the craft. transition from shortform to longform content.
I started writing for public consumption as a blogger. Around 2013 was prime time for personal blogs and it seemed like the smartest way to start to get myself out there as a writer. Step by step, I built a small following and got really consistent with 600-800 word posts. That was the sweet spot for a while. I would think it up, batch write, and post multiple times a week to the instant gratification of blog and social media comments about whatever my musings were for the moment.
But as I grew, as more opportunities came my way, I had to start refining my writing process. One of the first writing contracts I received was to write about local music talent in Philly. Those were also pretty short posts, but they prepared me to eventually start writing music features. This was for a free magazine called JUMP, where I began to learn the beauty of feature writing, reporting, and longer form articles. Then we were talking the 1k and up word counts, incorporating interviews, scenery, I learned so much there.
After that I had the privilege of writing for Essence.com and a few other online outlets which continued to build that muscle over time. It’s truly been building step by step because there is no way I would have been ready to write a whole novel back in 2013. All of this freelancing and blogging wasn’t necessarily preparing me to write fiction content, but it was a lot of reps in writing in general which only helped.
When it came to fiction, I used to only be able to write short stories. It was almost as if my brain moved much faster than my ability to write, so I would rush through the story so that I wouldn’t forget where it was going. I explored on the page a bit with different short stories, until my 20-page sample of Good Morning, Love felt like it could be something more.
There was something about this story that suddenly made me feel like I could see it through in a different way. So, I wrote and wrote until I couldn’t and then, I did a small beat sheet to keep my ideas straight while I took more time writing. With the beat sheet, my ideas were safe, so I didn’t have to rush the story.
It was an important lesson for me to learn how to take my time. I wasn’t going to be able to post about this in 3-5 business days. It was going to take me three years to get the manuscript in good enough shape to share with anyone.
During that time, I learned how to take my time more on the page from reading other writers and observing how they allowed a story to unfold. The rushing I was experiencing in my craft was me telling myself to get to the point, but I realized that the reader is here, yes, to see the result, but also to go on a journey with these characters and that it was okay to slow down, to explain, to learn to hold some details for later.
The key to being able to write longer form content for me has truly come from my understanding of revision, my practice of revision. Knowing that I can write a general skeleton, because fast brain, and then go back in to fill out more later.
Writing books, whether they be fiction or nonfiction, are about being in it for the long haul, friends. People spend years on books where in the past, I felt like I was doing good if I spent three days on a blog post. It was certainly a transition, but not one that happened over night. It was one that took a lot of gradual steps to get to the point where I had the endurance to complete a whole book.
You know, outlines can be very polarizing, but I think they are a major key in being able to write longform content. Whether you have the ability to organize ideas in your head or you need to put them on paper, I think outlining is happening somewhere. My 600-word posts didn’t need much outlining but my 80,000 book did. Now, I’ve shared that I normally don’t start with an outline but at some point, as I’m kind of finding my way in the story, eventually I have to start creating a picture for myself of where I’m going. In my opinion, longform content needs some type of road map to keep you on track. [But remember “grain of salt” always with these types of things. Do what works for you!]
I also feel like free-writing can be useful in the process of transitioning to long form writing. At times when we focus too much on the point of the story or the language, we can get stifled and honestly give up or end a piece prematurely. Spending some time with a header at the top of the page and writing everything that comes to mind, can truly help you exhaust all the possibilities of a subject matter that then allows you to start shaping and molding it in revision.
Revision, revision, revision is what I’ll always come back to. Especially for those of us with these brains that are always on one thousand, I find that most times, I don’t have a lot to start but I write what I do have first. I will come back to it. I write a little more, come back to it, write a little more, and on and on. All of a sudden this 600-word piece has become 1200 words or whatever it is I’m trying to get to. I can’t tell you how many times I heard “revision is writing” back in the day, but now that I am a writer, I understand how true that statement is.
I think of the progression of work and how you can go from:
They sat on the beach.
They sat on the beach to watch the sunset.
They sat together cross-legged on the beach as the sun descended.
They sat together cross-legged on the beach as the sun descended into the collision of the water and the sky.
I mean, this is me winging it here, but you get the picture. We get to beef up what we have in this expansive way. How can we expand the meaning? How can we expand the scene? What else is happening here? That to me is how I’ve stretched myself in writing.
It’s a balance for sure. Writing is not all about adding words, because we should be both trying to get our point across but also being concise. But this type of decision making only comes down to the repetition of it all. The more you write, the more easily you start to identify what you need and what you don’t need in a piece. That’s also where those subjective readers come in and not being afraid to share your work with the other writers you’ve been in community with to get feedback.
The thing about longform content is that it takes patience and time. Two things that most of us in this generation are consistently trying to avoid. But I’ve had to learn to be patient with my work. Being both diligent to complete it, but also allowing it to come together as it wants to. Some days I don’t have it to write. There are things that still haven’t worked themselves out in my brain. I’m much more patient with that now, and I think we should be if we want to write things that are worthwhile.
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