Process and Emotion

I’ve been thinking about the role that my emotion plays in writing.

Now I’m not the overly emotional type when it comes to writing. I’m horribly pragmatic about it. So pragmatic that few things irritate me more than folks asking about Process with a capital P.

(This is different from process, which just means, how do you get your thoughts on paper?)

But there are those who mean Process. And that irritates me because Process implies glamour, genius, and weekly dates with your Muse who gushes about your prose and how you surprise even her.

Capital-P Process is a horrible concept because writing is really just ... writing. It isn’t glamorous and you rarely feel like a genius. In fact, you learn all the ways in which you are far from genius. Your Muse arrives only after you’ve been pounding out dreck for quite some time, hoping to discover the heart of a scene.

Even then, she’s a little tetchy and asks for a cup of coffee because you can’t expect her to look at your work until she’s had a bit of caffeine.

The process (lowercase p, mind you!) of writing isn’t always euphoric. As Nathan Bransford blogged, it's often more about willpower than anything else.

And yet...

I’m learning that the best part of my stories are the ones that engaged me on a deep emotional level. I know I’m on the right track when I’ve gone over a scene a million times, and hit the point where I care.

We all have those scenes that wrote themselves and just sing. But I also have just as many scenes- scenes necessary to the story- that are easy to leave at good enough, at merely well-written. I’m learning to do some unglamorous digging until I find that one aspect that moves me to curiosity, anger, or compassion.

Because, really, if I was bored writing the scene, why won’t a reader be bored reading it? Yes, writing is about the process of getting (and keeping!) your butt in a chair. But the point of that work is capturing scenes that speak to the heart and mind.

Writing should never be an choice between work or emotion. It should always be about both.

So what about you? What role does emotion play in your writing? How do you keep at it day after day until things are just right? I’d love to know how you do it. It’s amazing all the different ways we get our stories on the page.

Lately, I Feel Like a Writer

Because I don’t get paid to do this all day long, I often don’t feel I have the right to call myself a writer. But lately, I lay full claim to that title. Why? Because I’m earning it. For the past two weeks I have had my butt in this chair every day for at least a couple of hours. (I do have a job and a toddler.) And I’m not browsing the internet. (Haven’t seen a post from me in a while, have you?) I am sweating and bleeding onto the page. I am toiling over words. It feels fantastically awful and awfully fantastic, depending on when you ask me.

I’m feeling like a writer because I’m pushing through the tough parts. A few days ago, I plunged into the next chapter of revisions and found I had to rewrite an entire scene. I sat down and wrote it, and it was really, really bad.

Usually, I would be so discouraged by this initial failure that it would take me a few days to face the page again. But this time, I went right back to it the very next day. I worked it. Then I moved on. And it’s better. Not perfect, but better. I can live with that.

I’m feeling like this is my job that I go to every day without question, without stalling, without excuses. Inspiration doesn’t make me feel like a writer. Working at it every day does. Hey, I may finish this novel yet!

When do you most feel like a writer?

I hope all of the NaNoWriMo participants out there will also feel like writers very soon, if you don’t already.

There is a Madness to My Method

I've never been good at making a detailed outline. I've always preferred to throw myself out there, writing four or five chapters until I get stuck. Then I decide what I'm writing about and where I'm going, make a sketchy outline, and keep plowing through the story.

This method gets me into trouble--on many levels. The main trouble is that the story and the characters keep changing. By the time I reach the last chapter, most of the previous chapters need heavy revision, if not complete re-writes. Usually, as I'm writing forward, I'm at the same time going back to revise. I may be writing chapter 19 and revising chapter 10.

It was working fine for a while, but now it's getting confusing. I'm so involved in the story, working on it so much, that I have no perspective. I forget all the things I've changed, what each character knows and doesn't know.

I've been getting a lot of critiques lately that go something like this: "Um, wouldn't she be scared/surprised/angry/sad to find this out?" Oh, yeah (hand smacks forehead), I cut that scene and forgot to change the rest accordingly. I feel like I'm trying to force these puzzle pieces together; but some of them have rounded edges and some square.

I am beginning to see the wisdom of a detailed outline. But oh, I hate the idea of doing it. Part of what I love about writing a first draft is the constant sense of discovery. There are surprises everywhere--about the plot, the characters, the themes. The very thought of having a detailed outline makes me not want to write. (I am one of those people prone to staring out the window thinking and calling it writing. If I think too much, I don't write.)

I suppose every writer has this to some extent, hence the common recommendation to put the finished manuscript in a drawer for a month so you can revisit it with fresh eyes. I don't think I'm at that point yet (the first two chapters need to be completely re-written), but I'm getting there.

All I really wanted to say is that I'm discovering a part of my process that doesn't work as well as I thought. I'm overwhelmed by all the little details I have to align. But then, I can't imagine figuring out the story any other way than through the process of writing.

Any thoughts on process?

More coming on the benefits of this method...

The Art and Heart of Critiquing

Critiquing can be a touchy thing. Rejection letters, no matter how thoughtful, are always rejections. And critiques, no matter how delicate, often involve little stabs at the heart--over and over again.

Our last meeting sparked a flurry of emails about our responsibilities to our fellow Slushies and whether or not there are things we should not comment on, like the publishability of our work, which in turn sparked debate over what we’re all in the group for anyway. All in all, good conversation.

Here are excerpts from my emails. Hopefully other Slushies will share their thoughts as well.

I think that we are all in this group for a variety of reasons, some of them overlapping and some not. At different stages each of us may be really on a roll, working on a big project we intend for publication, or in between projects, or in a slump, or targeting specific skills to work on, or simply playing with words.

As far as I'm concerned all of those reasons and more are perfectly valid, and we should support each other in what we're trying to do. However, it may not always be clear what each of us is coming for, so the more specific we can be about the questions we ask our fellow Slushies, the better our feedback will be.

The way I grow most as a writer is through all those comments that make my heart sink when I first hear them, the ones that I want to sweep under the rug and dismiss because obviously my genius has been tragically misunderstood. But if I sit with them for a while and wait for the heart-sinking to stop and take a good honest look, that's when the real growth happens. That's when I'm a real writer. That's when I decide the truth for my story and me. Often as not, I do end up dismissing comments, but only after a good honest look at them.

I may regret saying this sometime down the line, but I'm going to say it anyway. If a Slushie were to say to me that she thinks I could be writing something better than this, or that I should put my energies into something else, or that I should take my writing in such-and-such direction....well, though I might whimper a little inside, I would welcome that feedback. We are each in a position to see each other's work from a unique perspective. I look to the Slushies to help me be a better writer, and I hope that includes choice of topics. If a Slushie said to me, "Lisa, I would love to see you write a more realistic story about a kid living in the Netherlands," I would think about that very seriously. Of course I may always say that I'm writing what I'm passionate about and I don't want to write realism. But at least you've spoken and I've heard you and we are thinking about the whole process of writing and not just the words that make it to the page.

To me, critiquing involves everything from grammar to story, style to character, revision to query, and hopefully one day to contracts and book signings. I want the Slushies with me every step of the way.

Stay tuned for more on this topic. Next installment: But would you publish it?

Beauty, Discipline and Inertia...oh yeah, and Writing

Yesterday, for the first time in ages, I didn't work on my novel the entire day. I didn't write one new word. I didn't revise a single sentence. I don't even know that I thought about it. Today, I didn't get back to it until late in the evening, and by then I was practically shaking from withdrawal. Okay, not really, but my mind was surely shaking.

You see, for the first time in my life, I am writing regularly. Not a lot, but every day. Sometimes it's only 15 or 30 minutes, but those are good solid fingers-clacking-constantly-on-keyboard minutes not those mamby-pamby looking-out-the-window-thinking minutes. This, more than anything else, makes me feel like a real writer.

So I am here to say that I've discovered the beauty of discipline. And also that for me, inertia is everything. If I'm at rest, I'm likely to stay at rest...forever. But if I'm writing, and I keep writing every day, then eventually, I'm likely to finish this book.