Tag: organic writing process

Sorry, No

I recently met a person at the coffee shop who discovered that I was a writer. They asked me to tell them about what I was writing.

Sorry, no.

In a hurry, I said, “Sorry, it doesn’t work that way,” and departed. But after walking away, I began thinking about my answer, constructing the reasons that it doesn’t work that way.

In my early days, I was always eager to tell people about what I was writing. My position changed for several reasons.

  1. In the early days, I was hunting for validation and encouragement. I was more insecure about writing. I wanted someone else to tell me how wonderful it all sounded.
  2. A book is a written work. The nuances live in the words and the order that I’ve arranged them to tell a story. I work hard to find the ideas, establish and grow the characters, advance the plot, and tell the story. That’s all done through written words and the supporting structure.
  3.  I’m an organic writer, also called a pantser. Starting with a concept, I build. The construction takes unexpected directions and doesn’t seem to pause until I write ‘The End’. What I tell you about today may not make it into the final first draft.
  4. Writing a novel or short story excites and energizes me. My ideas are usually complex. Chances are, you’re not going to be able to follow, because, again, I’m talking about a written work. Your lack of enthusiasm will depress me. Unless you want to read a passage or have me read it to you, I’m not going to tell you. I’m also not going to let you read it because of reason number two, already presented: it’s a work-in-progress.
  5. Finally, with all the previous reasons, talking about what I’m writing to others siphons energy off, in my experience, so, sorry, no.

Policy exceptions exist. First, if you’re an agent or publisher, I’ll be polite and do what I can to tell you what I’m writing and why it excites me.

I can also talk about the writing process (I probably enjoy talking about it too much), especially to other writers. As part of that, I’ll share some of a WIP with other writers. Whether it’s me and my expectations, or their experiences, or our empathy, or all of these things along with other aspects, I think other writers are worthy recipients to hearing about my WIP.

Thinking about all of this, I realize that my attitude is a major hindrance to selling agents or publishers on my finished novels. I love being subtle and complex in my writing, and accomplish that, in my mind. Lot of people don’t have the patience for subtle and complex, and it’s hard to convey in the first twenty pages, along with a synopsis, pitch, and hook. I’m just not good at that shit. Admitting it means that I need to work harder on it, along with my first twenty pages.

I suspect that my writing style likely only appeals to one percent of potential readers. Not a problem, to me, because there are many readers in the world. The larger problem is that I probably need to submit to one hundred agents to get one interested, and they’ll probably need to pitch it to multiple editors and publishers. So, I feel like I’m looking at a high and steep rocky mountain to climb.

I’ve been climbing it for a while, and will keep going. Each time I reach one ridge, I think I’ve reached the top only to find there’s more climbing to do. That’d be a problem if all of this conceiving, imagining, writing, editing, and revising wasn’t so much damn fun.

It’s also addictive.

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

2

Negotiations

Thinking about my writing process this morning, I think I may have left people with the impression that my muses just dictate to me. That’s a false impression. I write about it in that vernacular a lot because of how the entire process ends up happening, but it’s more involved than that. I’m sure most understand that, but as I’m overly bent toward being pedantic and over-analytical, I’m going to enlarge on my process.

The muses fill me with a concept, general story arc, and the main character. A few other characters and some reveal points follow. This all happens very fast. Ideas constantly bang on my mind to enter the writing realm. Many are rejected outright. Some are briefly entertained about how they can be expanded. Others get a more thorough mind treatment but had deferred until later (which may not ever come).

A few ideas enter the writing hopper where they’re given more writing cogitating time. This is where the muses really enter, tossing ideas about the story and how it can develop. Sometimes, these come on very strong, concrete, and specific. When that triumvirate arises, the writing urge is ignited. It then depends on my schedule and projects that are underway. When I was younger, I split myself between projects. With more experience, I’ve developed a routine of focusing on one project until it reaches some stage of completion. They’re then often edited and revised. After that, they can go in different directions.

Meanwhile, my organic writing-like-crazy process isn’t that straightforward. The muses suggest and I counter suggest. I’ll often consider and present multiple possibilities for character development, story arcs, and how a scene goes. I present them to the muses. They reject, accept, or modify them.

Even then, when I sit down to write, it often doesn’t come out as envisioned. Things take place that I never foresaw. This is the true writing-like-crazy process, and when I give full control to the muses. It comes out and I do my best to type it up without analyzing it or putting it into perspective with the rest of the story, arcs, etc. That comes afterward, when I think about where this piece has taken me and what needs to change, along how it’ll be changed, and why it needs to change.

Of course, the muses and the entire process is mine. There aren’t little elves or gorgeous creatures inhabiting and haunting me, telling me what to write. What I call out as the muses is a deeper subconscious level of thinking and creativity that seems to work at high levels of complexity and speed, and its my intuition. I can’t keep up with that thinking on my conscious levels. I’ve learned to trust that process, not because of great creative or critical success, but because, from that process comes the story-telling, novels, and tales that I enjoy. I write for myself. It saddens me that others don’t enjoy it. I hope that’ll change someday, preferably while I’m alive.

Likewise, when I say that the characters have taken over, I’m using a shorthand to describe a process. The characters were put into a situation. I thought about what could happen and different directions that they might take, and then let it settle into my subconscious mind’s chasms for greater process. Results then spring out when I sit down to write. Sometimes, of course, they spring out beforehand, and sometimes they just explode into my thinking an awareness at awkward moments. Words heard or read, realizations, photographs, a piece of song, a splash of light, a burst of noise…multiple things trigger that explosion.

In the end, my process is all about negotiations, negotiations about how commercial or artistic I’ll let myself flow, the directions I do and don’t want to take, and my acceptance to write like crazy, accept that it needs work, and then keep working on it later, and the intuition to accept this feels right, coupled with the understanding, nothing is permanent. Better ways might emerge. Stay open to them.

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

2

Something in the Coffee

There’s something in the coffee, some sort of quantum additive that accelerates time. That must be the case, because I can’t believe that January, 2019, is done. How else can this be explained? Over eight twelve percent of the new year has passed. Can we still call it a new year, or is it now a mildly used year?

Hoping all you writers and dreamers out there are keeping up, pacing yourself with the pursuit of your goals and dreams. I’ve started out strong, I’m pleased to mention. Four on Kyrios is out with twenty agents.

Meanwhile, I’m writing a new novel, April Showers 1921. This is a return to ground processed before, a young adult SFF novel. The novel concept and cover streamed into my dreams at the year’s beginning, and I took off after it.

AS1921 has been a challenge to write. Numero uno, I’m writing in a much younger voice. It’s harder to get into their skins. Numero dos, scenes and dialogue keep pouring into me. I try keeping up, but, numero trey, the novel is much faster paced than I expected. I keep challenging that pace, suggesting to my muses, “Aren’t we going too fast?” They tell me, “Just write what we tell you.”

Yes, the muses are demanding and arrogant as always. I don’t know why I’m always expecting them to be friendlier and more relaxed. I take what they dish out because I don’t want to scare them off. I’ll endure their demands as long as they keep delivering.

I’ll write what and as they tell me now because I can always edit, revise, and slow the pace later. They vex me, though. They’ve given me five main characters, and yet they’ve kept one of those characters off the page through the first four chapters. I’ve asked them, how is that character going to join the story? When? They’ve stayed mute about that, but typing that sentence just triggered the flash of a scene. I’m beginning to suspect the muses are keeping some things back because they see how overwhelmed I am by their pace. I would be angry, but I’m too grateful.

Time to write like crazy, at least one more time in 2019. Cheers

6

Next

You’ve slip into another life, putting on their skins. You pick up on their words. Their thoughts and feelings float into you. You begin to appreciate who they are.

Surroundings emerge. The plot rises. Events become clearer with a sudden squirt. You’ve followed paths that you didn’t know existed. They twist into surprising turns. The characters become deeper than you’d known. Sharper edges develop on their worlds. Their love and pain quickens as their direction grows crisper.

You walk with them, feeling it all, wanting to cry, and sometimes laughing, standing aside as you witness their existence and embrace them. Insights into their relationships develop stronger pulses. Typing and thinking, picking through words, you strive to keep up the best that you can. Their lives and times overpowers yours, and then, you stop for the day and think with a soft, private sigh, I miss them.

And you wonder, will they be okay? What’s going to happen to them?

What’s going to happen?

You think you should know because you’re the writer, the artist behind these ideas, but really, you’re just transcribing. It’s all going on whether you write it down or not.

That’s what happens when you write like crazy.

 

6

Sick, Compromised, Logical, and Wrong

I confess, I’m not a good person to have as your driver on vacation. Yes, I’m safe, aware, and involved, but I’m also goal oriented. I’m driving for that destination. Stop to look at the view? That’ll slow us down. Eat? What? You have to pee? Are you kidding me?

Yes, once I put a goal into place, it’s hard to abandon. It’s true with my driving and my writing. What is a strength is also a problem.

I’m debating about a sixth book in the Incomplete States series. (The working title, The Final Time, came to me as soon as part of the brainstorm that inundated me last night.) It’s a logical decision to me, as though I’m in control of the whole thing. Yes, and no, of course.

First, I acknowledge, I’m a little sick of working on the series, sick in the sense that I need a time-out. Sick, as in the sense that I was eager to work on something different. I have a goal in mind, and I’m almost there. I don’t want to turn away from that goal. I see and understand that about myself.

I thought that maybe I could compromise with myself and my muses. I will write some on the side, maybe, maybe not, we’ll see (he said, hedging his commitment), and continue editing full-time. Yes, that sounds like a good compromise.

Yes, I’m pretty stupid at times, thinking that it’s all about logic, control, and goals.

That’s not it at all.

I forgot that I write for myself. I write for myself in the sense that I am my number one fan, and my number one reader. I write for myself because I want to know what I think. I want to know the story. To now think of the story and try to apply the brakes is ridiculous. I want to explore it; I want to know.

That means I must write it.

That might all fizzle out, of course. Perhaps as I begin exploring it, the story will peter out. I’ll conclude, there’s not anything more to write and learn here. I might write some and realize, well, this is really just part of the last book.

I don’t know. It’s foolish to waste time contemplating what might happen or whether I have a decision to make. I’m a writer, and must write, and then I’ll decide what to do with it.

My coffee is at hand. Time to write and edit like crazy, at least one more time.

 

0

Killing Time

It was an excellent day of editing, with little re-writing or revising required. Five chapters were edited. Although I kept part of myself separate as an objective measure to ensure continuity and clarity, reading my work was a reader’s delight. This was the sort of book I enjoy, and I was pleased with myself for what had come of my efforts of drinking coffee, staring out windows, talking to myself, dreaming, thinking, and typing. So, congrats to me.

Meanwhile, this evening, I had spare time to kill. It happens often when the daylight hours grow shorter. It suddenly seems like, hello, it feels like eight at night but it’s four P.M. I have energy but the darkness discourages activities.

So I’m reading. I’m usually reading several books. To pass time this evening, I resumed reading Carlo Rovelli’s book, The Order of Time. 

His book is a slow read for me. I typically read a few pages a week. Sometimes I don’t read it for a week or two. His book gives me a lot to think about. As I read, ideas stir in me like mice creeping out in search of food. I begin pacing, hunting for the handle about what I’m thinking.

And suddenly, I realize, there is a potential sixth book in the Incomplete States series. There is something else that can happen, that can be done. It seems like it should be done.

Drawing out a notebook that I kept for scribbling about ideas, I confirmed that I’d formed the basis for this final book back in March, 2017. There it was, in the musings about Chi-particle states as they decay and transition from being imaginary and traveling faster than light to gaining mass and energy as they slow to less than FTL, to interacting with a wave-function collapse to establish arrows of time. In those fourteen pages of thoughts, written over three days, was the answer that could be the basis for the final book.

I’m astonished that I overlooked something that I think is sort of obvious, now that I see it.

Naturally, a muse leaps out to take charge. Words flow like lava from an erupting super-volcano. Opening a new doc, I type. As I do, ideas accelerate. Scenes expand. Dialogue rushes in. Plot points follow. Pages are typed.

Of course, I was writing at home. That’s fraught with interruptions as my wife laughs aloud at things she sees and reads on the Internet, plays videos, and talks to me about the news. The cats come in to see why I’m making that noise with my fingers and whether it’s something that they can eat, and if it’s not, can I give them something to eat?

All this puts me on edge. I’m frustrated with the interruptions, excited about the ideas, and pensive about writing another book in the series. Knowing me, one book can easily become two, or three. I’m almost finished with editing book four, A Sense of Time. Do I really want to pursue a sixth?

It’s anguishing. It feels like, I’ve envisioned the framework for the book so I’m now compelled to write it.

I didn’t know how to finish this post. I write to help me understand what I think. I write to channel my thoughts and enthusiasm. I write to wonder…

I returned to the new document to read what I wrote. More ideas and arcs are squeezed out of me. I’m reluctant to agree to the muse and write a sixth book but the writing fever has me, again begging the question, who is in charge here? Is there a master?

I’ll see what I think tomorrow, when it’s time to write like crazy, at least one more time.

0

Progress Report – Incomplete States

I wrote five books (originally four) for my latest work in process.

I began work on this series in July, 2016. It was originally one book in concept, but what did I know? Eventually, it became four books. Then I felt it necessary to split the original final book into two books because it was over six hundred pages and three hundred thousand words. In an amusing aside, twenty-five documents were created to develop the five books, with well over a million words.

I considered the first take on the entire series to be a beta draft because the novels’ story lines were so interwoven. While written one at a time, I often edited and revised the previous books as I learned the story.

Now I’m editing the fourth book, creating a true first draft of the Incomplete States series by clarifying that story. Once the first draft is finished, another draft will be required to ensure that the same story is being told in the series’ five books (Four on Kyrios, Entangled LEREs, Six (with Seven), A Sense of Time, and An Undying Quest). Then comes another draft to sharpen and polish, and then it goes to the editors for their input.

I’d expected to have the series’ first draft completed by Thanksgiving, but my error (not saving a backup) set me back (lesson learned). I now have December twenty-first as my target date for completion. It’s not unreasonable, as long as I don’t do anything stupid.

Meanwhile, it is fun to read my creation. I’m enjoying myself. My writing /editing time is a sanctuary from existence’s frustration, pain, and weariness.

Time to edit and write like crazy at least one more time.

0

The Heat

Now we come to the part of the novel that I say, “Huuuhhh?”

I’m editing and revising the fourth novel, An Undying Quest, in the Incomplete States series. I remember writing these chapters last December and January of this year. First, there were five chapters, which became ten, a reflection of the multiple POV. These chapters were being written in parallel in a mad heat of intensity. The muses were crazy and insistent during that time, and I sat back and typed as fast as I could.

Typing as fast as I can leads to a lot of stumbling over the keys, and a great deal of swearing as I miss a stroke, realize it and back up, muttering, “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” as I do. The chapters were interesting to edit in the first pass after writing them because sometimes the tense changed. In reflection of that, I came to see how I was sometimes doing method writing, imagining myself to be the character to take in their senses, know their thoughts, and act correctly. I wonder, in retrospect, how that writing process affects my relationships and interactions with others. It intrigues me, too, that I can’t remember what I wrote, but I remember writing and editing it.

The weave pattern of these chapters means they’re more challenging to read and edit. The twists give me pause. To track them, to ensure they’re correct and consistent, delivering the end of that stretch while staying true to the concept, arc, and ending, required me to drop back and create another document. The document’s contents are, “This happened here,” and, “That happened now.”

Yes, it’s tricky, but it delights me. That worries me that I’m not being objective.

Yes, it’s tricky.

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

0

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