Almost three years ago I began a short personal essay for a class. It turned out okay. It satisfied the requirement for the class and I earned an A, but I knew it had more work before it was something really good. So I set it aside and came back to it months later. I extensively rewrote it and submitted it to a workshop course. There it received some of the most positive feedback of anything I submitted during my time in the MFA program. I rewrote again and entered the new version in a contest at the university. It came in third. I rewrote again. I started submitting it for publication to journals. Although I've been submitting things for years, this was the first piece to receive regular personal notes instead of only form rejections. Most of the notes were simple hand-written comments along the lines of "please consider submitting again in the future" at the bottom of the form letter. However, one journal actually included a full letter with specific critiques explaining why despite the essay's strengths they didn't feel it was quite right for them. So even though I was getting consistently positive feedback, it still wasn't accepted, so I took another look at it and rewrote again.
Months went by with no change. Encouraging comments, but no acceptances. So again I decided to look it over and try to see how else I might improve it. And unlike my past evaluations of it, I didn't think the essay was that good. It had definite strengths, but it also had what now struck me as glaring weaknesses. The momentum of the piece fell flat about halfway through, so the essay itself simply didn't work. I thought about it but couldn't figure out how to fix the problem. So more than two years after I first started writing it, and more than a year after I began submitting it, I set the piece aside and decided to stop submitting it until I could solve its structural problems. I did this suspecting that the essay was simply a failure, something that comes close without ever quite working right.
Another couple of months passed, and I picked it up again, curious if I might see anything now that I missed the last time. And sure enough, some new ideas came to mind. The essay's faltering momentum seemed as evident as before, but now I could envision a new structure, a complete renovation, that might fix it. I'm not yet done with this new rewrite, but I feel excited about the essay again and think it might finally reach its potential.
Friday, December 19, 2008
Sunday, November 2, 2008
Advice On When To Move On
The topic of finishing, knowing when you're done, is something I've obviously been thinking about and wrote about last time. So to help me consider the issue, I've been reflecting on advice I've received from teachers over the years.
I've studied under some good writers who have given different types of instruction and advice. Perhaps my favorite writer I took a class with had a process very different from mine. He spent months thinking about his stories. He would jot down notes, but basically do draft after draft in his head until he had figured the whole thing out and even polished the language. Then he would write it down, and essentially the first written draft was the final draft. I could never work that way. I simply couldn't keep it all in my head. Also, this professor was a great short story writer and not a novelist. I doubt his process would work on a novel due to the larger scope and the difficulty of keeping so much in one's head. Basically the way he ran his workshop classes was to examine the pieces students submitted, to look at the structure, the techniques, and analyze them. We often got into abstract discussion of about how literature works and why, but often that came at the expense of specific critique of the pieces themselves. Although I feel I learned some things in that class, those things were larger theoretical concepts, and I'm not sure the stories I submitted benefited a whole lot. Probably my professor didn't have much to suggest for how to change a story because once his were written, they were done, so he wasn't much for changing them after that point.
Another professor I studied under was an accomplished novelist. She had published five or six novels and many short stories over the years. One of the specific pieces of advice I remember from her was directly in response to the question of knowing when you're done. She said that is, of course, one of the toughest questions to answer and her best take on that issue was to quit rewriting when she felt like she was starting to make the piece worse. It's been a few years since she mentioned that, and I still reflect back on it as I rewrite, and the tricky thing is that when I approach a piece I haven't looked at for a while, I usually spot things to improve. I have one story I've been working on for over four years, and I revised it again as recently as a month ago, and I think I was still improving it. So on the one hand I think I should continue to work on it since I haven't started completely messing it up yet, but on the other hand I think at some point I have to move on, retire it, and work on future pieces. I don't know that I've reached that point yet with this particular story. Most of the stories I've written over the years ultimately were nothing more than learning exercises, but I still feel this one is good and will be published eventually.
I asked another professor about his thoughts on the issue of when do you know you're done. I suggested that maybe you can tell you're finished when somebody finally publishes something. And he said that even then, it's not that clear. He was at that time editing a short story collection. The stories had previously been published in magazines, and the collection had been accepted for publication. Even so, as he went back through it, he found some stories he still wanted to rework beyond simple edits. I recently read an interview with Tobias Wolff about his new story collection, which includes revised versions of stories he published years ago. And he's certainly not the only writer to keep returning to the past and revising it. So I don't know. I guess the difficulty is to avoid winding up like the writer in Albert Camus's The Plague: he keeps rewriting the opening passage of his novel, trying to get it perfect, and since he never moves on from the beginning, he never completes anything.
I guess I'd rather move forward and accept that some of my past work isn't as good as it ultimately could be, but in the end produce more. If I wind up writing a great novel, but it's my seventh novel and the first six were learning experiences, I still think I'd be happier with that than if I spent twenty years to produce one novel that was ultimately great.
In part my desire to move forward comes from some other piece of advice whose source I don't remember. I think it's important to move on when the passion dies. This is a difficult continuum, however. There are writers who write a passion-fueled rough draft, can't stand to rewrite and so they quit there. That doesn't seem like a good way to go. But if I write, rewrite, revise, rewrite, revise, edit, polish, rewrite, edit, etc., etc. and I've gotten the piece far, but I've reached the point where, despite liking it as a story and feeling it's good, I'm getting sick of it, well I think that's the time to move on. If I'm at that stage with one piece and another piece is taking over my mind more and more, I think it's best to move on to that next piece. Now it's certainly possible that the earlier piece will force it's way back into the passion part of my brain and I'll return to it down the line, but still, it's not necessarily the most productive to rehash the same thing forever.
One final thought on this issue is closely related to that previous idea: as I improve as a writer, I think my ideas get better. I wrote my first novel between the ages of twenty-three and twenty-six. I have no regrets about writing it. I learned a lot from the experience of drafting, rewriting, submitting it to workshops and a writers' group, and ultimately defending it as my MA thesis. But the basic story was not necessarily the most interesting thing in the world. As with many first novels, it drew heavily on my own experiences, and it had the kind of plot that might simply be too minimal to ever be of much appeal to most readers. If I were to continue working on that novel until it reached the level of being a great novel, I suspect it would have to change so much that it would barely resemble the original. So if the final version is going to be so different, why not actually do something different? Rather than being burdened with that history, it's better to start fresh. My second novel moved further from my own experiences, but still has some limited scope. I think this book is good, and I hope to see it published, but I know the story is limited and will not appeal to many readers. But I have other ideas for future novels that have the kind of premises that I think have much more potential to bloom into something great. And I think it's because as I head into my thirties, my views of the world are larger and more interesting than they were when I was in my early and mid twenties. So that's one more reason to keep moving forward, to progress to the next piece instead of rehashing the old ones forever.
I've studied under some good writers who have given different types of instruction and advice. Perhaps my favorite writer I took a class with had a process very different from mine. He spent months thinking about his stories. He would jot down notes, but basically do draft after draft in his head until he had figured the whole thing out and even polished the language. Then he would write it down, and essentially the first written draft was the final draft. I could never work that way. I simply couldn't keep it all in my head. Also, this professor was a great short story writer and not a novelist. I doubt his process would work on a novel due to the larger scope and the difficulty of keeping so much in one's head. Basically the way he ran his workshop classes was to examine the pieces students submitted, to look at the structure, the techniques, and analyze them. We often got into abstract discussion of about how literature works and why, but often that came at the expense of specific critique of the pieces themselves. Although I feel I learned some things in that class, those things were larger theoretical concepts, and I'm not sure the stories I submitted benefited a whole lot. Probably my professor didn't have much to suggest for how to change a story because once his were written, they were done, so he wasn't much for changing them after that point.
Another professor I studied under was an accomplished novelist. She had published five or six novels and many short stories over the years. One of the specific pieces of advice I remember from her was directly in response to the question of knowing when you're done. She said that is, of course, one of the toughest questions to answer and her best take on that issue was to quit rewriting when she felt like she was starting to make the piece worse. It's been a few years since she mentioned that, and I still reflect back on it as I rewrite, and the tricky thing is that when I approach a piece I haven't looked at for a while, I usually spot things to improve. I have one story I've been working on for over four years, and I revised it again as recently as a month ago, and I think I was still improving it. So on the one hand I think I should continue to work on it since I haven't started completely messing it up yet, but on the other hand I think at some point I have to move on, retire it, and work on future pieces. I don't know that I've reached that point yet with this particular story. Most of the stories I've written over the years ultimately were nothing more than learning exercises, but I still feel this one is good and will be published eventually.
I asked another professor about his thoughts on the issue of when do you know you're done. I suggested that maybe you can tell you're finished when somebody finally publishes something. And he said that even then, it's not that clear. He was at that time editing a short story collection. The stories had previously been published in magazines, and the collection had been accepted for publication. Even so, as he went back through it, he found some stories he still wanted to rework beyond simple edits. I recently read an interview with Tobias Wolff about his new story collection, which includes revised versions of stories he published years ago. And he's certainly not the only writer to keep returning to the past and revising it. So I don't know. I guess the difficulty is to avoid winding up like the writer in Albert Camus's The Plague: he keeps rewriting the opening passage of his novel, trying to get it perfect, and since he never moves on from the beginning, he never completes anything.
I guess I'd rather move forward and accept that some of my past work isn't as good as it ultimately could be, but in the end produce more. If I wind up writing a great novel, but it's my seventh novel and the first six were learning experiences, I still think I'd be happier with that than if I spent twenty years to produce one novel that was ultimately great.
In part my desire to move forward comes from some other piece of advice whose source I don't remember. I think it's important to move on when the passion dies. This is a difficult continuum, however. There are writers who write a passion-fueled rough draft, can't stand to rewrite and so they quit there. That doesn't seem like a good way to go. But if I write, rewrite, revise, rewrite, revise, edit, polish, rewrite, edit, etc., etc. and I've gotten the piece far, but I've reached the point where, despite liking it as a story and feeling it's good, I'm getting sick of it, well I think that's the time to move on. If I'm at that stage with one piece and another piece is taking over my mind more and more, I think it's best to move on to that next piece. Now it's certainly possible that the earlier piece will force it's way back into the passion part of my brain and I'll return to it down the line, but still, it's not necessarily the most productive to rehash the same thing forever.
One final thought on this issue is closely related to that previous idea: as I improve as a writer, I think my ideas get better. I wrote my first novel between the ages of twenty-three and twenty-six. I have no regrets about writing it. I learned a lot from the experience of drafting, rewriting, submitting it to workshops and a writers' group, and ultimately defending it as my MA thesis. But the basic story was not necessarily the most interesting thing in the world. As with many first novels, it drew heavily on my own experiences, and it had the kind of plot that might simply be too minimal to ever be of much appeal to most readers. If I were to continue working on that novel until it reached the level of being a great novel, I suspect it would have to change so much that it would barely resemble the original. So if the final version is going to be so different, why not actually do something different? Rather than being burdened with that history, it's better to start fresh. My second novel moved further from my own experiences, but still has some limited scope. I think this book is good, and I hope to see it published, but I know the story is limited and will not appeal to many readers. But I have other ideas for future novels that have the kind of premises that I think have much more potential to bloom into something great. And I think it's because as I head into my thirties, my views of the world are larger and more interesting than they were when I was in my early and mid twenties. So that's one more reason to keep moving forward, to progress to the next piece instead of rehashing the old ones forever.
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Finishing: Yeah Right
So I set a deadline for myself to have an additional revision done in time to enter a contest. I need to have my manuscript finished and in the mail by November first. I've been doing revisions on the computer, printing out the new pages and then going over them once more with a red pen in an effort to catch all the little issues. Last night I got all the way to the end of my book, and so I'm ready to print out the remaining pages and do the final read through and then input the additional edits. I still have a week before the contest deadline, and it definitely looks like I'll make it in time. And the timing couldn't be better.
Unfortunately, my life is squeezing me so I'll soon have even less time to work on my writing. I'm being promoted at the book store, which is great in that I'll make an extra twenty-five cents per hour (Hooray! My income this year might even hit five figures!) and will even soon be eligible for some minimal health care benefits, but I'll also be working more. Rather than being at the book store twenty to thirty hours, I'll be there thirty hours a week minimum. On weeks when I don't have student papers to grade, I'll still be working about fifty hours a week. When I do have papers to grade, it'll be sixty plus hours. This coming week I'm working seven days. And that means the little time I currently find to write will be even scarcer.
Anyway, the sound of violins behind me is distracting. Where was I going? Oh, yeah. Finishing yet another revision. I don't know if I'm actually done. Is it ever possible to be done? I'm sure there are improvements I could make. My newest draft is the tightest, and shortest, version of my book. The length concerns me a little bit. Although it's still a three hundred page novel, double the minimum length for what would be called a novel as opposed to a novella, it's still not a long book. And I have had a few of my early readers who felt like they wanted more, that they would like to spend additional time with the characters. That, of course, is one of the greatest compliments I could hope for, but it also makes me wonder if it should be longer. Basically I have three separate story lines following three major characters, so although the book is one cohesive piece, it's in a way three linked novellas. So I can understand that a reader might want more of each. I have a few ideas for additional chapters I could include, but I'm reluctant to keep writing more. For one thing, I've been working on this for years already and just want to move on. But, more importantly, I feel like the book is tight. Even though it's not a plot-driven book, the major plot points work together pretty succinctly without major digressions and insignificant details. I'd like to think I've got on my hands the type of novel somebody might pick up and feel compelled to keep reading and finish in a couple sittings.
But anyway, I think I might have begun writing this post with some sort of point in mind, though I'm not entirely sure what that point was. It might have had something to do with the old issue of having trouble finishing. I'm pretty sure it was something like that. And the final thought for the moment is this: although I'm sure I could keep working on this book, keep writing new bits and pieces, keep editing for the clearest, most engaging prose, reconsider and evaluate every decision I made along the way, I'm not going to. I'll enter this new version in that contest, look for other such contests, check into small presses who might be interested in a first literary novel, query agents who probably won't be interested in a first literary novel, and move forward with the next novel.
Many times over the years I've had students approach me asking if they could revise a paper an additional time after the final draft in order to improve their grade. For my own sake, I can't keep grading draft after draft; I obviously don't have the time for that. But for their sake as well, I recommend moving on. Instead of trying to juggle one more revision while also writing the first draft of their next paper, it's better to learn from the previous essay and apply those lessons to the next one. And that's what I need to do as well. It might be that my book still isn't where it needs to be, isn't tight enough or long enough or whatever enough to get published. But rather than spending another year on it, I'd rather move forward. I'm a better writer now than I was when I started this book, and the next thing I write should be better than this one. It's possible (although depressing to dwell on) that I'll have four or five novels written before one makes it out into the world. But that's how it is.
Unfortunately, my life is squeezing me so I'll soon have even less time to work on my writing. I'm being promoted at the book store, which is great in that I'll make an extra twenty-five cents per hour (Hooray! My income this year might even hit five figures!) and will even soon be eligible for some minimal health care benefits, but I'll also be working more. Rather than being at the book store twenty to thirty hours, I'll be there thirty hours a week minimum. On weeks when I don't have student papers to grade, I'll still be working about fifty hours a week. When I do have papers to grade, it'll be sixty plus hours. This coming week I'm working seven days. And that means the little time I currently find to write will be even scarcer.
Anyway, the sound of violins behind me is distracting. Where was I going? Oh, yeah. Finishing yet another revision. I don't know if I'm actually done. Is it ever possible to be done? I'm sure there are improvements I could make. My newest draft is the tightest, and shortest, version of my book. The length concerns me a little bit. Although it's still a three hundred page novel, double the minimum length for what would be called a novel as opposed to a novella, it's still not a long book. And I have had a few of my early readers who felt like they wanted more, that they would like to spend additional time with the characters. That, of course, is one of the greatest compliments I could hope for, but it also makes me wonder if it should be longer. Basically I have three separate story lines following three major characters, so although the book is one cohesive piece, it's in a way three linked novellas. So I can understand that a reader might want more of each. I have a few ideas for additional chapters I could include, but I'm reluctant to keep writing more. For one thing, I've been working on this for years already and just want to move on. But, more importantly, I feel like the book is tight. Even though it's not a plot-driven book, the major plot points work together pretty succinctly without major digressions and insignificant details. I'd like to think I've got on my hands the type of novel somebody might pick up and feel compelled to keep reading and finish in a couple sittings.
But anyway, I think I might have begun writing this post with some sort of point in mind, though I'm not entirely sure what that point was. It might have had something to do with the old issue of having trouble finishing. I'm pretty sure it was something like that. And the final thought for the moment is this: although I'm sure I could keep working on this book, keep writing new bits and pieces, keep editing for the clearest, most engaging prose, reconsider and evaluate every decision I made along the way, I'm not going to. I'll enter this new version in that contest, look for other such contests, check into small presses who might be interested in a first literary novel, query agents who probably won't be interested in a first literary novel, and move forward with the next novel.
Many times over the years I've had students approach me asking if they could revise a paper an additional time after the final draft in order to improve their grade. For my own sake, I can't keep grading draft after draft; I obviously don't have the time for that. But for their sake as well, I recommend moving on. Instead of trying to juggle one more revision while also writing the first draft of their next paper, it's better to learn from the previous essay and apply those lessons to the next one. And that's what I need to do as well. It might be that my book still isn't where it needs to be, isn't tight enough or long enough or whatever enough to get published. But rather than spending another year on it, I'd rather move forward. I'm a better writer now than I was when I started this book, and the next thing I write should be better than this one. It's possible (although depressing to dwell on) that I'll have four or five novels written before one makes it out into the world. But that's how it is.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Finding Time
As I'm sure any amateur writer can relate, it's tough to find time to write. Not to suggest that my situation is tougher than other people's, but my situation is tougher than other people's. Just joshing. Actually, I think it's in some ways easier to find time to write now than it was back in grad school. It's weird. In grad school, I was there to write. That was the whole point, and yet there were so many other things going on. I was teaching and tutoring, reading and studying for classes, reading and studying for the comps exam, reading and commenting on other writers' work for workshop, grading papers, preparing for classes. With all of that going on at once, it often became a struggle to find spare moments to actually do the thing that supposedly was the point of being there. I mean I still did. I wrote a whole novel and rewrote it and workshopped parts of it and revised and showed it to faculty and revised and defended it as my thesis. I did a lot of writing, more than many of my fellow students in fact. But it still felt hard.
Now I'm in a situation that could also be described as tough to find writing time. I teach as adjunct faculty at a community college, and I work at a bookstore. I'm either in class or in office hours about eight hours a week, plus I spend probably another ten or so at home doing prep work, and that's when I don't have papers to grade or in class assignments to read over, which most of the time I do. So my teaching job is probably somewhere in the range of a twenty t0 thirty hour a week part time position. Then I also work at a bookstore twenty to thirty hours a week. So basically, although I don't have a full time job with the better pay and benefits that come with such employment, I work at least forty hours a week, usually more like fifty or sixty hours a week. Plus, both jobs require a half hour plus commute from home. I sometimes manage to have one day a week where I don't actually have to GO to work, but then even if I stay home, there's teaching stuff to take care of, so it's not really the same as a real day off.
Yet, despite all this, as I wrote above, I feel like I have more time to write. The trick seems to be in using the time I have. For instance, today I taught in the morning, had office hours, and then I have a couple hours before working an eight hour shift at the bookstore. So in that break, I'm obviously writing this blog, but then when I'm done I'm going to sit and go over my novel with a red pen. I've been squeezing in a bit of revising on the computer in the evenings or on afternoons before or after teaching, whenever I have some spare moments and I'm actually at home. Then I print those revised pages and take them with me so I can do even just a few pages at a time on my half hour lunch break. When I take advantage of that free minutes, even when they're few, I can still get work done.
I set the goal for myself to have my novel revised once more by the end of the month. I'm more than two thirds of the way through now, so I think I'll meet that goal in the next few days. It's a tough life, but whose life isn't? Part of what helps me plow through is the thought that time spent writing isn't merely something fun I do for myself (although it is), and it's not only a dream of achieving something that might connect with people (although it's that too), but on a pure practical level, it's a way to advance my career. Right now I'm working this hard because I don't have much option in the way of full time employment. I can't get a steady job, so I have to do what I'm doing. But if I work hard on my writing and get published, new doors will open for me, and I'll be able to land a good full time teaching job that currently I'm not qualified for. So it can be hard to sit down after a long day of working two jobs, or after spending hours grading freshman essays, or simply after sitting in my car driving through freeway traffic, but if I want to be in a position in the future where I don't have to do those things, I have to sit down and do the extra work now. So far I'm doing it. Here's hoping I can keep it up as long as it takes.
Now I'm in a situation that could also be described as tough to find writing time. I teach as adjunct faculty at a community college, and I work at a bookstore. I'm either in class or in office hours about eight hours a week, plus I spend probably another ten or so at home doing prep work, and that's when I don't have papers to grade or in class assignments to read over, which most of the time I do. So my teaching job is probably somewhere in the range of a twenty t0 thirty hour a week part time position. Then I also work at a bookstore twenty to thirty hours a week. So basically, although I don't have a full time job with the better pay and benefits that come with such employment, I work at least forty hours a week, usually more like fifty or sixty hours a week. Plus, both jobs require a half hour plus commute from home. I sometimes manage to have one day a week where I don't actually have to GO to work, but then even if I stay home, there's teaching stuff to take care of, so it's not really the same as a real day off.
Yet, despite all this, as I wrote above, I feel like I have more time to write. The trick seems to be in using the time I have. For instance, today I taught in the morning, had office hours, and then I have a couple hours before working an eight hour shift at the bookstore. So in that break, I'm obviously writing this blog, but then when I'm done I'm going to sit and go over my novel with a red pen. I've been squeezing in a bit of revising on the computer in the evenings or on afternoons before or after teaching, whenever I have some spare moments and I'm actually at home. Then I print those revised pages and take them with me so I can do even just a few pages at a time on my half hour lunch break. When I take advantage of that free minutes, even when they're few, I can still get work done.
I set the goal for myself to have my novel revised once more by the end of the month. I'm more than two thirds of the way through now, so I think I'll meet that goal in the next few days. It's a tough life, but whose life isn't? Part of what helps me plow through is the thought that time spent writing isn't merely something fun I do for myself (although it is), and it's not only a dream of achieving something that might connect with people (although it's that too), but on a pure practical level, it's a way to advance my career. Right now I'm working this hard because I don't have much option in the way of full time employment. I can't get a steady job, so I have to do what I'm doing. But if I work hard on my writing and get published, new doors will open for me, and I'll be able to land a good full time teaching job that currently I'm not qualified for. So it can be hard to sit down after a long day of working two jobs, or after spending hours grading freshman essays, or simply after sitting in my car driving through freeway traffic, but if I want to be in a position in the future where I don't have to do those things, I have to sit down and do the extra work now. So far I'm doing it. Here's hoping I can keep it up as long as it takes.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
As Always: Revision
So It's been a busy few weeks for me that involved not much writing. I moved cross country, settled into my new home, succeeded in finding two part time jobs that provide more hours with less pay than full time work and no benefits. So I have not made a ton of progress toward getting my newly drafted YA fantasy into the next stage. However, I did manage to revise a short story for the nth time, making it that slight bit better where I hope it will now go from getting hand written notes on the rejection slips to actually getting acceptances. I also did my initial read through of the fantasy novel, and I feel although it is of course rough, it has a solid base to it. The skeleton of the story is working, and now I'm ready for the hard work of fleshing out the characters further, making the world pop, and doing all the other stuff that takes so much time and effort but can't be ignored. However, before I get to that, I have something else that I've moved to the front burner again.
I finished what I thought was the final revision of my previous novel several months ago. I'd been working on it pretty steadily for about two years when I defended it as my MFA thesis. From there I moved into working on an additional revision, then all the nitty gritty polishing stuff for three more months or so. I had it where I felt it was ready to put out into the world and even started querying agents. Then I had one of my trusted early readers take a look. She hadn't had the time to read a draft up until that point. And fortunately, or unfortunately depending on how you look at it, she had some great notes for me. For one thing, she found a number of small typo errors that I could have sworn I'd eliminated but somehow still survived. But also, she had some really good suggestions of some places to tighten, some scenes that were redundant, some questions that arose about certain characterizations and so on. Anytime I get good feedback I'm grateful to the person who provides it, but it can also be discouraging because it means my work isn't over. So after talking with her I knew I needed to attack my manuscript again, but I just couldn't seem to find the energy and force myself to sit down and do it. After all, I'd already spent years and reached the point where I was supposed to be done. But one of the differences between being a guy who enjoys fiddling with writing in my spare time and somebody who truly is a writer is in the ability to sit down again and again and find more things to improve.
So I knew I had work still in front of me, but I put it off. I knew I wasn't ready to send it out to more agents or anything until I addressed the new concerns, but I also lacked the heart to do the hard work. But finally I've kicked my butt into gear and said, "Self, you need to do this." But how to motivate myself. After all, it would be more fun to start in on rewrites of the new book. Plus, the old one is a challenging literary novel that even if I succeed in making it great has a limited chance of ever being published while the new one is more marketable and might be possible to actually become something other than a file on my computer or a stack of pages in my room. After some thought I decided I needed something specific and concrete to motivate me, some set deadline by which to finish the revision. It's easy enough to say I won't query any more agents until I fix these little problems and then simply never query any agents. So I decided the best motivating factor to provide a strict deadline for this (hopefully) final revision would be to find a nice contest to enter. And sure enough I found one. I'm planning on entering the novel in a contest for beginning writers who haven't previously published a book. The deadline is the beginning of November, so I have about a month to get it ready.
I don't really expect to win this contest. If I do, that would be great. Not only does the prize include a publishing contract, but the prestige would likely be enough to launch my academic career away from adjuncting and into full time work with a bit of security. But the important thing isn't to think about winning, but simply to think about making my book as good as it can be through one more draft. Then I can query more agents, send it out to small presses, and submit to more contests. And with a deadline hanging over my head, I think it should happen. I've spent many hours the past few days hacking through some problems in the book's opening, and now I've managed to address a number of issues in the first four chapters (including cutting out the false start that was the previous chapter one). I feel confident that even though I'm working twenty-some hours a week at a bookstore, have about forty student papers to grade and two classes to prepare for, I'll have a well-polished manuscript in the mail to that contest before the end of October.
I finished what I thought was the final revision of my previous novel several months ago. I'd been working on it pretty steadily for about two years when I defended it as my MFA thesis. From there I moved into working on an additional revision, then all the nitty gritty polishing stuff for three more months or so. I had it where I felt it was ready to put out into the world and even started querying agents. Then I had one of my trusted early readers take a look. She hadn't had the time to read a draft up until that point. And fortunately, or unfortunately depending on how you look at it, she had some great notes for me. For one thing, she found a number of small typo errors that I could have sworn I'd eliminated but somehow still survived. But also, she had some really good suggestions of some places to tighten, some scenes that were redundant, some questions that arose about certain characterizations and so on. Anytime I get good feedback I'm grateful to the person who provides it, but it can also be discouraging because it means my work isn't over. So after talking with her I knew I needed to attack my manuscript again, but I just couldn't seem to find the energy and force myself to sit down and do it. After all, I'd already spent years and reached the point where I was supposed to be done. But one of the differences between being a guy who enjoys fiddling with writing in my spare time and somebody who truly is a writer is in the ability to sit down again and again and find more things to improve.
So I knew I had work still in front of me, but I put it off. I knew I wasn't ready to send it out to more agents or anything until I addressed the new concerns, but I also lacked the heart to do the hard work. But finally I've kicked my butt into gear and said, "Self, you need to do this." But how to motivate myself. After all, it would be more fun to start in on rewrites of the new book. Plus, the old one is a challenging literary novel that even if I succeed in making it great has a limited chance of ever being published while the new one is more marketable and might be possible to actually become something other than a file on my computer or a stack of pages in my room. After some thought I decided I needed something specific and concrete to motivate me, some set deadline by which to finish the revision. It's easy enough to say I won't query any more agents until I fix these little problems and then simply never query any agents. So I decided the best motivating factor to provide a strict deadline for this (hopefully) final revision would be to find a nice contest to enter. And sure enough I found one. I'm planning on entering the novel in a contest for beginning writers who haven't previously published a book. The deadline is the beginning of November, so I have about a month to get it ready.
I don't really expect to win this contest. If I do, that would be great. Not only does the prize include a publishing contract, but the prestige would likely be enough to launch my academic career away from adjuncting and into full time work with a bit of security. But the important thing isn't to think about winning, but simply to think about making my book as good as it can be through one more draft. Then I can query more agents, send it out to small presses, and submit to more contests. And with a deadline hanging over my head, I think it should happen. I've spent many hours the past few days hacking through some problems in the book's opening, and now I've managed to address a number of issues in the first four chapters (including cutting out the false start that was the previous chapter one). I feel confident that even though I'm working twenty-some hours a week at a bookstore, have about forty student papers to grade and two classes to prepare for, I'll have a well-polished manuscript in the mail to that contest before the end of October.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Finished
I just finished the first draft of my YA fantasy novel. It took me almost exactly three weeks to write, and this draft came in within a few hundred words of the 60,000 mark, three pages shy of the 200 page mark, so there's no doubt it's an actual novel-length work, which I feel damn good about completing in three weeks. I've never done anything like this so fast, so that feels really good.
As far as the actual draft goes, I don't have a clear idea yet how good it is or will eventually be. I haven't gone back and read over it at all. I barely glanced back at previous chapters to make sure I had details right. Partly I had less need to do this since I was going so fast and kept a lot of it in my head as I went. But also, I kept notes on character names and traits so I could reference that quickly as I went instead of looking back and trying to find them in the earlier chapters. Also, I kept making notes as I went on things that need to be addressed in the rewrite, plot points that come out late in the book that should be set up earlier, character traits that need more emphasis, places where the foreign world can be explored in more detail, etc.
On a whole I suspect this draft is not especially good. There are many places where I simply inserted place filler stuff that I knew was a bit cliche or not too interesting or whatever simply because I couldn't immediately come up with something better. Or there were places where I finally understood a character in the last chapters and knew I had to establish that character better in the early chapters. But those things are inevitable with rough drafts. What I feel good about is that the basic skeleton of the story is in place. The major events, the plot turns, the characters: they all have now been established. So my job when I go back to it to rewrite is to make all of those things as good as can be, to strengthen elements that are currently underdeveloped or weak or don't quite work, but the story as a whole now exists as it didn't three weeks ago, so I now have a base point from which to make adjustments. Although I consider the rough draft to be only the starting point of an overall piece--maybe a quarter
of the total amount of work being completed at that point, maybe less--it still feels good to have that accomplished.
The next step is to not look at it at all for a while. This should be easy enough for me at the moment. I'm moving, so this week I have to keep getting boxes of books shipped to my new home and preparations made for my trip. Then next week I'll be on the road driving thousands of miles cross country. Then once I get there, I have the tasks of unpacking and settling in, getting to know my new community, and biggest of all, finding a job. I won't be in a state of mind where I can sit down and look over my novel and begin evaluating how to proceed with revision for at least a few weeks, which is great. And since I've got so much going on between now and then, I won't be thinking about it too much hopefully, so when I return to it, I should have as fresh eyes as is possible considering I'm the one who made it all up.
The other news I have at the moment is that I got a rejection yesterday in the mail. It was for a story that I consider to be my best, but has yet to be accepted anywhere despite making the journal rounds for a couple years. Now getting rejected is not at all unusual for me, and I basically take it in stride now and don't have hurt feelings or whatever, but I do feel encouraged when somebody at the journal has taken the time to jot down a few words on the form rejection slip. The incidence of this happening has gone up for me in the past year, and at the moment I have two pieces making the rounds, both of which are regularly coming back to me with hand written notes. It feels good every time, but yesterday felt especially encouraging because the rejection with a note came from one of the major journals, Zoetrope: All-Story. Of course they still didn't want to publish my story, but for them (who in my mind rank right up there with The Paris Review and The New Yorker) to go to the trouble of jotting down a little PS telling me to keep them in mind for the future when I'm submitting, well that feels pretty good. Whereas a few years ago I sent out stuff that got rejected and saw nothing but form letters, now it seems as often as not I get some kind of personal response. So although I still have a ways to go to actually break in and achieve any success, it feels like the goal is much closer than it ever has been.
As far as the actual draft goes, I don't have a clear idea yet how good it is or will eventually be. I haven't gone back and read over it at all. I barely glanced back at previous chapters to make sure I had details right. Partly I had less need to do this since I was going so fast and kept a lot of it in my head as I went. But also, I kept notes on character names and traits so I could reference that quickly as I went instead of looking back and trying to find them in the earlier chapters. Also, I kept making notes as I went on things that need to be addressed in the rewrite, plot points that come out late in the book that should be set up earlier, character traits that need more emphasis, places where the foreign world can be explored in more detail, etc.
On a whole I suspect this draft is not especially good. There are many places where I simply inserted place filler stuff that I knew was a bit cliche or not too interesting or whatever simply because I couldn't immediately come up with something better. Or there were places where I finally understood a character in the last chapters and knew I had to establish that character better in the early chapters. But those things are inevitable with rough drafts. What I feel good about is that the basic skeleton of the story is in place. The major events, the plot turns, the characters: they all have now been established. So my job when I go back to it to rewrite is to make all of those things as good as can be, to strengthen elements that are currently underdeveloped or weak or don't quite work, but the story as a whole now exists as it didn't three weeks ago, so I now have a base point from which to make adjustments. Although I consider the rough draft to be only the starting point of an overall piece--maybe a quarter
of the total amount of work being completed at that point, maybe less--it still feels good to have that accomplished.
The next step is to not look at it at all for a while. This should be easy enough for me at the moment. I'm moving, so this week I have to keep getting boxes of books shipped to my new home and preparations made for my trip. Then next week I'll be on the road driving thousands of miles cross country. Then once I get there, I have the tasks of unpacking and settling in, getting to know my new community, and biggest of all, finding a job. I won't be in a state of mind where I can sit down and look over my novel and begin evaluating how to proceed with revision for at least a few weeks, which is great. And since I've got so much going on between now and then, I won't be thinking about it too much hopefully, so when I return to it, I should have as fresh eyes as is possible considering I'm the one who made it all up.
The other news I have at the moment is that I got a rejection yesterday in the mail. It was for a story that I consider to be my best, but has yet to be accepted anywhere despite making the journal rounds for a couple years. Now getting rejected is not at all unusual for me, and I basically take it in stride now and don't have hurt feelings or whatever, but I do feel encouraged when somebody at the journal has taken the time to jot down a few words on the form rejection slip. The incidence of this happening has gone up for me in the past year, and at the moment I have two pieces making the rounds, both of which are regularly coming back to me with hand written notes. It feels good every time, but yesterday felt especially encouraging because the rejection with a note came from one of the major journals, Zoetrope: All-Story. Of course they still didn't want to publish my story, but for them (who in my mind rank right up there with The Paris Review and The New Yorker) to go to the trouble of jotting down a little PS telling me to keep them in mind for the future when I'm submitting, well that feels pretty good. Whereas a few years ago I sent out stuff that got rejected and saw nothing but form letters, now it seems as often as not I get some kind of personal response. So although I still have a ways to go to actually break in and achieve any success, it feels like the goal is much closer than it ever has been.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Pushing that little bit extra
About a year ago, I realized I had put on some weight. It wasn't the doctor's visit that convinced me. After all, how accurate can those scales be with patients stepping on them all day long? Plus, I had my wallet and keys in my pocket, so that surely accounted for the thirty pounds I didn't remember gaining. And yes, my old pants didn't fit anymore, and I even had to buy a new belt, but really that's not enough information to conclude that I had put on weight. What changed my views, however, was when my parents saw me at my sister's wedding. I hadn't seen my folks in a couple years, and they were shocked at the belly on their son. They kept saying things like, "It's not that you're fat, it's just that I think of you as slim and you don't look like you." Or, in other words: "wow, you got fat."
So I figured the sugary sodas and regular consumption of Ding Dongs combined with my sedentary lifestyle might not be the best route for optimal health. I cut those out and just tried to keep on eye on my eating. No big deal. In a few months I'd dropped fifteen pounds. But that was all that was coming off. My old pants still didn't fit. My new belt was still bigger than I felt ideal. So I decided to actually work at it and try to lose the extra weight.
Now, as my parents said, I've been slim most of my life and never had to worry much about stuff like this before, but fortunately, in the past three months, through maintaining a healthier diet and bumping up my exercise, I've shed another twenty pounds and am back close to where I was when I got out of college. I realize I'll never be as thin as I was in my teen years, but then again I don't really want to look like that now. Nearly thirty, about 150 seems okay.
But what does this have to do with writing, since that is the subject of this blog? Well, I noticed something in my efforts to lose weight that I feel has a strong connection to writing. It's easy to act like I'm trying to lose weight, but not really do anything about it, to claim it would be nice to get back down to where I was several years ago, but to only put in the minimal effort. And when that's my approach, I only get to a certain level, and then nothing else happens. But when really focusing and working hard on it, I accomplish more. Pretty basic, I know, but still valuable I think.
The biggest analogous aspect of losing weight for me comes when I'm riding the exercise bike. It's tiring, my legs start to ache a little, and my body basically wants me to stop doing it after I've barely warmed up. But I can decide how much more I'm going to do. When I don't think I can go on for much longer, I can say, okay five more minutes. Or, the one that I've noticed the most is when I switch up to a higher speed for a couple of minutes. I'll set my book down and keep my eye on the clock. I want to slow down; my legs are tired. Thirty more seconds. Come on, this is long enough. Twenty seconds. Okay, I can do it, maybe. Ten, nine. eight. And so I push that extra little bit and wind up burning more calories and losing the weight.
The same principle is true of writing. It's so easy to claim that I want to write, but then never squeeze in the time. But there are opportunities to make it happen. If I set a goal and push through to achieve it even when I'm tired and ready to quit, then I'm making progress. With the fantasy novel I'm currently writing, I've been setting goals for myself to do at least 2,000 words a day and 4,000+ if I can manage it. More often than not, I can squeeze in those extra words. This might mean that if it's late at night and I'd just as soon go to bed or read a book somebody else wrote and actually published, I keep writing instead. Simply staying up a little later, and not quitting for the day until the goal is met can make a huge difference.
Right now I'm three quarters of the way through my novel, and I only began writing it seventeen days ago. And I think one of the major reasons for that is because when I'm ready to set the computer aside and do something else, when I'm feeling tired and want to go to bed, when it's been a long day and I want to give myself a pass on writing for the evening, I sit down and do it anyway. If it's ten PM and I haven't written a word, well I better get cracking so I can get to bed at a reasonable hour because that goal can still be met.
So I figured the sugary sodas and regular consumption of Ding Dongs combined with my sedentary lifestyle might not be the best route for optimal health. I cut those out and just tried to keep on eye on my eating. No big deal. In a few months I'd dropped fifteen pounds. But that was all that was coming off. My old pants still didn't fit. My new belt was still bigger than I felt ideal. So I decided to actually work at it and try to lose the extra weight.
Now, as my parents said, I've been slim most of my life and never had to worry much about stuff like this before, but fortunately, in the past three months, through maintaining a healthier diet and bumping up my exercise, I've shed another twenty pounds and am back close to where I was when I got out of college. I realize I'll never be as thin as I was in my teen years, but then again I don't really want to look like that now. Nearly thirty, about 150 seems okay.
But what does this have to do with writing, since that is the subject of this blog? Well, I noticed something in my efforts to lose weight that I feel has a strong connection to writing. It's easy to act like I'm trying to lose weight, but not really do anything about it, to claim it would be nice to get back down to where I was several years ago, but to only put in the minimal effort. And when that's my approach, I only get to a certain level, and then nothing else happens. But when really focusing and working hard on it, I accomplish more. Pretty basic, I know, but still valuable I think.
The biggest analogous aspect of losing weight for me comes when I'm riding the exercise bike. It's tiring, my legs start to ache a little, and my body basically wants me to stop doing it after I've barely warmed up. But I can decide how much more I'm going to do. When I don't think I can go on for much longer, I can say, okay five more minutes. Or, the one that I've noticed the most is when I switch up to a higher speed for a couple of minutes. I'll set my book down and keep my eye on the clock. I want to slow down; my legs are tired. Thirty more seconds. Come on, this is long enough. Twenty seconds. Okay, I can do it, maybe. Ten, nine. eight. And so I push that extra little bit and wind up burning more calories and losing the weight.
The same principle is true of writing. It's so easy to claim that I want to write, but then never squeeze in the time. But there are opportunities to make it happen. If I set a goal and push through to achieve it even when I'm tired and ready to quit, then I'm making progress. With the fantasy novel I'm currently writing, I've been setting goals for myself to do at least 2,000 words a day and 4,000+ if I can manage it. More often than not, I can squeeze in those extra words. This might mean that if it's late at night and I'd just as soon go to bed or read a book somebody else wrote and actually published, I keep writing instead. Simply staying up a little later, and not quitting for the day until the goal is met can make a huge difference.
Right now I'm three quarters of the way through my novel, and I only began writing it seventeen days ago. And I think one of the major reasons for that is because when I'm ready to set the computer aside and do something else, when I'm feeling tired and want to go to bed, when it's been a long day and I want to give myself a pass on writing for the evening, I sit down and do it anyway. If it's ten PM and I haven't written a word, well I better get cracking so I can get to bed at a reasonable hour because that goal can still be met.
Monday, July 21, 2008
Current Project Part II
I made my decision to go ahead and begin working on my young adult fantasy novel a couple weeks ago. Part of what's exciting about it is the idea of working much faster on something than I'm used to. When I'm heavily engrossed in a project I like to set a daily goal of 2,000 words. This is absolutely manageable, and it keeps me going at a good clip. At this rate, I can do an entire first draft of a 90,000 word novel within a couple months, and that's even allowing for days when I don't meet the goal or I tack a weekend off completely or whatever. But with this fantasy book, I saw it as a bit different. Partly because it's aimed at younger readers, I saw it as being a bit shorter than what I've written in the past. Instead of 90,000, a book of 60,000 words seems about right. Also, since the idea has been bouncing around my head for a while I started writing knowing for the most part where I was headed. Of course I still had large holes that needed filling, but I assumed those would come as I discovered the world and grew to know the characters. So I set out with the goal of completing a rough draft within a few weeks. Basically I'm moving soon, and I don't want my progress to be disrupted during that time.
So I broke it down and came up with a daily word count goal. If I did 2,000 words a day, then I could have 60,000 at the end of a month. 4,000 would result in a draft in 15 days. So I figured that somewhere in between was the appropriate daily objective. The chapters for this book are working out to each be in the 4,000 word range. So my basic goal is to write a full chapter each day if I can manage it (4,000+ is lovely), and if I can't get that much done, then to at least hit 2,000 words. This way I'm steadily progressing even if I don't always get as much as would be best.
I began two weeks ago Sunday, and for the first four days, I wrote a chapter a day. Then I slowed a bit and was still hitting the 2,000 word a day goal, but was taking a couple days to finish a chapter. Then I sped back up again, and then slowed again. Anyway, at present I have hit at least 2,000 words every day for the past 15 days with only one exception, and that day I came in around 1,600 words, so it wasn't too bad. Right now I'm halfway through chapter 11 of what I expect to be 15 chapters total. I have about 42,000 words of that 60,000 word mark, so I'm getting close. I fully expect to finish the draft this week, making it by far the fastest I've written anything of this length.
It's been fun to tackle a project like this for several reasons. One: speed. I've read about writers just plowing through books in a week or whatever and wondered how that could be possible. I think Stephen King wrote The Running Man in a week (those claims must only apply to the first draft, however). Or there's the famous case of Keruak writing On The Road in a matter of days, typing the whole draft onto that giant scroll of typing paper so he wouldn't have to slow down to change sheets. And I've discovered there is something energizing and exciting about moving so quickly. I have no delusions that what I've come up with is brilliant. I already know I have tons of corrections to make as far as inconsistencies go in plot details. I've made a bunch of notes about things choices I made later in the story that have implications earlier on. And that's not even considering the rest of the rewriting process that would happen with any book.
Two: plot. As I mentioned in a previous post, I used to read a lot of fantasy, but about a decade ago I moved on to other things. The majority of my reading in recent years has been what might be termed "literary" in the sense that it's about normal people dealing with regular life stuff. That's what I most enjoy, and that's what I've been writing for the past few years. So to switch gears has been like a great vacation since most of my other stories don't hinge on plot. There's that old adage, which I suppose has some validity even though, like most such maxims, it has exceptions and doesn't necessarily stand up to careful critique, but anyway it asserts that plot and character are on a continuum, and when one goes up in development and importance, the other goes down. So basically, a heavily action oriented story doesn't have time to develop the characters into fully three dimensional people, and the stories that most fully explore the inner lives of characters and reveal them as complex humans have little actually happening. In most of what I write, I like to have something going on, but the events take a back seat to the characters and what they're thinking about and how they interact with each other or whatever. But in this fantasy story, I have way more plot. My protagonist is transported to a world of magic, and the world is in the midst of a war, and there's a prophecy concerning his importance, and there's kidnapping and an evil wizard and and and and and . . . So that's fun. I suspect one of the major things I address in rewriting is to carefully go through and make sure that the characters are coming alive in the way they need to, that I haven't slid so far into the plot side of things that I neglect my characters because, after all, if I as a reader don't care about the people in the story, then what difference does it make what crazy stuff happens to them?
Three: rediscovering the fun of stories for younger readers. I wrote previously about not having read much fantasy in recent years, but I realized the other day that the one area I have actually continued to read in that genre has been children's books. In the years during which I don't think I've picked up more than two or three adult fantasies, I've reread or listened to audiobooks (or both) of the Chronicles of Prydain (still one of my all time favorites), Narnia, A Wrinkle in Time, Peter Pan, The Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland, Harry Potter, and others. So I wasn't as unprepared as I initially worried I might be to tackle such a writing project. But in order to further understand what I'm attempting, I began looking at some books that are currently on bookstore shelves in the genre, and that has been so much fun. There are some great books out there. I am absolutely in love with the Spiderwick Chronicles. Artemis Fowl was fun. There's one called Erec Rex that is a blast.
Four: being engrossed. The major reason I write is because I love doing it. Ultimately, yes, I hope to publish. If I could actually make a living at it, that would be awesome. Not because I want to be a famous writer or anything like that, but simply because it would mean that I could do for my job something that I would do for fun anyway instead of doing something that always felt like work. I know writing is hard work, but it's more fun than it is frustrating, wheras jobs I've had are on the reverse of that. But as much fun as writing is, it's not always on the same level. During the last stages of my previous novel, it was definitely leaning toward the hard work and not too fun side of things simply because I was at the point of going through and trying to fix grammar and typos and little things. It was tedious and didn't transfix me the way earlier stages of the process can. But now again, for the past two weeks, I've simply been having a blast as I sit down to write, and during the rest of the day when the story plays out in my head and I solve the puzzles of how to continue forward and how to bring everything together in a satisfying conclusion.
Five: publishability. I didn't begin writing this book with thoughts of publication, but as I've continued on, the idea has occurred to me more. In general genre writing is easier to get out there than literary stuff. I hope I can find an agent for my literary novel and then get it to a publisher, but I don't know. I think it's strong, but the market is so tough, it might never happen. And not to say that getting this YA fantasy published will be a cinch, but it seems like I'll face fewer of the difficulties than with an adult literary novel. At the moment I have no plans for additional fantasy stories. I don't especially see this one as the first of a series, although I'm sure it could be possible. But if somehow I hit it big with this and fell into the possibility of a career writing this kind of book, I would love it. That wouldn't be my top choice since I'd still rather write literary stuff, and I have more ideas for those novels at the moment. But it would still be far more preferable than the kind of day job scenario I see for myself for the next thirty years.
So I broke it down and came up with a daily word count goal. If I did 2,000 words a day, then I could have 60,000 at the end of a month. 4,000 would result in a draft in 15 days. So I figured that somewhere in between was the appropriate daily objective. The chapters for this book are working out to each be in the 4,000 word range. So my basic goal is to write a full chapter each day if I can manage it (4,000+ is lovely), and if I can't get that much done, then to at least hit 2,000 words. This way I'm steadily progressing even if I don't always get as much as would be best.
I began two weeks ago Sunday, and for the first four days, I wrote a chapter a day. Then I slowed a bit and was still hitting the 2,000 word a day goal, but was taking a couple days to finish a chapter. Then I sped back up again, and then slowed again. Anyway, at present I have hit at least 2,000 words every day for the past 15 days with only one exception, and that day I came in around 1,600 words, so it wasn't too bad. Right now I'm halfway through chapter 11 of what I expect to be 15 chapters total. I have about 42,000 words of that 60,000 word mark, so I'm getting close. I fully expect to finish the draft this week, making it by far the fastest I've written anything of this length.
It's been fun to tackle a project like this for several reasons. One: speed. I've read about writers just plowing through books in a week or whatever and wondered how that could be possible. I think Stephen King wrote The Running Man in a week (those claims must only apply to the first draft, however). Or there's the famous case of Keruak writing On The Road in a matter of days, typing the whole draft onto that giant scroll of typing paper so he wouldn't have to slow down to change sheets. And I've discovered there is something energizing and exciting about moving so quickly. I have no delusions that what I've come up with is brilliant. I already know I have tons of corrections to make as far as inconsistencies go in plot details. I've made a bunch of notes about things choices I made later in the story that have implications earlier on. And that's not even considering the rest of the rewriting process that would happen with any book.
Two: plot. As I mentioned in a previous post, I used to read a lot of fantasy, but about a decade ago I moved on to other things. The majority of my reading in recent years has been what might be termed "literary" in the sense that it's about normal people dealing with regular life stuff. That's what I most enjoy, and that's what I've been writing for the past few years. So to switch gears has been like a great vacation since most of my other stories don't hinge on plot. There's that old adage, which I suppose has some validity even though, like most such maxims, it has exceptions and doesn't necessarily stand up to careful critique, but anyway it asserts that plot and character are on a continuum, and when one goes up in development and importance, the other goes down. So basically, a heavily action oriented story doesn't have time to develop the characters into fully three dimensional people, and the stories that most fully explore the inner lives of characters and reveal them as complex humans have little actually happening. In most of what I write, I like to have something going on, but the events take a back seat to the characters and what they're thinking about and how they interact with each other or whatever. But in this fantasy story, I have way more plot. My protagonist is transported to a world of magic, and the world is in the midst of a war, and there's a prophecy concerning his importance, and there's kidnapping and an evil wizard and and and and and . . . So that's fun. I suspect one of the major things I address in rewriting is to carefully go through and make sure that the characters are coming alive in the way they need to, that I haven't slid so far into the plot side of things that I neglect my characters because, after all, if I as a reader don't care about the people in the story, then what difference does it make what crazy stuff happens to them?
Three: rediscovering the fun of stories for younger readers. I wrote previously about not having read much fantasy in recent years, but I realized the other day that the one area I have actually continued to read in that genre has been children's books. In the years during which I don't think I've picked up more than two or three adult fantasies, I've reread or listened to audiobooks (or both) of the Chronicles of Prydain (still one of my all time favorites), Narnia, A Wrinkle in Time, Peter Pan, The Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland, Harry Potter, and others. So I wasn't as unprepared as I initially worried I might be to tackle such a writing project. But in order to further understand what I'm attempting, I began looking at some books that are currently on bookstore shelves in the genre, and that has been so much fun. There are some great books out there. I am absolutely in love with the Spiderwick Chronicles. Artemis Fowl was fun. There's one called Erec Rex that is a blast.
Four: being engrossed. The major reason I write is because I love doing it. Ultimately, yes, I hope to publish. If I could actually make a living at it, that would be awesome. Not because I want to be a famous writer or anything like that, but simply because it would mean that I could do for my job something that I would do for fun anyway instead of doing something that always felt like work. I know writing is hard work, but it's more fun than it is frustrating, wheras jobs I've had are on the reverse of that. But as much fun as writing is, it's not always on the same level. During the last stages of my previous novel, it was definitely leaning toward the hard work and not too fun side of things simply because I was at the point of going through and trying to fix grammar and typos and little things. It was tedious and didn't transfix me the way earlier stages of the process can. But now again, for the past two weeks, I've simply been having a blast as I sit down to write, and during the rest of the day when the story plays out in my head and I solve the puzzles of how to continue forward and how to bring everything together in a satisfying conclusion.
Five: publishability. I didn't begin writing this book with thoughts of publication, but as I've continued on, the idea has occurred to me more. In general genre writing is easier to get out there than literary stuff. I hope I can find an agent for my literary novel and then get it to a publisher, but I don't know. I think it's strong, but the market is so tough, it might never happen. And not to say that getting this YA fantasy published will be a cinch, but it seems like I'll face fewer of the difficulties than with an adult literary novel. At the moment I have no plans for additional fantasy stories. I don't especially see this one as the first of a series, although I'm sure it could be possible. But if somehow I hit it big with this and fell into the possibility of a career writing this kind of book, I would love it. That wouldn't be my top choice since I'd still rather write literary stuff, and I have more ideas for those novels at the moment. But it would still be far more preferable than the kind of day job scenario I see for myself for the next thirty years.
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Current project
So I ended last time without actually getting to what I'm working on now. As I wrote before I was floundering after finishing my previous novel and having trouble really sinking into something new. I bounced around a little bit, but for one reason or another, I wasn't ready to begin on a few of my other novel ideas. But I had one left. While most of my ideas are more in the realm of "literary" fiction (although I'm not necessarily a fan of that term and it's pretentious associations), I had one idea for a fantasy novel. This idea began building in my head a few years ago, and maybe a year or so ago I thought about the possibility of making the main character younger and thus, it could be a young adult fantasy instead of straight fantasy.
Now I have nothing against fantasy. I'm not one of those MFA types who looks down on genre fiction as less worthy or significant. It's all just entertainment, and whichever appeals more to you, that's just fine. As it happens, I simply prefer stuff in the "literary" mode, where it's about real characters in real world situations, where nobody's been murdered, and there's not a terrorist attack about to happen in a matter of hours if our hero can't prevent it. Even as I write that, I realize there's a bit of a snarky tone there, which I don't really want. I have gotten into some of those types of stories before (I've read everything Thomas Harris has published; I've stayed up late into the night to finish a James Patterson novel). The one genre that I have been most attracted to in my life is fantasy. Between the time I learned to read and the time I finished high school, probably the majority of my reading time was spent on fantasy novels. However, at some point in there, I'd say the change occurred in my late teens, I just sort of lost interest. My tastes changed. I didn't lose any respect for the art, but I didn't want to spend my time on it either.
So, that brings me to the point where I am in my late twenties contemplating writing a fantasy novel. A few things stand in my way. One: I'm not sure whether I'll have the excitement and interest in the project to work on it for the necessary length of time required to produce something good. After all, I spent years on my first two literary novels, and it's not fair (I guess I see it as disrespectful to the genre) to think I could just bang one out without putting in the same kind of hard work rewriting, revising, editing, etc. But would my passion be sufficient to keep me going through all those months of work on a genre that I am no longer in love with? Two: I haven't read a fantasy novel in years. Sure, I've seen the Lord of the Rings Movies and Harry Potter. I've even listened to the audiobooks of Harry Potter (read by the amazing Jim Dale), but it's been about a decade since I was actively part of that literary community, where I consumed many books and had a good understanding of its conventions and tropes. I'm afraid that if I tried my hand at this genre, I would unknowingly produce a story riddled with cliches that fans of the genre would abhore. I believe it's important to do one's research and to know about the kind of story one is writing. I'm sure if I tried to write a mystery, for example, I would produce something that didn't go beyond the conventions of the earliest type of mystery story. Sherlock Holmes would laugh at my pathetic clues, Sam Spade wouldn't even leave his desk to solve my case, and whoever the current champion detectives are would scratch their heads and wonder if I could possibly be serious with my offering. Because I don't know that genre. In the world of "literary" fiction, I feel comfortable with a story idea that even if it's a simple plot it hasn't been done quite the way I'm doing it, or there's enough room for another story along these lines because of the unique voice or character combinations I'll present. But I don't have that background any longer in fantasy, and I don't want to presume that because I've studied writing and have an MFA I could whip out something great because, "well, it's only fantasy, how hard can it be?"
After considering those reservations a few months ago, I pretty much set the project aside. I figured maybe at some point down the line I'd start tinkering with it, maybe do a chapter here and there and have a slowly expanding file on my computer, but I no longer thought it would be something that I would feel compelled to write. And then I reached the point I described earlier of lacking a project. So I'm in a situation where I need something to get caught up in, but I don't want to start my next literary novel because I know I'll be picking up and moving in a few weeks, so I don't want to disrupt that process. But I'm also not working, so I have plenty of time. It's possible I could pound through something fairly quickly and finish a draft before my life goes into upheaval. So, alas, my thoughts turn more and more to this fantasy idea. As a young adult book, it would likely be shorter than my previous novels (I'm thinking in the range of 60,000 words as opposed to the 90,000 range I've done before), and I have most of the story mapped out in my head and even written down in a set of notes I've compiled earlier. The final factor was simply that more and more this idea is what was occupying my brain. I wasn't thinking about the next literary novel, I was wondering how I could make the fantasy world work, what trials my hero might face and how he would overcome them. So I sat down and began.
More details next time on how it's coming along.
Now I have nothing against fantasy. I'm not one of those MFA types who looks down on genre fiction as less worthy or significant. It's all just entertainment, and whichever appeals more to you, that's just fine. As it happens, I simply prefer stuff in the "literary" mode, where it's about real characters in real world situations, where nobody's been murdered, and there's not a terrorist attack about to happen in a matter of hours if our hero can't prevent it. Even as I write that, I realize there's a bit of a snarky tone there, which I don't really want. I have gotten into some of those types of stories before (I've read everything Thomas Harris has published; I've stayed up late into the night to finish a James Patterson novel). The one genre that I have been most attracted to in my life is fantasy. Between the time I learned to read and the time I finished high school, probably the majority of my reading time was spent on fantasy novels. However, at some point in there, I'd say the change occurred in my late teens, I just sort of lost interest. My tastes changed. I didn't lose any respect for the art, but I didn't want to spend my time on it either.
So, that brings me to the point where I am in my late twenties contemplating writing a fantasy novel. A few things stand in my way. One: I'm not sure whether I'll have the excitement and interest in the project to work on it for the necessary length of time required to produce something good. After all, I spent years on my first two literary novels, and it's not fair (I guess I see it as disrespectful to the genre) to think I could just bang one out without putting in the same kind of hard work rewriting, revising, editing, etc. But would my passion be sufficient to keep me going through all those months of work on a genre that I am no longer in love with? Two: I haven't read a fantasy novel in years. Sure, I've seen the Lord of the Rings Movies and Harry Potter. I've even listened to the audiobooks of Harry Potter (read by the amazing Jim Dale), but it's been about a decade since I was actively part of that literary community, where I consumed many books and had a good understanding of its conventions and tropes. I'm afraid that if I tried my hand at this genre, I would unknowingly produce a story riddled with cliches that fans of the genre would abhore. I believe it's important to do one's research and to know about the kind of story one is writing. I'm sure if I tried to write a mystery, for example, I would produce something that didn't go beyond the conventions of the earliest type of mystery story. Sherlock Holmes would laugh at my pathetic clues, Sam Spade wouldn't even leave his desk to solve my case, and whoever the current champion detectives are would scratch their heads and wonder if I could possibly be serious with my offering. Because I don't know that genre. In the world of "literary" fiction, I feel comfortable with a story idea that even if it's a simple plot it hasn't been done quite the way I'm doing it, or there's enough room for another story along these lines because of the unique voice or character combinations I'll present. But I don't have that background any longer in fantasy, and I don't want to presume that because I've studied writing and have an MFA I could whip out something great because, "well, it's only fantasy, how hard can it be?"
After considering those reservations a few months ago, I pretty much set the project aside. I figured maybe at some point down the line I'd start tinkering with it, maybe do a chapter here and there and have a slowly expanding file on my computer, but I no longer thought it would be something that I would feel compelled to write. And then I reached the point I described earlier of lacking a project. So I'm in a situation where I need something to get caught up in, but I don't want to start my next literary novel because I know I'll be picking up and moving in a few weeks, so I don't want to disrupt that process. But I'm also not working, so I have plenty of time. It's possible I could pound through something fairly quickly and finish a draft before my life goes into upheaval. So, alas, my thoughts turn more and more to this fantasy idea. As a young adult book, it would likely be shorter than my previous novels (I'm thinking in the range of 60,000 words as opposed to the 90,000 range I've done before), and I have most of the story mapped out in my head and even written down in a set of notes I've compiled earlier. The final factor was simply that more and more this idea is what was occupying my brain. I wasn't thinking about the next literary novel, I was wondering how I could make the fantasy world work, what trials my hero might face and how he would overcome them. So I sat down and began.
More details next time on how it's coming along.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Starting
My last post was about finishing a big project and resulting anti-climax that comes with the absence of this thing that was such an important part of my life for so long. I suggested that a good way combat the resulting funk is to begin something new. Unfortunately, this is not always as easy as it seems, at least for me.
I've read about writers (Stephen King comes to mind) who work on shorter pieces immediately after finishing bigger works. This seems like a great way to use up the energy that still is inside as well as to combat the anti-climax of being done. However, I've come to realize in recent years that deep down I'm not a short story writer; I'm a novelist. I admire short story writers and appreciate when I read a great piece that manages to tell a good story in such a small space, but the truth is I probably read more novels than short stories, and sometimes I read short stories and feel that they're okay, but would be better as novels (stories by E. Annie Proulx and Alice Munro come to mind). And beyond my taste in reading, it just seems that when I have an idea, it's for a longer piece. Even when I have the initial inspiration of a single scene or a simple event, I'm not satisfied with leaving it at that slice; I want to know what happens next and after that. Currently I have ideas for a few novels that I want to write in the next number of years, and two of those began as what I thought could be short stories, but I wrote the short stories and realized I was deeply unsatisfied with them although I still loved the original ideas. The problems were due to the failure of the ideas to fit into the short story frame. In order for those pieces to be explored in a satisfying way without turning to sentimentality, cliche, or whatever, they have to be larger. I need to know the characters more fully, to explore where they came from and where they go after the scene that was the initial inspiration. So as far as shorter pieces go, although I've been working for the past several years at the craft of writing and I've written a handful of stories in the process, I feel I have only produced one that is any good along with one personal essay that is also strong. Possibly I have a couple novel chapters that might be able to stand alone, but writing a short story may be more difficult for me than writing a novel, so turning to that avenue as a way out of my post-completion funk doesn't typically work well.
I finished revisions of my second novel a couple months ago. I tried to fight off the blues through getting involved in the hunt for an agent, but of course that's not the same as actively writing. Although it takes a lot of time and an essential part of becoming a professional writer with published books, it doesn't satisfy me at all. It's just hard work, and the more I think about the difficulties of actually landing an agent and getting my book out there, the more I'm likely to sink into the depression that comes with having finished my novel. So clearly, I needed something else, another creative project. But what?
I decided to try my hand at screenwriting, not expecting to really produce anything that will make me a Hollywood success or anything, but just to gain more experience of another form and to give myself something to work on. I took a screenwriting course in my MFA program, and for the final project of that class I wrote the first act of a screenplay along with an outline of what the rest of the story would be if I finished it. So I decided it was time to return to it. So that's what I did. I absorbed myself in screenplays, reading more of them to refresh myself on the form, and I sat down and worked day after day. It was fun for a while, and it provided some of the distraction I was looking for, but ultimately I lost steam with the project. Essentially my problem with it came from a basic uncertainty with the story at the heart of the piece. I wasn't convinced the characters were really working and that I could conclude the story in any satisfying way. In part, I wasn't sure what I actually believed was the "right" thing for the character to do in his situation, and so I was left with choices of a standard Hollywood happy ending or a cynical finish, neither of which felt honest or satisfying, but I couldn't come up with anything else, any middle ground either. I suspect the entire thing needs substantial alterations much earlier in the story at the very heart of the characters before an ending will be possible. So I sputtered and floundered and was left in the same position I was in before, only now instead of merely the anti-climax of finishing a novel, I was in the added funk of attempting something and failing. Of course failure is an unavoidable part of the creative process, and I still have hopes that some day I might return to the screenplay and be able to figure it out, but in the mean time, what do I do to satisfy this deep urge in me to write a story?
Well, I tried to do a short story, which as I wrote above, is not my forte. The story was one that had been needling away at my brain for a few years. I wrote an unsuccessful version of it a few years ago, which due to a computer crash a few years ago is now completely lost. So I thought I might be able to write this story now and avoid the problems I had with it back then. But it wasn't working either. I sat down day after day with it, and produced only a few pages, including two separate and very different openings and a number of notes that haven't yet become the key to solving the story's failings.
Let me clarify one thing here before continuing. I don't want this to seem like I'm complaining. I fully understand that failure is part of the process. Most of the paths I take will be dead ends. That's simply the nature of writing. That's why writing is a process and not merely a single step. Furthermore, every time I attempt something and produce a version I'm unhappy with or I abandon a project three quarters of the way into a draft, it's still a valuable learning experience. I like to think of it as analogous to painting: a great artist doesn't doodle his first sketches and produce masterpieces, but that doesn't mean that every crap drawing or flawed painting wasn't a valuable part of the process that eventually led to great work. Hopefully in the future I can anticipate some of the problems I hit in the past and avoid them, or I can see why I went wrong and do something else instead. Time spent writing is worthwhile. Period.
However, as great as it is to learn and see problems that can be overcome or to simply try new things and add that experience to the sum of what I've done, it's not the same as being actively involved with something I love.
So after unsuccessfully trying a couple of routes to get into a new project following my novel I decided a new novel was probably the best option. As I mentioned above, I have a few ideas for novels that I want to try in the next few years. One I'm sure I'm not ready to write simply because it's too serious and dark, and I feel I need at least a few more years of living before I will be the person who can write it. Another one will require extensive research about a historical time and place, so I'll have to do substantial work on that before I can actually begin writing anything. Then there are two others. One of them I'm excited about. It's one of the ideas that I thought could be a short story, but now I feel has to be a novel. For about a year or more I've thought in my head that it will be "my next novel." However, life issues prevent me from beginning it at the moment. Or, I suppose I could start it anytime I want to, but I don't feel the timing is quite right. I'm in between things as far as a job and a place to live, and I know everything will be in upheaval in a few months as I move. So for the sake of continuity and momentum I don't want to be smack in the middle of this novel when I have to pick up my life and transport myself. I'd rather start this novel in a couple months when I'm settled and can work the writing into my new routine.
So that leaves one other possibility for a novel to work on. And once again, I feel like this post is dragging on and on, and if anybody ever actually reads this, I imagine they're getting anxious for it to end, so I'll leave the details of my current project for next time.
I've read about writers (Stephen King comes to mind) who work on shorter pieces immediately after finishing bigger works. This seems like a great way to use up the energy that still is inside as well as to combat the anti-climax of being done. However, I've come to realize in recent years that deep down I'm not a short story writer; I'm a novelist. I admire short story writers and appreciate when I read a great piece that manages to tell a good story in such a small space, but the truth is I probably read more novels than short stories, and sometimes I read short stories and feel that they're okay, but would be better as novels (stories by E. Annie Proulx and Alice Munro come to mind). And beyond my taste in reading, it just seems that when I have an idea, it's for a longer piece. Even when I have the initial inspiration of a single scene or a simple event, I'm not satisfied with leaving it at that slice; I want to know what happens next and after that. Currently I have ideas for a few novels that I want to write in the next number of years, and two of those began as what I thought could be short stories, but I wrote the short stories and realized I was deeply unsatisfied with them although I still loved the original ideas. The problems were due to the failure of the ideas to fit into the short story frame. In order for those pieces to be explored in a satisfying way without turning to sentimentality, cliche, or whatever, they have to be larger. I need to know the characters more fully, to explore where they came from and where they go after the scene that was the initial inspiration. So as far as shorter pieces go, although I've been working for the past several years at the craft of writing and I've written a handful of stories in the process, I feel I have only produced one that is any good along with one personal essay that is also strong. Possibly I have a couple novel chapters that might be able to stand alone, but writing a short story may be more difficult for me than writing a novel, so turning to that avenue as a way out of my post-completion funk doesn't typically work well.
I finished revisions of my second novel a couple months ago. I tried to fight off the blues through getting involved in the hunt for an agent, but of course that's not the same as actively writing. Although it takes a lot of time and an essential part of becoming a professional writer with published books, it doesn't satisfy me at all. It's just hard work, and the more I think about the difficulties of actually landing an agent and getting my book out there, the more I'm likely to sink into the depression that comes with having finished my novel. So clearly, I needed something else, another creative project. But what?
I decided to try my hand at screenwriting, not expecting to really produce anything that will make me a Hollywood success or anything, but just to gain more experience of another form and to give myself something to work on. I took a screenwriting course in my MFA program, and for the final project of that class I wrote the first act of a screenplay along with an outline of what the rest of the story would be if I finished it. So I decided it was time to return to it. So that's what I did. I absorbed myself in screenplays, reading more of them to refresh myself on the form, and I sat down and worked day after day. It was fun for a while, and it provided some of the distraction I was looking for, but ultimately I lost steam with the project. Essentially my problem with it came from a basic uncertainty with the story at the heart of the piece. I wasn't convinced the characters were really working and that I could conclude the story in any satisfying way. In part, I wasn't sure what I actually believed was the "right" thing for the character to do in his situation, and so I was left with choices of a standard Hollywood happy ending or a cynical finish, neither of which felt honest or satisfying, but I couldn't come up with anything else, any middle ground either. I suspect the entire thing needs substantial alterations much earlier in the story at the very heart of the characters before an ending will be possible. So I sputtered and floundered and was left in the same position I was in before, only now instead of merely the anti-climax of finishing a novel, I was in the added funk of attempting something and failing. Of course failure is an unavoidable part of the creative process, and I still have hopes that some day I might return to the screenplay and be able to figure it out, but in the mean time, what do I do to satisfy this deep urge in me to write a story?
Well, I tried to do a short story, which as I wrote above, is not my forte. The story was one that had been needling away at my brain for a few years. I wrote an unsuccessful version of it a few years ago, which due to a computer crash a few years ago is now completely lost. So I thought I might be able to write this story now and avoid the problems I had with it back then. But it wasn't working either. I sat down day after day with it, and produced only a few pages, including two separate and very different openings and a number of notes that haven't yet become the key to solving the story's failings.
Let me clarify one thing here before continuing. I don't want this to seem like I'm complaining. I fully understand that failure is part of the process. Most of the paths I take will be dead ends. That's simply the nature of writing. That's why writing is a process and not merely a single step. Furthermore, every time I attempt something and produce a version I'm unhappy with or I abandon a project three quarters of the way into a draft, it's still a valuable learning experience. I like to think of it as analogous to painting: a great artist doesn't doodle his first sketches and produce masterpieces, but that doesn't mean that every crap drawing or flawed painting wasn't a valuable part of the process that eventually led to great work. Hopefully in the future I can anticipate some of the problems I hit in the past and avoid them, or I can see why I went wrong and do something else instead. Time spent writing is worthwhile. Period.
However, as great as it is to learn and see problems that can be overcome or to simply try new things and add that experience to the sum of what I've done, it's not the same as being actively involved with something I love.
So after unsuccessfully trying a couple of routes to get into a new project following my novel I decided a new novel was probably the best option. As I mentioned above, I have a few ideas for novels that I want to try in the next few years. One I'm sure I'm not ready to write simply because it's too serious and dark, and I feel I need at least a few more years of living before I will be the person who can write it. Another one will require extensive research about a historical time and place, so I'll have to do substantial work on that before I can actually begin writing anything. Then there are two others. One of them I'm excited about. It's one of the ideas that I thought could be a short story, but now I feel has to be a novel. For about a year or more I've thought in my head that it will be "my next novel." However, life issues prevent me from beginning it at the moment. Or, I suppose I could start it anytime I want to, but I don't feel the timing is quite right. I'm in between things as far as a job and a place to live, and I know everything will be in upheaval in a few months as I move. So for the sake of continuity and momentum I don't want to be smack in the middle of this novel when I have to pick up my life and transport myself. I'd rather start this novel in a couple months when I'm settled and can work the writing into my new routine.
So that leaves one other possibility for a novel to work on. And once again, I feel like this post is dragging on and on, and if anybody ever actually reads this, I imagine they're getting anxious for it to end, so I'll leave the details of my current project for next time.
Monday, July 14, 2008
Finishing
It's always a bit tough when I'm not absorbed in something. I find that my typical response when I reach a finishing point, whether it's completing a draft of a novel, a major revision, final polish, or graduating, my next mood tends toward the depressed. I work hard, put in a ton of effort, and then there's such a strong anti-climax at the end. I've felt this when I did theatre and would direct a play: weeks were spent rehearsing, and then opening night arrived and I had nothing more to do with it. But probably the greatest example of this is with a long writing project. After all, at least when one graduates from school, there's a level of social understanding that something worthwhile has been accomplished (okay, maybe nobody thinks that about getting an MFA). But if I've spent two years working on a novel, and now I've finally completed the absolute polish, what has truly changed? I went from doing something by myself at my computer to not doing that. I'm not suggesting I want sympathy, I'm just tossing this out there as a sort of odd experience. For me although it's exciting to know I've done something, it's also a bit depressing.
A large factor in this anti-climax is due to how much I like writing. When I'm really caught up in it, it's absolutely the most fun thing to do. Even when it's more of a struggle, it's an exciting struggle, like trying to figure out a complex puzzle. Personally, I don't really get Sudoku, but I appreciate why other people would enjoy it because I like that aspect of creating a story where I have to be precise and get everything to work in the exact correct way or it won't hold together. So going from actively being absorbed in something I love to not having that in my life sends me into a bit of a funk for a while. So I find the best solution to this is to dig into the next thing.
Between finishing my first novel and beginning my second, I was busy with other things, so after the inital blues of not having my first novel constantly in my thoughts I noticed the absence of writing a bit less than I sometimes would. I packed up my life in Maine and traveled across the country, spent weeks visiting my family in California, including my then two year old nephew and newborn niece, and then I drove north to Alaska to begin an MFA program. These things worked as distractions fairly well. But Also during this time, I was thinking about the next book, which at the time I envisioned as a collection of inter-related short stories. And before I began working on the new novel as a novel, I had begun some of those stories and I tried to figure out how the others would work together. Then I also tried to do some other stories, hoping to compose something that I could publish in a literary journal, boost my resume and start getting a name for myself.
My experience in recent months has been a bit different. I finished my MFA with the novel as my thesis, but I knew I had more work to do with it. Whereas my first novel was a great learning experience, I have no plans to attempt to publish it, but this new one is different. It's a better book, and I felt that with a few more months work, I could get it to the polished stage it needs to be in order for somebody in the publishing world to be interested. So I was out of school, and decided to take a few months to work full time on the book without the distraction of a job or basic life responsibilities (A gigantic thanks to my parents for letting me stay at their cabin, which made this option possible). This worked amazingly well, and I think I probably managed to get more time in additional revisions than I could have if I spent another year working on it while also working full time. But this left the problem of having nothing else on my plate when I finished. The anti-climax came big because I had no other major distractions, and so I went from many hours a day spent on this novel to nothing. From the perspective of an outside observer I'm sure it doesn't seem that different. I was an unemployed guy who sat at a computer fiddling around, and now I spent less time at the computer. But for me, it's a tough transition to make. The driving force in my life is one day no longer there, and I have to figure out what to do with myself.
So the logical solution is, of course, to start something new. But, alas, that isn't always so easy. But since I see this post is getting a bit long, I'll let something new wait for next time.
A large factor in this anti-climax is due to how much I like writing. When I'm really caught up in it, it's absolutely the most fun thing to do. Even when it's more of a struggle, it's an exciting struggle, like trying to figure out a complex puzzle. Personally, I don't really get Sudoku, but I appreciate why other people would enjoy it because I like that aspect of creating a story where I have to be precise and get everything to work in the exact correct way or it won't hold together. So going from actively being absorbed in something I love to not having that in my life sends me into a bit of a funk for a while. So I find the best solution to this is to dig into the next thing.
Between finishing my first novel and beginning my second, I was busy with other things, so after the inital blues of not having my first novel constantly in my thoughts I noticed the absence of writing a bit less than I sometimes would. I packed up my life in Maine and traveled across the country, spent weeks visiting my family in California, including my then two year old nephew and newborn niece, and then I drove north to Alaska to begin an MFA program. These things worked as distractions fairly well. But Also during this time, I was thinking about the next book, which at the time I envisioned as a collection of inter-related short stories. And before I began working on the new novel as a novel, I had begun some of those stories and I tried to figure out how the others would work together. Then I also tried to do some other stories, hoping to compose something that I could publish in a literary journal, boost my resume and start getting a name for myself.
My experience in recent months has been a bit different. I finished my MFA with the novel as my thesis, but I knew I had more work to do with it. Whereas my first novel was a great learning experience, I have no plans to attempt to publish it, but this new one is different. It's a better book, and I felt that with a few more months work, I could get it to the polished stage it needs to be in order for somebody in the publishing world to be interested. So I was out of school, and decided to take a few months to work full time on the book without the distraction of a job or basic life responsibilities (A gigantic thanks to my parents for letting me stay at their cabin, which made this option possible). This worked amazingly well, and I think I probably managed to get more time in additional revisions than I could have if I spent another year working on it while also working full time. But this left the problem of having nothing else on my plate when I finished. The anti-climax came big because I had no other major distractions, and so I went from many hours a day spent on this novel to nothing. From the perspective of an outside observer I'm sure it doesn't seem that different. I was an unemployed guy who sat at a computer fiddling around, and now I spent less time at the computer. But for me, it's a tough transition to make. The driving force in my life is one day no longer there, and I have to figure out what to do with myself.
So the logical solution is, of course, to start something new. But, alas, that isn't always so easy. But since I see this post is getting a bit long, I'll let something new wait for next time.
Sunday, July 13, 2008
My Basic Process
So here's my first blog about my process. As the title of my blog indicates, what I write here will most likely be half thought out and subject to change. Although I think about this stuff a lot, my views shift regularly. Furthermore, there's a decent chance I won't always bother to check these posts for grammar, typos, etc. After all, these thoughts are only half thought out, so if they're a little rough, so be it.
To begin I'll simply outline my basic process, and in future posts, I'll get down to what I'm specifically working on at the moment.
PREWRITING: Typically a story idea has marinated for months or even years in my head before I set it down, although sometimes I get an idea and then begin writing it that very day. The length of time thinking about it tends to correlate with the length of the project. I toss a novel around for years before setting anything down on paper whereas a flash fiction piece might go straight from idea to a draft.
DRAFT 1: Once I have notes and some good idea what the overall scope of the piece is I start writing. When I have the time, I like to go regularly and shoot for 2,000 words each day, but I can't always manage the time if I'm busy with other things in my life. So I might go well for a week and then not get anything for several days. Or I might go straight for two months hitting my daily goals. Anyway, once I have a first draft I put that aside and let it sit so I can get some perspective on it.
READING: After a few weeks or even a few months I return to it and try to read the whole thing as quickly as possible. For a full length novel, it will probably take a couple of long sessions over a couple days, but I don't want to read it the way I might read other things--a chapter at a time, or a few pages on the toilet, or whatever. I make minimal notes as I go through it, but not on the small things like grammar or spelling; those wait until the end. This read through is to get an idea of whether the story works, if it flows, if it even makes sense. From here I take a small step back and let it return to my brain for a bit, so I can just ponder the whole thing some more.
REWRITING: Then I make more notes and I do a complete outline. I find that outlining at the rewriting stage is even more useful than outlining from the beginning. It's a way for me to see the whole scope and how chapters fit together and if the basic arc of the story is coming together. This outline begins with what I actually have in the first draft, but then it evolves into what I want it to be in the revision. So the outline itself goes through multiple drafts as I continue to rewrite. Now is when I begin actually creating a second draft. This involves going through a hard copy with a red pen. I cross things out; I write in new things. Sometimes I'll hand write multiple new pages or X out whole chapters. This is not even revising. This is REWRITING. By the time I'm through, the hard copy is so marked up that I don't even attempt to update these changes on my computer. I go through and I retype the entire thing. This way, I not only include those changes I wrote in by hand on the hard copy, but I also make additional changes as I go. I almost think of this as two separate new drafts, the red ink hard copy is draft two, and the new document on my computer is draft three. By the time I have a full new version, a few more months have passed, and I'm ready to set it aside and hopefully gain some more perspective and then return to the reading.
REVISING: When I return to the rewritten draft, I want to get the same sense I aimed for after the rough draft: Does the story flow? Are there glaring errors? Do the characters make sense? Etc. But I also want to focus on the language and precision. Am I going onto tangents that are unnecessary? Is there repetition that can be trimmed? I have a tendency to expand in the initial rewriting stage, and here is where I tighten. This draft is about trimming the fat.
EDIT/POLISH: Finally, once I've been through the above steps, perhaps circling back multiple times and repeating them, I am ready to just edit. This is the tedious step. I love the other stages of the process, but here is where it comes down to putting in the hard work that will hopefully make something publishable and ready for the world. Again I print out a hard copy and pull out the red pen. I go through the entire thing sentence by sentence. Some places might jump out at me that need larger revision, but typically the story is solid at this point and it's simply a matter of finding errors, fixing awkward phrases, and making sure that it flows, not only from the scope of the overall story, but in the actual paragraphs and sentences. It's a pain, and I can never catch absolutely everything, but it's unavoidable.
I've written two novels using basically this process each time, with some variation. And I didn't mention in here showing the work in progress to others, workshop classes, writing groups, teachers, friends, but that happens as well. It looks pretty straightforward the way I have it described in this blog, but in practice it took me about a year to generate the first draft of my first novel, and then two years to finish the final draft, at which point I decided it was a great learning experience but not anything to attempt to publish. The second novel was at one point conceived as a collection of interlinked short stories, and so I began working on sections of it years before I started drafting the whole thing as a novel, but from the point I began in earnest, I probably wrote the first three chapters or so during a busy spring semester and then completed the rest of the first draft over the summer, so about six months total. Then I took the next two years to rework it. I currently have a draft that I felt was done, but then I got some good suggestions from one of my early readers, so it now has a few additional changes to undergo, but it's close. Unlike the first novel, I hope to publish this one, and I'm seeking an agent for it.
There's more to write here, of course. I haven't mentioned anything about what I'm doing currently, or the unease I feel when I'm not solidly in the middle of a project, but that will have to come later.
To begin I'll simply outline my basic process, and in future posts, I'll get down to what I'm specifically working on at the moment.
PREWRITING: Typically a story idea has marinated for months or even years in my head before I set it down, although sometimes I get an idea and then begin writing it that very day. The length of time thinking about it tends to correlate with the length of the project. I toss a novel around for years before setting anything down on paper whereas a flash fiction piece might go straight from idea to a draft.
DRAFT 1: Once I have notes and some good idea what the overall scope of the piece is I start writing. When I have the time, I like to go regularly and shoot for 2,000 words each day, but I can't always manage the time if I'm busy with other things in my life. So I might go well for a week and then not get anything for several days. Or I might go straight for two months hitting my daily goals. Anyway, once I have a first draft I put that aside and let it sit so I can get some perspective on it.
READING: After a few weeks or even a few months I return to it and try to read the whole thing as quickly as possible. For a full length novel, it will probably take a couple of long sessions over a couple days, but I don't want to read it the way I might read other things--a chapter at a time, or a few pages on the toilet, or whatever. I make minimal notes as I go through it, but not on the small things like grammar or spelling; those wait until the end. This read through is to get an idea of whether the story works, if it flows, if it even makes sense. From here I take a small step back and let it return to my brain for a bit, so I can just ponder the whole thing some more.
REWRITING: Then I make more notes and I do a complete outline. I find that outlining at the rewriting stage is even more useful than outlining from the beginning. It's a way for me to see the whole scope and how chapters fit together and if the basic arc of the story is coming together. This outline begins with what I actually have in the first draft, but then it evolves into what I want it to be in the revision. So the outline itself goes through multiple drafts as I continue to rewrite. Now is when I begin actually creating a second draft. This involves going through a hard copy with a red pen. I cross things out; I write in new things. Sometimes I'll hand write multiple new pages or X out whole chapters. This is not even revising. This is REWRITING. By the time I'm through, the hard copy is so marked up that I don't even attempt to update these changes on my computer. I go through and I retype the entire thing. This way, I not only include those changes I wrote in by hand on the hard copy, but I also make additional changes as I go. I almost think of this as two separate new drafts, the red ink hard copy is draft two, and the new document on my computer is draft three. By the time I have a full new version, a few more months have passed, and I'm ready to set it aside and hopefully gain some more perspective and then return to the reading.
REVISING: When I return to the rewritten draft, I want to get the same sense I aimed for after the rough draft: Does the story flow? Are there glaring errors? Do the characters make sense? Etc. But I also want to focus on the language and precision. Am I going onto tangents that are unnecessary? Is there repetition that can be trimmed? I have a tendency to expand in the initial rewriting stage, and here is where I tighten. This draft is about trimming the fat.
EDIT/POLISH: Finally, once I've been through the above steps, perhaps circling back multiple times and repeating them, I am ready to just edit. This is the tedious step. I love the other stages of the process, but here is where it comes down to putting in the hard work that will hopefully make something publishable and ready for the world. Again I print out a hard copy and pull out the red pen. I go through the entire thing sentence by sentence. Some places might jump out at me that need larger revision, but typically the story is solid at this point and it's simply a matter of finding errors, fixing awkward phrases, and making sure that it flows, not only from the scope of the overall story, but in the actual paragraphs and sentences. It's a pain, and I can never catch absolutely everything, but it's unavoidable.
I've written two novels using basically this process each time, with some variation. And I didn't mention in here showing the work in progress to others, workshop classes, writing groups, teachers, friends, but that happens as well. It looks pretty straightforward the way I have it described in this blog, but in practice it took me about a year to generate the first draft of my first novel, and then two years to finish the final draft, at which point I decided it was a great learning experience but not anything to attempt to publish. The second novel was at one point conceived as a collection of interlinked short stories, and so I began working on sections of it years before I started drafting the whole thing as a novel, but from the point I began in earnest, I probably wrote the first three chapters or so during a busy spring semester and then completed the rest of the first draft over the summer, so about six months total. Then I took the next two years to rework it. I currently have a draft that I felt was done, but then I got some good suggestions from one of my early readers, so it now has a few additional changes to undergo, but it's close. Unlike the first novel, I hope to publish this one, and I'm seeking an agent for it.
There's more to write here, of course. I haven't mentioned anything about what I'm doing currently, or the unease I feel when I'm not solidly in the middle of a project, but that will have to come later.
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