The Place For My Writers Notes

Original posting Nov 8 2010

Yesterday was not a particularly productive day for me in terms of straight words for nanowrimo. On the other hand, since I was having trouble concentrating between my wife's volleyball game on television that she likes to insist I look at just for a moment, my continuing battle with my sinuses, and I suspect a bit of self pampering (darn it, it's Sunday, tomorrow I have to look at those student papers, why can't I relax a bit?) ... anyway, with all that going on, I took a step back and spent some time trying to lay out some other scenarios for the future writing. I was doing these in kind of rough bullet format, just a phrase or sentence or two describing what might happen. Also taking a look at the opposition, and considering just what kind of trouble it might raise. Admittedly, this is not direct narrative writing, looking over a character's shoulder at the scene, describing action, setting down dialogue, and all that.

However, I find that I need this kind of rough framework to be very effective at the other stuff. Somehow having a stack of pre-cut scenes in rough form like this lets me focus more on the scene that I'm actually writing right now. It also gives me more traction when I finish a scene -- I can just look at the bullet list and pick up another chunk to work on, instead of spending a while musing on what to do next. Not an outline, nowhere near that level of detail, but just some bullets about what might happen. Some are at the level of "The agents arrive in town" while others have a little more detail about what happens. But they are all just a couple of sentences, waiting for more attention later.

Still, I simply wrote them into the running text that I've been working on. And I counted those words on my nanowrimo total, because I really do think they are part of my writing process. Admittedly, they really need to disappear before the final editing -- each and every one of them needs to be expanded into at the very least one scene, and sometimes more. But getting the ideas started in this kind of bullet list of possibilities, in words, seems to me to be part of the writing. So I count it.

Aha! Over here on the aging nanowrimo notes http://community.livejournal.com/writercises/142578.html I talked about doing this kind of thing at the end of every writing session, putting down some notes about where you are and what you going to do next. Also, when you remember that you need to go back and straighten something out, add foreshadowing, or maybe work on some other pieces later on, make a note! I think one of the dangers of writing is trying to keep it all in our head. Except for short stories, and I'm not even sure about most of them, there's probably more there than we actually can keep in our head. And we have this wonderful trick -- write it down.

So that's today's advice for the nanowrimowers -- write it down. Don't depend on the little grey cells to hold onto that idea, question, point to consider, direction to explore, or whatever. Put it down in black and white, on paper, in a file, somewhere. And for the bonus, you can more easily look across that list for the purposes of rearrangement, selection, or whatever. Okay? Or if you happen to be pausing, put down some bullet points for later expansion. What might happen next? And after that? Wow, there's a chase scene somewhere ahead? Keep that in mind by putting it in the list. So...

WRITE!

Original posting 19 November 2007

Quoting Ben:

[clip]
> How does one handle the enormous word counts?
[snip]

Hi, Ben.

I've been thinking about that question of how to handle lots of words.

I kind of think the real answer might be like the one about how to eat an elephant - one bite at a time. So then the question is how do you divvy up the pile?

There's some different answers to that one, and like Kipling's ways to sing the tribal lays, they are all right. So look for what works for you. Plenty of people find a deadline, a quota, a goal of some kind works for them. Show them the goal and stand back, because they're off and running. That's more or less what the nanowrimo challenge does unless you add a bit to it.

There are also plenty of people who are more regular nibblers. They may not be too comfortable with a huge overhanging goal, but ask them to do a short story every week, an exercise on Fridays, or some other regular task, and they'll get it out week after week without missing. Set up a blog or website to collect that stuff and before you know it, they've got a respectable pile of stuff.

Sometimes you can take one of these and translate it into the other. That's really why I think it's important to take the 50K in a month and look at it as 12.5K a week or a mere 1,666 words a day. They may be mathematically identical, but in terms of emotional commitment, they are often very different.

Or toss in the weekend breaks or whatever makes it fit your life. Or you may be more comfortable with a number of hours, a list of scenes or topics, or some other way of carving that old elephant into bites that fit your dentures. When I teach project management, I usually point out that one of the most important measures of a work breakdown structure is whether it makes sense to you, and that's really what we're talking about. Take one skewer of grilled meat a day, and that oliphaunt doesn't look nearly as scary!

In fact, I've recently pulled this trick on a student here who is writing a paper. See, he told me that the paper is due on February 7, so there was lots of time. I asked him to make a list of the steps that he needed to go through to have the paper ready. He looked a little puzzled, but fairly quickly had a list of nine or 10 things. And I suggested that we start at the deadline and work our way back. So final review by the companies might take - oh, say two weeks. And this would take a week or so. Oh, let's skip the New Year season, since that's when everyone will disappear. And . . . suddenly we were looking at needing to start last week in order to get the paper done in time (and we don't have slack in that schedule yet - I think we're going to be in trouble). Anyway, having those intermediate little inch-pebbles helps quite a few of us keep on track.

There's also a group of folks who do a fine job of planning, Might be note cards, character sheets, or one of the design-a-story programs, but they work through their outline/design in some detail first then get into filling out the structure they have drawn up.

I've recently seen Lois McMaster Bujold describing her approach. She says she keeps an outline from the beginning but it is very sketchy, and as she writes, she also fills in the outline and modifies it. She said she probably has as many words in the final outline as in the novel.

Incidentally, I think an important piece is learning how to change up. For example, I am way too likely to get stuck in the research part of articles I am writing - I love digging through the literature and doing little summary papers. I really have to cut myself off and go back to writing the paper, putting together a structure, filling it in, and then smoothing out the whole thing. I have trouble cutting out the extra neat stuff that is really irrelevant, too. Non sequitur is my Achilles heel. I have learned, to some extent, the usefulness of changing formats. Written text, power point slides, and for real brainstorming, I like a big white board. Shifting back and forth when working can help you see the big picture and all those little details, too.

(I also keep side notes, both on paper and in files, of those extra ideas and stuff. Somehow jotting those down gives me the freedom to set them aside for now, instead of having them chew up my attention. And sometimes I even remember later to look at them. Good fodder for quick little followup pieces!)

I guess what I'm saying is to start with an approach that feels comfortable for you, whether that's free writing or carefully laid out writing, but don't be afraid to shift gears as you go along. Maybe you find yourself a bit off track and need to do some surveying and map work before the next step, or maybe you hit an inspiration and want to take off and write while the words are flowing - do it!

Sorry, this isn't a nicely bundled short answer. I'm not sure there is a short answer. Maybe find a hint over in that song about "life's a dance that you learn as you go, as" and writing, the reflection of life in an inky pool, well,
it takes a dash of that spirit too?

Hope something in here helps.