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Writing Thoughts: Dwelling On Process

Picture of a tortoiseshell cat, upside down and looking cute.Here is the only thing I know to be true about writing advice: none of it is 100% true. There are always exceptions, always idiosyncrasies of individual process.

Here is the smartest piece of writing advice I ever got: said by Syne Mitchell while I was at Clarion West in 2005, “Try different things, find what works for you, and do that. Lots.”

Writers should pay attention to our own process. Sometimes we’re reluctant to do so. We worry that like the centipede in the story who stops being able to walk after thinking about exactly how she does it, looking at our own process will damage or kill it. A Schrödinger’s cat: we know we’re doing something, but if we look to prove that, it’ll vanish.

This is not actually true. Looking will, most probably, not kill it. If you are the rare exception that cannot look at their process without damaging it, a brief examination will let you know this without damaging anything too much. Maybe. There are no guarantees in writing advice.

But if you are part of the vast majority that WILL learn from it, what will you gain?

  • A knowledge of WHEN you’re productive that will help you make the most of that time. Is the morning your most productive time? Then schedule your writing for those hours rather than the draggy and low word count afternoon.
  • A knowledge of WHAT conditions make you productive. Does the coffee shop’s bustle and a few doses of caffeine stimulate you into productivity? Or do you need solitude and the ability to read aloud as you go? Find it out and do it, do it, do it.
  • Permission to indulge yourself. Do new notebooks spur you to new stories? Then go for it. Does a two hour walk shake loose the clarifications you need for that revision? Then put on your sneakers.
  • A sense of yourself as an artist. Because you are, you know. Your mind is a precious machine capable of creating wonderful things. Coddle and care for it. Appreciate the amazing combinations it makes, the verbal webs it spins, the hard glitter of its jewels.

Take a few weeks. Track your daily word count as well as the circumstances that accompany it, such as when and where you wrote. But go further than that. Track the other things that affect it: your mood, your diet, your sleep. You may find that daily walk doubles your output, that the days when you took time to eat breakfast rather than just slug down a latte, change your outlook.

FOr many of us, stress is a killer of productivity. I know nothing can drive me faster to the distraction of Bejeweled Blitz or cruising my Twitter stream. All the more reason to de-stress your life whenever you can, all in the name of writing.

Enjoy this writing advice and want more content like it? Check out the classes Cat gives via the Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers, which offers both on-demand and live online writing classes for fantasy and science fiction writers from Cat and other authors, including Ann Leckie, Seanan McGuire, Fran Wilde and other talents! All classes include three free slots.

Prefer to opt for weekly interaction, advice, opportunities to ask questions, and access to the Chez Rambo Discord community and critique group? Check out Cat’s Patreon. Or sample her writing here.

4 Responses

  1. I am going to buy a new pair of boots. In the name of writing. 😉

    Seriously, though, this is great advice. I keep meaning to start tracking my output. I even did, for a while, and now have this lonely Excel spreadsheet cluttering my computer, detailing a three week stint of writing mindfulness.

    I need to figure out a good way to destress. For my writing’s sake, as well as my husband’s.

  2. Tracking it can make you feel a lot happier. I sometimes forget how much stuff I’ve actually gotten done in the course of a week.

    And destressing – YES. For me, it’s long, long walks.

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Finishing a Novel

abstract image to represent the documents of TabatToday I finished Hearts of Tabat. Sure, I’ll go back and do some smoothing before sending it off to beta readers on Monday, but the book is done, the scenes are there, and (roughly) in the order they should be. The last scene took a lot of circling — I went out and walked five miles, came back, poked at it, went into the other room and made some notes, came back and kept pecking away.

I felt resistant to getting that last scene down on paper — I know that after a year and half with this book I am simultaneously exultant that it is, finally, done and sense has been wrestled from the seething mass of incoherence, and at the same time reluctant to let go of what has occupied a substantial part of my head for quite some time.

It’s an odd floaty but incomplete feeling. I feel as though I’m not sure what I should be doing, and a little anxious yet jubilant. There is a certain fear that beta readers will get something and go, “this is not a book”. Particularly when I’m trying something a bit adventurous with the structure, which I’ll save talk of for another time. I think they’ll like it; it’s as rich in Tabatian flavor as the first book and considerably more things happen in this one, to address the main criticism of that first.

Since I haven’t posted any stories on Patreon this month, I put up the first three chapters, but only for patrons. I figure they make the writing of the novels possible by supporting the stories. If you’re a patron, I look forward to hearing what you think.

I know that I need to read through the draft at least once and make sure all the names are correct; they shifted around a lot during the writing and most of the characters have gone through at least two permutations (Ariadne/Adelina, Skilto/Sebastiano, Crocofissia/Serafina) as have some of the surnames. There’s also some scraps of notes I’ve jotted down: loose ends to tuck into the narrative here and there.

But it feels as though there are a lot fewer redundant passages in Hearts than in Beasts, mainly because this manuscript hasn’t, like its poor counterpart, had multiple editors and agents leave their mark on it.

I’m also reassured that being SFWA President will not destroy my career; I wasn’t sure I would be able to finish a book while in office, but here you go. I promised Wayne if I didn’t get two done this year I wouldn’t run again; now I’m halfway.

At seven, I’ve got a Mandarin lesson via Skype, but I’d rather play Fallout. However, I will be good, and make poor Grace listen to my vowels and exhort me to “practiss, more practiss” before I will go indulge. Tomorrow I will plunge in the other big project due at the end of the month and frantically plow through that, but for the rest of the night, I get to play video games and not feel a gram of guilt for doing so.

May is for getting the YA novel finished; it’s currently about half written. I finally figured out the title, which is Conflagration.

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Writing and the Human Condition

Not particularly informative illustration
Someday I hope to have my students greet me with tiny classroom dioramas too. Perhaps not as many dinosaurs as Connie merits.
Gads, that sounds like a pompous start to pontification. But I wanted to talk about something that I often say in class. It’s something Connie Willis told my Clarion West class, and which I repeat, but don’t explain as thoroughly as I should, because it’s so clear in my head.

But words are imprecise things, and so I’m a-gonna do what we used to call “unpacking” back in grad school and even provide some useful examples.

What did Connie say? She said, “Good fiction teaches us what it means to be human.” As good f&sf writers, I would argue that we might change “human” to “self-aware being,” but that is picking nits.

So what does that mean? It means we’re all faced with this common problem: life. And we want to know what we’re supposed to do, and what we can get away with, and what to do about all that hardcoded primate behavior that keeps popping up from time to time, and stuff like that. Sometimes the message features a universal human, sometimes it is a human shaped by particular circumstances, such as race, gender, class, sexuality, disability, etc. It’s why we like to read fiction. It’s why we like gossip. We want to know what other human beings do.

And here’s why this is important: Sometimes thinking about what a story is trying to say is a good way to complete, rewrite, or sharpen it. Doing this at one of those stages can move a story from good to excellent. Do I start a story knowing the message? Hell no. It emerges (hopefully). Sometimes I have to coax it out of its hiding place in the prose. Sometimes I have to go in with a club.


But what are some examples of messages? This is my blog and so I am going to be lazy and pull examples from my own work. Here’s some easy ones:

  • Worm Within – Sometimes people go crazy and can’t trust their own perceptions.
  • Whose Face This Is, I Do Not Know – Sometimes we take our cues to appear a certain way from other people and it’s not usually a survival trait.
  • Bus Ride to Mars – What’s this dying thing all about and will stories carry us through?
  • Lost in Drowsy Dreams – Jealousy leads to sad moments.
  • The Immortality Game – Daydreaming and wishing about the past is a futile and sometimes narcissistic activity.
  • Love Resurrected – You don’t always get what you want in love and sometimes if you do, you will regret it.
  • Clockwork Fairies – Differing viewpoints of the world can present difficulties in love
  • Ms. Liberty Gets A Haircut – Feminism is complicated.
  • And the current piece I’m finishing up – Addiction will twist your life in strange ways.

Can you do this with every story? Maybe. There’s some of mine that I’d have a hard time doing this with, but I don’t know whether the problem is my own blinders, a lack on the part of the story, or just something that happens sometime.

Thoughts? How easy is it for you to figure out what your stories want to say? And when you find that out, what do you do with it?

(And shouts out to my peep Ann Leckie, who also edits the fine online fiction magazine Giganotasaurus, on the book deal!! Go Ann, you rock!!)

Enjoy this writing advice and want more content like it? Check out the classes Cat gives via the Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers, which offers both on-demand and live online writing classes for fantasy and science fiction writers from Cat and other authors, including Ann Leckie, Seanan McGuire, Fran Wilde and other talents! All classes include three free slots.

Prefer to opt for weekly interaction, advice, opportunities to ask questions, and access to the Chez Rambo Discord community and critique group? Check out Cat’s Patreon. Or sample her writing here.

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