Some days, when I sit down to write, the words flood out. Other times, they come with a gentle patience, like a flower’s petals unfolding, but with a little more speed.
They’re both enjoyable means to an end.
Stalling
I was stalling this morning. I knew what I wanted to write. Several scenes were queued in the writing stream, ready for release.
But I was stalling. Why? I like to think I was limbering myself. So I checked news, stocks, sports, weather…idling my writing mind, passing time…ahem, stalling.
I know some of the stalling was due to uncertainty. While I knew these scenes, I wrestled with another aspect of the trilogy. That sort of excursion always slows me, no matter what project I’m working
My stalling ended abruptly with one line that I read:
“Browns find out how far down the rabbit hole goes”
A new angle of dialogue and thought were ignited. Like that, I went from stalling to impatiently writing.
Then I paused to write about it and share it with you.
I asked myself about that: why was I posting about it? But writing’s point for me it to help me think about what I was doing, and why I was doing it. I spare you deeper words and insights, because I’m writing for me, and doing just enough to unleash my thinking.
Okay, time to write like crazy, at least one more time, even if it is a new year.
The Pacing
So here I am, forced to pace around the coffee shop again, because I can’t keep up with the speed of thinking and typing. Words are firing at me like a Gatling gun is at work.
I’m writing the third book of the Incomplete States trilogy, and I love its direction, but then my mind snaps back to book two, and I think, I need to add this, this, and this to book two.
That’s when I’m set into pacing in an effort to separate thinking about the two books, and organize thoughts and define changes to the plots and arcs. I catch glimpses. That’s sufficient for now, because I know that I can walk away, and let my brain work on it, and when I come back, it’ll provide answers and directions about what I need to do and how to go about it
Now, though, done. Spent. I want to keep writing, but I understand that I must balance that enjoyment and activity with the rest of living and being. So, time to stop writing like crazy.
For now.
River of Words
Coffee is cold. A quarter of the cup remains. Writer’s butt has set in. Hunger pangs trouble my stomach. Time to drink down the last dregs of cold coffee and head home to fill other needs and fulfillment.
It’s been an invigorating day of writing like crazy. Like, the stream of words is a swollen, raging river of scenes. I just needed to dip in and hang on. Third book of the Incomplete States trilogy is taking shape. The first drafts of the first two books are being mildly reshaped to fit what else is developing. Excitement pushes me to keep writing, keep writing, but pragmatism says, stop for now. Don’t worry. The river of words will keep flowing.
Cheers
Beta Chapter
A chapter was ‘completed’ yesterday. It was one of five chapters in progress in this portion of telling the story. I often work like this, because events happen in parallel, or results from one chapter affect the others.
Finishing the chapter, I didn’t think of it as a first draft as much as I thought of it as an alpha version. Playing with that idea, I decided a chapter isn’t a draft until the whole novel is completed as a draft. Beta is better, because it’s pretty complete, but subject to other possible changes, unknown at the point of first completion, because I’m an organic writer, and I don’t know what else is going to happen. Things that happen later can often force changes to chapters and scenes already written.
Calling it beta is something that just came to be yesterday, stolen from the software development world. Once I completed that chapter, I walked around, mumbling to myself, “Now what? What comes next?” I had no idea. The chapter was done, a pivot point established, and I no clue where it was pivoting to. Yes, I know the book’s ending, and how the trilogy ends, but that’s like saying that you know what a country is like because you know the country’s shape.
Coming in to write this morning, I still didn’t know was to happen. Walking, I distracted myself by thinking of other things, like cryptocurrency and politics. Then pop –
Write this. This will demonstrate that. Then write this, and this, and this.
Suddenly I had a chain of beginnings and kernels of scenes. Computer fired up, coffee swallowed, I bent my head and typed streams of words. New alpha chapters were started. One of them reached beta. Even as I wrote them, I saw another pivot developing, but could not quite see how it all fit together. But, as I’ve learned, it’s best for me not to worry myself about it, but just to write to it. Writing to it will take carry me forward as needed. I don’t seem to consciously understand what’s happening, but on some sub-conscious level, the words and scenes are all known, like the book is already written somewhere else, and I’m just opening the pages and copying them.
Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? But it works. I’ll take it.
It’s odd, but I want to keep writing because it’s been fun and productive, and I feel like I’m riding a terrific wave, yet, my writer’s sense is telling me to stop. So, I’ll acquiesce to that voice.
Great day of writing like crazy. Time to go eat lunch.
Messy Creativity
After yesterday’s writing like crazy session, I walked away preoccupied by the random messiness. It’s like, I’m baking a cake and have some of the ingredients, but I’m not sure which ones I have, and what else is needed.
Or, it’s like debugging code without knowing where you’re at in the program.
It’s like walking through a strange room in the dark with little idea about which way to go.
Yes, I’m a pantser when it comes to writing. I’m an organic writer. Unscripted, or semi-scripted. I suppose the outlining writing tribes would tell me, “Outlining can solve your problems.”
That’s perhaps true, but I like my messy creative process. It’s fun to be surprised by a scene’s direction. I have no doubt that writers that outline will say, “Having an outline doesn’t mean that you can’t be surprised by what you write and how a scene turns out.”
Okay, you have me there. I just like the messy process. That’s one possibility. The second is that I’m not patient enough to write an outline. I become too impatient. Likewise, perhaps I’m too undisciplined to use an outline. More likely, it’s all of these things. But I believe that after trying to write outlines first, and suffering, I just stumbled on this messy process, and find it works. In the end, what works is what matters.
Got my coffee. Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.
Beautiful and Terrifying
In today’s writing metaphor, I’m weaving a trilogy.
I’ve been writing here in the coffee shop for two hours. I still have three-quarters of my drink remaining.
Sitting down to write, I opened a floodgate to the dam of words – sorry, another metaphor – and they gushed out. Again came an unanticipated scene, and a surprising pivot. With it came more tangible substance about the third novel, and what’s to happen in it. And with that, I began writing the third novel of the “Incomplete States” trilogy (previously known as “Long Summer”). Still have some to write with the first novel to complete the initial draft, though. I was reluctant to do it, and that’s when the weaving metaphor arrived.
Novel three didn’t have a working title. Creating the Word doc, I just called it Book Three. I didn’t want to slow down to think of a title. I just wanted to get those words into the computer. Between books one and three, I wrote one chapter in book one, and the kernal of a chapter in book three, about thirty-two hundred words total.
It’s been an excellent day of writing like crazy. It’s fucking exciting, even though it’s also sometimes beautiful but terrifying. I put it like that because I see and know the scenes and the arcs, but I don’t know the words and the details, and I worry that I’ll lose them before the trilogy is finished. It became such an intense experience that sometimes I needed to get up and walk around to vent enough energy to focus and type.
It’s fun and exciting, too, being in these stories with these characters, on vivid other worlds and starships. Sometimes, it feels like I’m there, experiencing it through them, and then returning to this life to record what happened. Crazy, right?
Yes. I guess that’s a side-effect of writing like crazy.
While
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.
Snow Camping, Horses, Volcanoes and Crossbows
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’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.
Michael Seidel, writer 