Creepy monkey. Creepy, creepy monkey.So I’ve finished up the writing of the first draft of a current project, which ended up about 90k words. By first draft, I mean all of the scenes are at least 75% complete, with most of them completely roughed out. The next stage of the process will follow what I did with the previous two books, which worked fine. Because I am a writer, I am fascinated with process. We all constantly wonder if we’re Getting It Right, a state which I can neither confirm nor deny. Hence this post, which anyone is welcome to skip.
As part of my process, which is perhaps overly paper-intensive, I’m printing out a copy right now, at a line and a half spacing so there’s plenty of room to write on it. I’ll go through that with my colored paper tags, marking the places where there are things to be fixed or done or included, including notes ranging in magnitude from “this needs to be foreshadowed in previous chapter” to “check street name.” I’ll read through the manuscript, tinkering at the paragraph and sentence level while answering each of those tabs so I can remove it from the manuscript.
When they’re all answered, I’ll print out another copy and read that aloud with pen in hand. That may happen more than once.
I’ve polished the prologue and first chapter a couple of times, so I’m running that past one writing group, and will be looking for first readers when I get to the read-aloud stage – if people are interested, please drop me a line in the comments.
Is this the only way to write a novel? A thousand times no! But it’s worked for me, and if there’s any part of it that’s useful to you, seize it freely. The single wisest thing I heard at Clarion West, from Syne Mitchell, was, “Try different things and find out what works for you. Then do that. Lots.”
By paper tags, do you mean sticky notes? That’s an awesome idea, I believe I’ll steal it.
Re: reading aloud, if you have a Kindle you could send the ms to your Kindle (there’s a way to do this, I can look up the info if you like) and then use the text-to-speech to make the Kindle read it out loud to you. Just an idea to save your voice.
I’ve also heard people say that reading it on an e-reader helps them find typographical problems because the different line length makes it harder for errors to escape in peripheral vision.
That’s a great idea about sending it to the Kindle, I’ve done that with some review pdfs I’ve gotten in the past.
The thing about reading aloud is that you catch stuff that you wouldn’t notice otherwise – repeated words, for example, stick out like a sore thumb in this process. It’s worth a raspy voice for a couple of days. 🙂
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"(On the writing F&SF workshop) Wanted to crow and say thanks: the first story I wrote after taking your class was my very first sale. Coincidence? nah….thanks so much."
~K. Richardson
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Retreat, Day 20
Eek, I thought I had been better about posting. At any rate, here I am still in California writing away. I had Wayne here Friday-Sunday, so no writing was done, but we really had just a delightful time with each other and both were very sorry to part when I dropped him off at the airport on Sunday.
Today’s totals:
Today’s wordcount: 5884
Current Hearts of Tabat wordcount: 119083
Total word count for the week so far (day 1): 5884
Total word count for this retreat: 52435
Worked on Hearts of Tabat, “Blue Train Blues”
Time spent on SFWA email, discussion boards, other stuff: 30 minutes
Besides working on “Hearts,” I have been finishing up “Blue Train Blues”, a steampunk set in the Altered America world, although over on the other side of the world, in their version of France, occupied by vampires. It’s not a pieceI’ve promised anyone, so it will probably go up on Patreon either this month or the next.
Here’s a section from it:
The evening wore on. Fortunes were squandered and won, and then squandered again. The cigar smoke haze thickened to the point of oppression, and the air grew stuffy except when someone entered or exited the car, bringing in a night breeze that cut through the heat like a saber stroke.
I tried to keep any thoughts from betraying us, but I could not help but wonder. The vampire knew my lord was cheating, he was threatening to say it openly, and there was only one end to it if he did make that accusation: they would kill my lord then and there.
But my lord seemed oblivious to his impending fate. He sat there playing and chattering away, an endless stream of blather that was his damned-silly-English-peer act, playing to the crowd with a touch of whimsy now and then. But underneath it all, he and I and the vampires knew, he was a werewolf, and while they had the numbers, he could at least account for some.
Lost in these thoughts, I swam back as the Renfrew beside me stepped forward to provide and light a cigarette, then retreated into his former position. My lord was talking about cars.
“Rover claims their new model goes faster than le Train Bleu,” von Blodam said.
“That’s nothing special,” my lord asserted. “I could leave with the train from here and my car could get me to my club in London before the train hits Callais.”
Von Blodam raised an incredulous eyebrow. “A bold claim.”
“It’s good English technology,” my lord said, and the edge to his voice was the same as though he’d bared his teeth, by the way the tension jumped in the room. I felt two Renfrews sidle closer.
But von Blodam laughed. “Then perhaps we should bet on. You will race le Train Bleu, and if you win, I will give you the prize of your choice.”
“And if that prize was to answer a question truthfully?” My lord’s eyes burned but could not melt the room’s ice.
Von Blodam smiled, and I could feel disaster looming like an iceberg. “Very well. Three questions even, answered with absolute truth, on my honor. What would you put up against something like that, my Lord?”
“Name it,” said my Lord softly. “For it’s clear that you are angling at something.”
The toothy smile broadened. “Very well. A reward of my choice, if the train reaches Callais before you are at your club.”
“A reward of your choice,” my lord said and his voice was expressionless. But his eyes still burned.
Outside the comfort zone is where the best art lies.We’ve all got a comfort zone, the place where we can function easily, where we know what to expect. It’s a nice place. It’s…well, it’s COMFORTABLE. Hence the name. It would be easy to stay there all the time.
But for writers, I think it’s very important to go outside it on a regular basis. For one thing, your characters are going to be outside their comfort zones, being challenged, tested, thwarted, more often than not, because one thing about comfort zones is that they can be pretty darn boring to read about. Who wants a character for which everything goes right? (This is, I will argue, why the Richie Rich comic books were pretty darn bland.) How can you write a character outside their comfort zone if you don’t know what it’s like?
And outside our comfort zone is where we learn new things, new skills, new things about ourselves. Here in Costa Rica, my Spanish skill is leaping upward in a way it wouldn’t at home, despite all my best resolutions about daily Duolingo workouts or buying books in Spanish from Amazon. And that in turn has prodded me to try some new things with it, like using one of my stories as a practice piece in translation.
This is why, when I talk to students about going into a workshop like Clarion West or Viable Paradise, I urge them to try to fail. Because you learn so much more from a story where you tried something new and failed than one where you did the same thing you always did. I wrote Zeppelin Follies while at Clarion West as my very first try at a screwball comedy, and I will confess that the first draft was a horrible mishmash of stuff. And boy did I learn a lot from that.
Fortunately, for the vast majority of writers, we like new things. New words, new vistas, new thoughts. And we find them outside that comfort zone, in a place that is frightening and exhilarating all at once. Whizzing along a zipline, diving into waters over our head, talking to strangers. If you doubt that you are brave enough to do such things, remember that you do something braver everyday by putting your writing out there for other people to look at.
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4 Responses
By paper tags, do you mean sticky notes? That’s an awesome idea, I believe I’ll steal it.
Re: reading aloud, if you have a Kindle you could send the ms to your Kindle (there’s a way to do this, I can look up the info if you like) and then use the text-to-speech to make the Kindle read it out loud to you. Just an idea to save your voice.
I’ve also heard people say that reading it on an e-reader helps them find typographical problems because the different line length makes it harder for errors to escape in peripheral vision.
That’s a great idea about sending it to the Kindle, I’ve done that with some review pdfs I’ve gotten in the past.
The thing about reading aloud is that you catch stuff that you wouldn’t notice otherwise – repeated words, for example, stick out like a sore thumb in this process. It’s worth a raspy voice for a couple of days. 🙂
I’ve just found you through Twitter and finding your posts SO helpful. Thanks!
You’re quite welcome!