November 2015 – 2squarewriting

Am still writing – just about

29th November 2015 pataitcheson22

The end of NaNoWriMo and November is upon us.

I’m not sure where it went, and can it really be less than four weeks till Christmas? And what now, in the dying days. Well, it is clear that I will not manage 50K words. I didn’t start this to build the habit of writing, which I already have, life permitting. I had told myself I would not, could not, too stressed, too busy. Then I started anyway because it’s a worthy challenge, I wanted to get further than last year, and I had a moment of madness.

My personal goal is 40K. It’s still a stretch target for me. I didn’t have Thanksgiving but I was out at a fundraiser last night, when I could usefully have been writing even a bit. I will have to push to make it.

Let’s see.

blog, writing process

Writing about love

17th November 201514th November 2016 pataitcheson22

I just read an excellent post on writing about romance on Kristen Lamb’s blog, written by Alex Limberg. It got me thinking about writing the bits that are more difficult, that are often done badly. How many times have you read something and rolled your eyes, while privately fearing you could do no better? A couple of things stood out for me.

The point about authenticity speaks to the fear of exposing ourselves on the page. Yet our characters sing when we infuse some of our own essence into them; our own remembered joy and pain. It hurts to dig these things up, to examine and dissect them for an imagined reader. Nobody said that truth was easy.

We have to acknowledge the fear and keep moving.

The other point that resonated with me was about different relationships. The best of them are all based on love, not the narrow definition of the word, but a wide and all encompassing description of the many ways humans care about each other.

We no longer have different shades of love written in our language in the way that the Greeks talked about eros, agape, philia and storge. We recognise them, but we often equate love with eros and are therefore uncomfortable applying the word elsewhere.

Thinking about my characters’ relationships in terms of love is helpful, both in how these connections develop, and how they go wrong and have to be repaired or abandoned. I hope a deeper understanding of writing about romance and love enlivens my characters, and through them, my story.

blog, writing process

Reading, writing, thinking

14th November 201514th November 2016 pataitcheson22

So, my WIP came back from the editor with hundreds of comments and suggested changes. I welcome all of it. It’s the benefit of another set of eyes, critical eyes, professional eyes which see what I can no longer perceive. I am going to revise in line with her comments…next month. Because this month, in a fit of madness, I started NaNoWriMo.

It’s mad because I tried last year, crashed and burned. Managed 17K on the NaNovel, and about another 8K on the stuff I wrote when the novel stalled. This year, my job is no easier, the hours are no shorter, the stress is more; yet I decided that aiming to write 50K in 30 days was a good use of my precious downtime.

Mad, eh?

So anyway, this year’s NaNovel is the sequel to my WIP. Figured I might as well move on with the story, which sending it out for editing released me to do. And an interesting thing is coming through. The need to write, and in quantity, led me to free write without censoring, something I rarely do. Get in a character’s head and write everything.

Last night, this resulted in a passage that has nothing whatever to do with my novel, but is definitely the bones of a poem about love. I have italicised it and moved on. I have no idea where it came from. The character is no sappy poet.

This is the power of writing without censorship; keep moving, keep it all, plan to sort it out later. I read somewhere that writing is like excavating, and editing/rewriting is learning what to keep. My poem bones are an unexpected find and they most likely will not be found in the novel, but they are useful and worth keeping. A scrap may still be woven into the story, who knows? I am a classic pantser so anything could happen.

Talking of writing without outlines- I have a bit of an outline but struggle with them- the other thing that emerged from my session is plot. Right after writing about L’s inner thoughts, a whole series of plot points and story solutions bubbled to the surface. Now I have the raw materials. Grapes are not wine. There’s a lot of work and effort to make that change. But finding the fruit? That’s the first step.

There are parallels here with the morning pages advocated by Julia Cameron in The Artist’s Way, a fabulous book without which I would not be writing anything, much less a novel. To be doing morning pages without doing them, as it were, seems like a wonderful integration of idea and action.

Time to get moving again.