Wrapping Up and Winding Down

The end of 2015 approaches, and I'm ready to switch my brain to vacation mode. Before I sink into a revel of books, knitting, and sugar, here's an update and overview of my writing year.

At the end of October, I mentioned I was a month into a new novel that I was writing with very little plan in mind. Yesterday I completed that first draft. I brought the characters and situation to a reasonable point of closure a bit past the 50,000-word mark that defines a novel in NaNoWriMo. The manuscript concludes with a self-indulgent epilogue that gives every character a happy ending, which was my reward for pushing through to the end.

Nobody gets to read this story. It's not at all good. Though I didn't restrict myself to writing in a single month, I basically NaNoWriMoed this first draft, and in true NaNo fashion, there are some tiny brilliant bits that emerged as surprises in the course of writing, and the rest is discardable. The premise turned out to be only marginally fruitful, and everything interesting happened in the subplots. I do like how many of the characters evolved, and some elements of the story have potential, so maybe certain parts could be salvaged and turned into something else. But that's a concern for another year.

At least I can report that I wrote a novel this year. I learned some things in the process and reminded myself what first drafts are like (bad). I derived some satisfaction from following through on a large project. It kept me from running wild on the streets or the internet for a couple of hours each day.

The more significant and satisfying writing endeavor of 2015 was yet another revision of THE EXTENT OF THE DAMAGE, which occupied me for the first half of the year. After confronting the fact that my manuscript was just too long, I shortened it by over 20%. By now I can't even remember how I possibly achieved this feat, so I'll have to review my series of posts about The Incredible Shrinking Manuscript.

All throughout the year, I've continued fiddling with the outline I keep talking about that I hope will eventually become another novel. This has been mostly a background project, and while I'm making gradual progress with it, I don't have any exciting milestones to announce.

I had a lot of fun this year composing blog entries that explore my childhood writing. Reading and analyzing the bizarre things I wrote as a kid has provided me with great amusement each month, and I'm glad my readers find these posts entertaining as well. I have more gems to share in 2016.

My final ongoing writing project is producing reviews of every book I read. The monthly recap format has been working out well for me, and I'll probably continue with that next year. Stay tuned for a January post with my favorite books of 2015, reading stats, and so on.

I'll wrap this up with two non-writing notes. First, for those who didn't see it elsewhere, check out the sweater I finally finished knitting and assembling this fall, a year and a half after starting it. And lastly, let's not forget that in 2015, we learned that I am a treasure chest once owned by the Visigoths.

May your 2015 wind down with some moments you can treasure. Here's to the end of another year!

Good Stuff Out There:

→ At Electric Literature, Lincoln Michel considers genres and the myths of popularity, with statistical analysis and an overview of ongoing debates: "There is an odd cognitive dissonance that happens in these conversations, where we are simultaneously supposed to believe that literary fiction is 'mainstream fiction' and genre fiction is 'ghettoized,' and also that literary fiction is a niche nobody reads while genre authors laugh all the way to the bank."

Writing Methods

There's this idea that two methods of writing exist, plotting and pantsing (flying by the seat of one's pants). Plotters outline the whole story in advance, potentially in great detail, then write a first draft that follows the outline. Pantsers begin writing with no plan and discover the story in the process of writing it, knowing they'll revise later to make everything fit together better. Often these two strategies are discussed with the suggestion that any given writer is one type or the other.

As with most dichotomies, the reality is more of a spectrum. Plenty of plotters expect to adjust or even ignore their outlines once they start writing and think up new ideas. Pantsers usually have some overall plot concept in mind at the beginning and may have many smaller details planned out. People also swear by writing processes that fall in between the two camps or aren't identifiable as either. And while some writers can only imagine working at one or the other extreme, others try out both at different times.

A month ago I gave an update on the novel I'm plotting in a hardcore way. This is the first time I've done extensive outlining before the first draft, but much of the work feels familiar from planning subsequent drafts of novels I wrote pantsily. I'm now revising my outline, which is also a familiar process, and I'm still pleased at the idea that all this advance work will eventually lead to a first draft that's solid, well-structured, and doesn't require several rounds of rewriting.

In response to a discussion about that post, my friend Julia wrote an amazing breakdown of her writing process, which involves a great deal of outlining and advance planning. Many of the steps Julia details are similar to what I've been doing as I plot out this novel, as well as what I've done when preparing for past revisions. Some of the parts that resonate with me aren't things I was conscious of doing or wouldn't have thought to call out, so I'm very impressed with her level of insight into her own process. Do check out her post, and feel free to imagine me doing most of that stuff, especially lying on the floor in despair.

While I'm enjoying my plotting, other than the bouts of floor despair, I was growing eager to begin writing something new, and this plot-in-progress isn't ready to embark on yet. I'd been musing for a while on another idea I thought I might be able to start drafting, but once I took notes on what I'd thought of so far, I found I didn't have enough to work with. I went through the "I will never have another idea oh wait I have an idea" routine surprisingly quickly and came up with something that I was fairly confident could result in a novel-length text.

In the past month, I've written 25,000 words on this new novel, and while I will not claim that they are good words in their present combination, they do set in motion a story that I'm curious to get to the end of. I've been pantsing pretty hard, assigning the characters problems that come to me on a whim, setting up scenes with no plan for how they'll play out, and surprising myself with intriguing developments. I have a very general sort of conclusion in mind but only the vaguest sense of how I might get there, which is both fun and terrifying. I fully expect that if this story turns out to be any good, I'll have to throw out at least half the subplots and overhaul many of the characters in the next draft. This novel, unlike the one I'm pre-plotting, will require a ton of rewriting.

I like plotting, and I like pantsing. Maybe eventually I'll decide that one end of the spectrum is more useful for me to stick with, but at the moment, I'm quite content to be working with both methods.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ In The Atlantic, Noah Charney explains the the reality of the modern book tour: "Then arrived another solution that I only learned about on my first tour, back in 2007 for my novel The Art Thief. It peeled back the veil over this quasi-legendary concept of authors on tour (I imagined groupies, whiskey, cigarette smoke, typewriters), and exposed me to a new, and completely fascinating, role that I never knew existed: that of the awkwardly named 'escort.'"

Fall Forward

Rain made an appearance today in the Bay Area, so it feels like an actual change of seasons as we head into October. My excitement is building for the fall literary events I wrote about last week. When I'm not too distracted by anticipation and precipitation, I've been busy with various projects, and I can report forward progress in several areas.

You may recall that in June I once again finished that novel I keep saying is done. You may have read the series of posts I made in August about how the latest revision led to a significantly shorter manuscript. You may wonder what's happening with that manuscript now. I've resumed sending query letters to agents, which means I tell them about THE EXTENT OF THE DAMAGE and share the opening pages in hopes that they'll be interested in reading more. I don't talk much about querying here because the process moves incredibly slowly, and there's nothing really to say about it until that glorious time when there might be something to say. But now you know that's in the works.

In that same June post, I also mentioned the novel I've been planning out in detail before writing, which is a new strategy for me. I reached a point in the outline where I discovered the plot was heading in a direction that didn't work, so I've returned to the beginning. A little at a time, I'm changing things around to make it all fit together better. Yes, I'm doing a revision of the planning stage and still haven't written a word of the actual novel. That means everything is going as intended, because so much less time and agony is involved in redoing an outline than in producing multiple drafts. I'll write this novel when it's ready, and in the meantime, finding the right version of the plot is satisfying and instructive.

That said, I've found myself itching to really write again, so I'm thinking of getting started on something else. It's been a while since I embarked on a first draft, with all the freedom and frustration that entails, and I could use the practice. Stay tuned.

This has nothing to do with writing unless I come up with a metaphor about stitching ideas together or something, but I've recently been spending a lot of time and attention on knitting after one of my occasional dormant periods with the hobby. (If you're a member of Ravelry, find me there.) Over a year ago, I finished knitting all the pieces of a sweater, and now in anticipation of cooler weather, I'm finally tackling the less fun work of assembling them. Yeah, there's definitely a metaphor in there somewhere.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Stephen Sparks at Literary Hub looks at novels written in invented dialects and some variations on this theme, "works that similarly inhabit languages unique to themselves, whether through dialect, an attempt at capturing the singular nature of consciousness, or in one case, unique because it is essentially alien."

Again We Come to the End

A month ago, I announced I was almost done revising. If you're familiar with my history of similar announcements, you might not have believed me, especially if you were aware that when I did in fact reach the end of the manuscript a couple of weeks later, I immediately went back to the beginning for another pass, claiming it wouldn't take long.

Well, I worked my way through the novel again in short order, reading the text aloud to myself and taking care of some final tightening, and I am now proud to say this novel is DONE! I mean, it's done until I'm under the guidance of an agent or editor who asks for further revision, but believe it or not, that's a future I dream about. But for now: DONE DONE DONE!

With that novel off my plate, I've gone back to the one I've been gradually planning out. I'm attempting to figure out the whole story in detail before writing it, a completely different process for me that I'm enjoying. I'm at about the three-quarters mark in the outline, so it's almost time to face the issue that I have no idea how any of the plotlines should resolve. So that gives me a project for the summer.

As another project, I'd like to write at some point about how I approached a revision with the goal of making the manuscript significantly shorter. Consider this another one of my bold proclamations, and we'll see how soon I can follow through.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ On the Melville House blog, Zara Sternberg interviews Harvard University Professor Daniel Donoghue on his investigation of the theory that "until the late Middle Ages, most people were only able to read aloud and silent reading was an anomaly."

Anticipation

It's almost time for the first Bay Area Book Festival, June 6 and 7 in Berkeley, and I can't wait! The organizers have put together an amazing schedule of talks and panels featuring an incredible set of authors, and there will be art, exhibitors, and food stalls to wander through. The festival is free and open to everyone, but to reserve seats for the indoor events and avoid waiting in line, you can purchase individual session tickets for a couple of dollars each. I have tickets for a bunch of Saturday events, and I'll report back on my festival experience.

I'm also excited about heading into the home stretch of this revision! As of today, I've completed all the chapters that I expect to be tricky. Yes, sure, two chapters ago I also declared I was through all the tough parts, but now I'm totally confident that the rest will be smooth sailing. And no matter how the process of tackling the remaining chapters goes, I will be done with this draft soon, and I'm thrilled.

What happens after this revision, you ask? Well, I'll send out the improved, shortened manuscript for another try, and then I'll work hard at distracting myself with other writing. Planning on the future novel has slowed the past couple of weeks due to putting more time into revision, but before that I was making steady progress on an initial detailed outline, and I'm somewhat close to the end of that as well.

Summertime means travel on the horizon for me, and I'm looking forward to enjoying that with at least one major writing project accomplished and some steps toward whatever comes next.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Hillary Kelly argues that publishers should bring back the serialized novel: "When we can freely turn to the next chapter in our novels, we can quash any suspense with the flip of a page. Slicing a novel into bits and slowly doling it out to the reading public takes control of that tension away from the reader, allowing it to ferment and blossom." (Thanks, The Millions!)

Items of Note

1. The stack of manuscript pages on the left is slightly taller than the stack on the right, which means I'm halfway through this revision. The novel is becoming shorter and the story tighter, so all is going according to plan.

2. The stacks of unrelated papers and magazines on my desk are growing, and I'm having spring cleaning urges that are in part a desire to goof off from writing. Must resist procrasticleaning.

3. As I continue plotting out the future novel, I keep thinking, "Oh well, I can always take that part out later." Maybe this explains how I arrived at item 1.

4. Probably the best thing I could do for my writing career would be to swim laps daily and then harvest all the brilliant ideas that occur to me in the water.

5. There already aren't enough hours in the day for me to write all the things I want to write. That's a pretty good position to be in.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Hannah Gersen of The Millions asked fellow writers to share their notebook pages, diagrams, and timelines: "I had a list of scenes and an outline of what I had written but the only way I could really get my bearings was to Google old lunar calendars. Finally, I took a big piece of paper from my son's easel and drew a three-month calendar that I could look at as I worked. In the calendar squares I wrote the events of the story, like a diary. After I did that, it was much easier to write. It was as if my brain could finally relax once the events of the story were organized in a familiar way."

What's Up

It's been a while since I've posted anything about my current writing projects. That's because for much of last year I was frustrated by how little writing I was accomplishing. It was difficult to think what to say on the topic, and easier and more fun to talk about the many books I was reading and the awesome stories I wrote 30 years ago.

But writing has gone much better in 2015, so I think it's finally time for an update. I'm working on two projects right now: yet another revision of the completed novel and a detailed plan for the next novel.

Another revision? Scary, but true. I received a lot of interest and encouraging comments during my agent search last year, but so far nothing has panned out. After spending a year away from the manuscript, I gave it a hard look with fresh eyes (if that isn't scrambling a metaphor) and saw room for improvement. I'm making another pass with a focus on tightening and shortening, and then we'll see how it goes. I'm pleased with my progress on this revision so far. I don't want to get into the details of numbers and timeframes and so on, but I will try to corral my thoughts and advice about reducing word count into a post at some point. In the meantime, check the Good Stuff for someone else's tips.

For the next novel, I've decided to try a completely different process in hopes of cutting back on the number of revisions required. I'm doing very detailed advance planning and plotting so that I can identify problems with the story and make improvements while it's still in the outline stage. This method works great for some writers and not at all for others, and while it's a new strategy for me, I'm finding it useful. Of course, the ultimate test will come when I start the actual writing, but by then I should have a firm grip on the story and characters. No plans yet on when the actual writing will happen. I'm deliberately working slowly on this, only spending a little time on it each day, so that I have plenty of space for contemplation and random flashes of brilliance as I go along. I'm sure I'll post more eventually about my experience with taking this approach.

In addition to these major endeavors, I'm also pondering other short and long writing projects I might undertake. And I'm getting excited about attending FOGcon in a week! There's a fabulous list of panels lined up, and I'll be moderating one on apocalyptic fiction, one of my favorite genres. Again, I'm sure FOGcon will be the subject of an upcoming post.

That gives you the general idea, though. If you've been politely hesitant to ask about my writing lately, now you know that things are looking up.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ At Fiction University, Jodie Renner outlines steps for shortening your novel: "Delete or condense scenes that don't have enough conflict or change, or add much to the plot or characterization. Condense parts where scenes drag, eliminating the boring bits. (Take out the parts that readers skip over.) Summarize transitional scenes or chapters in a few sentences to tack onto another chapter."

Going Swimmingly

I just had the most rewarding swim. The rhythmic movement through the water loosened up a muscle kink that had been plaguing me. It also helped me (as it so often does) work out a bit of plot that I was stuck on.

My recent vacation to visit my family was wonderful. And despite my fears and occasional past experience, the break didn't diminish my interest in writing, but rather built up some new momentum.

Before, during, and since the trip, I've been working on carefully nailing down the story of the next novel. I haven't historically been the kind of writer who creates detailed outlines in advance, but I feel like I could be, and I want to try it this time. I think if I can discover the story in the pre-writing stage, rather than in the first draft (and the second, and the third), I can reach the finished version in fewer revision iterations and a lot less time.

As always, we'll see how that really goes in practice. But now I've waded in, and I'm gliding smoothly along.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Competing perspectives: At Thought Catalog, Michael Malice advises Never edit as you write: "Editing while you write is like climbing down the mountain as you try to reach the summit. Get the job done first, and only then should you try to go back." Responding in Electric Lit, Lincoln Michel offers a different point of view: "Each path you take--choices of voice, structure, character, setting, etc.--alters your destination. Thinking of it that way, is it so crazy to take out a map and backtrack if you realize you are going the wrong way?"

You Get the Picture

It's been a while since I posted anything about this new novel I'm working on. That's because after I did a bunch of planning and a lot of research and then some more planning, I wasn't sure how to proceed. I still needed to figure out many aspects of the story, and I didn't really know enough about the facts, and it was all rather intimidating. I went off and wrote some other stuff for a bit, and I wrote nothing for a time, and I let myself get distracted by unrelated things. Somehow none of that resulted in progress on the novel. But now I finally have a much stronger grip on the story, and I'm feeling far more confident about getting somewhere. So it's the perfect time to get caught up in the excitement of a vacation and forget all about the novel again!

I'm really looking forward to visiting my family. I'm also happy about feeling that when I get back from the trip, I'll be eager to move forward with this novel instead of continuing to avoid it.

In a couple of other areas, I've made more visible progress:

I'm pleased to report that my new/old Polaroid camera is functional! I was able to purchase the appropriate battery and film, but I wasn't certain I really had it working until I peeled apart the first photograph. I'd braced myself for disappointment, so seeing a clear image there was kind of astounding, perhaps what it might have felt like to encounter a Polaroid for the very first time.

Here, meta-ly, is a photo of my first four photos:

Inspiration vs Perspiration vs Procrastination

There is a component of creativity that comes out of nowhere. At no particular time and for no particular reason, you might be struck by an image or a scenario or a dilemma that enthralls you. Maybe this happens to you constantly, maybe it's rare, but either way, that spark of inspiration can become the thing you're excited to write about (or express in the creative format of your choice). A creative project has to start from something, and this so-called visit from the muse might be the best source for an idea you actually care about.

But any creative project requires a whole lot of ideas, not just a starting point. That sentence you overheard can inspire your novel, but you're going to have to make a million decisions about character and plot and setting to transform that sentence into a story, and that's leaving aside the fact that you also have to sit down and write the damn thing. Since so many brilliant ideas come unexpectedly, it can be tempting to wait around for as long as it takes for all the right pieces to fall into place in your head, but this isn't generally the best tactic.

Coming to every decision in its own sweet time could take forever, so it's important to apply the same discipline to planning and thinking as to writing: Show up and do the work whether you want to or not, whether you feel inspired or not. This won't be effective absolutely every time, but usually, all that's required to get things flowing is to make a start. Focus on the problem, stare pointedly at research materials that might lead to ideas, and a solution will become apparent. It's not magic, it's persistence.

Once you've had a little success with the just-do-it strategy, it can again be tempting to sit back and let the rest of puzzle assemble itself through those useful flashes of brilliance. This might work, after all, now that you've solved that one big problem that was plaguing you for ages.

Don't do that. A crucial aspect of persistence is that it's ongoing. To really accomplish anything creative, you have to work at it and work at it and work some more. Even if it's summer and there are new books out and vacations to plan.

This post is of course simply a timeless observation, relevant to nothing at all particular or currently relevant.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ This summer, London is full of benches inspired by books, and they're rather lovely. (Thanks, Books on the Nightstand!)

→ At The Millions, Jonathan Russell Clark examines The Art of the Epigraph: "Writers don't use them to boast. They are less like some wine and entrée pairing and more like the first lesson in a long class. Writers must teach a reader how to read their book. "

News Is No News

A couple of weeks ago, I posted about writing a new short story. The other day I finished revising it, and then I submitted it to a literary magazine. This is my first time trying to get a story published. It will be pretty cool if it's accepted, but it's also been neat just going through the process. If the story isn't picked up by the first magazine, I'll try some others, and maybe I'll start submitting stories more often.

In novel news, there isn't any. I've been continuing to research the next novel, but I'm getting sort of bored with that stage and feel like it's time to move on to writing soon. There are still some major story details that I need to figure out, but idly pondering them hasn't been productive, so I'm ready for a more aggressive tactic like writing things out in a format other than Post-Its.

That's about all there is to report at the moment. Of course I've been reading a lot, too, but that goes without saying.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ In the New York Times Bookends column, Zoë Heller and Mohsin Hamid consider the adage Write What You Know: "The first mistake I made as a schoolgirl was to assume I was being asked to write exclusively about things that had happened to me. In fact, the injunction is only to know; the business of how you come by your knowledge is left quite open. You can mine your own life, yes. But you can also sympathetically observe other people's experiences. You can read and research. And you can use your imagination."

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."

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."

Forward March

Well, February's over, and I still haven't written a new novel or sold my last one. But it's such a short month, how can anyone get anything done?

I did manage to read quite a few books last month, and though I predicted I'd never again surpass my January reading record, I more or less tied it in February. On the novel planning front, I've transferred all my sticky notes to SuperNotecard and have been contemplating the plot. And in the agent search department, [redacted].

This weekend, I'm off to FOGcon, a local convention for fans of science fiction and fantasy literature. This will be my fourth time attending (and the fourth year the con has been held), and I can't wait. Many writers attend the con, as well as some people involved in publishing, so if I wrote in the genre, it could be a networking opportunity, but since my novel is mainstream, I'll be there primarily in my role as a reader, and I'm quite content with that situation. I'm looking forward to spending the weekend talking about stories with other people who think talking about stories is a great way to spend a weekend. To get an idea of some of the stuff we'll be discussing, check out the schedule of panels. And if you're in the area, come join us!

Good Stuff Out There:

→ In the New York Times Opinionator, Margaret Hawkins shares her Confessions of a Lifelong Eavesdropper: "I eavesdrop all the time. You could say it's my hobby, though I don't seek out opportunities. These slices of language come at me through the air, begging to be heard, like small, precious gifts I cannot refuse, mini vacations into other lives."

→ Gabe Habash at PWxyz has gathered the endings and explanations for 12 Books That End Mid-Sentence.

What Planning A Novel Looks Like

While I write exclusively on a computer and no longer have much desire to participate in workshop exercises where I'm expected to scribble down a scene on paper, I like to do my early planning in physical format. Putting my messy handwriting all over little pieces of paper that I can move around is useful and satisfying for me in a way that my computer screen can't duplicate, even though I've been very happy with the virtual index cards of SuperNotecard. I don't understand why real cards are more helpful during the early stages of a draft, but I'm sure there's some study out there that explains the phenomenon.

For the novel currently known as INCONCLUSIVE, I've been busily rearranging sticky notes in an attempt to discover how the plot might work. (I opted for Post-Its rather than index cards this time because I wanted to be able to keep them in place on some portable flat surfaces.) I'm now to the point where I feel reasonably confident that this is actually a viable story, but there are still enormous gaps in the idea department. I'm going to need to make a lot more decisions and do a lot of research before I can start writing, but I knew that already.

Here's a photo to give you an idea of the current state of the project:

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!)

Getting A Move On

Early in January, I admitted to having a little trouble restarting my brain after a long period of time off. I did manage to remember some things about writing, though, and I started making notes on a new project.

I dove enthusiastically into story planning for a little while, and then I found that thinking up good ideas was hard work. It was a lot easier and more fun to sit around reading all day, and that's how I actually ended up spending most of the month. Since the start of the year, I've read five complete books, plus the majority of the long and dense GRAVITY'S RAINBOW and a third of GREAT EXPECTATIONS. I'm sure that's the most I've read in a month since childhood, and it's probably a record I'll never surpass.

This was a lovely, lazy way to spend January, and now it's really time for me to get back to real work. I've had a chance to do some background mulling on the ideas for the new novel, and I'm ready to bring the story into the foreground again and face the fact that it will require actual effort to turn it into a draft.

Meanwhile, the query process continues, also mostly in the background. I'd love to get a move on with that, but I'm already doing everything I can at my end, and the majority of my role right now is to wait and be patient. I'll admit to that being another thing I'm having a little trouble with...

Good Stuff Out There:

→ At the New Yorker's Page-Turner, Thomas E. Kennedy recounts a tale of Aggravated Bibliophilism: "You return to the shelf of dictionaries, where it should be, and run your finger along the twenty-something multicolored spines, but there is no royal-blue one. You feel along the back of the shelf to be certain that the book has not slipped behind the other books. It has not."

Something New

I have sort of begun a new novel. So far all I've written is a lot of notes on Post-Its, but it's a start.

I'm not ready to describe what the novel is about, because the aboutness hasn't yet gelled into a concise explanation, but the pieces have been knocking around inside my head for more than a year. I hadn't written down any of the ideas until this point, so what I've been doing this week is simply getting everything from my head onto paper. I find it very helpful to work with pen and paper at this part of the process, though I can't explain why (and my handwriting is atrocious).

I know quite a bit about the characters, but they're still lacking names, which means that in the notes they're all referred to by letter designators. I have many components of a plot, but not yet enough that all sticks together properly. I want to make sure I can construct a whole plot out of this idea before I start the first draft. There's also research that I'm going to need to do before beginning. So I may be in this pre-writing stage of writing for a while, in order to be confident I can get the writing part right.

Venturing into an unknown story is a little intimidating, but mostly exciting. It's a nice change to be at the starting end of the novel process after so much revision. It's been a long time since I was here, and I was a much less experienced writer the last time around.

I don't have a real title, but for the purposes of being able to refer this novel as something, I'm calling it INCONCLUSIVE. That's more fun than "Untitled", and it has some relevance to the story. I'll let you muse on that while I get back to scribbling on sticky notes.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Karen Bender writes at the New York Times' Opinionator about The Emotional Power of Verbs: "Form your characters in terms of actions that will reveal their interior lives. If you want to describe a dress your character is wearing, think about how she is moving out the door in that dress. Is the woman walking, hurrying, sauntering, floating?"