Tag Archives: novel writing process

The Post that Wasn’t

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Well, I’ve been trying to finish up a post for today and it’s not happening. I think I’m too tired to make the thoughts come together. What I’ve written is seeming increasingly disjointed, and that’s telling me I’m too tired and need to give it up. At least for today.

Instead, I’ll just report that I’m continuing with my little routine of 15 minute tasks, though today’s stint of actually working with Sky went for about an hour and a half. I’ve upped that portion of the routine to 30 minutes and so far, not too bad.

I read some really cool stuff in my old journal as well. It pretty well describes how I felt today:

“Even the tenuous concepts I’d begun to develop have been shattered by these new questions. Questions I don’t seem able to answer. And then I begin to shrink away even from thinking of the questions. I don’t want to open the door and see all that chaos. I don’t even begin to know how to put it into order…”

Yup, that’s how I felt today. But I also came across another entry that was backed up by something I read online to the effect that I have to be patient. That it’s unrealistic to expect it all to come together easily and quickly. I need to just relax and trust the process, something I’ve never done well.  But after six books you’d think I might have reason to trust. To just keep going back to the work, not demanding that I come to a decision today, or that it all fall into place, just keep coming back, keep reading, and thinking and eventually, things will gel.

And now it’s after ten and I need to go to bed. Still have ironing to do… 🙁

 

And Finally, Task Five

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Last week I related how I was gently returning to the saddle of working on my current novel, The Other Side of the Sky or my “Work In Progress,” by means of with five tasks that I pursued in 15 minute increments:

Task 1:  write in my log or do morning pages

Task 2: Declutter organize the office (this project is coming along nicely. Soon I may not have to devote any time to decluttering the office)

Task 3: Read something about writing (I’m reading my old log from 2000)

Task 4:  Answer fan letters

and now Task Five:  do something that specifically relates to Sky.

Last week that was writing a nonstop — fast, stream-of-consciousness writing capturing my thoughts about the book at the moment.  It was also looking through one stack of 3×5 cards, each with a question and jotted answers on it relating to basics of the book. I got these from a Writer’s Digest article (Feb 1992) by Jack Bickham called Short Story Blueprint, and have used them to start off every book I’ve written. Questions like,

1. What kind of story is it?  — in this case, Sky is an action/adventure, science fiction/allegory with romantic subplot…

2. What is the setting? — alternate world, underground civilization without connection or direct referents to earth. Thanatos is the name of the empire, and yes, it might be clichéd, most people might know that Thanatos is Greek for death, but right now, I don’t care. I love the sound of it. Like the sound of its inhabitants, as well: Thanosians…

3. In what time period is it set?  — irrelevant since it’s a created world, but the culture will be Roman flavored.

4. Who is the main character? — Lucius Tyrus Meranius aged 24 at the start; ten years later called Talmas. A former aristocrat and decorated soldier in line to be made heir, betrayed unto death, but survives to become an Ouranian. He returns to his family and home city only to be betrayed again and for the bulk of the book is a slave to the Delphenian Ambassador.

A secondary main character is Nolenius Iylantia or Iyla, daughter of the Delphenian Ambassador.

The remaining questions are:

5. What is the main character like?

6. What does he want or lack?

7. Why is it vital to have this?

8. Who is the antagonist?

9. What is the antagonist like?

10. What is his/her plan? How will he fight the protagonist and try to thwart him?

11. Why is it essential to the antagonist’s happiness to fight the hero, persuade him to make the wrong decision or keep him from discovering what might bring him peace?

12. What secondary characters are there who help or hinder the hero?

13. What is the story’s time frame? Hours? Days? Weeks? Years?

14. How does the story start?

15. How does the story end?

16. What dramatic scenes do you envision?

17. Who will your viewpoint characters be?

All of the questions do have answers on the cards, but some of them are not answered very well. Seeing as they were intended to help with the generation of a short story (and for people who had never written one, at that,) and that not only am I writing a novel, but a complex one, I have to tweak them a bit — I have multiple antagonists, for example. I have a hero and a heroine. So I answer the same questions for each of them. I’m not exactly sure what the hero wants. I have an answer, but I’m not sure I like it. I’m also not sure why it’s vital to the hero that he gains what he wants.

I think sometimes this sort of exercise is helpful in jogging some thoughts free, but at the same time, for me the characters kind of have to show me. I can’t just say, he wants freedom. Or he wants a wife and family which he knows that as a slave he can never have… But there is value in setting down wrong answers, just as there is value in setting down right ones. If you set down a wrong answer, at least you know what you don’t want. Or if you can’t think of anything better, at least you can proceed with the not so good answer and see where it leads. Always it’s led me to where I want to be, though sometimes not until the third or fourth drafts.

Right now I know how the story starts. I have an idea how it ends. I know who some of my viewpoint characters will be… I have five chapters written, and some ideas for dramatic scenes…

Now I’m going back through it all, reacquainting myself with my characters and the world I’m developing.

Tentatively Back in the Saddle

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As the title of this post suggests, I’ve tentatively returned to the saddle of actually attending to my Work In Progress, hereafter, as much as I can remember, to be referred to as my WIP.  (That’s the official, professional writer designation…)  Anyway, for a whopping TWO consecutive days now, I’ve actually gone into my office and done something somewhat related to writing.

When I found myself repeatedly avoiding the work, bored by the very thought of it, unable to figure out why it bored me, I decided to be very nice to myself, gently insisting at first that all I need do was come into the room for a period of time. I’ve been in here working on decluttering, taking stuff out of the closet, getting rid of some of it to make room for stuff from other rooms and the stuff on the bed in the office … and berating myself for not attending to the writing.

So I turned it around. Using the essential Flylady timer, I decided I would do writing things in the 15 minute blocks Flylady likes to call baby steps. I aim for coming into the office around 9 or 10 in the morning, but if that doesn’t happen, afternoons will work too. Then I decided on five things I would do while I’m in here.

In keeping with the spirit of The Artist’s Way, which you may recall I was working on last winter, first up would be 15 minutes of writing in my writing log or doing morning pages, whatever I wanted to do/call it.

Next, 15 minutes of decluttering the office until it’s done. After all… I was doing it anyway, it was in the office and writing related since the clutter and mounds of stuff have been very distracting mentally .

Task 3 is 15 minutes of reading about writing. I have a number of writing books on my shelves I haven’t read, and others I have and could easily reread to my advantage and it was to one of these I thought I’d turn. Instead, I felt led to pick out my own journal kept from May 2000 through January of 2002, chronicling my journey through the beginnings of Enclave (then referred to as Black Box) and my current WIP (ha ha! I remembered the acronym!).  One of the first things I came upon in reading my own journal from over ten years ago– at least two years before any of my books had sold — was this:

“Well, I’m officially at work on Black Box now, after several days of easing into it. I have some pages of log on the computer, beginning (over a year ago) the day I first developed the characters — very sketchy, but names and some form at least. My complaint then was that it does not seem Meaningful like Arena and (The Light of) Eidon, just a ditzy little thriller…

“The next entry was (a day later) — I checked out books. After that, the next one is this month… So here we go… I feel blank and at a loss, but hey that’s old hat. That’s almost the way I’m supposed to feel…”

Several paragraphs later…

“I’ve made some progress but… This is interesting. I am bored. I’m trying to get going on Black Box and I’m not excited or inspired at all. Is it me? Is it the spark of life that’s missing? Is it that I’m pretty sure Arena’s not going to be bought this month and thus Eidon is a complete waste? It’s a good book, but it’s not going anywhere (publishing-wise). The only one with hope of going somewhere is Black Box and I don’t care about it. Is that a problem?”

Well, seeing as this is exactly how I’ve been feeling about  The Other Side of the Sky, minus the angst about whether it’s going to sell or not, since it already has, that was quite encouraging. And this even more so:

“I’m feeling restless, like I’m wasting my time, but I think all this is part of my process and is okay.  Understanding what I’m doing and why, will help me look in the right direction when it comes to my ruminations. Last night I spent some time listening to Lorie Line and trying to get hold of who Cameron is and why I should admire him…I also went through the oldest of my journals I could find — May of ’93 –wherein I was already to chapter 10 of rough draft on Arena and feeling lost, frustrated, etc. I was basically feeling my way along. Nothing but the broadest of outlines (at the time)…”

This is all SO familiar. You’d think I’d be used to it by now, but I never seem to be.  And yet… and yet, as I mentioned in the pages I’ve just been quoting from, it’s clear that God’s intention for me is that I do the work as unto Him, with the proper power system (filled with the Holy Spirit) and motivation (to bring glory to Him; to obey Him in using this gift He’s given me) and leave the results to Him.

It’s just so darned uncomfortable. It feels so much like I’m doing nothing but wandering around. It feels very incompetent.

Nevertheless…

“By means of faith, Abraham, when he was called, obeyed by going out to a place which he was to receive for an inheritance; and he went out, NOT KNOWING WHERE HE WAS GOING.” ~ Heb 11:8

Some Writing Happened

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I have to put it that way. I don’t feel like I “wrote”. It just happened. Of course, writing happens everyday, since I usually write something… in one journal or another. But not on Sky.

Today I kept thinking about going into the office and doing something, but… didn’t. Until around 2:40, when I decided to just try a micro step: “Just go write a paragraph,” I told myself. “Or even a sentence. Or just resolve one issue. Then you can quit.” So I went in and did that. And somehow that opened the doors and I moved through five pages of chapter 1. This is not first draft, this is first draft repair. As in try to shape it so it actually makes sense. Try to answer all the questions in the margins like, if So and So is so good at prognosticating, why didn’t he predict this very obvious and inevitable result of existing political tensions? If Whatshisname is terrible in a crisis why did all his superiors leave him in charge when they had to know a crisis was brewing? Should he be wimpy or just ornery? Why is this other guy Chief of Security for a religious enclave? Would a religious enclave have  a “Security” force? If so, why?

And so on.

But… five pages. And they just came. I’m quite pleased.

Moodling

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Yesterday somehow I was led to this really cool, really relevant quote from Brenda Ueland who wrote a book in the 1930’s called “If You Want to Write: A Book About Art, Independence and Spirit.”

I think I’ve read it, but I’m not sure I read it all the way through. I recall a similar statement to this, but I could’ve sworn it was by Dorothea Brande, who wrote a similar book around the same time called Becoming a Writer, whose book I did read and all the way through. I’ve just reserved Ueland’s from the library.

Anyway, here’s the quote:

“So you see, imagination needs moodling — long, inefficient, happy idling, dawdling and puttering.”

As the author of the article I found this in said, “Sounds lovely, doesn’t it?”  Oh yeah, The article itself, on the website Exploring Women’s Creativity is entitled “Take Time for Creative Moodling.” The subtitle is, “Relax and Take it Easy; It Helps Enhance Your Creativity.”

How’s that? Well, it has to do with the type of waves your brain generates. Alpha waves, induced by the relaxed, puttering state, are where you get your greatest bursts of creativity. When you’re focused on what you’re going to do next, or how to accomplish your goals (“focused concentration”) that’s Beta waves and they’re too focused to entertain the types of whimsical, “irrelevant” thoughts that go along with creating something new. If you’re too tired, you pass right through the Alpha state and into the theta state, which is drowsiness, and from there into delta… zzzzzz. 

I could SO relate to all of this.  More tonorrow. Maybe.

It’s Official

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During our meeting at the skydiving place last Thursday, my editor said she would take some of my questions to her boss and let me know what his answers were. Today she was back at work and true to her word, sent me those answers.

The first is that Bethany House has indeed approved the story idea for The Other Side of the Sky!  So it’s official and I can now begin working on it in earnest. Not that I wasn’t before, really, just that it’s nice to stop wondering if any day I’m going to get a “Thanks but no thanks” and have to drop it all to come up with another idea. Not that I wondered overmuch, mind you.

I’ve been reading a lot about Jerusalem over the last few days. Why was the Temple destroyed, what happened after that, why is the area called Palestine, what is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre about, etc. Today I went looking for maps. Not that I’m writing about Jerusalem — I’m not —  but I find that reading about historical things gives me lots of ideas.

The other day I was trying to go through my five pages of notes on the prologue and kept getting cross-eyed so I decided I’d go through and just write down all the questions the notes I had were generating. I put each question on a small business sized card and ended up with 39 cards. Many of the questions were of the “Should it be A or B?” nature. No wonder I was getting overwhelmed.  If I’m trying to follow some kind of simple narrative and with every step have several options… it doesn’t take much before you can’t even hold it all in your head anymore.

Sort of like this.  I’m going to write a story about a girl and three bears. Or should it be a boy?  And maybe only two bears. Or maybe they should be raccoons. Or deer. If they were deer how would that change the story? What if they were owls?  Okay, so she goes into the woods… or do I want it to be a moor? Do bears live in moors? I’d better go look that up. Okay. No, bears don’t live in moors. What about deer? Oh, but I want them to be eating porridge and I don’t think deer eat porridge. Maybe they could be eating salad.

Let’s go back to the bears for now. So she gets to their house and knocks on the door. Would the bears leave their door unlocked? Well, why not? They’re bears. So she knocks and goes in and finds … what? A sofa? A TV? A pile of pine needles? I wish I knew what this story was going to be about…

See? Like that. So now I have a whole stack of cards about stuff that happened in the story maybe 1000 years before the actual events of the story (or should it be 500 years? Or 100 years?) so that I can figure out why things are the way they are in the present story time. Politics, government, people groups, and the actual physical location…

My hope is that once I get these things more or less determined, then maybe I can not only start writing but keep it up for a time. 

Seriously, I do hope that. LOL.  Oh, and there was one “comment” from BHP and that was their hope that I would try to tell my story in the fewest words possible in the interest of attracting a potentially broader readership. Apparently there are many readers who are scared off by long-looking books. I, on the other hand, pass up on books that are too short. Seriously. I don’t like short books. They’re just too…

…short.

I am such a dinosaur. 🙂

Do the Next Thing

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“Waiting is the rule, not the exception. When the door is closed and the stage is empty…we’re to wait resting. In patience. Patience is the ability to (sit back and) wait for an expected outcome without experiencing tension, anxiety or frustration.”

I have been avoiding work  for the last hour and a half or so (I ate lunch and watched rain, so it wasn’t all idleness) because I’ve been afraid. Afraid that the summary I wrote yesterday will turn out to be much worse than I think it is, that I won’t know how to fix it and have to start over. Also, afraid because I don’t know what I’m going to do besides read through the summary. I think of the book and an avalanche of disconnected thoughts and ideas sweeps over me. I have no idea how to make order of it all, no idea how to take a small bite, no plan, no goal, nothing…So I dither and stall and procrastinate.

And then I think the Holy Spirit brought two things to mind (since I asked for help) 1) that I can take the “sit back” part out of the above quote and just think, “Patience is the ability to wait for an expected outcome without experiencing tension, anxiety or frustration.” It doesn’t mean I sit back and do nothing, necessarily. Elizabeth Elliot noted that “God’s guidance comes most often when men are doing what they normally are supposed to do. David was taking care of the sheep, Samuel serving in the temple when God called them. ‘Do the next thing’ is one of the best pieces of advice I have ever had. It works in any kind of situation and is especially helpful when we don’t know what to do. What if we don’t even know what the next thing is? We can find something. Some duty that lies on our doorstep. The rule is DO IT. The doing of that next thing may open our eyes to the next.”

So right now, what is my next thing? Well, read that dratted summary, I guess. And do it without tension, anxiety or frustration, knowing that God will do it. He will guide me, tell me which way to go and what to do next. I have only to ask…

——

[Note: I wrote the above last Monday, early afternoon. But then the Lord showed me what I needed to do, and I ended up pulling most of my summary/synopsis together, all but the last two paragraphs. By the time I was done, I was too tired to even think about a blog post. In fact, I’d forgotten I’d even written one. Then  yesterday I came across that Global Warming article and felt that a post on it needed to go up in a timely manner. Then I found this “Do it Next” post… and as I’ve continued to focus on the principles in it, it seemed a good one to put up, even if it was “out of order.”

The synopsis is now done and sent in to Bethany House. I await their response.]

Been Here Before

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Well, for three days now I have actually spent several hours every day working on Sky. On Friday I thought I might have a one-page synopsis written by Monday. On Saturday I rewrote what I’d come up with on Friday and thought it was moving along. Until the end of the day as I was reading over my five paragraphs and realized that the first four were all backstory, and I hadn’t even gotten to the actual events of the story.

So today I didn’t know what to do. What I’ve written does flow. But the actual events of the story need to begin in paragraph one, not five, and I can’t figure out how to do that and still have it all make sense.

I did get out some of my old writing notes, particular passages I’ve culled from the book Overcoming Writing Blocks, and hey! It’s familiar stuff. I’ve been here countless times before. How is it I can so easily forget that the blank mindedness, the flitting from thing to thing, the inability to concentrate, the feeling of being overwhelmed by all the possibilities, all the notes and folders and stacks of papers with their seemingly unrelated ideas… how can I so easily forget that it was exactly like this in every book I’ve ever written?

Well, one of the things those passages mention is the importance of time. After wrestling with the material a bit, you give it a rest and come back refreshed the next day, which is what I think I’ll do.

She Went Out Not Knowing

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Today, to my surprise, since it did not seem at all likely at the beginning, I actually got back to work on Sky. Briefly. Not terribly productively but, I did. The first thing I did was to go in, stare at my stack of folders and then start a nonstop. Which I’m going to share here, thereby killing two birds with one stone [ just remember nonstops are stream of consciousness; I’ve edited only to clarify the gibberishy parts]:

Well, I’m in here, finally. Ready to work. Sort of. By that I mean, I’m here in the chair, I have nothing else to do except maybe eat, because I’m hungry and it’s past lunch time. I have done this over and over.  Sit down finally, stare at the stack, nothing in my head. I just sit there staring at it, wanting to do anything else. So try rebounding…  This is my gift. God will give me the ability to do what He wants me to do.  Fear and discouragement and frustration are emotions of disbelief in the fact that He has all under control.

That my Father, like me, actually intended that I should have been working all this time and whoa! Look at what happened! We’ve gotten nothing done. So then He’s going to condemn me, right? Tell me what a bad girl I am because I didn’t do what I was supposed to do. Okay, that’s nuts, He would never do that. But then I get angry. “Well, God if you intended all this other stuff to happen and me to be so undisciplined, then why…

Hmmm… is it an accident that I just read Jennifer McGuire’s (Hero Arts artist) blog about how she gets all her zillion cards done? When she goes over to mom’s for dinner she brings images to color while chatting. In the car she cuts out shapes while driving a long way to church. Um. I have to drive myself and I wouldn’t be able to see if I tried to color at my mother’s because it’s too dark. Plus we don’t go over there for dinner any more. I could do it while watching TV but I don’t like doing that. So.

Now my hand is falling asleep from trying. And I’ve not even been writing 10 minutes. So what’s up with that? Of course I knew that I had problems. The barriers and hindrances and obstacles to writing this book have been monumental. Overpowering. I’ve not been able to even do a proposal. So… um. I stopped, distracted by email.

Am I making bad choices, Lord? Should I be focusing on my calling, the writing? Should I have not done Christmas?

I’m not getting a strong Yes! That’s what you should have done. So I’m going to conclude that it’s not. That I did everything You … well, that I mostly did what You wanted me to do. I’m a woman under authority. And my husband does take precedence.

So. I haven’t missed on Bible class. I have kept up the blog and people are reading it and are apparently edified by it. So. Now it’s time for Sky. And I want to go eat my sandwich. Hmph.

I don’t know what to do. Don’t know how to get back into the book. Lord, I need guidance. I don’t even know how to start. Read through it all again? Go read entries from when I was starting former books? Oh. Yeah. I could read that section on starting a new book…

And at that point the nonstop was interrupted by a phone call about two minutes from the timer beeping. I did eventually go read the section on the new book and found it quite helpful. The biggest help was the verse at the end:

“By means of faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed by going out to a place which he was to receive for an inheritance;  and he went out not knowing where he was going.”  ~ Hebrews 11:8

Oh yeah! That’s right. He didn’t know where he was going. Just like me Cool!