from a notebook entry at 5:24 p.m. yesterday after a particularly satisfying work day:
After an exhausting week of mucking through swamps, I found myself fully in the flow today as I worked at my writing desk. Some days I get a taste of that ease, but it has been a while since I have had a day of feeling immersed in it. A day where everything comes together with little or no struggle. Where synchronicities fall like rain. The image that came to mind mid-way through my post-lunch walk was one of scattered pieces of matter swirling around a dark, chaotic universe suddenly and unexpectedly coming into alignment, as if some mysterious force were pulling them together into one big harmonious dance.
It feels so good, this balance of work and play, that I don't want to leave my desk. I just want to bask in this universal flow some more.
What do I have to show for it? A plot line with the story's key energetic markers and a clear idea of where the scenes I have written so far fit into that sequence. I know it doesn't sound like much, but it is. The direction (map) I have been longing for, praying for, seeking and stalking for months has emerged from what I thought was a collection of random scenes.
Today, Gabby was looking over my shoulder and walking by my side, rejoicing right along with me at every discovery.
Is this the birth I have been waiting for?
Gabby was born January 19, 2010 -- the day she first introduced herself to me in a notebook entry -- but her story was born today! And it was pure magic.
18 October 2012
11 October 2012
Texas, continued
Turns out Texas (see 9/11/12 post) has some interesting and unexpected landscape features. One of them showed up in my dreams the other night as a swampy marsh (or maybe a marshy swamp) that I was wading in up to my knees, trying to find a way out. When I woke up, I didn't understand the symbolism at first, wasn't sure whether it connected to my writing at all, but after this morning's morning pages, there was no doubt. At least not about that.
Yes, for the past several days (or weeks?), unbeknownst to me, I have been wandering around this natural wonder of the emotional landscape, which we shall call The Swamp of Doubt. While I could get back in the car and just drive around it, hoping to leave it behind, I am pretty sure that is not the way to move on. Writing has a sneaky way of bringing up issues or feelings that are best addressed right now, because if ignored, they may turn into permanent roadblocks, or at least irritating energy blocks.
No doubt my main character, Gabby, is going to experience plenty of doubts as she adjusts to life in a new place. Transitions and new experiences -- any kind of change, really -- open the doorway to doubt. How could they not? Which would explain why I keep running into doubt at every turn lately, including in my writing life.
One thing I know for sure? Doubt's got all of the questions and none of the answers. Questions like: Can I construct a plot that works? Do I have enough ideas to sustain a plot? Will those ideas come together in a coherent way? Do I already have the knowledge I need inside or do I need a teacher to show me how to do this? And those doubts, if left unchecked, spiral into a whole universe of other doubts.
The antidote?
Trust.
Belief.
Faith.
And, perhaps, a better map.
02 October 2012
Feedback
The proverbial shoe was on the other foot last Friday. After years of critiquing my students' writing, I decided it was time to put myself on the hotseat. I took a chapter of my novel-in-progress to the Baltimore Book Festival for a free one-on-one feedback session sponsored by the CityLit Project.
I have a couple of what Julia Cameron calls "friendly readers" who have read several scenes from the novel. Their feedback is always constructive and encouraging, and their enthusiasm about the story and the characters gives me the energy to keep writing. But asking for a critique from an experienced writer who knew nothing about me felt like a bigger risk.
Was I doubtful/nervous/terrified beforehand? Yes.
Did I go for it anyway? Yes.
And I'm glad I did.
So on Friday afternoon, after much fretting about what scene to bring and whether it was really ready for an objective pair of eyes (ask my husband, he'll tell you), I sat down with Gregg Wilhelm, the Executive Director of the CityLit Project, who has worked in various aspects of publishing for several different publishing houses. He read quietly, scribbling notes on the pages as he went, and I watched, fidgeting with my pen and reminding myself to stay detached from the outcome and open to his suggestions.
I was pleasantly surprised when he came back with largely positive comments. He said the scene as a whole was well constructed and complimented me on capturing the personalities of the characters in dialogue as well as through their actions. He suggested that I add a bit more exposition -- some details of the room and of the characters' appearances, things that the point-of-view character would notice -- to set the scene more clearly for the reader. We also talked about some specific instances of word choice that will add polish.
What else did I learn Friday? That I can afford to go a lot easier on myself when I am drafting new scenes. That it's okay to let my characters ramble and to use too many adverbs and adjectives and to let some cliches creep in here and there (kind of like that!). And that for now, I can give the madman more room to create and imagine and breathe life into the characters and the story without worrying about how it sounds or whether it will be good enough. That's what the revision process is for.
I have a couple of what Julia Cameron calls "friendly readers" who have read several scenes from the novel. Their feedback is always constructive and encouraging, and their enthusiasm about the story and the characters gives me the energy to keep writing. But asking for a critique from an experienced writer who knew nothing about me felt like a bigger risk.
Was I doubtful/nervous/terrified beforehand? Yes.
Did I go for it anyway? Yes.
And I'm glad I did.
So on Friday afternoon, after much fretting about what scene to bring and whether it was really ready for an objective pair of eyes (ask my husband, he'll tell you), I sat down with Gregg Wilhelm, the Executive Director of the CityLit Project, who has worked in various aspects of publishing for several different publishing houses. He read quietly, scribbling notes on the pages as he went, and I watched, fidgeting with my pen and reminding myself to stay detached from the outcome and open to his suggestions.
I was pleasantly surprised when he came back with largely positive comments. He said the scene as a whole was well constructed and complimented me on capturing the personalities of the characters in dialogue as well as through their actions. He suggested that I add a bit more exposition -- some details of the room and of the characters' appearances, things that the point-of-view character would notice -- to set the scene more clearly for the reader. We also talked about some specific instances of word choice that will add polish.
What else did I learn Friday? That I can afford to go a lot easier on myself when I am drafting new scenes. That it's okay to let my characters ramble and to use too many adverbs and adjectives and to let some cliches creep in here and there (kind of like that!). And that for now, I can give the madman more room to create and imagine and breathe life into the characters and the story without worrying about how it sounds or whether it will be good enough. That's what the revision process is for.
26 September 2012
Message from the Universe...
Sometimes the universe sends the right words at the right time.
"This is what things can teach us:
To fall, patiently to trust our heaviness.
Even a bird has to do that before he can fly."
~Rainer Marie Rilke
"This is what things can teach us:
To fall, patiently to trust our heaviness.
Even a bird has to do that before he can fly."
~Rainer Marie Rilke
18 September 2012
Trimming
This week's challenge? An exercise from Louise Doughty's A Novel in a Year: Choose a scene, do a word count, and cut the words by a quarter. Repeat with next scene. After a few days, read the new and old versions to see which sounds better.
Cutting out whole paragraphs, Doughty says, is cheating. Instead, she says to consider each sentence, each word, and ruthlessly eliminate anything that is not absoutely necessary (case in point, there are a couple of adverbs that last sentence could do without).
At first, I thought this exercise was getting too specific too soon, but I tried it anyway with three scenes of different length (from 1 to 3 pages). Turned out that in the process of doing such mindful trimming, all kinds of other useful things popped up. Things like places or characters that need more description, parts that might be better off somewhere else in the story, questions about how a character feels/reacts in a particular moment, bits that need to be added for clarity, moments that beg for more/less tension. Things that will help me make more substantial revisions when I get around to serious rewriting.
What sounded like a task that was all about the word count turned out to be about something quite different. While my left brain was busy counting words, my right brain snuck in and put its creativity to work, re-seeing the scene. And, after spending ten weeks cranking out new material, it felt good to revisit some scenes that I hadn't looked at for a while.
Truth is, I think I like this part of the writing process better than coming up with new material. Or maybe it is just more in my comfort zone after years spent evaluating my students' creative writing.
Just one more reason to keep exercising the madman daily...
Cutting out whole paragraphs, Doughty says, is cheating. Instead, she says to consider each sentence, each word, and ruthlessly eliminate anything that is not absoutely necessary (case in point, there are a couple of adverbs that last sentence could do without).
At first, I thought this exercise was getting too specific too soon, but I tried it anyway with three scenes of different length (from 1 to 3 pages). Turned out that in the process of doing such mindful trimming, all kinds of other useful things popped up. Things like places or characters that need more description, parts that might be better off somewhere else in the story, questions about how a character feels/reacts in a particular moment, bits that need to be added for clarity, moments that beg for more/less tension. Things that will help me make more substantial revisions when I get around to serious rewriting.
What sounded like a task that was all about the word count turned out to be about something quite different. While my left brain was busy counting words, my right brain snuck in and put its creativity to work, re-seeing the scene. And, after spending ten weeks cranking out new material, it felt good to revisit some scenes that I hadn't looked at for a while.
Truth is, I think I like this part of the writing process better than coming up with new material. Or maybe it is just more in my comfort zone after years spent evaluating my students' creative writing.
Just one more reason to keep exercising the madman daily...
11 September 2012
Now Entering Texas...
Thanks to Laraine Herring, author of Writing Begins with the Breath, I now have a name for where I am in the novel-writing process. She calls it "the Texas Period," thanks to the time she drove across Texas with her family and thought it might go on forever. It's just like reaching the middle part of writing a book, she says, "where the enthusiasm of the beginning has waned, but the end is not in sight, and you really, truth be told, have very little idea of what you've got to work with (though you're sure it's junk)."
All judgments about Texas aside, this metaphor captures the middle phase of writing a novel perfectly. Some days I am cruising down the wide open highway with the wind in my hair, while other days fellow travellers fly by at blistering speeds as I sweat and labor just trying to keep up with the tumbleweeds. Last week, I pulled into a scenic overlook (do they have those in Texas?) to look back at where I've been so far and to preview the road ahead. This week, I'm taking a little detour to revisit some older scenes and do a little trimming to tighten them up. But I'll be back on the road soon, foot firmly on the accelerator (didn't they just up the speed limit to 85 mph on one Texas highway?), generating more of these middle pages.
The first time I read Herring's book, almost two years ago, I jotted a note in the margin of this page: "Haven't crossed the border into Texas yet." So it's nice to know I am making progress. Maybe it's time to post a map of Texas on my writing room wall and pin one of those little cars from the game of Life to it. Then every time I write -- whether it's a few paragraphs or a whole chapter -- I get to move the car a few miles.
Whatever it takes to keep the motivation flowing...
All judgments about Texas aside, this metaphor captures the middle phase of writing a novel perfectly. Some days I am cruising down the wide open highway with the wind in my hair, while other days fellow travellers fly by at blistering speeds as I sweat and labor just trying to keep up with the tumbleweeds. Last week, I pulled into a scenic overlook (do they have those in Texas?) to look back at where I've been so far and to preview the road ahead. This week, I'm taking a little detour to revisit some older scenes and do a little trimming to tighten them up. But I'll be back on the road soon, foot firmly on the accelerator (didn't they just up the speed limit to 85 mph on one Texas highway?), generating more of these middle pages.
The first time I read Herring's book, almost two years ago, I jotted a note in the margin of this page: "Haven't crossed the border into Texas yet." So it's nice to know I am making progress. Maybe it's time to post a map of Texas on my writing room wall and pin one of those little cars from the game of Life to it. Then every time I write -- whether it's a few paragraphs or a whole chapter -- I get to move the car a few miles.
Whatever it takes to keep the motivation flowing...
07 September 2012
Out of Doubt
No need to send a search party. I wrote my way out of the vortex this morning. (Still a little dizzy, but on my feet again.) So what worked?
One: I opened the door to the main character's flaws by asking what has/what will she fail at? We all fall flat on our faces at times, much as we try to be perfect. The more we aim for perfection, the farther there is to fall. Good to remember that characters are better, and miles more believable, when they are not perfect.
Two: I chose to be grateful for the resistance I felt yesterday. Yes, grateful. Much as I hate to run up against it, resistance is almost always just the universe's way of reminding me to let go and get out of my own way. So I expressed my gratitude for being able to see that there are gaps, some of them quite large, in the plot and in the characters' lives that I couldn't see before. And then? Questions about missing pieces began to pop up. Questions like where Gabby's favorite place/place of refuge is and what she was obsessed with, or at least highly curious about, as a child.
Three: I went back to a scene I felt was powerful when I first wrote it and looked there for clues about what else might happen. Asked what implications that scene had for other parts of the story based on what it revealed about the characters. That opened the floodgates, encouraging me to search other key/favorite scenes for clues. By the time I put my pen down today, the gaps had transformed from uncrossable chasms into potential bridges.
Lesson to carry forward? When doubt creeps in, take a deep breath. Don't force answers. Invite questions.
One: I opened the door to the main character's flaws by asking what has/what will she fail at? We all fall flat on our faces at times, much as we try to be perfect. The more we aim for perfection, the farther there is to fall. Good to remember that characters are better, and miles more believable, when they are not perfect.
Two: I chose to be grateful for the resistance I felt yesterday. Yes, grateful. Much as I hate to run up against it, resistance is almost always just the universe's way of reminding me to let go and get out of my own way. So I expressed my gratitude for being able to see that there are gaps, some of them quite large, in the plot and in the characters' lives that I couldn't see before. And then? Questions about missing pieces began to pop up. Questions like where Gabby's favorite place/place of refuge is and what she was obsessed with, or at least highly curious about, as a child.
Three: I went back to a scene I felt was powerful when I first wrote it and looked there for clues about what else might happen. Asked what implications that scene had for other parts of the story based on what it revealed about the characters. That opened the floodgates, encouraging me to search other key/favorite scenes for clues. By the time I put my pen down today, the gaps had transformed from uncrossable chasms into potential bridges.
Lesson to carry forward? When doubt creeps in, take a deep breath. Don't force answers. Invite questions.
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