My Writing Process Blog Hop

Last week, both Richard Gibney and Tony Noland tagged me in the latest big blog game: #mywritingprocess. Like most popular writing games, I've missed it because I've been quite sick and quite deep into my own novel. Last week was also the first week in over five years I missed #fridayflash. It's been a tough time, so let's lighten it up with writing talk.

The basics of the game are familiar:
1) Post on a certain day (May 19th for me, May 26th for whom I tag)
2) Mention who tagged you.
3) Answer the four questions.
4) Pass it on.

Not too taxing, right? And the appeal is this exposes different processes of different writers. Even Richard and Tony have very different posts. They provided me four questions about my writing process, posed, for whatever reason, in the first person.

1) What am I working on?
Today I'm editing the second novel in a series, We Don't Always Drown. The first hasn't been published, but because I plan this series to run for quite a while, I wanted to do more of the construction in advance. At this point I'm certain it was the right idea as it's allowing me to alter the original to set up continuity for so many crazy payoffs later on. No spoilers, I promise, but lots of zany backstabbing.

2) How does my work differ from others of its genre?
If you accept it as a Fantasy novel, it's not set in our world but isn't Medieval-centric either. I write in the Post-Post-Post-Apocalypse, after the dinosaurs have come back, and the machines rose against us, and sentient thunderstorms chased the machines in suspiciously theological patterns. The world is so splintered that we have magic but very few surviving systems of figuring out how it works, and so if you can keep an automobile running, you might as well stick with it. Triclopes, imps and humans have to negotiate to live together in pockets of mingled fascism and anarchy, because it's really hard to establish a neighborhood when another apocalypse might hit on Tuesday. Hopefully this tells you why I'm not like George R.R. Martin.

3) Why do I write what I do?
That changes wildly based on the project, doesn't it? Last House in the Sky and We Don't Always Drown come from a place of deviant Fantasy; we have enough fake Medieval Europes, and not enough cars chasing brachiosaur convoys. I'm as much a child of Akira Toriyama and Rumiko Takahashi as I am of Tolkien and Homer.

Yet there are other projects that resonated around strong unrests. The novel I wrote three years ago, The House That Nobody Built, was about questioning identity and the prison-industrial-complex-as-Ilium. Elements that get stuck in me tend to turn into stories. I've got several shorts on submission to market right now that came from solipsism and disablism, or my love of places that feel like they can judge you, or my unease with the Magical Girl genre (I stress that the unease is mine – it's a beautiful genre).

4) How does my writing process work?
I always begin with an element of an idea, and almost never with the full idea. The key elements in my writing are character, premise and style. If I get one, then I need to spin out the others from it; if I've got a super-creepy alien spy, then I spin up a premise for her to spy on, and a style that'll make the most of her adventure. Alligators by Twitter started as a stylistic riff on the Twitter conceit; character and premise came about sentences later.

I have a simple formula for composition. On novels, I aim to write scenes, letting actions play out as they do, for at least a thousand original words per day. I seldom give up at that line; it's just there to let me know I can if it's a tough day. It's similar to this for short stories; I go for the scenes that need to happen, caring even less about word count as they tend to be the product of bursts. In all cases my emphasis is to get the small things right and postpone the big things that would distract from composition.

I'm not in that zone right now, as I'm editing. I've broken the novel into eighteen chunks of chapters, about 18-25 pages each. The copy is covered in bolded text (prayers for my future self to re-read a questionable section) and suggestions that came to mind after I composed. "Wouldn't it be cooler if hadrosaurs chased him here?" "Remember that article on volcanic geology? It'd help this." That sort of stuff.

While my health as been poor, I do my best to knock off one chunk per day, and hope to have all the chunks done by June. There are four chapters that I'm considering scrapping and writing entirely new versions of, which would delay things, but a good book that's late remains good, while a bad book that's early sucks forever.

After I have a clean copy, I'll probably read the entire thing to check tonal and plot consistency. If it passes, then I have two wonderful alpha readers who will be happy to tear into it. Their job is to tell me if any emperors are missing clothes. After I dress all my emperors, I go to betas, who I'm blessed to know. They're kind enough to take a cheese-grater to my baby.

So there we have, and all that's left is passing it on.

First, I'm going to side-link to Lise Fracalossi, who has already done this, but was the first person who came to my mind. She's a fellow Viable Paradise grad and an author I expect a lot from in the coming years.

Next, I'm going to invite anyone who found this post useful or entertaining to play the game. Just link your blog post in the comments and I'll add you in here. I'd rather this sort of game be inclusive.

That invitation given, here are four more people whose writing is worth reading.

Ferrett Steinmetz recently sold his Fantasy novel, Flex, to Angry Robot Books. I'm pretty sure he blogs more in a year than I write novels, screenplays and short stories combined. I love reading him discuss writing, and so I'm hoping he'll play along.

Alex Haist doesn't blog terribly often and is presently deep in her own novel. Like Lise, her work is going to be very special to some people, but I'd rather she tell you about it. That is, again, if she plays along.

Peter Newman is a Fantasy novelist and what you might call a graduate of #fridayflash. His first book, The Vagrant, is due out with Voyager in 2015. He's also husband to the delightful and prolific Emma Newman, who I'd also be tagging if she wasn't recovering from ill health and maddeningly busy. I should also mention the two run a wicked podcast.

Lastly and furthest from least, Randall Nichols is one of the most diligent writing friends I've ever had. He will never hesitate to take a cheese-grater to a baby. He's written comics, screenplays, and is presently helping produce a card game. That last is elaborated upon in his latest blog post. I've seen the kingdoms he's cooked up and they're quite neat. Go ask him about Cyber Kong.

Ideally everyone plays along by posting on May 26th, a week from today. And ideally they will tag a few more people as well. But do we live in an ideal world? We'll find out in a week.

Rough Draft Done Two Days Early, Let's Go Read Books

At 1:10 last night, I wrote the final chapter of We Don't Always Drown. It's 60 chapters long, about 97,000 words, and as in dire need of editing as I am of a bath.

Like always, I'll post a breakdown of the entire process. Right now I have to make a run to the library - finishing writing means it's time to read.

But I wanted to share a sheet of paper I've kept floating around my desk since the end of February. It assisted my temporal reasoning with the dates when people might visit, or when I'd be traveling, which is a handy way to not rationalize against productivity. At the end of every writing day, I'd mark down the roundest version of my word count.

The 22nd is marked "Godot" because I'm headed off to NYC to see Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen in Waiting for Godot. A pair of wonderful friends got me a ticket to go with them, and I'm equally excited about spending Saturday night with them. I've got something to celebrate now.

Mum At the Final Act

Apologies for recent and short-term blogging silence, friends and fellow readers. The biggest thing slowing The Bathroom Monologues has been on my novel-in-progress, We Don't Always Drown. I've just finished re-plotting the final act and think it's devious enough to go forward. Right now it weighs 76,000 words and feels ready for a big trick of a conclusion. I'm hoping to finish the rough draft before next weekend, when I hit NYC to see Waiting for Godot with friends.

This composition string has taken its toll on reading time; I'm even days behind on blogs, let alone my NaNoReMo pick.

I'm a third of the way through The Master and Margarita. At this stage in my career, I still feel awkward critically assessing the novels of others. So far the novel is delightfully cheesy in a way that none of the Russian heavy hitters I've ever read has gone for, including the deliberate, knowing setup conversation between those darned secular elites and the man we know will turn out to be Satan, as they deny his existence only to be blown away.

This is a good cheese, and an unusual cheese, especially for the contrast of flashback narratives to Pontius Pilate's encounters with a Yeshua of some renown. This Yeshua behaves skittishly, mortal to a fault, even denying his own teachings to get out of being convicted. Where the Satan-against-Soviets satire seemed gleefully pro-Christian, this depiction reads highly anti-Christian. Am I wrong? I almost hope not, because the collision of those two themes could make an incredible novel, and one third of the way in, The Master and Margarita hasn't uncloaked its true shape yet. It could wind up as a number of kinds of novels.

What this really calls for is research on cultural context, but I'm so deep into writing my own novel that reading time is slim. This has slowed down my consumption of Bulgakov's novel, but I'm no less enthused to read it.

Bronchitis and Guilt

Bronchitis is a lot like a baby turtle trying to eat a strawberry.
This may make more sense in Paragraph 3.

Bronchitis and guilt. Of the two, guilt will kill you quicker. Guilt will make use of your bronchitis, your student loans, the girlfriend you disappointed and the holiday you never make special enough. Any of those elements are dangerous, but guilt uses them all.

I'm a delusional sort. Scratch that - humans are a delusional sort, and it's the rationalists I distrust. One of my delusions is a guilt complex that I'm never doing enough. For the last week I've been relatively silent because I've been relatively bedridden with a splendid case of bronchitis. That's an infection of the bronchial tubes that cakes my lungs with solid snot, throws off my internal temperature, locks my joints, saps appetite for the nutrition necessary to fight it, and drives my neuromuscular syndrome nuts. By Thursday I'd pulled muscles in my back, both biceps, and pulled both hamstrings, simply from coughing or contorting in discomfort. It was such that I could no longer lie down without excruciating pain, and thus had to alternate between exhausting myself by sitting up for any relief, and lying down and making the muscles worse.

I am doing much better, and thank you for asking. But I also felt pangs of guilt over not continuing my novel, even when my head was so fogged I couldn't speak an entire sentence. I even felt the pangs when, in the sort of nonsense despair excessive pain causes, I worried my whole novel was garbage and had to be thrown out. Even when I was sure the work was worthless, I felt vile for not transcending and doing the work anyway. The Joker would laugh at me, and The Joker is never wrong when he thinks you're funny.

Writing is beautiful, and prose is one of my great passions in life. This morning I'm excited to be able to think straight and consider these characters again. Yet the anxiety I soaked in this weekend is the kind of mindset that you may wind up with if you become too attached to goals. I've argued it before and won't go on at length now, because I desperately need to sleep a full night soon or it's off to the hospital. But please, think about how stupid John Wiswell is because he's driven the next time some successful author tells you to lock it down and work harder.

For now I think what the last few months were like. Everything was held up in October for Viable Paradise. Then...

November: wrote my first screenplay.
December: wrote four short stories.
January: wrote 51,033 words of a new novel.

For these fruits, I think I'm not doing enough. The Joker would bust a gut.

I've got about a week left before I head to Massachusetts for Boskone, where it turns out I'll be reading in the Flash Slam competition. If you're in the Boston area, I'd love a little cheering section. I can't wait to practice, just as soon as my voice comes back.

I'm trying to figure out when I'll have enough wherewithal to write more of the novel. Maybe Monday? And whenever, how much I can get done before I ship out. I think the break is actually helping the plotting in a way I'll have a better handle on next week. Too funny if not writing for a while is the best aid to writing better fiction.

Bad Good Habits

I’m bad with goals. On January 8^th I started writing my next novel with the goal of a minimum of a thousand words per day, but with my attention on writing scenes, chapters and arcs – of getting the text right. I write much more when I focus like that, which became the problem, because on the first day I wrote about 2,900 words. On the second day, I wrote about 2,900 more. On the third, I wrote 2,300, and felt exhilarated, having never started a novel so quickly, but also like I’d cheated and profoundly failed.

Do you recognize the problem? Do you have it, too?

Last week I managed to drag my chubby butt to 2.54 miles on the elliptical machine. It was the farthest I’d ever gone, and was so hard on my body that I was trembling for the next hour and felt exhausted the next morning. When I climbed on the next day and didn’t match that all-time record, my heart sunk. I was sweaty, and spent, and my neuromuscular syndrome flared up so badly I couldn’t bend my knees, and I felt like I hadn’t done enough.

I've habituated expanding my goals to a cancerous degree. We often talk about failure in terms of not reaching goals. Figuring out what you can achieve and what’s reasonable to push is vital. You have to learn to make a routine, and then to push. I fail in these ways all the time – it is, allegedly, mortal. But there are other ways to fail. Victory can defeat you.

It's a good line. ... Shut up.

Goals can’t remain static. It’s ridiculous to teach a baby to take her first steps and then never expect her to perform more than that. In writing, you want to push you productivity up if you can. If you can write 500 words in a weekend for months, then it’s healthy to try for 1,000. If you can bench fifty, try sixty. Sure.

But figuring out the limits above those goals is essential, and it’s something I’m terrible at. You can psychoanalyze me as the boy who learned to walk again, who didn’t readjust into school well enough and was brutalized for it, who wound up with nerds who all pulled better grades, and thusly craved to exceed his performance. I don’t think the mind is that simple, or that one reason is ever trustworthy for a whole personality. But I knew within seconds of seeing “2.56 miles” on the elliptical’s panel that I was going to guilt myself over not hitting that again tomorrow. And I knew I shouldn’t, and that it wasn’t healthy, and that I couldn’t stop it.

This is part of why I hate critics who backbite at authors for having a slow pace. It took Harper Lee a lifetime to make To Kill a Mockingbird, and then she was done. Truman Capote, of significantly faster work and greater output, supported and championed Lee. They weren’t competitors, and one wasn’t failing for not having the process of the other.

Goading people into rushing risks breaking them. Screw breaking their work – and yes, dashing towards word count like #NaNoWriMo ruins plenty of decent novels – it can damage their development.

No one browbeat me into writing 33,700 words in my first two weeks on this novel. That I am now significantly ahead of schedule and feel the dread of being behind is a doom of my own making.  It’s hardly fast composition – I have friends who are self-publishing books like they shed manuscripts. But today, after writing two emotionally demanding chapters in separate time lines, and having difficulty even sitting up in the chair afterward, I didn’t feel accomplished. I felt sicker and I felt like I’d failed.

Don’t do this. And if you’re like me, let’s talk it out.

Consequences.

There are authors I respect who advise to lock everything up, to be cold, and be as productive as possible. As someone who won’t fall asleep tonight because the mere strain of writing has jacked up his health problems such that he may not fall asleep tonight, please take my advice: ignore those authors. Mind yourself. Mind your goals and your limits.

And if somehow I become the Capote to your Lee, trust me that I will be overjoyed to share your one book with the world.

Writing a Lot and Reading Nothing

This is going to be a quick post. I wanted to write an essay Saturday afternoon, but I wrote on We Don't Always Drown until evening, and then had to beta read for a friend.

So I intended to write an essay after hitting my word count goal on the novel on Sunday, maybe during the football games. But word count is horse hockey, and I kept writing until I'd finish an arc in the novel around 9:30 PM. Then I needed to find food.

Once the rough draft is done I'll post the breakdown of words-per-day on We Don't Always Drown, but I have never had a book start like this. In five days I've written over 13,000 words. It is the most I've ever gotten out of the beginning of a book. The big cheats are knowing the characters, loving their chatter, and already having the major plotting ready. It's a rush, and I'm blessed with the strength to stay upright and keep working. I don't know how long I can keep it up, and keep expecting to crash. The syndrome always gets its day, you know.

Serious work in books.

The downside is that, besides beta reading and some #fridayflash, I haven't been reading. I'm spending all that literary energy on composition, which can get dangerous. It makes me look forward to #NaNoReMo in March, when we'll all draw our classics from our shelves and do a penance unto the canon.

I rummaged through my book boxes and unearthed most of last year's candidates, as well as a few books that have been around and unread even longer. I don't know why my list is sausage fest after two straight #NaNoReMos of reading women, but it is. I figured I'd share, particularly if anyone has questions or recommendations based on these. I'll open up a proper poll in February. For now, the long list is:

-Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations

-Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita

-Alex Haley’s Roots

-Victor Hugo's Les Miserables

-Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace

-Fyodor Dostoyevksy’s Crime and Punishment

-John Irving's The World According to Garp

-Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities

-Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita

-David Foster Wallace's The Infinite Jest
-Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow

Any winners?