Wednesday, July 27, 2011

"I will always, always, always wasting away the time."

Photo credit: Quiet Delusions
This summer has been one of dabbling--I've been playing guitar, learning to cook a little, and for whatever reason, I've been working on three different writing projects all at once.  Not, probably, the best strategy when it comes to building focus and digging down deep into a story and making it big and real and saleable and full of high stakes and layers and awesome. 

It is, however, a pretty good strategy for getting back to the fun of writing when all that stuff starts to feel a little bit scary and serious.

So one of the projects I'm working on is this fantasy story I drafted a while back--before I had an agent, before I had a book deal.  I drafted it in between two revisions of KISS THE MORNING STAR, and for whatever reason, writing this story was the most enjoyable experiences I've ever had writing.  I love my little trio of heroes, I love the mythology and the magic of my little world, and I love the setting of the story, which is mostly in the real-world city I live.  It incorporates many of the things I love about home--the Lake, the crazy seagulls, and the beautiful stone "castle stage," which has always seemed to me the perfect place on earth to perform a Shakespeare play, and it's where my characters are performing the comedy Twelfth Night.

Anyway, I was reading through all the files of notes and beta comments and early drafts in my folder for this story, and I came across one I had almost forgotten, which was titled "Bonsai Remix".  What craziness I found when I opened the file to see this weird, mix-and-match junk poetry version of my first draft, which...hilarious and nonsensical as it may be, yielded some interesting thoughts and some fun lines.  My hazy memory and a few google searches brought back this funny little bonsai story generator, and I picked out a few silly lines to share with you, including the title of this post, which seemed pretty apt for me, especially perhaps for this summer of dabbling. 

(But sometimes...just sometimes, not "always, always, always"...the "wasting time" is really dreaming and thinking and turning over ideas that lead to a good story.  And sometimes dabbling in an old story to find back the fun of it all is so worth it!)

So here are a few more goofy nonsense lines of my bonsai story...will you share some of yours?  :)


The noise of them!” He laughed at her feet.

She slowed down, still wheeling and she was some serious wtf.
And a little puckering mouths gaping open and snapping closed, each crooning somehow melted together said the “transition apartment” that came with vampires or pacifists or pacifists or reading or anyone who had thrown that way.

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

practice makes...well, persistence, for one thing. and probably improvement.

my second loaf of homemade bread, better than the first
I used to be a sandwich artist.  Back when the bread had a u-shaped notch in it and there were no cucumbers or spinach or avocados or even a choice of cheeses.  So when I first started, everything was a mystery--slicing tomatoes was clumsy and a bit dangerous, cutting a pan of bread took me an hour (and six bandages).  But as with most learned skills, practice made perfect--or at least, practice made pretty good and pretty efficient and pretty predictable. 

Writing is...a little different.  My hands could learn the best way to pick up the precise amount of lettuce to spread on a footlong sub for a perfect sandwich, but there isn't a formula for writing a novel, or even for getting a first draft written.  Writers talk about being "plotters or pantsers", they talk about outlining, they talk about fast-drafting and taking it slow.  They write out of order or they write only after six years of intensive research and planning.  They write on napkins, or post-its, or in longhand with a sparkly gel pen.  They write a first draft that sounds like the author talking to himself about what the book will eventually be.  They write crappy first drafts, comforting themselves that they can fix all in revisions, or they write with great care, hoping to not waste their time writing unnecessary words in their first drafts that will later be cut.

And however they do it, a writer gets a novel written.  It might be brilliant.  And the next time they do it--same process, same everything--it might not work at all.  In fact, the only thing that might work for that next book is to do things in a completely opposite way.  It's anything but predictable.

From here on I have to get personal.  I can't pretend that I can tell anyone how to write a book or what the best writer's process is because the truth is?  I don't even know what my own process is.  It changes with every book I write.  And while it can sometimes be scary and frustrating because...um...aren't I getting any better at this by now????...it can also be exciting and gratifying because...um...I get so bored with jobs that are the same all the time!  That pan of bread that took me a an hour and six bandages to cut later took me five minutes with my eyes closed.  But it also took all the joy and beauty out of my life forever.  (Okay, hyperbole aside, that's not even true.  I love the smell of fresh bread and I also like knives...but my point is repetitive jobs kill my soul.)

So.  Let me tell you about my processes for some of the books I've written.  My first novel took me six years to write.  (Actually, I'm really fuzzy about dates because I gave birth to two children in that period of my life and probably didn't sleep for more than three consecutive hours at any point, but yeah, it was like six years from start to finish.  Ish.)  The novel was a book for adults about a woman who is learning to paint but finds herself only able to paint pictures of public restrooms.  Stop judging.  I only pitched it like that once or twice.

Anyway, for that book, I knew my character.  I spent, oh, fifty-some pages getting to know her.  I had an idea of what might happen in the book, but I'd get to that later.  Every day, I revised everything I had written up until that part, and then I'd go on and write another page or two.  It was sort of like I was writing by the seat of my pants, and that was exciting, but the whole time I knew exactly where it was leading.  I knew the climax of the book, and I knew how it would end.  I can't actually remember how much it changed from that original vision, and I can't bring myself to read it to find out, but really, it doesn't matter.  Having the ending in mind was what allowed me to pull through the book to the end.  And finishing that draft was the miracle moment--the accomplishment that assured me that I could write an actual book, the accomplishment that still reassures me every time I sit down to write--I can end this!  Except.  It was messy and unwieldy.  Was there a plot? Maybe, if you squint.

My second book, about a boy who steals his history teacher's car, was like...I planned that book out within an inch of its life.  I had a notebook filled with plot diagrams, and I knew every scene and how it would lead to the climax and then what would happen afterward.  I wrote the first draft in less than a month, and the pace was like a race car flying along.  Writing a book has never felt easier. So I was like, OH OKAY! From now on when I write a book I need to know everything that happens, and it will be so much easier and better!  Except.  Later I realized that the book was so thin...it felt like I could still see the little plot diagram there beneath the surface.  Also I hated the simplicity of its themes and how...direct it was.  Back to the drawing board, process-wise.

I wrote another book.  This one, at that time called The Dharma Bum Business, but now known as KISS THE MORNING STAR!  Yay, happy little book!  I took about nine months to first draft this, and it was a wonderful and frustrating experience.  I knew I wanted a strong plot structure, but I also knew I wanted layers and depth and emotional connections and complex themes and gray areas and also there was this little problem with my characters who absolutely wouldn't do anything I intended them to do and did absolutely everything they could to surprise me on the page so that I scrambled to align the ending I envisioned to their journey.  I ended up writing three very different endings for the book--vastly different from each other--so different I can't even imagine how I got from one ending to the other without hopelessly unraveling the whole story.  And then I changed the point of view.  I've cut so many scenes and added so many others from the first draft...I've changed the geographical path of Anna and Kat's road trip by about a thousand miles.  It wasn't easy, but it was totally worth it...and it taught me a million lessons about writing that I hope I'll be able to remember for every other book I write.

I've written two more complete first drafts and two more partial works-in-progress since then, and I have to say, my process has changed--I still spend some time plotting and scribbling notes and noodling about with character voices and researching before beginning a draft, but I have less of a focus on what exactly happens and more of a focus on the emotional journey of my characters, the stakes and the conflicts they face, and what parts of their struggles are universal and will resonate with readers.  I've started writing a pitch before I get too far in, to sort of sell the idea to myself, and to focus on the concept--what I'm trying to say.  I write some parts fast and some parts agonizingly slow.  I write a lot of so-called "unnecessary" words--words and scenes and whole chapters I will hack from the manuscript at a later date--and while it may seem inefficient (and I hope to get better at figuring out where my story really begins, for example), for me, I think writing those words really is important, even if it's not necessary for anyone to ever read them.  I'm getting a tiny bit better at figuring out which of the words in my book are those words, too.  A tiny bit. 

I can't predict the exact process that will help me arrive at a perfect sandwich first draft, but I'm getting better at figuring out the things I need to know before I start and the things I'll figure out as I go...the questions I should ask before I begin and the questions that will keep me moving on to the next scene...the times I should write fast and sloppy, trusting revision to fix it later, and the times I should go back and fine-tune some of what I've already written in order to make it feel worth it to go on...the times when I should follow my characters into unexpected places and the times I need to wrestle them back onto the plot diagram.

And I hope that, even though I can't write a first draft with my eyes closed yet (or indeed, without needing multiple bandages, but that's just because I'm a klutz), I am improving.

How about you?  Do you first draft with the same process, or is it messy and evolving, too?  Do you plot or go by the seat of the pants?  Do you need to know the ending or do you let the events unfold?  What questions do you need to know the answer to before you begin? 

Sunday, July 10, 2011

two quick lovely things...

I just wrote an actual real post about writing, but I'm scheduling it for Tuesday because I want to let it simmer in my head a little while longer and because Tuesday is sort of the day I typically post when I actually typically post, which I know, I know, I'm not stellar about being typical or scheduled or anything of the sort.

But.  Real post about writing--the process of creating a first draft--coming Tuesday.  And in the meantime, I wanted to shout from the rooftops how excited I am about two cool things.

One, this book:

A Need So Beautiful, by Suzanne Young
Um. never mind the weird face I'm making, okay?  I'd take a better photo but that would involve me taking a shower, and then I'd probably never get any writing done during these few brief hours that I have the house to myself.  I love Suz, and I loved this book.  It had a great pace, a sexy and refreshing love story, a unique concept, and more than anything else, I connected with Charlotte--I put myself in her place and wanted to know what I would do in her situation; I could feel her pain and her temptation and her indecision and her sadness...and I cannot wait for the sequel.  Especially after the very last chapter, aaackkk!

The second really cool thing was that yesterday I had the exciting chance to go down to Hamline in St. Paul and hear my agent, Sarah Davies at Greenhouse Literary give a talk about taking a story from ordinary to extraordinary, a concept that anyone who reads the stories she writes on her blog knows she has a good handle on.  And then I got to meet her for the first time (she didn't recognize me right away--I am much taller in writing!), and I left all inspired and impressed and informed...couldn't stop smiling all evening.  :)  Here we are on the Hamline campus, shortly before D. and I sprang her from campus for a tiny jaunt to a Dunn Brothers Coffee shop and some nice conversation.




Thanks, Sarah, and I hope next time you make it to Minnesota, you can see a little bit more of our awesome state!

Friday, July 1, 2011

a brief word from the bickering boys...

Coming home from daycare, my children got into a knock-down, screaming fight about...the EXACT number of shady spots in our front yard.

Jabber (screaming): NAME the third one! NAME IT.
Monkey (screaming back): I'LL SHOW YOU WHEN WE GET THERE!
J (inhuman growl of rage): NAAAAAAME IT.
M: I'LL SHOW YOU WHEN WE GET THERE!
J: I DON'T BELIEVE YOU THERE ARE ONLY TWO SHADY SPOTS TWO SHADY SPOTS TWO SHADY SPOTS
M: THREE SHADY SPOTS THREE SHADY SPOTS THREE SHADY SPOTS
elissa: (explodes*) WHO THE HELL CARES IS THIS REALLY WORTH SCREAMING ABOUT I JUST FREAKING PICKED YOU UP FROM A MORNING AT DAYCARE AND I AM SUPPOSED TO BE FEELING FOND AND LOVING FEELINGS ABOUT MY LONG-LOST CHILDREN BUT RIGHT NOW I AM NOT FEELING THOSE FEELINGS AND I DO NOT CARE ONE FREAKING BIT HOW MANY SHADY SPOTS ARE IN THE FRONT YARD SO NO MORE TALKING NOT ONE WORD UNTIL WE GET HOME. GOT IT????
(long quiet pause)
M: Until we get home?
elissa: Be quiet.
M: Until we get home?
M: Until we get home, Mama, and then we can talk?
M: Mom? MOM. Until we get home?
J: MONKEY'S TALKING!
M: BROTHER'S BREATHING!
J: I HAVE TO BREATHE! IT'S HOW I STAY ALIVE! IF YOU DON'T BREATHE THEN YOU DIE!
M: BROTHER'S YELLING!
elissa: BE QUIET.
(quiet pause; we pull up at curb outside of house)
M: (pointing them out) one. two. three. four. four shady spots.
J: (shrugging amiably) Huh. There ARE four shady spots. YESSSS!

*I know, I know.  Mom of the freaking year I am not.