I've been writing and re-writing my query ad nauseum for about a month and a half, and in the process developed what feels like a genuinely new skill: the ability to take a sentence, and determine what sentence should logically follow. That might sound like table-stakes literacy, but it genuinely feels like I've turned on my mangekyo sharingan. Before, I would look at my writing-- now I can see it. I can consciously identify what elements of a sentence demand elaboration, put them together with explicit goals for where I want the succeeding sentence to take me, and finally identify possible sentences that satisfy all relevant criteria.
Right now, I'm very slow at applying this skill. It takes me about an hour to edit 100 words, and frankly the cognitive load is so high I don't think I'll ever get more than a 2x or 3x speedup. Whenever I get back to actually writing (as opposed to editing), I'll need to retrain my brain to think in flow-state vibe-coder first-draft mode. But whenever I reach a particularly high-stakes passage, I'll have my dojutsu waiting in my eye sockets.
If anyone wants to copy my technique, I would suggest briefly focusing on a type of art that's hyper-constrained in word count. Flash fiction, light novel titles, slam poetry (but not the irritating kind), song lyrics, elevator pitches, and of course query letters. Write and re-write as many times as it takes to be perfect-- and get iterative feedback.
Props to /u/FtttG for introducing me to qtcritique, I wouldn't have gotten here without that.
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I've been writing and re-writing my query ad nauseum for about a month and a half, and in the process developed what feels like a genuinely new skill: the ability to take a sentence, and determine what sentence should logically follow. That might sound like table-stakes literacy, but it genuinely feels like I've turned on my mangekyo sharingan. Before, I would look at my writing-- now I can see it. I can consciously identify what elements of a sentence demand elaboration, put them together with explicit goals for where I want the succeeding sentence to take me, and finally identify possible sentences that satisfy all relevant criteria.
Right now, I'm very slow at applying this skill. It takes me about an hour to edit 100 words, and frankly the cognitive load is so high I don't think I'll ever get more than a 2x or 3x speedup. Whenever I get back to actually writing (as opposed to editing), I'll need to retrain my brain to think in flow-state vibe-coder first-draft mode. But whenever I reach a particularly high-stakes passage, I'll have my dojutsu waiting in my eye sockets.
If anyone wants to copy my technique, I would suggest briefly focusing on a type of art that's hyper-constrained in word count. Flash fiction, light novel titles, slam poetry (but not the irritating kind), song lyrics, elevator pitches, and of course query letters. Write and re-write as many times as it takes to be perfect-- and get iterative feedback.
Props to /u/FtttG for introducing me to qtcritique, I wouldn't have gotten here without that.
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