I’m a linear person by nature–I make a list, I tick the items off one by one, and I always, always keep moving forward. I approached my first novel this way, moving relentlessly forward until it was complete. But this time I’m writing a historical fiction and the process is turning out to be completely different.
I can’t tear through 5K words in an afternoon on this one. The words start pouring out, but then sooner than later, I encounter a black hole in the world I’m inhabiting. I don’t know how the window would work, or whether they’d have tea at two or four o’clock. I’m not sure which style of carriage this character would drive–or if he would drive it at all. And then I slip out of writing mode and disappear into the black hole of research, until the gap in my world is filled in so well that I can touch it, smell it, and dream it–until I could write it in my sleep.
This ping-pong style of writing alternately freaks me out and energizes me. Whenever I find myself on the precipice of the unknown, I get a sinking feeling in my gut, but then I always jump. I know that in ten or fifteen minutes I’ll be that much better, fuller, and ready to write. But, man is it scary to face holes at every turn! In a modern setting, the details fall into place as easily as breathing. Thinking is barely required. But with historical fiction, I am learning that I have to live the period before I can write it. That would explain why, when my husband brought home a 1000 page book on the great manors of England, I squealed with delight.
How am I handling this change in process? Two key developments: one, I use a lot of XXXX’s when I write now, and two, I am also writing another project in parallel, one that is simple, wild and unpredictable, with absolutely no research required because it’s pure fantasy. The side project feeds off of the pent up energy and stress that builds from tackling such an ambitious historical fiction project. Yesterday I crossed the half-way point in the side project and realized that meant I was half-way to finishing another book. Another book? I never planned on that!
To be honest, what kicked the side project off was my son’s simple request that I write a book for him. “Mommy, when are you going to write a book for me?” he asked, and of course, how could I refuse? As soon as I started writing it, one afternoon after a lengthy research session that stretched so long I felt my eyeballs would fall right out, I realized I needed this simple MG book as much as my son did. I’m so glad he asked me to write it.
Will I always write two projects at once? Or even more at once, bouncing from one to another as I see fit? I’m not sure. I’ve always thought of myself as a one-project kinda girl. But apparently I was wrong. Or maybe I just underestimated myself.
Regardless, the value of having different outlets for writing has proven itself to me, and I’d encourage anyone who’s considering a side project to just do it. Don’t feel like you’re cheating. How can you cheat on yourself? Your mind brings these desires to the forefront because they are what you require to create. So, create! In the end, the side project may become the project you really needed to write, or it may make the long-term project turn out a million times better, or you may just end up with two books for the price of one. Any one of those will do.
So, I just finished up my first beta read for another writer. For how many bazillions of books I have read, this was the very first time I made editorial notes on one. I’ve made notes for book reports and term papers, but never in an editorial mindset. In the past, the idea that the words on the page could change never crossed my mind.
Beta reading was a different experience than I expected. At first, I stopped every time I needed to write a note on something, even trivial things. Then I kept having to back up and re-read in order to recapture the pace and premise of the story. Which kind of sucked. In order to truly form an opinion on the story, I needed to let it wash over me. Beta reading was getting in the way of my beta read.
I took a break and looked for some advice. Did you know even wiki has an entry on betas? Well, I found this excellent blog entry by Corrine Jackson on How to Beta Read, and it confirmed many of my suspicions. First, I needed to plan to read the MS twice–once as a reader for story, plot and pacing, and a second time for more detailed feedback. I compromised by highlighting anything that caught my eye in the MS, and then going back to make all of the actual notes at the end.
One bit of advice I’d read repeatedly was not to offer false praise. I think my problem runs in the opposite vein–I give too much criticism. I’m very quick to read something someone else wrote, and then change it into what I would write. That’s not the most helpful thing for the writer. I’m beginning to think the real expertise in beta reading is understanding what the author wished to achieve, and pushing their writing towards their goals. It’s very hard not to write for yourself, but after all betas are reading for someone else, and their writing must be respected.
I’m looking forward to the next beta read I have coming up in another week. I’ve been super fortunate to connect with great betas right out of the gate, and it is only now as I attempt to return the favor that I realize what a gift a good beta read truly is. Hopefully the 10 page feedback doc I emailed was seen in that light, but I’m not sure. It may take me a little practice yet.
Earlier in the week I found out that I won my very first writing contest. I am not going to lie–winning feels pretty spectacular. At this point, I’ve written one novel (which you see listed above), and I’m in progress on my second . . . and this is the first very small sign that I may not be wasting my time.
Note, of course I say MAY NOT, because who am I to say what will happen? All I know is that a little validation goes a long way towards believing in the possibility that you will one day produce works worth reading, or words readers will linger over. That day is a ways off, certainly. But I believe it exists.
With less than a thousand pages under my belt, I do not profess much expertise on writing. I can only recommend that you write, and when you see a contest that gives you pause, enter it. There is no winning if you do not enter. And there are many, many contests out there. You can find them on popular writing community websites, and by following publishing people on Twitter. Some of them, like the one I entered on Figment, are quick flash fiction contests that take little time, but are great exercise for the brain.
Again, there is no winning if you do not enter! So DO IT!
Here are some sites/contests to check out:
http://www.scribophile.com – many short contests currently, all free
http://dailyfig.figment.com/category/contests/ – oriented to young writers, but offer great quick prompts
http://www.familycircle.com/family-fun/fiction/fiction-contest-rules-2012/
http://askwendy.wordpress.com/ – wendy lists tons of contests each month
Before you have a heart attack, I’m not suggesting that you turn off your email forever–or even for a full day. But for me, turning off my email for an hour or two at a time is like taking a vacation these days. In fact, I’ve grown to love the feeling. Now I close out my email every time I write something other than . . . an email.
Before I started writing, my email was often like a lifeline. I needed that ding every few minutes to prove I existed–that I was alive and someone needed me. Even if that someone was Old Navy telling me about a sale. But now, the connection and satisfaction I get from writing a scene far outweighs the email buzz. I don’t need it anymore. In fact, I don’t want it anymore.
So, if you are rarely without your phone or email window, I recommend ditching them for an hour a day. Much like the shoes you stuff in a closet to “throw away later”–after a very short while, you won’t even notice they’re missing.
Other Tips to Keep Email from Ruining your Life:
- Unsubscribe mercilessly. You are not going to miss any sales or coupons or whatevers.
- Don’t subscribe to Dailies. That writing prompt arriving in your inbox every morning might as well delete itself, am I right?
- Use an Alias. Set up a trash account on google, yahoo, whatever. Use this for everything you need to supply an email addy for but never want to hear from again.
- Use Folders. If you take a few minutes to set up sorting actions to filter your email into folders, you will save yourself hours. When everything’s sorted to a folder, you know if you have anything important to look at right away.
Most evenings these days my creative director husband and I have book-related conversations. Topics like, Why do I feel Like a Loser, What Should I Do Next, and the like are common. But last night we took a step away from all of that and just had some fun with it — and now, my heroine in THE SIGHT, Katie Cranford, has her very own twitter (@katiecranford) and email!
Is it a jinx to believe that one day gaggles of girls will follow Katie? Is it egotistical to contemplate what she’d have to say, or how far to develop her persona? These thoughts have crossed my mind, but for now it’s just plain fun to bring her to life. What her future holds remains to be seen.
I’ve read and loved books my entire life, but it wasn’t until I started writing that I understood how very real characters are. As I write my new work in progress, a historical young adult novel set in Victorian times, I feel like I am peeking in on lives that existed long before my book idea.
As I write dialogue, sometimes I try to make a character say something they would not. It’s pretty obvious when I do it. And for the life of me, I cannot leave the words on the page. It’s as though my character is yelling at me, “I wouldn’t say that, Melanie!” And I have to listen.
At the beginning of a project, I tend to write little(or not so little) bios for each of the main characters. Certain ages, traits, and even physical characteristics, seem imperative to each character. I write little notes about things that happened to them growing up–things that will never be in the book. But it makes them real . . . and who’s to say, if I searched high an low through every public record available, that they would not turn out to be real? Who’s to say they don’t exist, somewhere, on some alternate plane, or even right smack in the middle of the white pages(I’m dating myself, I know).
As I write, I allow myself every indulgence when it comes to my characters. That way, when times are rough for me, they can carry the burden a while. Are your characters real, too?
That’s a line from a Better Than Ezra song, in case you’re one of their fans too. If not, they’re an oldie but goodie.
So, last night I spent a good portion of the evening trolling blogs, as I’ve been doing for endless weeks now, sucking up every little thing I can learn about writing and publishing. In the process I ended up with five hundred tabs collected in my window, waiting for me to freeze time so that I’d actually have enough time to read them all. As I flipped through the windows, admiring and learning, something else happened.
I got an awful feeling in my stomach. It was like homesickness, only I was already home so I guess I’d call it more like . . . destinysickness. Covetous-future-envy-sickness. If you’ve never felt it, good for you, and let me explain. Destinysickness is equal parts yearning, disappointment, jealousy, impatience, and vigorous creative energy. It occurs from viewing what other people have accomplished and letting yourself feel envious. When I feel like this, I’m likely to either:
A. Completely redesign my website/blog/etc from scratch in a murderous late evening session
B. Research and write an entirely new outline for an entirely new project that I don’t have time for
C. Tear through writing about 5 chapters of a current WIP
I try to end up at C, because it’s the only useful outcome, but sometimes the Destinysickness makes me crazy, and I pile one envious feeling after another on top of the pit in my stomach until I can’t sleep and get nothing productive done. Why do I do this to myself? It’s not nice. It doesn’t make me happy. It’s such a strange thing, this mixture of impatience and energy. I’m more accustomed to sketching the energy out of my system in mere minutes, rather than enduring the lengthy process that writing requires before you reach a moment of closure.
At these times, I’m so grateful for my husband. I blah, blah, blah at him about this stuff, and you know what he does? He asks me how long I’ve been writing books. Which is six months. Then he just looks at me and shakes his head, and I laugh and laugh and get back to writing.
Reading about another writer’s process makes me feel less alone, or whacky, or stupid about the way I do things. Camaraderie is as reassuring as a warm blanket. I want, more than anything, to know “I am not the only one” . . . and that “I am like other writers.”
I devour blog entries and articles that outline HOW other writers work. I love the details. I love feeling like I’m peeking right over their shoulders watching them. This connection to other writers informs and supports my own writing process. So, this is what my own writing process looks like:
I sit in the dining room, at one end of the big, empty table. My MacBook Air is directly in front of me. On the screen, two windows work in tandem, one is the latest rev of the WIP, and the other I affectionately name, “scrap.doc” On the table to my right is a printed copy of the WIP, double sided, in a blue folder, with two gigantic binder clips securing the pages. Invariably, a blue pen is propped on top of these pages.
When I settle in to work, I start with the print pages, opening the blue folder to reveal the challenge that will face me today. The clips secure the stuff-I-already-worked-on to the left side of the folder, and trap the stuff-I-have-left-to-fix on the right. Think of them as vicious metal bookmarks that keep me from easily hopping to another more appealing section of the WIP.
I write like hell on the paper pages. I always start a chapter by looking at the word count — is this too long? Does it need to be split up? Does it have a good flow with the size of preceding and following chapters? Then I make a quick list of the major plot points. Then I cross-out, draw arrows, scribble through, notate, and sometimes even physically cut up the chapter until it’s clear what needs to be done. Including writing things like “I hate this!” when I need to let it out.
That’s when the “scrap” document comes into play. Often, I know the writing just isn’t working, but I have to get over the fear of losing something good. So, anything I crossed out on paper gets copied into the scrap doc before I delete it from the WIP. I stuff these orphaned chunks into the scrap doc quickly and mercilessly. After all, I’m not throwing them away, I’m just setting them aside, like you do with a pretty little gift box before you finally dump it into the recycling bin.
Once I’ve fed the scrap doc, I read back through the chapter and make all of my other edits. If I miss certain phrases, I rescue them from the scrap, saving important details and adjectives until they come together into a much, much better whole than they formed the first time around. I find that the scrap doc gives me the freedom to find the right words instead of clinging to the wrong ones. It lets me clean house guilt-free. And that’s when revisions go well, when you have the freedom to make the necessary changes.
In the end, the scrap doc is a graveyard of lovely yet repetitive descriptors, broken phrases, and useless adverbs, and over time I am certain I no longer need them. Then the WIP can really shine, free of the burden, and ready for the next step: scrap2.doc.
Last night my eldest son picked a few books to read a chapter from before bed. We read together. I was blown away to find that every single one started in a dream or sleep state.
“Sophie couldn’t sleep.” – The BFG, Roald Dahl
“Qui-Gon Jinn woke with a start.” – Star Wars, The Dark Rival
“It was sometime before dawn when Ruthie Stewart opened her eyes.” – Stealing Magic, Marianne Malone, c. 2011
Here’s a classic favorite as well:
“As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic vermin.” — Metamorphosis – Franz Kafka
And an interesting comment to sum it up:
“In my opinion, EVERYONE thinks EVERYTHING is too cliche these days,
OF course everything is cliche, everything has already been done!” – Yahoo Answers Comment
Overall, I believe good writing is good writing. I cannot say unequivocally that you should not start a novel in a sleep state, although I seem to have read that many times recently.
What’s more curious to me is the tendency to write this type of opener. It’s almost like birth for stories. Sometimes you need to start from birth, when a novel first comes to consciousness, but other times you can skip ahead — what’s important is to start where the story starts.
Back in school, my design mentor used to tell me it’d take a backhoe to pull the stick outta my ass. That’s right, I’ve been known to be a little uptight . . . a teeny, tiny bit of a control freak. Well, writing is stripping that freakness off of me layer by layer — it’s the backhoe I’ve been waiting for all my life. How am I learning humility?
The quality or condition of being humble.
Oh, let me count the ways!
1. Five days after I let my buddy read the MS, when I realize I let someone read the piece of crap MS!
2. Two days after I sent a query letter, only to realize that I HAVE NO BUSINESS sending query letters yet!
3. One minute after my oldest son asks me if I’m going to sell this book for money, and if so I should ask “one hundred dollars.”
4. Thirty seconds after I mistake one contest I entered for another, and say it to the contest runners!!
I mistook their email for another freaking email I’ve been waiting on, and in my excitement, totally earned my dose of humility for today. But the best part is, Pam and Quita gave away query letter feedback with their agents, the absolute rockin-est prize in the universe! Follow them on twitter for a chance at their next contest.
If you haven’t been to visit Wordle yet, check out what it can do. This is a super kick ass word map of my wip, THE SIGHT! Plus, these diagrams aren’t just pretty pictures — they can show you which words you are using way, way too much, or tell you which characters are falling through the cracks.
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