Archives for November 2017

There is an older movie starring Al Pacino called Scent of a Woman.  Pacino plays a bitter veteran who hires an impressionable and anxious young man to accompany him through the streets of NYC for Thanksgiving weekend.

One of the best scenes takes place when Al Pacino asks a young lady to tango with him in a fancy restaurant.  She confesses to him that she does not know how, and he says an amazing line leading to an even more spectacular choreographed dance sequence.

“If you make a mistake and get all tangled up, just tango on.”

Watch the whole dance sequence here.

Like me, you’ve probably got tangled up in your plot at some point.  And like me, there was a tendency to feel that I can’t continue on.  But just like Al Pacino said, “There are no mistakes in the tango.”

If you get tangled up, just tango on.  Here’s how:

1) Don’t let plot inconsistency keep you from writing.  If I overthink it, I become paralyzed and stop writing.  This is distracting and can derail us.  Truth be told, there are probably holes in the story line big enough for the foundation of a house.  But that’s why God invented editing!

2) Don’t let the science of a situation make you get a PhD on Google.  This one has been the MOST tempting for me.  I don’t know about weather conditions, types of drugs, or anatomical facts about the human body.  Google is a couple clicks away, begging me to go down a research rabbit hole.  Again, I can leave a blank space and make a note and come back after I get the plot laid on the pages.  But I am not stopping the flow of the story for the facts of the science.

3) Don’t let the stop sign in a scene become the stop sign of your writing.  There are scenes that I haven’t been able to tidy up yet.  So, as I was writing I felt like I was losing the scene, I did something unconventional.

I just jumped into a different scene.

Almost all the times I left a scene to write another, working on that alternate scene gave me the idea of what to do with that loose end in the original scene.  This just happened to me this morning and I had a huge break through.

The bottom line: Tango ON!  Don’t get tangled up, or I should say, don’t STAY tangled up.  Get that clay on the page and you can form it into the Statue of David on the rewrite.

It’s hard putting the words down when you don’t know where you’re going.  It’s hard if you’re not in the habit (like I’m not).

It’s harder still when you lose yourself among the trees of creativity when you lost sight of your forest called “why.”

This is the buzzword of today’s culture.  Why.

Why are you doing this?  Seriously?  What caused you to want to write 50,000 words in 30 days?

Can I share three things that I’ve done that kept my lazy butt in that chair over the last 21 days?  Here they are:

1) I compared the feeling that I had at the moment to “skip writing” to the potential feeling I would have of having “given up” on the novel.  I think that motivated me a lot.  I thought, “is getting up an hour or two later going to feel good on December 1 when I’ve spent another month of my life not being a novelist?”

That’s a pretty strong why for me.  I’ve locked my inner novelist up for all my life.  I’ve come to find it better to let him out, because he is me.  I can’t separate myself from what I was created to be.

2) I really put emphasis in the process of writing over the product.  I know that I’m going to try to get this book published.  I know that it’s going to be a whole other thing.  However, I’ve grown to love and desire that sacred time where my fingers become the conduit of the words that make worlds.  I can’t quite describe it.  And I know it’s not for everyone.  But I know I’ve never experienced anything like it.  Do you enjoy getting lost in that “hole in the paper?”  Do you enjoy creating worlds?  Focus on that when it hurts.

3) I thought about the first time I read a story and realized I wanted to write it.  It happened in 4^th grade and I always had that desire, even to this day.  When did that happen for you?  When did you realize you could write?  When did you realize that you took a great joy out of reading a book on the beach than swimming in the ocean?  Think about this and meditate on the idea that you get to create that experience for someone else.

But don’t stop.  If you’re only 500 words in on Day 21, that’s okay.  Remember, there is power in those words.  Keep writing.

Keeping it moving – Part 1: Borrow Conflict

The next several days  going to deal with some techniques on how to keep it moving.

Are you feeling that?  The dragging feeling?  That’s what I felt when there was a lot of people in my story but not as much going on.  Then I remember reading something from a Writer’s Digest article.

Conflict drives a story.

I looked at all the characters in my world and thought for a brief moment about their motivations.  I discovered something.  Every motivation, if examined individually, gave way to the character having his/her own agenda – and that agenda didn’t line up with the plan of the protagonist.

So here is how I kept the story moving:

1) I borrowed conflict from other characters.  It’s not just the hero fighting certain opponents.  It’s conflict from other characters within their own lives that keeps the story moving as well.

2) I borrowed conflict from the setting.  I like the idea that the setting that I have provides constant conflict for the character in my world.  It allows me to explore how the characters react to situations beyond the antagonist.

3) I borrowed conflict from within.  I love seeing how the people in my world fight themselves.  This conflict they produce when in a room alone is sometimes more captivating than the primal storyline against the antagonist.

Conflict is important.  As a reader, I long for that.  As a writer, I long to observe it and bring it to the surface.

Keep it moving with conflict!  Keep writing.

This Video about a book looks quickly at The War of Art.  It’s an excellent resource if you need that creative kick in the butt!

 

You can purchase it on Amazon here.

There are two thing that I’ve been doing that have helped push me over the 40,000 word mark during NaNoWriMo.

Caution: this is the first time that I’ve ever done this.  Other writers and winners of NaNoWriMo may have better advice.  This is just what has helped me.

1.  Plan wide.  The plot of my book is rather sprawling.  This provides me a multitude of creative options to explore.  As soon as I saw the canvas was wide open, I began to put the brush down and see what the colors looked like on there.  This might not be the case for you.  And some books are only based on a small world.  Stephen King’s Misery really only deals with two characters and most of it takes place in a single room.  You still feel like a world has been opened, but when you step into you feel confined, by design.

2.  Write deep.  Anne Lamott’s book Bird by Bird offers a great concept.  She discusses a one-inch picture frame (I have referenced this before).  This means that when writing, I just focus on that particular scene, and that conflict going on in the scene.  I become discouraged if while I’m writing a scene I start to think, “Well what about what happened in another scene?  What about this character in relationship to that?”

Stop.

Focus on the sensations of that scene and take your reader there.  Make them a third and intruding party on a private conversation meant for two.

This is all I have.  Keep writing. Put one word down after another and committed to coming back after you’ve produced the clay that will become your sculpture!

When you sit down to write, other voices invade your creative space.

Here is what I have been telling myself despite these grating voices:

I knew that I wanted to be a writer in 3rd grade.  It’s all I’ve ever dreamed of becoming throughout high school and I was pretty decent at it.  But I never – I repeat – never pursued it until now.  The thing that pushed me over the edge was the realization that I’m only losing time.  Unexplored passions become paths to bitterness.  Pursuing the dream of being an author has opened up a cool and fragrant place in my heart that I had forgotten about.

So let’s shut three more voices up today, as we push through with our writing.  Here are some offenders:

4) You’re losing control of all the details.  This one bothered me most at the beginning.  It’s easier to deal with three or four characters, and one central location.  But I added a second world, that has three sub-worlds, a transportation system, a government, a different food system, past relationships, broken families, etc…It’s hard to track this.

This voice stands on the rooftop and says, “Order order!  This is getting messy!  Fix it NOOOOOOWWWWWWWW”!

This voice speaks in the morning.  I often feel like I’m going to a huge family reunion of 600 people.  I’m certain there’s a connection to everyone, but it takes a handful of conversations to figure out who’s who.

To this voice, I say, “Let’s make a note and go back later.”

I believe that if you just make a little note in your word program, or Scrivener (which is amazing, by the way), you can just clean all that up in the edits.  I think we agonize over those things on purpose to keep us from the main goal of getting those words out.

5) Your book is so similar to __________________ and no one is going to buy it.  Income may be a motivation for you to finish your novel and I can’t say I’m entirely against that.  I want to pursue publication and expect to be paid for writing this novel, but that’s not what keeps my butt in that chair filling the screen with words.  When you’re think of salability, this voice materializes with hard logic.

It says, “Someone’s been reading Tolkein!  And everyone is going to know.  Ohhhh, just started the Harry Potter series?  Know how I know? Because I can tell in your writing!”

Here’s what to say to that voice:  So what?

Everything is like everything.  You’re influenced by what you love to read and watch.  If you love movies with rich characters and low-tech culture, you’re probably not going to write a great Sci-Fi novel or historical narrative.   You’re apt to go with what you know.  So don’t be afraid of that.

It’s impossible to avoid the influence of other things you’ve read/watched/heard.  But don’t discount the influence you bring to this type of story.   Your voice has never been heard in that setting, and you can’t make it come alive (unless you’re plagiarizing directly, you dirty cheat).

6) You don’t have any clue how this is all going to come together.  This is where I am right now and it’s an odd spot.  I have all these people in this world doing different things.  Then a whole different set of people in another world started doing other things.  They each have their own agenda and none of them are really telling me about what they’ll do next.

“Oh man,” the voice says, “you had an idea of what was going to happen but now you’re in a whole other place!  So much for planning!”

The rebuttal for this is: my story is true, and that’s all that matters.

I’m not producing a plot, I’m following people and the plot they make themselves.  I’m not making a melody here, I’m telling the story of these people and there may be a sour note or two.  It’s an odd place to be, but I’m curious to see how it shakes out.

Here’s what I believe:  If I don’t know what’s going to happen and I”m excited to see, my reader will be too.

For instance, I sat down on November 1 with a character that was going to be a big hero of the story.  On November 5, that character died.  I was shocked, but it fit right into the motivation of another character and provided conflict fuel that threw the story into overdrive.  I still look back on that character longing to write about them, but someone else’s motive in the story made it impossible for them to survive.

Your passion has to be louder than the voices.  Yes.  Passion.

The fifteen mornings that I’ve spent in front of a blank page have been transcendent.  I’ve stolen moments from every day life to gaze upon a world and characters that exist to fulfill a greater story.   I don’t say that to sound  sensational.  I truly mean it.  I love my day job.  I am passionate about it.

But this is a dream that’s been in the basement for too long.  After decades, I finally thrust that cellar door open to find it.  I’m happy to announce it breathes.  It’s alive.  And so am I.

At any rate, tell those voices to quiet down and do more watching than dictating.  See where these people with their individual passions are taking you.  Keep writing and don’t give up.  I waited 25 years to take this dream seriously, but I’m like a kid again in just under 30 days.

The most difficult thing so far about writing a novel in one month happened around the 25,000 word mark for me.  It was the voices – and what they said.

Now, don’t get freaked that I’m saying this.  I don’t mean I heard them audibly, but it was an invasion of my inner quiet moments.

As a new fiction writer, I’ve found value in learning to silence myself and allow whatever is floating in my head to drop to the page.

The voices I hear while writing are the opposite of creativity: They are fixed on sabotage.  Here are the phrases each voice likes to repeat.

1) This it the best thing ever written.  Yeah, you didn’t think I was conceited did you?  Well, I’m actually not.  This voice booms when I find those ten awesome words out of the hundred awful words.  He tells me to rest on my laurels and not make such a big deal out of sitting in that chair and letting what’s inside come out.

He says, “Dude, lets just go get that mansion now on the way to that six-figure book deal.”

Nice try, french fry!   From what I’ve read of the writing process, this is the one of the easiest parts – just getting it on the page.  What follows is the re-write, where I get the opportunity to step into the holes I created in this plot, the agent query, where I get to hear how I’m not special, and the editor, where I get to hear how my stuff is cool, but worthless apart from professional intervention.

Those descriptions of the process are exaggerated to make a point, but this book is far from done if I want to put it on a Barnes and Noble bookshelf.

2) This is the biggest piece of crap ever written (I seriously shouldn’t even be allowed to own a computer because of how bad it is).  Yeah, I’ve heard this guy far more than the first.  This is when self-doubt kicks in and you realize that this thing you just gave birth to not only has extra limbs, but it’s got wings and it’s flying all over the freaking delivery room causing chaos.

This voice says, “Wait, you’re actually going to let people read this?  Really?  Why don’t you just poison the town’s drinking water while your at it?”

I don’t know how other authors look at it, but I truly look at what I’m doing in this stage as producing raw material with hidden gems therein.  I’ve texted some of my friends and beta readers a line here and a quote there.  I stand back and think, “Wow, that’s pretty cool that I wrote that, but yuck!  Who put all this garbage before and after that?  Oh, wait, that was me as well.”

3) Whoa, if __________________ knew you were doing this, they would laugh!  This voice has a fancy way of saying that your creativity is useless.  This is especially true if you’re like me, and have never written a book before.

This voice comes in many forms, and it usually takes the tone of someone else.  It says, “Oh, so you have time to do that, but you failed this project at work?”  Or, “Wow, I can’t believe that you are still doing that.  That’s kind of a waste of time.”

The rebuttal: those people don’t need to know.  And this is the most important lesson that I’ve learned: if you’re doing this for any other reason than for you and for the thrill of it, you’ll not have steam to finish.

You can’t estimate the value of your passion based on someone else’s measuring tool.

Some do things for money.  Others for attention.

I’m writing for the writing.  Even if I throw this thing into a (digital) trunk, on November 30, I’m going to say I wrote a fiction book.  It only took me 25 years and 30 days!

We all only have a certain amount of time.  When we say we are too busy, what we are saying is, “I’ve said yes to all the things I possibly could.”  That’s a truer statement.  Not having time is an illusion because all have time for the things that are important to us.

My entire life, I never had time to write.  I talked about it.  Dreamed about it, and one time, I got close to starting to write.  But I never had the time because I consider myself leading a very busy life.  Then, I discovered a cold truth about the way I was speaking about my schedule.

“I haven’t got time” is a lie.  This statement undermines the fact that those who are writing somehow have more time than I do.  We’ve all made this statement before about things we can’t find the time to do.

Yeah, that’s right.  I thought you all had 24 hours, but somehow, I’m stuck with only 12!  What a sorry chump I am.

I realized that in order to add in time to do NaNoWriMo, I would have to sacrifice something else.

I would like to share with you only two specific things that I gave up to make time.  By the way, I don’t believe you find time, or have time, but you make time. I only gave up two things in order to make time for NaNoWriMo

1) I gave up the gym until my novel is done.  I love working out, and I’m not saying I won’t try to sneak it in, but writing during this season is the top priority (This bought me 45-90 minutes every other day).  I know what you’re thinking.  He looks like his body is still beach ready! Thank you for noticing, but it’s on a sabbatical from the free weights in the month of November.

2) I stopped watching Netflix.   This is sad because I only just discovered Parenthood.  I’m pretty shocked no one told me about this life-altering gem earlier.  With a little bit of regret, I decided I would forgo a month of me crying to write this novel.  Sorry Craig T. Nelson, your charming and uncouth ways will not dissuade me from creating worlds.  Crosby, your cavalier attitude towards life and love are adorable, but there is so much conflict racing through this novel of mine.  I  must put you and Jabbar on pause and see what happens with you around Christmas time!  (This allotted me about 20 minutes per day. This is an average because, like you, I tend to binge watch or not watch at all).

That’s it.  Those are the two things that I’ve quit to make time.  Think about doing an activity audit and see where you can get some words down.  You’d be surprised how many things you do on autopilot.  Keep writing, and I’ll catch up on Parenthood with you after Thanksgiving!