June Writerly Things

Where I start a new novel and other literary chaos

A representation of writer’s block by Leonid Pasternak (1862–1945)

The (New) Manuscript

I started on a new story exactly 14 days ago. I have 24,000 words. It flows out of me like lava. The heat wave makes it impossible for me to sleep so I find myself creeping downstairs to work on it in the dead of night even when the sleep deprivation gives me a headache. I like it when stories want to claw their way out of somewhere.

I always start a new story with a 3-4 sentence paragraph of what it is. It could be anything, 3-4 sentences of a character I’ve thought of or a piece of dialogue or a theme or a fully formed plot. Writing those sentences down first helps me to make sense of them. And then I expand them to a paragraph. Sometimes 1 paragraph, sometimes 3.

And 14 days ago I expanded it into a whole-ass pitch and posted it on a subreddit that critiques queries. The response was overwhelming. A query to a book of which only one-fourth exists. Maybe that forms part of the fuel that propels me to write it in pure flow state. Some of the story exists in longhand on pages of the yellow legal pad we use at work, and some of it in the cloud. I have no goals in terms of word count or timeline. I want to get the story out first.

#JuneJottings

I wasn’t really built for social media. Oh, I know how to use it to stalk people and the non-Luddite millennial in me has kept up with the jargon and the trends and tech side of it. But that’s where it all end unfortunately. Half the time I forget to take photos of anything interesting going on in my life and the other times I’m too tired and time-poor to edit videos and pick music to go with it. I can barely get through a couple of posts on Bluesky and X (the artist formerly knows as Twitter) before wanting to go cook or read or write.

But I’ve made a conscious effort in the last month or two to actively engage in the community. FOMO be warned. And have even hosted an event called #JuneJottings which is a fun prompt game that lets participants answer a different question everyday, about their works in progress, for the whole month of June.

The engagement has been insanely satisfying. Connecting with writers who are actively building worlds, experimenting with genres or simply bending them to their will, writing (and visualising!) characters I want to root for, makes me envious and intimidated of their talent. But envy, is a good thing for me. #JuneJottings has been a good thing for me.

The game is still on till the 30 June.

Some of the slides for #JuneJottings this month

---

---

Resources and instructions

Two full blog posts, one that focuses on my favourite craft essays on writing (I’m looking at Cheryl Strayed and recently, Benjamin Schaefer), and one that tells baby writers to just write what they want to write without waiting for permission.

Happy writing!

Amrita