Writer to writer: From think to ink - Gail Carson Levine 2014
Drops of blood
Being a writer
The imaginatively named and spelled Bluekiwii wrote on the blog about the struggle that sometimes comes with writing: “I always have the problem of actually starting to write. The story I want to write blanks from my mind, and I freeze before I’ve even begun to write a word. Or I’ll write something, realize it’s rubbish, and cross it out and begin again, and I’ll continue on this way through the story until I give it up halfway. Or I sit in front of the page thinking of ideas/possibilities and reject each one. Have you ever felt this way, and what have you done to get rid of this feeling in order to write? How do you start the process of writing a story? Do you outline what you are doing first? Do you plan each chapter? How do you visualize what you’re trying to write before you do it? Do you make a rough sketch of what your characters are like before fleshing them out in the story?”
I love this observation, written by journalist and playwright Gene Fowler: “Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.”
No writer I know ever ever ever says, “I sit down at my computer every morning without fail and pop out seven glorious pages. Isn’t writing the merriest activity on earth?”
Before I start a new novel, I speculate (in my notes) about what I might like it to be. Often I reread fairy tales. Also, I keep a running list of ideas for future books, and I revisit that. If any of the ideas interest me, I write more notes about it—where I could take the story, what might happen. I continue with notes and trying out new ideas until something clamors to be written. Even then I’m not sure, though, and I write more notes, until a beginning emerges. Usually I have a sense of how the story should end—nothing specific, and nothing that can’t change.
Then I plunge in and start writing, without an outline but with a rough idea of where I’m going, which may be entirely different from where I end up, and occasionally I lose my way for many pages. Although I don’t plan each chapter, I do have an idea of a scene before I write it, and I have an internal alarm that shrills when things are getting dull and I need to shake them up or throw in a surprise.
Naturally, this is just my method. Many writers work from outlines, which may be loose or highly detailed.
When I’ve got three pages, I always think, I’ve written one percent, which is ridiculous because the book may turn out to be longer or shorter than three hundred pages, and because I’m likely to write lots of pages that I’ll wind up cutting.
I do not ask myself if what I’ve written so far is any good. Such thinking is prohibited. It just gets in the way. Let’s work at characters, dialogue, action, setting, and expression, and leave pronouncements on quality to the critics.
But if you must be critical, here’s a trick to try:
When you think you wrote something awful, write the judgment and keep going, as in:
Maxine and her brother Ken left the apartment to buy a carton of milk. What garbage. Who cares? The elevator didn’t come for a full five minutes, so they took the stairs. What difference does that make? I should just cut it all. Maxine had told her mother she didn’t want to go to the store, but here she was, on her way. The store was boring. This is boring. I should shoot Maxine.
Maybe it will turn out that the elevator was delayed because Maxine’s upstairs neighbor, the one who gives her piano lessons, had a heart attack, and he was being carried into the elevator on a stretcher. Or maybe there will be a unicorn in the store when Maxine and Ken finally get there. Or you’ll find other characters who interest you more than the two of them. When you finish the story, you can delete all the mean sentences.
And here’s another trick: Write without deleting or crossing out. When you don’t like what went before, just hit Enter twice or drop down a line in your notebook and write the sentences better or differently. If you’re still not satisfied, repeat. Five is the limit, however. After five rewrites you have to move on.
Along similar lines, blog reader Mya wrote, “Homework load seems to increase every year through high school, and though I badly want to write, sometimes I can’t seem to find the time. So I was wondering, how do you organize your writing time? And there is also the fact that real life can drain so much energy, making you too tired to type a single word. How do you get inspired once more, and relax into the mood?”
I’m not great at organizing my writing time. I write while I eat breakfast and while I eat lunch and at night when I have my snack. That’s an hour or so. And then I write in between, but I’m very distractible. If an email comes in, I look at it. If the phone rings (rarely), I pick it up. I’m not a role model.
My method is to keep track on paper of the time I spend writing. The goal is at least two and a quarter hours of writing a day, so I write down my start times and stop times. I may write for twenty-three minutes and stop to read an email. Before I look at the email, I note the time.
Some authors set themselves a daily page goal, say five pages, or a daily word count, say a thousand words. Both are fine practices, too.
Lots of us work well with small time goals and rewards. I’ll often tell myself that if I write for half an hour, I can take a break. Not too much later I demand another half hour of myself. In doing this, I’m not thinking about finishing my book, but underneath I know that if I put in enough time at my desk and write enough pages and notes and think enough, I’ll get there.
In fact, worrying about finishing is a distraction. Just write.
Thousands of people compete in NaNoWriMo—National Novel Writing Month—every year. The goal is to write a certain number of words of a novel during the month of November, a short month with only thirty days, but at least it’s better than February. There’s a word count for adults and one for kids. Anyone who finishes wins. It’s a great goad to get you going. If you can, try it. From writers who’ve participated, I know that it’s fun, even for those who don’t win. They’ve put something down, created a beginning they can go back to, and there’s always next year.
Sometimes I don’t make my time goal, but I forgive myself, because heaping coals on my head does no good. The coals burn! And they make getting going the next day even harder.
You can invent your own goals. Some people do better with a stick and some with a carrot. If you’re a carrot kind of writer, you can write stories as gifts for the birthdays of all your friends and relatives. And for your pets! Write a story for the major and minor holidays. Celebrate National Pie Day (December 1) with a story. Or Pi Day (March 14) with a story about math.
If the stick gets you going best, devise a punishment for yourself if you fail to meet your goal. Make it awful. No more pie for a year, not even on Pie Day. If you don’t care about pie, make it something that does matter to you. Swear an oath like that.
When I first began writing novels, a book trained me out of needing to be in the mood. That book, Becoming a Writer by Dorothea Brande, was written almost a century ago. The language is old-fashioned, but the ideas aren’t. Here, in my more modern words, are three exercises from the book:
• For the next week, wake up fifteen minutes to an hour early and write right away, before you’ve had breakfast or changed out of your jammies, and especially before you read anything, preferably before you speak to anyone. With luck, your mind will be empty of your conventional way of thinking and surprising ideas will pop up.
• For the following week, set aside a particular fifteen minutes a day for writing. No matter what may come, you have to write during that time.
• For the last week in this program, write for fifteen minutes at different, random times. The purpose of this is to accustom yourself to writing whenever possible in any circumstance and not to depend on your mood or on a particular place. If you can write only in your bedroom or only when there’s absolute silence, your opportunities narrow. I write in airports, on planes and trains, in hotel rooms. In an airport, for example, under a giant TV blasting endless headlines, weather, and commercials, I can still write. I’m irritated. I wish the thing would shut up, but I soldier on.
Doesn’t matter what you jot down during these periods. It can be notes, journal entries, thoughts, or stories. Whatever it is, remember: You’re writing. This, too, should be saved.
Each writer works uniquely. I’m a start-and-stop writer; I’m willing to be interrupted and I interrupt myself—but I always return to my computer. You may dive in and not come up for air until someone demands your participation in family life or until you have to go somewhere. Then you may forget about writing for days. Maybe you charge ahead, but you can’t stand to look at what you’ve written. Or you have to rewrite every sentence a dozen times before you can move forward. Or you need a deadline to shove you along, and then your pent-up inventiveness pours out.
This exercise is from me: Observe yourself as you write, as if you were a wild creature in its natural habitat. Don’t change anything or bemoan anything. Marvel at yourself. Write a journal entry about you, the writer.
And here are two more exercises:
• Sometime this week, write outside your comfort zone. Write in the living room while the family is watching television. Bring your pad to breakfast and write while you chomp down on your pancakes or your high-fiber cereal. See if you can zone out the distractions, or see if the distractions themselves take you somewhere unexpected.
• Also this week, write in an unaccustomed mode. If you usually write longhand first, go directly to a computer, or vice versa. See if there’s a change in your writing. Does the new method expand you? (You can then return to your usual way, but sometimes it’s helpful to shake things up.)
Of the writers I know, some write at a certain time. The hour arrives, and they sit at their desks, hoping that routine will prime the muse’s pump. Some free write (write whatever comes to mind) before they enter the “real” manuscript. Some edit the work of the previous day before they pen or type a new word. Some snack their way through an entire book (carrots and celery, to be sure).
The point is that mechanics, not inspiration, keeps us writing. Continuing in the face of bewilderment eventually earns us inspiration. Habit—I can’t emphasize this enough—gets us through.
So here’s my advice:
1. Establish writing habits, whatever they are: a particular time to write, a number of pages that have to be written, a time goal. If you choose my method, the time goal, write the time down as you go. Don’t let it be vague.
2. Know that you are a writer and your obligation—possibly your calling—is to write.
3. Forgive yourself if (and probably when) you fall short.
In case you need something to write while you try all the exercises in this chapter, here are two prompts:
• Your main character (MC), Eraxo, has an awful case of writer’s block and a looming deadline. Although his writing is blocked, his ingenuity isn’t. In the time freed up by not writing he invents a device to slow time and give himself as long as he needs to work through his writing paralysis. He sits at his strange machine, dons the headset, turns the dials, lifts the levers, and pushes the start button. Everything works. He has slowed time. But he discovers that his surroundings change with tempo and that creatures live here who are invisible at humanity’s ordinary pace, and they are not happy about being discovered. What happens?
• Eraxo’s sister, Eraxa, recognizes that she lacks the writing spark, but she wants it. She loves books, and her morals are not strong. She’s as clever as her brother, so she invents a time-travel machine. She will go into the future and steal a bestseller, then return to the present and submit it to a publisher as her own. However, in the future she makes a dire discovery about the fate of books and reading and publishing. When she returns to the present, she has new and unexpected choices that challenge her questionable moral fiber, her courage, and her foresight. What happens?
Have fun, and save what you write!