Ultralearning: My First Novel

There are things you think about doing for so long. When pondered long enough, debate and doubt build. And what you seek will not get accomplished. But I think, perhaps if that doubt builds up long enough, the dam will burst at some point. I believe people cannot harbor infinite doubt – I certainly could not. My doubt: I couldn’t write a novel, much less 100,000 words.

But what started this? Why did I even write 100,000 words?

In my day-to-day life, I work professionally in the financial industry. I hold degrees in economics and finance and have worked in different aspects of asset management for several years now. I did not know the first thing about writing a book. I just wanted my own story.

Reflecting on it, the ignition of the powder keg that caused this was all the content I have consumed. And that’s not referring to some phase where I binged a bunch of TV, read a copious amount of books, or played hours of video games during a recent period in time. I mean everything I have consumed in my life.

Okay, that might sound like a bit much. But yes, I have consumed so many stories that I grew up loving as a kid and proceeded to find and discover as an adult. Take some your classic examples: Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones. Great books, great movies. Video games like Horizon, The Witcher (the books too), Jak & Daxter – also great stories. Those are some examples that pop into mind and many more. But here’s the thing about these stories: what form does our love for them take? For some, it could re-watching them year after year like some tradition – don’t lie, we’re all guilty there. For others, there are the pleasures of immersing yourself into some character you really like and expressing that from the mountaintops of Comic Con. Personally, I liked to imagine myself in that world alongside the characters in my daydreams. And as I got older, instead of myself, it became my own character that would fit into to the setting of that world.

I finally decided to have my own character get their own world. A world to call home.

What was the best way to think about writing, though? For me, it was reading. At some point, it became clear that consuming more and more content was not the answer. I would need to sit down and really think more about creating – and eventually have a surplus of consumption to creation. What I consumed content-wise on getting started was more than just fiction and fantasy novels too. Business and self help books also challenged me to think more deeply about this. The book challenging me to think hard on this was Ultralearning by Scott H. Young – and I would highly recommend this book to anyone no matter what your walk of life.

I learned about the book when I was between jobs. I went to many interviews. Towards the end of one interview, I reached the obligatory ‘do you have any questions for me?’ segment. I asked the gentleman I spoke with if he had any good book recommendations for me. He mentioned Ultralearning to me very quickly and recited how one of his former employees used this book to pick up new skills to enhance his job performance. It was one of the few answers I received that genuinely piqued my curiosity.

The Book changed my life in just 9 principles. A great aspect to these is that they are not linear. These are observations noted by Scott H. Young as he studied many ultralearners. Because ultralearning is not a cookie cutter method. Each project is unique, as the author notes. As stated, the uniqueness of my journey as a writer will not state these linearly. These are common denominators, all of which I want to share with you first:

I. Metalearning: First Draw a Map

II. Focus: Sharpen your Kinfe

III. Directness: Go Straight Ahead

IV. Drill: Attack Your Weakest Point

V. Retrieval: Test to Learn

VI. Feedback: Don’t Dodge the Punches

VII. Retention: Don’t Fill a Leaky Bucket

VIII. Intuition: Dig Deep Before Building Up

IX. Experimentation: Explore Outside Your Comfort Zone

I always yearn to learn more. Not just in my field, but outside of it too. Some topics for me aside from writing include physics and mechanical engineering. If there was an author out there who literally “wrote the book” on this, I wanted to know right away.

Think about, for example, your college major. Traditionally, it’s what you dedicate your life to learning in your school years in order to set yourself up for your career in life. Many, but not all of us of course, will spend our whole lives honing our skills and deepening our understanding of this one particular discipline. Now, I love what I do, and I always will. Studying markets is fascinating to me because it is everchanging at such a rapid pace. But even I had a moment wondering ‘isn’t there something more to what I could spend my time on in this one life I get to live?’ Of course there is! When I thought more on this epiphany, it felt like I opened my mind up to think more broadly. And as I thought more broadly about the pursuit of writing, it was time to think more deeply.

So about my writing journey…

Where do I even begin? That’s what I asked myself. Principle III came more into effect at the beginning for me. The beginning felt like a shotgun blur but where I would really say I cemented my start was with the Vocal short story challenges. In 2022 last year, there were two challenges that we eventually came to learn were judged by Christopher Paolini, author of the Inheritance Cycle.

Two short story contests: I’ll start there. The first short story contest was a prologue challenge with the given prompt, ‘There weren’t always dragons in the valley’. With no idea where to start, taking some kind of prefixed start appeared to be what I needed to do. I signed up for Vocal, entered my story, and took off from there. Although I thought the first story was initially terrible – and is being re-written from the ground up now – it gave me just the push I needed to get my start. The thrill of my first, actual story sent me off to the races. I felt the compounding effects when I wrote Scales of the Fallen in my second short story contest.

Plotter vs Pantser

This was something fun to remember. Of course in my English classes, I always remembered being told about the importance of an outline. The approach was not to my liking. It made sense for short term assignments…but not for a full length novel – at least for me. I did write one, but a minimalist one with no aim of serving a north star-type of purpose. Loose guidelines took favor over laws or hard principles. Although ironically the principles I, II, and IV played a real effect here.

On this plotter-panster spectrum, I operate likely towards pantser, but not all the way. Having a rough idea of what should happen in each plot point is helpful, but the underlying details that come are what I like to learn as I go. Because what excites me most are implications and consequences. For every action, there is always an equal or opposite reaction. The best parts of my story are born from that.

The catch to discovery writing? I understand I will be undergoing much more editing up front. I do think about that – frequently now. With the first draft now complete, I am intentionally taking time to let the story just stew for at least a month or so. But as things marinate while I am mentally removing myself from the details and challenging all schools of thought around focusing on the big picture of the story. That will require checking the outline, ironing the many discrepancies I probably wrote, the alignment with the lore I developed along the way, and most of all, the reconciliation of the implications that would follow the characters’ own events.

Staying Consistent as a First Time Writer

I would not have finished my novel in under a year were it not for thinking really hard on consistency. Principle II strikes again here. Writing a full length, 100,000-word book is challenge. That goes double for first time writers too. The key here would be to routinely build good habits that worked with the schedule of having a full-time job. Most days went something like: wake up, exercise, go to work, cook dinner, and then write until bed time. Sometime it was one hour, other times three. But after watching a simple video about writing 100,000 words by Brandon Sanderson, I really began to think deeper on consistency and time blocking. 500 words per hour. If I stayed true to this, I knew I would have something written in no time.

Habitual Structures

Now that targets have been established, the next step was setting myself up to be in a position to thrive on what my sights were set on. There was one element that I felt constantly opposed against: time. My job comes first. That is my first priority which also takes up the most of my time – of anyone’s time of course. Honestly, I could write a whole other piece on how much newfound respect I gained for people who worked on a novel – or any other pursuit of passion to be sincere – in their spare time while working full time in something else. I also had exams for work that required studying outside of working hours too.

On top of day-to-day things like household matters, errands, and I guess doing general adulting things, you need to be especially considerate of making sure you don’t lose your time with others. I live with my significant other – who also leads a very busy lifestyle – and my time with her is always what comes first when we’re together relaxing after an honest day’s work.

The importance of time management was not something to underestimate. During a work week, after I have signed off, cooked dinner for everyone, I will typically dial in about 1 to 2 hours, sometimes three, but mostly 1 to 2. Weekends were opportunities to really double up on my time and spend 3 to 4 or sometimes up to 6 hours. In my mind, assuming a rate of 500 words per hour, based on the top end of hours I’d spend during work days (2) and weekends (4), that’s 18 hours a week to dedicate to writing. If I stuck to that every day, I could write a full-length novel 11 weeks…just under 3 months. Did I do that? Not a chance. 11 weeks turned out to be 11 months.

Knowing Your Limits

The background of my career is analytical, so it is fun for me to think of a timeline in those terms. But because we are all human and don’t function like machines, I took that projection with tea spoon of salt. Off the bat, I highly doubted I would be writing EVERY weekend. On weekends I like to be outside often enjoying the city or traveling to others. Trying new restaurants, going to sports games, and concerts are what I like to do with my friends or family I spend time with too. It’s important to get out there, relax, and take your mind off things your occupied with – like my job, the everyday issues of adulthood, and even other interests like my story. I did have some periods where I felt attached at the hip to my story of course and just wanted to stay clutched to it. That brings me to my next point.

Burnout. Now I can’t speak for everyone, but it’s safe to say that no one is immune to burnout. Some more experienced writers probably have plenty more stamina, but I didn’t. For a first time novel, I’d say the first 40,000 words were written surprisingly quickly and fiercely. Between that and the 100,000 mark however, there were a couple of brick walls I careened into after having what I thought was a stroke of genius.

You could say there are two creative states of beings in writing. The first is like a vacuum, strategizing your story, fleshing out characters, and further envisioning your plot. A total absorption of ideas and information. The second creative state is like a hose. You’ll have to excuse my silly comparisons, but the hose takes everything that you absorbed with that creative vacuum and spews out processed stories. I say this because I felt like I reached a point where I spewed out too much with a lack of steam. In other words: I got hosed! Sometimes you just need to take your eyes away from it for a couple days. Don’t get hosed.

The End of the Road

The home stretch was interesting for me. I’ve learned you should always have an ending in mind for your story from the start. And I did. But there were, strangely, feelings of not wanting to be done with my story. My mind would jump back to previous chapters and reminisce about them. There was also the fact that I am more of a pantser than a plotter. Though I stuck to my beats, that dragged it out a bit.

Regardless, I crossed the 100,000-word mark!

Finally crossing that threshold, after setting my targets to follow month after month, felt intensely gratifying. A few thousand more words, I was finished. Whether it was initiative, fatigue, or honestly a bit of both, I finished with just over 103,000 words in total.

My experience was minimal at best. I had no back ground, academic or otherwise in literature. Just an imagination and a hunger to learn. That’s what Scott H Young’s Ultralearning book taught me and it changed my life forever. The person I was at the beginning of this story had a lot to learn. Even still, there will be much more to learn as I head into the next phase of editing my first draft and crafting the second.

If you’re reading this, I hope this gives you some kind of inspiration to pursue that inner passion you’ve always wondered about. Therefore, I’d like to end my story with a quote from Confucius.

He who says he can and he who says he can’t are both right.