Plantser

There is much banter in the writing industry about the terms “pantser” and “plotter.” I believe they were coined by the NaNoWriMo community. To be a “pantser” is the write by the seat of your pants, to have no set route and to go where the story takes you. To be a “plotter” is to have a comprehensive outline, to know where you’re going and how you’re getting there before you even start writing.

I’ve tried it both ways. NaNo 2014 I was a pantser. I basically had a character idea and some settings ideas and I went from there. It was the seed to my novel, and I’m super glad I just did it. But to be totally frank, the result was… unsatisfying, to be diplomatic about it. For my second and third drafts, I was (/tried to be) a plotter. Even though I loathed writing outlines and the process was disheartening and soul-sucking compared to just writing narrative, I was sure that the reason my first draft had failed was because I didn’t know where I was going when I started.

Well, my second draft, while being much better than my first, was still far off the mark of what I want to eventually end up with. I don’t believe that it benefitted from an outline as much as I had learned a lot from the first try, but after I finished it, I didn’t have that perspective. From where I was standing, it looked like I had a second draft that was much better than my first and it had had an outline: ad hoc, ergo propter hoc. But I was several chapters into my third draft when I realized that I was going at my story from completely the wrong angle.

And I realized that writing the outline had contributed to cementing this wrong angle in my head.

Not to mention that starting over after writing a comprehensive outline was… well suffice to say that I was more ready to give up writing forever than to write another comprehensive outline. More than that, though, I wasn’t sure yet where the story was going to go. I kept trying to work on an outline and getting stuck on things that I couldn’t predict. And I was getting very frustrated with not writing narrative—the only fun part of writing. (Hashtag my own opinion kthxbai.) So I decided to start writing and see if it went anywhere.

The beginning I wrote was both strong and terrible: strong because I think I started in the correct place, narratively, and terrible because it was disjointed and semi-coherent. That was partially because I was in a semi-panic while writing it and as a result was having terrible aphasia. I kept not being able to find words, so instead using the much more formal words for things than my narrative voice justified. But I said fuckit and kept writing, because it felt like running away from a predator: didn’t matter if I tripped, I fucking got away.

As I write more, my voice comes more easily; the sequence of events happens more naturally; and as ideas come to me I feel very free to incorporate them if I want to—no restrictive outline to stick to like glue. As a result I really feel like this draft is where I’ve been wanting to get to all along. I still feel like it is almost certainly not the final draft. Much polish and sanding and restoration will be needed once I’ve finished writing it. But I may have finally found the thing that I won’t have to rewrite from the ground up.

Anyway. I recently read a term that I had previously not heard of: “plantser.” This is a hybrid planner-pantser. For me, that means I know the starting point, I know the themes, I have a cast of characters (some of which may not end up making appearances), I know the twist, and I know what Cassidy needs to do to “win”—but I don’t know the exact journey she takes to get there, and to be honest, I don’t know if she wins or not, yet.

So, put me in the plantser camp, because I need a little structure—a little, but not too much.

Word count: 10,916 (⪤)

•••Hey, did you know? I’m fostering kittens! Come follow my tribulations on my kitten blog! Paw-Purr-azzi•••

Scared of my feelings

As I’ve been making (slow, slow) progress through my book, I’ve realized something that isn’t very encouraging. I’m wondering if it’s normal for other writers, or if it’s indicative of my feelings for my book.

I get really excited when I’m thinking about the story, the twists and turns, and the way the pieces fit together. I enjoy thinking about it. But when it comes time to actually write it? It all drains away. It feels dry and uninteresting, and my overwhelming feeling is that the book is going to be “nothing special,” or possibly just a giant waste of time.

I don’t want to listen to that voice, for obvious reasons. I have ideas for other stories, and I haven’t yet tried to write them, so I can’t say whether or not I have more enthusiasm for writing something else. I really, really want to finish this book before moving on to another project, so I probably won’t be receptive to “just write something different for a little while” advice. Cassidy is my baby and there are so many things I want to say with this story. I just wish the stream of good feels didn’t dry up as soon as I start trying to put words on “paper.”

My apprehensions aside, I have been writing. I got Scrivener for Christmas and I’ve been trying out the “write scenes in separate files” technique that so many people talk about. Historically, I haven’t really thought in “scenes,” but more in progression of events. Trying it this way is definitely helping me understand where scenes are delineated in my writing, and that really helps me understand the flow of tension. Because if each scene needs to be a book-in-miniature, with rising- and falling-action and a climax, then I think it helps you get a feel for if the scene is doing what it is supposed to, and if it’s necessary to the story.

Tangent: just because it has the three ingredients, doesn’t mean each of these climaxes need to be dramatic and extreme. They just need to be identifiable.

Well, that’s all for now, folks.

Word count: 4,513 (ᆡ) (NaNo in May is... not. But at least it got me writing!!)

I'm losing it.

I’ve written dribs and drabs. I’ve constructed sentences that I’m proud of. For the most part, I’ve made a thing that I’m happy with. The third try at Cassidy is the closest yet to what I started out envisioning. I’m not bored, or tired, or distracted.

What am I, then? Why is it that as I get nearer to being good I get farther from wanting to continue it?

I have a long reading list. Several books checked out from the library, and they’re ebooks, so when they expire they just... go away. I want to read them, but I’m currently reading a much longer, much heavier sci-fi book that is also commanding all of my love and interest.

After I finished Becky’s feedback letter, I had a strong feeling of liberation. Finally, I could work on my own writing! Something changed during the long break wherein I didn’t think much about Cassidy, so that when I came back to it, it wasn’t at all onorous. I had somehow managed to recapture the feeling of writing for myself, the way you do when you’re a kid and being creative is just a thing you do, no matter how anyone reacts. I wrote 2,542 words, in quick succession. Everything felt like an increase in freedom, rather than a decrease. But then, it sorta... petered out.

I’ve had a lot of things happen in my personal life: pets adjacent to me dying, foster kittens aging out, and my own personal pets having medical problems. I’ve had a lot on my plate, and a severe deficit of energy to devote to anything that isn’t self-care. The remembered feeling of goodness hasn’t been enough to bring back my desire to write. But what’s worse: I also haven’t really felt bad about that fact.

The downside to dry spells is that gnawing feeling of guilt of a job left unfinished. It brings me back, again and again, because my characters get antsy and don’t want to be ignored. But this time... I’ve felt nothing. I want that nasty guilt. I want to feel compelled to go back. And right now, I don’t.

So I’m fishing in my pool of readers. What can I do to get reinvigorated? How can I make Cassidy matter again? I want to want to. Gimme your magic writing sparkles.

Word count: 5,820 (ᚼ)

Tips for overcoming writers' paralysis and cultivating enthusiasm for your writing

Long title is long!

I was at the gym yesterday and I was finishing up my stretches. After stretches, I do ab workout—situps, crunches, leg-lifts, or jackknifes, depending on the day. Yesterday was jackknifes. After that, weights, then a half-hour of cardio. And I was lying on my back, looking at the wasp nest in the highest tippy-top of the cathedral-vaulted ceiling and dreading every single step of it with my whole self.

I probably don’t need to tell you, but dread is one of those ingredients in a workout (or any other chore) that really dominates the flavor and ruins the dish.

So I thought to myself, “Self, stop it! Why do you dread this so hard? You know it exactly. You have done it so many times you could do it in your sleep. Dreading it only makes it take longer; and when that’s not true, it sure makes it seem to take longer!”

“But, Self,” I protested, “What should I do to dispel this awful funk? You make it sound easy. I assure you, it is not.”

“Fear not, Self,” I laughed, “There is a solution! Behold!” I flourished my cape. “When you started coming to the gym, you were infused with feelings of accomplishment, pride, and self-power. These feelings have waned as the gym routine has become mundane, but in truth, the fact that the gym routine has lasted long enough to become mundane is an indication of exactly how accomplished, proud, and powerful you should feel!

“In short, do not focus on the mundanity, the sloggishness. Focus on the things that made you start coming in the first place! The way it draws into focus the ways in which your body is succeeding at being strong, beautiful, bendy—what have you. After all, what are you anxious for? Have you elsewhere to be? I think not. Now is your time. Enjoy it.”

Well, it got me through the rest of the workout, and I realized that the same technique can be applied to most things we dread. Staring at the blank page, fingers poised over the keyboard, thinking, “I know I was gonna say something… what was it again?” we have started looking at our writing as an obligation, a chore. What if we spent a few minutes right before we start writing to remember exactly why we write? If we can recapture the feeling of the joy of creation, the freedom of crafting a world to our own specifications, the way it used to be an escape rather than a prison, then writing will be a breeze.

Yesterday, after my workout, I was victim to a sustained headache and stomach ache and did not return to the world of creation, but I’m going to try out this technique today and see if it works as well for writing as it did for finishing my gym routine. Happy writing, everyone!

Word count: 2,778 (૚)

Back from Seattle

Well, it was whirlwind and I think I need a vacation to recover from my vacation, but it was also the greatest weekend trip ever. I had no idea that Seattle was so cool, and it made it glaringly clear to me that I should never attempt to write a story set in a place I’ve never been. There was so much about it that I’d never have known, but that anyone who had so much as visited would have picked on. So glad I went!

A research trip is vastly different from your average vacation. We squeezed in a few tourist things, but for the most part we parked downtown and walked around. We went to the public library. We drove two and a half hours (one-way) to visit a beach to make sure it would be an acceptable setting, then turned around and went back without even leaving the car. (Beautiful white-sand beach, by the way. Totally visit the Grayland State Park. Totally doesn’t work as the setting, though.)

Seattle’s history is fascinating. The construction and the conception, the architecture, everything. Our visit was absolutely jam-packed. The day we got in, we visited Pike’s Place Market (an experience unto itself) before we even checked into our B&B. To get there we took a shuttle, then the water taxi. It was 92° and humid as Satan’s armpit, and I was wearing long pants (of course)—I finally nearly had a panic attack because I felt like I couldn’t breathe and at that point we went back (via water taxi and shuttle, which we took in the wrong direction and had to walk back to the stop and wait another half hour sweating and frothing and generally wishing we were dead) to the B&B and tried to reform our melted forms into human shapes, using such tools as The Shower and Fans and Air Conditioned Rooms.

Sunday we had brunch at SkyCity in the Space Needle, which was breathtaking. The food was well above-average, but I’ve had better, but that’s not why you eat there—you eat there because the restaurant is walled with glass and rotates for a 360° view of the city and the Sound. We went to the Chihuly museum and there was a street fair and then we went to see the Fremont Troll, a public sculpture under a bridge in the suburbs.

Monday was the Library, the 5-hour drive and, ultimately, sushi. We stopped on the way back from the beach in a tiny town with no cell service called Westport for lunch; we ate at The Original House of Pizza, and it was really good. Hit that up while you’re in the area for Grayland beach.

The final adventure came on Tuesday, when we slid into the airplane five minutes before they stopped boarding and were breathing sighs of unmitigated relief and disbelief that we’d managed to check our bag and return the car in time—when apparently the plane broke off its tow bar and we had to disembark and find a new way to get home.

This was probably all our fault—a balance between the luck it took to get to the gate on time and the twisted whims of fate.

Phone calls, runnings back and forth in the airport, hungriness, exhaustion, and finally we got a flight on Delta at 7:35pm that was delayed to 8:40 and got to DIA barely before midnight. We caught the bus with ease and were in bed by 1:40am.

I took a bunch of notes, both digital and mental, and I’ve apparently discovered a place I’d be willing to live in the US that is outside of Colorado. If you ever visit Seattle, don’t miss the library. Or the tour of the underground.

Happy Thursday, all!

Still. Reading.

So, July has begun. My high hopes of having a third draft by now are flapping, shredded, in the wind. My hopes of having a third draft sometime this year are hiding behind things, hoping to not get stomped by hard-hearted reality as it thunders past.

I finished The Maltese Falcon (67,000 words, by the way). 179 pages (the other 10 were discussion questions) never took so long to read, ugh. The book is good, and tight, and I enjoyed it, but it would never have gotten published today. The book starts off with the physical description of the protagonist, followed immediately by the physical description of the secretary, followed immediately by the physical description of the femme fatale, followed immediately by the physical description of the protagonist’s business partner… there were step-by-step descriptions of how Sam Spade rolls a cigarette, how he sits up in bed, how he eats. I can’t imagine how long the book would have been if Hammett had been forced to cut those descriptions, like he would be if he were trying to get published now. The prose is utilitarian and without flourish. You can clearly hear the whisky-and-cigarrette-smoke-ruined voice reading the book; growling, begrudging, yet trying to hide the fact that he’s enjoying himself.

It was a relief to finish the book, and I immediately tried to check out The Big Sleep, but of course it was checked out of the library. Instead I checked out a copy of K Is For Killer, a book that was picked on by Hardboiled and High Heeled as dealing directly with women filling traditionally men’s roles, their independence, and the theme of the “wrong body” that pervades the female detective genre. I read it in about three days and found it highly enjoyable, and when I finished it, The Big Sleep was still checked out. What to do now?

I read for pleasure for a few days, but today I was just starting to get an itch in my britches to start writing again. Just in time, I got an email saying that The Big Sleep was back in stock—thank god! Who knows what may have happened if I had started writing, all willy-nilly. Perish the thought.

My third draft is going to be very different from the second; all in good ways. It’s not going to be quite the reinvention that happened between Cassidy0 and Cassidy1, and I’m very happy about that. It is in my nature to look at my experiences and average them, and make predictions based on them. Like, “The first time I ever wrote a second draft, I completely rewrote the whole book from the very ground up.” So, obviously, that’s what every subsequent draft will be… until I have a larger sample size to draw from. Now, I’m looking at keeping most or all of the same characters, tweaking their roles minimally, tweaking their personalities considerably, adding scenes aimed at developing characters and themes, and generally grab the steering wheel and aim the car back onto the more acceptable, less self-involved road (where the “self” is Cassidy). It’s fascinating to me how a book can be vehicles for themes and messages that aren’t visible to the naked eye; one must unwrap them, one thin layer at a time, like an onion, to arrive at the pungent nugget of truth underneath.

Maybe it’s just true that, when you’re writing, you see the jewel of the message you’re trying to convey. The words are the wrapping paper. Your finished product is never going to look like that jewel, but that’s okay, because if it did, it wouldn’t be interesting—it’d be a necklace with no neck; a mustache with no one to twirl it. The reader needs to arrive at the jewel on their own to grasp the full impact.

Anyway, I post this and I begin The Big Sleep, as one. Happy reading to us all!

Well, this has been anticlimactic

Just as I embarked on my third draft journey, I received the feedback from my writers’ group that I had so craved. While it has been overwhelmingly positive, the things that got picked on surprised me, and to my surprise, stung me quite a bit. I don’t want to go into them at this point, since I haven’t even mustered the courage to finish reading all of it. I know that intentions matter little when writing inclusive fiction—just because you don’t realize you’re furthering a negative stereotype or trope doesn’t mean you shouldn’t correct it when it happens. Still. I feel a little picked on, which I know is something I need to get past.

I found myself reacting to some of the feedback with, “But... I feel like that’s true to the genre,” which made me realize that I’m actually not all that well-versed in the hard-boiled detective genre (previously mis-identified [by me] as noir, which is a whoopsie made by the film industry, check it out if you’re interested) despite reading many contemporary examples of same. As they say, you can’t break the rules until you know them.

I picked up a couple of academic-style books about the Hardboiled genre, Unless the Threat of Death is Behind Them by John T. Irwin and Hardboiled and High Heeled by Linda Mizejewski. So far, I’m about 82% of the way through UtToDiBT (that’s a fun acronym), and it’s really opened my eyes to what’s “important” about the genre. The tropes are fun, but they aren’t what makes it literary. It’s surprised me on many levels: one, how close I came to a lot of the marks without having been aware of them. Two, the fact that there are a lot of different ways to write correctly within this genre. Three, the best things about literature are present in the best Hardboiled and/or Noir novels.

Discovering this stuff has really raised the bar for me. I’m simultaneously invigorated and goddamned terrified. I have seriously considered straight giving up. I have reminded my writers’ group that wunderkinds are bullshit, but it seems like the inventers of the genre all wrote literary-level novels on their very first try. I have a hard time imagining juggling all those balls, to be totally honest. But, if I think through the process, I have realize that either, they actually got very lucky without realizing it (which actually is a thing that happens), or they had this in mind as they wrote, and possibly shoehorned some things in which might have felt very unnatural to them at the time in order to get that level of literary value. Dashiell Hammett may have had a notecard that said: “Theme: contrast the repetitive with the extraordinary with the singular” and then another notecard that said “parable: Flitcraft? Features: flying shrapnel, breaking machinery” and looked back at these notecards as he crafted the dialogue—certainly a final-draft problem. The Maltese Falcon didn’t spring forth from his forehead, fully formed. It was designed, and he took as much time writing it as it took to get it as close to right as he could. (And, to be fair, it wasn’t his first work in the genre.) Hammett, Chandler, Cain and other authors within the genre were all striving throughout their careers to master their craft—more than just telling stories, they were telling the Human Story, even if those who fancied themselves authorities in the world of literature considered detective novels to be pulp fiction.

Writing is a marathon, not a sprint.

I was reading UtToDiBT earlier and was suddenly overcome with the urge to fill out some notecards before I forgot all the brilliant things that had just occurred to me. So, instead of being OCD and forcing myself to keep reading, I went and got my notecards. I filled out six notecards with two character’s starting and ending points and the events that trigger the changes. I am happy that I did this. Now I’m done and am going to go back to reading. I’ll notecard again if the mood strikes me. If not, I’ll roll right into HaHH. After that, I’m going to be reading at least The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett and The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler. And then I’ll feel at least a little more secure in asserting that something that may be considered a “bad” thing to do falls within my genre.

I may even feel empowered to do it differently.

Writing hygiene

As my deadline nears (thirty four hours, thirty four minutes) and the words pile up (“not as quickly as I’d like,” she thought, her forehead wrinkling with worry), I’m made to think about writing hygiene, which is a term I just made up, derived from sleep hygiene. Sleep hygiene refers to making good habits to increase your likelihood of having a good night’s sleep, such as turning off screens an hour before bedtime, going to bed at the same time every night, preceding bedtime with the same approximate routine (like brushing teeth, reading, etc) so that your body gets trained to expect sleep to follow.

Similarly, I think that having good writing hygiene would help me write more consistently. Currently, I do have a routine, but it’s not consistent enough to train me. I start whenever I want to, by checking my comics and deviantArt and Tumblr, then (allegedly) I start writing. However, Tumblr frequently segues into Facebook and even if it doesn’t, following Tumblr link chains can be an endless activity (and I’m not exaggerating). As a result, I end up being ready to start writing right around lunch time, and then I have to eat, and while I eat, I like to watch a show, which is, I know, a bottomless pit of unproductivity. Meaning, I can’t watch a show during lunch if I have any expectation of writing afterwards. But it’s a very hard thing to resist, when you’ve got nothing else occupying your eyes.

Long story short (“too late!” she cackled, rubbing her hands together gleefully), I need better writing hygiene. It is true that my comics, Tumblr and deviantArt are all inspirational to me and help me get into the headspace of writing, but Tumblr just doesn’t have any convenient early-exit points. It makes me think that maybe I should save Tumblr as a post-writing reward rather than a pre-writing requisite. In addition, I should have a set time of day that I begin this routine—and perhaps, a set time that I end it, though I hesitate to stop myself if I’m on a roll.

But if I write 2,500 words and let the spirit take me until Branden gets home, the next day I feel the letdown of not having done anything to reward my hard work, of simply jumping back into the fray and putting my raw, abused nose right back against the grindstone. I always promise myself, “if you write today, you can play Don’t Starve afterwards!” (“she does, you know,” she griped. “I’m starting to think she never planned to let me go.”) But there’s never time afterwards, and then the cycle begins again.

It’s possible that changing venues might help me with both staying on task and choosing to stop; but all of the appealing venues are ones where it’d be at least a little rude not to buy something. Branden has suggested the library, and it’s a very good idea, but the image in my head of a library includes hard plastic chairs, MDF desks, and a distinct lack of beverages. I think I’m probably mistaken in at least some of these assumptions, but, so far, laziness has won out, and I’m home-bound for writing. Primarily, I write while sitting on the floor of the unbelievably smelly room which houses three five-week-old kittens who think that me and my computer are the hottest ride in the whole park. (“Gee, I wonder why it’s so hard to get anything done,” she sneered, lighting a cigarette.) It’s how I multitask: kittens get quality Elly time and I get quality kitten time and I compose my masterpiece and Everything Is Just Great. Right?

Of course right. Or so I keep telling myself. And I could be right, it’s just a matter of discipline. So, here I sit, in Smelly Kittenville, preparing to write something that looks like Philip K Dick and Raymond Chandler had a hideous mutated Frankenstein baby. Wish me luck!

Word count: 47,372 (뤌)

But what about when writing becomes a burden?

On Wednesday, I managed to write about 1,500 words towards my story. It wasn’t torture, it didn’t hurt; I was shocked at how much I’d built it up in my head to be this extremely “difficult” thing.

But after Wednesday, the tide ebbed and I was once more stranded on the high ground of inspirationlessness. I know as well as anyone that “waiting for inspiration” isn’t a valid strategy to writing, but I’ve been feeling almost abandoned by my muses. Thinking about writing has been frustrating, and frustration has made me feel veritably glued to my couch. Not only do I not write, I also don’t do anything else I need to do. Everything seems unapproachable, unattainable, and frankly, pointless. I really wanted to give up, but I stubbornly couldn’t accept that I could walk away from my novel, which had so much promise and so much time sunk into it, and a bunch of people whose opinions I respect waiting for it.

But not being able to walk away from it felt like a chain. I was feeling worthless, which made it worse... I’m sure most of you know how this goes. Getting stuck creatively can feel a lot like depression. (Not being a mental health professional, I’m not sure when something crosses the border into depression—does sadness have to be a part of it? I wasn’t feeling sad, at least not for lengths of time. Weekends were great. I still enjoyed things. Etc.)

Last night, as I was falling asleep, my mind wandered to where I had left Cassidy... and then it wandered farther. I “wrote,” in my head, the subsequent scene. I have greased the axles of my writing wheels and today, I’m excited to write. Nonetheless, I’m going to post here what I think regarding When Writing Becomes A Burden.

Writing can feel like a burden for a variety of reasons. I think a major one is: Life Is Happening. Something major is going on in your life that’s sucking a lot of your energy and the idea of spending any of that precious resource on “frivolous” creative endeavors simply seems overwhelming. You lost a job or got a new one. You ended a relationship, or began one, or your relationship changed. You had a baby or got pregnant. You got sick or someone you care for got sick. Whatever. You are out of emotional bandwidth. In my opinion, this is the best, most legit, reason to suspend a creative endeavor. You need to take care of you. Sometimes, when whatever it is that is sucking your bandwidth resolves, you can’t pick up your project where you left off. That’s sad, but it’s a fact of life. Unless you can recapture your headspace of the time, I would say, don’t stress it. Move on to something new.

One that I’ve struggled with a lot before Cassidy came along and introduced herself, was I’d have a tiny idea fragment—a character, a setting, a one-sentence summary—that simply didn’t have enough substance to grow into a full story idea. I would have a lot of creative energy and no targeted creative outlet. It’s easy to say “when you get like that, write something, draw something, do something,” but it’s just as frustrating when you sit down and open a text document and type “I hate this why can’t I write” a hundred times. Or scribble the same noses, eyes, lips you’ve been scribbling for years. Writing or drawing with no direction doesn’t usually feel good, at least not to me. It feels futile. And it’s a little sad because, before Cassidy, I hadn’t had a fully formed creative idea in years.

Getting to the point where writing feels like a burden while you’re still in the middle of your project is the worst, though. That’s where projects die. And it’s mostly because, working on a project is like climbing a mountain. It gets really hard. It is really easy to turn back, because behind you, the mountain has flattened out. You’ve gotten bored with it, you’ve had some other ideas, you want to do something else for a while. But I firmly believe that that voice—the bored voice, the lazy voice, the frustrated, tired, distracted voice—is a defense mechanism that is no longer useful to you as a modern human, and listening to it is nothing but destructive. If you hear that voice, that’s okay. It’s impossible not to. Hear it, listen to it, and like a teenager to her parents, reject it. Say “Okay, I’m tired. I’m frustrated. I’m bored. I hear you. But I’m working on it anyway.”

That voice will fade, the more you tune it out. And if you’re working towards an end, you might have days where you delete everything you wrote. But the next day, you’ll do it better. As long as you gave it your best try, you’ll feel accomplished—much more so than if you did nothing.

So stick with it. Fill your personal library with finished projects instead of fragments. Give yourself room to take care of you, but hold yourself accountable when your fear/frustration/boredom is trying to exert power over you. You can do it. You are powerful. And remember, you make your own inspiration.

Word count: 32,710 (翆)

Two blogs in two days, lordy lordy

Yesterday, I wrote 4,127 words. Not counting the blog. It took me till 5:30pm and I felt quite burned afterwards. Please excuse me for not having a whole lot to say today.

This morning, I wrote a post for Tumblr about how to give feedback on works in progress, specifically aimed at people who have difficulty with that. Because, well, people who don’t have difficulty with that probably don’t need a guide. *harrumph* Anyway.

So, today I will blog about things that inspire me and things that assist in my writing process. There is no guarantee that this will be interesting.

Inspirations:

• Colors
• Song lyrics
• Brilliant original stories, like Daughter of Smoke and Bone
• Stories about cynical underdogs fighting for justice
• Stories about angels, apparently
• Surreal feelings of seeing the exact path life would have taken if a choice were made differently
• Really cool shoes

Writing Aides:

• Yo Yo Ma and the Silk Road Pandora station
• Hot chocolate
• Kitties on my lap
• 30-minute timers
• The thesaurus
• Slippers
• Constant adulation and encouragement from Branden
• Microwaveable lunch

Did I put those in unordered lists so that my blog post looks longer? Mmmaaayyybbbeee. Did I just stretch out the word “maybe” to put more filler in my post? No, actually, that’s just an added bonus.

Sorry my interesting tank is empty today. I hope to be more engaging on Friday!

Word count: 15,307 (㯋)

Interrobang‽

This isn’t news to most people following this blog, as most people following this blog are either my own doppelgänger (Branden), follow the same nerdy sites as me, or are well-versed in their own right, but this. This bit of punctuation! I didn’t know that there was a way to type it. There’s apparently also a punctuation mark that is a backwards question mark and a forward-facing question mark that share the same dot, which is called a “love mark” and is meant to end a sentence that expresses love, like “Happy anniversary.” I wish there was a way to type that, but so far I haven’t found it. (There are also many other cool punctuation marks that mostly don’t have a way to type them. See here.)

Second super-fun thing: Neil Gaiman will be signing books at Old Firehouse Books in Fort Collins on February 6, starting at 4pm! I think I’d like to try to get there, but I don’t know if I actually will, knowing me. If I did go, I’d bring Neverwhere for him to sign. And maybe book #1 of Sandman. Is that how book-signings work?

Having just reviewed my blog post from Monday, I can say, wow, I was loopy. That’s okay, I’ve written things while loopy that I wonder why I can’t write like that while fully intact. On Monday, after my blog, I did manage to write a little more. Not a lot; only about 200 words, but better than nothing.

I’ve been reading my tumblr and checking my deviantArt feeds till now and I think—I think—that I’m going to be able to open up my writing and write! That will be excellent. I have to say, I’m looking forward to having a finished project. And that anticipation should carry me through the rewrite.

I’m starting to identify more with Cassidy, and that is extremely helpful. I still stress about my ability to pepper clues and red herrings throughout the book, but I can’t fail until I try. What’s more is that the clues, while important, are actually much more understated than it seems they might be if you’re not really analyzing a work. I mean, a lot of the time, “clues” are just things that happen that your investigator doesn’t have the proper context for, that make sense after the mystery is solved. Only very occasionally are clues going to be the fingernail trimmings found in the ashtray, or the discarded zorro mask. More often it’s the fact that the baby’s blanket disappeared, or the friend you haven’t seen in a decade happens to drop by.

I’m trying to work Cassidy’s history into the “present-tense” narrative of the story, and I’m not sure if I’m doing a good job, but hey, that’s what writers’ group is for, right? I’m liking how the theme of the book—identity—is working its way into the peripheral parts of the story without my having meant to squish it in. That’s pretty cool. Mostly, I’m appreciating the things that happen when my brain percolates the story, and I really look forward to writing those things down. So now I just have to conquer the sleepies and the what-if’s and the what-then’s and start writing things down. I managed the first draft in thirty days. Twenty-eight, maybe. If I set myself a word goal, maybe I could manage the second draft in, say, sixty days.

That’s it. I’m setting myself a weekday word goal of 2,000 words per day. I don’t have a top limit, so that’ll be until the book is written, however long that is. On my blog posts I’ll be posting my word count, so all of you readers, you many readers, you legion of readers can keep me honest.

To infinity. And beyond! (Today’s word count: 5,129. Special character? ᐉ [typography is fun])

A change of perspective

An update to Wednesday’s post: My dad is just fine. It turns out that he had “fluid overload,” and fluid in his abdomen was putting pressure on his lungs. They gave him a diuretic and now he feels much better.

In light of that, the plan to go to Durango was back on.

He and I passed the five-and-a-half hours in comfortable silence and happy conversation. We have always gotten along. At the terminus, I took a luxuriant bath and slept like a dead person, then woke up and had lunch with him and a couple of his friends who had been a big part of my childhood, who I remember very fondly. They apparently remember me fondly, too. This makes me happy.

After that, I sought out my favorite teacher of all time, Tom Byrne. He taught my sophomore and senior English classes, and he was one of the first teachers who made class fun.

Well, I don’t really remember high school that well, but however it happened, he is both mine and Branden’s favorite teacher, and we are both among his favorite students.

Tom hasn’t been doing so well for the last few years. He’s a young man, but he has brain cancer, and after several years of doing pretty okay, it’s starting to get the better of him. He’s in hospice now, which means that, for those of you who are like me and didn’t know exactly what that meant, he’s given up on treating the disease and his treatment is now focused on treating the symptoms, trying to make sure his remaining time is as comfortable and rewarding as possible.

He used to love to travel. In fact, he just got back from Hawaii last month. Sadly, at the end of that trip, his state took a sharp decline and it seems likely, now, that his travel days are over.

I still call him Mr. Byrne to myself and Branden and my parents and really, anyone not him. He wants me to call him Tom, so I do, but when I say “Mr Byrne,” in my own head, that’s an honorific. It’s like calling someone “sensei.” I honor him.

He was very happy to see me. We sat and talked about travel and books and people and cats. Then we went on a long walk and talked more about people and books and Durango and school. Then when we got back, we sat and talked some more about my wedding to Branden, at which he was a guest. He said it was the best wedding he’d ever been at, and that he had been kind of blown away by the fact that we’d wanted to include him in our wedding photos. (For my part, he was certainly a high point of the whole occasion.) At this point, he seemed very tired and despite not really wanting to end our visit, I think we both ran out of things to say.

Then his cat scratched me.

The message was clear.

When I left, we hugged for a long moment and I kept in my tears—barely. I knew I was losing it and he probably did too, but I hate people who visit or call sick people and cry, like, “your illness hurts me! Quick, make me feel better!” I wasn’t going to do that to him. I got to the car and sobbed for a minute or so before starting it up and going home.

After that, I was really emotional and getting weepy at any old thing. My dad took me out to dinner, which was really nice, but I almost wasn’t fit to be in public. I kept a lid on it, knowing that my dad was doing his best to keep my mind off “things,” and he did a pretty good job. But it kept sneaking up on me a little. At any rate, I’m happy to be home, in my bedroom, behind a closed door for a couple of hours.

The main character in my book is named in honor of Mr Byrne. I told him so. He said he wanted to read it. I said of course.

On that note, I think I have found the way I want to begin the revised draft of my book. I think I’m going to try to write a little tonight. Thanks to everyone for your well wishes for my dad. Until Monday!

Enthusiasm wanes as capability increases

I received my corkboard and my index cards! I also started reading another mystery novel within the set of books that I would call my inspiration for my story. This one, Gun, With Occasional Music by Jonathan Lethem is entirely different from Dennis Lehane in terms of... well, everything. Gun, With Occasional Music is a satirical science fiction detective novel that adheres faithfully to the more cliché tropes of the noir genre. While it is telling a story, it seems to me that the focus is more on the tone and the world that it builds than the story itself. I say this in part because I’ve read the book at least twice now, and I still can’t remember what the story was at all. But I can remember that I loved it, and that the world that it built was engrossing and entertaining, and the tone was engaging and usually hilarious.

In Gun, the protagonist is a disillusioned, mostly broken PI in a world where no one but private inquisitors and the police are even legally allowed to ask questions, not even the most basic ones like “what’s your name?” (I assume this gave Lethem fits trying to write.) I think this adheres more to the literary ‘definition’ of the noir trope in that we see the PI go from a state of jaded apathy about the client who walks through his door—knowing there’s little he can do to help and sending him on his way—to a grudging, ungenerous refusal to accept that anyone is beyond hope in a just world; refusing to let go of the idea that maybe, just maybe, the world is still just.

My favorite definition of a noir protagonist, and the one I’m calling the ‘literary definition,’ is this:

But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective in this kind of story must be such a man. He is the hero, he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor, by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world. I do not care much about his private life; he is neither a eunuch nor a satyr; I think he might seduce a duchess and I am quite sure he would not spoil a virgin; if he is a man of honor in one thing, he is that in all things. He is a relatively poor man, or he would not be a detective at all. He is a common man or he could not go among common people. He has a sense of character, or he would not know his job. He will take no man’s money dishonestly and no man’s insolence without a due and dispassionate revenge. He is a lonely man and his pride is that you will treat him as a proud man or be very sorry you ever saw him. He talks as the man of his age talks, that is, with rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust for sham, and a contempt for pettiness. The story is his adventure in search of a hidden truth, and it would be no adventure if it did not happen to a man fit for adventure. He has a range of awareness that startles you, but it belongs to him by right, because it belongs to the world he lives in.

If there were enough like him, I think the world would be a very safe place to live in, and yet not too dull to be worth living in.

—Raymond Chandler, The Simple Art of Murder

I’m trying to keep that definition in mind while writing my main character, Cassidy. I think much of my difficulty comes from the fact that I want her to be so much braver than I am.

My first draft came out very tame. While I believe that the mystery was interesting, no character was pushed to the point of desperation, and no real danger was ever encountered—because I have a hard time imagining a person actually taking the actions of a desperate man and sincerely intending to do bodily harm to another person.

When I read it in my mystery novels, it’s shocking because it’s not an action genre with bullets flying and punches punctuating every paragraph; it’s gritty and ugly and real and when someone gets shot, they don’t get back up and keep running. So while I don’t think I’d have a hard time writing the more exaggerated, unrealistic combat scenes that you might see in a Marvel movie or an episode of Buffy, I hesitate to broach the kind of violence that belongs in a noir book, because it needs to be grave, not glorified. It needs to be tense and terrifying, not inconvenient or irritating. In a noir book, the violence should be the thing that ends the book, because it ends either the good guy or the bad guy. It’s not an obstacle.

And then, when the protagonist does struggle to his or her feet, it seems all the more triumphant.

Anyway.

Now that I have my tools in hand, I am predictably hesitant to begin the process of rewriting. After all, I messed it up so bad the first time... of course, without my first try, this story wouldn’t exist at all. I need to start thinking of the words of my first draft as being the shell around the nut of the story. Crack it off and throw it away, and you’ve still got more than you had before. Sure it’s incorporeal, and the second draft may not be much better than the first... but it’s a lot more likely to be closer to the truth of the story than the first was.

So, I am now picking up my index cards and my sharpies and I’m writing things on them. For example:

Cassidy Byrne

Lonely. Brave. Realistic. Observant. Intuitive. Driven. Disadvantaged. Aloof. Curious. Honest. Snarky. Educated. Blunt. Careful. Self-assured. Self-alienated.

Puts ‘morally right’ in front of ‘legal’ in the alphabet, but operates within the confines of the law as often as possible. Desperately wants to know who she was before she ‘woke up,’ but not to the detriment of her clients. When presented with leads on her own case, has a hesitancy to follow them that she doesn’t understand.

Anyone out there struggling with their own re-writes, or first drafts, or inspirations?

What's the opposite of procrastination?

On Monday the 29th of December, I ordered a large corkboard and a pack of multicolored index cards. It’d been about a month since NaNoWriMo and I was itching to start revising my story. Of course, I didn’t really know where to start and I was super nervous. I’ve never revised anything before—in fact, I’ve rarely finished anything before. The sum total of my experience with revision is advice on NaNo boards and the show Stark Raving Mad, which had a gag in its first episode about multicolored index cards and a corkboard just to show how anal the editor was... so I figured that was probably a good place to start.

So I hemmed and hawed and discussed it with Branden (my inspiration and my support) and I wondered what I was going to write on my index cards, and once stuff was written on them, how I would stick them to the board. It was quite literally like owning paper and pencils and a ruler, but no textbooks. I was understandably confused and more than a little scared.

As part of my preparation I decided to reread some of my favorite books within my genre. As I progress (present tense!) through Darkness, Take My Hand, I can plainly see some places where I went very, very wrong. It is humbling but enlightening, and the things I believe I’ve learned through reading the book are extremely exciting to think about implementing. Of course, trying to do so will probably end up looking like a kid trying to fence based on watching a video of fencing... but I will give it my best effort, and practice will eventually make perfect. One hopes.

My goods were supposed to arrive on December 31st, fresh and waiting for me to begin work the next day—but they didn’t arrive. I was full of woe! How would I start revising if my revision materials weren’t here yet? I didn’t want to start anything on the computer, because it would lock me into a certain way of thinking and that way surely lies madness. As usual, I was allowing my black-and-white evaluations of things to block the creative process. Of course, it wasn’t even New Year’s Day yet, so my anxiety was premature.

New Year’s Day came and I discovered I was in no shape to begin revision anyway. I hadn’t had anything to drink the night before but I did stay up till after 3am, and woke up much too early. I was a zombie with a head full of sand, and was actually mostly relieved that my materials hadn’t arrived. Branden and I mercifully spent much of the day watching Supernatural with our friends, allowing someone else’s creativity wash over and inspire us.

Last night, as I settled into bed, I continued reading my book. I read late into the night, hoping that reading before bed would help me sleep better (as I’ve been getting extremely poor sleep of late), but woe, it was not to be. When I finally forced myself to put down the book, my brain was afire with tightly furled buds of ideas, and I couldn’t help myself but try to force them to bloom.

And bloom they did.

Sometime after 3am, I finally fell asleep, but every time Branden or I shifted in bed, or a cat stepped near me, or a fly sneezed somewhere in the house, I woke up again and my buzzing brain picked back up where it had left off, seemingly moments before.

In this fashion, I slept until about 7:15.

So I am here before you now with less than four hours of sleep, eagerly awaiting my corkboard and index cards, and I literally can’t wait to start. When I’m finished with my second draft, it will bear only a passing resemblance to my first, and I think that’s both amazing and wonderful, and slightly embarrassing.

Anyway, here is a line I thought up last night. In hopes to get you hooked:

A dog, fitted with electrodes behind his ears and a talk collar around his neck, shouted “hi” at me halfheartedly as I walked by.

“Hi,” I replied automatically, and immediately felt embarrassed and impotently resentful, as if I’d accidentally waved back at a pickle-costumed human advertisement.

Feels a bit tortured. Any suggestions for making it more streamlined?