My last post concerned the idea that where you write can affect how you write. This post voices my overwrought opinion that what you know can affect how you write. In other words, sometimes knowledge can hogtie you, where ignorance lets you run free.
I wrote my first novel in six months. Certainly, it needs a deeper edit and, since I’m the only one who’s read it, there’s a good chance some revision is in its future. But still, it’s a whole novel. By contrast my second novel is taking more than twice as long. Why?
Probably the main reason for me, is that I know more about writing now. NO! I know more writing RULES now. When I wrote that first novel, I was just a Reader. I could spell and had a geekish grasp on grammar, but I hadn’t read any how-to-write manuals, or taken any classes or seminars. I just loved reading fiction and making up stories of my own. I usually kept these stories in my head, but occasionally I’d start writing them down. I’d even started a few novels, but never finished one. Then, a chance meeting sparked an idea that I couldn’t shake, and before I knew it, I had started writing another novel. This time the writing was different; the story flowed.
I had a wonderful time writing that book because I didn’t know it was supposed to be hard.
Back then, I wasn’t a Writer. I didn’t know all the rules that now cause me to second guess myself a thousand times a day. I didn’t know only well-published authors are allowed to use adverbs and adjectives and dialogue tags other than said. I didn’t know you should never start a book with a prologue, or with the weather, or that certain things had to happen at page 100, or 200, or whenever. I just wrote the story the way it made sense to me. Oh, how I wish I could write unencumbered like that again.
Now, under the burden of all these rules, I have a hard time letting the story flow. I’ve read some writing tips—underage rules—and tried some of them, but they didn’t work for me. I even tried typing blindfolded, but claustrophobic panic put an end to that.
And if I let myself think about writing the life-or-death query letter, or the number of other writers vying for “my” slot on the release list, or the state of the publishing industry—well, I start to wonder if I shouldn’t do myself a favor by deleting everything in my Writing file and taking up Reading again.
I know it would take awhile to quit editing as I read, but I think I could do it.
Really.
Except, well, there’s this one story idea …
I lived in Indiana when I wrote my first novel, and I wrote it while sitting in my bedroom beside a bay window looking into the woods. I wrote that novel in six months. Now, I live in the central valley of California. And though my home is on a street lined with shade trees, and I can hear the birds, I can also hear traffic and all the noise gardeners make in various neighbors’ yards each day of the week. My progress on this novel? It’s one year in, and I’m still not done.
taking place in her home and garden, I had little problem, but the rest of the book is set almost exclusively in a coastal town, and it’s been much slower going. I have to work harder to get in the mood, to place my mind in the setting. It would be so much easier, if could see the ocean, smell the air, feel the breeze, hear the gulls outside my window as I wrote.
In the mysterious ways these things happen, it was just as well I started writing full-time then because, two months later, I broke a bone in my dominant hand and wasn’t able to use my jewelry tools again until recently. I could, however, type—one handed, for a while, but still.
Things have been a little silly around this blog lately, read the last two posts and comments, if you don’t believe me. Thank you all for sticking with me. I needed that bit of levity. However, I’m going to go deeper today … though, knowing me, I won’t be too serious about it.
I would never tell you that I love quiet indie movies like The Good Girl and Wendy and Lucy, or that I’ve seen The Apostle at least five times.
And I can’t think of any reason to mention that I’ve never eaten pizza that measures up to my expectations, rarely eat ice cream, love black jelly beans, and still hope someday to find those original candy lipsticks that were wrapped in gold foil, not the imitation ones they sell in the vintage candy shops.
… well, I could, I just think it’s better storywise to reveal it later. It occurs to me this is sort of like a strip tease. I have to reveal enough to pique your interest, but keep enough covered to tease you into staying around for more. I want it to be obvious that her reactions are not those of an emotionally healthy character, but I don’t want the reader to dislike her because of that.
the world. You hope that all you have taught them has taken hold, and they will be all right in the big bad world. Though you know the people they meet will not love and protect them the way you do, you pray that most will treat them well, and you dream they will find someone who cares for them as much as you do.
I can state -- almost unequivocally -- that the title of this blog does not refer to my mental state. It refers to my writing, which does, of course, flow out of my mind. Sometimes the process of writing is messy, sometimes weird, sometimes beautiful -- and always harder than I wish, but I love it. As I wander back into the real world from time to time, I hope to entertain you with my musings. I am currently writing a novel (working title: Trilogy), which will fall in the category Nathan Bransford describes as the "type of book that is both literary and yet commercial, familiar and yet exotic, well-written but not too dense, accessible but with some depth." He calls this "book club fiction", as in -- the kind of book your friends would choose to read together and discuss. Or Oprah might pick? One can only dream!
