Writing chronologically your thing, or being bold with back-insertions?

I understand that movies are shot out of sequence, perhaps not all, but definitely some. I have no idea why this happens, other than obvious things. Outside shooting would require the right weather; the actor needs to lose weight within the film (Cast Away's ending was shot at the beginning - it was easier for Tom Hanks to get really thin before the start of production, then take time off to bulk up for the early scenes); the director's preference; and other reasons beyond my knowledge.

It must be one of the greatest challenges of movie acting (other than the boring time sitting around between takes) with things so disjointed and each day's shooting unrelated to that of the day before. I really admire film editors, too, who give us the final product.

In Belle's blog recently, she expressed her dislike of writing out of sequence, the disjointedness of it. I'd never considered my feelings on it, but I've always done it. Long after I've completed chapters, an idea will pop up that simply has to be expressed in Chapter 2, or an event in Chapter 20 needs a reference to it in Chapter 10. In fact, I write about a quarter of the book, I'm guessing, out of sequence. I've inserted great chunks of dialogue into beginning sections, because I suddenly want to introduce some new event now, in this later piece of writing, and it needs an earlier clue. I imagine that all mystery writers must do this.

In a way, it's the opposite of revision, where we must remove irrelevant passages (despite how damned good they are). Just as I take out brilliantly conceived paragraphs, or even whole pages, I also need to insert things.

I'm surprised that writers would have a different take on this; I assumed everyone worked the way I do. I guess it could be perceived as scattered thinking, but life is scattered, when you think about it. We go along day-to-day, and things from our past unexpectedly come rushing in at us; events long-gone now intrude; memories temporarily blot out our present; a casual conversation reveals an unknown snippet of history that totally changes our view of someone or something. So it is with my writing.

In fact, during the writing process - not the "ass applied to the seat" work, but the internal writing, while I'm doing housework, walking, whatever - I am rarely thinking about the future content, other than the basic plot outline. I'm analyzing what's happened previously. Did he really say that in the right tone? Would she have done this willingly? Should she have spoken to him first, before acting on it?

Whatever method we use, it makes no difference to the final outcome, as long as we're enjoying the writing process - all of it. I don't like to hear that people are agonizing over their work. Of course it's brain-taxing, and often emotionally-draining, but it should always be a joy. It's temporarily painful to remove some of your brilliant words during revision, but I believe there should be nothing but love involved in adding to the original work. No tortured writer here.


A rather chicken-pecking word count yesterday - just 1600 words. They resented being put on the page, but are thankfully satisfying to read. It happens sometimes, doesn't it? The little writing muse tells us to back off a bit, take it easy. But I prefer Tally-ho! writing, the Boadicea approach. I have a feeling it will be back this weekend.

No changes to my stats this week. Still 9 Pending, 1 Partial, 1 Full, 10 No Response, 12 Rejections, for a total of 33 queries for Hafan Deg, my orphan in agent-land.

Have a good weekend, and - if you're lucky enough to have him in your life - show Dad you love him.

 

How do you write? Fast or slow?

I finished another 2200 words over the past two days, bringing me very close (I keep saying that!) to my cut-off point for the World War II memoir-within-the-novel, prior to concentrating only on present day events.

Bonnie commented that she can't write so quickly, but needs to analyze each and every word. We all have our own methods. I can't work slowly, or interrupt my flow, as I mentioned in another blog. If my writing isn't moving like a torrent, I become irritable. For me, revision can only come after those exuberant words have been poured out onto the pages en masse.

There is an excitement during this period and I barely take a break, needing to get back to it. I revise after about an hour's work, it seems, although I certainly don't time myself. This is a quick revision for obvious errors and to get a clear feel for the structure, but I don't spend too much time at it, because I don't want to spoil that zone I'm in. I then get back to the actual writing, and then revise, and so on, again and again, including the earlier sections I've already dealt with during this session.

After about four hours of this, usually by the end of a chapter, I'll do a more thorough, more or less final revision. Then I start pecking around like a chicken, finding a better word, refining a phrase or a sentence, and correcting typoes. This is slow work, as all of you know, but it's the only time I am slow.

After that, I send the whole thing to my Yola site, suitably re-fonted for readability online. At this point, it gets edited again, because errors pop out with the larger font I use there. It's then ready for those of you who are reading it online to catch up with Strachan's adventures.

Once this manuscript is complete, I'll then revise, revise, revise, for the almost final version, print it off, and edit the hard copy completely. That stage could take weeks, or months. I've been doing so well with this particular book (it wasn't so easy with Hafan Deg, for some reason) that I'm making an assumption that the revision work will not take too long at the end, because I'm very satisfied with what's complete now. I may well add more segments on the War, because I keep coming up with new anecdotes that would just add that extra something, but, at the same time, I need to keep an eye on my word count. The last thing I need at the conclusion of the work, is to have to go back and chop major sections out because I've written too much.

Were I well-published, selling, receiving some critical interest, I could easily produce 150,000 words, but lacking that stature means I must stick close to 95,000 if I want an agent to consider me. They don't like flogging new work to publishers if the work is too long. (Something to do with their costing/revenue projections, I think.)

On days when I have few other household, art blog, or online reading demands, I write at my computer from early morning and, if the buzz is in me, will work right through until dinner time, when my cats start bugging me for food. I more or less work office hours, and this suits me. I am still writing in my head long after I've switched off the computer, of course, which makes for little piles of notes on the coffee table, scribbled out when I'm meant to be following the news, or a movie. It's really hard not to go back to the computer sometimes, and I have to be very firm with myself. I guess some of you might think this is a bit obsessive, this work routine, but it's a huge joy for me, having the time to devote to it.

I've freelanced for years, working from home for other people, and I made the decision when I came to Brighton, this quiet, not too exciting (but cheap!) town, that I'd do MY stuff, be it painting or writing. Of course, the writing is the clear winner at this point.

We want to be published, need it for some vain proof that our work has substance, that it could somehow move people who read it. But that's not the reason we write. Ultimately, this need that we have, this drive, goes beyond public recognition. It's simply necessary for ourselves. We are, in fact, in love with it.

 

Querying Two Novels - How tricky is that?

I wrote over two chapters this weekend (6,600 words) in my effort to move my main protagonist, Strachan, permanently back to the modern world. She doesn't want to go, so I'm stuck in the 40s for a little longer. I remind you that I am at the mercy of my characters. This week is crunch time. Who's the Momma here?

Soon, probably by fall, I should be querying agents for two novels. You can't query them together, because they don't want to know about your second until they've sold the first, but it makes life a little easier for me, this round. I've researched and approached so many agents, that it will be relatively easy to identify the true possibilities. I know who doesn't respond at all (a bit rude, I think - the bottom of my list), and the tone and substance of rejections, so the most approachable will be at the top.

But what if you sent out one book to a new agent on your list who hated it, when she might have loved the second? I suppose, depending on the quality of her rejection, you simply shoot back a second query, saying something like, "Well, I do have this other one, by the way, which could be more your style..." I mean, you've established contact, right? That's one of our biggest challenges.

I know a lot of you have written more than one book, yet to be picked up. How do you deal with it? Or, if you're in the same boat as I am, how will you deal with it, when the time comes.

As it is now, I end my query letter with, "This is my second novel. The first is currently being revised." So far, no one has sent a rejection with the postcript, "Oh, do send us details on your other book when it's ready, as perhaps we'll like that one much better."

We writers are an over-imaginative lot, aren't we?

Why Aren't You Writing? No Excuses, Please.

I worry about you. Not all of you, but some of you.

After years of raising kids, animals, and generally meeting the needs of others, I've had a lot of experience at worrying. I do it efficiently, not wasting it on things that can't be changed, but focusing on how to make things better if it's at all possible. Call it a weakness, but I've always done it, and I probably always will. My children need very little of my worry time now, and seem to be managing perfectly well. I don't have any particular money issues, so no demands there. There's no Grand Passion in my life, so I don't need to waste time wondering what he's getting up to. My health is good. My neighbors are nice. Jeevesie has had a bit of a cough, but I'm not so worried that I've felt the need to rush him off to the vet. Deciding where to live is an on-going challenge for me, one I'm constantly examining, but I wouldn't call it a problem.

This frees my worry-time up to concentrate on you. Why aren't you writing more? I know you're writing some, but it doesn't look like a lot, from where I'm sitting. You seem to spend rather a lot of time discussing what you intend to write, along with detailing all sorts of other goals vaguely related to that, but I don't think many of you are following Dorothy Parker's famous adage,

"Writing is the Art of Applying the Ass to the Seat."

Look, you all want to write, I can see. The passion in your blogs, the firmness of your resolve, the excitement in your plans - they all prove you were born to be writers. But you don't seem to be producing much. Why is that?

Don't talk about writer's block, because we all know we can work through that with the act of writing. Don't say you haven't the time, what with work, school, lovers, spouses, children and pets. Most of our writing occurs in our heads when we're not at the computer. It happens in all the oddest or most mundane places. All you need to do is to record it. Take that great dialogue that was running around in your mind the whole time you were dining with friends, or while you were doing the laundry, and get it onto your hard drive.

You can squeeze in an hour a day somewhere, if you really want to. Think of it as your morning workout time, but for the soul, and get up half an hour earlier. Tonight, be firm with yourself and get out of the living room and away from that TV (there's really not that much worth watching, be honest!) and put in half an hour at your computer before bed.

An amazing thing is going to happen if you do this. You'll find that the half hour is not enough, that you haven't quite finished what you wanted to say. You'll scrape up more time, somehow, and you will feel wonderful because of it. You'll find you can't wait to go the manuscript, can't wait to finish what you started to write at 10 pm the night before.

As a reminder, unless you are the slowest writer in the world, one hour should produce about three pages, or around 750 words. You should write as quickly as you can, just getting the words down, and letting your thoughts flow. Don't spend more than a minute re-thinking a word or phrase, because you'll come back to it later and immediately know what you were looking for. (And, sometimes, you won't know until the book is almost ready for an agent!) These pages could well be imperfect to your eye, but that's fine. Perfection comes later. Someone said that the real writing comes with the final revision. And that comes with a whole new set of devilish obstacles that you can face down the road. Let's just concentrate on your initial draft.

The time is for being frivolous with your thoughts, adventurous with your plots, bold with your characters. If the dialogue is proving to be a laborious slog, just get the main points down with the notation "blah, blah, blah". Throughout the day, your characters will have those conversations in your head, believe me, and you'll replace those "blah" bits easily when you get home. You can revise the whole thing, picking up obvious spelling or grammatical errors then. (But remember the little Typo-Imp will arrive later, despite all your efforts.) Or you could leave it all for the weekend and revise all of your week's work at one sitting, because you can spare a little more time on the weekend, right? This might be the perfect routine for you. Unload through the week - inadequate thoughts or brilliant ones - and refine on Sunday.

You should then have a satisfying 4,000 good words to boast about.

Do this for a month (16,000 words!), and then take a little break. You deserve it. Not for long, now, because you don't want to permanently break your new schedule. A week or two should do it.

Please be strong and ignore your must-read blogs during your half-hour writing time. Don't be seduced by a catchy headline in your Reader. I know you need to research things, that you still need clarity on some points, but save that for a separate session. Your own writing is more important than anything else that's out there.

You must keep up with your book-reading, however. This is where your writing-bug came from in the first place, and where you'll find renewed energy for your own work. Even if it's only half an hour before you turn out the light, it's valuable.

I don't want to have this discussion with you again. It's unfair to make me worry like this.

Oh, and just to get you in a competitive frame of mind, which doesn't hurt, I completed almost 8,000 well-revised words for Strachan's Attic this weekend, after a couple of weeks of ruminating, and I'm past the 50% point in my final draft.

Now, let's see what you can do.

Self-Publishing Revisited, PAGE Counts?

A few posts back, I wrote about self-publishing, expressing my own view that conventional publishing is preferable for the serious writer. Well, I came across an article that takes a totally different approach, and I felt it was only fair to share the link with you as we need to be open-minded in this changing world, and I'd hate to think (as if I had that kind of influence!) that I'd deterred some of you from self-publishing when you might forge ahead because of it. Here's the article at Writer's Digest. Perhaps you'll leave your comment for me. I'm interested in what you think about it.

I've been a little tired of late, and I know it's caused by too much immersion in the writing process. At present I'm researching aspects of WWII, as it applies to the RAF Bomber Command in Britain. It's a fascinating read, all of it, but you get caught up in individual stories and photographs and it leads you away from the original point of the research. Looking at the those lovely young men, ready to fly out on their next mission, uncertain if they'll return, I am struck by how very young they were. It's true today, of course, with so many young people at war, and I am selfishly relieved that my own sons have been spared such involvement.

All of this has added to this weariness, which is not physical. It comes from a deep emotional pull into those bygone lives, a draining process. I am a product of the so-called Protest Generation. We thought we were actually making a difference back then. Yet still we are at war. Call us naive, over-optimistic, stoned, we had a sense that the world could know peace. So much for that.

May I just remind you guys of a little thing that I had overlooked myself at the beginning of this blogging process. The number of pages you've written is irrelevant. Depending on the size of the font (which, it's recommended, should be 12 pt Courier or Times New Roman) the number of pages will vary. The only thing that matters is the word count, which you can find in "Tools" in your Word program. I mention this here today because I think there are some of you who don't know this. Thought this might be helpful.

Never hang back from asking a question that you feel is a tad silly - that you figure everyone knows, except you. I Googled a lot to get answers to dumb questions, and mostly got the answers. But we're all friends here, and need to support each other. If you still haven't received a satisfactory answer, comment here. I'm not for one minute suggesting that I know everything, on the contrary, but I know many of my readers are really smart. Someone will know the answer.