JUMPSTARTING TODAY’S WRITING SECTION

 

When writing anything other than a blog post or a short picture book text, as the saying goes— it’s a marathon, not a sprint.

 

Beginnings are easier for me, because they come in as a sort of voice with sentences formed that have wind beneath their wings. Watching a helicopter lift off would be a good analogy to the experience.

 

Endings have their own energy. Everything that came before is adding up, and the reflection of the opening hovers over-- projecting the outline of the runway to landing.

 

It’s the long middle that looms over like a gray cloud every time. The feeling that I have no idea where to go and my mind feels empty. How will I get through today's section? I have nothing.

 

A few years ago, when I knew I’d be writing middle grade novels not as a one-off fluke (my first) but every year after that, I devised a technique that works for me during those seemingly endless middle of the story writing sessions.

 

I end each writing session with an evocative sentence. One that charms me. One that hopefully intrigues a reader. One that does the job the very next morning when I sit down feeling I have nothing to say.

 

The same words writers conjure to draw the reader in serve to pull this writer into the next chapter, and off we go.

 

I resolved never to end a day’s session in a static place, and this helped me get to the finish line one section at a time.

 

If your artwork seems to move in starts and stops, perhaps try this way. It takes self-discipline to halt the vehicle just as it moves into a higher gear. But then, it takes self-discipline to write a long story, paint an oil painting, or compose a symphony.

 

It’s all good. Happy navigating the middles to you.

PLOT, Stick to the PLOT

 

There is a ubiquitous how-to writing suggestion to cut any of the text which isn’t serving the plot. This includes description of landscape, weather, and general sideshows.

 

Writers of yore had no such compunctions, and leisurely took us to places where we stopped and smelled the roses before resuming the characters’ journeys to their resolutions. Poor Tolstoy would have been eviscerated by contemporary editors for the almost novella-length chapters that veered off the plot. I know, I read War and Peace, the whole thing.

 

Today, we are told we don’t have the time. Readers don’t have the patience. No one can stand still and wait for the narration when it takes the slightest rest.

 

I had an editor tell me that a half-page section of dialogue, while hilarious, didn’t advance the action. When I suggested it served both as more character revelation and also for comic relief, the editor’s response was that readers, especially young ones, don’t have the time for that. Cut, cut, CUT.

And, for that matter, also cut the view of the countryside as seen by the main character from the moving train window. Never mind that the train is moving fast. The plot is what must move here, so unless there’s a killer on the train who’s looking for our hero, we don’t need to see or hear our hero’s thoughts on the train. Move, move, MOVE.

 

I humbly suggest we should strike a middle ground here. Resting places in novels are precious spaces, and I intend to keep them, because as a reader I need them just as much as the fictional characters do.