False Starts

One aspect of writing that does not get a lot of attention is the number of times it takes to get a story right.  When I was learning my craft back in college I had always assumed that the great writers spit out their stories and novels complete, correct, and fully-formed the first time.

Then one instructor showed the class the revisions on a Mark Twain story.  There were cross-outs and revisions; insertions and rearrangements.  And another writing myth died for me.

This made me feel better and it something I remember when I struggle to get a story right.  Generally these days, with all the stories pouring out of my head like blood from a bad gash, I usually get close to the mark but there's always a revision or two because I almost always leave out something I wanted to include or I realize at the end what I really need in the middle of the piece.

But when I really struggle I will go down rat holes looking for a way out.  That doesn't happen often.  I'm a careful enough writer that I usually know what I'm doing and where I'm going before I sit down to compose.  And I write a lot of material in my head to save time.

But just the other day I started a story about stealing content that went off the rails after the first page or two.  It became a love story.  Whoa!  Not where I wanted to go.  So I thought about what I was trying to say and then it hit me.  Stealing content from the internet creates bad karma -- not a good thing -- destroys any personal happiness you might otherwise have because you are cloistered in a room and not with other people.

Once I knew this, the rest was easy.  The main character has a dream on these exact points (arguing with himself you might say) and decides to start to make amends.  He goes to a video store to buy a movie, meets a girl, and viola!  Now I have a love story.  Oh, the beginnings of a love story.  But in typical fairy tale fashion, the protagonist made a deal with himself  to delete all the stolen content should he find the happiness he had been missing.  When he doesn't, the girl is in a bad car accident and ends up in a coma.  Our hero deletes the illegal content the next morning and the girl comes out of the coma -- a happy ending.

And my moral: if your story is going nowhere, don't despair.  Instead try thinking about where the story is going and is there a more interesting way of getting there.  If there is, take it.  If there isn't maybe you need another character to help the story along.  Or perhaps you are not telling the story you intend.  Thinking about all that but above all, keep writing.

Writing as Therapy

When I first started writing, back in high school, I kept a journal.  The journal, in addition to getting me writing on a regular basis, was also a form of therapy -- a way to let out the stresses of the day. And while it may not seem like a 17-year old has many stresses -- aside from the standard soap opera fare of my love life, such as it was -- there were things that pissed me off or scared me or were unpleasant.  And those pages are filled with a record of those events.

These days I am more mature and vent stresses in other ways but writing is still a form of therapy depending on what I'm writing.  How could it not be?  I draw from my personal experience and often relive moments and situations that were stressful.

In fact, I find myself writing short stories about my younger life focusing on events that are black and painful to me.  I suppose I am exorcising the demons I've carried for years, but I'm finding that art does not always imitate life exactly.  I make adjustments to make the story work better.

This is nothing new, of course.  Writers have been drawn scenes and characters from their lives as far back as Charles Dickens and possibly farther than that. It is believed that Shakespeare channeled his madness and angst at the loss of a child into Hamlet and King Lear.

More importantly, all art has a therapeutic effect.  The whole notion of catharsis in Greek tragedies is based on this idea.  Art helps us purge our demons and wrestle them to the ground, it helps us understand them and expose them to the light of day in the hopes of dispelling them like shadows before a flashlight.

Sometimes it works; sometimes it doesn't.  So far for me I writing about my demons is seems to be a form of absolution but I can't be sure.  I seems the more I write the more demons demand a voice.  Good thing I keep a notebook.

Keep writing everyone.

Writer Collaboration

A friend on Facebook found an interesting site for collaboration among writers.  The way it works is someone, say me, posts an idea -- a plot for a story.  Then other writers flesh it out and develop it.

On the surface this sounds fine.  But then I saw all the legal stuff about rights and splitting of profits if the stories from the collaboration sell well and I lost interest.

Frankly, I'm not going to give away any of my ideas to anyone, not even my publisher.  But even if I put that aside, collaboration among writers is a tricky thing because writing talents vary.  If I come up with the idea and produce a solid first draft, someone else can come along and wreck it because their talent is at the same level.  Or the reverse can happen:  I come up with the idea and write a first draft and then someone else rewrites it and improves it more than I ever could.

In that situation how do you determine how I am compensated or how the other person is?  Is the idea worth more than the story itself or the other way round?

I don't know and the situation gets murkier still when you increase the number of writers involved.  In a team of five writers, if each writer does not contribute 20% of the whole, an even division of credit is unfair.

Now having said all this, I should say that I would like to see a way for writers to collaborate and work together.  I just don't see how it is possible because of the compensation, ownership, and rights issues surrounding it, which is sad.

I wish my friend luck on the collaboration site he found, but I think it will come to naught.

A Revised Plan for Revision

Some months back I detailed my main way of editing and revising my novel.  It works well when I am focusing on the individual parts.  But the novel has to work as a unified whole and that was getting lost so in addition to the process I described using my Kindle to read and enter comments, here's a few extra steps you might want to take.

At some point in your revision process, say after you've got five or ten chapters or say ten or twenty pages or more, stop what you are doing and go back a re-read the book from the beginning the way the reader would.

I like to read it slowly because I'm looking for anything that is missing or is inconsistent or simply wrong, like the word that I forgot to include.  Sometimes I let the computer read it to me so I can listen. My ears proof my work better than my eyes because my ears almost never hear my writing; my eyes see it all the time and are easily fooled.

Have a listen to some chapters I stop and think about what's missing, do I have all the character reactions I need, is there a vague point that I can clarify, can I place the reader more concretely in the story?  All of these things matter and all get my attention.

I did this for Book 2 over the weekend to see how well it holds together and I was surprised to see it works pretty well.  Oh there were some adjustments to me made, but not many.  Well, not so far, but I'm not quite done revising yet.

The one drawback to this method is it requires a good chuck of time without interruptions.  So if your environment is chaotic, you might want to wait.  But once you start you want to proceed to the end so that you can experience your book in its entirety.

I chose a good place to stop work yesterday, a natural breaking point in the story, but I need to resume today for several hours so I can reach the next breaking point.  This is hard because I have other demands on my time too.  But I'll do the best I can and hope it works out or I push a bunch of stuff off to the side and make time so that I can complete this work and then hop over to the edits from my publisher on Book 1 once more before it goes back for a second round of editing.

Keep writing everyone.

Stepping back

I received the edits on my first novel.  They weren't anything I can't live with and in some case I've rejected the edit.  My rule on this is: if it changes the meaning, the edit is bad.  That said, that doesn't mean some sort of revision isn't in order.  Often editors know that they original text needs changing but their attempt to do so misses the mark.  That's okay.  They are editors, not writers.  They don't have my vision for the story.  But if I see their intent, I can often revise my text to include their suggestion.

And so when I read book 1 it is clearly well written with a polish I like.  But when I read book 2 my reaction is to go look for some glossy paint.  The book does not yet give the same reaction.  I'm not sure why, so I'm stepping back and revising the book again.

Not that I finished the last revision.  I haven't but what's the point of that?  The book needs something.  I think I need to more clearly dramatize the scenes.  Or maybe it is the scenes themselves.  Or the writing isn't flowing or all the above.  I'll figure it out.  I just wish I hadn't spent three months on the last revision without realizing this.

And to be fair it is not the whole book. At least I don't think so.  I suppose it might be.  Hmmm.

Regardless, I'll put on my revision goggles and start hacking away at the thing.