Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
I picked up my laptop bag and headed to the door. “Off to write,” I told my wife. “I’m pretty excited. Just fifteen pages left of this draft to revise.”
“How long will fifteen pages take?”
Pausing, I broke out in a broad grin. “Well, that depends on how it’s written.” As I laughed, she joined me. I went on, “I mean, it really depends on how it reads and if it still fits with the story after the revisions I’ve made.”
“I see,” she answered.
Shrugging, I turned back to the door. “And then I begin again.”
It’s just one of those days, unpredictable to me, when the writing effort gains sharper clarity and focus. I think the bottom line is that after weeks of thinking and writing and editing and revising, my understanding of the story as originally written crystallized and is now much higher. This feeds to greater focus and concentration, because I’m more certain about where I’m going. Which then generates greater writing energy and enthusiasm, pressing me to keep writing and editing, keep going, keep going.
But, writer’s butt is setting in. The cheeks are compaining about the chair’s hard surface. And though I’d go on, my stomach is querying, “Hey, are we going to eat anytime soon? Very hungry here. Hello? Anyone feel me?”
And my brain is harping, “You need to run errands. Go shopping and get needed supplies for yourself, the house, the wife, and the cats, and add gas to the car because it’s almost on empty.”
Moments like this are always bittersweet. So much was accomplished, leaving me feeling joyous over my progress. But I must stop. There will be other days. Some will be like a slog through knee deep mud, but there will be others like this, when I feel like I’m soaring.
In the muses we must trust, amen.
I love reading and writing. I think I’m learning to love editing and revising, but they’re more challenging.
Writing is a matter of switching on my imagination and playing various games. These games are typically, ‘what if’ and ‘who did’ variations, putting the characters into interesting and challenging situations, and then finding the resolution of those created problems. I write these in bursts and then spend time refining and expanding on them.
I’m a pantser, as it’s called. Pantsers are also sometimes called organic writers; we don’t outline, or outline very little.
A problem with my method of writing from the hip is what happens next is often a surprise. Characters often go into unexpected directions. As I write then, I need to address how they veered from my original intentions. Then I edit to some degree, to confirm it all somewhat fits together.
Editing and revising requires me to delve more deeply into these matters, also addressing pacing, and clarifying as I do. These activities are seriously embraced once a draft has become solid enough to start resembling a novel.
Editing and revising requires more discipline, and I’m not the most disciplined individual. Burdened with its own challenges, editing and revising also brings greater reward. As many writers will say, the first few drafts are learning the story, finding the plot, and understanding the characters. For me, the editing and revising parts are about developing authenticity and depth.
Then comes reading. I mean writing others’ works, whether it’s fiction or non-fiction, and any of the sub-genres.
I often limit my fiction reading while I’m writing. I know from my experiences that fiction reading causes me to challenge what’s up with my own fiction in progress. So I avoid it.
But all reading also inspires me to write. Non-fiction pulls me into a different direction, of course, which ends up costing me time as I pursue knowledge and expansion of things I seek to understand more deeply or clearly.
Once I’m finished with drafts and enter the editing and revision stage, I happily jump back into fiction reading. Where fiction reading now becomes a problem in that stage is that I need to divide my time between the book I’m enjoying reading, and the book I’m enjoying creating.
You know, though, I have it pretty good if that’s the summation of my life’s problems.
Just for the record, I’m now reading the second book in Naomi Novik’s Temeraire series. A creation of alternative history, it’s written like historic fiction with a fantasy kicker. That kicker is the existence of dragons. These dragons are intelligent and well-spoken. Yes, they speak, and they develop solid, beautiful relationships with their people.
They’re also used as instruments of war. A great deal of the first book dealt with dragon strategy in conjunction with naval warfare, and the tending and treatment of dragons.
It’s all set in the era of the Napoleonic Wars, but fascinating politic variations emerge, as well as challenges built into that era regarding class and sex roles. Lot of fun to read. I can imagine writing it was terrific fun.
As far as non-fiction reading, I’m now into The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder by David Grann. I’d previously read his books, The Lost City of Z and Killers of the Flower Moon. I enjoy his writing style and the information they convey about things that I didn’t know. I know so little about this world, and it’s fun and exciting to learn more.
I don’t hesitate to recommend any of the mentioned books. My hope is that someday at least one of my efforts will be regarded and enjoyed in the same way that I enjoyed these.
Revision continues. Read. Change. Correct.
Two complicated chapters slowed progress. They remain in need of fixes. But I think their changes should be addressed in context of the entire story. So I press on into the next chapter. Read. Revise.
Those were complicated chapters. And important because of the revelations they delivered. So going through them meant patience and diligence.
But I felt that I lost some of the thread. I wondered if I was confusing myself with attempting too many changes to improve the flow. So, I want to let those chapters slip out of mind and see how they read the next time they’re approached in their natural order.
Page 306 is under scrutiny. The main protagonist is enduring an unidentified illess. Going through the prose affects me. Empathizing with the character, nausea and lethargy overtakes me. Dryness spreads from my lips, invading my mouth, takes over my tongue, slipping into my throat. My eyes grow weary. I want to stop.
But there are goals. There must be discipline. The goal for today’s session is to reach page 330, a completely arbitrary number presented to the pscyhe because I work better with order, structure, and goals, a condition of my personality and my work history.
After page 330 is reached, eighty pages will remain.
First, I’m going on a break. Stretch. Walk in the sunshine. Breathe in, as the character tells himself, breathe out. Like the song “Machinehead” by Bush: breathe in, breathe out.
I’m not looking for perfection. I just want to be happy with the story.
A mental mistake. Revising today, the draft surprised me; things I thought I’d changed yesterday weren’t changed. WTH, over? Didn’t I change that? And that? Was that all a mirage, a dream, work done in a different reality.
Realization came belatedly, no, I was in the wrong draft. While working on the latest draft yesterday, I’d opened a previous draft to look something up. Well, it was the last doc closed yesterday, so it went to the top of the document list. Without thinking today, I opened it up, went to where the doc said I left off, and commenced revision. Wasn’t until I glanced at the page number and realized I was twenty pages behind that I finally seriously applied critical thinking to the moment and understood what happened.
What a rube. What a mistake. No harm; just time. But damn, I thought I did some good revising today. Hope I’ve learned a lesson and don’t do that again.
Michael Seidel, writer 