A few nights ago, I sat down to write this blog post and realized I wrote a similar one almost exactly one year ago. I'm taking this as portent of a second finished book in my future.
Let me set the stage for you: It is a warm summer's evening in Calabasas, CA. A young writer is seated at the local Starbucks, earbuds in place, laptop open, staring at the work she has written thus far. A good start for an evening of writing, yes? The only problem is that the past three months have not been productive--as far as writing is concerned-- and she feels estranged from the manuscript. She skims through the most recent chapter and realizes she and the characters haven't spoken in weeks. She had thrown them into a crisis, and then casually walked out of their lives, leaving them to fend for themselves.
Now, they were not speaking to her.
She nursed a creamy hot chocolate as she tried to make sense of the tangle the characters had created in her absence. Characters who used to love each other were now giving each other the cold shoulder; locations that were once safe were now menacing; story threads that were alive and vibrant were now rotting corpses.
We're going to need a bigger hot chocolate, the writer thought.
But instead of ordering up another grande with cream, she packed up and went to Kinko's, where she printed the 30,000 mischievous words in manuscript form. And then she set about re-initiating herself into her characters' lives. As she read, she found herself saying, "I'm so sorry, Charlie, I had forgotten that happened to you. No wonder you are angry." Or, "That's completely irrational; the Evelyn I know would never have done that. You need to apologize." By the 30,000th word, the characters had welcomed the writer back into their world.
Which is a good thing, too, because this writer was starting to doubt her sanity. Is it normal for a writer to need to re-read the story she came up with in order to make sense of it? I felt like such a failure, until I remembered my last novel. I must have printed 5 versions of that manuscript along the way, not counting the 7 drafts I completed once the story was completely on paper.
To me, writing is a lot like tying shoelaces. When I outline, I poke the holes through which the laces will thread. If I don't poke enough of them, there's nothing for the laces to grab onto, and the reader will fall out of the story-- I mean, the foot will fall out of the shoe. If there are too many holes, the foot will lose circulation, and the reader will feel overwhelmed by plot.
Once I've outlined, I begin threading the laces, hitting each plot point along the way. But every so often, I notice that the laces are too loose, or too tight, and I have to go back and readjust. This time, that happened at the 30,000 word mark. It will probably happen again in a few weeks, and again when I've laced through the final hole. Then I'll tighten and loosen until I'm sure the reader won't fall out or suffer from pins and needles. Finally, I'll tie it into a little bow, and send it on it's way into the world.
Agent Kate Testerman (aka Daphne Unfeasible) uses shoes as her avatars and in her blog posts. I think that's appropriate. As an agent, she tries on dozens of shoes a day in her slushpile. When an author queries, she's basically saying, "Here's this shoe I've created. It's just my style and size. Does it fit you too?" When the author finds an agent with the same foot size and style preferences, they pair up and raid each others' closets.
Have you ever had someone else tie your shoes for you? Afterward, your shoe feels alien. The wrong bits are tight, the wrong bits are loose, your skin is pinched, the knot is off to the side... For me, that's what it's like to have others critique my drafts. I think, THAT's what you wanted emphasized? But, that part is not nearly as interesting as THIS PART. Are you sure? Ok.... And then I incorporate those suggestions--when I agree, of course. And then the story feels... off for a bit. So I do my own round of revisions after all the reader feedback. I make sure I'm the person to tie the knot, so the shoe feels right to me. After all, I picked out the color and style, it's made to fit my foot. If it fits on anyone else's foot, that's a bonus.
Let me set the stage for you: It is a warm summer's evening in Calabasas, CA. A young writer is seated at the local Starbucks, earbuds in place, laptop open, staring at the work she has written thus far. A good start for an evening of writing, yes? The only problem is that the past three months have not been productive--as far as writing is concerned-- and she feels estranged from the manuscript. She skims through the most recent chapter and realizes she and the characters haven't spoken in weeks. She had thrown them into a crisis, and then casually walked out of their lives, leaving them to fend for themselves.
Now, they were not speaking to her.
She nursed a creamy hot chocolate as she tried to make sense of the tangle the characters had created in her absence. Characters who used to love each other were now giving each other the cold shoulder; locations that were once safe were now menacing; story threads that were alive and vibrant were now rotting corpses.
We're going to need a bigger hot chocolate, the writer thought.
But instead of ordering up another grande with cream, she packed up and went to Kinko's, where she printed the 30,000 mischievous words in manuscript form. And then she set about re-initiating herself into her characters' lives. As she read, she found herself saying, "I'm so sorry, Charlie, I had forgotten that happened to you. No wonder you are angry." Or, "That's completely irrational; the Evelyn I know would never have done that. You need to apologize." By the 30,000th word, the characters had welcomed the writer back into their world.
Which is a good thing, too, because this writer was starting to doubt her sanity. Is it normal for a writer to need to re-read the story she came up with in order to make sense of it? I felt like such a failure, until I remembered my last novel. I must have printed 5 versions of that manuscript along the way, not counting the 7 drafts I completed once the story was completely on paper.
To me, writing is a lot like tying shoelaces. When I outline, I poke the holes through which the laces will thread. If I don't poke enough of them, there's nothing for the laces to grab onto, and the reader will fall out of the story-- I mean, the foot will fall out of the shoe. If there are too many holes, the foot will lose circulation, and the reader will feel overwhelmed by plot.
Once I've outlined, I begin threading the laces, hitting each plot point along the way. But every so often, I notice that the laces are too loose, or too tight, and I have to go back and readjust. This time, that happened at the 30,000 word mark. It will probably happen again in a few weeks, and again when I've laced through the final hole. Then I'll tighten and loosen until I'm sure the reader won't fall out or suffer from pins and needles. Finally, I'll tie it into a little bow, and send it on it's way into the world.
Agent Kate Testerman (aka Daphne Unfeasible) uses shoes as her avatars and in her blog posts. I think that's appropriate. As an agent, she tries on dozens of shoes a day in her slushpile. When an author queries, she's basically saying, "Here's this shoe I've created. It's just my style and size. Does it fit you too?" When the author finds an agent with the same foot size and style preferences, they pair up and raid each others' closets.
3 comments:
Fantastic. I laughed out loud reading this, a couple of times, in fact.
What did you do to Charlie??? I don't know if I'm going to be a fan of this book!!!
This is a comment well after the fact... and well after you directed me to your blog in the first place for your NaNoWriMo post... but then, of course, I had to read other stuff and I've had your shoelaces post open in one of my tabs for quite some time now and finally got around to reading it... and I love both the analogy and how you interact with your characters... because I feel the same way about my characters and even though I have no formal outline, that laced shoe makes so much sense. Such a clever metaphor.
And THEN... scrolled down and you have a story you've been posting? My reading is apparently not yet finished...
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