Novel writing plans

Weekly letter, May 3rd, 2024.

Hi. 🥳 Happy Friday.

Here’s a little video postcard I made for you this morning:

Chronicles from afar

has requested more Swedish nature videos, and so I oblige. This is the state of spring here right now. 😌 Going to be really warm and sunny this weekend, and we’ve put up our outdoor furniture. I plan on sitting here all weekend, soaking up as much sun as possible, listening to the song thrushes and wood pidgeons.

(By the way, I love that we can now embed videos into any post on Substack. Doesn’t have to be a full video post. So neat.)

This week I’ve edited and published a new video for my channel. The first one in 6 months. And the first one in the new editing software I’ve learned. I recently switched from Adobe Premiere Pro to DaVinci Resolve. Had I known how amazing DaVinci is - on top of, y’know, being FREE - I would have switched years ago. And saved so much money I don’t even want to think about it. (Bye, bye Adobe and your stupid, expensive subscriptions. 👋🏻)

So that’s a tip for you if you’re into video editing. Try DaVinci. It’s not as complicated as it might seem. I followed this excellent tutorial, and it got me sorted in no time. Keyboard shortcuts and all. Editing now is so much fun. I’ve really missed it.

I’ve finally re-published my Watercolor Birds course to my own website. Skillshare, as we know, is an ever-sinking ship. This particular course has completely fallen by the wayside. I spent an insane amount of time on it, released it on Skillshare back in 2022, where it didn’t gain as much traction as my drawing courses there. I got disappointed and demotivated about that, and then I kind of forgot about the course. Such a shame, because it’s the best course I’ve made, and my most “trademark” one. Feels great to have all of my best courses on my own site now, all neat and up-to-date.

I’ve also spent some time in my sketchbook lately, drawing crows and jackdaws:

And last but not least… I’ve gotten accepted into a 1-year novel writing course! 🎉

I believe I’ve only briefly mentioned my novel writing plans in my podcast, so here’s the full update: I’m planning a trilogy of novels loosely inspired by my high school years back in the late 90s. It’s an idea I’ve had for a long time, but haven’t quite found the right format for.

And then, back in the beginning of April, I remembered that there are these novel writing courses that can be taken remotely. You apply for them with an idea for a novel, and a few pages of writing from it. And if accepted, you work on that novel and get feedback from teachers and other students. It was exactly the type of support and accountability I’d need. But the application deadline was two weeks away. So I scrambled to finalize my idea enough to be able to write 5-10 pages from the first chapter, and applied for 9 different courses just before deadline. Phew.

I was amazed to get a reply from one of the schools less than two weeks later, and a positive one at that! I immediately accepted the spot. The course starts in mid-August. I’m so excited.

And so terrified.

It’s scary just to tell you about this, because we all know what I’m like... It’ll be a huge challenge for me to maintain my motivation and discipline with this project. I’m going to want to quit soooo many times. I’ll come up with a million reasons why the project can wait. Fiction writing, for me, is very sensitive to low motivation and outside pressure of any kind. The only thing that will keep me on this path is to remind myself of why this matters to me. Even if my writing sucks and the book turns out to be crap. Even if trying to get it published is futile. It still needs to get done, because I’m 40 years old, and I won’t die happy until I’ve completed at least one novel in my lifetime. I have no more time to waste. There are no excuses.

Ugh… I might have to eat that up in the future, but there it goes. I intend to do this thing, and I look forward to sharing my process with you. I plan on keeping up my regular work during the course, at least these weekly letters. Might have to slow down the pace for the YouTube channel and other projects. The course isn’t just about writing the novel, it’s about giving feedback on other students’ projects, and probably some lectures and seminars and other activities as well. We’ll see how busy next year becomes, but I’m ready for it!

Anyways, I hope you’ll enjoy your weekend. I’ll see you next week. 😊

With love,

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New video:

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Some favorite things lately:

• The Deep Questions episode where they talk about artists quitting social media:

• This beautiful piece about raising chickens, by Amory Rowe Salem.

“I watched with recognition as our rasorial creatures bent their heads to the ground and brought the full force of their attention to a single square inch of grass. They were excellent excavators of the granular, masters of the microscopic, capable of quarrying the tiniest insects and grubs. But they paid a price for their ground-level monomania, sometimes missing a juicy worm just a few feet away—or a predator overhead—because they simply weren’t seeing the bigger picture. As a mother, a teacher, a citizen, I also knew the opportunity cost of becoming mired in the details. It behooves all of us, every now and then, to turn our faces to the sun lest we lose sight of the magnitude of the stage on which we are playing.”

• Adam Duff’s video about the algorithm-as-narcisisstic boss:

  "Don't depend on YouTube as your source of income. You cannot depend on a narcissist because they're not dependable. You have to depend on yourself. You have to know who you are."

• This brilliant post from Tara McMullin on WhatWorks, about the state of marketing in the digital ecology.

  "The downstream effects of millions of people using the internet as a gold mine make it hard to survive—let alone thrive—in this environment. The air is thick with pollutants. The water is contaminated. The climate grows hotter."

• Music to draw birds to:

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I am a watercolor wildlife artist by trade. You can view my original paintings and prints for sale here.

If you're a beginner artist, you might enjoy my self-paced courses on drawing and watercolor painting.

If you run a creative business and are tired of the social media hustle, I have a workbook called Calm Marketing you might find useful. I also offer personalized business advice via my Creative Business Audit. It’s like a high-powered coaching session, but super-affordable, and delivered via pdf.