Tag: novel writing

The Plan du Jour

Plans must be made every day. They’re compartmented by activity. They’re all based on what’s been done, and the overall goals, objectives, mission, and visions.

This is a product of my military years. Make lists, prioritize, structure and plan, hup – two – threp – four. About the only thing in my life exempt from planning is this blog. The blog is just a lark, a creative outlet, a place to vent and rant, and a channel for improving my knowledge, sparking my thinking, and making connections. Everything else is serious.

Writing is especially serious, even as it’s fun. A plan is required or an organic writer like me. The most critical part to remember about having a plan is that it’s a tool to help organize and progress. Trying to make the perfect plan is counter-productive, unless you’re murdering someone or robbing someplace. In just about everything else, it’s sufficient to have a sketchy plan.

When I’m writing the story, the story writes the plan. My novels typically begin with a concept or a setting. Ideas volunteer and find roots.

But writing is like vehicular traffic for me; everything causes a reaction. Implications, issues, conflicts, and outcomes arise. Plans are needed. Some of that planning is researching aspects to provide more depth and realism. Other planning is simply developing concepts and character background. Characters often leap into action on a page. I accept that, but to carry the story forward and keep it honest, I need to know that character. So, off I go, into a character snapshot. Some of that ends up in the novel as exposition. It depends upon the material and story. Even if I include it at that point, it can be removed later. It depends upon the arc, relevance, and pacing.

Writing and walking work well together. My mind can pick up where I left off writing the story on the last session and resume that thread preparatory to beginning a new day of writing like crazy. Reading and writing works well for me, too. Reading fuels my creativity, invigorates my desires, and reinforces my will, all good things while on a novel-writing journey.

All of this is less so with editing and revising.

In editing and revising, I already have the raw material that writing provided. The characters are established; so is the plot. The research has been completed, for the most part, and the results are embedded in the story.

I can say that research is completed for the most part. Sometimes while writing, I’ll put in some shorthand about something require greater detail, clarification, or verification that I’m not completely wrong about what I think and have based my novel decision upon. I use the shorthand because I’m in the writing rhythm and don’t want to divert myself from that path. I mark these places with <TK> and some explanation about what I wanted for there, and why. These might need research at that point. Sometimes, though, I find the research has been completed and used elsewhere. Sometimes I find that what I thought was needed there is no longer required. I go with the flow as I see it.

An editing and revising plan then evolves more into finishing the novel as a coherent and entertaining story that others can read and enjoy. I sit down to edit and revise with a goal of completing thirty pages each day. It’s just like running miles for me, or walking; having a specific objective keeps me focused on the overall course. That objective, though, isn’t the goal, and I don’t confuse the two. Editing and revising the book remains the goal for this phase of the vision. The vision is a completed, published novel.

Thirty pages is a somewhat arbitrary distinction. I often exceed that. Once in a while, I’ll fall short.

Reaching thirty pages a day is neither easy, nor difficult. It depends upon the work presented. Some of it’s already been significantly revised, edited and polished, because part of my process as an organic writer is to edit and revise as I write the novel. These sort of passages are a pleasure to edit and revise because they’re so easy. The biggest problems I encounter are writing butt and becoming complacent. Writing butt is, of course, when you’ve been sitting for so long, your ass has gone numb. Since I often have my head up my ass, this can have serious health ramifications for breathing and thinking. Complacency is when I stop thinking critically about what I’m reading.

Beyond this basic plan and structure for editing, sometimes, in the course of reading what’s been written, I’ll draw up short. Something does not align with what was previously read, or what I recall writing later in the novel. At that point, I have options.

My options depend on how big I view this mis-alignment, i.e., how disturbing or surprising I find it, and it’s influence on the rest of the plot and novel. Sometimes, it appears to me to be so large that it becomes a plan to resolve this difference. Other times, it’s smaller and I simply make a note to review and resolve. A few times, the flawed connection has arrived because I just read that part. Then, I’ll flip back to it quickly, confirm my facts, and continue. A few times, it’ll be something like a planet, ship, or secondary character’s name. When that happens, I’ll verify, and then completed a global search and replace.

With all plans, as learned in the military, it’s about mission accomplishment. What is my vision, and how does completing my mission support it? In writing a novel, it’s pretty damn simple and clear.

Now, excuse me. I have a plan to go edit and revise, at least one more time.

What about you? Do you have a plan du jour?

 

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As I Edit

As I read, I edit.

As I edit, I check on the pauses and look at notes to confirm continuity.

As I read and edit, I’m surprised and delighted by how well the novel comes together.

As I’m delighted and surprised, I’m nervous and anxious. Will the enjoyment I find be sustained, and will others enjoy it as well?

Then, as I read, I forget.

Until there’s another pause and I edit again.

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The Light At the End of the Tunnel

“How’s it going?” a friend asked. “Is there a light at the end of the tunnel?”

He was asking about my novel in progress. Like many people, he was speaking cliche-ese. I’m not in a tunnel, and I’m not looking for a light when I’m writing a novel. I once may have thought that way, but I’ve changed. The light would mean there’s hope ahead.

I’m enjoying the writing journey, so there’s no need for a light. The process can sometimes rival a clogged toilet’s mess, but it’s well damn lit.

“What will you do after you’re done?” Bill asked. “Will you write another?”

It’s a question from outside the circle of writers, and again, is common in cliche-land. Bizarre, to me. In sports, the assumption is that you’re going to keep going as long as body, will and team allows. Likewise, that’s how it seems to go in performing arts like acting and singing. Why, then, assume that a writer will be one and done?

After our pleasantries, I walked on but stayed with the topic in thought. I have a novel in progress and two in the wings. Five more, perhaps more than that, have a first draft completed, and require editing, revising and publishing. I don’t know when I’ll give them the attention they deserve. I’ve begun to think that I’ll work on them if I don’t have anything to write.

It’s peculiar to think that there can be a time when I don’t have anything to write. Reading others always stimulates my writing desires, as does watching television and movies, traveling, conversations with friends, and the news. On any given day, I think, “Oh, I can write a novel about that,” or, “That can be the start to a good novel.”

The only permanent elements of life are change and uncertainty, though. Maybe death, too; it depends on your philosophy. I can’t predict that I’ll write until my death or that I’ll always have story ideas. I don’t know what’ll happen to my brain and my body, or our society. But, basically, I’m not in a tunnel, looking for a light. I’m on a plain of light, following the words.

Time to write like crazy – or edit and revise (like crazy?) – at least one more time.

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Schrodinger’s Novel

Phase one has been completed. A draft of the current novel-in-progress exists. One hundred eighty thousand words, it requires editing and revising.

That realization would have once fired me into an arc of despair a few years ago. Back then, when I finished the first four novels, (five, if I include the wreck of the very first miserable novel I wrote), I hated the idea of editing and revising. I wanted to be done with writing it and have the novel completed, damn it. But with the next four novels, I learned to embrace and enjoy this peculiar state. In honor of Erwin Schrondinger’s thought experiment about a cat, I call this state, a Schrodinger novel.

The novel exists but needs work. How much work isn’t known or understood. To reach that point, I must employ myself as a reader. (I don’t use outside readers until the second draft is completed and the initial kinks have been resolved.) Yet, because the novel is still incomplete in my mind and requires work, I, the writer, must also continue employing my intelligence, skills and creativity to resolve the issues.

With a tenth novel finished, I feel comfortable with my process. I’ve become more patient, mature and insightful about how I write. It’s fun and rewarding, because, damn, man, over the course of the last ten months, I’ve written one hundred eighty thousand words. That’s just what made it into the book. Twenty-five thousand more words exist in summaries, tracking documents, snapshots and thought exercises that I documented. Then there’s the stuff that I wrote and cut because it was going down a wrong path, failed to further the story, or I didn’t like it.

At this point, the novel has some semblance of the expected finished novel, subject to others’ feedback. That infuses me with powerful satisfaction.

There is a mood shift inherent in the process. My focus is sharper. I’m no longer fumbling and reaching to create a beginning and ending or to connect the dots. That, which is really the second most challenging aspect of novel writing for me, has been done.

The first most challenging aspect? To keep going when it became frustrating and I thought it hopeless. Sometimes I’d take a wrong turn. Sometimes, I’d write myself into a corner. “Now what?” I wondered. Sometimes, I’d read someone else’s novel and think, “How beautiful. I’ll never write that well.” Yeah, I do, I understand, but my writing is different from their writing, and has its own beauty.

Meanwhile, as I completed the first draft, other titles began arising as potential final titles. I often provide a working title that captures the concept and overarching story’s essence. That’s typically overcome by events as the transition from the abstract embedded in the concept to the tangible required to tell a story is processed and the actual words make their way from mind to page (or screen). One in particular arose more sharply and clearly: ‘Entanglements’. Unfortunately, that title is in use by several other writers for their novels.

As I write that and think, another novel title arises. I want to let it simmer for a few days before writing it for others’ consumption. I have conducted Internet searches, and the title doesn’t show up as another’s title.

***

The words I write here have the relaxed, intellectual tone of introspection about what was done and what remains. But the physical being that I am is sitting here in the coffee shop with a secret grin. I want to run around and shout it out to the world, “It’s done, it’s done!” But then I would need to amend that, “Well, the first draft is completed. It is, and it is not, something.” (See? There’s that whole Schrodinger’s novel again: what state does it exist in? It’s funny to me, if no one else.)

In a way, finishing a novel, or a draft of one, reminds me of being in love. It feels special. I’m thrilled, pleased and hopeful, but I really don’t know what remains to come. There’s a lot of uncertain energy unsettling the air.

All of those who have been in love will know what I mean.

2

Back Up

I sit quietly for a bit, considering my surroundings. It’s warm. Higher humidity is creeping in. Sunlight and shadows dapple leaves, branches, logs and rocks on every side. Quiet reigns.

I don’t think we’re where we’re supposed to be.

But this was where we planned to be.

Isn’t it?

I put the question to the writer.

He clears his throat. “Well….”

Not what I want to hear. “Well, what?”

“No.” I can’t read his expression. I believe he’s hiding something from me. He looks around. “No.”

“No, what?” For a writer, he’s a poor damn communicator.

“No, I agree with you. This isn’t where we’re supposed to be. It’s close but….”

“Don’t you dare say, no cigar.”

“…it’s wrong.”

Wrong. “What do you mean, wrong?”

The writer’s face tightens with dismay and repressed anger. “It means I missed it. I took the wrong fucking angle and now we’re here, and this isn’t where we’re supposed to be, as you pointed out.”

“So what do we do?”

“What do we do?” His look pierces me with disheartening judgement about my intelligence. “We? Hah. What the fuck do you think we do? We back out of this.”

“Back out? But there’s a couple thousand words – “

“Yeah, I know. I wrote them.” The writer crosses his arms. “I fucking wrote them. Now I’ll tear them out. Don’t worry, we’re not far. It won’t take long. I know what I need to do.”

“I believe I heard those words at that last turn, and then we ended up here.”

“Jesus, way to destroy morale and momentum, dude. Ever think about being a motivational speaker for people considering suicide?”

Ouch. Harsh.

Turning, he strides back the way we came. Sighing, I follow and glare at his back. It’s lighter and less oppressive back this way, an immediate improvement. Still, I’m irritated. He may be the writer, but it’s my energy being consumed, something that he often overlooks.

He’s spoken, though. Time to rip out a chapter and a few other pages and paragraphs. Then I – he – well, one of us will write like crazy, at least one more time.

2

Five Chapters

I’m starting five chapters today:

Virus

Everything

Nothing

Ice Cream Headache

The Others

With each, I’ll put up the chapter title as a place holder. I’ll add the date beneath it in parentheses, and then a summary of what the chapter is about. I’ll highlight this in yellow and add <TK at the beginning, to help me remove it later. I know what I see and hear as the opening lines for each chapter, and I’ll add those lines. They will probably not be the first lines to the chapter but they’re a nugget around which to build the rest. After that process, one of those chapters will more sharply call, so I’ll take it up.

I always use <TK as an editing tool. Sometimes it’s a placeholder to insert some piece of necessary information, or to clarify or rewrite a passage. Sometimes I know the nugget, the critical piece that I want to immediately write, but know that I need a bridge to the rest of the novel, so I’ll insert <TK and explain what’s required.

I started and wrote five chapters in parallel before. Why five? I’m not certain. It’s not anything magical nor planned. Ideas are germinating. These all sprouted at the same time. I want to cultivate them so I can press on.

I suspect eight or nine chapters remain to be written in ‘Long Summer’. That includes the five I’m starting today.  I suspect that means I’ll write about thirty thousand more words. I won’t bet on whether I’m right but the beginning of the end of the first draft is cresting the horizon.

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

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This Now

I read the epiphany once again. A separate, small document, fifty-three words, it has become my North Star, guiding me through the novel’s climatic seas of life, space and time. Since writing it five days ago, I open it every day. I’ve made one change to it since its creation.

This Now comes together. Now appeared to be a single playing card but when I grasped it in thought, Now revealed itself to be a deck of cards. I fan them out, seeing and understanding how this Now forms and exists. Beautiful. I think of the Chronicles of Amber and the Trumps of Doom, and smile. This is not the same, but thank you, Roger Zelazny, for your amazing imagination.

A thumb’s fingernail travels along the index finger’s nail on the opposite hand. I do this often as I sit and think when the words are marshaling in my mind. It comforts and balances me. I think of the tell in Inception. I remember the words, “Touch has its own memory.” That’s a key aspect of today’s approach. I remember looking at photographs of myself and seeing how differently I see myself in them from what I see in the mirror. It’s another aspect of today’s approach. I think of the lies we tell ourselves and others to survive, to succeed and thrive, and the truths that finally bend us to face a crises. It’s another aspect of today’s approach.

The quad-shot mocha is hot, sweet with chocolate and bitter with espresso, conflicting, complementing currents, perfect for writing about Now.

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

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Today’s Agenda

Between making oatmeal for breakfast and turning on the shower water, I asked the writer, “What are you going to write today?”

The editor joined us. The writer recapped where we were as I washed my hair. The editor reminded him that we need to go back to further revise and add to some previously created chapters because of other events later introduced.

“Yes, I remember that,” the writer answered with affable equanimity. “I will, don’t worry. There needs to be three of these chapters where we’re at now.”

That was the first I was hearing of it. Before I could say that, the writer continued, “That first chapter of this trio is titled ‘Miasma’.”

“It is?” I said. “That’s the first I — ”

“Yes. I don’t know what the other two are named yet. It’ll come to me.”

“Okay, but what’s to happen now? Forus Ker — ”

“The Englis and Exnila.”

“What about them?”

“Do you remember them?”

“Yes, of course, but — ”

“They’re going to show up.”

“They are?”

“Yes, yes.”

“How? And why?”

“Because remember, all the nows.”

“Umm….”

“We’ve only focused on some of the nows. Other nows are happening. We’re going to inroduce them. Oh, yeah. That’s the name of the second chapter. ‘In Other Nows.'”

“Isn’t that a little too cute?”

“No, it’s perfect. Trust me.”

I turned off the water and stood there dripping. “Okay, I’ll trust you. But how do the Englis and Exnila arrive? I don’t see it.”

“I do. It’s coming. It’s developing. You’ll see. Trust me.”

The writer says trust me often. “Okay.” I don’t see that I have another choice than to trust him. If I don’t trust him, we get nothing done. I began drying off.

“Hurry up,” he said. “It’s time to go write like crazy.”

I nodded. “At least one more time.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Those Exciting Moments

when you achieve a goal

reach a destination

or the day has come

AT LAST

Or when you sit down to write the next piece, a section that’s been growing in your head like a burst of spring on a time-elapsed film.

Reading, observing others, walking, thinking and watching television, scenes keep building. Small details are added to earlier chapters as the novel expands to fullness and nears its end. Epiphanies strike about cause and effect, action and reaction, directions and decisions, and revelations and choices.I didn’t know some of it. My inner writer has been waiting to spring it on me. His cleverness astonishes me once again.

Bring on the mocha. Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.

0

“Here we go, beast.”

Writing a novel is often an exploration for me, a visit to new, uncharted realms. Sometimes I get a little lost.

I completed three chapters yesterday. They’d been written in parallel. One of them was part of the five chapters being written in parallel.

That’s how it is. The novel in progress reminds me of math involving nonlinear equations that I once briefly encountered. They involved solving simultaneous equations and polynomials. I don’t remember much more except it struck me as a fascinating way to encounter and express relationships and awareness.

Besides being nonlinear, the novel is asynchronous, part of the idea of asynchronous epiphanies that evolve throughout the novel, something borrowed from asynchronous learning and asynchronous computer functions. This sometimes gives me a headache. The novel is and is not chronological, an apparent paradox that adds a challenge to writing it, because it may appear chronological, and I naturally revert to thinking about it in terms of a chronological approach. (I imagine readers reading it, and asking themselves, “What?” And I laugh….)

All of this was born out of the ideas that something is possible until it’s proven impossible, the alienation and isolation that develops with technology and how it affects our personalities and thinking, colonization of other planets, and how often our thinking mirrors computer operations (or is it the converse?) and work on asynchronous levels. That gave a rise to thinking about how reality works, and the creation of the chi-particles. Chi-particles have imaginary energy and mass and travel faster than light. I also throw in some soap opera, just to keep it interesting.

Along the way with all of this, I keep playing with the ideas behind reality, as to whether we create it, or it creates us, or if it’s a symbiotic process that depends upon one another. Symbiotic may not be the right term. That’s supposed to apply to biological entities, but then I think, can reality as we experience actually be a biological creature, but then that diverts me back into notions of God and creative intelligence.

Anyway, finishing those three chapters brought me back up to a specific intersection of storylines that required me to bring other chapters and storylines up to date so all may proceed. That necessitated delving back into what has been written to re-calibrate and orientate myself and my characters. I needed to read what had already been written in specific areas and review notes.

Reading what was written turned out to be a surprising and rewarding journey. My writing and its characters, setting, and stories surprised me. They distracted me from my main task of figuring out what happens next, yes, but it was enjoyable to read material written months ago and find out that it’s decent writing. Of course, it’s my child; what else would I think?

Here I am now, re-calibrated and re-oriented, quad shot mocha in hand. “Here we go, beast,” I tell my computer. “Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.”

Five hundred pages done; how many more remain?

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