Inktober 2019 Postmortem

Project

I set out to write a story with specific strictures that were outside of my control, in order to stretch myself as a writer. I was to conform to the prompt subjects and sequence, focusing on style over story flow.

Goal Achievement

• Improve as a writer: A really vague goal. Therefore, very difficult to evaluate whether it was achieved. However, I do feel like there were one or two insights I gained this month. I'm not entirely sure they came from writing the prompts, though.
• Keep Pace with the Prompts: Both yes and no. I fell behind multiple times, but I finished the writing three days early.
• Write Stylistically: Again, a mixed bag. I'm very keen on several of the sentences which had both elevated diction and imagery that was both clever and easily apprehended. On the other hand, there are several sentences I believe I substituted fancy words for style.
• Feel like I got Something Done: Done and done. I feel good about the shape of the story. It i s a small accomplishment, but it is mine.

What worked well?

Tight and specific stepping stones. I didn't work on them every day, which I found had a lot to do with the day of the week and my bandwidth at work. I did very little even thinking about Inktober over weekends. But back to the point, when I did work, it was very easy to get what I wanted done. Sure, I agonized over a few of the sentences, even got stuck a time or two, but on the whole, knowing what happened next and what sort of imagery I needed made pulling a sentence together a simple task.

What didn't work well?

Narrative. Most of the sentences work well individually, but when strung together they overload the reader. Alternately, in spots the changes are too choppy. Given the goals, this was inevitable, however. I'm not sure individual meaning always came out either, nor communicating full intention.

What defied expectations?

I believe the tight conditions, the stricture of the structure, if you will, made it easier to write the story, rather than harder. This has a lot to do, I think, with the nature of Non-Verbal Working Memory (something I only learned about in the last week, though it explains a heckuva lot).

What will I do different next Inktober?

Given the previous answer, something a bit more ambitious for the core project, I think. I don't want to try to work against the NVWM, but given that phenomenon, I can do something that requires more work than a single sentence a day.
I'll also start on time.

What will I do different on other projects because of this Inktober?

I will continue to recognize that style, while cool, is also why I don't think much of Thoreau. Going for style as a primary goal leaves much behind that the end result is little more than a fancy outline.
I will also break projects into very small chunks and visualize them before writing.

How do I feel about Inktober 2019?

Really good. Despite my complaints, I feel like I did a really fancy outline. I have a great shape for a story here, and as the next draft can ignore the strictures, I can improve the faults quite a bit. On the other hand, most of it is already pretty completely visualized, so should be able to bust through a second draft.
I'm not sure this story belongs in Caldonia. Certainly the material itself could fit, with the absurdness of the horror and the horrific absrudity, but it's not lighthearted. Maybe I need a world specifically for short projects. We'll see.