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A Door, A Window, A WhateverPosted by dhoffman on January 6th, 2009

An interesting and what feels like productive evening.  I said I’m not going into word counts or what’s what, and I won’t, but I will say that I’m feeling pretty good about things.

I had a mostly-agonizing day as my head is clearly interested in picking something to write, but was unwilling to show me the door to that something.  Does that make sense?  Whenever I’m starting something — whether it’s a new book, a new chapter, or just a moment in a book, I’m looking for the door, the window, some opening that lets me into the scene.

Here: you can write a main character crossing the street, getting on the subway and going downtown, and you don’t have to make it particularly interesting to convey that information.  Like, “Galen crossed the street, got on the subway and went downtown.”  Wow, awesome.

Sometimes you can get away with stuff like that.  Sometimes, though, that momeent you’re describing requires more art than that.  Maybe it’s an important decision, crossing the street and getting on that subway.  Maybe Galen doesn’t like riding the subway, or he feels silly going downtown when he thinks he should be going home.

At those times, there’s an opening you have to find that’s just the exact, right, perfect, appropriate way to describe the scene.  Sometimes it comes easy.  Other times . . . not so much.

Starting out Lions Together was like that.  I knew I needed Gabe and Nikki on a plane together.  But how to get them there?  Are they driving to the airport?  Checking luggage?  Are they the kind of people who’e check luggage for a weekend trip (no, they’re not)?  Or maybe just start them out as they’re getting into their seats, stowing their carry-ons.

Those little decisions an author makes a million times in the course of a story are what makes the story interesting to read.  For the most part, they’re unquantifiable to boot.  There’s no “right” way to describe someone walking across the street, getting on the subway and going downtown.  It has to fit the particular circumstance and that circumstance’s greater context.

So a slide-rule isn’t going to help much.

At any rate, I might have found one such door tonight.  I’ll check it out tomorrow and see if I still feel that way, but right now I’m feeling alright, yes I am.

Still an Idiot, But At Least I Have a WordcountPosted by dhoffman on December 30th, 2008

So, I deleted about 100 words from the start of Chapter Fifteen and then wrote 1,245 words.  I sort of petered out in the middle of a sentence about security cameras (don’t ask), but I think I found my way back in.

There are two dangers, I find, with National Novel Writing Month (for me, at least).  The first is that the breakneck pace of pounding out 50,000+ words in a single, crowded, 30-day period tends to leave one feeling drained at the end of that month.  It happened to me last year and I never really got my act together until the following November.

The second danger is that I’m focusing so hard on writing that I’m not focusing on WHAT I’m writing.  Which is not to say that the core of what’s down is bad, it’s just that when I actually set down to get back into it, if I’m being more thoughtful and considerate of where I’m going . . . it’s tough to get back in.

More than a year later, I’ve just now figured out how to get back into Animals.  My thoughts on that are so all-encompassing it’s actually a little torturous going back to Lions.  Well, it was.  Then I was walking to the kitchen to get a glass of water, contemplating bagging it for the evening and playing some World of Warcraft when I came up with a great way to skip what I wasn’t enjoying, what felt like more of the same (as in, “more of what the last five chapters were filled with”) and get into some cool, new, interesting stuff.

Turns out it worked, and while I do wish I was on Animals, I also enjoyed immensely, being back with Nikki.

I should be parked in front of the computer again tomorrow.  I don’t know if I expect to get thousands and thousands of words, but I’ll be happy just moving the story forward again.  I’m about 1/3 through the chapter with a pretty clear line of what’s coming next.

Oh, and for whatever it’s worth, this month of introspection on Lions Together and Animals has given me a pretty clear idea of where I go on both stories.  Lions Together needs — NEEDS — massive rewrites, but I think I know where that needs to happen.  For example, a lot of Chapter Two has to go.  It’s clunky and it has characters I don’t think we’re ever going to see again.

Regardless, I’m going again.  Maybe not full steam ahead but really, full steam ahead is kind of rough trade, when you get right down to it.  I don’t have a deadline, artificial or not, and I’m just enjoying the ride.