Lilith Saintcrow

Oh, you book, you. You feisty little book. This is twice you’ve juked me out, three times if you count that outline I bowed to pressure and did. The one you’ve made me alter and throw out TWICE now.

Oh you little rascal. You just do not know who you are f!cking with.

I’m getting ready for the last big tango of this part of our relationship. It’ll be a great dance full of gunfire and merriment. I’ll get the characters through the crisis while you yawn and grin at me. I can feel the last big push of creative effort sneaking up on me. It’s a constant tickle under the surface of my skin. I can’t finish another task, I walk away from things I’m doing to sit down and eke out a few more words. I sink so deep into the story any interruption makes me blink resentfully while I return to this world of bills and responsibilities.

So just keep smiling, you book, you. I’m not so kind a lover when you tease. I’m listening to the White Stripes and getting ready to drag you out on the dance floor. No more deleting chunks of text. No more feeling around the corners. Oh no.

We’re going to do this, you and I. I’ve got you around the waist and we’re on the parquet. We’re going pedal to the metal, aiming for the horizon, and devil take the hindmost.

I might not be the best date this story’s ever have, but goddammit, I’m going to be the date this story never forgets.

Crossposted to Deadline Dames. So you want to know how the Dames got started? Stay tuned…

Someone once said, “You don’t know how to write novels. You only know how to write the novel you’re writing NOW.”

Wise words.

Writers fall on a continuum. You have your pantsers, who tend to store things in their head and blithely run through a novel; then you have your plotters, who have a variety of strategies for deciding on what happens in a novel before they write it. (Strategies like outlining, 3X5 cards, mapping a novel on butcher or kraft paper, Post-Its, you name it.) Anywhere you land in that process is fine as long as you come up with a workable product at the end.

I’ve been an inveterate pantser for most of my writing life. I generally work hot and fast after a protracted period of getting the book clear inside my skull, led on from point to point by the Muse, halting only for those places where I have to feel out what happens next like a woman with a plug in one hand searching for a socket in a dark room. (While artillery goes off all around and rats are trying to eat me…) Sometimes (as we discussed last night on Twitter) I stick inessential or don’t-have-it parts in [square brackets] and flail onward while the momentum is hot. Things like [big fight goes here, yadda yadda, get gun kicked away in struggle and wound to hip]. You get the idea.

Then there comes a book to change all that.

I’ve actually outlined the rest of the book I’m working on, in square bracket chunks.

This upsets me a little. I tend not to “plot” so much because the few times I’ve tried it, I’ve ended up feeling confined by the strictures and throwing them out anyway. It’s like someone peering over my shoulder as I write, which is the kiss of death for any kind of peace of mind for me.

Part of having a sustainable writing career is learning to take these sorts of changes with a minimum of flailing. Or, at least, scheduling in the flailing so you can meet your deadline.

So now I’m forced to take a deep breath and repeat to myself, Be mellow. It’s another way of doing the book. As long as the book gets done, we’re OK with however we get there. Just do what the novel needs now, and don’t worry so much about it. You’ve done this thirty-odd times, and each time it’s been different. You finished the other books, you can do this one, outline or not.

So my message for this Friday? Relax. Each book, short story, poem, what-have-you, is unique. Some won’t get finished. Others need different preparations along the plotter-pantser continuum to come to fruition. If this was easy, or if one size fit every novel, well, this would be a lot easier.

But it isn’t. Just ride the pony you’ve got for now.

Now, when I start losing my mind in another twenty thousand words, can someone point me back at this and thwap me on the head until I chill out?

Thanks.

I am doing #Askawriter tonight at 6:30PM PST. For 20-25 minutes I will answer questions on Twitter about writing and publishing.

I climbed on the treadmill yesterday. A half-mile later, the simple answer to my dilemma hit me right between the eyes. Security cameras. That’s how that character knows what he knows. Duh! So then I had 2.25 miles to think about it and the implications.

That’s the big secondary reason why I exercise. Physical movement often shakes the creative nuts and bolts enough to jam things into place. I’ve always been good at thinking on my feet.

So today is for seeing just where that revelation will end us up in terms of Dru 4, and also for reading Public Enemies. (Yes, the movie was based on it. But it’s about So Much More than the movie. Did you know Pretty Boy Floyd, the Barker Gang, Bonnie & Clyde, and John Dillinger were active at the same time?) It’s a fascinating book, and Burrough obviously loves his material. He’s not half bad as a writer, either.

So, um, you guys can stop sending bonbons now. The Muse was deluged. I’m sure she’s throwing stuff at me now in self-defense. I have not-very-nice thoughts of letting her eat her way out of the pile of beribboned boxes…but then I decided to lend a hand.

She is my Muse, after all.

Over and out.

The Muse, again. Taking the story through a bootlegger’s turn, and now she’s sitting on her red velvet fainting-couch, selecting bonbons from a beribboned cardboard box, and thinking through how she’s going to tell me to fix this thing. I can’t go any further until I figure out how Character A has received the information he’s going to impart to Girl Friday. I know there’s a solution, it’s on the tip of my brain. The goddamn Muse is sitting on it.

Some days she’s like that.

I am just going to keep throwing bonbons at her until she takes pity on me or until the solution wriggles out from under her and into my head. In the meantime, I’ll be working on another project to make this one jealous. Making books jealous of each other is a good way to jolt them free. If I’m not working on one thing I’m working on another, and that’s what’s saving my sanity.

Such as it is.

So. I’ll be shoveling bonbons and working on the homicidal-fae book today if anyone needs me. If you see the Muse, throw some choco at her or kick her pretty little derriere, willya?

Thanks. You’re a pal. I couldn’t do this without you.

*exits stage right, hands fisted in hair, muttering*

The morning is nice and gray and soft-edged outside my windows. Not foggy, but not with the glare of spring sunshine and a blue lidless sky either. I’m glad–you live in the Pacific NW for long enough, you start getting nervous when it’s not cloudy or raining. No doubt the rain will start later today, but for now it’s just…cloudy. And I like it. The synchronicity engine is still turning over and echoing under the surface of Real Life.

Yesterday I was fighting tooth and nail with the latest book, and I figured out the point where things had gone wrong was…whoops, 10K words ago. After much thought and cutting and pasting, I only lost about 8K of those words. *headdesk* There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth. Not to mention cursing, bitching, and wandering around the house muttering and glaring balefully at things. I hadn’t precisely gone wrong, I’d just…well, had a major plot thing happen too soon, and it removed a lot of the necessary tension for the book to go forward. Plus I can always keep that 8K chunk for if I need it later. It will go in the graveyard like every other wrong turn.

If there’s one thing that’s changed about me writing, it’s that I only feel a twinge and not a huge soul-devouring terror when I slice out a huge chunk of text.

So now I have to figure out how to proceed from five steps back.

Those are the days when writing is intensely frustrating and nothing seems to go right. They hit just often enough to remind me that the usual state of affairs is a gift.

I have great hopes for today.