A Very Minimalistic Play

It's time to move ahead in our journey through my childhood writing, so I braved my next teenage Steno notebook (#4, for those keeping track). As I read through its pages, many entries made me laugh, and even more provoked cringes. One piece of writing stood out by causing the most of both reactions.

In addition to its other exceptional qualities, this work is noteworthy because it's written as a play. When I started writing creatively in my free time during high school, one of my first efforts was a short play, but I only experimented with the format once or twice more before the piece we'll consider today. I frequently attended theater at the time, both school and professional productions, and I auditioned for every school play, though I was rarely cast, so it's no wonder I had an interest in playwriting.

Like most of my adolescent works, this one is unfinished, exhibiting my usual struggle with plot, so prepare to be left hanging. As you'll see, I put a lot of thought (a lot of thought) into elements that in retrospect weren't the most important to focus on:

(This is a very minimalistic play. What else can you expect from a play that consists entirely of one side of a telephone conversation? Consequently, the set, props, and lighting are of little importance. The play takes place in CAROL's college dorm room. All that is required are some books, notebooks, a bag of pretzels, a can of soda, some other random clutter, and of course, the all important telephone. To eliminate the need for furniture or walls, the stage can simply be darkened, and CAROL may sit center stage in the light of a large spot. Make sure the light is not too bright or harsh, as the audience needs to look at it for the entire play. Another note concerning comfort: Be sure the telephone can be comfortably held for a long period of time. A shoulder rest which attaches to the handpiece may be used, if desired.

What is important in this play is that the audience be able to follow CAROL and NICK's conversation. The actress playing CAROL should determine exactly what NICK is saying at each pause and wait the correct length of time before speaking again. Small changes may be made in the lines as the actress or director sees fit, in order to aid in comprehension or to sound more natural.

There are few stage directions. The actress may do whatever seems natural while talking on the phone: sit up, lie down, eat, drink, doodle, do leg lifts, etc. These actions should be spontaneous and unplanned.

An Introduction to Me, Age 13

Throughout this investigation of my childhood writing, I've been excited to get to the thick folder of eighth grade work. English class that year placed a heavy focus on writing, with an emphasis on the planning and revision stages. I was eager to examine pages of crossed-out sentences and scribbled notes that might reveal my early story development process.

Alas, while at least two drafts of every piece survive, the differences between versions are minimal in most cases, with only a few word choices improved, punctuation errors fixed, and maybe an occasional sentence rewritten. And really, that's not surprising, since I was a 13-year-old kid who'd always been praised for strong writing skills. Why would I bother to alter my stunning prose?

Based on my own experience and what I've observed in others, it tends to take a long time for writers to understand and accept that what pours out in the first draft is often nothing close to the best possible version of a story. Revision is time-consuming, difficult, and frustrating, so it's no wonder we resist it. Still, I applaud the Sudbury (Massachusetts) Public Schools for teaching revision in the eighth grade writing curriculum, even if this step was only cursory in practice:

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. "

Full Speed Ahead

Things have been going well on the revision front this past month. I'm still finding that relatively small changes are fixing my hard scary problems, so I'm zooming right along on this millionth pass through the manuscript. Well, zooming compared to the speed of any of my other passes, so at least that's something.

As part of the process, I'm once again making a bit of headway on shortening my too-long novel. I've cut or abbreviated a bunch of scenes that don't serve enough of a purpose or that seemed to drag while I was reading aloud. And I'm yet again trimming unnecessary words and sentences all over the place, because apparently I didn't get them all last time.

Or maybe someone has been adding words to my manuscript while I'm not looking. Otherwise how could I have let the following piece of dialogue survive to this point?:

"Tell Meredith I'm ready for my ice cream."

"You want ice cream?"

"Meredith always brings me ice cream."

I returned to the kitchen. "He says you always bring him ice cream?"

I was aware that my characters were possibly a little too obsessed with ice cream, but this sounds like a comedy routine without a punchline.

That mischievous somebody is probably also responsible for the fact that the same unusual verbs keep appearing over and over again throughout the story. I've been tracking down occurrences of "crammed" and "gaped" this week. I also have my eye on the rather too popular activity of characters touching one other on the shoulder, which could lead to problems, namely, reader boredom.

In my ongoing angst over paragraph breaks, I've now become concerned that I have too many short paragraphs, and I've been merging some of these together. After long, painful periods of thought, of course. You see why this is all going so slowly?

But seriously, I'm zooming along over here. It's like I might even be done someday.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ The New York Times asked a variety of authors to comment on how new technologies influence fiction: "This new place [the internet] needs to be studied; it needs geographers, anthropologists and economists. There’s a new visual and conceptual grammar -- just as we learned how to look at paintings, so too have we developed ways of looking and being in cyberspace," says Charles Yu. (Thanks, The Millions!)

This Is How You Do It

While I was on vacation, I didn't forget how to write in terms of craft. I didn't significantly lose track of my place in story, at least not once I'd reread the chapter in progress and the notes I'd left for myself. Ditto for the character's voice.

What I did forget was how to write in terms of how to actually sit down and do it. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say I forgot that writing is never a thing I especially want to do.

Well, sometimes I do want to write. For example, if I'm in the kitchen getting something to eat before a writing session, I often think how nice it will be to get back to my desk and dive in to the story where I left off. This feeling can last all the way up until I'm sitting at my desk, at which point I would rather do almost anything except start typing sentences into my manuscript.

It's like this pretty much every day. But generally as soon as I've managed to type anything at all, I'm hit with tons of ideas even better than what I was planning, and I can't wait to get it all down. In three words flat, I can go from loathing to loving writing. It's not the writing process I would opt for, but it's gotten me through all these drafts.

So it took a few days to remind myself that when it seemed like the prospect of writing was the worst thing imaginable, that was just another day at the office. As usual, I had to force myself to write, and then it was fine. That's just how to write.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ At Beyond the Margins, Chris Abouzeid ponders The Mystery of Names: "Why does one name light up in the author's brain while dozens of others seem dull and unworthy? J.K. Rowling chose Harry Potter's name because she wanted something ordinary. But there are hundreds of ordinary English names. Why not Henry Miller? Or John Smith?"

Ramping Up

Deadlines and goals are useful. I mean, duh, right? They certainly work well for me, so I always have this nagging feeling that if I were operating with a real deadline on my novel, I'd be a lot more productive and probably finished by now.

What qualifies as "real" in my head is a funny thing. I've successfully met the deadline for National Novel Writing Month many times -- and without it, I might never have written any novels -- but the penalty for failing is only self-flagellation and maybe some mild disappointment from friends. I'm great at self-flagellation, so I ought to be able to set up a personal arbitrary deadline at any point, and I can create the potential for mild disappointment by announcing it on my blog or even just telling a few people.

I guess I have done that at least once, when I committed to an hour count goal last November as a parallel challenge to NaNoWriMo. I met my goal, and it helped me be more productive than usual. I was kind of intending to repeat the challenge a couple of months later, but that never happened.

I'm constantly making goals for myself about when I'm going to finish this scene, this chapter, this whole damn draft. But I never make them real by telling anyone else, so they're meaningless.

Thinking about this more, I realize that I'm only comfortable committing publicly to a goal based on a certain amount of time (or in the past, a certain number of words), not to one involving progress through the story. That's because I can't know for sure if a scene or chapter will be painless to write or will require long thought and agonizing over every sentence. I'm afraid that if I have to meet a deadline, I'll rush when I shouldn't, and the quality will suffer. Which would be a counterproductive use of productivity, so of course that's why I'm not comfortable with it. I mean, duh, right?

Therefore, here's another hour-based goal. Back in the spring, I did an assessment of how much time I spent working, and I wasn't pleased with the results. I resolved to push myself to focus more on writing each day, and that's been going pretty well, if you overlook a summer full of breaks. I'm currently more satisfied with how much I'm getting done.

So now it's time to boost the numbers and raise the stakes. I'm going to increase my hourly goal each week for the next four weeks. At the end of that time, I'm going to post about this again and tell you how well I'm doing.

And if I don't, your mild disappointment will rain down upon me! Believe me, this is one of the scarier fates I can imagine.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Author Keith Ridgway confesses in The New Yorker's Page-Turner blog, "I don't know how to write.": "I've written six books now, but instead of making it easier, it has complicated matters to the point of absurdity. I have no idea what I'm doing." (Thanks, Nathan Bransford!)

It's How You Use It

If you're familiar with National Novel Writing Month, you'll know that the event revolves around word count and that the goal is to write a novel of 50,000 words. You may also be aware that 50,000 words is much shorter than most novels published for adults these days. The type of book I'm writing could be twice that, or more. (Speaking very, very roughly, a published book has around 300 words per page.)

Since the beginning, I've been expecting this novel to be on the long side -- and no, for those of you out there snickering, it's not because I have an embarrassing history of producing ridiculously lengthy manuscripts. THE EXTENT OF THE DAMAGE contains three distinct stories, so it needs a good amount of space for all the plots to unfold. I've put a lot of attention into deciding what belongs on the page and what doesn't, and at this point I feel confident that the book will be the correct length to tell the story, with no excess.

I wrote the first draft of DAMAGE during NaNoWriMo in 2007, so I was keeping careful track of the word count. It came in around 80,000 words, and I was pleased to know that I'd have plenty of room to add more to the story. When I wrote the second draft from scratch two years later, I also kept track of my daily word count (though I'd forgotten about that until I found the spreadsheet today). The second version of the book was 110,000 words, a size that seemed appropriate for the story, with even a some leeway to expand.

During this revision, I haven't focused much on word count. I'm rewriting within an existing document, doing a combination of adding new material and removing old text, so tracking words is a less useful metric. Instead, I've been keeping track of hours worked. I've also been thinking about the number of pages in each chapter and noticing the page count that's always visible at the bottom of the window.

Obviously, there's a relationship between page count and word count. They increase and decrease together, and you can estimate one from the other. But I hadn't been making those estimates, and I hadn't been running the word count feature. And more importantly, I wasn't doing any of the math about how many of the pages in the document (which contains all the novel's chapters) had been added in the course of working on this storyline.

So I was surprised when I finished the second storyline (yay!) and discovered that it's significantly longer than the first one I revised. This isn't a disaster, and I was aware that the second plot was turning out larger than planned, but the actual numbers were unexpected.

See, the story that takes place chronologically last, which is the one I revised first (sorry, this is complicated), serves as a sort of frame for the other two storylines. For structural reasons, the frame story has more chapters than the other two. I also intended to add the most new material to the frame (it's really more than a frame) while keeping the other two plots fairly stable. Therefore, I concluded that the frame would be longer than the other two.

When I revised that first storyline, the chapters tended toward a consistent length. I started the second storyline and was a bit alarmed to find that the chapters were all turning out longer. I decided that was fine, and I guessed that as a result, the two stories might be about the same size. At no point did I do any actual math on this to see how far off my guess was. In hindsight, the page and chapter discrepancies clearly meant I was creating far more words and pages for the second story.

As I said, this is not a disaster, and I'm continuing to stand behind the length of the manuscript. The third storyline will have the same number of chapters as the second and is supposed to be around the same length -- but I guess we'll see how it goes.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Theresa Stevens at Edittorrent talks about how to build complexity into texts without undercutting the integrity of the story: "complexity is built up in small moments, but each of those moments must be clear in and of themselves. If the contradictions in your narrative aren't presented in a clear way, in a way that allows the reader to easily grasp them, then you're not building complexity into the text."

The More Things Change

Today I looked over my outline -- a set of virtual index cards created in SuperNotecard -- to consider whether the sequence of events in my story still makes sense. As I've revised over the last couple of weeks, I've ended up rearranging scenes and writing some unplanned new scenes, so the outline needed review.

I was relieved to conclude that the basic order of events is still logical. With the recent changes, there are even parts that work better than before. Since my novel involves three separate storylines, the idea of doing any more serious restructuring is daunting. I'm glad that I get to keep the chapters in the order I decided on months ago, but I really wanted to assure myself that I wasn't just avoiding change because it's the easier option.

I get kind of exasperated that at this stage I'm still sitting down and writing scenes that take the story in a different direction than I planned. By now, I want the story to be settled.

During my more reasonable moments, I realize that this is a very silly thing to want. It's awesome that without even meaning to, I keep coming up with ideas that make the story better that I thought it was going to be. Oh yeah, duh. As I've written about before, it's crucial to get the story right, and I'm just going to have to make as many changes as it takes until that happens.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Michael Agger at Slate investigates the science behind the question of how to be a faster writer: "It's no secret that writing is hard ... but why can't I be one of those special few for whom it comes easily? What am I doing wrong? Why haven't I gotten any faster?" (Thanks, Edittorrent!)

Just 10 Minutes

Recently I mentioned how easily distracted I am. Also, I like ice cream. Was that a squirrel?

I frequently find it a struggle to start writing and stay writing. One very effective, very stupid technique I use to stay focused is a timer set for a small amount of time, like 10 or 15 minutes. While that timer is counting down, I'm not allowed to do anything except write. No switching to a window other than the document I'm typing in. No getting up from my desk. Just writing.

A timer isn't any kind of deterrent, and there's no good reason that a countdown should overpower my usual distractibility, but it works. Every time, my silly little brain falls for the trick of "Oh, come on, you can do it for just 10 minutes!" While the timer runs, I write and rarely try to do anything else, and if my attention does stray, I remember and switch back into writing. At the beep, I'm often on a roll and immediately reset the timer, or I'll take my brief earned break and then quickly return to writing. Getting started is always the hardest part.

Earlier this week, psychologist David Rasch spoke to my writing club about writer's block and procrastination. Everything he talked about was painfully familiar. He discussed a number of possible causes of and cures for avoiding writing, and it was a great presentation. His overall message was one I already know too well: One way or the other, you just have to make yourself write.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Beyond the Margins contributor Kathy Crowley interviews Steve Almond and Jane Roper on humor: "So it's not so much about the word or object itself, but how it’s used. A subtly incongruous word or detail, carefully placed, can make all the difference. The only exception is the word 'underpants,' which is funny no matter what."

What I've Been Doing Instead of Blogging

I haven't posted here in a couple of weeks. This is what I've been doing with myself in the meantime:

→ Staying off the internet for much of the day. I decided to disable my computer's wireless connection before bed each night and not turn it on until finishing the day's writing work. To my surprise, most days I haven't been particularly eager to get back online, and after writing, I move on to reading, housework, etc without stopping to look at Twitter, Facebook, and Google Reader. As a result, I've been more productive than usual in the non-internet world. As another result, I've only had time for "essential" online interactions, and I've regretted missing out on my normal levels of consumption and engagement. Such are the problems of our modern world (or not).

→ Engaging repeatedly in pointless turmoil that goes like this: I think of a brilliant blog post I'll write later that day and compose a few sentences in my head. I run out of time in the day for writing a blog post, due to accomplishing so many other productive tasks (or not). I tell myself I'll write the post the next day. The next day, I have lost all enthusiasm for the topic but have another brilliant idea. The cycle repeats. I do not write any blog post at all. I feel guilty about neglecting my blog and letting down my devoted readers. I berate myself for the narcissism of imagining that my readers, however devoted, are actually sitting around thinking about how I have let them down. I feel guilty about my narcissism. I feel narcissistic for posting about my guilt. I marvel at the fact that I do not yet have any posts tagged "guilt".

→ Thinking about patterns, habits, and cycles, both in my own life and in the lives of my characters. Despite my real or imagined narcissism, I far prefer to analyze these as they apply to my characters.

→ Making excellent progress on getting the story of my novel right by writing a synopsis. I'm sure this advice appears many places, but I know that in REVISION & SELF-EDITING by James Scott Bell, he recommends drafting a synopsis (or several) as a way to assess a story before revising. I've been writing what I expect will be about a 15-page document that lays out the plot of my novel -- not the plot as it exists, but as it should be. This has been a slow, extremely useful process that is forcing me to come up with answers to all the questions like "How did that result in him believing that?" and "Why wouldn't she have told him that years ago?" Once I'm done with the synopsis, the idea is that I'll know what I need to change in the next draft, and I'll have some confidence that those things won't need to be changed again. I keep feeling like it sure would have saved a lot of time if I had simply created this synopsis before ever writing the book in the first place, but I know I wouldn't have come up with most of this stuff without writing it a couple of times. It would be awfully nice to develop the skill of doing it in the other order, though.

→ Smiling at my reorganized book collection every time I walk down the hall.

→ Rewarding myself for getting rid of 150 books by -- yes, you guessed it! -- buying more books.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Paul Collins at Slate studies a Victorian writing guide and observes what the first how-to book for fiction can still tell us: "[Sherwin] Cody tells would-be Victorian writers to show and don't tell ('To say your heroine was proud and defiant is not half so effective as saying she tossed her head and stamped her foot'), to kill their darlings ('sacrifice absolutely everything of that sort'), and write what they know." (Thanks, Dick!)

→ Parker Peevyhouse at The Spectacle puzzles over When Writers Don’t Read: "Reading a chapter of someone else's book is like taking a shot of espresso -- it keeps me going. It puts me in the right frame of mind, like the author is sitting there with me waiting for me to jump in with my own story."

Oh Yeah, Duh

I think I should retitle this blog "Oh Yeah, Duh".

First I had to remind myself that, oh yeah, duh, I love reading. And then, huh, that's right, I do vaguely recall that writing is intense.

Now, for my latest blinding flash of obviousness, it's occurred to me that I should read my manuscript before revising it.

I don't want to go out on too much of a limb here, but it might be helpful to know what's in the novel before I try to fix it, right? And there's just a small chance that reading the manuscript might result in renewing my interest in the story, wouldn't you say?

To be fair, there was a point in time that I read this complete draft. I even read it IN HARD COPY, IN ITS ENTIRETY, and OUT LOUD, as Anne Mini likes to say. But that point in time was over six months ago, and that point in drafts wasn't entirely the current version, though it also wasn't entirely different. But still, come on, how clueless can I be?

So if you need me, I'll be over in the corner with a dunce cap, waiting for my manuscript to print.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Book critic Julia Keller explains why she loves reading many books at once. (Thanks, Beyond the Margins!)

→ And James Bridle at booktwo.org addresses the pervasive problem of book guilt: "People have confessed to me that it’s been months since they last picked up a book, because they still haven’t finished the last one."