Posted on

Writer Down, but Not Out

In the beginning, it always sucks.

Saturday night I stayed up well past my bedtime and punched out a little over 1000 words. I liked the opening scene, the characters seemed happy with my plot. I crawled into bed and dreamed about the story.

I couldn’t write again until Sunday night, but all day I brainstormed ideas and dialogue and visualized the characters. Midday, my inner-editor suggested I combine the characters from last year’s story with this year’s story (maybe that’s the problem with last year’s novel – right characters, wrong story). It sounded reasonable and feasible. At 8pm, I sat down and punched out another 1000 words.

But, after 2000+ words, I hated the story. It felt flat and the characters sounded forced, so I did the unthinkable during NaNoWriMo. I deleted, not everything, but about half. I let my inner-editor get the best of me.

Last year about this time, I battled the same doubts and deleting temptations . A chapter or two into the story, I threw my main character in front of a car. Then I thought, that’s just silly. Predictable and silly. I can’t possibly write the next 47,682 words from a hospital bed. I went back and downplayed the whole car scene and re-wrote my character riding safely through the intersection.

During my off-writing time yesterday, I read Natalie Whipple’s recent post on writing a first draft, and one tip stuck with me: Write how YOU write. She reminds us, “The only writer you can be is you. The only story you can write is your own. The only way you’re going to stand out in the market is by channeling your own unique voice. So just accept that and enjoy it.”

Day one of NaNoWriMo, I tried to weave a story like I was some great writer whom I won’t name because it’s really embarrassing that I would even think I could write that way. And, as I spelled out the scenes, the characters didn’t like it one bit, and neither did I. When I went back and rewrote in my own style, the pressure lifted and the characters cooperated.

I admit, I still worry the story will play out like a Hallmark movie (no offense, Hallmark, but I’m hoping for something with a little more meat). So, as I turn to my laptop this afternoon, I will be posting two mantras at the edge of my screen:

1) This is only an exercise. If the story reads jerky and nauseating, like a ride on a wooden roller coaster, it doesn’t matter. No one will go to jail, nor will I lose my day job.

2) “Write as you write,” Christi Craig-style. And, forget about crafting the great American novel, for now.

Posted on

The Importance of Shades of Gray

I love this week’s theme on Wordsmith.org: eponyms.

Today’s word, as quoted from Wordsmith’s site:

manichean. adjective: Of or relating to a dualistic view of the world, dividing things into either good or evil, light or dark, black or white, involving no shades of gray.

ETYMOLOGY:
After Manes/Mani (216-276 CE), Persian founder of Manichaeism, an ancient religion espousing a doctrine of a struggle between good and evil.

***

I heard it or read it somewhere: writing is a solitary act, but it cannot be done in isolation. If you’re not a writer (and of manichean tendencies), you might think that sentence contradicts itself. Writing is, or it isn’t, a solitary act.

But, I find, in writing, there are no black and white, right or wrong answers most of the time.

Two writer’s whose blogs I frequent, Linda Cassidy and Cathryn Grant, both posted this week on the subject of genre descriptions and the struggle to find the right category for your novel. Linda posted a link to AgentQuery’s genre descriptions, and, though my novel is several rewrites away from being agent-ready, I could relate to the struggle of choosing a genre. AgentQuery starts out by comparing the job of classifying a novel to the question, “Where are you from?”

I’m from Wisconsin. Well, really I was born and raised in Texas. So, I’m from Texas. Right? I’ve lived in Wisconsin long enough, but my heart is still….

You get the point. It’s a tough question that only I know the answer to, and the answer isn’t one or the other. In the world of genre categories, nothing is clear-cut either. Genre descriptions overlap and interweave and can drive an author mad.

My struggles with my work-in-progress henge on my resistance to rewrites. I’ve been sitting on the premise that a rewrite must go from beginning to end and back again. After several encouraging comments from other writers on a recent post of mine, I thought, okay, I’ll break it down, piece by piece, and address those parts that don’t work. But until I read Linda’s and Cathryn’s posts, I stared blankly at the story and wondered, which parts don’t work?

What does all this have to do with queries and categories, you ask? Let go of the linear, and hear me out.

Linda’s and Cathryn’s posts, and AgentQuery’s descriptions, gave me pause and shed a new light my novel. I asked myself, in what genre would my story fit? I came up with an answer of what I don’t want, and then my mind flashed through several scenes in need of fixing, or deleting. That may be a minute part of the writing process for some authors, but, for me, the experience was like a jump-start.

In the last several months, I’ve connected with a number of great writers online, my own mini virtual salon. In this online community of writers, our experiences overlap. One writer’s struggle highlights my own, but in a different way. Even if I read others’ posts that describe steps and struggles in the publishing process that are well beyond my reach, I learn. When they comment on my posts, I grow in the same way as a writer who might be sitting in a cafe, sipping coffee with my colleagues, reading our work face to face. As a mother of two young children with little time to write – much less, time to get out for coffee, alone – I cherish these relations and their dialogue.

Posted on

Gearing Up for a 30 Day Workout

nano_09_red_participant_100x100_1“[W]riting is physical,” Natalie Goldberg says in her book, Writing Down the Bones (p.50). I, along with many of my other NaNoWriMo participant colleagues (I think), would agree.

Last year at this time, I dove – head on – into writing. I’d been talking about writing all summer. I registered for a writing class that would take place just after the new year. And, in a rare move contradictory to my no-risk personality, I signed up for NaNoWriMo. Even more surprising, I wrote a somewhat lucid story that inched passed the 50,000 word count. Up until the moment the purple NaNo word meter hit the 50,000 mark and flashed “you’re a winner,” I authored only short, undeveloped stories that barely registered 1000 words.

This year, I signed up for NaNoWriMo by accident. Really. I logged on to my account to check up on an old message in my inbox. When a window full of legalese popped up and asked if I would accept, I thought, sure, I’ve been here before. Click.

Wait. Accept? Accept what? Oh, boy.

I tabbed over to my author info page. Sure enough, that little purple line was back down to zero. It stared me in the face, like a digital taunt, daring me to try again.

I’ve had to remind myself, as the days inch toward November 1st, that NaNoWriMo is another exercise in writing. Natalie Goldberg emphasizes the importance of exercise when she says “[t]he rule for writing practice of “keeping your hand moving,” not stopping, actually is a way to physically break through your mental resistances and cut through the concept that writing is just about ideas and thinking” (p.50). She, of course, means pen-to-paper. But, I believe, in translating her philosophy to hand-to-keyboard, NaNoWriMo offers a 30-day plan to whip my writer’s mind in shape: “cut through” my tendency to think too hard about a story, pound out 2000 words a day (on a good day), and see what becomes of the characters and the work.

NaNoWriMo is initiation by fire for those writers who want to come out of hiding. It’s a test of tolerance and discipline. And, it’s an intervention with your mind’s editor, a reason to send her away for the next 30 days. If writing 50,000 words of one story makes you want to take a nap, if you’d rather dream up your story than put it down on “paper,” remember writing is an art to be learned and practiced. No good story comes out perfect the first time around. I’ve heard it over and over, but my stubborn (sometimes egotistical) mind refuses to listen.

To combat that stubbornness, I’ll take on another 30-day challenge of late nights, fast typing, sweat, and a maybe a few tears. Oh, and fun. NaNoWriMo is supposed to be fun!

***

Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones (Boston, MA: Shambhala Publications, Inc, 1986), p. 50.