Recently in Writing about the process of writing Category

Here’s an excerpt from an interview with me that’s up today over at Scribophile, an online critiquing and hanging-with-writers community.

Scribophile: In general, how much research do you do for your novels? Does it take place before you sit down and write the thing, or do you work on both tasks at the same time? And how can you tell when you’ve done enough—or even too much?

Erin:

Mostly I write and research in parallel. There are places where it’s straightforward. You need to give a character a sucking chest wound, so you read up on sucking chest wounds, find yourself a combat medic to chat with, and then get your knife ready and write. Easy peasy.

There are places where research is just procrastination. You need to launch a spaceship from a magnetic rail, so you start researching eddy coils etc, and before you know it you find yourself wondering if the magnets need to be supercooled, and deciding Loftstrom Loops are awesome and we should totally build one, who do I write to at NASA about that—forgetting that none of the characters give two figs about how the shuttle works.

The best and hardest kind of research is the research that builds the world. For instance, my current book in draft, The Swan Riders, has horses in it — in fact it takes place during an epic cross-continent ride. I’ve never been on or around horses, so I don’t know much about them. The tricky part about this research is that you don’t know what you need to know. So I did a lot of general reading, of the “horses for dummies” kind. A lot of hanging out in virtual communities like The Long Rider’s Guild. A great horse informant was found (hi Jen!).

The other kind of research (chest wounds and space ships) I mostly do as I go along, but the horses kind of research I have to do upfront. This is because I have to shape the story to suit the horses, not twist the horses to suit the story. I knew I’d got it (as much as it could be got) when horses stopped being a problem and became an inspiration. When they moved themselves, the way stories move or characters move.

I call this letting-research-shape-the-story thing “writing from the inside out.”

Getting to inside-out is difficult. If you think that’s hard to do with horses — and it is — try writing about another culture. You can’t just pin some feathers and blood sacrifice on ye olde sword and sorcery story and call it Aztec. That’s writing a story from the outside in.

Appropriation is always a risk—and really, all stories are appropriation. But the second miracle of fiction is that it is possible. Writing about people who are in various profound ways Not You is possible.

For a week I’ve been flailing around with the current chapter of Sorrow’s Knot.

I keep thinking I’m about to hit the point where I can stop completely ravelling the last draft and saving only a sentence here and there. I dream about the big downhill rush, and I’m always sure it’s just after this last little slog. And maybe this time I’ll be right, who knows.

Anyhow. This week’s chapter addresses one of the big problems from the first draft: no one understood why my hero had to do the terrifying and incredibly brave thing she did at the climax. I mean, I feel like I understood it. But no one else did. And by no one I mean my incredibly smart editor.

So, task: create a chapter where the whys and wherefores of the brave/terrifying/magically logical climax are spelled out. Where the character - visibly and on-screen - figures out what she’s going to have to do. Short-term payoff: suspense. Will she really do THAT? Long-term payoff: increased reader satisfaction and decreased reader confusion. Hopefully fewer editorial post-it notes expressing bafflement. Definitely worth doing.

But what does this look like on the page? This looks like a big old chunk of talky exposition, that’s what it looks like. The scream in the sunlight horror all-is-lost incident right before this? Let’s lose all momentum by TALKING about it. A lot.

You may now picture me banging my head into my treadmill desk. Repeatedly.

Today, finally, I think I found the path through it. It’s a well-worn path - so well worn that screenwriters use it as a truism: exposition is ammunition. Let’s make the characters FIGHT about what to do next. It’s a well-worn path but I missed it, and finding it seems like a little miracle. If I can just get through this next little push, it will be a fast clean rush to the ending.

(Or not.)

Well, I did it. I tore apart the chapter I was talking about yesterday and put it back together again. And then - then I wrote the new ending for it. The one which brings the characters to the edge of escape, but fails to let one of them out. I finished it about 12:00, and spent the remaining half hour in my office shaking and crying. You can either view that as a sign the book is working, or a sign that I should up my meds. Up to you.

It’s not even really that terrible a scene. It’s just that characters being crazy-brave always nail me. Every single time, they nail me. Sad I can handle. But beauty and bravery break my heart.

So where are we now? Well, if I didn’t seem to be allergic to structure, I’d say this was the “darkest moment” part of the draft. If it were a 100-page screenplay, so sayeth the Screenplay God Blake Snyder, this would be page 75. The break into act three.

I have some hope that act three will be faster to write. I’ve totally torn act one and two apart, saving only the main characters, the general premise, and a paragraph of description here and there. I have never had to strip a book so far back. It’s not a rewrite, it’s a just-plain write. But act three may be more or less salvageable. Wish me luck.

Also, an aside: someone commented yesterday on my berating myself for listening to thinky-plotter me and thereby getting stuck. She says: “But I suspect that the thinky self gets you across the chasm on some kind of Rube Goldberg bridge, and then the real writer self sees where to go and flies across.” That rang true. Maybe I can usefully view my thinky-plotter self as one of the poor souls working on the crazy bridge in Dr. Suess’s How Lucky You Are. After all, you have to cross the gap somehow. Maybe you need a little crazy bridge labour before you can leap.

Today saw me back my writing office after a four day weekend. I’ve not gotten much work done since the beginning of April, which is a long stretch when deadlines are near.

But the thing is … I tried to write this last chapter. I gave myself a nice pause and a couple of thinky days before tackling it, plotting how I was going to help the characters out of the dangerous place where they were trapped, and then later how I was going to get them to go back there on purpose. When I thought I had it all figured out I tried to write it.

And failed. I wrote an entirely wrong-footed chapter, mechanical and choppy and confusing. But I pushed it (after all, I’d already given myself the pause) and got the characters to the end of the chapter, and the edge of escape. And as they came to the edge, I thought, “wait, this is IT, this is where it happens, right here, right now.” And I thought: “this is why I couldn’t write this: I was trying to avoid this moment.”

Of course that wasn’t what I had thoughtfully planned, so I ignored the hunch and wrote past the moment, completing the escape. Then I froze up.

It took me a few days to decide to throw out my plans (not to mention most of a chapter) and trust my gut. Of course NOW it seems obvious — why would they want to escape then come back? — but I fought and fought and whined and stomped my feet. But today, finally, I scrapped the problem chapter, stripping it back and putting it back together with its new not-escape ending in mind. I’m ready, tomorrow, to bring my characters to the their worst moment, the all-is-lost point. GULP.

But when, oh when, am I going to figure out that my thinky-writer self doesn’t know what it’s doing? When am I going to stop pushing through before I’m ready? When am I going to quit fighting those deep flashes of insight? Listen to your self, Erin: “This is where it happens. Right here. Right now.”

Below are actual excerpts from my notebook and facebook feed and twitter and etc on the process of getting used to a treadmill desk if you (like me) are a klutz. Feel free to read the whole thing aloud in your best Captain Kirk voice.

Treadmill desk log, day one: I got a treadmill desk! (Actually I scored my in-laws dis-used treadmill and stuck a board on it: fortunately I’m short, so that’s all it takes.) This is day two of typing and walking at once, and frankly I expect to end up plastered against the back wall of my writing office. Also I can hardly type and think this whole thing might be stupid. But everyone tells me I’ll get used to it.

Treadmill desk log, day three: I still haven’t injured myself. Typing is improving slowly. The “second nature” thing that was promised has not yet appeared. Basically this is annoying and if hadn’t been endorsed my klutzy friends, I’d quit it.

Treadmill desk log, day four. Treadmills make my hips and knees feel weird in a way that walking doesn’t. What’s up with that? Typing continues to improve. I do think a separate keyboard and a boost for the monitor may be necessary.

Treadmill desk log, day seven: I think I could grow to love this thing. My brain seemed to work so much better this aft, strolling, than it did this morning, sitting and flailing. (Of course, this morning was dayjob and I’ve got a fundraising project. Still.) It helps to turn up the speed to 1.4 or 1.5 km/hr. 1.0, the lowest speed, seems artificially slow. Would I rather have a dog? Yes. Does this beat sitting in a chair? Um… I think it might.

Treadmill desk log, day ten: The treadmill desk is becoming comfortable and easy. Case in point: Today I’m in my writing office but have forgotten my shoes, which makes treadmilling dicey. And yet I feel a genuine urge to get up there; a feeling that things would feel better if I were strolling along. Me having an urge to exercise is one of the signs of the apocalypse.

Treadmill desk log, day 17: The treadmill is clearly smarter than me, and I still haven’t learned to program it. But I have learned to access the pre-set programs, and the one called rolling hills, that varies the incline, is making treadmill desk working much better. It does get a little steep in the middle, but my old sore hip feels better than it has in years. Making the same stride over and over again wasn’t helping, but this is.

Treadmill desk log, day 20: I’m on retreat, loving it. Walking hours through the woods. And yet I do miss my treadmill desk. Stock up on canned foods, everyone: I miss a piece of exercise equipment. The Mayans were right. THE MAYANS WERE RIGHT!

Treadmill desk log, day 25: Today I investigated who at the dayjob might approve me getting a treadmill desk there, too.

Treadmill desk log, day 30: Today I hit 50 miles, and officially became annoying and evangelical about treadmill desks.

I’ve been asked for a video, so here is a video. I wrote a script so I wouldn’t be all “Buh, my desk moves.” James filmed me rehearsing it, then refused to film it again. He says it’s fine. I guess it’s fine. (I hate videos.)

I was just talking to a writer friend about how we want our scenes, our chapters, our stories as a whole, to be a little more jagged and gangly, with bits sticking out that don’t quite fit. Neatness is often seductive — you feel it’s “right” if it all fits together — but it is a small thing, and a false one.

The friend I was talking to was another writing Mommy, and we were particularly discussing our tendency to let the external pulls of our life creep into our fiction. Why did her scene end there? Because it was time for her to go pick up her daughter from school. Why are my chapters suddenly turning out at about 3,000 words? Because that’s how many “keeper” words I can write in a week. Deep true reasons of art, obviously.

But it is hard to resist the temptation to wrap things up at the end of the day, and make them neat. Leaving bits hanging feels like leaving wounds open. Or, less dramatically, like stopping your knitting in the middle of a row, without casting off and tying a knot. If you leave loose threads - won’t it all unravel? But writing is not knitting. Writing is wild. It does not prosper when we clip it short and box it up so. Ursula LeGuin wrote that all art tries to say the unsayable—and writing, God help us, tries to say the unsayable in words. It ought to be rough. It ought to be shaggy.

(A related point, which I won’t develop here: outlines don’t work for me. I observe that they work for other people but I don’t understand how they possibly could.)

Endings are of course place where one is tempted to pull all the threads together and tie a bunch of knots. That’s legitmate. You don’t want a novel that feels like it’s going to come to pieces in your hands. Novels - this is a remarkably controversial statement, but - novels are big stories. When you come to the end of a story you don’t want to be startled by the storyteller’s sudden silence. You don’t want to look up going: “wait, what’s wrong, did you choke on something? Did the transmission cut out? Did they leave out the last few pages? WHAT? WHAT!?” At the end of the story you want the sigh and the silence, and then the impulse to stand up and cheer. You don’t get that if you don’t make a good ending.

But many, many books go too far in making endings. They tie everything up too neatly. They end with a great clanging final thump.

The thing is, book endings aren’t really endings. (Unless they end with the world blowing up.) They often have that sense of launching something new, of going through a new door. Even something as simple as “and they lived happily ever after” is about putting a big door at the end of the novel and then opening it up. I personally like readers to be able to imagine the future of my characters, and to be able to glimpse what it is. It’s not too different than the way I like them to be able to glimpse the back stories of the assorted secondary characters. That these untold stories are there adds richness, even if no one writes them.

Endings are like … weddings, I suppose, which is why books often end with the bells ringing. In life it’s bad when weddings are viewed as endings. Anyone who’s successfully married will tell you a wedding is a beginning, or perhaps a climax at the end of Act One. Still, weddings have that quality I look for in novel endings, of ceremony and transition, of possibilities changing.

And like weddings, the happiest of endings can sometimes make me cry. Those are the best tears. Give me a book like that.

Yesterday I did a great deal of awesome writing, bringing my characters to a climax/crisis/realization/high-point thingy. (This is the technical term.) Today I put almost no words on paper.

I’m not stuck. I think I know what happens next, in broad strokes (which is more than I knew yesterday at this time), but I felt a resistant to writing it. I felt in need of some time to let the idea leaven and rise. So I took the time, doing some editing and note-making and doodling instead. And even though I’m missing a deadline soon (April 1? not gonna happen) I feel better for letting the dough sit.

I am not always — not often — this kind to myself, but I believe in the value of this sort of kindness. Sometimes it’s best to respect your reluctance when you don’t want to write. There may well be a reason for it.

See also: how to get stuck and brood.

Yesterday I spent quite a bit of time trying to come up with an English word, similar to arroyo or wadi, for a stream that runs only after a rainfall. Eventually I asked one of the hive minds (an online writers group) who came up with “wash” or “dry wash.” Arroyo and wadi were the words I knew, but “wash” was the one I wanted.

Why does it matter? Well, it matters because it’s for Sorrow’s Knot, and sometimes these high fantasies need a bit of care with language.

I remember reading how Tolkien swapped “tobacco” (which appears in The Hobbit) for “leaf” or “pipeweed” in The Lord of the Rings. He was unwilling to give up the actual pipes, but he did try to keep the Spanish loan-words out of his beloved and profoundly North-European Middle Earth. There’s a similar dance around the word “potatoes.”

Tolkien was, of course, a linguist — and is, of course, a master. Few of us laboring in his shadow would go so far as to worry about “potato,” and even if we did, we would not do it so well. But we should worry a little. High fantasy generally takes place “once upon a time,” or “long ago and far away.” It is hard enough for the reader to believe that the tale I’m writing now, on my laptop, with my iPod playing, could possibly come from such a distance. If I don’t use some care with language at the level of “dry wash” (or “potato”) I have no hope at all of pulling off such an audacious scam.

In other words: It breaks the spell of “this is an old tale” when a high fantasy contains thoughtless loan words. I say “thoughtless” because English is about half loan words if you go back far enough — it has a habit of jumping other languages in alleys and rifling through their pockets for stray vocabulary. But still, one can stick to the well-worn-in ones.

In other other words: don’t get me started on Middle-Earth-Knock-Off-Wannabes who use words like “okay.” “Vote for OK” was the slogan of the Van Buren campaign. Elves were not eligible to vote for Van Buren, and therefore shouldn’t use the word “okay.” High fantasy writers: Don’t cross the streams!

I got out to the Hermitage on Wednesday afternoon. I unpacked my food, put my grandmother’s quilt on the little bed, poked around the tiny space — it’s an old stone milk shed, smaller than the average dorm room, with walls two feet thick and a counter across one of the deep window ledges that serves a desk. Profoundly quiet. I thought: now what? So I went for a walk.

The centre has about 15 miles of woodlot trail. There was a messy thaw going on, snow turning into ice, turning into mud. Well, I thought, I can cope with that. My book needs a messy thaw. My goal for the retreat was to take apart the existing nine chapters of Sorrow’s Knot. I’m a feel-one’s-way writer, so often my new chapters, when sent out to beta readers, will be topped with a note such as: “I’m doing something different with Fawn and will take her out of chapters 1 -5. Pretend you haven’t met her.” There were four major shifts of that kind that needed retrofitting. After that I hoped to write the two or three remaining chapters that would finish the first half of the book.

Messy thaw. Muck about, get muddy. Watch for tiny bird tracks and beautiful moss. Can do. So I finished the first two chapters — the really hard part — on Wednesday and the remaining seven — not as hard, but much longer — on Thursday. Thursday was a good day: mild and sunny. I walked eight miles.

On Friday that grimmest of winter things: sleet, then freezing rain. Ice came ticking down: we got half an inch. And then snow — huge flakes, falling fast. And then more ice. It was lovely but I couldn’t go out. So I worked, in a broken stuck way, on chapter ten. Some decent stuff, not amazing. It felt — forced. Trapped. In a little milk shed in the middle of nowhere where it would probably be stuck until the spring thaw. Shit.

So I whimpered and whined. And I decided it would be okay to be nice to myself. Pity I didn’t the necessary nice-to-self stuff: a book. Plus there was no bathtub. Not bringing a book: that was dumb. I turned on my smartphone and started expressing broken stuckness via text message. You know, in the spirit of our desert fathers.

And that, of all things, helped. Mostly Seánan helped: listening to my stuckness and questions and helping me work through things. (If anyone needs a book midwifed, I recommend her.) My hubby helped too. How I missed him.

An idea came to me out of all those questions. The first act ends with main characters setting out on a journey. The why of that was clear to me in my last draft, but (based on my editorial letter) it was coming off as “idle curiosity” instead of (as I was hoping) “desperate quest.” As if Frodo wanted to see what Rivendell looked like. Rats. Okay: Why do they leave? How to make it explicit? A trigger, a reason a —

Oh, got it.

A sudden and miraculous breakthrough, one which opened up the whole middle of the story. I skipped head two chapters and started writing. On Saturday I wrote 4000 words. On Sunday 2000, but I was running out of strength.

Fortunately, at that point the kids showed up to take me home. We built a bonfire in the snow — their first campfire — and roasted marshmallows. They were extra sweet, glad to see me. Home again.

Well, blog, let’s see. It’s been awhile. Last week I finished an edit of the first half of my book in draft, Swan Riders. I discovered what the arc of the main character was somewhat late, and so there was a lot of moving stuff around. You’d think this would be mechanical, but in fact it was hugely satisfying. I even made myself cry.

Meanwhile, I’m thinking about Big Weird Poem again. It seems to be approaching chapbook length, and approaching done. I’m wondering if any publishers anywhere are interested in publishing a 40 page book. I may be DOOMED.

Meanwhile meanwhile, Sorrow’s Knot, the book I’m rewriting (usually mentioned around here in the context of how much trouble it’s giving me) is finally moving along. This is good because it’s due — EEEP! — April 1st.

This week I’m planning my first ever writing retreat. I’ve rented a hermitage in the Crieff Hills. I’m going on Wednesday and coming back Sunday. I’m planning to work on Sorrow’s Knot, and my goal is to finish the first half. Here’s the thing. I was really planning that I would completely re-do the first act of this novel and then try to salvage the last two acts. (The first act is the longest act by far, and takes up a half of the book. Then there’s a major turning point, and that’s what I want to write up to this week.) I’m starting to wonder if that’s going to happen — if I’m really going to end the first third in such a way that I can pick the second two thirds more or less intact. As I rewrite, it’s turning into a different book — and a better one, by far. But that makes the April 1st deadline pretty scary. Still, one must follow the energy.

I am currently fussing about my writing retreat, and sublimating said fussing into wondering about what food to take.

I even cast a Tarot about “how to move with my writing on retreat.” (I do not actually believe that shuffled pasteboard influences my life. I do, though, believe it’s useful to borrow an external perspective. Tarot is a mirror mets a dream mets an inkblot: always interesting, sometimes startling.) A notably intense casting: I got major arcana for three of four cards, including the Devil reversed for a signifier. This reads to me like a “break out of the rut” card, so: let go of the old draft of the back half, perhaps? “Deeper emotional connection and more equal footing,” sayeth the book. It’s kind of a wild energy card, though, so it could be (and I hope it will be) a big wild out-of-control few writing days.