Portrait of the Artist
Everything Is True
Ada Hoffmann's author newsletter
One of the new-to-me Substacks I've been enjoying lately is Joy Baglio's newsletter, "Alone In a Room." Updates are not very frequent but they're each full of some really meaty, interesting, open-ended prompts that I've enjoyed playing around with. I thought I'd share some of what I wrote in response to the most recent series of prompts - on setting creative intentions for yourself as a writer.
(These prompts are phrased as beginning-of-the-year intentions, like something you'd do when you make resolutions at New Year's, but they were posted in February, so that's obviously not the only way to do them. I did them at the spring equinox, because that felt right.)
Here's some of what I wrote for the Portrait of the Artist portion - lightly edited.
I am thoughtful but playful. I think through all sides of an issue. I welcome nuance. I empathize even with villains. In fact I love villains. I humanize everyone I can. I let my characters pause to think and feel. I love writing sensory experiences. I love the weird. I love bringing characters face to face with mystic experiences that expand their worldview. I love exploring intense experiences and letting characters grapple with trauma. I am less confident with action scenes but can rise to their demands if I stay grounded in the individual characters' senses and motives. My characters are neurodivergent and queer like me and my friends. I write best when I am writing from the heart. I write best when I am not worrying about how it will be received. I write a lot about power and characters who are in someone else's (or a group/religion's) power. I love weird monsters, scary monsters, and cute monsters. I like to explore a range of different moods and tones.
What's fascinating about this exercise is that I can see a lot of continuity - things that have been true of me as a writer for my whole life - but also things that have changed for me over the years.
Take "I love writing sensory experiences," for instance. This might not have been true for me at the beginning of my career, or even when I wrote THE OUTSIDE. It's something I've been playing with a lot lately, though - partly in fanfic and partly in my new WIP, where I've specifically been trying to up my game at worldbuilding and getting across how a setting feels. It turns out sensory experiences are great for that. It's actually immense fun to get absorbed in describing food, or sex, or the clothes that the characters like to wear - you can craft a bespoke set of sensations for the readers to vicariously enjoy, and if you do it right, it develops the characters and fleshes out the setting at the same time! Every other author in the universe probably knew this before I did, but I'm delighted by it now!
There's a lot more to the intention-setting exercises, including setting specific goals. Definitely check it out if it sounds like an exercise you'd want to do for yourself!