Tag: novel writing

Tricks of the Mind

I ran into a friend who is also a writer. She and I, along with a few others, used to meet for drinks and conversation. All writers, we talked about what we were writing and our writing processes, and complained about the non-writers and our struggles with them. Non-writers are rarely interested in our WIPs and processes. I can appreciate that. I’ve gone into eyes-glazing-over mode when others have gone into explanations about their processes about things like making soap or quilting.

Our outings were wonderfully healthy and happy times. Everyone in the group moved, though, leaving us to find other avenues or go without. I turned to posts like these to help me cope.

When we encountered each other on the street, we resumed our writing relationship, spending fifteen minutes catching up. Both had elsewhere to go, though, so we had to cut the encounter short.

One thing she revealed was that she’d begun using a typewriter to write. She’d slowly stopped writing as much as she used to write, and thought that part of her issue was that she found herself editing as she wrote when she used a computer. That process curtailed her productivity. Typing the work in progress, at this point essentially defining the concept, helped her because she held tangible evidence in her hand each day.

It was an interesting issue and approach. I can relate. Sometimes, when the writing way becomes denser, as it has in the current chapter in progress, tangible progress seems elusive. I type, think, edit, revise, and repeat. It’s not as much fun, but I discover that I still achieve about fifteen hundred words a day. That’s not an amazing amount, but it’s tangible progress.

Once in a while, I’ve returned to writing in a notebook. I consider that much rawer and intense. I’ve done so when I feel like I’m stuck. I usually felt stuck when multiple paths to pursue were available, paralyzing me with indecision and doubt.

In the end, I applaud her typing effort. Whatever it takes to goad yourself to keep writing, you know?

Got my coffee. Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.

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Wandering the Dark

Man, was it dark. At first, I saw and heard very little. When I did hear or see something, I’d type like crazy to capture those impressions. They were the starting position. I thought it was the beginning, but it turned out to be toward the middle.

Hearing people talking and moving, I followed them. Drawing closer to them, I started glimpsing their figures and faces. With greater exposure, I came to understand them. Soon, I could slip into their thinking and understand what they’re doing and their motivations.

But the paths and area remained dark, forcing me to explore. Some paths were easier to follow. Others became dense with forest, slowing me down and forcing me to feel my way. I stumbled over things unseen underfoot, slipped along muddy sections, got stuck, and sometimes fell.

I kept going, though, mapping it all in my mind and typing up details. Sharp turns, switchbacks, parallel paths and hidden ways surprised me. Cliffs and walls were encountered. Following a grade, I climbed to the highest area I found, thinking, from here, I’ll see and know where I’m going. But it looks different from up here. The details aren’t visible from this level. It’s the details that must be known and understood.

Hours of typing become days of typing that developed into weeks, months, and then, years. But at last, I think I fully understand the story problem and solution. I believe I see all the paths and connections. I think I know where everyone went, why they went there, and what happened to them.

Now that I know, I can finish. Finishing, I can begin revising and editing to ensure the story I see at the end, when it’s all been revealed, is the story that I wrote from the beginning.

Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.

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The Three Cs

Got my three Cs – coffee, computer, and cookie. The cookie is an indulgence. I ate breakfast – granola and yogurt with blueberries – a few hours ago, but I feel hungry, so what the hell, I indulged myself and ate a cookie. Salty caramel, if you must know.

Admittedly, eating the cookie was a little bit of stalling. I was stalling my start today because yesterday’s writing events surprised me. Handley attacked Kanrin with a sword. Kanrin killed her. What was going on with Forus Ker? He just sat there watching. Meanwhile, the ship’s alarms continue to go off. Kanrin’s nets have been compromised. And where are the rest? What are they doing?

None of this was planned. The destination is known but the path is a wildly winding way.

Once I finished writing those pages and concluded that chapter, I cleaned up errors and checked continuity. Then I walked, and wondered, where are we going now? What’s supposed to happen?

All of this took me down paths about immortality and death. Born with a fear of dying, and still capable of suffering injury and pain, one doesn’t abandon those fears, despite the evidence of past experiences. Even if you’ve died and returned before, or you’re not sure that what’s happening is reality, virtual reality, or a hallucination, and even if you’re doubtful if the outcome matters because of everything else happening, coping with the natural emotional and intellectual stresses inherent in these paradoxes challenges your will and sanity. Put yourself in that position and imagine. And remember, whatever the brain or personality might decide, the body may have different ideas. We’re not the masters of ourselves that we’re told as children. It’s a lesson we learn as we age and our bodies and abilities decay. It’s a lesson that’s reinforced as we meet others with lesser and greater abilities than ourselves. Exploring these avenues of similarities and differences and the impact on our decisions and actions is one of the most exciting and delicious parts of my writing experience.

When I walked and thought, I struggled to know what was to happen next in this story? It’s stupid of me to wonder, but I can’t resist. I know, though, I’ll slip into the moment and begin typing, and things will come out that I never foresaw. Consciously, I don’t know what’s next, but once I assume the typing posture, out it comes, if I just let it.

Yeah, it feels like weird fucking magic, typing something when I don’t know what I’m going to type. After all these years of writing, the process still astonishes me. I hope it never stops.

Now fortified with sugar and caffeine, it’s time to write like crazy, at least one more time.

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Off-kilter

My writing world is a little off-kilter this morning. I’m again doubting that the muses and characters know what they’re doing. I suspect they’re conning me.

The muses and characters agree about what’s to be written, what’s happening, and what’s to come next. “Trust us,” they purr.

I’m jaundiced about their plans. “Seems like we’re going around in a bac.”

“A what?”

“Bac. ” I spelled it, “B.A.C. Big-ass circle.”

“Writers,” one muse mumbled to a character (Brett), who nodded back with an eye-roll. They didn’t care that I’d witnessed this, implying a disrespect that I didn’t like.

“We know what we’re doing,” another muse said, like a young mother speaking to her mother about the way she’s raising her child. “Just follow our guidance.”

“I am,” I said. “If you could let me in on a little more, I’d feel more comfortable about I’m typing.”

Several muses and characters unloosed scoffing sounds while another muse said, “We don’t want to burden you with too much.”

“I’m the writer here,” I said. “Shouldn’t I know where the story is going?”

“You do know,” one muse said.

“Yes, you know how it’s ending, don’t you?” said another muse.

Handley, a character, “Nothing personal, but we don’t want to give you too much to juggle. You already seem a little strained by the novel’s direction.”

“It’s more than a novel, it’s become a series,” I said.

“Exactly,” Handley said. “And there’s a great deal more material available that we could give you, but you seem tired of writing this.”

“Yes,” a muse said. “You’re weary of writing this, doubtful of the content, dubious of your skill and talent, and worried that you’re pulling a Wonderboys.”

I clamped my lips tight for a second before speaking. “None of that’s germane to this conversation. While that’s all true, that doesn’t change that right now, it seems like you guys are leading me in a — ”

“Big-ass circle,” a muse said. “Yes, we know.”

Realizing that I wasn’t going to win this discussion, and that the muses and characters weren’t going to tell me more until they thought I was ready for it, I finished my walk, purchased my coffee, and set up to write.

Time to write like crazy and see where the characters and muses take me. Do you know that the muses have never told me their names?

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Tying Up

I finished another chapter. Serving like a flare in the night, it lit more of the final stages of the novel, Good-bye, Hello, and the Incomplete States series. Seeing those pieces, I re-arranged one chapter and wrote the beginning of another. As I wrote that, the segue off a previous chapter appeared. This was the opening to the final final piece. I laughed at the phrase even while I juggled pieces in my mind and saw it all come together with the ending already written. A chill thrilled me as I read the pieces. So satisfying and fun, visiting this world and these peoples, and all their myths, technology, travels, and adventures. They move into this last phase with hope, but I write with bittersweet inevitability.

It’s been a fun journey with these concepts, and narrowing the focus of the concepts into a tighter and tighter frame. Once again, revelations and realizations surprised me. These mostly involved Kything, Kything, who began as Professor Kything, named in honor of the term from A Wrinkle In Time. Kything was not who they thought.

Kything was not who I thought.

There’s more of him still to be revealed to me. The revelations and patterns remind me of a difficult Sudoku. After wrestling with logic and patterns, hunting for the final solution, a key square was just completed. With it came the insights to finish the puzzle.

Even as I think that it was a wonderful day of writing like crazy, I’m beginning to grow sad, because I see this marvelous journey coming to an end. Yes, a lot of writing remains, and then the the editing and revising marathon begins, but those are different skills, with a separate satisfaction to them, than the unbridled creative flow of raw writing.

I feel a quiet chuckle as I realize, this feeling I have is just like how I feel when I’m finishing reading a good book.

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After the Revelations

This is not how I thought writing would go.

I had a romanticized, glamorized vision about the writing process and a novelist’s life. I thought I would be dictating the story, making it up and writing it down. Instead, here we go again. Philea finishes her wide-ranging tale and brings it back to the moment where it split away,  and joins two other paths. One path was forged by Pram when he told his part of this story, and the other path was forged by the six primary characters on the Wrinkle.

I’ve been waiting for this re-connecting. I’d seen and heard, experienced, if you will, what they were going to say and do once they came back together. Honestly, Philea’s side-trip astonished me. She went into a life that I didn’t know existed. It’s also surprising that it startled her as much as it startled me.

But, at last her side-trip is done. It’s time for those long-awaited next scenes. But before I go into writing those scenes, I need to soak in what Philea and the other characters experienced. She and Pram shared more examples of parallel life-experience-reality-existences — a LERE, their shorthand for other Now events that that lived (or are living) and share with the rest trapped in this cycle.

They’re trying to understand what will happen to them. They’re attempting to take a piece of information and fit it in with other pieces of information to create a substantive, believable cause and effect tale for what they’re enduring. That’s human nature, to fill in the gaps, color them with some form of logic or explanation, and make it all whole.

I feel for them, pitying them, because I know that’s not their nature. That’s not what they’re living. Even as they draw closer to the truth, sometimes even stating it in incredulous terms as a possibility, the six don’t always agree on the verbiage or logic. The logic argues against their standard expectations about reality, existence, and the arrows of time. Besides, not all of their experiences will support the truth, in their minds, because they don’t remember everything that they experience. Remembering more answers less by introducing more complexity and gaps. At this point, I think all readers will understand that.

So listening  to — hah, typing — my characters’ struggle to resolve these new fragments of information, I really feel for them. The passages of their thoughts and dialogue that I’ve typed leave me oddly reflective.

That’s a first, raw, impression. On greater thought, it’s not leaving me oddly reflective. Instead, I’m taking what I learned through my characters’ learning, and applying it to my existence, here in the real world.

We’re all pieces. We see ourselves as pieces that comprise a whole. Yet, few of us ever fit fully, completely, and comfortably. And when one of us goes, we struggle to see the new whole, because we remember the whole that we knew, and lament its changes. We search for answers and rarely find closure and resolution. We remain wondering.

With these notes softly echoing in my mind, I sip the final dregs of cold coffee and end my day of writing like crazy.

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The Character Mix

Philea’s voice remains strong. She retains control of the story boards, dictating what’s going on. I’d prefer some shortcuts so I can finish the novel (and series, Incomplete States). 

Not going to happen. The characters know what they want to say to convey the scene’s meaning to them and how they want the scenes to portray them. Kanrin is straightforward when he speaks and pragmatic in his actions, but likes to keep his speaking to a minimum, letting others fill the gaps. He doesn’t ask questions, but wait for people to volunteer insights without being prompted. He knows that many people like to give their opinions, and within these opinions are some aspects of the truth, or enough to give him direction. His story telling tends to be direct and shorn of observations. He’s also very patient.

Handley is more scattered. She tends to do free-association streaming of thinking and interaction. She gets angry at people and hold grudges without sharing why with them. She’s also troubled more than the rest by the entire series and its concepts. They don’t make sense to her, and even while she experiences them, she’s attempting to either rationalize them or reject them.

Meanwhile, Pram has become more physical, aggressive, and belligerent. He’s also awoken to the awareness that he was used and that most people don’t consider him a nice person. Yet, is it really him? Or are his interactions being manipulated to drive him to a specific end? Impatient to be free of the circular complications, he’s always asking the others for information.

He also knows from his external memory that he wasn’t always like this, but he’s trying to unwind the cause and effect to better understand how and why he changed.

Because of his experience in Returnee, Brett is more philosophical about the situation and open to ideas about what might be going on. His experience taught him that systems and perceptions can’t be trusted, and that we often only have a sliver of the available information. Brett is also a rememberer, able to recall and understand his other life-experience-reality-existences with greater clarity than the rest, giving him deeper insights into the struggle they’re all enduring.

Richard, another rememberer, is less talented as a rememberer than Brett. When it comes out eventually that Brett is actually Richard’s replacement, Richard becomes bitter and sullen. He wants the others to want and need him, and is desperate to do and say things that will raise his esteem.

Then we have Philea. A scientist in most of her life-experience-reality-existences, she’s the most intelligent of the group. Her intellectual prowess (and technological breakthroughs like her time-traveling machine, Wrinkle), enhanced her value as a target for the organizations, species, businesses, and other entities who seek to master and control the forces that this group have encountered.

Although Philea isn’t a scientist (or engineer) in her current incarnation, her thinking style and logical expression remains similar, but less practiced. Fleeing and jumping the Wrinkle as hostile forces close in and try to take them, her new experiences awaken greater insights in this part being written now. I always knew and respected this piece existed, and that it would come to be written at the right moment. That moment seems to be now. Her revelations awaken the group to greater depths of involvement and complexity.

Still, I was surprised with her introduction and references to Kything. While writing like crazy during the past week, I wondered how this was all going to tie together even as I typed and edited it. Philea dropped the reveal on me at the end of yesterday’s writing session.

Good to write all that up. Permits me to think through the craziness and reassure myself that I’m keeping up with developments.

Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.

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Cringe Writing

Philea continued to dominate my recent writing sessions. During yesterday’s effort, she took me down paths that had me cringing. It wasn’t the sort of stuff that I generally write. It was contrary enough to my normal voice and style that I considered whether it should be continued. I wondered if she’d breach the series’ borders and was taking off into the wrong direction.

This prompted a guidelines review in my post writing walk. They were good reminders.

  1. Write like crazy. I’m still finishing this book and series. (The series is Incomplete States, and this novel, the fourth, is Good-bye, Hello.) Basically, open the doors, portals, floodgates, valves, lit the fuse, whatever metaphor works, and let it go. Editing is for later, when it’s all done.
  2. The characters are allowed latitude to explore themselves and the story. This has the additional benefit of allowing me to explore the story and characters.
  3. I’m an organic writer. While I know where I expect to end up, the paths I follow are being created as I go. That’s the same with the characters. A compass is used to keep us going in the correct general direction, making corrections as necessary.
  4. Let the readers decide. Readers bring all kinds of conceptions and ideas to stories they’re reading. They find their own interpretation of truths and myths, and apply them. They won’t all enjoy the same books, or even the same parts of a book.

That last point, about readers deciding, emerged from early critique groups. I’d noticed several biases develop in a writing group. Not surprising, as they’re all readers before they’re writers.

  1. Some like to be told everything. They don’t want any gaps in what was said or happened. They don’t want it to be abstract. Others prefer that their imagination fill in the gaps, or that, this is like life, and we don’t always know all of the answers.
  2. Some writers/readers like a leisurely style. The want to slow down and breath in the atmosphere.
  3. Some prefer style over substance, or substance over style. 

I tend to write in a very active voice. It’s my preferred voice. But, I use multiple POV (sometimes first person, but third person dominates). In giving latitude to characters, I notice some of them don’t like a direct, active voice.

After thinking about that, I realize, well, of course. I don their skins and minds when writing from their POV. When I do that, I try staying true to them and their voice. Just like real individuals, they have styles of observing, thinking (and applying knowledge and lessons learned), interacting, and taking action. They carry emotional and physical baggage. These traits direct their voice when the story is being told via their POV.

This wasn’t something I developed on my own. I’m always developing on other writers’ shoulders. This specific point came through an epiphany I had while reading J. Franzen’s The Corrections about fifteen years ago. I later cemented my impressions while reading Wally Lamb, Michael Chabon, Louise Erdrich, Tana French, Kate Atkinson, and others.

Of course, in a qualifying pause, I change up styles to reflect pacing and tension. I use shorter sentences and words in confrontational scenes, epiphanies, fights, and arguments. That brevity contributes to a more direct and intense feel, speaking for myself — yeah, it’s my blog post, right, so who else could I be speaking (or writing) for? — as a reader and a writer. Your preferences might vary.

As a reader, I’m not married to any one style. I like enjoying books and taking what I can from every one of them. Many books end up surprising me, and I like that most of all, as a writer and a reader.

So I cringed and wrote Philea’s part about Holes and The Stipulations. I won’t predict whether it’ll make it into the published version.

Time to get back to writing like crazy, at least one more time. 

 

 

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