Sci-fi, fantasy, and everything in-between
Craft
Discussions of the writing craft.
[Writing] Progress update
01 year ago
OK, I’ve stalled out. The novel stares back at me with dead, soulless eyes and says “let me go” in a piteous, mewling whisper.
I haven’t written more than three lines in it for a week. Obviously, this isn’t working. With DayJeorb, family, house, and medical things going on, writing has become an occasional, if-I-feel-inspired-for-five-minutes-on-the-bus kind of thing. The only time I get a solid two hours to write — a basic minimum for me to be productive these days — is on the rare evening off. Looking at my writing folder is getting depressing.
Here’s what my average weekday looks like:
- 5:30: Wake up, get dressed, brush hair, and so on.
- 6:00: Do some dishes, eat breakfast, get bicycle ready.
- 7:00: Out the door.
- 7:45: Get to the office, prep for DayJeorb
- 8:00: DayJeorb
- 11:00: Get lunch, eat, write if possible with remaining time (this never happens)
- 12:00: DayJeorb
- 5:00: Get on bicycle, go home.
- 5:45: Relax for a little bit (thank you, Loreen!)
- 6:00-ish: Various combinations of family activities, dinner, playtime with Bee, and everything that can’t happen during the work day. At the end of it all, I read Bee some stories and put her to bed.
- 9:30-ish: Time in which I could write, if I had any brain power left (this never happens).
So, what to do when you need to write, but simply don’t have the blocks of time you need to write the novel you started the year so desperate to finish? I’m entirely open to suggestions. For the time being, I’m going to go back to my old sentence-a-day rule, so that if nothing else happens on any given day, I’ll have written at least one sentence of new prose. It’s something, if not ideal.
Beyond that, I’m kind of stuck.
Writing parallel novels
01 year ago
The novel editing proceeds more or less on schedule, which means I’m still wondering what the hell I was thinking, but I guess that’s basically my natural state as a writer.
One of the challenges I had with this novel in its first draft is that one of the most important characters is off-screen for much of the story. Her scenes and activities are conveyed in summary form after the fact, interspersed throughout the novel. There wasn’t any help for this at the time. I had to get the story out from the main protagonist’s perspective first. But now that it’s done, all that summary is just a godawful drag on the story, and needs to go.
So I’ve been taking those summarized details, and expanding them into full scenes that shift the point of view to the secondary character. And as I do this, I’m converting the info dumps that exist in the first draft to drama that actually appears on the page. The protagonist’s chapters are beginning to shrink to manageable sizes while these new chapters grow.
In essence, I’m writing the novel again from the secondary character’s perspective. It will be shorter, with fewer overall chapters — right now the pattern seems to be working out to one secondary character chapter for every two primary — but it still feels like writing the novel again. And I’m finding that to be a good thing: I’ve recaptured the excitement of writing it in the first place.
It’s very liberating. I don’t feel any stress over ripping out huge swaths of talking heads and info dumps, because I’m going to make those into shown-not-told scenes for the secondary character. And I don’t feel any need to wax loquacious with the new chapters, because everything else is already in the first draft chapters. Can’t say for sure this will work out in the end, but so far so good.
And so it begins…
01 year ago
I have officially started editing the manuscript that, Squash willing, will become a marketable novel by the end of the year. I’m starting out by mapping out the plot, characters, and storyline threads, with the goal of breaking the novel down into bite-sized, easily digested chunks complete with cross-referencing links so I don’t lose track of details like character descriptions.
I have never done this before. I have no idea whether this will be a useful exercise or a waste of time. But I do know I was terrified of opening the manuscript up until I started doing this, so it’s already accomplished that, at least.
It’s a process, not an end result
02 years ago
by Damon Kaswell
in Craft
Have you ever woken up and thought, “Today, I feel like a complete success. Everything I touch turns to gold, I finish what I put my mind to, and my dreams are coming to fruition.”
Yeah, me neither.
If you’re like me, you’re not a writer. Oh, you want to be one, sure. Maybe sometimes you even put words on paper. Maybe you mail those word-laden pages out to magazines and agents. But a writer? A real one? Hah! Don’t make me laugh.
The truth is, I’ve never really felt, deep down, that I am a writer. More often, I feel like a failed writer, or a writer-wannabe. Sales don’t seem to make any difference. I can’t possibly compare to other writers I know. I’m a pretender, but they’re the real deal.
I have it on good authority that they feel the same way. There’s always someone “better” to compare yourself disparagingly to.
But lately, I’ve been trying to take this feeling, examine it dispassionately from the outside, accept that this is how I will always feel, and move on from it. I will never feel like a writer to my bones, because no one is a writer.
No one. Not you, not me, not your favorite authors. And that’s just fine.
Allow me to elaborate. Being a writer is a process, not an end result. When I ask myself if I’m a writer, it’s the wrong question, and will always and inevitably lead to an answer I do not like. So now, I try to ask myself if I’m writing.
More often than not, the answer is yes.
So the next time you wake up and find yourself wondering if you’re a writer, try accepting the idea that you are not. Your results may vary, but I’ve found it relieving. The pressure’s off, and I can then sit down and do some writing.
Because after all… I’m a writer, damnit.