Tag: writing process

What’s What

Out of what I am, what I read, what I know, imagine, and think, come thoughts that I didn’t know, things absorbed which now push up out of my mind’s mantle of thinking and into the novel.

The characters develop sympathies that I didn’t expect. Vulnerabilities and phobias that I’ve never known are introduced. Their attitudes harden. The new attitudes shape their directions and decisions, flexing the story’s direction.

I play catch up with my thinking, but I’m always falling behind. The characters and I go through the story together, seeing what happens and catching our breath.

It’s been a good day of writing like crazy, but it’s left me somber and reflective. After all that’s happened so far, the main character now faces a large metal door. It seems to be brushed steel.

We’re both waiting for it to open.

Even as I contemplate it, the door sneaks open. Whispers of the next conversation float out. “Who are you?”

“I think that’s my line.”

“How’d you get here?”

“That’s also my line.”

So it begins unfolding as doubt and confusion wrestles with truth and expectations, and story forms.

Another day of writing done and gone, at least one more time.

 

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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.

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Lapses

I fumbled through routines. Did I feed the cats? Yes, I remembered, I did.

But I didn’t bring in the paper. Oh, yeah, go get it.

I forgot my gloves. Right, go get them.

Jesus, I forgot that refrigerator light bulb. That’s right, that’s right, I planned to go to Ace and get that after I’m done writing, and wanted that bulb with me. Christ, go get it.

You better think. Do you have everything else?

I thought about it. I’d begun the morning by thinking about an intense dream I had. Then the muses took over, writing in my head. They revealed why the other character hadn’t joined yet, and gave me more insight into her eventual appearance.

Scenes kept flowing through me on an unstoppable course. As it happens when the muses push hard, my imagination became switched on full. Story and characters flowed, along with poems and floofinitions.

In the end, though, I had to shove all that aside and re-focus energy and attention on April Showers 1921. It became one of those sessions of typing fast and hard, leaving my coffee almost full, just, I think, a sip and a gulp consumed before I launched into full writing mode.

Finally, three thousand words later, the muses relented. A stop was ordered. I reckoned seventy-five minutes had passed. It felt like I’d totally been in that church were the scenes were taking place, and not in a coffee shop table, typing on a laptop. I’d ignored my posture, of course, so my shoulders were achy from being hunched over and typing as fast as I could.

Good day of writing like crazy. These days are not terribly frequent, but I love them when they come.

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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

This Phase

I began a new novel project at the beginning of the new year, April Showers 1921. I’m in the exploratory phase. While the character, story, and its cover popped up in a dream, and I can see it and hear the characters and story, sometimes ‘watching it’ like I’m seeing it on a television or movie screen. Then I’m scrambling to capture all the details, translate them to words, get the order right, and get it on paper.

It’s difficult. The pace is fast and relentless. My brain power lacks the capacity to absorb it.  Stopping to do and enjoy other things is hard because novel scenes are always popping out. Details spring into mind in the middle of conversations with other people. When I’m in an actual writing session and everything is channeled into a coherent order, the inexorable flow quickens. The faucet is opened but I have no control over the volume that pours into me. Becoming intense and exciting, I fall behind again, forcing me to break off and pace to regain control, take a deep breath, and go at it again.

I also want to jump ahead to learn more about the villains. They intrigue me, but my muses are being coy about them. They offer tantalizing glimpses but won’t let me see the whole thing yet.

Yeah, weird, but it’s my process. If I could, I’d just stay here with this novel, hour after hour, watching, listening, shaping and writing. I’d probably deprive myself of sleep and exercise, but not coffee, water, and food – a man needs to know his limitations.

I remind myself of my basic writing approach.

  1. Discipline: write every day.
  2. Patience: it’ll all come. Just keep writing.
  3. Persist: stay with the story and keep moving it forward.
  4. Write like crazy: capture what I can as I can, and then edit, polish, revise, and re-order scenes and paragraphs as necessary.
  5. Finish. The goal isn’t just to write but to tell a story in a novel.

These sessions leave me spent, as you can probably understand. I vex others because most energy is being diverted into writing this novel while I submit my last finished work to agents in search of publication.

The coffee shop is closing, and they’re kicking us out. It’s their usual Sunday thing. Done writing like crazy, at least for now.

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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.

 

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The Process

He had his talismans, his gold-plated 2001 quarter, the pen with which he’d written the first short story he’d ever sold, once lost, but then found in a box of memorabilia, and his tumbled and polished lapis lazuli. With those in his pockets, he processed his mental checklist. Keys, money, wallet, computer, backpack, sunglasses. Donning his coat, he gloved up and left the warm house for the cold, sunny day.

Squirrelly grey clouds marbled the sky’s blue arena. Sidewalks squished with remnants of last night’s rain. He walked fast, shifting from thoughts of cats, wife, social engagements, and news to his stories, drawing up where’d he stopped, what he’d planned since then, and where else he might go, considering the scenes and words like they were night stars.

One mile he walked, warming up over the twenty minutes, two as the land dried out under the sun, reaching the coffee shop in less than thirty-eight minutes. Warmth, conversation, and music percolated inside the small, modern, glassy place. Weird, it didn’t smell like coffee.

He knew many faces but spoke to no one but those needed to get coffee. After ordering it, he set up his computer at a table and powered up. Documents were opened. Internet connections were made.

Hot, black coffee was sipped. Words and ideas were contemplated again. Setting the coffee down, he raised his fingers over his keyboard.

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

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