It's Tradition

December is the time to look back and reflect on accomplishments of the year that's ending, or even more dangerously, to look ahead and declare hopes and intentions for the year to come.

My hopes for the following year are always big. However, I never want to say too much about that, because I'm conscious that eventually I'll be looking back at whatever I wrote and comparing it to reality. So I tend to focus on accomplishments.

My accomplishments are usually pretty big, too. But often they don't feel that way to me, mainly in comparison to those hopes I still know about even if I didn't write them down. Which makes it all the more worthwhile an exercise to tally up what I've done and see that it's not nothing. As I reminded myself a few months ago, a major reason I document my progress is to help me recognize how much progress I've actually made.

A year ago, I was in the middle of a novel draft that I started in November for NaNoWriMo 2022 and continued to work on daily until taking a year-end break. Right after the beginning of 2023, I resumed this daily writing practice and maintained it consistently until I reached the end of the draft in late February.

While that draft was less than I'd hoped for in terms of cohesion and general story-shapedness, I'm pleased by my diligence in creating it. For four months, I committed to writing at least 100 words every day, and sustaining that kept me moving forward. I developed a pace that let me accurately estimate how long the project would take, something I dream of doing again, though I'm sure it will be harder when my standards don't keep dropping as I approach the end.

I think that with a solid outline worked out, I can write the next, better draft with the same sort of sustained energy. I did imagine I'd be doing that by now, or at the very least, be preparing to start early in the new year. Once again, my hopes exceeded reality. Still, when I remember how disconnected and vague that last draft was, and compare it against my sense of the story now, I realize I made plenty of progress over the rest of the year. Slow progress, but progress nonetheless.

The bulk of this year went toward a lot of brainstorming and a lot of research. With both, I've been frustrated at not more efficiently arriving at the solutions, but that's how it goes. Occasionally good ideas seem to spring up effortlessly and randomly, but more often getting at them requires probing deeply, sometimes in what might be the wrong direction.

My work throughout the spring was somewhat scattered, often iterative, occasionally perhaps misdirected. It was also interrupted by a number of breaks. Moving into summer, I focused in on character and plot problems, including with the help of sticky notes. I also went down a deep hole of research and worldbuilding that may or may not end up having enough prominence in the story to justify the work I put into it. It's all part of the process, really!

Much of the fall involved burrowing down more such holes. I put in some solid, consistent hours over the last few months, but it sometimes felt of questionable value. While I spent the previous two Novembers in fast-paced NaNoWriMo writing mode, this November I stalled, stuck on what seemed like an unsolvable problem, and that was demoralizing.

But good news: In early December, I hit upon a more elegant solution than anything I was aiming at. The idea felt like it sprang out of nowhere, but experience tells me all that earlier thinking helped me get there. In any case, I've triumphed over a big problem that was flummoxing me, and I'm ending the year on a high note. Many other story problems remain, but those will wait until 2024.

As always at the turn of the year, the unknown future feels full of promise. Here's hoping!

Good Stuff Out There:

→ In an interactive data visualization at The Pudding, Alice Liang explores trends in romance novel covers: "Today's newest romance novels bear a stark difference to the rotating stacks of clinch covers one might find at a used bookstore or estate sale. In that era, publishers sought to differentiate their novels from their competitors with a distinctive style, but still kept to a common enough language so that a browser would know a book is romance at first glance. Now, most romance novels are illustrated, brightly colored, and have a distinctive pop art style, but they still have a recognizable common language." (Thanks, Lauren!)

Back Again

I'm squeaking in at the end of the month with another writing update, although there isn't much new to report on the writing front since the last update.

I did a lot more research in April and May to learn about the science behind the science fiction of this novel I'm planning. The scifi I like best is built on real science, backed up by plausible details, so I decided it was worth investing the time on research to make the world of my story convincing. I probably went overboard, since it's true that research is a great way to avoid moving on to writing, but I did manage to hammer out many worldbuilding decisions and nail down specifics.

That home improvement imagery may be coming to mind because also during these past couple of months, I was supervising various work on the exterior of our house. Though I didn't have to wield any tools myself, that created some commitments and distractions that took time away from writing. I had some additional fun distractions planned as well, so my productivity expectations for this time were lowered, and I'm actually surprised I got as much accomplished as I did.

The work on the house and the research both wrapped up just in time for a vacation. I spent a couple of wonderful weeks visiting family, seeing friends, and taking part in joyful celebrations. I'm grateful that I was able to travel and that most of the plans worked out pretty well. And now it's great to be back home.

I'm sure it's going to take me a little time to review the notes from before the trip and get back into the world of the story, but then I hope to move on to outlining and other non-research prep. Maybe next time I update about writing, I'll even have an update about writing!

Good Stuff Out There:

→ At Electric Literature, Rebecca Ackermann writes about how the strangeness of office life is captured by the unrelated novel and show both titled Severance: "Through the fictional lens of extreme speculative scenarios—that somehow become more plausible by the month—both narratives illustrate the tempting lure of productive white-collar distraction in a chaotic world, the price of the dehumanizing dissociation that it demands, and the recognition that finding deep meaning and purpose in our relationships with each other can free us from a life lived half-asleep."

A Writer's Search History, Revisited

Last month I noted on Twitter: "My search history suggests I have small children and a drug problem. Happily, neither is true." Writing leads to a lot of internet searches, sometimes weirdly specific, often on topics that are odd or disturbing either individually or in combination.

Four years ago, I put together a post highlighting some search queries that had featured in my recent research. When I looked back at that post -- once I finished suppressing my panic about how it's four years later and I'm again, still, working on same novel -- I was amused (mixed with an additional dash of panic) to see many similarities with searches from the past few months.

→ Previously on Lisa's search history, I was seeking concussion information, and just recently I looked up "concussion check" and variations. As it happens, a different character is the subject of concern this time. Within the plot, this all makes perfect sense, but maybe I need to examine why my novel has a motif of head injuries. Related searches: "head wound blood", "bleeding from chin".

→ Last time, I wanted to know about the smell of vodka, and I didn't end up using the information. A couple of months ago, I put something in a scene about the narrator smelling tequila, but I wasn't sure it made sense and ultimately took it out. It doesn't appear I did any searching this time around, so I must have done some real world investigation, meaning the research didn't all go to waste.

→ In the category of "of course you can find that on YouTube", I recently searched "sound of a baby burping" and watched numerous videos, all in the name of essential research. More baby queries: "how long does it take a baby to drink a bottle", "when can baby roll over", "older child sharing room with baby". Incidentally, the baby and older sibling I was writing about are part of a brand new family of secondary characters introduced to the novel in this draft, since I didn't have enough people to revise already.

→ My previous search post discussed my brief desire to explore motel curtains for some reason. This year, my decor needs were about "bathroom tile walls". I'm reminded of a long-ago commiseration with a writing buddy regarding first drafts overly focused on describing wall and floor coverings.

→ "election day 2026" is the sort of search I do when I suddenly consider that the part of my novel that takes place in the future also takes place in early November. Election Day will be before the novel starts, and of course it's a midterm, so there shouldn't be a glaring absence if the characters don't mention it. Most likely, I went through this same panic cycle years ago.

→ "california shrubbery" is the sort of search I do when I suddenly doubt that an extremely small detail is realistic. I'm imagining a row of bushes in front of a house, which I think of as a very common yard feature, but what I'm picturing is a childhood home in Massachusetts, so do houses have those here? Several times a week, I walk around my neighborhood, but I guess I immediately forgot about this query, because I still haven't paid any attention to the question while outside my (unshrubberied) house.

Artifacts of Fiction

Last month, while I was out for a walk in my neighborhood, I saw a sign for an estate sale inside a house that was on the market. I never pass up an opportunity to look around a stranger's home in a socially acceptable manner, so I went in.

It was clear that someone had spent a long life in that house and taken great care of their belongings. I lingered for a while over a beautiful Art Deco bedroom set that has nothing to do with the decor (if you can call it that) of my own house but would fit in well at the home of my antique-collecting parents. Primed by childhood weekends of antique fairs, I turned my highly specific knowledge to the shelves of smaller items in search of any other Deco pieces. I didn't find any, but my attention was grabbed by a set of white dishes with tiny green flowers near the edges. The pattern instantly made me think of being young in my other parents' kitchen. It's a strong memory, but I'm not even convinced it's correct -- it might be my grandmother's dishes that bear this pattern.

Then I spotted another object full of personal significance, but this one had nothing to do with my real family. Instead, it was connected to the fictional family that inhabits my novel. In THE EXTENT OF THE DAMAGE, the characters buy an early model Polaroid camera. It's not a major event in the story, but the camera does play a role in several scenes, as do the photographs passed down through the years. I put a fair amount of effort into researching 60s-era Polaroids, so it gave me a thrill to unexpectedly discover one in front of me.

The actual camera in my novel, which the characters purchase in 1964, is a Polaroid Land Model 100. It retailed for $165, equivalent to over $1000 in today's dollars. The estate sale camera is a Model 250, available starting in 1967 for about the same price, but the two models are similar in design. The original owner had carefully preserved all the camera's accessories and documentation, and what most excited me was the idea of a carrying case packed with everything my character would have brought home from the store. For $40, I took this piece of fictional family history back to my own real house.

More on Novel Research

On Wednesday, I wrote about the different stages of novel research. Today I have a few more research tips to pass on, based on what I've figured out through many drafts of many manuscripts.

The single most important thing I've learned about research is to record every piece of information the first time I discover it. While revising THE EXTENT OF THE DAMAGE, I wasted untold hours looking up facts that I almost certainly verified two drafts ago but couldn't be sure of. Now everything I research, I immediately type or copy into a file, along with a reference to where the information came from, whether it's a URL or a page in a book. Treat your research as though you're going to have to provide footnotes to your story, and you'll be ready when you doubt yourself later or you get questions from a critique partner or editor.

Be organized with all these research notes you're diligently keeping. For DAMAGE, my computer has one folder of files divided up by major topic, including "earthquakes", "aerospace industry", and "babies". Additionally, in my SuperNotecard story notes, each chapter has a card with references for specific facts in that chapter. This slightly obsessive method of documentation is what works for me, but you'll have your own personal record-keeping strategy.

As with any research, when you're acquiring information for a novel, you need to consider all the types of sources that are available to you. Primary sources from within a time, place, or culture are extremely valuable but sometimes easy to forget about. A cool but tricky thing about fiction research is that other fiction can often be used as a source. A novel by an author with firsthand experience may be even more revealing than a work of nonfiction if you're looking for everyday details of an experience you can't have yourself. Novels, movies, and TV shows that are about a certain era, location, or industry but were written from outside may also be useful, but tread carefully and consider the work's reputation and biases.

In general, be thoughtful about sources. Not everything on the internet is true, and the same goes for books. If a fact seems questionable to me, I try to verify it against a second, independent source. Because part of DAMAGE takes place in the 1960s, I'm always eager to watch movies made during that time to notice details like a washing machine in a family's kitchen or people smoking, well, everywhere. But movies aren't a pure reflection of reality, and I have to keep that in mind. Similarly, while the television series MAD MEN has a reputation for extreme accuracy in its 60s-era period details, I recognize that it's a work of fiction by writers with a twenty-first century perspective, and I only trust it up to a point.

Finally, remember that the research you invest in a novel is to improve your story, not to insert directly into your story. When you become intimately familiar with the world of your novel, that will show in how well and seamlessly you bring it to life. Rarely is this accomplished with paragraphs of dry explanation or awkward dialogue in which characters tell each other facts about their setting. Resist any urges in that direction, and keep your meticulously organized research notes to yourself. (Or maybe you can share them online as background information or bonus material for your readers.)

That's the end of my novel research advice, at least for now. I still have a whole stack of library books to get through.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ At io9, Charlie Jane Anders offers 10 Can't Miss, Surefire Secrets Of Torturing Fictional People: "Suffering that happens because of your characters' decisions is way more interesting -- and often more painful, because of remorse. A lot of the most powerful fictional torment comes as a result of people's terrible decisions, but it's also really poignant to see someone stick his or her neck out for justice, and get dinged."

On Novel Research

As I've mentioned, I'm currently deep in the research phase for my next novel. I enjoy the various aspects of research: the obtaining of new knowledge, the tracking down of obscure facts, the delaying of actual writing. In the course of many years and drafts, I've refined my research process through trial and error, and I thought I'd pass along some strategies and techniques.

Much of novel research is similar to any other research, including the work you probably had to do for term papers in school. While I still find it ludicrous that in sixth grade, each student in my class had to create a box of index cards filled with details of every major battle of the Civil War, I will concede that this project gave me a strong foundation in research skills. I was fortunate to receive an education that helped me refine these skills as I got older, and later I worked at jobs that gave me further practice. As with any research task, when fact-finding for your fiction, spend time thinking up relevant keyword combinations to run through a library catalog or web search, and always remember to judge the quality of sources. It's also useful if you have an ability to skim information to find the sections that are worth reading carefully.

I do novel research at several different points in the writing process. The initial stage, before I start a first draft, is my opportunity to get an overview of major subjects in the story that I don't know much about. This is where I am right now with INCONCLUSIVE, and one thing I need to learn about is life in a biology lab, so I've been consulting a ton of library books on this topic. I also anticipate plenty of online research, but books tend to be a good place to start for in-depth, curated information.

The advance research stage is the time to immerse yourself in whatever parts of the world of your novel aren't familiar to you, whether it's a time period, geographical area, culture, or career. (If your novel is set in a world of your own invention, you might be doing more world-building than research at this point, but most likely there are reality-based aspects you'll need to learn about.) This is also the part where it's really easy to get trapped forever and never begin writing the story, so it's advisable to give yourself a research deadline. (Note to self: Set a research deadline.)

Once you've decided that you know enough and can start writing, you're going to quickly find out how much more research you wish you'd done. When you're in the middle of a scene and there's some information you want to look up, you're supposed to make a note of it, keep writing, and fix it at the end. That's what everyone says, but I'm terrible about this, because I don't like moving forward in a story if I'm uncertain about what's happened so far. The deal I try to make with myself is that instead of interrupting my writing for a research excursion, I can investigate the question that night, or the next day at the beginning of my writing session, so I feel comfortable knowing I'm not getting too far ahead with a fact unchecked.

There's always the potential for more research, so I always have to exercise judgment about how much to do when, and sometimes I don't get the balance right. I'm sure I've put dozens of hours into verifying details of scenes that I removed in a subsequent draft. Ideally, you'll stick to more general research early in the writing process, when a story is still in flux. Then plan to devote time to another research stage after you've completed a draft or two and have some certainty about both what's happening in your story and what you still don't know.

I'll wrap up my research advice next time with some tips on record-keeping and choosing sources.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Bill Morris at The Millions considers second novels and asks, Are We Entering a Golden Age of the Second Novel?: "There's plenty of empirical evidence to support the claim that the second novel is the hardest one to write -- and that it can be even harder to live down."

Library Love

I want to sing the praises of my local library, because lately I've been making heavy use of its wonderful resources. In particular, I'm grateful for two of those resources, which your local library most likely offers as well: ebook lending and interlibrary loan.

I've known for a while that my library participates in several programs that allow patrons to download digital books, but for a long time, I never bothered looking into the details. In January, though, I wanted to read a book that I intended to get from the library, and since it was fairly recent and fairly popular, it occurred to me that I might be able to borrow it as an ebook and save myself a trip. It turned out I was right, and that I could check out the book immediately.

Since then, I've determined that the list of available ebook titles isn't as miraculously complete as my first borrowing experience suggested, but I've still found enough overlap with my interests that I've read five library ebooks so far this year. At my library at least, ebooks show up in a regular catalog search, listed as "electronic resource". You can also search or browse the ebook catalog separately to see what's offered.

I've put in requests to borrow several more ebooks that have waiting lists. Currently, library ebook programs are constrained to operate as if the books were physical, so each library only owns the right to lend a limited number of copies at a time. This means that if you want a hot new release, you may have to wait months for your turn -- but perhaps not as long as if you're trying to borrow the hardcover, since presumably fewer library patrons are using the ebook resources.

If you've already embraced ereading but haven't investigated your library's digital offerings, I encourage you to take a look at your library's website and see what your card gives you access to. You may have to set up an account with an ebook lending program and download a specific application, so there's a little bit of a technological hurdle to overcome, but clear documentation is probably available. I had to spend a few minutes getting started with each of the programs that my library's affiliated with, and none of them work quite as seamlessly as Amazon, but now that I'm set up, it's easy for me to borrow ebooks at any time.

When it comes to physical books, I'm fortunate that my library has an extensive collection of its own but also offers interlibrary loan that gives me access to nearly every book or subject I've ever searched for. Last week, after I finished looking through the books I'd checked out for novel research, I discovered how much more on the topic was available, and I spent a bunch of time in the combined catalog making interlibrary loan requests. When I started getting error messages, I discovered that I'd reached the maximum number of requests, but I figured that would be enough books for now.

Yesterday I picked up my stack of requests, and it was pretty cool to see that some of them came from as far as Las Vegas. So keep in mind that even if your local library isn't particularly impressive, it's probably connected to a network of other libraries that you can easily borrow from through interlibrary loan.

When I was a kid and consumed books at a frantic pace, my local library was a beloved and necessary part of my reading life. As an adult with the financial resources to support a slower reading habit, my use of the library has ebbed and flowed, but I've always been very glad to know the library is available. This year, since I've had an uptick in reading and new novel research needs, I've really been feeling the library love, and I hope I've spread a little of that to you all.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Daniel José Older covers the Fundamentals Of Writing "The Other": "If your book has two black people in it and both just happen to have superpowers and represent the forces of good and evil, you have a problem. Between these two exceptional, magical characters dwells a swath of fully human, often non-magical but emotionally complex white characters. It doesn’t matter that one of the black characters is a good guy; trust me."

Not So Fast

Last week, I got some very wonderful time off with a Hawaiian vacation full of ocean views, relaxation, and reading. I returned from the trip invigorated, eagerly dove into serious research for the next novel, and was immediately interrupted by getting sick. I'm all recovered now, but it made for a disappointing first week back. (Though at least being sick gave me time to finish up my vacation reading.)

I have made a little research progress, though. Some weeks back, I spent an afternoon among the library stacks identifying books that could be useful, and now I've started looking through them. I'm going to have to learn a lot about several different topics in order to write the new novel effectively, and I'm sure that any day now I'll stop being coy and tell you more about that.

I'll also have many recently read books to tell you about once I get caught up on reviews. And maybe soon I'll have others things to talk about, but for now, that's all there is to report.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ At Book Riot, Josh Corman wonders Why Dystopian Novels Speak To Us: "Fear is the root of every dystopia, and it's the glue that keeps the reader stuck to its characters and conflicts for the book's duration. If you harbor any distrust of your government (or governments in general), then 1984 will speak to you more powerfully; if you're concerned about climate change and corporate power, then Margaret Atwood's MaddAddam books will be likelier to get under your skin."

The Surnaming of Characters

Earlier this week, I offered some advice about choosing character names and avoiding common naming pitfalls. While most of the suggestions in those posts apply to all parts of a name, I wrote them with first names in mind. Today I promised to talk about specific issues related to last names.

So here's where I admit that I have no real advice on this topic. I hate coming up with last names, and I find that in most cases, characters don't need them, so I only give surnames when it's absolutely necessary.

For the first novel I ever wrote, which I spent several years on, I had a database of character information that included -- I kid you not -- where the protagonist's friends' parents went to college, even though that never came up in the story in any way. I never gave the main character a last name.

My recently completed novel is about a family. I did choose a last name for them right from the start, and fortunately, that took care of a whole bunch of characters at once. There's one other family in the novel with a last name, and a doctor appears briefly and is referred to only by title and last name. That's the extent of the surnames. One character who marries into the family doesn't take her husband's name, and that's a fact I know in my head, but I never worked out what her last name is.

I don't have a good reason for my aversion to last names. They might be slightly harder to choose than first names due to carrying more cultural information, but they also have somewhat less "must feel right for the character" pressure, so it probably comes out about even. Certainly it's fine, and even advisable, that the majority of my characters don't have last names, but I shouldn't be so intimidated.

This is what I do know about last names:

→ Research is a good idea. Last names, even more than first names, are tied to ethnicity and potentially a great many other familial background factors. I've picked surnames imagining that they signified one culture, then later learned that I got it completely wrong because I didn't bother looking anything up.

I also had a weird (though kind of cool) thing happen once when I essentially made up a last name by putting together some syllables that sounded plausible. This was for one of my early NaNoWriMo novels, and at the time, I had the whole thing posted on my web site. A stranger emailed me, excited because he searched for his extremely rare last name and found my site, and he wanted to know if there was any family connection (it wasn't apparent to him that the name was in a story). While he was tickled by my explanation that I had fabricated the name, I did think that in the future it would be worthwhile to search and verify that any name I use isn't practically unique.

I don't have a single go-to internet source for last names. My method tends to be that I think up or find a name somewhere and then do a search to learn more about it. But like I said, it's not something I've dealt with very often.

I'd be thrilled to know your resources or strategies for identifying and researching names. One reader has already pointed me to a great character name generator that asks you to input ethnicity and birth decade before spitting out a random first and last name matching the criteria (plus a detailed personality profile).

→ Last names can overload the reader. If some readers have a tendency to not fully absorb first names, you can bet that even more of them are skipping past last names. I get irritated by books that keep giving me new characters with both first and last names, because I know I'm going to have enough trouble remembering one name per person, let alone two.

In most stories, most characters don't need last names. I gather it's more of a convention to introduce every character by full name in some genres, such as mysteries and thrillers, and maybe if I read more in those genres, I'd be more tolerant of the phenomenon. But I'm perfectly happy not learning a character's last name unless it's going to be necessary, for the purposes of logistics or realism, to have the narration or a character use it. The reason I was able to write multiple drafts of my first novel and never know the main character's last name is that throughout all his many plotless adventures, it just never became story-relevant.

That said, if you are going to use a major character's last name, it's good to introduce it sometime early in the story even if it's not important until later. I recently read a book and was totally jarred when halfway through, the protagonist's last name appeared, and I realized I hadn't seen it before then.

I already know that my new novel is going to require quite a few last names, so please, share any advice you have. And I still haven't made a lot of progress on even the first names, so wish me luck!

Good Stuff Out There:

→ At Tor.com, a group of science fiction authors discuss food in SF: "Food is an excellent way to do very elegant worldbuilding, the kind that can make a fictional world seem real, like it extends way past the edges of the frame."

The Naming of Characters

I still haven't named any of the characters in the new novel I've been planning. I had thought that even making notes would be too cumbersome while the characters remained nameless, but it turns out that I'm having no trouble referring to them by their roles, or by letters that signify the roles. I could probably leave the characters unnamed throughout the entire planning and research phase, and only choose names as a final act of procrastination before I embark upon drafting, but I think it might be time to start making some concrete decisions about this story. Naming the characters is a good place to begin.

The naming of characters is a difficult matter. The name of a major character might appear hundreds of times throughout a story, so there's pressure to choose wisely, but it's not clear what that means. In theory, it's an arbitrary decision, unrelated to the many elements that create a stronger plot or a more compelling conflict. In practice, names carry a huge amount of baggage, some that will be familiar to the writer as part of a larger culture, and some that individual readers will bring to a story and that the writer has no chance of anticipating or controlling.

You can see why I've been reluctant to approach the naming problem. Occasionally a character has appeared in my head with a name already attached, but more often, and in the case of this new novel, I've thought up fairly detailed stories for these people without imagining what any of them are called. That means I'll probably end up scanning the lists at 20,000 Names in search of possibilities. Like most name sites, that one includes name meanings, but I almost never pay attention to those. I don't pick character names for symbolic purposes, so the meaning only concerns me if I think it would have mattered to the character's parents.

When I choose names, what I'm focusing on are these considerations:

→ The inscrutable quality of rightness. I recommend finding a name that feels good to you as the writer, and I have no advice about how to do that. I may reject a dozen names because they don't fit before deciding that one is perfect, and it's a completely idiosyncratic decision that I couldn't hope to explain. In the best case scenario, that perfect name I've chosen will also resonate with the reader as embodying every facet of the character. In the worst case, it will be the name of the reader's most despised ex, but there's nothing you can do about that.

→ Suitability to the character's background. Consider when and where your character was born, their ethnicity, and any other familial factors that contribute to naming patterns. Do your research on this. When selecting names for the three different time periods in THE EXTENT OF THE DAMAGE, I spent hours with NameVoyager charting popularity over time so that the names would be appropriate for each era.

→ Neither too common nor too unusual. It's strange if everyone in a story has a top-ten name, or if they all have extremely unfamiliar ones, so unless you're going for a specific effect, aim somewhere in the middle. Usually my major characters have medium-popularity names, perhaps with one that's odder or more prevalent, and then I give the smaller characters a whole range, so that the balance is a set of names that feels neither too generic nor too ridiculous.

→ Not the name of anyone I know. This is trickier than you'd think. First of all, I'm acquainted with a great many people who monopolize a great many names, so I actually have to narrow it down to only excluding the names of my closer friends and family. Then it turns out that I have a weird tendency to give names to characters without even noticing that they match the names of my nearest and dearest. This led to some awkward conversations about my earliest manuscripts, which were only ever seen by those same nearest and dearest, and I now take extra care to avoid unintended overlaps. Finally, I do have a natural bias toward names that are familiar to me, so I often draw from the name pool of people I once knew but haven't talked to in decades. I don't have any motive in giving a character the name of an acquaintance from high school, it's merely that the name was more likely to appeal to me than one I'd never encountered. All of this is to say, if you ever think I've named a character after you, please be assured that I haven't.

Those are my basic criteria for selecting character names. Later in the week, I'll be back with thoughts on avoiding naming pitfalls and the special pain of picking last names.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ At Vulture, Kathryn Schulz identifies The 5 Best Punctuation Marks in Literature: "Once in a while, though, a bit of punctuation pops its head up over the prose, and over the prosaic, and becomes a part of a tiny but interesting canon: famous punctuation marks in literature." (Thanks, The Millions!)

A Writer's Search History

For ages, I've been meaning to share a selection of the odd web searches I've conducted during the creation of this novel. This short list only scratches the surface (and it leaves out the huge number of less weird research queries). Maybe later on I'll go back further into my Google search history and bring you some more examples.

→ "concussion allowed to sleep" - Turns out it's not really true that you have to stay awake if you have a concussion, though it might be a good idea for someone to prod you periodically.

→ "what does vodka smell like" - It seemed particularly silly to search the internet for an answer when I could have done firsthand research by walking downstairs and opening the liquor cabinet. I was lazy. And as with a great many of my research queries, after I spent a while looking for information, I ended up changing the scene so it was no longer needed.

→ "woman crying" - I looked for a video of someone crying (of course there are thousands of these) so that I could play it on my computer, leave the room, close the door, and perform a test of how well it could be heard from the next room.

→ "bulldozer video" followed by "bulldozer rev engine" followed by "verbs for engine sounds" - I was trying to describe the sound accurately. I ended up with "a bulldozer roared to life", which is completely unoriginal, but I'm terrible at this sort of thing.

→ "stacking blocks one year old" - Yes, kids can at that age. This is only one of hundreds of searches related to child development, parenting, and childbirth. It was still a lot easier than firsthand research.

→ "history of car air conditioning" - It grew in popularity during the 1960s - and "air conditioning movie theaters history" - That's been common for longer.

→ "motel curtains" - As I typed this query into the search box, it struck me as combining the bizarre with the uninteresting. I scanned the image search results for a moment and then decided that I wasn't going to use the concept in the story anyway.

→ "red sox schedule 1995" - Here's a case where I might be going overboard on attention to detail, though at least this was very quick to look into, unlike some other questions I obsess over. In a scene set during Labor Day weekend of 1995, I mention that a character might have attended a Red Sox game if he'd stayed in Boston rather than going to San Jose to get the action of the novel going. If the Sox weren't actually home that weekend, would anyone have noticed or cared? Well, it's okay, because they were.

→ "when to make thanksgiving pie" - The day before is fine. I could have asked my in-house consultant, but again, I'm lazy.

→ "how much do employees make in ipos" - Enough.

(Note: It seems like this post should be tagged "querying", but that means something else.)

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Kathy Crowley at Beyond the Margins offers a 12-step program for finding structure in a messy draft: "You recognize that something is missing. Just to be old-fashioned, let's call it structure. Bones. Whatever. Yes, you've written something moving and lovely and it's a work you care about. But still. When you look at it, you are reminded of a jellyfish."

Bits and Pieces

Friday is the day for collections of random unrelated topics, right?

→ As I get further into my current storyline, I'm very excited to discover that I'm coming up with a lot of subplots and character details that will flesh out this slightly lacking story without requiring much change to its main plot. This seems like it will make revision easier. We'll see how that goes.

→ I love that when I muse about a research question on the internet, my friends take it upon themselves to look into it and pass on facts and sources. I have the very best kind of friends. Oh and by the way, I wonder how I would find a medical text designed for laypeople that was written in the 50s or 60s.

→ Lots of people in the book world spent this week at Book Expo America, so I spent the week daydreaming about being an author who gets to appear at BEA. This was a nice break from my usual daydreams of being interviewed on NPR.

→ Sometimes it takes an hour to write two paragraphs. Sometimes it takes half an hour to write an emotional moment, and then you decide to remove it from the scene. Other times, it's as if you actually know what you're doing.

→ There is totally no law that requires a list to include five items. I checked.

That's the latest dispatch from the word mines. Have a good weekend!

Good Stuff Out There:

→ At The New Yorker's Page-Turner blog, Ryan Bloom discusses What the First Line of "The Stranger" Should Be: "[The] first sentence of 'The Stranger' is so elementary that even a schoolboy with a base knowledge of French could adequately translate it. So why do the pros keep getting it wrong?" (Thanks, The Millions!)

A Typical Day in My Writing Brain

9:30am: I'm going to get so much writing done today!

11:00am: I guess I should probably stop [reading the internet/doing these somehow urgently important dishes/"carefully planning my week"/reading a different part of the internet] and get started on that whole writing thing.

11:03am: I have no idea where this scene is supposed to go next. I'm not going to produce anything good today.

11:07am: OHMYGOD that is the best paragraph I've ever written! This scene is going in such a brilliant direction.

11:16am: Well, I wrote that one really awesome paragraph. Isn't that enough of an accomplishment for one day?

11:52am: Okay, what if he says that to her, and that sets up the thing that happens in the next chapter, and it's also sort of parallel to what happens later in the other storyline...

12:13pm: Ugh, this chapter I wrote a few months ago is going to need so much polishing. No, wait, I love it.

1:31pm: Is this the best reveal ever, or what? Is it? Is it? Probably not.

1:33pm: Whatever, I'll fix it later.

2:00pm: Wait, what if none of this makes any sense because nobody did that kind of thing in 1963?

2:48pm: Now that I'm positive the situation is period-appropriate, I think I'm not going to use it after all because something else works better.

3:35pm: How is it that I'm still researching this when I thought I'd already decided not to use it?

3:41pm: Okay, it's decided: I'll do it like this, and later I'll go back and add a part to the other storyline where they talk about the same issue.

3:44pm: I will never ever ever be finished with this novel.

3:46pm: No agent will ever consider my manuscript because it's too long. But not like it matters, because I'll never be done revising it.

3:47pm: The time I'm spending on revision is worth it because I'm creating an incredible manuscript, and it doesn't matter that it's long because every word belongs there.

3:48pm: I'm delusional. I will never be successful.

3:49pm: Okay, what if in this scene, they're talking about that other thing, and then I take out that other scene?

4:53pm: Shoot, I spent so long writing that I'm not going to have time to [read/blog/do those urgently important dishes/read the internet].

7:29pm: Oh, I know, I should make that scene take place at the office.

9:15pm: What kind of desks would the office have?

1:47am: Ohmygod have I based that whole chapter on a glaring anachronism?

1:53am: No agent will ever consider my manuscript because of how the story opens.

This is a sample typical day, but not all of my days follow this pattern. On many days, these thoughts occur in an entirely different order! Also, I have totally exaggerated how long I typically spend working in order to make myself look good in this post.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ io9 offers a very cool chart that reveals how science fiction futures changed over time: "Once we had our data, we divided it up into works set in the Near Future (0-50 years from the time the work came out), Middle Future (51-500 years from the time the work came out) and Far Future (501+ years from the time the work came out)."

A Little Knowledge Is a Dangerous Thing

Occasionally as I'm drifting off to sleep at night, I jolt awake thinking, "Did I fact-check that?" I always tell myself to stop thinking about it and go to sleep instead of getting up to do research, which invariably means that I lie awake worrying for longer than it would have taken to look it up.

A lot of facts go into a work of fiction. My novel takes place in the real United States in particular real cities at specific times. The basic rules of reality apply to the characters -- that is, my book doesn't involve magic, supernatural elements, warps in the fabric of time-space, or anything like that.

Into this real world setting, I'm putting fictional people and giving them a whole lot of fictional accessories: houses that don't exist, imaginary businesses, made-up books. Part of getting the reader to go along with the fiction is to make sure that wherever it touches the real world, it's consistent with what the reader knows.

For a blatant example, if the characters are all carrying cell phones in 1995 (or even more blatantly, in 1965), the reader is going to notice that inconsistency with the real known world. An unjustified anachronism like that isn't part of the fictional overlay of the story, it's an error. The reader will be at least distracted and perhaps moved to throw the book across the room and never pick it up again, depending on their tolerance level. I want to avoid that.

The actual examples are subtler, of course, but the problem is the same. What kept me awake last night was wondering if it's really reasonable to drive from the Grand Canyon to San Jose in one day. This occurs in the chapter I'm revising, and I supposed that I must have researched it when writing the previous draft, but I started to question whether it was realistic.

Some readers (of this post and eventually of the novel) will be familiar with the distance and recognize if I've made a factual error. More readers will be like me -- they haven't made the drive and have only a vague sense of the geography -- so they might accept whatever I present as truth, but they might just as well question it like I did. This is clearly a detail that I need to get right, and it's one of my easier research problems.

Google Maps puts the drive at twelve to thirteen hours. Okay, that's an achievable single long day of driving, but the story introduces additional factors. The characters are traveling in 1963, before the completion of the interstate highway system, so they might be on slower roads. If I needed to judge the driving time more precisely, I'd do more extensive research on the highways, but I can already rule out a one-day drive due to the other complication: the characters include two five-year-olds. A family with small children isn't going to willingly make that drive in a single day.

I'm a bit irritated with Past Me for writing the chapter this way so that now I have to change it, but it turns out it won't create a huge amount of upheaval to adjust the scenario. I even have a change in mind that might make the story better.

This isn't the first time I've found that needing to accommodate the constraints of the real world results in a solution that improves the story. I've encountered other writers talking about this phenomenon, too. It's pretty cool when it happens.

All of this brings up the issue of when in the writing process to do research. It's easy to put a ton of time into research before or during a first draft and then discover in revision that many of the researched elements are no longer needed. For that reason, it can be better to save detailed research until later, when you know what's staying in the story. But then you run into situations like this where you've written a factual error into the events of the plot, and the fix is more complicated than changing a few words. Though as I said, these fixes can lead to good improvements. So I don't have a good answer about when to do research, except that you should definitely not get so caught up in research that you avoid writing altogether.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Kathryn Schulz describes her night owl habits in an essay on Writing in the Dark: "Mostly, though, I stay up to write. I started doing so in earnest in college, when almost everyone stays up to write--to the dismay of the remaining few, a.k.a. the roommates. Half my memories of those years are bathed in the blue glow of a computer, illuminating an otherwise dark room."

A Message from Earthquake Country

I'm obsessed with earthquakes, and so I'm writing a novel that involves a major earthquake, and so I'm even more obsessed with earthquakes.

I've lived in the Bay Area for 14 years. I can remember about half a dozen specific quakes with enough magnitude to cause that adrenaline rush of excitement and terror. None did any damage where I was, and at most they knocked things off shelves closer to the epicenter. On maybe twice as many occasions, I've felt a small, questionable tremor that sent me to the USGS site to check, or I've learned after the fact that I failed to notice a quake while I was in a car or asleep.

The earth moves a lot in California, relatively speaking. Today a rare significant earthquake hit Virginia and was felt along most of the East Coast. Twitter went wild with quake reports, along with a certain amount of ribbing from Californians saying that a little shaking was nothing to get worked up about. I think most California residents aren't as jaded as they might pretend to be. A little shaking is still grounds for posting to the internet out here, even when nothing's damaged.

It's likely that I'll eventually experience a destructive earthquake, but so far I have no first-hand experience. Which I'm glad about, as the owner of a creaky old house built on a liquefaction hazard zone. (Apologies to my parents, who just had a collective heart attack reading that.) As a writer, though, I do have a morbid desire to know what it would really be like if it happened here and now.

(On the other hand, if the Big One happens here and now, that breaks my entire story, in which a massive quake strikes here and at a specific point in the near future, with a clear implication that it didn't also happen a few years earlier. Fortunately or unfortunately, I get no say at all in the real world timing.)

I've done a lot of research into past earthquakes and projected quake scenarios for the Bay Area, and I expect to do another round of research before the manuscript is finished. The destruction caused by even a very large earthquake in modern California would be far, far less than what occurred in places like Haiti, thanks to our much better building standards, living conditions, and infrastructure.

I'm trying to keep the effects of the earthquake in my novel realistic and to portray a likely quantity of destruction, fatalities, and so on. Since writers are sadistic, while doing my research, I frequently had thoughts like, "Only that many deaths? That's not very dramatic." Optimistic projections are good news for reality, not as good for fiction. I went with the worst-case scenario.

 

UPDATE, 11:55pm: The eastern part of the Bay Area just experienced a 3.6 quake, and Twitter is abuzz over this minor shaking. Incidentally, I didn't feel it in the South Bay.

What I Did On My Summer Vacation

→ Assured my family members repeatedly that my novel isn't about them. Especially my brother, who has already "identified" himself in two of my previous manuscripts and who shares certain traits with a certain main character in THE EXTENT OF THE DAMAGE, which has only become more noticeable now that my brother has become a father. All of which is completely unintentional, because if anything, this character is the one modeled most closely on me, and it's not my fault that my brother and I are kind of alike. It's our parents' fault.

→ Discovered new similiarities between my family members and my characters everywhere I looked. Began to panic about whether my family would ever believe that the parallels were coincidental, or at least unconscious. Realized that while I've never paid much attention to "write what you know" as a piece of advice, "you write what you know" may be an inevitable curse.

→ Research. Mostly in the form of observing the behavior of the various kid family members encountered on my travels, with the aim of better writing the children in my novel at their different ages. Especially infancy. Rest assured that I would have been just as attentive toward my newborn nephew and inquisitive about his habits if I didn't have babies to write about.

→ Watched my father at work in his recording studio doing pitch correction on a vocal track until every single word sounded perfect. "That seems so agonizing," I thought. "I would never have the patience for that." Then it occurred to me that I'd just spent a week polishing a chapter until every single word was perfect.

→ Unearthed a box of stories I wrote in elementary and middle school, including a thick folder from eighth grade containing multiple drafts and worksheets on the revision process. I guarantee you'll be hearing more about this.

→ Answered "What's going on with your writing?" and "What's your novel about?" lots and lots of times. Still not as good at fielding these questions as I think I should be. Did not resort to responding with, "It's about you, okay?" (Because it's not.)

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Maggie Jamison offers fantastic advice about the exact issue I've been struggling with: "How do you create a character who suffers immensely, but who doesn’t sound whiny to the reader?" (Thanks, writerjenn!)

→ Bryan Russell at the Alchemy of Writing reminds writers to stay open to change when revising.

Revision Is Just a Phase (And Then Another Phase)

During revision, you can't expect to do everything at once. A flawless second draft is a wonderful daydream, but it's an unlikely reality. Revision happens in phases.

When I started the second draft of THE EXTENT OF THE DAMAGE, I made a deliberate choice to focus on character and plot, while leaving the development of setting and period details for later. This was a natural order for me, since setting is the part of storytelling I think about least. It also makes sense in general: you can still figure out if pacing and motivations work even when the characters are wandering around in something of a featureless void. Plus, keeping things vague in earlier drafts means you avoid doing research or worldbuilding that later becomes unnecessary when you remove a scene or subplot.

I believe my intention at the beginning of the draft was also not to worry about the careful crafting of every line. Again, putting off this step is sensible because it means you don't invest too much time on material that may not make it into the next draft. I seem to have forgotten this plan almost immediately, which helps explain why I spent a good eight months on a draft I wanted to get out in two or three. (Additional explanation: I have never, ever been right about how long something will take.)

Now I have a tight, nicely written draft, and if all I had to do was bring the setting to life and read up on 1960s childbirth practices, this novel would be going really well. Alas, though I made huge improvements to the characters and plot in this round of revision, there are still major weaknesses that require more big changes.

So I'm figuring out the next phase. I certainly won't be starting over, as I did for the second draft, but this revision is going to be more substantial than I'd hoped. It would be great if I could fix the remaining story issues and simultaneously build up the setting, all in the third draft. But I suspect that's just another wonderful daydream.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Chris Abouzeid at Beyond the Margins explores the idea that stories endure longer than the words that tell them.