Lilith Saintcrow

It’s Friday again, which means another chapter of Selene is live. And it’s time for another writing post. This time I have a subject I promised to treat–the irrepressible Fanbot*, this last week, asked me if I work on stories in a linear fashion, or in a non-linear fashion. (I did type “non-linearly” but my inner editor twitched and foamed at the mouth pretty hard on that one, for some effing reason.)

The answer is, it varies. Before I get started, though, check out this news item about a Japanese movie dealing with the idea of “cruel art”. I found that fascinating–but let’s stay on target, shall we?

Let’s assume that I’m under deadline for a piece of writing. This is a good assumption because the overriding objective I have (especially when under deadline) is to finish the damn piece. (Please note that I’m not talking about my trunk novels, or about pieces I poke at solely for my own gratification.) To that end, I generally have a daily goal of wordcount; I don’t care where the words go in the story as long as I get enough of them out on a daily basis.

I also do not care if those words are GOOD according to the censor in my head. At the point of sheer brute production, the point where I am creating a whole story, I don’t give a damn whether they’re good or not, I just care that they’re there.

I should back up and explain this a little. I do care about producing quality work. But in the fever-heat of creation, it is so easy for the internal naysayer, that Internal Censor, to kill a work stone-cold dead or trap you in timesuck and ongoing masturbatory revision by the simple feat of saying these words aren’t good enough. During sheer creation quality is not my problem, it’s the Muse’s problem–and things go better when I leave it to that bonbon-eating bitch.

When I talk about “submission to the work”, this is what I mean. You have a story to tell, you just have to get it out. You can fix technical burps and fiddles later, but you absolutely must have a whole corpse of raw footage before you can edit it into a reasonable work of art. That’s why it’s called a “work” of art.

Now (bringing us back to the subject at hand) sometimes the work decides it’s not going to come out in a linear fashion. Sometimes the ending comes first or there’s false starts, I have to do the middle and build the story around one scene (like smoke, actually, which started with the vision of Rose looking into the alley and combat boots twitching from behind a dumpster). Most of the time the book starts with the hook, like Dante Valentine’s very first whispered line (My working relationship with Lucifer started on a rainy Tuesday.) Sometimes it’s the end that I get first, like the crucifixion scene in mirror or the words exchanged between Dante and Lucifer at the very end of To Hell and Back (“Here I stand, Lucifer, and not all the hosts of Hell shall move me”/”Not all the hosts of Hell are necessary, Necromance. Just one.”)

When that happens, it’s horrible for a pantser. Yes, I am a pantser. I write by the seat of my pants. I am not a plotter; a plotter has an outline for the book. (Note that this is a continuum, writers fall in varying points along the continuum. I tend to fall near the pantser end. This is not a value judgment, it’s just an observation.) There is nothing as freaked-out as a pantser who has to trust that all these disparate chunks of text will somehow turn into a coherent book. If I do indeed have an ulcer, I am sure worrying about the chunks of steaming text I have to fit together is a small but significant part of its inception.

I talk sometimes about “submission to the work” (especially when I have had one too many glasses of wine and get misty-eyed). Strictly put, it is my job to show up each day, every day, and be ready to do the damn work. It is the Muse’s job to provide the story and the thematic elements; at the point where I am writing the zero draft, it is not my problem to worry about whether or not the story is Good Enough.

When I have the whole zero draft, then I can start worrying about Good Enough. And a funny thing happens–when I submit to the story and let the Muse worry about the goddamn quality control during the heat of creation, I go back to that draft weeks later when my eye is fresh and I find stuff I didn’t even know I’d written.

Herein lies the miracle of creativity: Most of that stuff is actually okay, if not pretty good.

I find that the story hangs together in a coherent fashion (most of the time). Sure, there’s defects, both large (structural) and cosmetic, but those are far more easily fixed and stitched together once I have the whole corpse. I can even get you a brand-new ending (my editor for the Valentine series can vouch for this) and tweak the entire level of darkness in a book with relative ease–once I have the whole frocking book out.

It took me a long time to get to the point where I could tell myself not to care about quality while I was creating**. Because while you’re creating, worrying about “quality” is just another way of giving the Internal Censor carte blanche to eff you up bigtime. At the point of actually getting the zero draft out there, don’t worry about whether or not it’s a good story. Just worry about getting the goddamn thing out of your head and onto the paper. As Stephen King had a character say in IT***, it might be a terrible novel, but it will no longer be a terrible unfinished novel.

But I’m drifting again. I do a lot of the work of plotting inside my head, and I work on whatever scene is “hot”–the one I’m “seeing” most clearly inside my noggin at the moment. Sometime the book builds itself from the beginning to the middle and then on to the end, but more often it doesn’t. For example, the current Jill Kismet book is leapfrogging itself in time as thematic elements assemble themselves, and I am still struggling with just getting the work out there and not going back and deleting while I work. (See? Even after eighteen books published and twelve or so unpublished, I STILL struggle with this. It never gets easier, the problems just get more interesting and stubborn.) Either way of working on a piece is fine, as long as I’m making progress toward getting the damn thing done.

The daily goal of wordcount helps me with that. I know a lot of people say, “Well, but focusing on wordcount just creates more stress! It actually blocks me/scares me/makes me avoid writing.”

To which I reply, honey, if that goal scares you, maybe you should find another career. I know a lot of people don’t agree with my “do it every day” ethos, but I’m looking at this problem as someone whose money for rent and my kids’ groceries largely depends on me producing work with reasonable efficiency and quality. Once one reaches a certain point of practice and technique, the quality is there–it’s hard NOT to get better if you keep writing and listening to your editors/beta readers/readers. But you have got to produce before you have any chance of getting better–really, it’s like sex. You stand a vastly better chance of getting some and getting good if you freakin’ show up in the first place. Consistently showing up on the page in the first place is critical to any kind of getting better.

So, my advice to the writers who ask me whether the order you write the story in matters is…don’t worry about that, just worry about the story getting written. Any road you use to get there in a reasonable amount of time is fine. At the risk of trotting out a hackneyed cliche, there is no right way to write a novel. There is only the right way of writing this particular novel, and finding that way can be a matter of trained instinct, dumb luck, or trial-and-error. Let the Muse worry about the order, the thematic bits, the quality control, and the story itself.

That bitch needs to earn those bonbons, dammit.

Over and out.

*Who does the best thrifthorror, and who was kind enough to send me a pair of kung fu kitsch figurines.
**Note that I am still not fully there. It is a process, and one you never get to the end of.
***Which has an amazing number of little tidbits about the creative process in it, by the way.

Oh, thank God.

I’ve finally reached the point at which the book has begin to “jell” together–as in Jell-O setting. The sudden shock of “rightness” when the thing finally pulls together in a coherent fashion instead of a thousand little tiny things zooming off in several different directions…it’s awesome. There is pretty much nothing like this feeling, unless it’s the relief of the last set of revisions sent off, or the first time an editor says, “I like it!”

I know I’ve been bitching a lot about this book, but it’s mostly because the interconnected vignettes are hard for me to write until I get that sudden jolt of rightness. It’s like the train backing up to push the couplings together*, then jolting forward, one car at a time, slowly building until the critical threshold is passed and the momentum forward starts to pull the whole thing along. So it’s a train instead of a lump of disparate metal parts. The motion has given it a new character.

Moments like this aren’t what I write for–I do it because I’ve got no choice–but they sure help.

* The Muffin told me about this. Isn’t it a great metaphor?

First: Steelflower and Hunter’s Prayer are both shipping through Amazon! Huzzah! I hear Steelflower is shipping through Barnes & Noble too. This means they’re out, O-W-T spells OUT! *grin*

And nowe, Ye Olde Bulleted Liste, againne, for I finde I hath brainpower not enoughe to smooshe a flea with thee Booke eatyng my tyme.

* Yeah, can you tell Chaucer Hath Blog has a new entry up? A hilarious new entry that deals with Blazing Man. I particularly hooted with laughter over the buying of pardons. I’m also reading Ivanhoe with the Selkie. Merry Olde Misspellings (that were perfectly acceptable and even standard in their own time), ahoy!

* I expected the most recent installment of Selene to create more of a stir since it has filthy pretty-much-noncon smexxors. But maybe I just didn’t pull it off well enough. Or maybe I was just an idiot when I worried it might shock people. Maybe I’m a prude? I didn’t think it was possible, but…

* I really wish more people knew about Sheila Simonson, particularly her Regencies, which I think are just the most awesome Regencies around. I know a lot of people love Georgette Heyer, but she (and most other Regency authors) leave me cold. Simonson, however, I LOVE with the flaming passion of a thousand suns. I just got out A Cousinly Connexion the other day and pretty much enjoyed myself wherever I opened the book up, which is rare. I found out Uncial Books is re-releasing Love & Folly soon–consider me a happy, happy camper.

* Speaking of books I wish more people knew about, I loved Midori Snyder’s Oran Trilogy (first book here) and was thrilled to find out they’d been re-released with new covers. I loved the old covers but I’m gladdened by the re-release more than I can say. I was looking for them about a year ago and could not find them anywhere, which made me a Sad Panda.

* I am thinking of decommissioning the Penguin Love cups. The person I had that tagline with (because penguin love is the sweetest love, delivered in a Cartman voice) is no longer a part of my life. It used to be a tagline we just trotted out whenever something flat-out didn’t make sense; it was out way of commemorating the absurdity of the world. It is no longer. I’m going to have to put together some new cup designs.

* Last but not least, oh holy hell, can I just please write this circus book in sequence instead of in little weird bits needing to be held together by wire? This is beyond a doubt the sloppiest-looking half a draft I’ve ever worked on, and it’s mine. *headbonkety*

I now return you to your regularly scheduled programming…

I do. I love my children.

But sometimes I just want muzzles. Or a cone of silence. Oh sure, it’s okay for them to play their music/cartoons/games at top volume, but the instant I try to sneak off to a quiet corner and watch some Musecrack for Perry the hellbreed, sent by the lovely Selkie?*

Of course they have to get progressively louder and louder so I can’t watch what I want. Because they want my attention. Even now the Prince is hanging on the arm of my chair, watching me type and making little clippity-cloppety horse noises.

And people wonder why I’ve learned to shut out distractions and just write. It’s self-defense. I’d never get anything done otherwise. A few moments of “yes, I see you, you’re lovely, now let me work,” goes a long way.

I’m in that itchy stage of creation where I just want to be writing, thank you. I don’t want to be interrupted for anything, which makes me a cranky Lili. Getting dinners and housework out of the way puts me in a lake of sharply-controlled frustration. It’s going to be this way until I hit the three-quarters slump–that is, when the book is three-quarters done and becomes the Book That Will Not Die, Stabbity Stabbity. Thankfully, I’ve been able to go on long walks–part of the fitness regimen**, I suppose, but also a very necessary part of the creative process. I think best when I’ moving, and I think doubly well when I’m alone. I really, really understand Bukowski’s constant harping on solitude, even if I deplore his misogyny and alcoholism.

Hey, nobody’s perfect.

So I’m off to get a few more words out. And the kids, well, they are still buzzing around. Fed, watered, and cosseted, now they are watching Looney Tunes.

It’s close to a perfect day already.

* She’s making up for sending me all sorts of sweaty medieval action that woke up Tristan.

** Because I think it’s about time I took my body back from my mother’s constant calling me ugly, thank you. More on that later.

I haven’t even had any breakfast yet. But it’s so quiet here–all the kids are sleeping–that I am taking the opportunity to touch a keyboard while I can finish whole thoughts without being interrupted.

Shocking, isn’t it? I write with chaos occurring around me all the time. It’s weird to have peace and quiet.

The next chapter of Selene is up. I spent some part of the weekend scheduling further posts, and making sure they’re formatted correctly. I am kind of nervous about Wednesday, because that’s when the huge smutte scene debuts. For some reason this makes me feel…no, not unclean. Not upset. What’s the word?

Ah, yes. Trepidation is the word. I have vast amounts of difficulty writing sex scenes anyway, despite all my good advice. And every time I have to revise/edit a smexxor scene I’ve written, I end up internally cringing. It just seems so…personal.

I know, I’m an idiot. I am not violating the privacy of imaginary people, no matter how much I feel like I am. Jeez.

The weekend was nice. Everyone was out of the house, either at the beach or hanging out with friends, and I had a chance to just be alone. I am a solitary person by nature, and I find it endlessly ironic that I am apparently the linchpin of this little commune/family. The Muffin is completely gregarious–he’ll start conversations with anyone–but me, I prefer to be holed up writing. And yet I’m the one who is socializing our wild little humans. Apparently they’re well-adjusted, but I can’t help thinking that’s a fluke.

I did see plenty of unsocialized (or improperly socialized) children this weekend, though. And it wasn’t at the bookstore, for once. I did grocery shopping and popped in to Target for some Princess essentials (apparently she NEEDS a certain type of tie-dyed retro shirt), and I saw a lot of parents ignoring obviously hungry and cranky children, or being physically threatening/borderline abusive to their little ‘uns. Five out of the six really egregious offenders were too busy yapping on cell phones to notice their kids were hungry and tired and DONE with this shopping thing.

This makes no sense to me. When I take my kids somewhere, I realize that they may get overwhelmed, especially the 6-year-old. I plan it very carefully–making certain the kids have enough sleep and food in them to make it easy for them to behave well. I ALSO do not talk on my cell phone while I’m driving, and only occasionally while I’m in a public place.

Here’s the thing: my cell phone is for emergencies or for imparting necessary information. “I just found _____, do we have any at home?” “What time are you going to be there?” or, “Is this something you would need for ____?” I can’t imagine why people apparently want to yap about NOTHING in the middle of a freaking GROCERY STORE while their three-year old is obviously wet, tired, and hungry. WTF?

Granted, I have a phone phobia, so that could be part of it. But really–when I’m out in a public place with my kids, I am In Charge, I am Paying Attention, and I am Keeping Track of where my little ones are. I am not engaging in a long chew-the-fat session with Aunt Fanny on the frickin’ phone. I am too busy paying attention to where my kids are, what they’re doing, and what I need to get at this store so I can go home.

What ices the cake is these people speaking ever so LOUDLY. I do not want to hear their conversations. I could care less about who is sleeping with who, what rap song you adore, how the trailer’s doing, or what the state of your thong is. (Lest you think I’m being tongue-in-cheek, these were actual subjects. I kid you not.)

The other thing, the thing that makes me so angry I can’t even see straight, is “parents” (do they deserve the name?) yanking around or shaking their kids in public. WTF? These are little people, goddammit. Would you treat another adult that way? No, because another adult would either kick your ass or call the police. Why is it okay to physically abuse your kids in public?

Maybe I’m oversensitive. I have never found it necessary to spank either of my children. I rarely even have to raise my voice. (Before you ask, yes, there are consequences for their actions. It’s not that I don’t punish. It’s that I don’t beat. I was on the receiving end of that enough as a child to remember what it’s like.) And my children are NOT little demons. They say please and thank you. They walk and do not run in public. They do not scream or stage fits in stores.

When I see someone picking on a kid literally a fourth their size, it shocks and saddens me, and makes me furious. You do not bring your four-year-old to the store without a proper snack or nap, yap on your cell phone endlessly while looking at CDs, and then shake or slap your four-year-old when she starts to cry because she’s overstimulated, bored, being ignored, and hungry. You just don’t. You spawned it, you’re supposed to be an adult and TAKE CARE OF IT now, and part of taking care of little human beings means sometimes you can’t stand around yapping on your frickin’ phone. Grow UP.

*sigh*

I really didn’t mean for this to devolve into a rant. But I am so proud of, and happy to have, my little ones. I can’t imagine treating them the way I saw several “parents” treating their kids this weekend. It just breaks my heart.

On a funny note about cell phones: I was in my regular Thai restaurant this weekend, and had occasion to observe a trio one table over eating with their BlackBerries out on the table. All three would stop their conversation with the people they were with the instant the cell phones buzzed or tinkled.

Can you imagine? These people were ignoring their lunchmates to BlackBerry, for Chrissake. When I go out to eat with someone, it’s because I want to have a conversation with them, not get interrupted by someone who isn’t even physically present. I can’t imagine, say, the Selkie putting her phone on the table and giving a higher primacy to its boops and whistles than to our conversation. I just can’t. Now, I can see her checking in with her Boy Scout about when she’s going to be home, but it’s obvious when we’re at the table that our primary focus is our conversation.

Oh yeah, and the food. I doubt any of the BlackBerry Trio even tasted their phad Thai. Which is, in my humble opinion, a damn shame.

So. It’s Monday and soon the house will start to stir. I’d better get breakfast in me. I can hear someone moving in the hall. It’s a little person.

I’m going to go hug whoever it is.

Over and out.