New New Shiny Makes Old New

I’m vastly entertained by the senselessness of that title, partly, I think, because I’m more than a little tired.

For my birthday, the beloved got me a new mp3 player, a 4GB Sansa Clip+ in blue, my favorite color. All it really does is play music, which is a good thing, because that’s what I want it to do. I don’t need or want all the other bells and whistles (I’m looking at you, Apple), and I certainly don’t want to pay for them, especially when the sound quality isn’t as good (at least to my ears).

One of the things the Clip+ has is a radio receiver that’s good enough for my purposes. I’ve been listening to the radio on the bus the last couple of nights, and over the course of the bus ride home, I’ve heard songs I thought I knew really well, things like R.E.M.’s “Losing My Religion.”

It’s like hearing completely different songs. There’s all kinds of stuff going on that I didn’t hear before with my sad little speakers and headphones, a whole layer of lusciousness I missed out on. There was another song tonight that sounded so different that I thought, “Is this a remake?”

I’m not sure what this has to do with anything — I just think it’s cool.

Head ‘Sploding

The problem with really fabulous brainstorming — a problem I’m just discovering — is that eventually your head starts to feel like it will explode, because there’s no room for all the ideas you’re coming up with. I’ve been writing things down, but I think I’m not writing enough down, because a lot of stuff is still inside my head.

I also think I’m reaching the saturation point, where I’ll have so many ideas I’ll just get paralyzed. I need to organize what I have so far and go with it. There’s still a whole lot I don’t know about the story — especially the second half — but I’m starting to suspect that’s a strength, not a weakness. If I don’t know what I want to have happen, I can let the story go where it needs to go. That is, I’m not going to crush the life out of it by trying to force it to go in a particular direction.

I also wonder if it might not be best to sketch things in. Scott Westerfield and Justine Larbalestier are writing a series of NaNo-related blog posts — his on the odd dates in November, hers on the even — and this one from Sunday the first is part of the reason I’m thinking about sketching the scenes I have and even sketching scenes I don’t have, just to see what happens.

Whatever I end up doing, I won’t be starting it tonight. Head full, me tired, sleep soon. (Plus, very early morning wake-up for workout with trainer.)

You Got A Friend

I’m lucky enough to work with one of my best friends. In many ways, he’s like my brother — we had that kind of relationship almost from the moment we met. (And since his last name is the same as my mother’s maiden name, we figure we’re related somehow…even though there are a bazillion people out there with the same last name.)

Today I was telling him about NaNoWriMo and KaBraiMo, and he said, “We should brainstorm together.” At first I was skeptical — he’s not a writer — but he’s creative and clever, and he’s one of my best friends. So I went for it.

He had all kinds of wild hare ideas, which are the best kind when you’re brainstorming, even when they freak you out a little bit. My initial reaction was to resist, but I kept thinking about them, and I think they’re starting to break up some of the rigid thinking that’s been holding me back. I’m not sure I’ll use what he gave me — he’s thinking movies and big, visual battle-y stuff, which isn’t something I’m likely to write. But I think I’ll use the underlying ideas, the biggest one being the idea I need to let my big ideas play out in big ways. I need to stop thinking small.

Riding home on the bus tonight, I realized that one of the reasons I’ve been thinking small is that I’m not sure I have the skill to write the big ideas in a big way.

Only one way to find out: try it.

KaBraiMo

Today began NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, where participants aim themselves at writing a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. I can’t tell you how many of my writing friends do this every year, including this year. Because I’m a competitive soul who hates to be left out of everything, I’m always tempted by this. I’ve never done it, partly because my writing process doesn’t really lend itself to doing this kind of thing.

However…

I’m at a crossroads with the wip. I don’t know what happens next — I don’t even have an inkling. Well, I did figure out the meat of one scene, but other than that? Nada.

While I was mulling things over yesterday morning – which is when I got my one scene idea — it occurred to me that I could do my own version of NaNoWriMo. I could take the month of November and just write whatever: snippets of scenes, thoughts, ideas, whole scenes if they came… The key would be that I wouldn’t edit, I wouldn’t even read what I’d done. This is pure brainstorming: Katy Brainstorming Month, or KaBraiMo. (I hear echoes of “Ka-boom!” when I say it to myself, which I kind of like.)

One of the things that’s always stopped me from doing full-on NaNoWriMo is the fear — or maybe concern is a better word — that I’d write a whole bunch, but that fixing it all would take more time than if I’d followed my usual path. That it would be counterproductive.

The difference here is that I’m stuck. I can mull and think and write notes to myself, or I can just write whatever comes into my head, with the idea that even when you’re heading in the wrong direction, you’re not stuck, and I’m much more likely to recognize a wrong direction if I start heading toward it, than if I stand here and think, “Maybe…”

Anyway, I’ll see how it goes…

Gah!

Nothing much to say. In the last week to ten days, I’ve been getting sleepy earlier than – I’m not sure the shortening days aren’t part of it. Whatever the reason, I’m conking out before 11:00 PM, night after night after night. Weird.

I finished the rewrite of that scene that I had to yank, and I’m very pleased with it. Until the book is done, everything’s provisional, but as itself, the scene works. It might not work in the book as a whole, but that’s something I won’t know until I have a whole book.

I’ve passed the 50k words mark, so technically I’m past the halfway point. I say “technically” because I’m not sure I can write this story in 100k words. The answer to that is also something I won’t know until I’m done.

I’m not sure what I’m writing next; I’m stumped in every direction I can think of. I know there’s a scene where Kerlis has to find something out, but I haven’t got the least clue how. I don’t have any ideas for how to embed that moment of learning. Or what happens as a result. I’ve kicked around a few ideas, but they all seem very bleah to me.

What I really need is to print out what I have and look at it as a whole — see how it’s shaped, find clues for the next stretch in what I already have, get a feel for where it’s going. I used to know, but then my imagination made a detour, and now I’m feeling lost. I need to stop a moment and get my bearings.

But first I think I need to sleep.

A Good Day…

Today, I got myself back over the 50k mark, making up everything I lost when I turfed out the Scene That Wasn’t Working, Latest Round. That makes it a good day. Even better, I ended the scene in a place that’ll be easy to pick up tomorrow.

Yep, a good day.

Fingerprints, or Writers Who Have Influenced Me

The other day, I had a powerful urge to re-read Mary Stewart’s The Ivy Tree. It’s been years and years since I read it — years and years since I read a Mary Stewart romantic suspense novel all the way through, in fact. My copy is decades old — the price on the cover is $0.75, the glue holding it together is dying, so the amber-yellow pages are loose, and they’re crumbling at the edges. I’m afraid to handle the thing, so I bought a new copy.

I’m about halfway through and one thing I’m noticing is how much I owe the flow of my own descriptive writing to Stewart. Her fingerprints are all over my writing. I’m surprised by that, somehow; I guess I didn’t realize until this week how influential she’s been.

This isn’t the first time I’ve read a beloved author and thought, “Oh, that’s where I get that from…” A few years ago, I opened Ursula K. LeGuin’s The Lathe of Heaven, read the prologue and realized that I’d absorbed her prose rhythms.

What I’ve done — absorbed ways of handling language – is different than plagiarism. Plagiarism is taking someone else’s work — their words and ideas – and using them as if they’re you’re own. The words I use, the ideas about plot and character and setting, are my own. It’s just that I’ve absorbed ways of managing those words to express those ideas from writers who’ve come before me.

And I have to say, I think I picked pretty good role models.

Perseverance

A long time ago, when I was a very young writer — young in writing experience, not exactly in age — the question of what a writer needed more than anything else came up on a private writing list I was on at the time. The answer that came back — which comes back every time this question comes up — was that a writer needs, more than anything else, is perseverance. You have to be willing to stick with it, no matter what happens. Otherwise, nothing else you have — talent, drive, contacts — will matter.

I’m reminded of this today, as I contemplate throwing out all this week’s work. In one 24-hour period, I wrote nearly 2,000 words, which is huge for me. I wrote another 300 the next day, and I probably wrote close to 500 today.

The thing is, what I have is kind of bleah, and I think it’s unfixable bleah. I decided to write the scene from the POV of a character whose more of an observer, and while observation could be a really cool thing for this scene — this is a character who can read people and read the nuances of a situation — it’s not actually working out to be cool. It’s working out to be a bit on the dull side.

So I’m pretty sure I’m going to put everything I wrote into the “Outtakes” folder and start all over again.

The thing that kills me about this is that what I just wrote pushed the manuscript past the 50k point, my proposed halfway point. When I yank all the new words out, I’ll be back below that threshold. It shouldn’t matter — 50k words doesn’t mean that much when over 2k of them are wrong, a hot, boring mess — but on some level it does matter to me. I guess I really do want to have a finished something again, and every step backward, away from that milestone, is painful.

This is where perseverance comes in. When writing is frustrating and painful, as it is right now, it’s easier to think about giving up: giving up on this story, giving up on writing in general. Thinking about giving up makes giving up more likely. I mean, there it is in your mind, a possibility. perseverance will keep me from giving up. It keeps me from seriously entertaining the thought of quitting. As maddening and insane as this sometimes is, I’m going to keep doing it, because I want to finish and I refuse to give up.

It strikes me as I write this that from a certain angle, perseverance strongly resembles stubbornness, or even pigheadedness. There’s an element of both in my refusal to give up. I’m okay with that: whether you call it determination or perseverance, stubbornness or pigheadedness, if you’re going to dream big dreams, it’s a quality you’re going to need. I’m just glad I have it.

At Last…

Etta James is playing in the radio in my head, triggered by the title I’m giving this blog. I think, I think, the scene that’s been giving me fits is on the right track. The thing I like best about it is that nothing’s settled by the end — it’s just an agreed-upon point of stasis between the two characters. I can see all kinds of complications rising out of what I have, and I hope the reader will, too. If I do this right, the big difference between my feeling of, “Stuff will happen because of this,” and the reader’s feeling of it, is that I know what happens as a result and the reader won’t. But she’ll want to…and she’ll keep turning the pages.

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One of my favorite blogs is agent Nathan Bransford’s. I like his attitude and his style, the way he approaches his blog posts. He’s just a pleasure to read.

He’s also informative. Today, he had a great post on first paragraphs, one I recommend reading. When he talks about the first paragraph’s three functions, he puts into words something I’d understood but had never tried to articulate. In three brief clauses, he liststhe things I look for when I open a book, trying to decide whether or not to buy it (or borrow it, as the case may be). I just hadn’t named those things.

As a reader, it’s cool but not key that I now know what I’m looking for. As a writer, this information is essential.

Go read the whole post. It’s short, and it’s excellent.

Why, Why, Why…

I half think I should call this “Whine, Whine, Whine.”

The scene I thought was so fabulous two days ago is not fabulous after all, at least not in its current incarnation. I’ve already begun overhauling it, making it stronger. I’d be more depressed about this if I hadn’t remembered that I had the same kinds of problems writing the last scene in Narthé’s point of view — false starts and do-overs. If this happens the next time I write a scene from his point of view, I’ll know it’s just a given when writing that particular character and I’ll prepare for it.

I wonder how much it has to do with the fact he’s a shapeshifting dragon who’s kind of like an angel. He’s not human and I try to keep that in mind when crawling under his skin to see the story from his perspective. That may gum up the works a little bit, so I end up writing all kinds of unworkable things that end up getting discarded. I hate doing that, but maybe it’s necessary.

This is another facet of trusting myself: Not putting any pressure on myself to decide what something means, or that an aspect of my process, however maddening, is a Problem That Must Be Fixed. Tonight, I’m just considering a possibility…and letting it go at that.  

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I’m reading a book that I’m finding fascinating and resonant: Revolution On My Mind: Writing a Diary Under Stalin by Jochen Hellbeck. Part of the fascination comes from knowing almost nothing about the USSR under Stalin — there are glimpses of that history that are triggering my (easily triggered) curiosity. The rest of the fascination comes the way Hellbeck explores four different yet similar lives through their writers’ diaries. 

It also feels as if what I’m learning is going into my imagination’s compost heap, to feed the roots of some story or other. That’s why I let myself wander wherever I want: I never know what’s going to be useful and valuable.