The process for writing this novel is of course different than any novel I’ve written before this. A huge part of that is due to the fact that I wrote out a proposal for this novel, before I wrote the novel. Sometimes I do a brief outline — the proposal had a lot more information than just an outline.
More process
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Nov 282010
Ritual
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Nov 252010
I have only a few rituals involved with my spiritual practice. I rarely talk about them.
One of them, though, is to say, “Thank you,” — every morning when I get up and every night when I go to bed.
Sometimes they get to be habit, just a quick thanks without intent or purpose.
Most of the time, though, I try to take that brief moment to express actual gratitude toward something specific, like a particular friend, some aspect of the day that’s passed, or the day to come.
I feel as though I can’t ever express the proper gratitude I have for my friends, my family, my life. I am privileged, I know, and I try to be aware of that each and every day.
So yes, thank you.
Happy Turkey Day to those who celebrate!
I am being hit hard by spammers in the comment sections on the web site. I went to all moderated comments and still had over 100. Now no anonymous comments are allowed on the site. I hope that stops them. I currently have no internet, and am trying to manage all this on my phone.
Running unblocked
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Nov 182010
So — last night I talked about how I had been blocked, unable to get my word count in.
Tonight, when I started, I did 1200 words in 40 minutes.
Can you say, “On fire”? I knew you could.
It took me about 2 hours to do about 2000 words total, which is actually about average for me. When, you know, I’m not blocked. As opposed to it taking 4 hours to do 200 words, which was Tuesday night.
I have a date Friday night, which means I probably won’t write. That leaves about 2500 words to write on both Saturday and Sunday, which is totally doable.
Here’s the official word count:
24,503 / 80,000
I keep thinking about what is story and what is plot. Nothing I’m writing is veering very far from the proposal. One of the things that I added with the retrofit was conflict, of a type. The main character’s choices can’t be *easy*. But none of that’s in the proposal. It makes for a better story, but it isn’t significant to the essence of the story, which is still in the proposal.
I don’t know. I’m just going to have to keep figuring it out.
Keeping that Beat
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Nov 172010
I’ve been having problems for the last two days, meeting my word count goals. I don’t write to discover plot, I know what’s going on, basically, in terms of the story. I write to discover the emotional journey. And I kept trying to work on a scene when I didn’t know where that emotional journey went, or what I wanted to say about it.
I’m currently in the middle of chapter 6. I finally figured out that I’d “lost” that emotional plot line back in chapter 4. So I’ve spent a lot of time tonight retro-fitting, as it were. This wasn’t so much a rewrite as a “make it not broke” thing. Plus, I’ve come to realize I need another scene in chapter 3, and I’ve made more notes about what that needs to look like, as well as where it needs to occur.
I’m still far behind in my word count. But at least I made real progress tonight, and the story feels “healed” in my head. Hopefully tomorrow I’ll be able to catch up.
22,428 / 80,000
One step in front of another
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Nov 142010
Back in 2005, my life imploded. I stopped writing for a while, about two years, actually.
When I started writing again, I completely changed my process. I got myself back into writing by doing writing prompts. I would write by hand, and when I started doing fiction, would then type it up.
For Clockwork Kingdom I followed this example. It was one of the reasons why 10,000 words a week was killing me. I was actually writing every word twice.
For Zydeco Queen I’m doing first draft on the computer. I’m finding it easier when I’m really into the novel, when the words are flowing. I don’t even notice the process of writing, it’s just suddenly hours (and pages) later.
When the words aren’t flowing — well, it’s gotten to the point that I’ve started turning off the internet in order to kill some of the distractions. I’m almost tempted to return to handwritten during those times, because there’s nothing I can do except write when all I have is paper and pen in front of me.
One of the other things I’ve felt, at least with this novel, is that I’m not taking as many risks. (I don’t know if this is true or not–very hard for a writer to judge her own work.) I think in part it’s because I don’t want to stray too far from the original proposal. I need to get over that, and just tell the damn story, including the wild leaps and forays. Stay out of my own way.
I have about 1600 words left to reach my 10,000 for this week. Time to get back on it. And turn the internet off again.
She’s tricksy, that one
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Nov 132010
One of the things that I frequently do is come up with a playlist of songs that I’ll listen to possibly obsessively while I’m writing.
The soundtrack from “Pirates of the Caribbean” was frequently on my list while I wrote Clockwork Kingdom. It was pirates, and fog, and ship battles, and it just set the mood for me.
I didn’t realize until just recently that a lot of the songs on the playlist for Zydeco Queen are from the 60s and 70s. The novel I’m currently writing has some scenes that take place in a high school. The songs that have crept onto this playlist are painful songs from way back then, expressing my teenage angst. Some of the songs I still like — others I kind of roll my eyes at the drama-queen nature of them.
While I wasn’t bullied horribly in high school, my best friend was. (She’d come to the US from Germany when she was 14. She dressed European — very stylish — not American, and got tremendous crap about it, as well as other things.) This book has been difficult to write in places, reliving those ancient hurts.
There was a meme going around, about tweets you’d send to your 13 year old self. So many things I’d tell myself to do differently. As that’s pretty useless, I guess all I can say is that, “It gets better. It does take a long time before it gets better, and you have to hit a couple pretty desperate places first — but it does get better.”
Nov 042010
Seriously, that’s what I feel like I’m doing half the time. I brought minimal things with me–when I left Seattle, I didn’t have a place, and I was looking at both furnished and unfurnished and I didn’t want to cart around stuff I wouldn’t end up needing. . .
I ended up getting an unfurnished place. And I mean really unfurnished. No curtains on the windows. Not even a shower rod in the bathroom. The place is newly remodeled–no one has lived here since they finished the work. But they didn’t quite finish the work, either.
Before anyone gets the wrong idea–I do like this place. I am really happy to be here for six months, both in this apartment and in the French Quarter. The poor realtor and the contractor are fixing things as fast as they can. There just happens to be a lot more to fix than they realized.
