creating anything at all.

By then, my partner had come home. I tried to clean the kitchen before we left to do the grocery shopping together, since I also failed to cook anything before he arrived. The kitchen is still not finished as I write this. When we got back, I cooked a quick meal, and I watched one of my comfort shows.

I cuddled with my partner, but the convesation quickly stirred to the job post, how I feel about it, and him talking about how hard it's been on him to keep everything afloat and that he needs me to get my shit together. I went back to watching my show.

I could have sat down and finally written something, while my partner is gaming. Instead, I keep ruminating. I'm a capable professional, but I can't keep a job due to stress and quick burnout. I don't actually want another job. At the same time, I'm terrified that nobody will hire me because of my flaky history. Getting a rejecetion letter would break the narrative of me "choosing" to not work a job like that, and highlight that I'm not cut out for the one thing that would solve most of our problems: a nine to five.

I applied for another job I don't even want, copy-pasting what I made for the first application. Maybe I did just to feed my other, back-up narrativeof the economy being too fucked for me to stress over jobs I can't get. Look, I'm sending out CVs and all, and no response.

My greatest fear is that someone will repsond. Invite me to an interview. Like me. Hire me. And I will have to say yes, because "we need this," and I will very quickly disappoint everyone. Again.

I still had a few of hours before my night shift begins. Instead of taking the chance to write, I again feel this heavy depression over a "wasted day." I keep thinking about how I repeat the cycle of shirt-lived career jobs that take months to recver from, and how my own body seems to fight me whenever I try to build the life I actually want, and how writing—the one thing I claim matters most—keeps slipping through my fingers.

Then, I wrote this post.

My night shift starts in two hours. Exactly the time I need to mentally prepare for it. Meaning, I can't do anything that demands energy. I will continue with my comfort show, so I don't have the time and space to be anxious over whether or not the shift will go well.

Part of this, I'm certain, is the life-long programming of productivity and capitalist cutlure, where if you're not monetizing something you're good at you're wasting time. I could've finished something in the last ten years, but as soon as I start writing, I panick and start focusing on something that 'could bring me money'. Not only does that other thing not bring me money, but I abandoned writing again.

And I've noticed that I only start feeling and thinking and spiralling like this only after I try to share this.

If you're some one who feels like their existence needs to be constantly validated, you might be like me. You stop writing because nobody else is loving your art as much as you.

The very first time it happend, I was ten. I told m family I was writing a book. This was directly met with laughter, ridicule, mocking a ten-year-old for thinking she is Dostoevski, then saying that very few writers actually become famous and profitable, so unless you're special you should forget this. Since I continued living with my family, being a kid and all, I hears this a million more times growing up.

My family gets mad whenever I mention this, because "these days" they say "yeah, but we haven't done that and we've been waiting for you to finish that book you're been writing for 20 years and get rich or something, come one, you're 30, get over it". They don't even know that I've started many books, they don't know when or how often I might be writing, they just keep asking me about somekind of "the book" they imagined when I was ten, saying they really want to know what I conjured up anyway.

The damage has been done, whether or not they say things like that anymore. If anything, I am EVEN MORE apalled and offended by the sudden 180 turn from mocking me to going "no but see everyone and anyone is getting book deals so go for it". Because all that matters to them is whether or not I'm doing something that will give me money.

Ahem, but that's my trauma to work with, and this is a different post, so back to the main point.

It didn't have to be familiy. It could be friends. It could be an online group of anonymous people. Point is, as soon as I include even one person, I start feeling "shame" for one reason or another. I share, I start projecting my insecurities onto people, I run away.

The "long term" idea that when I finish and publish, there WILL in fact be people reading it, doesn't seem to motivate me. Because I don't know who those people are.

What it was really about is me feeling like there's no-one rooting for me and that there's nobody there to pick me up when I feel down about my writing. Took me too many years to realize what I needed was a way to pick myself up.

But until now, whenever I did start writing again, I inevitably end up thinking "I should share this as I go!"

The last time I did this, I showed it to my friend. Well, my friend whom I had a low-key crush on and we had this whole, I dunno, whatever lesbians who can't stay friends have.

She read every chapter I wrote. Heck, we turned it into a whole performance where I would dramtically read and act the chapters out-loud. We went on vacation together, and I would write new chapters in a day or two while we lay on the beach, an she'd read them afterwards. It was perfect.

At the same time, I started publishing chapters online. Your usual choice, Wattpad and Inkitt, to get a sense of regularity and to maybe kinda sort of start making a name for myself again.

Well, thinhs got queer between me and my friend (it always was but I jsut had to cross the line) and not short after, we stopped talking at all.

Even though I put out my work online and told myself to "post as if you have a hundred hungry readers who are waiting" I still dropped out. Because I had begun to shape the story for her.

So, I vanished.

I started writing again now, a few months later, but of course I started something new. And again, all I can think of how I am going to show it to my group chat, because the story is based on our collective experiences.

I realise now, I have to break the cycle. And that experience with my friend shoewed to me more than anything that all my downfalls come from feeling like I HAVE to been by others to be validated. But when that validation doesn't work out or doesn't last long, I believe my writing, too, is worthless.

So, if any of this feels close to your heart, I just want to reassure you:

You are the person who loves your writing the most, and your writing will always love you back, unconditionally.

Please, give it the same treatment. There won't be anyone else out there who can equal this love, this familiarity, between creator and creation. So, give your writing the love it deserves. Don't stop taking care of it because you're divorcing people out of your life. So, be there for your writing, too. Spend time with it, love it for what it is, keep creating someone beautiful. This is between you and written word.

If you feel like your heart is reasily swayed by word—and of course it is, for you wouldn't have fallen in love writing writiing—invite no-one into this private, intimate relationship between you and your art. Write your novel, and tell nobody. The only words that matter are not those of validation or criticism from others. It's the words you and your art have to say to each other.