Writing, Sweating And Writing Some More

To be a writer is to sit down at one’s desk in the chill portion of every day, and to write; not waiting for the little jet of the blue flame of genius to start from the breastbone – just plain going at it, in pain and delight. To be a writer is to throw away a great deal, not to be satisfied, to type again, and then again, and once more, and over and over….
John Hersey

Earlier last week I finished a book. Well, the first draft anyway. Then I put it down for a few days and Saturday, I picked up that huge binder and began the process of editing and revision. Then I’ll send it out, chapter by chapter to my crit partners who will pick it apart and send them back to me and then I’ll revise again. And then, I’ll send to beta readers and of course they’ll see things I need to address so I’ll revise again and then I’ll send to my agent. And then after it’s been looked at, read, picked apart, put back together, tightened, shortened, lengthened and honed - it’ll be printed up and mailed to my editor.

I was sort of afraid to pick it up. In fact, last night I was afraid to.

Afraid for a multitude of reasons - this is my first NY single title. Will it be good enough? Will my editor like it or when she sees it will she rue the day she signed me? When I read it, will it be what I remember? Better? Worse? How much work will it be to revise?

The list goes on really because I’ve found fear to be a constant companion since I sold my first book. In truth, I’m not sure anything is truly worth working for if you don’t want it bad enough you have fear of losing it.

The secret of becoming a writer is to write, write and keep on writing.
Ken MacLeod

But I will pick it up again tonight, and tomorrow and every day after until it's done. I will revise it and I will make it the best I possibly can. Because it’s the only way to finish. Because I love the story and I want my editor to love it too. I want the readers to love it. Because I’m a writer and we write.

Lauren Dane is currently working on Undercover - a futuristic, menage, bdsm flavored erotic romance due to release from Berkley Heat December 2, 2008.

www.laurendane.com
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Failing to Plan is Planning to Fail

The other morning, my critique partner tossed off 4500 words on her new manuscript, and gave it to me to look at over lunch. Yes, you read that correctly. 4500 words. In one morning. I'm lucky if I can manage 3000 words working sunup to sundown.

When I asked her how she'd managed to write so much so quickly, she pointed to her sheet of notes -- scribbled bits of plot and character development that were cryptic in the extreme. But she claimed she'd been thinking about the story since the previous night, and had it pretty much written in her head, so she just had to type it out. Unfortunately for my hopes of ever having a 4500 word morning, I don't write like that.

A few days ago, Tina blogged about the difference between being a plotter or pantser. But most pantsers -- at least among the published authors I've talked to, and it's worth noting that these are the ones that finish books and deliver them on schedules -- don't write blind. They have some sort of an idea for the book. They may not have a plot, per se, with turning points and escalations and denouments, but they have a theme, or a motif, or a character arc, or a situation they want to explore. In other words, they have a plan, loose though it may be.

I'm not a plotter. The conflicting needs and desires of my characters produce their actions, and those actions result in a plot. But it's like quantum physics ... all plots are possible, until the moment when the waveform collapses and a single plot is chosen. So my writing is a series of collapsing waveforms, looking at the range of plots, picking one, writing a few hundred or thousand words until the range of possible plots is once again overwhelming and a new one needs to be selected, then the whole process repeats until the book is finished.

To keep from wandering forever lost in my imagination, I rely on my plan, which helps me to choose the appropriate options from among the glittering host of possibilities. So, for example, in my current release from Cerridwen Press, SHADOW PRINCE, my plan included the basic setup for the story, the backstory (developed in NOT QUITE CAMELOT), and the dichotomies I wanted to explore, such as trust/suspicion. And because of genre conventions, I knew that the characters would ultimately be sucessful in their quest, and the resolution would be a happy one, although I didn't quite know what that resolution would be. When faced with a choice for where to take the story next, I went back to the plan, and that kept the whole thing flowing in a cohesive fashion, building toward the final showdown at the end.

I'm finishing a new novel, now, and really need to write quickly. With my critique partner's example, I thought I'd try making some notes for what has to happen in the various chapters remaining. They ended up being notes like "wanders around town, meets people, learns things". Wow, exciting chapter, huh? I'm sure it will be, by the time I write it. But until that moment when a single possibility is chosen, there's really no way of knowing what will happen. That's what keeps it interesting.

Three Million Words For Process

Last week, I was chatting with Megan Hart about process and writing and how authors spoke about writing. Some authors talk about it in that "one true way" sense, like their process is "THE" process. Others are more of the "this is what works for me" school and still more find it hard to put what they do into a frame of reference. Me? I tend to be in the "I don't know if it makes sense but this is what works for me, try your own thing though because your mileage may vary."

Talking about writing is an odd thing because it's like a unique language for every writer. How many words are there for writing or process as they're seen through the lens of different authors? They're just words and they hold meaning to me with regard to process but not so much to other people. I don't think about writing in technical terms at all. I just write.

I have notebooks in stacks in and on my desk. Each notebook is for a different book or story idea. Some of them have detailed notes about characters, snippets of dialog or other text, research notations, and others have the story kernel - the whatever it was that tickled my fancy to give me the idea - just a line, a picture from a magazine, etc.

I'm working on being more organized with this, we'll see if that happens or not. Right now, I'm writing on a deadline. Reading Between the Lines is due by August 1 and I'm pretty sure, given my current pace, I'll be finished with the first draft by this time next week. This gives me plenty of time then, to leave it for a few days and then to come back and edit, revise and turn in.

This is my process when I work on timelines. I used to just plow through, draft, edit, revise and turn in but now I like to have a bit to let the book sit when I finish so when I come back to it later. For me, I can see it through more objective eyes with a little bit of distance.

Inevitably, when I'm working on a book, more book ideas come to me. Right now I've got two other books in progress but I forced myself to stop working on them until I finish with RBTL. Sometimes though, I have to get stuff down so I treat myself like I do my kids, I set a goal (pages or words) before I can stop and work on anything else. (I don't normally do page or word counts unless I'm hard on deadline or something like this happens)

Anyway, a little illustration of how that works for me:

Last night I'm on the exercise bike (where I read and sometimes plot, etc) and I'm listening to The Prodigy. Suddenly, an image comes to me and as I'm pedaling away, sweating, more of the scene begins to unfold. And the line of dialog, just one.

Bang. My new story unfolds just like that. I finish my 45 minutes and jump off, write that line of dialog down and after I shower and get my goal met for the day, I wrote it. I now have to figure out the rest, the length, the meat of the story, etc, but essentially, that's how this works for me. An image, a lyric, a smell, a sound, someone's voice - little triggers and a bizarre movie begins in my head and a book is born.

Lauren