From FRANTIC to STEADY

 

As I’m rounding my fourth draft of my WIP, a novel for middle grades, I reflect on the process and how it has changed over my writing years. It’s not my “first round at the rodeo,” as the saying goes.

 

The creative process of earliest attempts, going back some years, were more intense. I would sometimes wake up in the middle of the night with a realization that there was a plot hole which needed fixing. I kept a pad and pen on the headboard and would jot it down to be addressed in the morning. In order not to wake my husband up I sometimes wrote in the dark, and blimey if I could make sense of my scribbles the next drafting day.

 

Many times, during first-drafting periods, I would realize that I had used the wrong word in a pivotal sentence and would turn the computer back on to revise. This could happen in the middle of dinner preparation or just before going to bed. Something inside me knew that if I didn’t take care of it, the insight would disappear into the void never to resurface again, and an important matter would be deserted for eternity.

 

I notice that the more times I had gone through this, the more relaxed the process had become. Drafting now is a steady and slow process. Each day’s session, once ended, stays quiet in slumber as my mind unwinds until the next day— when I go on to the next.

 

What hasn’t changed was my commitment to productivity, guarding the time I set from other incursions. A friend wants to get together or talk on the phone? Not during writing time, please. (Weekday mornings, with Wednesday being my vacay day.) Doctors’ appointments? Reserved for Wednesdays. Same for all other chores that can’t be done in the afternoon or evening.

 

In other words, I treat writing as a job. I know that for me this is the only way I can accomplish these marathons.

 

Writing no longer takes over my whole day. It has its allotted time, and the blessed focus and concentration this time brings. But today each novel drafting is a “one foot in front of the other,” “one day at a time,” to the finish line.

 

There is no universal wisdom here. Every creative must find how they work, and thus, how to work.

RIDING A WILD STALION

 

Having just completed the fourth draft of my work in progress (=WIP) and with two beta readers’ feedback to help navigate the last two drafts, I can now assess what an anomaly this current WIP has been.

 

I was never a true planner. I have a writing friend, a published novelist, who not only fully charts all the details, plot points and characters of her stories before she begins typing the first paragraph, but if she finds that her writing has so much as begun to stray off the planned course, she deletes those pages and gets back on the road she had marked.

 

I can’t imagine writing this way. Too much like the homework back in school days: I know I must do it, I have a feeling of satisfaction when it’s done, but the work itself is torture, if you find extreme tedium torturous.

 

I know two writers who are complete pansters, (=writing by the seat of their pants) no plan whatsoever. They sit down to a writing session with no idea what will appear on the screen/page. Stephen King claims to be one. He sits to write in order to find out what will happen next. This is successful only for those who have so ingrained story structure in their creative mind that it turns out brilliantly, or at least not a complete going-nowhere-mess.

Panstering is very much like a flying trapeze without a safety net.

 

I had attempted this once a few years back and gave up after the first chapter. I then sat down to make a rough chart and proceeded as I usually do. I follow the chart loosely, discovering some surprises along the way but basically staying the charted course. Some call this “discovery writing.” It’s a plan that is not detailed, and the details are spontaneous and immensely enjoyable parts of the process.

 

I started my current WIP this way. But this time, right after the first chapter, the story went its own way. I had so completely lost control of this galloping horse that I didn’t stop to glance at my charted plan. What was happening on the page bore little resemblance to my plan.

 

It was as if I attached the reigns of a trusted old workhorse to a carriage. Once we left the carriage house, the horse began to gallop. To my horror, I discovered it was not the horse I thought I had attached, but a wild stallion. I was driving a carriage that a young wild horse I'd never met before had taken over. I had no control.

 

I’d start every writing session dreading where it was going. I had no idea where it would end.

 

Well, it did end. A second draft surprised me, because it sort of held together.

 

What’s next? Who knows. But it’s been an experience.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE TO WRITE A NOVEL?

 

Someone asked me yesterday how long it takes to write a novel. The National Novel Writing Month (=NaNoWriMo, November) makes folks who don't write novels think it takes a month to write a full-length novel for adults.

Articles such as this (from Writers Digest) give a wild range of two and a half days to sixteen years.

Seems to me the definition of what constitutes writing a novel is what needs clarifying, because these estimates are comparing apples to oranges, or more likely— watermelons to olives. Technically, both are fruits. But this is where the similarity ends.

It’s not only the size and scope, but what do they mean by “writing a novel in X number of days.”

If NaNoWriMo is the definer, we’re speaking about finishing a first draft. Writers know that is just the beginning. It has become a sort of fashion among genre writers to fast-draft a first draft. A month’s first draft will be followed by many more, but you could claim to have written the novel in a month.

When the claim is that it took many years, we are not speaking of working on the novel five days a week for years. These books had long stretches of sitting in a drawer, real or virtual, before the writer finished the umpteenth draft and called it done.

If we look for any kind of metric, those who do not write novels would do better to ask about the general rhythm or work discipline of different writers. Every day? Only on weekends? Now and again? How many hours at a writing session?

And there, too, are wild differences. No wrong and right, just long and write.

©Tom Gauld

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