Tag: novel writing

And I’m Writing, And I’m Writing —

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.

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Lightning Strikes

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.

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My Character & Me

It’s apparently spring in my novel, because I’m experiencing a revolt. No blood has yet spread across anything. I don’t think it will. We’re pretty civilized here. Civilized people don’t kill one another to get their way, except in fiction…right…?

The main character and I are wresting with what’s going on in the novel. He’s moving into this new direction. Heavily dependent on technology, he insists on exploring how the loss of personal technology influences his behavior. He has become mentally, physically, and emotionally weaker. Although he’s staying fit and slender, he’s aging, and his energy level is drooping. He does not have the level of control with which he’s accustomed to living.

But he’s not seeing that in his people. Without technology, individuality is sprouting. His people see and hear better than him. Many have higher energy levels. Some are becoming bullies. While bullying had been psychologically and socially influenced over the course of time from now until the future, and diminished through socializing, technology in their recent history, those safeguards and safeties were removed when their nanotechnologies were removed.

Other emerging trends among his force are disturbing him. Binge drinking is becoming a problem. Without their sexes and free of their technology, people are becoming sexually active. Promiscuity is flowering. That’s causing jealousies and attachments that can affect discipline, good order, and the chain of command.

These changes, and how this unit copes with it, is the story, he insists. That’s what he believes should be written. I disagree; I sought more of an adventure story. I add elements of adventure, threats, and conflicts to increase that sense of adventure, but he keeps dragging me into psycho-analysis.

I dreamed about this problem last night. In the dream I was a military member on shift again. I’d been lazy and hadn’t completed the shift checklist. Hell, I didn’t know where to find it. I hadn’t inventoried the COMSEC materials, read the log, closed out the last log for the Zulu day, nor started another one, and shift change was coming on fast.

Anxiety suffused me; WTF was I going to do? 

Well, I started scrambling to make it right. But I was quickly sidetracked with my environment. It was disorganized, and poorly planned. I was appalled. Although I knew I was running out of time, organizing that place developed into my primary priority. Of course, once I did that, I developed a focus. Having a focus revitalized my energy level and determination, and wiped out my anxiety.

Pondering the dream this morning, I developed understanding that it wasn’t about my life, but the novel in progress. That bifurcation I experienced was causing anxiety because I didn’t know what the character was coming up with next. And, I’d developed him as a strong individual. I didn’t like seeing him losing his way.

Ah, hah, I understood, oh, there we go. This is about writing the novel in progress. My conflict with my character  —

Let’s put this more correctly. The change of direction in the novel from my original intention bothers me. With that, I’ve lost focus and energy. Thinking about this – because I write to help me think – I think my character is correct.

I know from reading others that many writers wrestle with characters taking over. Some dismiss it; they’re the writer, they’re in control, and they decree what gets onto the pages. I live and work through my characters on the pages. We’re partners more than master and puppet. Perhaps it’s due to my organic writing style, which, on reflection, can look as complicated as layers of spider and cobwebs. And it’s not like I haven’t been down this path before. I often begin with an idea that grows into something else.

Although it makes me uncomfortable, I’ll probably write what the character wants. Then I’ll edit it down to find a compromise we can live with.

Characters; they can be the worse.

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

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Conversing

While you’re writing your novel, do you ever have conversations with yourself – sometimes, aloud – about the novel and what’s going on, or needs changed?

Yeah, no, me, neither. That would be crazy.

Wouldn’t it?

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Weaving the Novel

I compared writing my novel to weaving a tapestry today. I was talking to myself as I walked and thought about the writing day ahead.

Then I laughed at myself.

Weaving as a way to describe novel writing can be apt, but it’s very limited. I don’t weave, so I’m not certain of its process. I always refer back to a meager elementary school introduction. Watching a weaving demonstration somewhere during a field trip, I recall shedding, picking, and battening, and the loom and the shuttle. I also remember being told about the warp and the weft.

(The Loom and the Shuttle could be a good pub name. I can imagine myself saying, “I’m going down to The Loom and the Shuttle for a pint. See you later.”)

(That also gives rise to the notion of drunken weaving.)

My vague youthful memories are not enough to go on. Thinking about weaving, I imagine the fates doing some spinning to create our existence and fates. I don’t know much about them, either. I’m seriously short of knowledge for this post.

Which is really the point. I claim, I’m weaving the tale because I go back and forth across the novel, adding, changing and deleting events, characters, and explanation. That’s what draws me to this comparison. Starting with small threads, I’m combining them into the fabric of a story.

These current chapters embrace that impression. “Bells,” “Destruction,” “Aftermath,” and “Change” are the chapters’ working titles. They might be the final titles. When I’m weaving new parts in the latest chapter, “Change,” I often go back to the three previous chapters and address details to maintain congruency. Although enjoyable, because it is fiction, which is terrific fun, it’s not my normal methodology. Normally, I pour some coffee into my mouth, address the keyboard, and start typing. I call this splash writing. It’s my favorite motif. I type like mad for a while, spinning out paragraph, scenes, dialogue, and chapters. Stopping, I go back and edit, refine, and polish the stuff.

BTW, when I address the keyboard, I’m like a rock star on a stage in an arena. “Are you ready to rock and write?” I shout at my keyboard. I do this in my head. I may be wrong, but I think that shouting that in the coffee shop may cause some untoward reactions. It’s a quiet place, the sort of silence you don’t want to interrupt with a fart, leave off a shout.

Having written all these words about weaving these chapters, I feel my inner earth trembling. A splash scene is building within. It’s ready to explode onto the pages. (This, unfortunately, reminds me of a tale my wife related to me about a juvenile male whale masturbating against the aquarium glass while elementary school children watched. I haven’t vetted the story, but that doesn’t stop it from being memorable.)

Okay, time to weave like crazy, write like made, splash on the page. Whatever.

Time to write.

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Chapter Length

Serendipity is useful. I’d just been pondering a chapter’s length yesterday. At thirty-six hundred words, I felt it lengthy. No, the reader within thought it lengthy, and was suggesting breaking it up into three chapters.

“Why three?” I asked the reader.

“That chapter has a lot going on in it. Breaking it up let your readers breath.”

“But three?”

“The way I see it, you have three natural breaks in the action.”

The reader, having read a lot, typically offers some good insights, so I considered what he said. As I did, a Reedsy article about chapter length was discovered in my inbox.

The article, “Chapter Length Matters. Here’s Why,” and its comments, gave me more substance for my thinking, so I thought I’d pass it on to other writers.

What of you, writers? Is there an ideal chapter length, or do you have specific guidelines, rules, or suggestions to share?

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How Writing Isn’t Like Yardwork

I was raking and hoeing yesterday, preparing the back yard to seed it for the winter. My wife had already put one garden to bed. As freezes are striking, she’ll probably put the other to bed this week. Meanwhile, we have before us the question, should she plant garlic and, or, onions for winter? Probably so, but we veered away from the subject into collateral discussions before a decision was found.

Back in the yard, thinking about trimming back trees and bushes, I wrote in my head, as I often do when doing something that doesn’t require focus and will let me think about other things. Often, I think, writing is a lot like yard work. You’re always pruning and weeding, considering what’s been done and what else must be done.

But in yesterday’s internal dialogue, I realized how flawed that was. Yard work is continuous; it changes with the season, but you’re always out there, forever doing things. Plants grow, not only in the yard, but in the yards around you. Volunteers arrive, and trees grow taller and fuller, changing the exposure to the sun. Weather changes, like the super-hot summer of twenty thirteen, and the super-frigid winter of the same year, damages and kills plants. These need addressed, as much for fire safety as aesthetics.

Which is why novel writing’s comparisons with yard work should end. Eventually, I finish a novel. It becomes published and goes out into others’ hands and minds. The yard is always being attended; it’s only completed for a brief cycle. Although a novel may feel like it’s taking forever – this one of mine is now in its fifteen month of writing – I know it’ll be done someday. Then I’ll begin another, and it’ll feel like yard work again.

But it’s not.

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A Pivotal Moment

Chapters finished, scenes drained out of me, I come to the next piece, the what happens next part of our show. This, for me, involves sipping coffee, reviewing notes, and staring fixedly at inanimate objects as I draw down the world, shut it out, and tune myself to the writers inside, waiting for one of them to clear their throat and begin telling me what happens next.

After review, I know where I stand, and where the novel stands, and where I’m next heading. I’m now pivoting to essentially part two of this section. This section begins with the genesis of this entire aspect of this volume. I’d created it August 4. I’d last modified it on August 8. It was a piece that came out of the darkness and rolled over me. As these things do, the piece created multiple questions about the setting, characters, plot, and situation.

To answer those questions, I began writing, and finished writing twenty-four chapters, one hundred eighty pages. Now, a little over two months later, I’m ready to pivot back to that first scene, and continue writing the story.

Of interest probably only to me, that first scene that I wrote has been deleted. It’s saved in another document. It was deleted because, within four days, I realized I was writing from the wrong character’s point of view. Another character had been created after that one, and they took over, demoting the original character to a minor role in the background. The original character didn’t put up a fight, but accepted the reduced role without a problem.

This is how I often work, not just in writing, but in almost every activity. My organization is strangely chaotic. Solutions and ideas leap at me, and I embrace them. But they usually reflect the end result desired, or some epiphany about what needs to happen within the project to enable the rest. Fortunately, generally, my mind works amazingly fast, especially when dealing with abstract matters. Yes, I’m being immodest, but it’s one of my favorite, and most dependable, traits. On the other end, it’s not unusual for people to write me off as a little crazy. I accept that, because I work with what I have, and what’s proven successful for me.

This is a pivotal moment. Action is moving the ship, the Epitome, and everything set up, down to the planet, Kyrios. The Kyrios action is grittier and darker. It’s complex. I’m intimidated with what’s planned for this section. As far as I know, it’s the second third of this volume. Parts of the end have already been written, serving as a light at the tunnel’s end.

Deep breath, and another gulp of coffee, and it’s time to write like crazy, at least one more time.

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Silently Working

I’ve been on pause from editing the novel in progress, “Incomplete States.” I’d become troubled that it was missing an overall aspect that could tie it together.

It wasn’t something I immediately jumped on. I let it flow through me for a while and considered what I’d written, the novel’s totality. I didn’t want to be rash. I convinced myself it was necessary to add a greater arc.

I didn’t have any idea what that arc would be.

I began addressing the problem by thinking and writing about it. Exactly what was it that I was looking for in the greater arc? The novels and series that are most in mind with this novel came back to me:

  • Roger Zelazny’s “Chronicles of Amber”
  • George R.R. Martin’s “A Song of Fire and Ice”
  • Frank Herbert – “Dune”
  • Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series
  • J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series
  • J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy

To a lessor extent, I also thought of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels. All that reading helps.

This wasn’t a quest novel, though; I wanted to ensure I didn’t accept an easy route and create another quest.

Several aspects attracted me. One, the epic sweep. Two, was how these novels and series embraced multiple levels of acceptance about the past, legends and myths, and prophecies. As the past receded in them, the past blended with myth and legend. More people in the novels grew enamored with lessor concerns that gathered importance in their lives, like fortunes, empires, and revenge. These smaller concerns were magnified into important concerns that eventually dwarfed the true, greater threats. In a way, I saw mirrors with our own planet and human civilizations, and how often we put profits, nation, and empire ahead of civilization and the planet.

But —

These novels and series also attracted me because of the greater and lessor acceptance. Uniform agreement about what was to happen, what had happened, and why, didn’t exist. Elements told their own stories. The differences in these stories provided the foundations for tension and conflict.

I wrote a one paragraph summary of each of these novels and series, defining their greater arcs against the dominant sub-stories that often propelled most of the action. That helped me clarify what I though my novel lacked.

Then I turned my attention to my novel and the situation.

I began by organizing information. Hundreds of thousands of words had been written. Deciding I needed visual assistance, I created character cards for the six major characters. Keeping faithful to the novel’s concept induced me to create character cards for each of their major iterations. As this novel is about cosmic and other entanglements, several of the characters are sometimes male, and sometimes female, with and without children, and sometimes married to one another. Sometimes one is the other’s parent, and sometimes, they’re enemies. Cards were created for each of them.

Having the cards allowed me to tack them up and move them around, hoping to prompt new thinking and insights. That approach produced; I brainstormed potential ideas, and then walked, thinking through what attracted me to each, and discarding some. After doing this, I thought I’d come up with the structure for the greater arc.

About four days had passed.

I sat down to write this morning. While I’d been thinking through all of these angles, the muse, or the muses, were at work in me. Sitting down with the slimmest idea of what was now to happen, I began typing. Within a few lines, I was on a world I’d not conceived before this. Memory of Jack Chalker’s “The Four Lords of the Diamond” series flashed into me along with Brian Aldiss’ Helliconia trilogy. New characters jumped into action, along with the agenda they pursued, in accordance with the greater arc.

Finishing with thirty-five hundred words about an hour later, I felt excellent about where I was. There’s still a tremendous amount to be done, but I had the semblance of the direction, the outlines of a plan, and vague ideas about events.

It was a good day of writing like crazy.

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Going Retro

Yea, verily, I’m struggling.

I’m dissatisfied with an aspect of my novel in progress, “Incomplete States.” I love its sprawling sweep, but it sprawls too much. The sprawl dilutes focus on the characters, and I don’t think the typically reader will care about them.

Which, in thinking about writing this novel’s first draft, is understandable. Its concept consumed me, as did trying to understand and convey the concept to readers through the story. Thinking about it during the last several days was at first depressing. Then, I thought I began to more fully see the issue. I let my imagination off its leash. Ideas about what to do began streaming in.

Still not satisfied with the process, I pulled out a pen and notebook. I’ve done that several times while writing this novel, so the notebook is already in place. It’s a rawer and simpler way to process information for me, and that makes it faster.

I’m, of course, partially just disappointed. I wanted to be done with the damn book so I can move onto other projects. Yes, I’ve entered the stage when my beloved novel has become the damn book, a thorn in my side as much as a joy of creation. This is like that D.I.Y. project, like putting down new floor tile, that is progressing well until, halfway through, you realized you made a major error. You know it must be fixed, but first, a little venting and stewing is in order. Those who are more stoic would probably just begin fixing it immediately, but that’s not how I roll. I must simmer in emotions first.

But, issue thought out, choices considered, and decisions made, I’ve bounced back up. Here I go again.

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