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madwriterAfter twenty-one years of writing essentially for fun followed by eight years of trying to (and occasionally succeeding at) writing professionally, I've gotten to the point where I don't always know the ins and outs of my own writing process until I have to put it into words for someone else. That happened today, explaining the method I've used in order to be able to sit down and write both the Shenandoah Saga and the gigantic Arizona:
In order to not scare myself off from writing the books before I even sit down to write them, I forget that I'm writing a book.
The lady I was talking to is my new neighbor, and her husband is working on his first book. He's running into two common problems: One, the parts of the book, even from one piece to the next, don't necessarily connect. Two, what he sees and hears in his head isn't necessarily making it to the page, confusing folks who try reading it (including his wife).
She explained that where most books are sectional, one following on the next, his thinking process was a giant web of interconnections, and he wasn't succeeding at getting all those connections down on paper in an understandable way. I pointed out that from the writer's perspective, everything in a book is a giant web of interconnections--it just reads in a linear fashion because the author has made those connections in a way that feels linear.
The advice I gave was that you let the web flow free while you're doing your pre-writing planning, but when you sit down to write you have to then forget that you're writing a book. Concentrate on what's going on at that moment in the story. Yes, know where it is in the narrative, and know where everything will end up, but shut off Omniscient Writer and get into your character's head.
Everything will still be interconnected. Even setting. For instance, I have a cave in Arizona near the San Pedro River that's sacred to the POV tribe and a holy woman named Genngha at the beginning of the book, so there it's featured prominently. But then it reappears, briefly, as an odd kind of shelter to a young Spaniard in the 1770s; again as a place of power for Geronimo in the 1870s; and finally as a significant archaeological site in the 2010s. What changes is what the cave means at that moment in the story.
Geronimo recognizes it as a place of power, as my post-Ice Age tribe did. But he knows nothing about its prehistoric past, so I present nothing of that past except to call it "Genngha's Cave" to peg it for the reader. The cave's existence is built on what I wrote earlier, but if I tried to bring all of that into the story again I would just drive myself crazy--and the reader with me, I'm sure. All that concerns me is that Geronimo is praying in this cave before launching another attack on an American settlement.
When you write in the "moment" this way, then it becomes clear whether or not what follows makes any sense. Your bridges between scenes thus can boil down to two questions: Does your finished scene set the stage for the next one? Does your scene build on the previous one in any way? If you can't answer yes to both questions, then something's wrong.
I mentioned that I have to use this method when I'm getting to work on a large project--and to stay working on it, for all that. Otherwise, who in their right mind would start writing a book that will likely top out at 300,000 words? Thinking of the whole scope of the massive opus is for pre-writing planning and post-writing edits and rewrites. If I try to contemplate the entire business as I sit in The Writing Chair and type on The Writing Computer in The Writing Room, then suddenly I won't be Writing, I'll be Fretting.
At the moment, I'm about 175,000 words into Arizona after some writing time late last week. So it's just easier to fill in what remains if I don't do the math. And nobody who's read the book, so far as I know, has yet been confused about what is going on at any given story moment.
In order to not scare myself off from writing the books before I even sit down to write them, I forget that I'm writing a book.
The lady I was talking to is my new neighbor, and her husband is working on his first book. He's running into two common problems: One, the parts of the book, even from one piece to the next, don't necessarily connect. Two, what he sees and hears in his head isn't necessarily making it to the page, confusing folks who try reading it (including his wife).
She explained that where most books are sectional, one following on the next, his thinking process was a giant web of interconnections, and he wasn't succeeding at getting all those connections down on paper in an understandable way. I pointed out that from the writer's perspective, everything in a book is a giant web of interconnections--it just reads in a linear fashion because the author has made those connections in a way that feels linear.
The advice I gave was that you let the web flow free while you're doing your pre-writing planning, but when you sit down to write you have to then forget that you're writing a book. Concentrate on what's going on at that moment in the story. Yes, know where it is in the narrative, and know where everything will end up, but shut off Omniscient Writer and get into your character's head.
Everything will still be interconnected. Even setting. For instance, I have a cave in Arizona near the San Pedro River that's sacred to the POV tribe and a holy woman named Genngha at the beginning of the book, so there it's featured prominently. But then it reappears, briefly, as an odd kind of shelter to a young Spaniard in the 1770s; again as a place of power for Geronimo in the 1870s; and finally as a significant archaeological site in the 2010s. What changes is what the cave means at that moment in the story.
Geronimo recognizes it as a place of power, as my post-Ice Age tribe did. But he knows nothing about its prehistoric past, so I present nothing of that past except to call it "Genngha's Cave" to peg it for the reader. The cave's existence is built on what I wrote earlier, but if I tried to bring all of that into the story again I would just drive myself crazy--and the reader with me, I'm sure. All that concerns me is that Geronimo is praying in this cave before launching another attack on an American settlement.
When you write in the "moment" this way, then it becomes clear whether or not what follows makes any sense. Your bridges between scenes thus can boil down to two questions: Does your finished scene set the stage for the next one? Does your scene build on the previous one in any way? If you can't answer yes to both questions, then something's wrong.
I mentioned that I have to use this method when I'm getting to work on a large project--and to stay working on it, for all that. Otherwise, who in their right mind would start writing a book that will likely top out at 300,000 words? Thinking of the whole scope of the massive opus is for pre-writing planning and post-writing edits and rewrites. If I try to contemplate the entire business as I sit in The Writing Chair and type on The Writing Computer in The Writing Room, then suddenly I won't be Writing, I'll be Fretting.
At the moment, I'm about 175,000 words into Arizona after some writing time late last week. So it's just easier to fill in what remains if I don't do the math. And nobody who's read the book, so far as I know, has yet been confused about what is going on at any given story moment.
no subject
Date: 2012-09-19 09:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-19 10:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-19 11:03 pm (UTC)But revision and editing are my favorite parts of the process.
Go figure.