The forest-tree problem comes up a lot in writing, especially with longer works. Your prose is tight, the characters strongly drawn, but what is the big picture, and where is the story going? This prompt asks you to put down in several levels of compression a summary of what you are doing, with the goal of helping you focus and stay on point — or change the point, if, say, you seem to be meandering in a direction different from the one in which you began. Such change is fine, in fact it can be fabulous for the energy of a project for it to take unexpected turns. Because meandering is natural to the writing process, it is useful for many writers to periodically stop and do an overview, to make sure the whole has the coherence they want.

PROMPT

1. Write a paragraph describing your project, where you are in the writing process and where you want to get this year.

2. Write a single, tight sentence that includes the title, setting, most important character or characters .

3. List three things you need to work on. These could be writing tasks on any scale, from developing a particular character, purging cliches, addressing a pervasive technical issue such as tense or point of view, writing a missing chapter, adding flashbacks, or eliminating needless repetitions. Be ambitious but not absurdly so.

4. After you've done some of that work, go back to the single sentence and try to turn it into a "pitch" and to the paragraph and try to turn it into your fantasy jacket copy. Let these documents remain alive, changing them as the book evolves.