I like to let my work sit. Not all writers do. Since I have multiple projects (including novels, short stories, non-fiction, and poetry) on the go at any one time, and I'm always ahead of schedule, I can afford to do this. I typically let my work sit for six months. This gives me time to rethink what I've written, but having a time limit on how long a book or poem is allowed to sit for keeps me from toying with it needlessly (and forever).
When I do revisit my older works, I inevitably find things to change. This is great. It means that the book, poem, or article will go off to the editor/publisher as polished as possible. I'm finding things that weren't perfect the first time around and making the entire work better. There can't be anything wrong with this. Can there?
Well, let's talk about the torment of the entire situation. If I read a sentence and can't believe I wrote it, it's a little bit of a blow. Not a big one. I'm a writer, I can cope with changes (whether those are made by me or someone else). Still ... the idea that I could write a sentence that isn't perfect is annoying. Yes, I know perfection is unattainable, but that's not the point. Revising is still not a lot of fun.
I typically revise for three weeks. That's it. I don't make any changes after that unless asked to by the publisher/editor. I should be happy, right? I am. Right up until I read my own book a year later. I always find something I wish I could change. A piece of plot I didn't include. A minor character I didn't flesh out. A word I wouldn't have used. Dialogue that could have been wittier.
In most cases, the work has already been published and it relatively unchangeable. Even if I could change it, it's not usually a good idea to make significant changes. So I have to live with an imperfect work. And that can make me just a little sad.
But there's a bright spot in all of this. When I look back on books written three or more years ago and I note all the things I'd change, all the things I'd do better, I'm heartened. I've progressed as a writer. I'm better at my job now than I was three years ago. And three years from now I'll be better at my job than I am now.
I'm growing as a writer. The torment of knowing that there are things I'd change in past books is lessened by the knowledge that each subsequent book is better than the last. And this is a wonderful thing.
I spent most of this week populating my novels with new and unique characters. It's a novelists job, to keep pumping out the characters. And I don't like limp characters in my novels. I like people with spunk, who are exciting and fun to be around. Bascially, I like realistic characters. But, when you've written dozens of stories, you start to run out of new characters.
Or do you? Look around you. Maybe not right now as you might be sitting on your computer in your own home. But next time you're out for a walk or on your way to work, glance around. There are people. More people if you live in the city, but there are still people out in the country. People going to work, people you live with, extended family. We all know some people. And we can observe more still. With so many people around, how can any writer claim to run out of characters for a book?
So this week I looked around. I watched friends and family, I watched people at the grocery store, and I watched families as I took my own children sledding this past weekend. Some of these people probably thought I was pretty strange with my notepad and pen, but that's okay. I watched and I listened. And I had a lot of fun as I realized once again that people are just plain weird. "Truth is stranger than fiction" has never been more real than it was this past week.
But all these people will make great characters. And I had a lot of fun imagining what they'd do in the situations in my novels. It was exciting and entertaining and certainly useful. There are so many different people in the world that I quickly found myself with more characters than I needed. Some of them are neatly written down and stored in my filing cabinet for future use in whatever story I come up with next.
So if you're having trouble creating well rounded characters, look to your neighbors. And your family. And whoever else you happen to encounter. Then insert them into a fictional situation and see what happens. Just remember to change everyone's name so they don't recognize themselves!
This has been a bit of a tough week for me. It's now December and I'm rushing a bit to complete all my 2012 projects before 2013 sneaks up on us. I'm finishing two non-fiction books, have a children's novel that I swore to my editor would be finished a month ago, and I'm revising and editing The Courtship, which is due out next year. I'd consider rewriting the entire thing, but I think my editor might come at me with a pitchfork if I do that again.
So this had been a tough week. Too much to do and not quite enough time to finish it all. So what did I do? I took a nap. That's right. Four projects that really should have been finished in November still sitting on my plate, and I decide to take a good long nap. Why? Because when we sleep, we dream. And dreams inspire us.
I certainly needed some of that inspiration this week. Writing a novel is a tricky thing. It needs skill, talent, luck, and inspiration. I can command the skill and the talent, and the luck is usually with me anyway, but the inspiration can run off just when I needed it most. So I used my dreams as a source of inspiration. People in my dreams became characters in my novels. Places become settings I'm proud of. Plots come out of the rather random things that happen in my dreams. And it all comes together, sometimes over several nights (or widely spaced naps).
This is what I did this week. And while it might seem like I spent a lot of time doing nothing but sleeping, I actually got far more done this week than I did last week. If the next four week go as well, I'll meet my goals with time to spare.
Here's hoping.
Accidents happen. And sometimes these are happy accidents. This is true of everything in life from finding a job to driving a car to writing a novel. What are happy accidents for a novelist? Well, they can be a lot of things. Perhaps that character in Chapter Three whose only purpose was to bring drinks to the table can suddenly play a significant role in Chapter Seventeen. Or you randomly explained how that serial killer escaped police custody and find out that it's actually a major plot point later on. There are lots of little accidents that happen when we're writing, even if we like to plot out each and every little detail.
This week I ran into a happy accident of my own while writing my current story. Weeks ago, when I had just started on my current novel, I was writing Chapter One (because I was at the beginning, of course). I had a couple of random characters in that chapter whose only purpose was to allow the protagonist to have a conversation with someone of no significance. Having conversations with someone who doesn't matter is what this particular character does, and he does it frequently.
Well, this week I was working on Chapter Twenty-Four. I'm basically halfway though this first draft. And suddenly the characters from the first chapter made a reappearance. They became useful in a way I'd never anticipated. I'd certainly never planned on ever using them again. But they just fit the situation and I didn't have to do much to establish them as characters because they had already been introduced. Okay, so I have to go back and tweek Chapter One just a little (by about ten words). No problem.
The point is that happy accidents result in some of the best parts of a book. No matter how much we plan out a story, it will inevitably surprise us. And this is the best part of writing a novel.
I was working on a particularly intense part of my next novel this week and it just wasn't coming together. It wasn't writer's block because I could write. It was more like I was writing the wrong thing. My prose was off and the words were not sticking to the page. It just wasn't happening for me this week.
After much thought, I realized what the problem was. I wasn't digging deep enough. The emotion wasn't there and without that emotion, this particular scene was going to fall flat and would not contribute to the final novel. And if it wasn't going to contribute, I needed to either cut the scene or fix the problem.
Cutting the scene was not an option, so I had to fix it. I had to find the emotion that would fuel the scene. This is often the key to writing a novel. Of course, it's easy to say "find the emotion." It's much harder to actually do it. After three days of agonizing over this, I turned to the most emotional form of writing I know -- poetry.
I wrote the scene as poetry instead of prose. I let it form in verse and suddenly my brain was engaged. I was digging for the real meat of the scene and leaving behind that which just didn't fit. If there wasn't room for it in the poem, it didn't belong in the prose. Once I had the entire scene written as a poem, I went back and converted the poem into prose. And I am immensely pleased with the results.
Did this take me a little longer than simply writing the scene would have? Well, yes (if I'd actually been able to write the thing in a satisfying way). But the results are more than worth the effort. So if you find yourself in a bind while writing your first novel (or your tenth), try using a little bit of poetry to reengage a sluggish brain.
I was giving a lecture at the local university this week and we were talking about how to choose what to write. Which genre should you pick? Fiction or non-fiction? And inevitably someone piped and and said that writers should only write what they know.
I hate this little bit of "advice" that seems to pop up frequently. It really doesn't help anyone. Why should a writer confine herself (I'm a woman, I'm going to use the feminine here; no offense to the guys) to what she currently knows when she can go out and learn just about anything. It's a limiting viewpoint and not something I subscribe to. Especially when it comes to giving advice to students, since they don't know as much now as they will 10 years from now. They could get stuck in a mentality that will never lend itself to the best they're capable of.
So I amended the statement. My exact words were, "Let's change that up a little bit and say that you should write what you're interested in. You can always go out and learn something new." What does this mean? Well, maybe you want to write a non-fiction book on learning to ride horses but you've never even touched a horse in your life. You can still write the book. Get out there and learn to ride and write a book about it.
Doesn't this mean that you're now writing what you know? Well, yes, but you didn't know how to ride a horse before you got the idea for the book. The point is that you should never let the statement "write what you know" direct your writing. Instead, go with your heart. What do you love to write about? Horses? Fantasies? Murder mysteries? We all have things we love, and we should direct our efforts to these areas.
If you can do this, you'll soon find that the words just pour out of you and take their place on the page.
I talk to other writers a lot. Probably two or even three hours a day. I talk to aspiring writers and I talk to seasoned professionals. I even talk to agents and editors on a regular basis. I truly enjoy most of the time I spend interacting with other people in my field of work (I write for a living), but there are weeks when I probably should have just ignored everyone and focused on my writing.
Why? Because this week I encountered no less then six people, aspiring writers all, who simply cannot take advice. It's really maddening. And I'm not talking about these people taking my advice. I'm talking about them not taking ANY advice, not from anyone. Not from an agent who replied that the work was just too long or the editor who stated that the conversation was just too trite. These aspiring writers simply refused to acknowledge that their writing was anything less than perfect. And these are people who hope to be published!
I'm not saying you have to change your story over every little bit of advice you get, but you have to be open to feedback. As a writer, or an aspiring writer, you have to keep an open mind and understand that advice can often improve your story, hone your skills, and increase the chance of your work making it past the slush pile. The advice of critics can and will make you a better writer, but only if you're willing to hear it.
If someone with experience gives you advice, you should seriously consider it. A publisher, editor, or agent is usually an expert in the field. Others writers who have been published have a good idea of what works and what doesn't. If someone you trust tells you something is just not working within the story, do yourself a favor and really look at ways of improving your book.
And, if you absolutely refuse to accept any advice whatsoever, don't whine when you keep getting those rejections slips. Instead, frame then as a testament to your stubbornness. Harsh? Maybe, but none of us are perfect. I've never written a book that hasn't changed between the first draft and the last, and I'm pretty sure other authors haven't either.
I hear it all the time. "I'd love to write, but I'm too busy." "I've been waiting for inspiration." "I've got kids." Well, guess what? Writers write. I've had this conversation at least three times this week, once in person and twice over the Internet. And hearing all these excuses (and many more) is starting to grate on my nerves. If you want to write, sit down and do it. Stop telling me why you can't and get to work.
Sound harsh? Well, so far this year I've produced (under various pseudonyms) a 100,000-word novel, 2 collections of short stories totalling 60,000 words, a non-fiction book of 55,000 words and two work books that go with that non-fiction book. That's a total of 265,000 words published so far this year. That isn't counting my 10 blogs, each of which gets a weekly posting of sometimes 1000 words or more, and all the work that hasn't gone off to the editor yet, including another 100,000-word novel. I've written well over 1 million words this year, and the year isn't over yet.
And I did this while raising 2 kids, only one of whom is in school (the younger one is still only 4 years old). Not only that, but I had major surgery to remove a tumor from my abdomen in February and I'm struggling toward my PhD in English. Just this week alone I've had to deal with lawyers and sick children, and I still produced 20,000 words.
I'm not bragging here and I certainly don't think every writer needs to write 20,000 words in a week. Many (most) writers need to hold a full-time job while taking care of a family. Writing is my full-time job, so I can write for hours a day. In fact, I have to write for hours a day to make a living. But anyone can write 1000 words a week. That's barely more than 100 words a day. Excuses will get you nowhere.
So what am I asking aspiring writers to do? Stop making excuses. Either start writing or admit that you're not going to start writing and move on. But don't whine and complain about how you don't have time or you can't think of anything to write about. No one has time. Everyone runs into writer's block. Everyone has things that happen in their lives, sometime major things like serious illness or a death in the family. But you either write or you don't.
Let's take the excuses out of writing and get back to the task at hand. Let's get back to our passion, to writing.
When writing, especially when writing novels or other works that demand a significant amount of time, it's easy to fall prey to vanity. It's easy to think about publication, and how to alter and change your story until it's what you think of as "publishable." It happens to everyone, even seasoned authors who've published forty books and are working on number forty-one. You might think that worrying about producing a "publishable" book should be an author's first concern, but you'd be wrong.
It happens to me sometimes. In fact, it happened this week. I was working on the first draft of a novel that as yet has no title, and I started approaching it all wrong. I started thinking about what my agent would want, what the editor might change, and how the publisher might market the book. Instead of writing a first draft, I was working on what would probably be the third. And I was skipping the most crucial steps, so I began to lose the core of the story I was trying to tell. Not good.
When you're at the beginning of your journey, when you're just starting to write that book, you absolutely shouldn't be focused on getting published. Until you have a workable product, there's no point in worrying about what you'll eventually do with it. So forget about being published. Dismiss the vanity that comes with imaging yourself as a bestselling author. Put all that aside.
I had to. I managed to. After two days of playing agent/editor/publisher, I remembered that I am a writer. My job is to use the power of the written word to weave a tale that's consistent, well written, and has a solid theme and premise. And I have to focus on that job until it's done. First draft, here I come.
Leave your vanity at the door when you first start working on that novel. Don't think about the world or how your neighbor might react to your words. Write a powerful story, regardless of genre, without any concern for how it might eventually be received. There's time for polishing and primping later. Pretend that no one but you will see the story. You'll stick it in a drawer somewhere and eventually, after you're dead and buried, one of your great-grandchildren might find it. Craft the story you need to tell. Later, hopefully with the aid of a skilled editor, it can be turned into something that may eventually sell to the general public. But now is not the time for that.
Once I'd remembered this, my fingers flew over the keyboard. My first draft is coming along nicely, my characters are developing (when they're not stopping in at the local pub for a beer), and the plot is shaping up. Of course, I had to delete the first two days' worth of work, but that's okay. The 'delete' key is there for a reason.
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