Two steps back

Worked on chapters 4, 5 and 6 today. Once I started reading through Chapter 6 yesterday, the problems in it seemed pretty severe and thinking them through sent me back to try again on scenes in previous chapters.

In particular, I've tried 2 different endings of Chapter 5 a couple times each. One ending is more dramatic but harder to pull off convincingly, so I keep chickening out and going for the weaker ending. (Essentially, I'm afraid to bring too much grief to my character too quickly. It seems like more than he can bear. And if he can't bear it, the pressure will build up before I can get him to the end of the story.) But then when I got into Chapter 6 I persuaded myself that I needed that more dramatic development to have happened, so I went back again and tried to make it work.

Chapter 6 has been my biggest pain the butt since I first started drafting it almost 18 months ago. It was first time that my writing schedule went off the rails and I ended up spending about twice as long on it, writing about 3 times as much as necessary. There's a lot of good material in it, and I've often thought that it would be good starter dough for a different story or book project. But so much of it doesn't fit with this book.

I think this is a function of it being in the voice of a secondary character. I have a few chapters, this one included, where I shift to another character's point of view. That requires getting in touch more with their motivation, which requires thinking about their backstory and so on. The hard part is figuring out how much of the character sketch work is needed in the draft in order to carry the story along convincingly. It's a tough balancing act when you switch to another character's POV like this.

That and other problems have me slowing way down as I come through the chapter again. This chapter probably more than any other needs actual rewriting--not just digging deeper and developing the potential in the episodes--but rethinking what the episodes are for in the story line and writing them over again.

So, I've got a lot more work to do on this than I wish I had. Friday now. I better plan on it taking all of next week. Similar to what I was thinking last week about Chapter 5, which I "finished" on Tuesday but found myself needing to go back and fuss with this morning.

Zooming through Chapter 4

I'm in the zone, I guess. I'm putting in a lot more hours working on it, spending a lot of time thinking about it when I'm not working. And I'm cranking through the edits.

I think that's the nature of editing for me vs. writing or rewriting. It doesn't take as much creative energy so I don't get exhausted so quickly. It actually is very tiring, but I don't notice it until I'm done and I can go several hours that way.

But, is editing what I'm supposed to be doing? I'm trouble a little by the thought that I'm neglecting the hard work. Essentially, on Chapters 4 and 3, and chapter 2 to a lesser extent, what I do is read it through and identify around 2 keys spots that are important and not that well developed and maybe 1 or 2 other sections that seem to be in the wrong place. And I make a bunch of marks where at the sentence level things are unclear. Then the next day I go through the computer file working on the bigger picture items first and then--fairly soon--moving on to the sentence edits.

That implies that the couple places that weren't very well developed are the only really serious flaws left in the chapters and it implies that my fairly quick work on them is sufficient. I don't see anything else, but I'm worried that it's too easy.

I'm moving along faster than my wife has time to read it, so I'm flying blind a little bit. I'm getting closer to the day when I'll need to hand off big chunks of it to another reader and get their response.

The total timeline on this kind of work has been about 6-8 hours per chapter. A couple hours or more to read and mark up the chapter, and a few hours to go through the computer file making the changes.

The sentence-level editing I am doing is a pretty rough cut. I do have a list of several bad habits i my sentence constructions that I'll need to spend a lot of time weeding out on my next rewrite/revision.

Related to that is my reading lately of How Fiction Works by James Wood. (I finished it and am reading it a second time as well as all the other essays of his I can find online.) I've been helped enormously by his discussion of the free indirect style. That's given a me a critical vocabulary for thinking more deeply about how I use point of view and how I have been flagging the differences between the narrator and the characters. More on that another time, but essentially I've come to think that I can do a lot better, so I've been experimenting with making some changes here and there as I go with the understanding that I'll be bearing down on that issue when the time for a really careful revision comes.

Quick run through Chapter 3

Well, I'm not doing at all what I noted yesterday I was going to do.

First, I didn't have my wife read Ch. 2, deciding that I was already confident in my own assessment of that chapter to keep going. I don't mind having another view, but I don't want to impose on her more than necessary.

Second, I ended up doing a bunch of work yesterday afternoon, which is uncommon. I read through Chapter 3 and made notes to be prepared to launch it today.

And I worked on Chapter 3 today, putting in what counts as a full day for me--about 2 or 2.5 hours in the a.m. and the same in the p.m. I made all the changes and corrections that I had made notes on yesterday.

Which doesn't amount to much. I'm probably not being rigorous enough. I re-organized a few things where there was jumping back and forth in time more than needed, and I developed the emotional complexity and meaning of one scene where I had been trying to get away with mystery.

I do think that I've done a good job digging and developing and fully explaining everything in this chapter, as well as 1 and 2, and that has been my goal. Probably what I'm really accomplishing is getting it all into good enough shape that I can seriously address the question of what gets cut--or prioritizing. Chapter 3 is also way too long. It's all very 19th century.

Still on Chapter 2

Well, the comments my wife had on Chapter 2 over the weekend convinced me that I need to do a little more work.

The obvious need, which I took care of this morning, was to straighten out the order of presentation. There was too much jumping back in forth in time so that it was was difficult at a basic level to understand what was happening in time.

I also trimmed out two scenes--deleting most of them and incorporating parts of them into other scences--which reduced it by about 2 pages. (1%! Big whoop.)

So now it is hopefully much more intelligible. I'm going to see if my wife can spare some time tonight to look at the first half of the chapter that was so confusing and confirm that.

What I fear, though, is that it is more obvious where it fails to be meaningful. I have a nagging sense that I'm evading spots where I know in my heart it is not really developed well. But I really want to keep moving forward, so I think that's what I'll probably do tomorrow.

I've been thinking more and more lately that it's time for another reader. I'm trying to postpone that as long as possible, but it's on my mind a lot.

"Finished" with Chapter 2 yet again

Today went like planned and I finished the work I had in mind for it. I found it didn't need (as far as I could see) as much development/digging as Chapter 1, and with luck that will be the case with the rest of the chapters.

When I started this week, I thought I would be cutting out huge amounts, but most of it stayed, and the few pages I did cut got replaced with fuller development in other places, so that it's about a page longer than the last draft--49 manuscript pages, which is way way too long.

So, same routine as last week and as through most of the process of the first rewrite. I'll show it to my wife over the weekend, make note of what weaknesses she's finding in it and then decide whether to put it aside and push on to Chapter 3 or linger some more on this chapter.

I'm feeling good about the work I got done during a four-day week like this. The discipline and habit are the main thing--working steadily every morning. It's good to have that back again.

I'm starting to hope for the possibility of knocking out one chapter per week this way during the rewrite process. That would mean 15 weeks total, starting two chapters ago, 13 weeks to go--slightly less than a semester, which would mean being done with this rewrite before Christmas.

Starting chapter 2

I read through Chapter 2 this a.m. I should have done it over the long weekend so that I could start fresh on the work today, but I'm not very disciplined about squeezing work in on the weekends.

I'm pleased with what I saw--not because it was any good but because some obvious fixes jumped out at me. For now, contrary to what I said last week, the next work to be done isn't so much about digging and developing as it is about trimming out a big section that is quite weak. One solution would be to try and dig into it and turn it into something, but in this case I think it's better to focus on what's going on in the rest of the chapter--to foreground and emphasize that other stuff by cutting out the less developed stuff.

So it's a trim and patch job. I'll start on that tomorrow morning.

"Finished" with Chapter 1 yet again

I put in a standard five mornings this week, including a full day today, and worked through the second rewrite of Chapter 1, finally, after a month of hesitation.

The main thing I did was delving deeper in the spots most relevant to what seemed to me the biggest problem with the chapter, which was unclear motivation for some of the characters' actions and lack of clarity about what was actually happening. That was really first three days, and yesterday and today I went through and bandaged up a lot of transition problems. There was a little bit of cutting along the way, but the chapter still ended up growing by two pages. I guess I cut about five pages and wrote about seven while I was at it.

Now I'm aware of a couple problems in it still--that it is way too long, for one thing, and that even with more clarity about what happens there's not so much clarity about why it's important or interesting.

So it is "finished" only in the sense that every chapter was finished as I went through the first complete rewrite. I'm going to have my wife read it over the weekend and give me her feedback, with the intention of making notes for a later pass at it, but in all likelihood I'll be compelled to tackle some issues right away. So I expect I'll be still working on Chapter 1 next week.

Anyway, I'm back to work on the novel. That's something to be grateful for.

Before I go to bed

Over the years, I've come up with a couple tricks to facilitate good working habits. One of them is to get clear the night before a writing day what I intend to work on the next day. The reason this has been crucial is that for me if I'm going to create new work, it's best to do that first thing in the morning before I really think too hard about anything else. And planning the work--thinking about the work--just trying to decide what scene I should work on takes enough intellectual energy that I don't feel like I'm starting fresh once I do start drafting. Making that decision the previous day--ideally at the end of the previous day's work--helps me get that fresh start.

Over the last year and a half (how I hate realizing it's been that long) I've often slacked off on this habit, because it's become less necessary at times. I've built up more momentum and self confidence that I could arrive at the writing table with a less conscious plan and find my way into the work more easily.

But it's time to revive the habit, especially considering what I observed yesterday about moving from a space of analysis to a space of creativity--of digging in and making a mess. I need to do that when I'm fresh and allowed the rest of the world and my own OCD thought patterns to start to attach little fur balls to my mind. I can't count on just finding the right place to dig. In fact, today I didn't and ended up wasting the morning tinkering at the sentence level. So I'm ending the morning by identifying the very lines--in two different episodes in Chapter 1--where the story is thin and will benefit from the clarity that will come out of more development. Tomorrow, I'll start with the first of those and hopefully have the energy to work on both of them in one day. Certainly in two.

And in the future, I'll have a similar plans for each of the chapters, telling myself each day, "Tomorrow I will dig here."

Dig; don't fix

I've been having a lot of trouble getting started on my rewrite until today. I've been getting up each morning and psyching myself out, giving in to fear and then surfing the internet.

It's because I don't know what to do and where to start. I can see specific things wrong, but I don't know how to fix them.

It finally occurred to me over the weekend that I should do what I was doing in the first rewrite--which is to dig; not fix. Instead of trying to put a layer of smooth coat over, I should be excavating more.

It's another way of saying what I've said before, quoting Jesse Lee Kercheval and Jane Smiley's advice at different points--the rewrite process is a repeated crossing of the border between analysis and creativity. What I need to do now is turn off that analytical part and let the creative part go. I've been afraid to do that because I know it will make a mess--create more short-term problems than it will solve. Even if I can avoid that fear, it's hard to avoid the habit--the impulse to keep trying to find solutions, to anticipate how things are going to work.

But in the long-term, it's necessary to be in that zone of not caring if something is going to work. That's where the discovery happens.

What's discouraging is the feeling that I have been and may remain in that zone forever. I thought that's what the first rewrite was about (and I didn't accomodate myself easily to that after the first draft). I was expecting that by now I would be in the space where I work on shaping and fixing and patching.

I guess I'll just have to hope that the amount of digging necessary is somewhat less and in more obvious places than in the first rewrite so that it goes faster, so that I really do move through a chapter a week (not counting the month it has taken me just to get started.) I doubt it though.

So, today I opened the file, found the first moment where there is a lack of clarity related to something important to the character development, and tried to dig--tried to get into that creative space. I got in about 90 minutes of fair work.

Struggling to start the second rewrite

I'm putting in a little more time each morning, but I'm not actually doing much writing. I don't know how to get started because I feel like there are serious problems when I re-read the first couple chapters, but I can't tell what they are. The story seems to drift around with things happening suddenly for no good reason.

So what I'm really doing is a lot of thinking. Emotionally, this is the kind of work that is hardest. Have to keep reminding myself that sitting around and thinking (and haltingly taking notes) is good and necessary.

What I decided this morning is that I need to get much clearer on my theme and how the arc of character development demonstrates that theme and then to go through my outline and check all the episodes through that lens. I'll start on that tomorrow.

Freewriting

I thought I would share an example of the kind of freewriting I do when I'm stuck and trying to get my thoughts sorted out. This is very raw material, really unintelligible to anyone but me, but it gives a sense of something very basic in my working process.



In this case, I'm trying to figure out how to diagnose and start remediating what isn't working in Chapter 1. It's the beginning work of my second rewrite.





August 14, 2008

What is going on with B?

Who is he?

Why does he behave the way he does?

What is his thinking about the ________ ?



A is someone he can manipulate. He probably feels ambivalent about that. It’s probably not something he wants. It’s like a crime of opportunity and he feels not great about it. But A gets on his nerves with by being so needy and overeager and fawning.

Take the ________ episode, for example. B is pretending, but it’s in a certain pitch that An misses.



What is that distinction? How are they pretending differently?

For B it’s the activity. The project.

For A, it’s the performance for each other. The act of bonding. A keeps “breaking the fourth wall” to talk about themselves as actors.





August 18, 2008



How would they handle ________ differently?

A wants to talk about it

B wants to circle around it. Hoard it for later. Taste it.

A is ocd

B is add

A might also tend to add, but the ocd is predominant.

That means he feels agitated until he gets some full satisfaction. Until something is completed in a some particular and emotional way for him. He has a script he expects to be followed in order to get proof of love. Deviate from that script, and he feels insecure, thus vulnerable, thus panicked, thus he can’t let it rest. Harps on people trying to Shepard them back onto the script—to make them say their lines.



With B, he perfectly willing to stop in mid script and switch to something else. He feels uncomfortable with being responsible for anyone else’s feelings. Wants to be loved like anyone else, though not particularly needy about that, but he doesn’t want to feel responsible for other people’s feelings, love or otherwise. Aloof. Learned it from his dad. That’s what’s manly. Neither of them are macho, and it’s not an aversion to emotion exactly so much as it’s an aversion to being intimate.



Hmm. Is it an aversion. Like they genuinely avoid it? Or is it that when other people seek it, they see it as an opportunity to exploit? To control people by withholding? Perhaps it’s not so much that they can’t be intimate as an addiction to the power that comes from withholding.



These are contradictory explanations. One makes B a lot less sympathetic than the other. Is it that he gets tempted into some manipulative behavior or that he has some piece of his soul missing?



Put it that way, and it’s obvious. He can’t be a monster. Has to be real.



Fragile balance. B tends to withhold, imitating his dad. Gets a kind of control. Confronted with someone especially clingy like A is what makes him feel vulnerable. Manipulating and pushing away feel safer.



Alright, so in this episode . . . I need to rewrite a few key scenes. When B shuts down the game—rewrite it with this motivation in mind. Same for when they start the game and the couple times we revisit it in the middle. The whole tone of it should be more like A drives B away—B reacting to A’s neediness—rather than B jerking A around, or worse, acting indiscriminately, which is how it reads now and why it reads so confusingly.



How about Chapter 2? Harder to say. Need to read it carefully again.

Back to work after a long break

I'm back to work on the novel and back to this journal after taking a full two months off.

I was out of the country for about 9 weeks, tagging along with my wife while she was on a work assignment. I had the mixed intentions of making it a writer's retreat and also taking advantage of every opportunity to fully experience my time abroad. Obviously "retreat" and "tourism" don't go together very well.

What actually ended up happening is the first two weeks looked a lot like a writer's retreat and then I put the book aside. I worked hard in our hotel room every day those first two weeks and plowed through to the complete the first rewrite of Part 2 and thus of the entire book. That was a big day and a big relief. Then I left the hotel to look around and haven't thought about the novel since.

I ought to be feeling guilty about that I know, but actually I think break's like that are appropriate and good for the book if it's not just a rationalization for procrastinating. The next batch of work--the second rewrite--should be stronger and more incisive because of the distance I've put between myself and the book.

That explains most of the break. Actually I was supposed to return to work a week ago, and since then I've been procrastinating. Partly I've been taking it slow in returning to this orbit and partly I was afraid. I have to build up the momentum and confidence again, and I didn't muster the energy for that last week. Now that I have, with about an hour of work this morning before needing to run some errands, I expect it will take awhile before the work is really going smoothly.