Sorry it's been quiet here! I was on the wrong side of a deadline (it had passed) and I was knocking myself out to get a paying piece out of the door. It's gone now, and though there are others in the in-box, this blog -- and my novel -- are important and so here I am.
I need to pick a date and post it at Novel Goal for when I start writing, and also exactly what my goals are. Baby steps! I tend to be too ambitious and then it shuts me down.
And I need to get in gear here with my pre-novel planning. I said I would have a month for that. Time is passing. What is my pre-novel planning?
Are you a plotter or a pantser (seat of pants writer)? (And is that pantser or pantzer?)
My friends in my writer's group all seem to be plotters. They have colored sticky notes on boards posted on their walls. I'm not sure how their systems work, but I'm sure I could turn it into a great procrastination tool. As a disorganized person, I also think I would get stuck trying to remember which sticky note color meant what and make a mess of the whole thing anyway.
I think writing would be a much less harrowing task if I had plotted my novel all out before hand. I've tried this. And there are a couple of reasons why this method doesn't work for me.
First, writing from an outline is like work. Here's what you have to say, now say it. I get paid to do that, and though I do it well enough to get paid to do it again, there's not much room for my soul in this process. I have never been good at writing from an outline. In school, when they try to teach writing by teaching you to outline first, that was always a disaster for me. I can't write to an outline. I usually would end up writing the piece, then outlining what I had and turning that in. Very useful, huh? That whole outlining exercise.
I sometimes have clients that want me to do an outline first. I'll do one, with the warning that what they get may not fit the outline. But I promise that it will be much, much better -- and it is.
Then again, a scratchy, sketchy outline can be a good prop to keep me from running off into some kind of panic that puts me in a fetal position. I'll be 30 pages along and I don't know what happens next! So just kind of a sketchy thing (for some reason it has to be really disorganized looking -- handwritten with none of the lines running straight so I don't feel trapped) with a few possibilities for if I get stuck is what I use. Just to keep going for the next day or so. This sketchy thing doesn't take me all the way to the end and in fact only covers the next couple of events.
But the most important thing, for me, on why outlining or advance plotting doesn't work is that I can't write deeply from an outline. When I was in my MFA program, I spent one semester mentoring with Sharon Sheehe Stark. Now, when you mentored with somebody, you had to send them a packet every month containing two short stories (one could be a revision, the other had to be new) and two novel reviews, plus an explanation of what you were trying to accomplish and whether or not this was working. I was working full time and had had suffered a miscarriage. I was a mess but was so committed to my writing (and the program) that I pushed on. But I was afraid. I didn't know what I would find in that dark place inside me that was screaming with grief. I couldn't write from there. It was too soon, it was too bloody. So, I thought I would try something different. I came up with a story, plotted it in my mind and then on paper, and wrote the thing. Not too bad! I thought I had found a new way to write. Little wear and tear on the author, either.
I will never, ever forget Sharon's response to me. I don't even need to refer to it. "Very clever, Anne, and I don't mean that as a compliment. Every part of this story read like you knew what was going to happen from the beginning, except for one part."
And here I'll interrupt Sharon. There was one part where the story deviated from the outline and my heart took off running, spilling out words and images that were actually thrilling and authentic, perhaps even original. Sharon spotted this right away. My hair stood on end as I read her note. How could she tell? How did she know what part was pre-plotted and what part had spilled out on its own? They didn't look that different to me.
But she knew. And she was right. She told me that I didn't care about the characters, was not in touch with their deep emotions and that I was forcing the story. (How else to get them from point A to point B?) She told me to throw away everything but the one, spontaneous part of the story. Wow!
Then she went on to say, "You are stealing from your own excitement. You have taken the heart out of your story."
I thank God I had her that semester, and that she was gifted in seeing the truth of my writing and the truth behind my writing. It's much more difficult to write this way because it is scary. And there are many dead ends and false turns along the road. I will kill more trees than my plotter friends.
But this is what it takes. I need to trust that the mind that can dream such vivid and interesting dreams while I am asleep can dream vivid and interesting stories while awake. I'll try to help it along, but I'd better not try to tame it. I just hope I have the courage for this adventure without a map.
What about you? How are you going to write your novel?
Update: A wonderful, detailed post about this very subject -- and more to come -- is at The Writer's Roundabout. Well worth a visit!
