Let the Planning Begin

I've taken the NaNoWriMo challenge annually since 2007. I have "won" in every attempt, but only once did I ever actually continue the novel to the end after crossing the 50k word mark. Even that novel has had to undergo significant restructuring and rewriting, and remains stuck on the operating table, its organs splayed out and shriveling while I figure out what needs transplanting and how to go about it.

Usually, even if I put a fair amount of planning into a concept, I end up completing the challenge as a "pantser," one who writes by the seat of his/her pants. Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn't. In the past, it has allowed me to take a relatively thin concept and flesh it out as I go along, sometimes with remarkable transformation. I might have thought I was setting out to make a cookie, but ended up with some kind of souffle. That is a good thing, but usually leads to significant rewrites to make the whole piece consistent from beginning to end.

The last few attempts at "pantsing" have been less fruitful for me. I got a few characters and concepts I can tease out and use, but more importantly, I never found myself "on fire" for the projects. There wasn't enough backbone to engage me, or to center me when I would drift off the path. I ended up getting in all 50k words each time, but even in all that prose, I never got a clear path to where I was going, or even if I knew how I wanted things to end, how in the world I was supposed to get there.

This year, I don't want to spend a month wandering in the woods. I don't want to get lost. I need a novel GPS to keep me on course. I need to...

Outline. There. I said it. (Shuddering, cringing, and smacking my mouth to get used to the taste.)

It's not that I don't like outlines. I think outlines are fabulous. I just think I'm slightly allergic to them.

Most of my outline attempts end up being just enough catalyst to send me off writing page after page of narrative idea building that never actually turns into the road map an outline is supposed to be. I get ideas for who a character is, what might have happened in the past to bring them to this point, the history of the town, the neighbor's goldfish's name, how much money is in the main character's first cousin's savings account, and what "might" happen. I even write it like that: "...then she might end up going to his house and checking to see if he has properly insulated his water pipes for winter, as that would let her know he was responsible and ripe for picking from the husband-tree."

All of that writing can be useful--it actually is quite useful in determining motivation, making characters three-dimensional, and helping me get unstuck when I am not sure what a character would do in a situation. What it doesn't do is keep me tight to a plot or tell me how to navigate transitions.

Transitions are the worst. (Any writer who tells you otherwise is not to be trusted. Unless they're willing to tell you how to breeze easily through perfect, tight transitions, in which case you listen to them and come right back here to tell ME.)

This year, I will probably do some of my usual narrative outlining, but I'm trying to be more disciplined with it. I am going to do an actual plot outline first, from beginning to end, before I let myself wander off the trail to find shiny objects in the weeds.

Every year I start a brand new notebook for my NaNoWriMo idea, and I'm about to crack open my birthday Moleskine to see what I can come up with. Right now, I don't have the first idea which idea I want to tackle, but between now and November 1, I intend to know where to start, where to end, and every twist and turn in between.

Unless the effort of outlining actually kills me.

It might.

Because I Am, Because I Must

Thank you to the lovely Ellen Morris Prewitt for tagging me at Creative Synthesis to share a slice of my writing life. Ellen is an incredible asset to the writing community in Memphis and at large. She is an award-winning story writer, novelist, and (near and dear to my heart) she facilitates a weekly writing group for people with a personal experience of homelessness. More than that, she is kind with her heart, generous with her time, and so very, very good with her words. You don't have to take my word for it: read her post Spinning Plates, or The Writing Life for a picture of how she makes it all happen. While you're at it, head over to Cain't Do Nothing With Love to listen to her collection of award-winning short stories. You will want to thank me later, but instead, donate to one of the worthy charities she has paired with each of her stories.

My Writing Process

 

The one on the left has a story to tell. I know it.

A friend once told me, "You could find significance in a paperclip." She was kidding me about my habit of philosophizing everything, but she had a point. Well, maybe not a paperclip exactly, but binders, peanut butter, and trips to the post office are fair game. The point is, I'm a thinky-type person, and it doesn't take much for me to get an idea. Having the time and energy to use them is another matter. As Neil Gaiman once said, "You get ideas from daydreaming. You get ideas from being bored. You get ideas all the time. The only difference between writers and other people is we notice when we're doing it." It is so true, and that is why I can never be caught without a notebook somewhere on my person. I never know when a provocative paperclip might cross my path, and I sure wouldn't want to miss it.

Those notebooks are a crucial part of the process in all my work. I've got more novels in progress than I can count on both hands (even with the help of a few toes), and every single one of them started with some tiny little germ of an idea that I chased around long enough to grow it into something worth reading. This is usually accomplished through a combination of guided daydreaming, good music, and miles of unusable meta-writing. I write in the notebook until I feel that I'm chasing my tail, and then I pull out the computer, fire up Scrivener, and start typing things in a more final form. My notebook is my palette for mixing colors and sketching, my computer is my canvas where it all comes together and starts to feel real. 

It is also worth noting my ongoing participation in National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo. This involves writing 50,000 words of an original novel in 30 days. I have participated and completed the challenge every November since 2007. I have done the challenge a couple of extra times as well, once with a friend in a random August, and I also took the challenge in the very first Camp NaNoWriMo. I'm not gonna lie, a lot of the stuff I have cranked out under that kind of pressure has been pretty crappy, but on the other hand, those challenges left me with some sizable lumps of clay with which to work. It's good for my discipline, but I'm starting to think I need a challenge to work on my discipline for finishing work rather than starting it.

 

What I'm Working On 

 

Currently, I have a few irons in the fire. Because of my habit of writing half a novel and then moving on to the next shiny-object idea, I always have plenty I could work on, either drafting, revising, rewriting, or submitting.

Right this minute, I'm working on my nine-thousandth rewrite/revision of one literary fiction novel, my first major revision on a YA novel, submitting one short story for publication, and completing two other short stories I've had outlined forever, but haven't finished. It sounds like a lot when it's out there like that, but I tend to work on things in spurts depending on what I'm feeling at the time.

The lit fic novel is my "kitchen sink" novel. I am working on turning it into a workable piece from a lot of fractured rewrites. There's not much to say about it at this point because it's still growing itself a backbone and is nowhere near taking its first steps.

The YA novel is called In My Place, and involves teenage boy who is killed in an accident and finds himself a ghost wandering around his old life. He ends up possessing the body of a classmate and must navigate the other boy's life, finding it very different from his own. This project began as one of my better NaNoWriMo efforts, but I never got the ending on it. I am tweaking the beginning (of course) so things will fit better with the end I have in mind. It is my goal to have a completed draft of this one before the year is out.

 Why I Write

 

I devour stories. Anybody's. I just love them, all shapes, all sizes, all flavors. Whether I'm sitting with you while you share some part of your life with me or I am reading my new book-of-the-month, I am already panning for gold in what you're telling me. Even something as simple as an unusual turn of phrase has a way of wriggling up in my mind and aggravating things. It keeps me thinking, and sometimes, when I'm lucky, it breaks my heart just a little bit. I like things that way.

Knowing this as I do, deep down in a place somewhere just to the right of my spleen, I realize that I must write. I want to be understood. I want to aggravate people's minds. I want to break their hearts just a little bit.

Just a little bit.

Tag! You're it!

 

Next week, please check out the next stop on this blog tour!

Kim Messer blogs at 40 Year Old Re-Virgin. Kim has vast experience as a professional editor and freelance writer, and she is basically just a wonderful person. Trust me. I wouldn't lie, because then Kim wouldn't like me and I'd be sad. Her blog is a brave one, full of heart and reality. Please spend some time getting to know her there. You will be so glad you did.

Jennifer Sudbury. You will never meet another Jennifer Sudbury, and that is just as well because the original is all you need. She is starting a new blog at The Other South and you should be happy about it. Read it, love it, but whatever you do, "don't bless her heart".

Stacey Gamble is my long suffering writing buddy and friend-at-large. She is one of the most creative people walking the planet, and you would know that if you had been reading her blog Searching for Wonderland. She splits her creative time across a number of endeavors, and I'm hoping she'll find a few spare minutes to share some thoughts on her writing life.

Inspiration Monday: Start Where You Are

When life gets busy, finding time to write is hard. Finding the energy, motivation, or inspiration to write when you do find the time can be even harder.

Trust me. I know.

The longer I sit and try to make things work, the harder it gets. I can't find my way to get back into whatever it was I was writing before life stalled me out. I can't find the voice, momentum, motivation, or character, or purpose.

This weekend I spent some time--a few slivers at best--staring at pages I've written and looking for the door. I remembered writing some of it, and some of it was like reading someone else's work. Some brought back the struggle, and some I remembered writing as my pen skated happily along, full of fun and imagination. I could look in the rear-view mirror and see where I had been, but nothing on that page really told me where I need to go.

The problem isn't plot or outline. I wish it was that simple. I know what needs to happen. My problem is that I can't seem to push myself hard enough to just throw it on the page. I think I've found my problem though: it's that darn rear-view mirror.

Looking backward can tell you a lot of things about where you've been, but it doesn't do anything for you when it comes to looking where you're going. When I think about beginning work on my projects, I knew so much less about what I was doing and where I was going than I do now, and yet the writing came easier. That was probably because I wasn't trying to live up to my own ideas, I was just writing my way through it. There was nothing in the mirror, only the road ahead.

I'm going to write today. I don't know what it will be or how it will turn out. The voice of my characters may not match what I wrote a month ago, but that's okay. In another month, I won't match the person I am today, and when I read back over it, those things will be easy to fix. The important part is to pry my eyes away from what was and focus on what will be.

If you're like me and have a habit of getting caught in quicksand, I encourage to you pick up your pen with me today and start again. Don't look back, don't look too far ahead, just start right where you are. Here's hoping we can meet on the finish line.

Play Nice and Keep It Above the Belt

I do not like most of my work while I'm working on it. I pick on it, I sneer at it, I hurt its feelings. I tell it that it is ugly and that I do not like the way it is shaping up, no siree, and that it better straighten up and fly right or I am going to be forced to give up writing altogether and take up basket weaving. The world has enough crappy novels, but not near enough artful baskets. Or so I tell myself and my poor, beaten-down writing.

I've learned that when I get like this, it means two things:

1. I'm a normal writer. Apparently this happens to everyone, and you'll never know how happy I was when I realized that Margaret Mitchell was probably ready to throw Scarlett over a banister a time or two, that J.K. Rowling probably has a few napkins covered in scribbles about Harry Potter getting a broomstick up the nose, and for a fact Stephenie Meyer wrote a faux version of Breaking Dawn for a friend called Breaking Down in which all her main characters died hilariously.

2. Normal writers need breaks. This is true of everyone and everything, and as much as I want to sit and poke my novel sore, it won't get written any faster or any better than if I walk away for a while and come back another day when it is more old friend than pushy house-guest. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, after all. If not fonder, at least tolerant.

If I'm hating on my work, then I can't pour any love into it. Good work needs to have the creator's enthusiasm weaved into every fiber. It deserves it. I deserve it. If no one in the world ever reads a word I write, the least I can do is love having written it. I can love it for existing, for the time we spent together. If I can do that, I'll always be proud of my work, lumps and all.

Today, that's what I'm working on. I'm trying to stop punching my work (and myself) in the face long enough to enjoy the fact that I am an artist and I am creating art. Anything much past that takes away from its simple truth, and it is in simple truths that we find the most happiness.

Write on, writers. Create and be fruitful in your art. It is what we were made for.

Landscape

My novel structure is finally starting to come together and look a little more like...well, a novel. The lay of the land is getting clearer and setting up solid. It's about time I had a few rocks to lean on in this thing, and if I do say so myself, some of them are very pretty rocks.

Here's to the landscape with its wilds and wastes and wonder. There is a lot to see, and for now, I'm enjoying the ride.

The Case of the Missing Saturday

When I woke up this morning, I had no clue what day it was.

I opened my eyes at the same exact time as I do everyday for work. I stared at the clock, and it stared back. My first thought came in the voice of what could only be described as one of my ancient Cro-Magnon ancestors. "Work," my mind grunted. "Time go work."

My second thought was a little more like my normal thoughts, including the articles and infinitives that generally characterize normal speech, even in the south. "All I ever seem to do is go to work," I thought, a little sadly.

I blinked at the clock a few more times, mad at it for sitting there and counting my precious, slippery seconds when I couldn't seem to get a hold on them. "When do I get a day off?" I asked it with my glare.

When it didn't answer, it dawned on me to ask it, "Wait--what day is it and how many more until Saturday?"

For two full, agonizing minutes, I stared down that clock and neither of us seemed to have any clue as to how to answer that question. I tumbled into a vortex where time has no foothold, a world in which there are no Saturdays, even a distant future Saturday on which to hang my weary hopes. No Saturdays, no Sundays. Only alarm clocks, traffic, work, traffic, a seven-hour nap if I'm lucky, and then an opportunity to rinse and repeat until I keel over during one of those activities. 

Once I counted on my fingers and toes to realize that it was, in fact, actually already Saturday, I nearly wept into my pillow.

After my brush with a world without Saturdays, I thought I had better make the most of the one in front of me. I was determined to cherish this sweet Saturday with all of my heart.

I sat myself down and set my jaw. "I am going to write you, novel. I am going to write you today, because today is Saturday, and that means that you and I have a whole day to stare at each other until one of us blinks since you, novel, are not an alarm clock which is a rude object that never blinks back unless the power is off."

I stuck my face into the manuscript and breathed in all the leftover creative vapors, hoping beyond hope that they would creep into my brain, seize my unraveled story threads, and for Heaven's sake, start knitting them back together.

I narrowed my eyes and sucked in a deep breath. I strategically placed all of my notes around me. I shooed my evil cat off of the notes and placed my fingers firmly on the keyboard.

Then I fell asleep at my desk.

Oh, you sneaky Saturday. You came without warning and escaped me just as easily. I will get you next week, and I will put you into a creativity-filled stranglehold.

You and me, Starbucks. You and me.

Unless I forget.

Is it Sunday yet? 

Writing in the Negative Space

No, I don't mean that I'm making my Hemingway-esque descent into drunken, depressed mad genius (though I wouldn't mind a good dose of mad-genius every now and then). I've just been thinking about one of my works in progress with which my creative wheels have gotten buried in about two feet of gooey, frustrating, infuriating mud.

This novel is a complete rewrite of one a did a few years ago. I mostly just scooped the cream off the top--the main character and all her delicious flaws, a couple of supporting characters, and two male leads. From there, I took the characteristics that spoke to me about each of those "cast members" and I used every drop of my psychology degrees to invent backstories that explained every quirk and facet of them all. Then I did that about twenty-five more times until I finally ended up with a social history for this little handful of people that rivals War and Peace.

Of course none of that will be in the book, but whatever. At least I know it, and that helps me to have the characters fully realized and in beautiful technicolor on the page, right?

The problem that I have now is that they're so technicolor in my mind, I have no idea what's on that page. Once you've gone that deep with your characters, you can't pull yourself out and see what the reader sees anymore. No mother looks at her child the way a stranger does, and that goes for fictional children, too.

This brings me to my problem. My main character has just experienced a fairly traumatic emotional crisis which will have lasting implications on her life-path, but also harkens back to some of that ginormous backstory I mentioned. I'm pleased with the lead up to this event and the direct aftermath, but now I'm kind of stuck. This character's history has set her up to be the type who puts on a facade while she's full of raging waters inside. I think I got that across in the "first punch" phase of her crisis, but now I'm up to the point where there are a little details that have to be ironed out and the next steps are setting in. I keep getting caught up in these little details even though I know the reader would be rolling their eyes and telling me to just get on with it.

Generally, that's a bad thing.

I want to get on with it. I do. I really, really, really with sugar on top do. My problem is that the way that she handles those little things show a lot about her character in subtle ways...way, way too subtle ways.

I love this character. We've been hanging out a lot for several years and she's like my little imaginary bestie. We like the same kind of ice cream and we're both left handed. She would get along with my evil cat. Of course it is hard to write about a character that you like going through terrible pain, but I am absolutely determined to keep her as miserable as possible in order to highlight her most redemptive quality--her quiet inner strength and resilience.

This brings me to the difference between the positive and negative space. I don't mean the "Yay, go team!" space and the "Everything sucks and then you die," space. I mean the difference between this:

 and this:

Positive strength in a character is really easy to portray. It's in style. It's cool. You have a character who goes out there and kicks some serious butt. She's taking names and wearing great boots. You really wish you knew who did her hair because it never looks bad, even when she's just taken out an entire room of bad guys while the hot male lead waits outside in the Porche.

Then you have my character. She's wearing scuffed up shoes that are definitely knockoffs from Payless. She's sarcastic and shy and mostly just wants to find a cave to crawl into so the sky will stop dropping chunks on her head. Then, the more you delve into her life and she starts to come out of her shell, you realize that she has been holding the whole world on her shoulders. She's holding it up pretty darn well, considering. After all, you didn't even notice at first. She's just not moving around a whole lot while she's doing it.

It sounds great in concept, but it sure is hard to write through, especially when I already know these things and I'm trying to write for people who do not know them and will never know them unless I get my words in tune. Her strength lies in the negative space, the places around her that reveal her shape while she's holding still. It's one thing to do that with a camera, but it's a heck of a lot harder to do it with the alphabet.

I'm going to keep pecking away at it and hopefully crest the summit long enough to get to another scene that sends me off at a run. That's where I struggle--I just can't stop worrying the lumpy spots long enough to get the rest of the manuscript out front.

If anyone is listening out there, I'd love to hear opinions or suggestions about how to fill in the foreground while drawing the attention to the background without your readers using your book to prop up an uneven table-leg.

I'm definitely wallowing in my warm welcome to the world of literary fiction. Plot? What's that?

Help!