Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
Woo-hoo. Fitbit has awarded me my India badge. According to them, I’ve walked nineteen hundred ninety-seven miles since I began using a Fitbit in mid-January. Fitbit says that’s the length of India, hence the badge’s name.
All those miles add up, one step and one day at a time. Just like all those words when you’re writing a novel.
I was stymied in my writing yesterday. I’d written a bunch (technical writing slang for “many words and a long time”) yesterday, and made great progress. But —
As great comedians have noted, there’s always a “but.”
My but came because I didn’t write the scene I’d intended. I wrote the setup for the scene, and then went blank. I knew what happened after that scene, so I wrote the other end of it. Now I had bookends, with blank space to fill in the middle. I knew the subsequent scene to those scenes, and began writing them in my head after I’d stopped physically writing. But that scene I’d set out to write? Still blank.
I sporadically considered the scene’s elements, setup and outcome through the evening as I walked, ate, read books, and fed the cats. Nothing firmed. It was like Jello that wouldn’t set.
Come this morning, though, as I rose, fed cats, checked on the solar panels invertor, and made coffee, the scene swam into view. Confrontations and dialogue developed. Unexpected actions by the characters joined. As the scene expanded and crystallized, changes required to the setup, outcome, and the subsequent story being written in my head emerged. By the time I’d finished showering and shaving, and was dressing, words rushed into my head. That’s exciting and fun.
Got my coffee. Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.
I just wrote a sentence in the novel-in-progress. Reflecting on its significance, I looked at the distant horizon of the novel’s conclusion and saw how this sentence impacted the outcome, tens of thousands of words away.
This reminds me of so many plans made. The long game needs to be played. I didn’t take up some vocations because of their long roads, like astrophysics and architecture. Oh, to study all those years, and learn all that math. Ugh. I lacked the patience, and the outcome seemed so tortuously distant and uncertain. Besides which, I probably wasn’t sufficiently smart or disciplined to pursue those courses. Thus comfortably rationalized out of trying those things, I set my sights on easier, and more comfortable targets.
Now I’m writing, what, the tenth novel? More? I’ve published four. More await editing and polishing. They need covers. More concepts queue to become novels. More stories stack up to be told.
I began writing because I thought I could do it. I’ve worked on it and continued working on it even as I sometimes slump over blank pages and screens, even as I read novels and admire others’ talents and skills, and wish I could attain half of their skill. I continue believing that I have so many shortages of skills, but I continuing writing and trying. I saw the long road demanded of writing a novel, but it didn’t matter. The other possible vocations interested and appealed to me, but writing is an addiction with the intangible draw of a true love.
Just some thoughts to conclude another day of writing like crazy.
While I looked out the window.
And studied the rainbow.
And thought about rainbows and the myths and science about them.
And admired its beauty.
While sleep was still being chased away.
And thoughts frolicked with dream remnants.
And the day’s planned activities opened in my mind like a hand of cards.
And I thought about making the first cup of coffee.
While I thought about what I was going to do today.
And what I needed to do.
I turned to my computer, and opened my file.
The file of the section of the novel in progress I’m working on.
And I typed.
A hundred words.
Five hundred.
One thousand.
Twelve hundred.
Fifteen hundred.
Then the scene was done.
And I reviewed what I’d written.
And closed the file.
And while I thought about what I’d just written.
And what was to be written.
And what it meant for what was already written.
I went to make my morning coffee.
It’s a risky business,
this writing business,
trying to make stories out of your thoughts.
It’s a risky business,
this writing business,
putting the words in the write way.
You have these images,
these sounds and scenes,
Floating up through your head.
Yeah, and if you’re not fast enough,
not alert enough,
that stuff all fades to dead.
You know, it’s a risky business,
this writing business,
and all that it entails.
But if you keep trying,
and you never stop writing,
They can never say you failed.
Once again, I find myself writing three chapters in parallel. I’m self-trained about fiction writing (shows, right?), so I’ve drawn my own insights. In this instance, my insistence on writing chapters in threes reflects my thinking. I begin with an introduction to the situation and expand on it. That’s chapter one. The next chapter is the buildup and climax, while the third chapter is the activity afterward and the denouement.
It’s not always this way, but this is what typically happens with the main chapters or sections. Other chapter types I call bridges and pivots. A bridge chapter links previously written chapters or sections, while the pivot lets me change direction. No, I don’t always write from the beginning to the end, but in scenes and sections. I read the other day that some writers begin with the ending, and work backward. They don’t begin writing until they’ve figured out that ending.
This week’s writing is slow but steady, hampered by research requirements. I am visual (hear me roar) in my nature, so I like visualizing things. If I know too little to visualize them, my writer calls, “Road trip!”, and off we go.
This road trip lasted a week. Can you I tell you how much I knew about horses when I started?
Exactly. Jumping on the information superhighway, we sought information about horses. Fortunately, another blogger posted a link to “How to Write Horses Wrong: 8 Red Flags” by Rachel Chaney, on Dan Koboldt’s site, which was a helpful starting point. Next, we hunted information on crossbows. Let me tell you, I know more about horses than crossbows, which should confirm how little I know.
Onward to more familiar and safer subjects, but which I required deeper and broader knowledge, snow camping and volcanoes. These were more of a refresher nature but also provided opportunity to remember important details.
I’m beginning the third chapter today. Besides being slowed by research, I wrote notes in parallel, and updated the bible. At one point, I also outlined these three chapters. I’m an organic writer by nature. I like the spontaneity organic writing provides. When things become complicated, I stop and write an outline. The outline is not deep, but a series of points to tie together. This outline was less than one page. It helped me firm what I’d visualized and permitted me to track and develop the action while adding the verisimilitude my research provided. Although I consider myself an organic writer, I’ve come to evolve into a hybrid writer, outlining pieces when needed, and following the lights through the dark the rest of the time.
Hybrid, organic, outliner, and pantser are convenient conversation and reference labels. They don’t tie me to anything. During the course of cultivating myself as a writer, I learned that I needed to develop a process that works for me. I’m not static. I hope that I continue to learn and improve. I expect it my process to change as I do. That is absolutely cool. What works for this novel may not work for the next one.
Doesn’t matter. I’ll do what it takes. The key to progress is putting words on paper, getting it to flow, keeping it coherent, logical, and true to itself, with a grammar and style that others will read, and finishing, with the caveat that finishing the novel’s writing process means just that; it still ain’t a book, and it’s probably not ready for publication. That was another lesson learned.
As an aside, because I became curious, the first two chapters in this section are fifteen pages and forty-eight hundred words. According to Word and the properties section, I started it on November tenth, spent five hundred forty-eight minutes on it, and last modified it yesterday at two oh three in the afternoon. Looking at the word count, over five days, I’ve written less than a thousand words per day. Like I said, slow writing, but necessary – and satisfying.
Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.
And I think of things that I’ve overlooked that need to be added, and events that would surprise the reader, and recognize that I want to add it to the story, but it doesn’t go in this book, but actually, OMG, the end of the second book, so it leads into the third book. I’m halfway – only halfway – through writing the first book. The second book is written but needs some wiring changes. The third book – I hadn’t thought about a third book before, but it started blooming like a volunteer posy. Am I supposed to uproot the thing?
No, because my writing excitement gets the better of me. But the series’ evolution forces more work upon me. The excitement becomes almost paralyzing, because I stop to let the evolution flow in. Sitting still in a sea of external noise and activity, I can look down the long tunnel through the rest of the first book, past the second book, and into the third book.
Now, here’s the tricky part. I can see and hear these events. They must be captured in words. More than that, I need to navigate unseen scenes that bridge now and then, and find the words, pacing, nuances, etc., to bring it all home. I love this part of thinking and writing. I feel all those wires connecting and gears turning. Illumination falls on new aspects and spreads. This is the essence of art, writing, music, and physics, for me, to think, to see, to think more to understand, and see more. It’s an unwinding coil without beginning or end, a Möbius strip of existence.
Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.
I’m not a fast or organized writer. I have more ideas and concepts than I can keep up with it.
It’s pretty damn frustrating. Just now, working on the novel-in-progress and starting a new section and chapter, I’m struggling to keep up with the writing. Meanwhile, I want this novel done so I can resume writing the rest of the series, and get on with writing other things. Being disorganized, though, I recognize a need to stop to organize.
I don’t want to do that. This is specifically about what volunteers, soldiers, platoons, and squads are in what scenes when things go down, and what happens to each. Who died, lived, went missing, set off the alarm? Who was on-planet, off-planet, on sentry, and on patrol?
Going through this reinforces my admiration and respect for writers like J.R.R. Tolkien, George R.R. Martin and J.K. Rowling and their respective series, or even Andy Weir, with The Martian. Once again, looking for secrets and magic formulas, I recognize, what must be done must be accepted and done. No way around it, except to have less characters. Unless most of my writing process, this is work, but the work has to be done. The conundrum is whether to carve out more time specifically to do this work, or use the writing time. Shortcomings exist for both solutions.
It’s a *shrug* matter. It must be done, just as bricklayers must lay the bricks one by one, and building a house requires each drawing and every nail. I’m petulant and whining, because that’s my personality. I think about the problem, realize there’s an issue, and then complain about it. Once that’s out of me, I put my head down and do what I must do.
For today, I’m going to write like crazy, one more time. Meanwhile, I’ll let my mind stew about my problem, and then address it later.
Procrastination is a good friend of mine.
It’s been a difficult day on the range. Always is, cat-wrangling. The critters sleep a lot, but they spring up out of sleep ready for action at the smallest sound. Sometimes, the first you know of this is fightin’ yowls. Then the fur’s flyin’. Both combatants are spittin’ mad, but you don’t know why. Cats and their slights are mysterious matters. Segregation leads to peace, but not forgiveness, and that separate but equal stuff doesn’t work for cats no more than it works for anything else.
I’m out of there, though, at the coffee shop with my brew. Characters are barking at me about what they wanna do, and where they’re gonna go. Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.
Don’t you love it when you’re writing, and lightning strikes?
Yeah, me, too.
Happened yesterday. A writing lightning strike is when I assume the position to write, and dictation begins. My job is only to keep up with the typing.
I track word counts as an incidental measure of progress. These are *almost* like the miles being traveled while on a trip. In a car, I generally know exactly where I’m going and how much I have left because I travel across a well-measured and documented region. Detailed maps are available. I know how far I’ve gone, and what distance remains.
I’d love to have such a map for my novel writing. I don’t. Word counts present an idea of how far I’ve gone, but little idea of how much further I must travel in the novel. In the end, all that matters I’ve typed and written until I finally type “The End”.
Word counts help me gauge what’s normal and inject some minor reward and satisfaction. Yesterday, I ended up with twenty-six hundred more words on my novel journey. Some writers may poo-poo that amount – and I’m not pursuing N2WM – but it’s higher than my average. Best, though, I completed three chapters being concurrently developed. In essence, they were part of a sequence of events. I wrote them in order, but as details developed, I backtracked to modify and align details and the timeline. Best, number two, is that completing them left me with a starting location for today. Best, number three, is that satisfaction of bringing more to the story and moving toward the novel’s completion.
Will lightning strike twice? I offer the late Roy Sullivan as evidence it could. Roy, a park ranger, was struck by lightning and lived seven times, and is the Guinness World Records official record-holder for those categories.
Time to write like crazy, at least one…more…time.
Michael Seidel, writer 