How the Finch App Taught me the Power of Small
Use the tiny revolution to supercharge your writing
FYI: I’m not associated with the Finch app. I’m just a big fan.
My husband has a favorite saying: pebbles on the pile.
It’s his shorthand for reminding me small actions undertaken consistently accumulate into impactful results. I picture the crow from Aesop’s fable dropping one pebble at a time into a pitcher until the cool, delicious water at the bottom rises high enough to drink.
This January brought me another lesson power of the small that greatly improved my personal life. So, I examined my writing life to find ways harnessing the tiny revolution could help me worry less, do more, and have more fun with my writing.
Here’s what I learned!
The tiny revolution and an app called Finch
One January morning my six-year-old zoomed up to me waving his iPad. Mom! Look at this app!
He introduced me to his cute digital pet bird and how he could outfit it with adorable clothes and accessories. As he gave me the Finch tour, I realized this wasn’t actually a kid’s game: it was a self-care app appropriate for humans of any age.
I downloaded it.
At first, my intention with Finch was to connect with my son and send him little cheers and heart messages. I also sent him a pair of tiny birdie pants—just as in real life, I wanted to ensure my son’s virtual pet wasn’t naked.
About a week after introducing me to Finch, my six-year old deleted it, but I was still playing! While leveling up my cute pet bird, I responded to encouragement to indulge in a mini stretch break or complete a one-minute breathing exercise. The app encouraged me to start a couple new micro habits (eg., message a friend on Wednesdays and Sundays). Before I knew it, I was feeling less rundown, more resilient, and even a little more connected to friends. I especially loved its grounding exercises for those challenging moments when nothing seemed to be going my way.
I’d heard of all these small interventions over my years of self-help reading, but Finch packaged them into an accessible format I actually used and enjoyed. And, yes, after a draining day wrangling cranky, sick kiddos, I enjoyed dressing up my little virtual pet in a saucy beret.
Finch totally sold me on the power of small. So how to apply my newfound tiny superpower to my writing? Turns out, I had a tiny arsenal already in my toolkit—I just hadn’t put it all together, yet.
Write shorter pieces
For the last two years I’ve been striving to write shorter pieces. It’s easier to break into new traditional publishing markets with shorter pieces. I’ve found a whole slew of other advantages to writing short—including an unexpected and wonderful revelation.
Writing shorter stories allows me to plan and draft faster. It streamlines the editing process and everything else about my production cycle and opens extra doors to feedback partners. I’m able to send more stories to publishers faster and feel more confident sharing short published pieces with friends and family.
Now, here’s the wonderful part.
My sweet spot for writing fantasy stories is novelette- and novella-length fiction. I saw this as a big problem since finding traditional markets for novelettes (don’t even get me started on novellas) puts me at a sizeable disadvantage.
Happily, novellas are the perfect length for my indie publishing projects. Not only do readers lean toward novella-length fiction on the indie market, but the huge task of writing and indie publishing a novel took more time and energy than I could manage while parenting young kids. However, getting a novella up for sale online? Turns out I can do that!
I now have two novellas for sale on Amazon, and I’m hard at work on the third. If I’d tried to publish one big novel, instead, the project would still be floundering.
Don’t overreact to feedback
Whether from my first reader, my crit group, or an editor, I’m easily daunted when something about my story doesn’t work, and I used to blindly ignore caveats that accompanied feedback: “this could be a accomplished in a single sentence,” “emphasize this point a little more,” “a rewrite [gasp] to avoid repetition of this overused word [oh, that’s actually a pretty quick fix].”
Feedback suggestions aren’t always small potatoes—but I tend to mix my mountains and molehills. A little change can go a long way. As an editor of my own work and others’, I wave big white peace flags to clarify the scope of my suggestions.
Step away!
Before having kids, I luxuriated in hours to gaze at my laptop and create. Now I’ve got an hour and change before I have to close the lid and get into mommy gear. I used to mourn the loss of long stretches, but I’ve learned shorter sessions are sometimes better!
Who among us hasn’t solved a plot problem in the shower? Or in the moments drifting in and out of sleep? When truly stuck, stand up and back away from the computer. Seriously. Take one of those Finch mini stretching breaks, they’re marvelous!
Another great technique I use is switching projects midway through a session. My project list for the week is organized, so if I’m stuck on one project, I just flip to the next. So long as I’m diligent to return to the tough spot in the future, stepping away and focusing on another project is a better approach than stubbornly staring at a blinking cursor.
Reduce overwhelm by breaking projects down
Earlier this year I posted about my writing organization system, which allows me to break larger goals (eg., indie publish a novella) into more manageable pieces.
It’s obvious to break massive projects into smaller chunks, but I’ve also had fantastic success slicing regular tasks into micro steps. Here are some examples.
When feeling daunted by a long story to critique, I set a goal to read the story one day and to write my feedback the next.
I may write a task for myself to “start” a scene or flash story. Technically all I’m expecting is a paragraph or two, but once the words get flowing, a lot more typically follow. The reduced expectations loosen up my creativity.
When story planning, short, iterative sessions are my new best friends. I jot down ideas (perhaps concerning my protagonist), then move to the story theme, then nibble at my setting or magic system. This sparks ideas so I circle back to my protagonist or the theme again. Lingering on any one section of story planning sucks me into a time-wasting black hole. Flitting in and out of planning cycles produces much stronger results. Plus, all that flitting makes me feel like my pet Finch.
The power of small
Someday when the glitter glue has all dried, the juice boxes have vanished from our pantry, and I don’t have to remind anyone to wear pants, I will once again be able to engage in lengthy writing sessions. When that day comes, I’ll be armed with a whole toolbox of techniques from my years of perfecting the power of small.
Until then, even if—like me—you only have a little time to write today, you can have fun, and you can produce meaningful work.