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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.

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It’s Midnight Somewhere

Everyone is asleep at my house, except for me. NaNoWriMo begins at the strike of midnight, and I hope to get at least half an hour of writing in before I crash. NaNoWriMo kick off parties are happening everywhere tonight, and while I’ve never been to one, I can imagine the scene.

A door opens into a surge of energy, a waft of fresh-brewed coffee mixed with the smell of cookies and the sight of candy wrappers scattered across a table, and stories of last year’s NaNoWriMo. Cords stream from laptops to extensions to outlets, creating a web of connections between writers. Minutes before midnight, conversations crescendo, and then – at 12:01 – the noise dips to a low hum of hard drives and the curt click of keystrokes. The race is on.

I wish I were sitting with my friends, Dot and Jenny, in Portland, with a pot of coffee and giddy smiles between us. Instead, I face my laptop alone. The cursor blinks at me, and my thoughts bounce from NaNoWriMo to my pillow and warm blanket and sleep. I may be in for a long 30 days.

***

If NaNoWriMo isn’t your thing but you kind of like the idea of setting high goals in compact amounts of time, then check out Linda Cassidy’s recent post. She and a few other writing pals have designed their own Nano contest, one that promises sparkling clean results.

Or, if you’d rather just write – on your own terms – but need a firm deadline on the horizon, here are two writing contests to consider:

The Collagist’s 2009 Flash Fiction Contest
Women on Writing Fall 2009 Flash Fiction Contest

I work better under pressure, so I love deadlines.  That explains why I’m staying up past my bedtime, waiting for the two hands of the clock to flip to 12.

Right now, it’s 11:01 my time. Somewhere on the east coast, it’s after midnight. A host of voices just rose and fell, wooo!

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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.

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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.