In the process of writing Learning Log, I've collected and reorganized a wide range of KM-related resources. Most of them are stored as links in my Diigo archives. They're also part of the updated Learning Log 1.5 website. They're hidden a little too deep in the weeds so I thought I'd highlight them here.
These resources were selected to accompany the storyline of Learning Log. They are not meant to represent a comprehensive collection of resources on Knowledge Management.
This short White Paper highlights a number of approaches for integrating didactic fiction into structured training, whether in an academic setting, a formal professional development context or an informal workshop.
The White Paper illustrates the integration of such didactic fiction with the specific example of Learning Log, a business novel focused on a Knowledge Management theme.
While Learning Log comes with suggested discussion activities, the intent is to inspire instructors and professors to create their own discussion activities and/or assignments for Learning Log as well as other didactic novels that may have a role to play in their course syllabus.
Book titles are important ... They sell the book. Or is it the cover that sells the book? Forget about all the work put into writing something of quality. It's all in the cover and the title (?).
I've been stuck on Learning Log as the title for my book, but I've never been 100% sure that it was the right title. In the process of thinking through what would be an author's introduction to the book, writing a short white paper about how KM instructors might use it in structured training, and thinking about how to "sell" the concept of the book to a publisher, I've had to look at the book from a 50,000 feet perspective.
Talking about the book to people has forced me to explain and to focus on the big picture. That in itself has been very useful.
Now think for a second... aren't these article titles a reflection of how I searched for information on the web? Wouldn't you want your book title to reflect how people might search for topics related to your book?
There are so many people on the web with advice, it's amazing. I feel perfectly justified in adding to the cacophony.
Here is my piece of advice regarding book titles: If you are trying to find a good title for your book, brainstorm first, then read all the advice articles listed above (and more). Reading the advice first might kill your creativity.
Book Review: The Invisible Heart: An Economic Romance
I can't remember exactly when I started this quest to better understand didactic fiction. And I'm not keeping track of how many business novels and business parables I've read to date.
At times, I've used the term "business novels," but didactic fiction covers much more than business novels. This latest didactic novel gives me an opportunity to touch on the distinction. The Invisible Heart: An Economic Romance, belongs to the broader didactic fiction category but it is not a business novel. It is an "economics novel."
Business novels and business parables are typically found in the business books section at the library. They tell the story of an entrepreneur or an employee, within the context of a company, a business. On the shelves of my local library, The Invisible Heart was classified as fiction rather than a business book.
There are two reasons for not placing it in the business section:
1) It's a real novel with a plot, conflict, tension, suspense, and interesting characters. Some business novels and especially business parables are thin on these key elements of a good novel.
2) It's about economic theory and policy, and while it touches on the role of private enterprise, it is not about any particular enterprise or business; That being said, it would have been fitting to place it in the section with economics books rather than fiction. The author is Russell Roberts, professor of economics as George Mason University. The Invisible Heart is Roberts' second "novel," published in 2001. The novel is accompanied by a Teachers' Guide, available on the author's website, and there are resources listed at the end of the book.
The intent of the book is clearly to teach key economic principles. In that sense, it is very didactic -- in a good way. The "teaching" is done primarily through dialogue (think Plato's Socratic dialogues), with the main character being under pressure to explain his views about economics, constantly being challenged and put to the test.
The conversation is one-sided, reflecting the author's intent and bias. So, while the purpose is clearly didactic, the reader doesn't need to be passionate about economic theory and policy to read through the book. The story stands on its own, economic theory or not.
I hope the author uses the novel in his own economics classes. The story may be partially autobiographical, or at least inspired by his own experience as an economics professor.
This novel is the closest I have found to what I am trying to achieve: a real novel with a story that stands on its own merits; a story I kept reading even when the economic theory and policy discussion didn't keep my interest.
Interested in knowing more about the story itself, check out this review by another reader.
The quest never ends. As I was reading one of the reviews of the latest Russell Roberts book, I discovered other "economics novels."
Next steps:
Find copies of the other two Russell Roberts novels;
I am finding other examples of didactic fiction. Most of them are business parables rather than business novels. They're simple stories. They tend to focus on a single challenge, characters are not fully developed, dialogue is straightforward. There's a lot of telling and little showing but that seems to be the format for quick business parables.
First, there's the Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles collection that I had ignored in the past.
Gung Ho!Turn on the People in Any Organization
Fish! A Remarkable Way to Boost Morale and Improve Results
Raving Fans!A Revolutionary Approach to Customer Service
One Minute Manager (and its follow up stories)
I just read Fish! It's a quick read coming at just over 100 pages. There's also:
Peacock in the Land of Penguins
Beans: Four Principles for Running a Business in Good and Bad Times
They Just Don't Get It! Changing Resistance into Understanding
Animals Inc.: A Business Parable for the 21st Century
Rain: What a Paperboy Learned about Business
The Green Baron: A Business Parable on Ecolution
Searching for "business parable" on the Amazon site returns more than 1,400 entries. I'm amazed! It's definitely more than I thought.
The business parable sub-category of didactic fiction is not what I am most interested in. I am more interested in the full fledged novel. I may read a few business parables to better understand the genre but that's not what I'm trying to write.
Learning Log Version 1.0 (Web) isn't the full version of the novel but it will give you a taste of what the novel is about and a sample section.
I don't have any way of accepting comments directly in the Novel / wiki at this time. This blog post is the best I can do. Please post comments about Version 1.0 in response to this blog post.
I am looking for a few volunteers to read a business novel focused on Knowledge Management. I am seeking constructive criticism that would enable me to make improvements to the novel before deciding what to do next with it (contact an agent, self-publish, throw away... there are lots of options).
If you are interested, read on....
* Are you a knowledge management practitioner? * Do you teach knowledge management? * Are you familiar with business novels? * Do you have experience reviewing or writing fiction? * Do you know me?
If you've answered "yes" to one or more of the questions above, please check out the materials I have posted on my website that explain what this Knowledge Management novel is about. If you're still interested after doing that, please contact me via email at Barbara.fillip@gmail.com.
The more didactic fiction I read, the more I see the variations and the more I am able to compare what I am trying to do with what has already been published. By "compare" I don't mean to suggest that what I am working on is better or worse than what is already on the market. I am not trying to copy any particular approach either. Rather, I am looking at the variety of approaches, the range of themes, the writing styles, etc.. I am trying to get a deeper understanding of didactic fiction as a literary genre.
The latest book I picked up in the didactic fiction genre is "Edge! A Leadership Story," by Bea Fields and Corey Blake with Eva Silva Travers. It was a very useful read for me on multiple levels but I'll focus here on one aspect, the role of the mentor/coach/advisor in didactic fiction.
* Edge! may be a "leadership story," as the subtitle indicates, but it might as well have been called a "coaching story." Without the coach and the coaching process, there is no story. This is the story of a leader who gets back his "edge" with the help of a leadership coach.
* Looking at the authors, it's pretty clear that Bea Fields is the leadership coaching expert who most likely provided the core coaching and leadership concepts and the other two authors helped with the writing. Corey Blake gave the main character some of his personal background in movies and scriptwriting, and Eva Silva Travers helped with the writing. I'm deducing all this from their bios. I could be off the mark. Interesting collaborative approach.
* This book falls squarely in the category of didactic fiction written by a consultant or consulting firm with a clear intent to use it as one of many tools in a marketing arsenal. You write a book that strongly suggests that your services are very valuable and the story demonstrates that value. In the process, you educate the reader about the coaching process and you make sure to point the reader to your website where your services are available just a few clicks away. I was a consultant for several years, I can see how it all makes perfect sense. It also doesn't really matter if the book is a money maker. It probably brings in more money in consulting services than in book sales. Not to mention that the book helps to establish your reputation as an authority in a particular subject area.
* The coach/mentor/advisor model fits very well with this book-as-a-hook-to-other-services model. If you have a protagonist who figures out everything on his own, there is little need for checking out the author's website to see how he/she might help you solve a difficult challenge you're facing.
While I understand all of that, I went in a different direction with Learning Log. I'll explain why. * I wanted to raise questions more than to provide "answers". I didn't need someone in the story who would know what the correct answers are. I needed a protagonist who would be inclined to ask questions, think on her feet and try things out. * I want the reader to finish the story and have more questions than when they started reading. I don't want the reader to be confused by the story and feel that there are no answers. I want to trigger new questions, spark conversations and find their own way. * Most importantly, I don't have the answers so I wasn't going to make them up.
There are too many people involved in Knowledge Management who have the answers. It's a crowded field. I decided I might find a niche by asking questions.
I'm now more than half-way through the second round of revisions of Learning Log, my didactic novel / business novel project. I thought I'd be really sick of it by now but instead of slowing down I've picked up the pace. It's not even so much that I want to reach the finish line faster, but I'm finding it useful to sit down with the manuscript every day instead of my previous routine of every other day. It helps to keep in the flow, remember details that need to be fixed, connect pieces previously disconnected.
This second round of revisions is turning out to be interesting in a number of ways. 1. I'm ignoring all the revision notes I had made during the first round of revisions. That may be a mistake but I was reading the manuscript in a different way at the time and my current read appears more useful. 2. I've been reading a lot of "how-to-revise-your-manuscript" materials and it is having a significant -- and hopefully positive -- impact on how I am editing. I have copies of Manuscript Makeover, by Elisabeth Lyon, and Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, by Renni Browne and Dave King, as my guides. 3. I am coming up with small but relevant adjustments in the plot that reflect a deepening of my own thinking about the KM / didactic part of the plot. I have to watch that my protagonist doesn't get too smart. She doesn't have the benefit of the revision process. 4. I'm liking the story more and more, and getting a better understanding of how to talk about it and explain how it might be useful and to whom. I still need to work on that but I'm no longer at the point where I was thinking no one would ever be interested in reading it. 5. I am enjoying myself tremendously! I actually like revisions. Never thought I would. Perhaps it's because I'm starting to really believe in the final product.
I also decided NOT to put the whole manuscript on my website and instead to figure out the whole "agent + publishing business" thing. Can't hurt to try! I'm sure I'll learn something in the process. I plan on posting more about didactic fiction in general and how it connects with the current buzz around storytelling in business and as an activity related to knowledge management. It's all coming together now.
Can you tell from the list of links to my own blog entries below that I have been slightly obsessed with this for the past 7 months? Perhaps obsessed is the wrong word... passionate is more like it.
Question: Is citing your own blog entries equivalent to citing your own publications as references in an academic paper?
Let's keep it short and simple. The novel has three parts (beginning, middle, end). I'm in the middle of revisions to the middle part. That makes it a tough spot to be in. It's slowing down in terms of progress, I've managed to get off the train a couple of times in terms of sticking to the writing routine, but I'm still making progress. More importantly, I'm still enjoying the process. At this point, I'm reminding myself that whether anyone will ever read it is irrelevant. No one will indeed ever read it if I don't manage to finish it.
(Note: Zemanta makes it so easy to create a list of links to my previous posts related to this topic. I really like it.)
Revisions to the novel are going well. I'm concerned about complexifying things. I do have a tendency to make things more complex than necessary. In this case, I'm creating the equivalent of a teaching guide for the novel. I'm coming up with discussion questions and little exercises that would be particularly relevant to accompany specific scenes or parts of the dialogue. As long as the exercises are kept separate from the main text -- which is easy to do with the wiki format -- they can all be deleted very easily if I decide later on that they don't belong in there.
As the subtitle indicates, the story is told as a business fable. I have tried elsewhere to highlight the range of formats and sub-genres within the broader concept of didactic fiction (see Didactic Fiction and Related Narrative Forms). As a business fable, it is very similar to Who Moved My Cheese?, by Spencer Johnson.
I enjoyed reading the book but if you are interested in getting a sense of the approach taken by the author, you can view a short video clip titled "Why People Don't Share Knowledge" on the author's website. The clip introduces one of the characters and one specific issue: knowledge is power vs. knowledge sharing is power.
The main character is a low level employee (Dot, short for Dorothy) who is suddenly given a challenging task that she doesn't feel prepared for. The story takes Dot on an adventure in a parallel world (where characters include a giant finger -- hint: finger pointing behavior) where she has to face another challenge (becoming a short-term consultant). In the process of addressing that challenge, she essentially learns key lessons that will be particularly useful in addressing her real world challenge. In addition, she gains the self-confidence she needs to take on her next challenge successfully.
Most of the characters in the parallel world have exaggerated "qualities" that illustrate the types of less than productive behaviors that can be found in any organization (knowledge hoarding, finger pointing, etc... ) and a lot of the plot revolves around miscommunication, misunderstandings, lack of trust, and internal politics. The organization's well being is in jeopardy and Dot's first task is to solve a mystery involving a ghost. To solve the mystery, Dot does a sort of organizational assessment and eventually uncovers the root causes of all the dysfunctional behaviors that were putting the organization at risk. As the story progresses, Dot also collects messages that turn out to be key rules that should guide knowledge sharing behavior. The rules are essentially the business lessons or "moral of the story".
I didn't come across any specific suggestion on how the book might be used in an organizational context, but it's a quick and easy read at just over 100 pages. It would be easy to assign it to a group as reading and to organize a group discussion around it.
When I first heard of this book a couple of weeks ago, I thought it might be the closest thing to what I am trying to write. I almost panicked thinking that perhaps what I was trying to write had already been done. After all it deals with a knowledge sharing theme and the story is told in a didactic fiction format. Now that I've read it, it's become clear that it has little to do with what I am trying to write. I'm not sure if that's good news or bad news.
I'm celebrating the completion of the first draft of the didactic novel today. I started exactly three months ago and I passed the 60,000 word mark today with what I consider to be the final scene. I anticipate that revisions will bring the final count to about 80,000 words.
Two things worked very well in getting me to this point: 1. I stuck to the plan of writing the first draft without stopping to edit or think too much about revisions. 2. I kept a detailed log of progress, with a word count tally and a growing table of contents.
Next steps: Read the full first draft and figure out how to proceed with revisions.
This is just a first draft. The more I was adding to it the more I seemed to be expanding the scope of what I was looking at in terms of "didactic fiction". In the process, I was reminded that there is a rich tradition to draw from and while the Socratic Dialogues have little to do with "Who Moved My Cheese?", I managed to put them in the same diagram.
I'm not sure it's possible to write a novel in the form of a wiki but I am using a wiki to write the first draft of the novel. In the process of doing that, I was a little stuck recently and the wiki saved me.
I must clarify here that I am not talking about a collaborative wiki. I am talking about a simple wiki tool (TiddlyWiki), designed primarily for a single user.
The main character in this novel is supposed to come up with the draft of a Knowledge Management strategy for the organization she works for. I was wondering if I was going to be able to write the KM strategy for a fictional organization. Up to now, I have been able to write the story without getting too specific about the organization itself. I was also wondering if anyone was actually going to want to read through a ten-page KM strategy in the middle of a novel. My current answer is that I'm only going to provide an annotated outline of the KM strategy, and it's going to include a lot of questions that my main character has about the strategy. She's going to post it in a wiki and she's developing a strategy for getting feedback on the wiki as well as to keep the strategy as a living/growing document on the wiki.
Of course, this allows me to use my wiki tool to make the whole section much more interactive. There's an annotated outline that can be read in a linear fashion, but within this outline, there are hyperlinks to all kinds of definitions, resources, etc...
Until today, I was using TiddlyWiki essentially as a drafting and editing tool. I'm now seeing that it could also be a publishing tool for the novel.
Having drafted this post earlier today, I started to wonder if someone had already used a wiki to write a novel. The answer is "yes". There have been attempts at writing novels with a collaborative wiki and there's even an article on using TiddlyWiki to write a novel. Here is the article: "Organize your novel with a Wiki" by writer LJ Cohen.
Here's also more on an adaptation of TiddlyWiki to publish hypertext stories: Tweebox.
I am making regular progress with the didactic novel. I've just passed the 40,000 word mark. As I may have mentioned in a previous post, the word count is a very silly way of measuring progress but it serves its purpose in the context of my initial goal of writing a first draft without worrying too much about the quality of the writing. At this point making regular progress in terms of putting down the entire story on paper is still the best thing to do and having a routine of writing 1,000 to 1,600 words per writing session is good enough to keep things going.
Assuming an 80,000 word manuscript, I'm halfway through the first draft from a word count perspective. If I look at how far the story has gone in terms of the plot progression, I'm closer to three quarters done. I'm sure some people write a 100,000 first draft and then cut down the fluff but I'm likely to do the opposite. My first draft is a skeleton of a story. I would not be surprised at all if my first complete draft turned out to be 60,000 words and my first round of editing involves adding some meat to the skeleton.
Any story has a beginning, a middle and an end. The middle is the most difficult part to write because that's where subplots can take on a life of their own. It's easy to start losing track of where the story is going. It's easy to start getting bored with the story or to wonder if you wouldn't be better off starting front scratch and throwing away what's already on paper.
While the main plot has remained unchanged, I'm finding that a lot of the details are heavily influenced by things I am encountering in my real work. Here's an example: This week at work was dominated by a "conversation theme". People share knowledge through conversations. Shaping the conversation to make it high value from a knowledge sharing perspective is a valuable skill. A high value conversation requires trust. Conversations where the parties involved distrust each other turn into debates where each side wants to win. While I was thinking about different types of conversations going on around me at work -- either as an observer or an active participant -- I decided to pay more attention to them in shaping the dialogues between my fictional characters and in deciding how much of the internal dialogue of the main character to put into the story.
The didactic fiction project is getting more and more interesting. With my first attempt at writing a novel, I had picked themes that I was interested in but not sufficiently comfortable with to write the story without additional research. With this second attempt, not only do I know better than to overdo the research and procrastinate on the writing but it is becoming clear to me that I know enough about the topic I am writing about to write the first draft without any additional research. If anything, I have too many ideas flying around and the key is to find the right way to integrate them. As I am writing the story, one small section at a time, a whole range of things I know from my own experience are emerging as ideas that can be integrated into the story. I do have to be careful to avoid making it autobiographical in any way but that doesn't seem to be a problem at the moment.
This brings me to the concept of knowledge integration. When we learn something new, we are essentially attaching a new nugget of knowledge to previously acquired knowledge. It is in the process of linking the new nugget to the others that we create "ah ah" moments. Beyond connecting individual new nuggets to specific preexisting knowledge, additional reflection can lead to a reorganization of the broader mental framework within which these nuggets are stored in the brain. It can be a paradigm shift, a turning around of a basic assumption, or simply a clearer, more organized picture emerging.
I'm not sure this makes a lot of sense but the didactic fiction project is turning into a wonderful knowledge integration experience. Writing this story isn't just fun, it's allowing me to do a lot of knowledge integration without having to think too much about it.
I came across a website with a visual that expresses all this a little better than my words.
" Knowledge integration is the process of fitting our ideas – our theories of how-the-world-works – together into a coherent structure." Source: Ideagram Ideas
Today is a big milestone! It's not the end of the road and it's not the beginning. It's an important step somewhere in the middle when we can celebrate what has already been accomplished and look forward to even more accomplishments to come.
As we celebrate Barack Obama's inauguration as our nation's 44th President, I am grateful for the extra boost of energy and hopefulness that is in the air. I am grateful for this opportunity to ride the same wave and make it part of my own life.
Here is my milestone of the day: I just past the 20,000 word mark with my didactic novel. I had set some artificial milestones at 20,000 words for the beginning of the story, 40,000 additional words for completion of the middle of the story and another 20,000 for the end of the story. While these are totally artificial, they are not random. All stories have a beginning, middle and an end and the middle tends to be the longer part and the trickier part. As I completed this first milestone this morning, I found that I had a lot to celebrate.
1. I wrote on a regular basis but did not focus excessively on trying to write a specific number of words each time I sat down to write a section. 2. At no time did I have any trouble figuring out where to take the story. 3. I let the words flow and did not worry about making it anything more than a first draft - no corrections. 4. I did not get distracted by research. I focused on writing. 5. I look forward to coming up with the next chapter without rushing to plan the entire storyline too soon.
I now know that I can and will finish this first draft. It's not just, "Yes, I can do this", it's starting to feel like "Yes, I will do this." I am riding the wave.
Am I really going to write a didactic novel? I'm perhaps more interested in writing a good story than in conveying a particular message. I don't have a specific approach or a methodology to share. I just have a few lessons learned along the way. I don't plan on packaging these lessons into a neatly bundled methodology. I'm not writing this to support a consulting practice. I'm writing it to a large extent as an experiment. I'm not trying to fit within a particular genre. What I end up with might be totally impossible to publish because it doesn't fit anywhere and it has a very small potential audience. That's perfectly fine with me. My intent isn't to publish it. My intent is to complete it and learn something in the process.
Am I making any progress with the first draft? Yes! I have 12,000+ words down. Obviously, it's just a first draft and a word count isn't a perfect way of measuring progress. How else would I measure progress? I have managed to stick to a reasonable writing schedule. I have also managed not to get distracted by too much research and little writing. I've also experienced one instance of creative inspiration. That's when I sit down with my computer with an initial idea of where the scene is going and when I'm done with it, I've come up with something completely different -- and better. I haven't experienced any instance of sitting down and being stuck. At this point, the words are flowing reasonably well. I'm not sure what else could be expected of a first draft. It's just going well for now.
Why measure progress? I'm reminded on a regular basis that my prior work on monitoring and evaluation continues to have a strong impact on my thinking, and not just in work situations. I keep trying to monitor how things are going, I keep thinking about what needs to be measured, what indicators make sense, etc...
For this didactic novel project, I'm trying to keep track of progress for one simple reason, it's very important to stay motivated over the long run. When I get stuck a few weeks from now and I start getting frustrated with the story, looking at how much I've already accomplished and being able to point to specific progress in developing the story will be of great value -- or so I hope!
This is a follow up to yesterday's post. What did I learn about key aspects of didactic fiction by reading a small selection of novels within the genre?
1. Storyline One of the challenges faced by these books is that their focus is clearly on the didactic element and they treat the storyline or plot as secondary. The result is that unless you're really interested in learning about the method or the approach being presented, the storyline may not keep you reading.
2. Style or format Who Moved My Cheese? is different in nature. It's a parable and it's shorter than a novel. There's no need to stick to a novel format if another format might work better.
3. Topics The Celestine Prophecy requires a certain openness to mystical experiences and New Age philosophies. The Goal and The Deadline are a little difficult to follow unless you're into factory process improvement and software development projects respectively.
4. Continuum On a continuum of "didacticism", with non-didactic at one end and didactic at the other end, these book would be very close to the didactic end. There are, however, many, many novels that are not within this genre and have a strong didactic element. The key difference is that they don't try to teach a method or an approach to a problem, they tend to make you reflect on some aspect of society or history. You read them for the story and in the process you learn something about the period in history, a social movement, a country, etc...
Many high school and college courses integrate some fiction in their reading lists. Historical fiction is a specific example of a genre that has great learning potential. It is fiction, however, so some degree of fact checking may be useful.
Next, more about fiction for development, one of my earlier areas of interest...
Apparently, it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert at something. What happens when those 10,000 hours (or probably much more than that) are spread across three decades and if, on top of that, the practice isn't "serious", as in "it's-just-a-hobby-and-I-don't-care-if-I'm-not-getting-better-at-it". Does that make it a waste of time?
I didn't learned much about writing fiction until I took it seriously -- still as a hobby -- and tried to write a full length novel a few years ago. I failed to complete the first draft. I had a target of 80,000 words and I never reached that. I came close and I did write every scene needed for the story to make sense but the manuscript isn't complete in my mind and I eventually gave up on it. The good news is that I had a lot of fun working on it, I'm ready to try again and I have a good enough idea of what went wrong with my first attempt to make sure I don't repeat the same mistakes.
Here's the main lesson I learned from that earlier failed novel writing effort: WRITE A COMPLETE FIRST DRAFT.
Just write! Write a very bad first draft without over thinking anything. A complete first draft is essential before any rethinking and revision happens. Don't spend any time planning a sequence of scenes, developing the character's profile, etc, etc... until the story flows and these details come out of the writing rather than the planning ahead. The only thing I really need is an idea of the overall story, the main plot and one subplot.
In my first novel writing attempt, I did a huge amount of planning, research, structuring the entire storyline with complex sub-plots and in the end I couldn't even get the story straight in my own head because I had made so many changes along the way. It was a great mental juggling exercise but not a great novel. I still love the storyline. I just wasn't able to transform what was in my head into a readable piece of fiction.
I also ended up doing a huge amount of revision on the early sections of the manuscript and fiddling with words and sentences while being unable to complete the first draft. I need to remind myself to keep it simple and watch out for my tendency to come up with unnecessary twists and turns that will distract from the main theme and plot. My first attempt at writing a novel was overambitious, yet a great deal of fun. I'm ready for a second try!
Define what a complete first draft is. Defining what a "complete first draft" is will make it easier to clear that hurdle and move on to a second draft/revision phase. A first draft is complete when all the scenes necessary for the story to make sense have been drafted. No specific word count needs to be reached. Any revisions of specific scenes, adding scenes or deleting scenes will be considered in a second draft/revision phase. Writing a novel is a long-term project. Having milestones and being able to pause and celebrate clearing these milestones is important. The first draft completion milestone is going to be my first real test. Since I've never gone beyond that I expect to learn more about revisions with this second novel writing attempt.
Don't commit to a tight writing schedule or a completion date. The commitment to writing regularly will come from enjoying the process, not a timetable. I don't have a target date for completion of this first draft either. The only commitment I have is to sit down and write a scene or section of the manuscript at least every other day. My commitment to writing these blog entries about the process is going to be even looser because I want to make sure to put the emphasis on writing the first draft and not spend too much time writing about writing the first draft.
Coming up next, a discussion of the "didactic" element in didactic fiction.
What a perfect day to start something new! As time goes by, I am moving further and further away from my original focus on "knowledge for development," but there's a constant thread throughout my not-so-regular postings. I don't know exactly what to call it. For a long time, I have been struggling to find a project (outside of my formal job) that combined my interest in writing fiction, which I have always considered to be a hobby, and my professional interests. I wrote a post a while ago about didactic fiction, "Fiction with a Mission". The idea has been floating in my mind and it is starting to crystallize in the form of a real project.
Here is it! I am going to write a didactic novel focused on a knowledge management theme. I've already started it and it feels like a solid idea. By a "solid idea" I mean that 1) I have a good understanding of what it's going to take to complete a first draft; and 2) the theme is tightly linked to my current professional occupation so that any research I end up having to do for the novel will also be useful. It's a dual dose of professional development. I'm sharpening my skills as a writer and I'm continuing to learn about knowledge management.
It is solid enough as an idea to post something about it here. The new start I'm talking about is related more specifically to this blog. Let's think about this didactic novel project as an experiment. What am I going to learn from it? This blog will be the place to reflect on what I am learning from the experiment.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=1c9b3cb4-6377-44ac-87be-c5e6b6f2bcab)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=553fabbe-355a-46ba-9236-0a626d8bcad9)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=72e3e3ab-0437-4e91-bb6a-da4d693dffe0)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=88bacc01-9f24-429e-8be7-25242da0d624)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=5b5e4ff5-9fc9-499a-a583-0b907159d579)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=11f0ca0d-dec7-46b2-b6af-a91c615e61a6)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=ae3f4c9e-1e75-4931-a183-7293f1cacb54)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=111f3f78-fd8d-4c20-be75-3bb122bbd7ec)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=10975582-aa30-4b1c-be44-c5153ec23b64)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=b16c7cbe-92d7-4a81-a0fc-99215f9944af)
