It was a dark and stormy night. I understand this is considered a writing nadir but actually I think it makes a pretty good opening line, irregardless of what the naysayers say about it.
P.S. I am also rooting for Pluto to regain status as a planet.
novels
My Ultimate Goal as a Writer
I want to write a novel that makes people feel the way my favorite songs make me feel.
You Can Talk About Writing – Too Much
If I talk about what I am writing – or planning to write – I make the writing more difficult and put the piece at risk of getting set aside, ne’er to be finished. It doesn’t matter what the listener’s reaction is – enthusiasm or boredom, support or disdain – sharing the ideas damages my process of converting ideas to fiction. After I talk about writing, I simply feel less urgency to get it done.
Seems like it would be fun to brainstorm with other writers or use them as sounding boards. But I’m not sure I could even talk to the cats without jeopardy. Maybe I could talk to a mirror? Never mind about that. Creepy.
Am I the only one in this situation? That doesn’t seem possible. Other writers, which side of this fence are you on?
You Can Think About Writing – Too Much
I do a lot of planning for every novel. I have the whole thing roughly laid out before I start writing and I decide what I want to accomplish each day before I begin. And yet, I never sit down to think about my writing. All my best ideas come when I am brushing my teeth or weeding the garden. Then, when I do sit down to write, the unplanned, unanticipated bits are so often the best products of any writing session. Furthermore, if I need to solve a particular writing problem, I can’t sit down and stare at the screen or the page. I have to take a hike instead, or do some housework, or go to sleep.
All of which makes me conclude that my un-, sub-, and super-*conscious brain is a better writer than my conscious one. And I speculate that all the planning and the structure are craft equivalents of brushing my teeth: they give my conscious brain something to do while the rest of my brain gets the real job done.
*Damn, now where did I get that phrasing from? “Un-, sub-, and supernatural forces” I think that is how the original went … something by Stoppard, I believe… Rosencrantz?
Plot: My Gratitude at Being Surprised
When it comes to a plot, like anybody I want a story that hangs together — and for me it is so satisfying to get to the end of the book and find that all of the subplots were intrinsic and pivotal to the main plotline. However, when it comes to a plot, what I most cherish is surprise. This is a consequence of my many years working as a motion picture story analyst. At the rate of 5 novels or 10 screenplays per week, I read and critiqued materials submitted to movie studios. After several years of this, you’ve seen it all, plot-wise. That was a long time ago, but unfortunately I still anticipate most plot twists. Sometimes I like an otherwise mediocre movie just because it has some story element that I didn’t see coming. I am less charitable with mediocre novels; I suppose that is because my emotional investment in a novel can be so much greater.
One of the (many) things that hooked me on the Potter books was how many surprises J.K. Rowling conjured. I think I was in book 5 before I anticipated a single surprise. Ahhhhhhh.
What I Want in a Character
Sometimes I read non-fiction but it never grabs me. It’s novels that grab and shake and catapult and expand me. I read novels to get immersed in the lives of people I can care about. I don’t have to like them. I hope they will be complicated, not trivial or easy to understand; nothing better than a character who baffles me – so long as I perceive that the author isn’t B.S.ing me, that the mysteries and the discrepancies are resolvable, and that once I spend more time with the character, I will start to understand.
Authors don’t fully understand the characters they “create”, even when they think they do. There’s a part of me that has the chutzpah to think that I design my characters. There’s another, dazzled part of me that senses them flying in through a door I’ve managed to open, just a crack.
The best characters are like great song lyrics. A few twists of phrase and they change me, profoundly and forever.
Required Writing 