I’m in the midst of the querying and submission process for The Novel that Won’t Die, and it’s starting out quite promising. Fingers crossed, and all that. In the meantime, I’m working in earnest on the first draft of Novel #2. The only trouble is, I don’t know which novel is Novel #2. I have two first drafts of about 10K words each. Each are treading water at that point. Just as I immerse myself in one, the other calls to me. Just when I hit a wall with one, the other experiences a breakthrough. I cannot keep dividing my time and attention between these two manuscripts, but cannot seem to buckle down with simply one or the other.
The writing process (or processes, as there are so many) continually fascinates me. I believe Ann Patchett described her novel writing process in The Getaway Car as a slowly perculating thought process. I’m completely paraphrasing here, but she explained how she needed to allow her characters and plot to formulate in her mind before writing a single thing down. Sometimes, this process would take months. And we all know how J.K. Rowling credits a long train ride without a pen in her purse for the initial formation of the Harry Potter universe.
My process seems to be different. And while I know my writing process very well, that doesn’t mean it’s working for me. I can’t stand not writing things down as they come, and while I’d love to begin Chapter 1, page 1 with a full outline in tact (what a dream that would be!), both my outline and my draft are instead created simultaneously. Maybe I’m just impatient? That sounds like me. The result: I can only get so far on a summary before I have to write more text, and I can only write so much text before adding to the outline. It’s very stop-and-go. When I’m stalled on the plot, I have to take a leap and write more, not knowing where my characters will land. Then, when I’ve written my characters in a circle (or worse) because I have no direction, I have to step back and hammer out plot.
I don’t like it. I like things to be linear, and organized, and yes, in my control. I don’t believe characters dictate the story. I do. If I start considering my characters to be living, breathing people with opinions of their own, I’m officially crazy, right? Or am I officially a writer? Either way, I force them to live on paper as well as in my brain, even while little squalling infants of their fuller selves. They look pitiful there, alone on the page, and I need them to grown up already.
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
I have never been able to outline, and it frustrates the crap out of me! I want to have the whole thing organized before I start and it never works for me that way. I guess my creative side cannot be anal-retentive.
TheKitchenWitch recently posted..Shrink-My-Ass-Month: Clam Chowder Re-Boot
I’m such an ‘outline’ person that I can’t understand why my anal-retentive brain has failed me in this! I’m free in my creativity until my fingers are on the keyboard, and then I’m a perfectionist again. It’s tiresome.
I’ve heard many writers say they’ve experienced characters “coming alive” – helping to shape the story so I don’t think it’s crazy if that starts happening to you.
My challenge with writing is that I never have a fully flushed outline (like TheKitchenWitch above). I have scenes…full fleshed out scenes but no clear way to link them into one concise story. Then I start thinking that maybe I have more than one story and that trying to link the scenes is futile. argh…
Mel Gallant recently posted..How I know I’m a curmudgeon
I can relate. I have so many parts of stories floating around, and they’re quite vivid in themselves. Shaping an entire body of work is the hardest part of the process for me.
My characters tend to come alive after I’ve lived with them a long time, and no amount of outlining virtually nowhere), we have the luxury of spending years with our characters. Later, the deadlines hit.
Do you worry you’ll forget your ideas/forget your characters if you don’t write them down? Do I have that poor a memory? Maybe so!
Oh, dear! I just looked at the comment when you replied and realized that SOME LITTLE MUNCHKIN must have managed to highlight & delete the entire middle of it while I was typing! LOL I was TRYING to say that no amount of outlining can make that happen, and that being unpublished (or virtually unpublished, as I am –had an ebook that went virtually nowhere) is actually freeing, because we have the luxury of spending years with the characters.
I’m sure that makes more sense!!!!
If I think of a character or idea in the middle of the night I always lose it by morning. Does that count? :)
Kathleen Basi recently posted..Rhyme And Reason (or: the Reason she can’t Rhyme)
I’m going with “officially a writer.” The characters have their own personalities, right? Even though you’re the one writing it down, you know what each character would do in a given situation due to their backgrounds/traits/etc., just like you know what a certain good friend would do. The character “chooses” the storyline. But I digress :)
Brooke Younker recently posted..Where the Difference Is
The best was when I dreamed of my character. That felt like a big moment, like when you start dreaming in another language after studying it extensively. I’ve never had it happen again.