Tag: pantser

Assignments

Getting ready to write begins with walking, in my routine. This is when I’m preparing to make the physical transition and focus energy. As my wife has observed, “You’re always writing, aren’t you?”

Yes, the writer(s) within rarely sleeps. He/she/they – we’re not sure of Writersville’s precise population – are always busy. Every sensory, mental, or emotional input can play a role in triggering ideas. Some ideas directly pertain to works in progress. Other inputs spill into a massive mental junk drawer for possible later use.

Splash writing gets the most attention. Something splashes in, and I write it out in my head. Later, I sit down and type it out.

I like writing in the late morning or early afternoon, and typically leave the house about ten to ten thirty in the morning.  My writing period, of sitting at the computer and typing, is not long. This is exactly how I’ve worked all my life, thinking long about things that I need to do and then using intense, short periods to execute. I usually write for about ninety minutes. Output isn’t huge, a thousand to three thousand words. My norm is sixteen hundred words or so. Back when word counts were measurements of progress, I counted. I no longer count, but I have an awareness, probably due to habit and repetition, of how many words I’ve done.

When I start walking, I put away thoughts of life problems, plans and issues, and turn to writing. That generally takes about eight minutes. This, along with the weather and other plans, dictates how long I’ll walk before writing. My preference is to walk at least ten minutes, but I’ll also use my Fitbit to decide how long I’ll walk. More recently, I’ve taken to walking about two miles before writing, so my walking and exercise is spread more evenly across the day.

But this is about writing, not exercising, and how I prepare to write. Sometimes, what I’m planning to write is more involved, requiring deeper, more prolonged thinking. So more time as I walk will be spent on it. But perhaps eighty percent of the time, I know what I’m going to write. For that other percent, maybe fifteen percent will come from the unfolding process that I sometimes employ once I sit down.

Finally, there’s that less four to five percent that’s a greater struggle. On those days, I’ve found it best to put the writers to sleep. Give them the assignment, and tell them to come back to me when I have something.

Then I walk. I stream music in my head. Note changes to the town, and the weather. Drift through thoughts and observations about lives and bumper stickers, or think about other novel concepts in progress. I’ll think about catfinitions, and possible blog posts.

Doing this today, I thought about how much the process really is like a teacher or manager giving out assignments, and then taking up the results later. Freeing mental energy by engaging in mundane issues and matters, or larger problems about which I can do little, frees the writers to use that mental energy and write. Then, sitting down, I’m generally well-prepared to begin. Well, eighty percent of the time.

The trick to all of this was that I’ve learned to be flexible about my approach, because I know more than one way will work. Deviations are acceptable. Even not writing, but thinking about writing, is acceptable, although it’s accepted with a grimace. Fortunately, that probably happens less than one percent of the time. In other words, of one hundred times sitting down to write, I’ll not actually write one time. And that’s cool; it’s not a reason to panic or to be afraid that I won’t or can’t write.

All this is evolved from those first efforts of sitting down with a notebook and pen, and mumbling to myself, “What can I write? What can I write?” The evolution has been helped greatly by the insights others provided, like Annie Lamott, Natalie Goldberg, Orson Scott Card, Stephen King, Damon Knight, and Elmore Leonard, and a plethora of blog posts and articles. Part of this, too, comes from understanding that my writing is a weaving process. Little of what I first write is how it appears in final form. That doesn’t matter, either, so long as I reach a point where I tell myself, “Fini.”

The other part of my process is that I like to have a cup of coffee or coffee drink when I write. Oddly, I’ll drink a quarter to a third of the cup in the initial writing session, and then the beverage will be forgotten until that point when I think I’m done for the day. Then I’ll pick up the cold cup and drink the cold beverage while I reflect about what I’ve done and what will come next. Drinking cold coffee disgusts my wife, but it doesn’t bother me at all.

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

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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.

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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.

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Novel Sculpting

I read a post the other day with insight into Tolkien and C.S. Lewis’ writing styles over on The Writer’s Path in an article by Andrea Lundgren. C.S. Lewis was a planner. Tolkien was a pantser. Best was the comment Lewis made about Tolkien’s style:

Diana Pavlac Glyer adds, “Lewis’s writing process was quite different from Tolkien’s. While Tolkien wrote things out in order to discover what he wanted to say, Lewis tended to mull things over before committing anything to paper. While Tolkien produced draft after draft, Lewis completed his work rapidly once he had settled on a clear idea and the right form to express it. And while Tolkien reconsidered every word on every page, when Lewis finished a story, he was restless to move on.”

That summarizes my writing approach: I’m writing to discover what I want to say. I’d not known this about myself in such an explicit manner.

Further reading on process came about from Jenn Moss’ Meta Monday post about her process. She referred to another process, The Snowflake Method. I enjoyed the fractal snowflake reference enormously and considered it pretty apt to Lorenz’s thinking and the Butterfly Effect. Randy Ingermanson writes about how to design a novel by starting small and enlarging, using triangles and stars and ten steps.

From all this came a better grasp of my process. I like to write to understand what I want to say, as Tolkien did. I usually start small and writing like mad, I create a block of words. That result is typically dense, with poor punctuation and spelling, and ‘<TK>’ with notes where I need more reference or clarification. Although I’ve become more mindful about pacing, voice and the rest through exposure to writing and editing, I don’t want those aspects to slow me down; I’m out to capture the essence of the story at that stage. This is fiction writing at its stream-of-consciousness rawest.

I then begin shaping the finished scene or chapter. Like a wood carver or sculptor studying a block of material, I do the same and begin carving, to see what’s in there, what should remain and what should be removed but added to somewhere else.

The carving process is involved. I’m working on plotting, connectivity with the rest of the novel, flow, spelling and grammar, voice, point of view and character development. It is much like sculpting and carving, taking pieces here and there and stepping back to see what I’ve wrought and what remains to be fixed. I think of it as chipping because I’m sculpting but I’m adding words and changing them as well. That’s where the analogy falls apart, but, oh well. I consider the entire active editing and revising, but it doesn’t replace the editing and revising that takes place after the entire draft is finished.

This is fun and rewarding. Watching that piece being shaped and refined is greatly satisfying. Beyond that, the carving process and active editing and revising provides me clarity about the novel. I especially learn about the characters at that point when I’m doing this, actively questioning how they would react to words, activities and new information.

All accumulated in a herd of new dreams thundering through me last night. I won’t recite them today, as people out there who read me are probably rolling their eyes and saying, “More dreams?”

Reflecting them on this morning took me into fractal thinking, and back into my novel writing process. I ruminated about how our brains are often creatively fractal, something I actively encourage my brain to be: I want new ways to look at old ideas and new ideas to present. To do that, I need to take the variables and spin them into a new direction. Like the butterfly’s flutter, you never know how one small input or variable will produce a new direction, if you can leave yourself open to it.

I call that writing like crazy, to which I owe Natalie Goldberg. Now four shots of espresso blended with chocolate and steamed milk is at hand. It’s time to do it again, at least one more time.

 

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The Novel Bible

I started thinking about my novels’ bibles while reading Whitney Carter’s WorldBuilding Post today. Some good suggestions were in there and I’ve found and incorporated most of them on my own.

The one thing about naming and history conventions for me is to keep track of them. Not just what they’re named, but sometimes, why they’re so named. I keep a separate document for that, and usually have it opened and update it as I’m writing, or at the session’s end. The bible for ‘Long Summer’, sequel to ‘Returnee’, is over 7,000 words. That’s not really big; James Michener used to have binders of information.

More interesting to me is that I’ve learned that I do more research to develop and build the world than I do to write the story. While I will write from forty-five to ninety minutes on an average day (and end up with word counts from one thousand to three thousand words in a session), I spend several hours researching and developing the worlds, characters, settings and situations. This is true not just in science fiction, which is my preferred genre, but in mystery, which I also write.

For example, if someone was born in America in 1975 and the novel takes place in 2015, they’re forty years old. That’s easy. But what music did they listen to while growing up in America? Did they watch television, and what did they watch when they did? What significant historic events happened in their lifetime, and it were they affected? Technology is part of this, something that I remember from a comment my mother made. While she’d traveled across the United States during her lifetime, I flew on a commercial jet when I was eighteen, and she didn’t do so for almost twenty years after my first flight. As we work and live, it’s easy to forget that ubiquitous devices like computers and cell phones are relatively new to human existence. Our civilization and societies are rich with laws, technology and permanent solutions that no longer apply. It’s important for the novel’s honesty and integrity to bear these matters in mind to develop coherent characters and stories.

I like substantial verisimilitude to novels that I read, and I include it in the novels that I write. Some people would say that I put too much in but I love tangent explanations. It’s largely because I think people are complicated. Little is black and white to many. They may state that it’s black and white, and they may act like it’s black and white, but most are offering a sketch insight to their true beliefs. Some of this is driven by people being politically or emotionally sensitive (or the opposite, attempting to be deliberately rude and crude), acting out, or displacement. More often, people struggle to untangle the skeins of history, thinking and emotions. There is also a large contingency of lazy people, and people who are just too tired, worn out, or impatient to figure out what they think, so they take the easiest courses of thoughts and actions.

All of this is recorded, in shorthand, in the novel’s bible. In ‘Long Summer’, as in ‘Returnee’, it’s easy when addressing future Human development. Corporations dominate, so corporate structure and thinking dominate. These are calcified, turgid organizations driven by reducing overhead and increasing profit, crying out, “We are a team,” or, “We are a family,” when they need to encourage hard work and cooperation, shrugging and noting, “We are a business,” when they cut jobs. They’re governed by wealthy people living in bubbles. However, factions who oppose corporations do exist. They cite multiple issues with corporations for their existence as individuals and groups. They’re more challenging to develop.

Even more challenging are the other intelligent races that emerge in ‘Long Summer’. Six races, including another branch of Humanity (seven, if you include Humans that have spread out from Earth), dominate the known and settled galaxies. One of these races is a long gone race. Traces of them are found everywhere but there isn’t any evidence of where they went or why. Such vacuums aren’t acceptable; naturally, theories abound about what happened to them.

All of this is recorded in the novel’s bible. Brief entries are made about the order in which these races encountered one another and their relationships with one another. Two of these races (besides Humans) dominate but the others are written into the script in various manners. All of this is organized and recorded. My bible itself is an organic record, growing and changing shape. It began, as they always do, with a few bullet lists. I always go with what I need for the moment to move forward. As more information and understanding was demanded, I developed a more complex structure to impose order so I can easily find information (what colors was his/her eyes/skin/hair again?) without exploding with frustration.

It’s an odd confession to make as a pantser. Pantser is the term often applied to writers who don’t plan and outline their novels in advance. I prefer the expression ‘organic’ writing, in that you plant the seeds and let it grow. Others call it writing in the dark. That works, too, as your mind’s lights find and illuminate the way.

In a way, I think of this novel writing approach in the same way that journalism works. A story happens: scandal, an explosion, an attack, an arrest. We have the big picture. Details are needed. Motivation and other questions about what, how and why happen arise to be answered. Reporters rush to the scene. Interviews are conducted. Research is accomplished. Investigation are launched, and layers are peeled back.

That’s how I like it. I tried to be a planner. Frankly, I lacked the discipline. My ideas and characters excited me. Scenes and dialogue bloomed, and I was urged to rush right in. And I did.

Whatever works, is my motto. There is the perfect way, the classic way, the artistic way. Mine is an imperfect way, and I’m continually addressing it. Each of must survey and inventory ourselves as writers to learn our strengths and weaknesses and develop our preferences for how we write. And after we write, we learn to edit, revise, polish. Writing is a tangled endeavor.

Now, a quad shot mocha is at hand. Time to write like crazy, one more time. Tauren just encountered the Travail Avresti for the first time. This is an historic moment, the first time that Humans from Earth are facing another intelligent civilization.

I want to know what happens.

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