Not a great day, but having not great days is part of the process. I'm grateful that I was able to just add sentences.
I am getting a little concerned about my stamina. It seems forever since I went for more than an hour.
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Monday, June 28, 2010
The warm weather writing chair
Good start to my restart today. 800 words. About 1 hour of solid invention. Finished off with a good place to take it up again tomorrow.
Felt like old times especially because I'm back in the chair that I wrote the first novel in -- a cheap outdoor glider on our screened porch. Hard to believe it was 3 years ago that I was doing the same thing. I'm not sure what will happen if the timing is such that I'm writing a first draft in the winter.
Felt like old times especially because I'm back in the chair that I wrote the first novel in -- a cheap outdoor glider on our screened porch. Hard to believe it was 3 years ago that I was doing the same thing. I'm not sure what will happen if the timing is such that I'm writing a first draft in the winter.
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Yet another fresh start
I'm back from my extended stay overseas and am just about back on a normal sleep schedule. Tomorrow is a Monday and as good a day as I'll get to recommit.
To what, exactly, isn't clear, but I'm going back to basics. Put the butt in the chair and pick up the pen and sit there until my time is up. No other expectations matter.
That said, I expect to spend the first-thing-in-the-morning energy drafting new material for the second novel. Meanwhile, the first novel is back in play. I think it needs to be revised some more. I'm going to give that the energy of later in the day for the time being, at least until I have a better sense of what work needs to be done.
Afternoons are devoted to getting back to paying work, which I gave myself a leave from during the last six months abroad.
It wasn't a successful trip in most ways. I thought it would be a writer's retreat where I got the second novel written, but that's not how it worked out, and I'm just going to have to let that go and not let the "ought to"s and the "should have"s keep me from JUST ADDING SENTENCES.
I really am back to the beginning.
To what, exactly, isn't clear, but I'm going back to basics. Put the butt in the chair and pick up the pen and sit there until my time is up. No other expectations matter.
That said, I expect to spend the first-thing-in-the-morning energy drafting new material for the second novel. Meanwhile, the first novel is back in play. I think it needs to be revised some more. I'm going to give that the energy of later in the day for the time being, at least until I have a better sense of what work needs to be done.
Afternoons are devoted to getting back to paying work, which I gave myself a leave from during the last six months abroad.
It wasn't a successful trip in most ways. I thought it would be a writer's retreat where I got the second novel written, but that's not how it worked out, and I'm just going to have to let that go and not let the "ought to"s and the "should have"s keep me from JUST ADDING SENTENCES.
I really am back to the beginning.
Monday, June 7, 2010
On excerpting novels to make short fiction
I ought to have remembered my previous theorizing about the difficulty -- and often unsuitability -- of excerpting novels to produce something that can pass as a short story. I worked through this just about a year ago when Lorrie Moore had what I thought was a very flat "story" in The New Yorker, only to discover later that it was an excerpt of her forthcoming novel in which context it made a lot more sense.
If I had been thinking of that I might have been more generous or patient with Jeffrey Euginides' recent work in the The New Yorker. He's one of my favorites. Or his second novel Middlesex is, anyway. He's not exactly the most prolific writer, and I eagerly await his next novel. In the meantime, he had a piece of short fiction in The New Yorker recently, which I read and was so disappointed by. That's it? What a lame ending.
It turns out I was mistakenly assuming it was a short story (I wish The New Yorker would account for this and just put add the words "excerpt from a novel in progress" at the start. Because they feel the work should stand on its own? It's the 21st century. People expect a little context.) The novel is apparently forthcoming. Eugenides discusses it and film adaptation and other stuff on The New Yorker book blog.
So the lame ending is presumably the end of a chapter and makes more sense read that way. I wonder if it's even the end of an episode in a longer chapter. In any case, I take it as further support for my theory. Maybe this will be an annual event -- a weirdly flat short "fiction" in The New Yorker in June and a long-awaited novel later in the summer. Maybe we can predict who it will be in 2011. Who else has been missing from the scene for several years? Maybe it will be Harper Lee.
If I had been thinking of that I might have been more generous or patient with Jeffrey Euginides' recent work in the The New Yorker. He's one of my favorites. Or his second novel Middlesex is, anyway. He's not exactly the most prolific writer, and I eagerly await his next novel. In the meantime, he had a piece of short fiction in The New Yorker recently, which I read and was so disappointed by. That's it? What a lame ending.
It turns out I was mistakenly assuming it was a short story (I wish The New Yorker would account for this and just put add the words "excerpt from a novel in progress" at the start. Because they feel the work should stand on its own? It's the 21st century. People expect a little context.) The novel is apparently forthcoming. Eugenides discusses it and film adaptation and other stuff on The New Yorker book blog.
So the lame ending is presumably the end of a chapter and makes more sense read that way. I wonder if it's even the end of an episode in a longer chapter. In any case, I take it as further support for my theory. Maybe this will be an annual event -- a weirdly flat short "fiction" in The New Yorker in June and a long-awaited novel later in the summer. Maybe we can predict who it will be in 2011. Who else has been missing from the scene for several years? Maybe it will be Harper Lee.
Sunday, June 6, 2010
The spayed computer
I've written before about how easily distracted from my work I am by email and internet and how I ought to have a second computer that isn't connected. There's an interesting note about that strategy from Johathan Lethem on the Pen America site, and the New Yorker book blog summarizes it:
I've decided I'm actually going to do it. (In my case, this is more about the revision process, which I do in a word processor, than the drafting, which I do long-hand.) I now have a computer to spare that will work for this -- one I replaced because it was operating too slowly and because I wanted more memory for photos on the extended trip I'm on. When I get home, the new one will be my connected computer, and I'm going to spay the old laptop to use for the revision work.
In an e-mail correspondence posted on PEN American's Web site that's been running this week, Jonathan Lethem tells David Gates his secret for writing fiction: an Internet-less laptop. "I’ve set up a second computer, devoid of internet, for my fiction-writing," Lethem explains. "You should imagine my computer set-up guy’s consternation when I insisted he drag the Internet function out of the thing entirely. 'I can just hide it from you,' he said. 'No,' I told him, 'I don’t want to know it’s in there somewhere.'"
I've decided I'm actually going to do it. (In my case, this is more about the revision process, which I do in a word processor, than the drafting, which I do long-hand.) I now have a computer to spare that will work for this -- one I replaced because it was operating too slowly and because I wanted more memory for photos on the extended trip I'm on. When I get home, the new one will be my connected computer, and I'm going to spay the old laptop to use for the revision work.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Very minor progress
Poor neglected blog. It's been awhile, I know.
I took that long trip referred to in the last post, had a couple weeks concentrating on paid work, and then took another long trip. So, lots of excuses for not working on the book. But the main excuse is that I don't know what I'm doing with it, so when I do have time, I'm intimidated and end up wasting the time. (I'm at GMT +7 right now, with very few cable channels and getting quite homesick, so when I see a baseball game is being broadcast live during my morning coffee, it's pretty easy to give in to that for a couple hours.) And it's so freaking hot here. It's just plain difficult to work.
But there has been some tiny bit of progress, though it is difficult to characterize. Basically, I've been stewing about the book now and then and taking a few notes. I've got an idea of a theme that I want to explore.
Which may be the kiss of death. Thinking too much about theme is probably fatal to the art. It's easy to drift over into graduate student thesis territory, and I'm better wired for that mistake than most. The way to avoid trouble, I think, is to keep thinking of it as an exploration. Exploring a theme should be OK. Presenting a theme is trouble.
In a sense, I've been feeling like the book isn't ambitious enough, even though I don't have a basic story yet and no prospect of ever finishing. I need it to be more worthwhile -- more worth the effort. The stewing I've been doing and the field of exploration I've come up with have been feeling a lot more reassured on that point.
In all honesty, I don't anticipate that I actually pounding out the pages for a couple months at least. I have a month more on this trip and some recovery time, and I'm thinking about returning to my first book for revisions during the summer. That's a big decision that I'm still thinking about. My plan is to get home and do a reboot and situational analysis.
I took that long trip referred to in the last post, had a couple weeks concentrating on paid work, and then took another long trip. So, lots of excuses for not working on the book. But the main excuse is that I don't know what I'm doing with it, so when I do have time, I'm intimidated and end up wasting the time. (I'm at GMT +7 right now, with very few cable channels and getting quite homesick, so when I see a baseball game is being broadcast live during my morning coffee, it's pretty easy to give in to that for a couple hours.) And it's so freaking hot here. It's just plain difficult to work.
But there has been some tiny bit of progress, though it is difficult to characterize. Basically, I've been stewing about the book now and then and taking a few notes. I've got an idea of a theme that I want to explore.
Which may be the kiss of death. Thinking too much about theme is probably fatal to the art. It's easy to drift over into graduate student thesis territory, and I'm better wired for that mistake than most. The way to avoid trouble, I think, is to keep thinking of it as an exploration. Exploring a theme should be OK. Presenting a theme is trouble.
In a sense, I've been feeling like the book isn't ambitious enough, even though I don't have a basic story yet and no prospect of ever finishing. I need it to be more worthwhile -- more worth the effort. The stewing I've been doing and the field of exploration I've come up with have been feeling a lot more reassured on that point.
In all honesty, I don't anticipate that I actually pounding out the pages for a couple months at least. I have a month more on this trip and some recovery time, and I'm thinking about returning to my first book for revisions during the summer. That's a big decision that I'm still thinking about. My plan is to get home and do a reboot and situational analysis.
Monday, March 22, 2010
Hiatus
I haven't been making any progress for the last several days, because I've had to concentrate my morning energy on a work assignment, and I definitely won't be making any progress for at least another 19 days, probably longer, because I'll be on a long trip. In theory, a person can travel and write at the same time, but I don't think I'm that kind of person. I'll be thinking about it though!
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
750 words. Hard lessons
I wrote 750 words this morning, which by my standards is nothing to brag about, but I'm recommitting myself to the basic thing -- just write something every day. I've been picking around the edges of different possible scenes this way, not really creating anything tangible, but hopefully doing some necessary seeding that will bear fruit later. I'm just trying to turn myself over to the idea of not knowing what I'm doing. It's been a hard lesson the last couple months. I thought a first draft would emerge as easily as with my first book and that the result would need less work on subsequent drafts. I've turned out wrong on the first item for sure and probably on the second item, too.
I read Jane Smiley's most recent novel the other day, which inspired me to go online and read some criticism of it, which lead me to an old interview with her from about 8 years ago. In that interview, she's basically summarizing what she says in Thirteen Ways of Looking At a Novel, which I've quoted here several times in the past already. But it was a kick in the pants to hear it again in a different way. She talks about just finding the energy and momentum to push through to the end. Make it as crummy as it needs to be just so long as it keeps moving forward. "Just add sentences." That was mantra the first time, and it has to be this time.
I read Jane Smiley's most recent novel the other day, which inspired me to go online and read some criticism of it, which lead me to an old interview with her from about 8 years ago. In that interview, she's basically summarizing what she says in Thirteen Ways of Looking At a Novel, which I've quoted here several times in the past already. But it was a kick in the pants to hear it again in a different way. She talks about just finding the energy and momentum to push through to the end. Make it as crummy as it needs to be just so long as it keeps moving forward. "Just add sentences." That was mantra the first time, and it has to be this time.
Monday, March 8, 2010
World's worst writer's retreat
Well, the reason I haven't been posting isn't that I've been working too hard on the book. I haven't had anything to sayhere except to express shame at how little progress I'm making. I'm about 9 weeks into the project, and I've got a little over 13,000 words, not a line of which I expect will be worth even typing into the computer. This a very different experience from my first book.
And a very different experience from what I had planned. I was way off in two assumptions -- that I could plan the book out and then write it and that this period of time would be a naturally productive time to do that. On the first point, the honest truth is that I still don't really have any idea of what the story is and what I'm building. Second, this so-called writer's retreat has been anything but. I knew it would be a challenge -- I'm living in a temporary situation in a developing country with all the quirks and discomforts and failures (power failures, for example, which we had this morning) that go with that. Every errand takes 5 times longer than it would at home. Even if I can protect a morning to write, I have to beat back more than the usual share of mental list-making. And then there are other distractions like side trips that take some time to bounce back from.
So, I should probably give myself some credit and rethink what it is possible to get out of this. Maybe my goal should be to go home in a few months with a good story to work on. Or with all the background and character sketching worked out. Or with ideas for 5-6 major scenes. And to get there, I probably have to take some pressure off myself so I can be more productive with each writing session. I've been sitting down to work with the expectation that I know what the book is and am producing a good draft, so that every second that ticks by is a failure to live up to that expectation.
I don't want to give up on the theory that it is possible to plan out a book and then write it, but it's not what happened in this case. At the very least, I didn't take enough time to plan it. Probably it's something that will have to emerge through the writing.
My real problem, I think, is that I have a severe aversion to and sense of guilt about waste -- wasted time and effort in this case -- and the feeling that I am wasting them adds pressure and decreases pleasure. I'm not having any fun exploring and inventing. It should be more fun than I've allowed it to be. Not only is this is the world's worst writer's retreat. I may be temperamentally the world's worst candidate for a writer's retreat.
And a very different experience from what I had planned. I was way off in two assumptions -- that I could plan the book out and then write it and that this period of time would be a naturally productive time to do that. On the first point, the honest truth is that I still don't really have any idea of what the story is and what I'm building. Second, this so-called writer's retreat has been anything but. I knew it would be a challenge -- I'm living in a temporary situation in a developing country with all the quirks and discomforts and failures (power failures, for example, which we had this morning) that go with that. Every errand takes 5 times longer than it would at home. Even if I can protect a morning to write, I have to beat back more than the usual share of mental list-making. And then there are other distractions like side trips that take some time to bounce back from.
So, I should probably give myself some credit and rethink what it is possible to get out of this. Maybe my goal should be to go home in a few months with a good story to work on. Or with all the background and character sketching worked out. Or with ideas for 5-6 major scenes. And to get there, I probably have to take some pressure off myself so I can be more productive with each writing session. I've been sitting down to work with the expectation that I know what the book is and am producing a good draft, so that every second that ticks by is a failure to live up to that expectation.
I don't want to give up on the theory that it is possible to plan out a book and then write it, but it's not what happened in this case. At the very least, I didn't take enough time to plan it. Probably it's something that will have to emerge through the writing.
My real problem, I think, is that I have a severe aversion to and sense of guilt about waste -- wasted time and effort in this case -- and the feeling that I am wasting them adds pressure and decreases pleasure. I'm not having any fun exploring and inventing. It should be more fun than I've allowed it to be. Not only is this is the world's worst writer's retreat. I may be temperamentally the world's worst candidate for a writer's retreat.
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Feeling better
I've been working the plan I described yesterday and generating more material to work with. That's good. Some of it feels right, which raises the question of what's going on when it doesn't feel right. Is that a sign I shouldn't pursue that material? Anyway, my little stack of mud pies is bigger than it was yesterday.
For the most part, I have had energy for morning and afternoon sessions, though I don't always have the time for the afternoon session. It's adding up to 2 - 3 hours a day.
For the most part, I have had energy for morning and afternoon sessions, though I don't always have the time for the afternoon session. It's adding up to 2 - 3 hours a day.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Reboot
How to describe what I've been up to in the last week?
Basically, I'm rebooting the project. As noted before, I've let my personal timeline push me into starting to draft too soon. All I really have is a situation -- not a story. The advance work needs more attention. (For the process I want to follow anyway. I know there's a school of thought that says just start writing and work out the problems as they emerge. That's basically how I did my first book. But I'm inclined to plan this one more before trying to draft it.)
One thing I did that actually took a lot of time was to outline a particular book that is both a favorite and a model for this particular project in some ways. Chapter by chapter, I wrote out what was going on in it and every once in awhile paused to make notes on what I was learning that I could apply.
One result was I developed a kind of schematic to help me brainstorm some plot and character development and to ensure that more (if not enough) is going on in the story. It helps me create complication in a way that is integrated. I'm sure this idea has been articulated in similar language a million times before, but this is what dawned on me and that I'm using to guide me for the time being.
Think of it as a triangle, which I won't try to draw here. Three points.
A. PERSONAL/PRIVATE story elements -- goals and obstacles having to do with home and family.
B. PUBLIC story elements -- goals and obstacles having to do with career, work or the outside world.
C. CHARACTER elements -- strengths and weaknesses of the character/s.
Each of these interact and push and pull one another. The desire for success publicly is complicated by the desires having to do with home which are complicated by the character's qualities, which change in response to the ups and downs of reaching for their goals, etc.
These should generate some number of conflicts, some of which are external to the character and some of which are internal to the character.
So, basically I'm going through each of my main characters and doing a lot of brainstorming and story development on each of these points. Sometimes that leads to drafting in the book's voice for a little while, but I don't really take that seriously yet. I just regard it all as note-taking.
I don't know how long this is going to take. I just try to do my best to treat it seriously for a few hours every day, and hopefully I'll have a good story I believe enough in to write soon.
Now, there is a danger of planning it so much that I'm bored with it. I saw a quote from Margaret Atwood recently where she talks about never knowing the endings of her books and never planning them out, because if she had all that ready, she wouldn't be interested in writing it anymore. Maybe the process I'm working on is too controlling. But I'm trying to compensate for another weakness, which is the difficulty of developing plot. I don't want to end up with a draft with no plot, so this is how I'm going about things.
Basically, I'm rebooting the project. As noted before, I've let my personal timeline push me into starting to draft too soon. All I really have is a situation -- not a story. The advance work needs more attention. (For the process I want to follow anyway. I know there's a school of thought that says just start writing and work out the problems as they emerge. That's basically how I did my first book. But I'm inclined to plan this one more before trying to draft it.)
One thing I did that actually took a lot of time was to outline a particular book that is both a favorite and a model for this particular project in some ways. Chapter by chapter, I wrote out what was going on in it and every once in awhile paused to make notes on what I was learning that I could apply.
One result was I developed a kind of schematic to help me brainstorm some plot and character development and to ensure that more (if not enough) is going on in the story. It helps me create complication in a way that is integrated. I'm sure this idea has been articulated in similar language a million times before, but this is what dawned on me and that I'm using to guide me for the time being.
Think of it as a triangle, which I won't try to draw here. Three points.
A. PERSONAL/PRIVATE story elements -- goals and obstacles having to do with home and family.
B. PUBLIC story elements -- goals and obstacles having to do with career, work or the outside world.
C. CHARACTER elements -- strengths and weaknesses of the character/s.
Each of these interact and push and pull one another. The desire for success publicly is complicated by the desires having to do with home which are complicated by the character's qualities, which change in response to the ups and downs of reaching for their goals, etc.
These should generate some number of conflicts, some of which are external to the character and some of which are internal to the character.
So, basically I'm going through each of my main characters and doing a lot of brainstorming and story development on each of these points. Sometimes that leads to drafting in the book's voice for a little while, but I don't really take that seriously yet. I just regard it all as note-taking.
I don't know how long this is going to take. I just try to do my best to treat it seriously for a few hours every day, and hopefully I'll have a good story I believe enough in to write soon.
Now, there is a danger of planning it so much that I'm bored with it. I saw a quote from Margaret Atwood recently where she talks about never knowing the endings of her books and never planning them out, because if she had all that ready, she wouldn't be interested in writing it anymore. Maybe the process I'm working on is too controlling. But I'm trying to compensate for another weakness, which is the difficulty of developing plot. I don't want to end up with a draft with no plot, so this is how I'm going about things.
Friday, January 22, 2010
Trough of despair
Hey, I passed 400 entries in this journal the other day.
It's not going well. I'm coming to the realization that I don't have much of a story at all. I'm knocking my head out to figure out one plot issue, under the mistaken idea all along that that one point is so key that it will carry the rest of the book. It's a trifle. I need a lot more story to make the book worthwhile.
It's helped me to remember that the core of the story has to be about relationships. (Did I already say this in an earlier entry?) Even if I know a lot about individual characters -- and I don't know much -- there's no story until they start to get intimate and have conflicts.
Basically, all I have is a setting. An interesting one, I hope, and not just a gimmick. But no matter how interesting it's not going to be a story until I start to pile on some trouble for the characters.
Figuring this out, as usual, is part of the process and ought to count as progress, but I can't help but notice the number of days passing by with not addition to my word count. Instead I'm making lots of theoretical notes.
Yesterday, I spent all day putting what plot I think I know on to slips of paper to shuffle. Boy, did that reveal some gaps.
Today I've been going through the exercise of outlining a book that is a favorite and that is inspiring this one. The point of the exercise is to see how that book works, where the sense of story comes from, the motive power, the interest. That's revealing all kinds of machinery that my story so far lacks.
It's the eternal problem with me. I've always gotten overexcited about scene and scenario without having any sense of plot.
It's not going well. I'm coming to the realization that I don't have much of a story at all. I'm knocking my head out to figure out one plot issue, under the mistaken idea all along that that one point is so key that it will carry the rest of the book. It's a trifle. I need a lot more story to make the book worthwhile.
It's helped me to remember that the core of the story has to be about relationships. (Did I already say this in an earlier entry?) Even if I know a lot about individual characters -- and I don't know much -- there's no story until they start to get intimate and have conflicts.
Basically, all I have is a setting. An interesting one, I hope, and not just a gimmick. But no matter how interesting it's not going to be a story until I start to pile on some trouble for the characters.
Figuring this out, as usual, is part of the process and ought to count as progress, but I can't help but notice the number of days passing by with not addition to my word count. Instead I'm making lots of theoretical notes.
Yesterday, I spent all day putting what plot I think I know on to slips of paper to shuffle. Boy, did that reveal some gaps.
Today I've been going through the exercise of outlining a book that is a favorite and that is inspiring this one. The point of the exercise is to see how that book works, where the sense of story comes from, the motive power, the interest. That's revealing all kinds of machinery that my story so far lacks.
It's the eternal problem with me. I've always gotten overexcited about scene and scenario without having any sense of plot.
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Counting what I tend to discount
I tend to categorize and pigeonhole and to put little mental asterisks next to things that don't resemble exactly everything else in a given pigeonhole. It's a bad tendency toward black-and-white thinking in a process where that is least likely to be helpful. Also, as you've seen, I measure my progress by counting things.
So I'm in a confusing period right now with nothing much to count but knowing that I ought to feel like I'm making progress anyway. I want to think of the work in two different aspects -- the preparatory/notetaking/journaling aspect and the actual drafting. I even keep that work in two separate notebooks, and I tend to count as "writing" what happens in the drafting notebook. But those two different aspects of the work are not so different at this stage. It's a blurry line, and out of frustration that I don't quite know what to write at the moment, I turn to my prep notebook to talk myself through it and end up doing a little bit of writing that I wish had emerged in my drafting notebook.
So for that reason, I can say I've made some measure of progress on the manuscript every day, including over the weekend, and I'm up over 6,000 words.
But still it is all background and character sketching and not yet tackling the present action plot. Which is the main challenge of this confusing period. I'm trying to figure that out still (it goes hand-in-hand with figuring out the characters, by the way) but my personal time line is to be drafting at this point. The story just isn't ready to be written. It's not that it won't be or can't be or that it's a flawed or lost project. My little tugs of despair or really only the result of an unreasonable time line that I've imposed on myself and the subsequent tendency to discount the necessary work that I am doing of finding the story and characters. That has to happen, and I've tried to rush it.
So I'm in a confusing period right now with nothing much to count but knowing that I ought to feel like I'm making progress anyway. I want to think of the work in two different aspects -- the preparatory/notetaking/journaling aspect and the actual drafting. I even keep that work in two separate notebooks, and I tend to count as "writing" what happens in the drafting notebook. But those two different aspects of the work are not so different at this stage. It's a blurry line, and out of frustration that I don't quite know what to write at the moment, I turn to my prep notebook to talk myself through it and end up doing a little bit of writing that I wish had emerged in my drafting notebook.
So for that reason, I can say I've made some measure of progress on the manuscript every day, including over the weekend, and I'm up over 6,000 words.
But still it is all background and character sketching and not yet tackling the present action plot. Which is the main challenge of this confusing period. I'm trying to figure that out still (it goes hand-in-hand with figuring out the characters, by the way) but my personal time line is to be drafting at this point. The story just isn't ready to be written. It's not that it won't be or can't be or that it's a flawed or lost project. My little tugs of despair or really only the result of an unreasonable time line that I've imposed on myself and the subsequent tendency to discount the necessary work that I am doing of finding the story and characters. That has to happen, and I've tried to rush it.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Building up stamina
1,700 words today. That usually happens when I've got a scene with a little bit of action and development in it. Once I start finding the story more, I'll have days of 2-3,000 words. So far, it's really just background sketches, which is starting to worry me. I guess it's only a trap if I make the mistake of thinking it all will be a part of the book. It might be a necessary part of the process to write this, but I can't let myself get frustrated later when I figure out that it's unnecessary material. Still, I need to start tackling the actual story.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
The joy of creation
I just love writing the first draft. Perhaps if I loved it less I would focus more and not need to do so much work on the rewrites. But I get a kick out of making stuff up as I go along. When I started this morning (900 words today), I really had no idea what I was going to write. I thought I would establish a certain journey that my character makes by car over a couple of days. I didn't have a theme or anything -- no certain plot points to hit, no certain characterization I wanted to weave in. I didn't know what she would do on the journey. I just made up a first sentence, wrote that down and kept going. An hour later I had invented all kinds of interesting walk-on characters and background anecdotes. Doubtlessly, almost all of it will get cut eventually, but it was fun. It's fun knowing I'm able to.
Monday, January 11, 2010
850 words
Nothing special to report. Typical working day - 850 words. Still sketching background material for now and avoiding the problem of plot. I have some ideas, but I also have some problems with the ideas. The same could probably be said of voice. I'm establishing a voice as I do this work, but I have some hesitations about what is being established. Pretty soon I'll have to come to some working decisions on this or I won't have work to do.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
I started a novel today
Today is the big day. I was scared as hell, and didn't have any sense of purpose, but I told myself what got me through the first one -- "just add sentences." And I also got to tell myself that I had done it once before. I sat down and wrote 700 words, a pretty light day by my standards, but I'll build up my stamina. So far, I'm ignoring the fact that I don't really have much of a plot, so for awhile I foresee myself writing a lot of overly detailed background material.
I was sitting on the couch in my new short-term rental in Saigon. Plenty to distract me -- it's pretty noisy here -- and I got up once to watch an old couple walking slowly down the street, the man playing some kind of traditional music adapted for Stratocaster and portable amplifier and the woman singing along and holding her hat out. They were tethered by the microphone cord plugged into the amplifier slung over his shoulder. How am I going to compete with that? How am I going to create anything as vivid as what's going on around me?
I think the length of my writing sessions is mostly determined by the natural breaks in the narrative. It's hard to come to a scene and then start a new one, so if it's a long scene, I have a day where I write a lot. If it's a short scene, I have a day where I don't write a lot. If I can train myself to restart again after finishing one scene, I could build up my word count a lot faster.
By the way, for the purposes of this journal, I think I'll refer to this book as BR.
OK, if I can find a satisfying lunch and get some household chores done, I'll have a routine. 100 days like that and I'll have a first draft.
I was sitting on the couch in my new short-term rental in Saigon. Plenty to distract me -- it's pretty noisy here -- and I got up once to watch an old couple walking slowly down the street, the man playing some kind of traditional music adapted for Stratocaster and portable amplifier and the woman singing along and holding her hat out. They were tethered by the microphone cord plugged into the amplifier slung over his shoulder. How am I going to compete with that? How am I going to create anything as vivid as what's going on around me?
I think the length of my writing sessions is mostly determined by the natural breaks in the narrative. It's hard to come to a scene and then start a new one, so if it's a long scene, I have a day where I write a lot. If it's a short scene, I have a day where I don't write a lot. If I can train myself to restart again after finishing one scene, I could build up my word count a lot faster.
By the way, for the purposes of this journal, I think I'll refer to this book as BR.
OK, if I can find a satisfying lunch and get some household chores done, I'll have a routine. 100 days like that and I'll have a first draft.
Monday, December 28, 2009
New year, new novel
I'm making a big transition in the next few days -- moving overseas for an extended stay and starting a new book. In a sense, it's a restart of this blog. I'll be back to where I was in 2007 in terms of the writing process.
I'll be living in Vietnam for about 5 1/2 months, and most of my energy for weeks has been focused on preparing for that. And I expect a lot of energy focused on getting set up there for awhile. Plus, I have several once-in-a-lifetime distractions during the stay, including some extended side trips.
But once I am settled and to the extent that I'm not socializing or traveling, I won't have a lot of responsibilities. So I plan to make it a writer's retreat. I've been stewing on this idea for my second novel since last September, sneaking in what research that I can, doing a lot of note-taking and character sketching and so on. I'm not as ready as I wanted to be, but I'm going with the flow. Sometime as soon as possible after the morning of Monday, January 4, after I finish a breakfast of cafe sua da and banh mi op la, I'm going to sit down in a quiet corner of our apartment with my notebook and start drafting the book. One way or another, with the information and skills I have. We'll see what happens. I think I'll be lucky to have it 3/4 drafted before I have to come home.
Stay tuned to see how it goes.
I'll be living in Vietnam for about 5 1/2 months, and most of my energy for weeks has been focused on preparing for that. And I expect a lot of energy focused on getting set up there for awhile. Plus, I have several once-in-a-lifetime distractions during the stay, including some extended side trips.
But once I am settled and to the extent that I'm not socializing or traveling, I won't have a lot of responsibilities. So I plan to make it a writer's retreat. I've been stewing on this idea for my second novel since last September, sneaking in what research that I can, doing a lot of note-taking and character sketching and so on. I'm not as ready as I wanted to be, but I'm going with the flow. Sometime as soon as possible after the morning of Monday, January 4, after I finish a breakfast of cafe sua da and banh mi op la, I'm going to sit down in a quiet corner of our apartment with my notebook and start drafting the book. One way or another, with the information and skills I have. We'll see what happens. I think I'll be lucky to have it 3/4 drafted before I have to come home.
Stay tuned to see how it goes.
Books read in 2009
As discussed at length at the end of 2008 and 2007, I have a peculiar and rationally inconsistent habit of keeping a list of all the books I read, but only counting them if I finish them. It is therefore a really misleading snapshot of how I spend my reading time -- no short stories unless it was part of a collection I finished, no anthologies I dip into, no literary journals and none of the dozens of books I start and don't complete. Some of those, it wouldn't be fair to count because I just read a few pages, and some of them it's really hard not to finish because I've already invested in 400 pages of time into it but there are another 400 to go.
For example, I foundered this year on Anna Kerenina about half way through, so it's not on my list. I read and loved War and Peace and was glad I did I finished it, but wished I counted for five books on my list. I forced myself to finish A Northern Clemency so I could add it to the list and regretted that much effort. For those reasons, I don't feel bad about counting much shorter books, such as all the S.E. Hinton books I revisited during a nostalgia phase last summer.
I don't have time this year to type out the whole list here -- more later on the reasons for my time crunch -- but I wanted to make a post here, partly to brag and partly to have a consistent record from year to year. My grand total this year is . . . 89.
That's probably the highest total ever, but my lifelong goal is to achieve 2 per week, 104 on the list for the year. I was always one step behind that for most of the year and sprinting not to lose any more ground. But about the middle of October I saw it wasn't going to happen --that I could maybe hit 95 if I kept sprinting -- and I started to coast. I don't anticipate doing any better in 2010 because of a new schedule coming up.
But how about the literary value of the list? There are fewer titles this year that were read to help me with my first novel, since it was really done. There are a few titles related to my second book (more on that later) which I plan to start soon. There is a Napoleonic Wars phase, really starting with The Charterhouse of Parma last year and continuing with War and Peace and a bio of Napoleon this year. There are several biographies, which my wife and read to each other at night. There are the textbooks for the classes I teach. I did count a couple audio books my wife and I listened to. I was reading more poetry at the start of the year and seemed to get focused on other things later in the year.
There a few graphic novels. I was partly inspired by the events in Iran to read Persepolis and partly inspired by The Amazing Adventures of Kavelier and Clay to learn more about comics. Kavelier and Clay was my great discovery this year. I read it twice and have it packed for another trip coming up, and I read a few other Chabon books. I especially loved Wonder Boys. Another new favorite is Middlesex, which I also read twice, and enjoyed The Virgin Suicides.
I read a bunch of dogs that I can't believe were so highly recommended. But I already complained about those enough. So I'll finish up with this short list of other fiction that I particularly enjoyed in the last year, in no particular order, some new books, some new to me.
-Oive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout.
-Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Letham
-Miles From Nowhere by Nami Mun
-The Bird Artist by Howard Norman
-Lucky Girls by Nell Freudenberger
-Happy All the Time by Laurie Colwin
-American Woman by Susan Choi
-Peace Like a River by Leif Enger
-Paris Trout by Pete Dexter
-The Book Borrower by Alice Mattison
Well, one more word, for the sake of poetry this time. Blood, Tin, Straw by Sharon Olds. She kicks ass as always.
For example, I foundered this year on Anna Kerenina about half way through, so it's not on my list. I read and loved War and Peace and was glad I did I finished it, but wished I counted for five books on my list. I forced myself to finish A Northern Clemency so I could add it to the list and regretted that much effort. For those reasons, I don't feel bad about counting much shorter books, such as all the S.E. Hinton books I revisited during a nostalgia phase last summer.
I don't have time this year to type out the whole list here -- more later on the reasons for my time crunch -- but I wanted to make a post here, partly to brag and partly to have a consistent record from year to year. My grand total this year is . . . 89.
That's probably the highest total ever, but my lifelong goal is to achieve 2 per week, 104 on the list for the year. I was always one step behind that for most of the year and sprinting not to lose any more ground. But about the middle of October I saw it wasn't going to happen --that I could maybe hit 95 if I kept sprinting -- and I started to coast. I don't anticipate doing any better in 2010 because of a new schedule coming up.
But how about the literary value of the list? There are fewer titles this year that were read to help me with my first novel, since it was really done. There are a few titles related to my second book (more on that later) which I plan to start soon. There is a Napoleonic Wars phase, really starting with The Charterhouse of Parma last year and continuing with War and Peace and a bio of Napoleon this year. There are several biographies, which my wife and read to each other at night. There are the textbooks for the classes I teach. I did count a couple audio books my wife and I listened to. I was reading more poetry at the start of the year and seemed to get focused on other things later in the year.
There a few graphic novels. I was partly inspired by the events in Iran to read Persepolis and partly inspired by The Amazing Adventures of Kavelier and Clay to learn more about comics. Kavelier and Clay was my great discovery this year. I read it twice and have it packed for another trip coming up, and I read a few other Chabon books. I especially loved Wonder Boys. Another new favorite is Middlesex, which I also read twice, and enjoyed The Virgin Suicides.
I read a bunch of dogs that I can't believe were so highly recommended. But I already complained about those enough. So I'll finish up with this short list of other fiction that I particularly enjoyed in the last year, in no particular order, some new books, some new to me.
-Oive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout.
-Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Letham
-Miles From Nowhere by Nami Mun
-The Bird Artist by Howard Norman
-Lucky Girls by Nell Freudenberger
-Happy All the Time by Laurie Colwin
-American Woman by Susan Choi
-Peace Like a River by Leif Enger
-Paris Trout by Pete Dexter
-The Book Borrower by Alice Mattison
Well, one more word, for the sake of poetry this time. Blood, Tin, Straw by Sharon Olds. She kicks ass as always.
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