Writer and writing teacher Darcy Pattison, on her site, Fiction Notes, said that she'd be interested in seeing a posting on how we write kissing scenes. I questioned her about it, because she's so clever and certainly more than capable of writing about The Kiss. I blithely didn't wait for her response, but simply threw some ideas down and pasted them into her comments box. She responded that she wasn't looking for samples, but a detailed description of the how - the technique involved in producing those words.
So today I have a confession: I don't have a technical approach to my writing. I understand all those lovely sites that talk about flow, voice and rhythm, but when they suggest the premeditated analysis and explanation of the words, discussions about character development and plot structure - well, this, for me, would discombobulate my work, and my head, and I can't do it.
My plots rarely follow my original rough (two-page) outline, because my characters develop as I go, and they take over the plot. I'm often surprised at where they take me. At times, of course, I have to dig them out from where they're mired, but not too often. The only certain thing is, and I've said it before, I always have my ending in mind from the start, and I know I'll get to it eventually. It's always been this way for me.
I don't know how I write, nor do I need to know. If I were to rush off now and take writing courses, I believe it would spoil my approach, not improve it. I took just one writing course in my life, some time ago, and that was because the final parts were about how to get your book published. No doubt, Prof. Hans Ostrom would shake his head at this, if he were to see it.
Which brings me to your writing. If you're writing properly - have the very best knowledge in matters of spelling, punctuation, general grammar - then the flow of your writing is unique to you, and shouldn't be overshadowed by worries about the technique you use. Take writing courses, by all means, if you feel you need improvement and believe, passionately, that you are meant to write and that this will cinch it. If you're brave and rebellious, you can even break those very rules - but at least know the rules you are breaking before you try this. (Think James Joyce.) However, over and above syntax, please just get on with it.
Reading good books and poetry is still one of the best ways to hone your craft. No one begins from a vacuum, writer and artist alike. This is the apprenticeship from which you'll never graduate; we never stop learning, do we?
The act of writing is a world apart from analysis and critiqueing. This is why we have such a hard time doing the revision work, because we're using another part of our brain. The hard-nosed editor in you is unrelated to the soft, overly-sensitive soul of your writer.
To do your very best work, listen to it as you write, let it sing to you, feel the rhythm of your words, sense when things are out of place, or missing entirely, and decide, sadly, but firmly, when you've said way too much. Do, for pity's sake, READ IT OUT LOUD. If you're honestly satisfied, and not just making do with that weak bit of dialogue in chapter ten, you can safely leave the criticism/praise to others - be it writing buddies, agents, editors, and - soon, I hope - your book-buying public, reviewers and critics (the last two, with luck, from the New York Times).
I love Darcy's work, and follow her posts avidly. I've learned some interesting things from her, but not the 'how' of writing. I said at the start that I didn't want to know. Like analyzing love, it spoils things. Just let it be.
Strachan is about three chapters from the end. I haven't been sleeping a full 7 hours this last few weeks, knowing how close I am. If I get completely carried away, and no one visits, I could be finished by Monday. It's heaven to know the book will not be playing on my mind when I go to England in August. I would have made lousy company over there, head-writing the whole time! When I'm doing it, I get this weird, blank look on my face, I'm told. Like I'm high...
Have a wonderful 4th of July weekend!
Showing posts with label the art of writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the art of writing. Show all posts
Friday, July 3, 2009
Monday, June 1, 2009
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,
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.
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.
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