The hardest part of getting up early to write is ... getting up early to write. Ha ha, brilliant!
Seriously. Three days a week I get up early to write. The other two I TRY to get up early to run. And no matter if I'm lacing up running shoes or brewing coffee, the hardest moment is just before I get out of bed. That tiny hateful moment when I roll onto my right side and sit up, hating everything.
After that it's not easy, but Lord, it's less bad.
Today I was in the middle of dream. My wife and I were on board the USS Constitution, a restored warship from the 19th century. We were the only ones on board, and it became important to lower the anchor. I chivalrously allowed her to kick the metal tang that would release the heavy anchor, and we leaned over the side to watch it plunge into the water. Chain poured over the side as the anchor sank, and sank, and sank.
It never reached the bottom. Instead, the ship started to tip, as if something big was tugging it over. The deck became vertical and we fell in! Luckily we swam into someone's basement (?) where we managed to dry off. Inconveniently I had to go to the bathroom. Even more inconveniently the only toilet was in the middle of the room. Most inconvenient of all, everybody arrived for a basement party(?) after I'd already -- let's say -- committed to my urgent physiological imperative. A dozen people, most of them from work crowded around and kindly pretended not to notice what was going on, as they made small talk and sipped punch.
Waking up from that was a delight, but the growing realization that sleeping time was over ... was not. I rolled over, saw the clock, and got up.
All of which is merely to say that I didn't approach my morning writing with any sense of optimism, excitement, anticipation, joy, or anything other than groggy resentment (why have to get up so early? why toilet not in bathroom? why basement party?) and the thick taste of strong coffee.
Too bad, I said. You don't have to like it, in fact, you're probably not going to like it. But this is what writing a book means: writing when you don't want to.
My job is just to show up and start putting words on the screen. It's the first draft: they don't have to be good, they just have to be salvageable.
And to my surprise I managed 1500 words -- some of which may even survive the first revision! Sometimes self-doubt is right (I bet I can't jump across that river) and sometimes it's wrong (writing this morning is useless). The trick -- for writing, not river-leaping -- is to ignore it.
Which means the only question worth asking of this first exploratory draft is not "is it good?" but "Can it be fixed?" Yes.
UPDATED: Creepy coincidence or serendipity? Either way, 4AM looks pretty early, even from 5AM: From Nathan Bransford's blog, Jeff Abbott on waking up at 4 to write his novel. Whatever it takes. Make that time sacred.
Friday, December 5, 2008
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Ink on Page
I've learned that it's hard to take text seriously when it's just words on my monitor. Things I can wipe clean with the delete key, or select and replace. It has a feeling of impermanence.
In one sense this is good: it makes it easier to construct that all-important, sprawling first draft. Who cares about polishing it? Just get it out so it can be fixed later. There's less pressure when it's nothing more than colored pixels on a computer screen.
For example, I have just spent a half-dozen sentences all saying the same thing. Fun! But I can get away with it because it's on-screen.
The trouble comes later, when I'm polishing, sharpening, revising, honing not just the words and sentences but the whole shape of the story itself. So that I'm sure, or as sure as I can be, that it says what I meant it to say.
That's when I imagine the printed words on an actual page. A thick, creamy, rough-textured book page, with dark assertive type, maybe a drop cap. This ... is real. This is a book. Somehow there's a magic to the printed page: the words can be the same as they are on screen, but they carry more weight than the onscreen ramblings of earlier drafts.
Not to mention that it's helpful even when writing the rough draft to imagine the permanence and solidity and real-ness of the finished project. Someday this will be real!
In one sense this is good: it makes it easier to construct that all-important, sprawling first draft. Who cares about polishing it? Just get it out so it can be fixed later. There's less pressure when it's nothing more than colored pixels on a computer screen.
For example, I have just spent a half-dozen sentences all saying the same thing. Fun! But I can get away with it because it's on-screen.
The trouble comes later, when I'm polishing, sharpening, revising, honing not just the words and sentences but the whole shape of the story itself. So that I'm sure, or as sure as I can be, that it says what I meant it to say.
That's when I imagine the printed words on an actual page. A thick, creamy, rough-textured book page, with dark assertive type, maybe a drop cap. This ... is real. This is a book. Somehow there's a magic to the printed page: the words can be the same as they are on screen, but they carry more weight than the onscreen ramblings of earlier drafts.
Not to mention that it's helpful even when writing the rough draft to imagine the permanence and solidity and real-ness of the finished project. Someday this will be real!
Sunday, November 30, 2008
This Is How It Ends
Another Sunday Scribblings exercise. This week's theme: A Winter's Tale. This one could use a little more work -- always the case! -- but I'm off to work on a real-life tale of winter: crackling fire and homemade chili, warming me and the house against a cold November evening.
So this is how it ends, Jase thought.
He grimaced into the darkness, grinning and winking and flexing his face to try to keep it numb. His hands had gone dead hours ago, after he’d dipped them in the racing sea and let them freeze as they gripped the wooden tiller. Hooks of ice, they were now, frozen to the tiller. But at least he could steer the boat up and down the mountainous waves.
So this is how it ends, he thought again. He heard spray rattling on his back and neck, but felt nothing.
Nineteen days out of Sander Ryk, the schooner had struck a berg. Odd for it to be this far south, but it was never mind that and all hands on deck, even the children, to staunch the killing flow of seawater. The berg had opened the ship like a knife prying open the white flesh of an apple, and forty-nine men, women, and children, had gone down when it plunged beneath the iron-grey waves.
He was lucky, or unlucky: he’d found the only boat, the little tender they used to unload fish in the harbor, and had thrown the only children he could find on deck aboard, stepping into the unsteady little sloop as the big schooner went under.
He’d shouted something at the children, got them under some oilskins and out of the way. Got the sail up, smeared the salt and ice off his face. And got underway in the screaming black storm.
He caught the sour smell of vomit, and looked forward. The younger one, a girl, was staring at her cupped hands.
“Hold it close! Don’t spill it!” She bent her head to say something to the other child, and he was about to tell her the foul mess would keep her warm, when he saw a paleness in the black swirling night.
He rubbed his face into his shoulder and looked again: Yes. Land shone out there somewhere.
A wave caught them sideways and the boat lurched and corkscrewed, sliding sideways and he was laughing, laughing, because he had been wrong, the land was so much closer than he’d thought, they were upon it, they would not drown at sea, God help them they were upon it, and he cried through the wind to hold on, and they were swept under the thunderous icy sea.
A snow-muffled seashore. Flakes melting into the water. The murmur of surf against seaweedy cliffs. A sand-floored cave. Spark of light; smell of woodsmoke; crackle of fire. Steaming wet wool. Two children and a club-handed man huddle toward the fire.
This is not how it ends, Jase thought. Not yet, anyhow.
So this is how it ends, Jase thought.
He grimaced into the darkness, grinning and winking and flexing his face to try to keep it numb. His hands had gone dead hours ago, after he’d dipped them in the racing sea and let them freeze as they gripped the wooden tiller. Hooks of ice, they were now, frozen to the tiller. But at least he could steer the boat up and down the mountainous waves.
So this is how it ends, he thought again. He heard spray rattling on his back and neck, but felt nothing.
Nineteen days out of Sander Ryk, the schooner had struck a berg. Odd for it to be this far south, but it was never mind that and all hands on deck, even the children, to staunch the killing flow of seawater. The berg had opened the ship like a knife prying open the white flesh of an apple, and forty-nine men, women, and children, had gone down when it plunged beneath the iron-grey waves.
He was lucky, or unlucky: he’d found the only boat, the little tender they used to unload fish in the harbor, and had thrown the only children he could find on deck aboard, stepping into the unsteady little sloop as the big schooner went under.
He’d shouted something at the children, got them under some oilskins and out of the way. Got the sail up, smeared the salt and ice off his face. And got underway in the screaming black storm.
He caught the sour smell of vomit, and looked forward. The younger one, a girl, was staring at her cupped hands.
“Hold it close! Don’t spill it!” She bent her head to say something to the other child, and he was about to tell her the foul mess would keep her warm, when he saw a paleness in the black swirling night.
He rubbed his face into his shoulder and looked again: Yes. Land shone out there somewhere.
A wave caught them sideways and the boat lurched and corkscrewed, sliding sideways and he was laughing, laughing, because he had been wrong, the land was so much closer than he’d thought, they were upon it, they would not drown at sea, God help them they were upon it, and he cried through the wind to hold on, and they were swept under the thunderous icy sea.
A snow-muffled seashore. Flakes melting into the water. The murmur of surf against seaweedy cliffs. A sand-floored cave. Spark of light; smell of woodsmoke; crackle of fire. Steaming wet wool. Two children and a club-handed man huddle toward the fire.
This is not how it ends, Jase thought. Not yet, anyhow.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Slow week
This has been a week of fits and starts. Some great momentum on my work in progress has been replaced by a ragged, strained effort not unlike running my closed fist along a barbed-wire fence. La, writing!
I posted below, somewhat smugly, about how if it's boring you shouldn't write it. Physician, heal thyself: of the 900 words I bled out this morning, probably 600 will be lost in revisions. So it goes.
Lots of compensatory progress in other areas, though! Several days of boatbuilding have provided me with the dressed, measured, and shaped locust pieces that hold up the boat seats on the centerboard well. The centerboard is the vertical plate that is lowered down to help hold the boat upright. It slides down into a slot, like bread into a toaster. The toaster is the "centerboard well," and where the seats attach to either side, they need little supports to hold them up.
Considering that I started with a log, ending up with clean, straight, smooth, beautiful, tough, support pieces is a pretty cool thing.
Last but not least: I seem to have solved the Mystery Of The Unpredictably Stinky House. The culprit is neither fish nor in-laws, but a heat pump condensate pipe that drains into a P-trapped pipe that dumps into our sewer outflow. So far, so good, right? Except when there's no water in the trap, foul humors backflow up the pipe and ... directly into the intake vent for the heat pump. Lo and behold, the stink is instantly dispersed, along with heat, through the house.
Several days' travel and heedless gluttony will, no doubt, make me desperate to return to all three projects (book, boat, pipes).
Happy Thanksgiving to all!
I posted below, somewhat smugly, about how if it's boring you shouldn't write it. Physician, heal thyself: of the 900 words I bled out this morning, probably 600 will be lost in revisions. So it goes.
Lots of compensatory progress in other areas, though! Several days of boatbuilding have provided me with the dressed, measured, and shaped locust pieces that hold up the boat seats on the centerboard well. The centerboard is the vertical plate that is lowered down to help hold the boat upright. It slides down into a slot, like bread into a toaster. The toaster is the "centerboard well," and where the seats attach to either side, they need little supports to hold them up.
Considering that I started with a log, ending up with clean, straight, smooth, beautiful, tough, support pieces is a pretty cool thing.
Last but not least: I seem to have solved the Mystery Of The Unpredictably Stinky House. The culprit is neither fish nor in-laws, but a heat pump condensate pipe that drains into a P-trapped pipe that dumps into our sewer outflow. So far, so good, right? Except when there's no water in the trap, foul humors backflow up the pipe and ... directly into the intake vent for the heat pump. Lo and behold, the stink is instantly dispersed, along with heat, through the house.
Several days' travel and heedless gluttony will, no doubt, make me desperate to return to all three projects (book, boat, pipes).
Happy Thanksgiving to all!
Saturday, November 22, 2008
I have been ungrateful
This week's Sunday Scribblings prompt is "Grateful." These prompts are a great way to try a quick different direction from my ongoing work in progress. And for that I'm grateful! Here it is:
I Have Been Ungrateful
There is a dusty little town some miles off of Interstate 25 north of Albuquerque, New Mexico, where the Sangre de Cristo -- Blood of Christ -- mountains fill the eastern sky like white knuckles on a fist.
In this dusty little town is a dusty little restaurant attached to the cook and owner’s house. The handwritten menus are laminated in torn plastic. Inside the air is close and warm, thick with humidity and the aroma of roasting chiles and the pinon fire smoldering in the corner brick fireplace.
Dad and I were the only ones there, shouldering in from the starry desert cold, blowing on our hands as Maria handed us the menus. She clucked at our confusion, all white hair and dark eyebrows, and recommended green chile and posole stew, for both of us. We rested our elbows on the grey formica table, unzipping our expensive fleece jackets, stretching out, sighing into the folding chairs. We had been walking in the high country for three days. We were unshaven and unwashed and hungry for warmth and food cooked on a real stove.
Red Christmas lights glowed from the walls, illuminating children’s drawings, statues of the Virgin Mary, paintings of Jesus and desert mesas, faded school pictures.
We heard voices through a doorway: a small group of children and adults, was singing. It took us a moment to realize the unsteady and out-of-tune melody was “Happy Birthday dear Grandpa.” We stopped crunching on chips to listen.
The song finished and a child’s thin voice said, “Grandpa, why are you crying?”
Outside, the stars spread a milky arm across the clear black sky, and the snow on the Blood of Christ mountains glowed blue in the starlight.
I Have Been Ungrateful
There is a dusty little town some miles off of Interstate 25 north of Albuquerque, New Mexico, where the Sangre de Cristo -- Blood of Christ -- mountains fill the eastern sky like white knuckles on a fist.
In this dusty little town is a dusty little restaurant attached to the cook and owner’s house. The handwritten menus are laminated in torn plastic. Inside the air is close and warm, thick with humidity and the aroma of roasting chiles and the pinon fire smoldering in the corner brick fireplace.
Dad and I were the only ones there, shouldering in from the starry desert cold, blowing on our hands as Maria handed us the menus. She clucked at our confusion, all white hair and dark eyebrows, and recommended green chile and posole stew, for both of us. We rested our elbows on the grey formica table, unzipping our expensive fleece jackets, stretching out, sighing into the folding chairs. We had been walking in the high country for three days. We were unshaven and unwashed and hungry for warmth and food cooked on a real stove.
Red Christmas lights glowed from the walls, illuminating children’s drawings, statues of the Virgin Mary, paintings of Jesus and desert mesas, faded school pictures.
We heard voices through a doorway: a small group of children and adults, was singing. It took us a moment to realize the unsteady and out-of-tune melody was “Happy Birthday dear Grandpa.” We stopped crunching on chips to listen.
The song finished and a child’s thin voice said, “Grandpa, why are you crying?”
Outside, the stars spread a milky arm across the clear black sky, and the snow on the Blood of Christ mountains glowed blue in the starlight.
Friday, November 21, 2008
Damage
Left hand: a slice from cutting garlic, a red gouge from a splinter of locust, a row of callouses from tightening clamps, mysterious abrasions most likely from rough lumber.
Right hand: two dings on my thumb, one a blood blister of unknown provenance, the other received when the wrench slipped while I was changing thickness planer blades three nights ago. Mystery divot on the knuckle of my middle finger. A small slice from opening a pop-top jar of peanuts, two mostly healed splinter holes.
Boatbuilding and running in cold dry weather are not kind to hands: these things I do in my spare time leave create small damages in their wake.
I'm coming to a point in my work-in-progress where I have to describe some very bad things. Researching them, so I know what to say and how to say it, has taken me into some of the darkest chapters of human history. I'm not boasting; I'm explaining why it frightens me, and why I'm starting to discover that I've been delaying writing this part of the story.
It scares me. I wonder if it will damage me. And if it does, is that enough of a reason not to write?
Or is that all the more reason to write?
I don't like talking about the specifics of things I'm working on until a draft is behind me, so this will have to remain vexingly abstract for now. But I can say this: I'm not afraid of sending my characters into these bad places and therefore going there myself. I'm afraid I won't be able to get them back out.
Then I think about the real people in real history who are now part of my research. Whose pain I am somehow using.
And I think, forget about me, what about them?
And I think: this must be told.
Right hand: two dings on my thumb, one a blood blister of unknown provenance, the other received when the wrench slipped while I was changing thickness planer blades three nights ago. Mystery divot on the knuckle of my middle finger. A small slice from opening a pop-top jar of peanuts, two mostly healed splinter holes.
Boatbuilding and running in cold dry weather are not kind to hands: these things I do in my spare time leave create small damages in their wake.
I'm coming to a point in my work-in-progress where I have to describe some very bad things. Researching them, so I know what to say and how to say it, has taken me into some of the darkest chapters of human history. I'm not boasting; I'm explaining why it frightens me, and why I'm starting to discover that I've been delaying writing this part of the story.
It scares me. I wonder if it will damage me. And if it does, is that enough of a reason not to write?
Or is that all the more reason to write?
I don't like talking about the specifics of things I'm working on until a draft is behind me, so this will have to remain vexingly abstract for now. But I can say this: I'm not afraid of sending my characters into these bad places and therefore going there myself. I'm afraid I won't be able to get them back out.
Then I think about the real people in real history who are now part of my research. Whose pain I am somehow using.
And I think, forget about me, what about them?
And I think: this must be told.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Love the moment
Here's something I struggle with during a first draft. I get very excited picturing this scene or that scene, to the point where I can call up any detail from the color of the sunlight to the sound a cat makes walking down a gravel road (nearly silent, by the way). I can see it! It's a great scene! I am brilliant! Editors will tremble before my prose, and weep!
Usually I have several of these scenes in my head at any one time, and then all I have to do is connect the dots: write the story that links each beautiful and compelling moment to the next.
The trouble comes when I'm writing the parts of the story that are not those scenes. That stuff is less interesting. Bor-ing! It's no fun to write, so I throw something together while daydreaming of how great the next scene will be.
Then I remove that boring transition months later during revisions.
I remove, in fact, everything that's boring. And if it's boring even to write, imagine how dull it must be to read! Here's my solution. It is not exactly rocket science:
If it's boring, don't write it.
A book isn't a series of precious scenes strung together like beads on a cord, it's a whole, with scenes and dialogue, narrative, transitions, flashbacks, all of it, knit together so tightly and so multi-layered that often several things are happening at once, nothing is removable, but nothing more is needed.
So I try to love the moment. Every moment of the story has to be interesting. Has to be worth writing about, has to be worth taking the reader through. I don't mean it all should be slaptastic melodrama, or lurid description. But it does all have to mean something.
Loving the moment means finding the interesting, beautiful, remarkable, noteworthy elements of everything, and then writing about that. Because every moment of the story should be relevant, important, even critical to the story.
It is also, I suppose, a worthwhile principle for daily life as well. Love the moment.
Usually I have several of these scenes in my head at any one time, and then all I have to do is connect the dots: write the story that links each beautiful and compelling moment to the next.
The trouble comes when I'm writing the parts of the story that are not those scenes. That stuff is less interesting. Bor-ing! It's no fun to write, so I throw something together while daydreaming of how great the next scene will be.
Then I remove that boring transition months later during revisions.
I remove, in fact, everything that's boring. And if it's boring even to write, imagine how dull it must be to read! Here's my solution. It is not exactly rocket science:
If it's boring, don't write it.
A book isn't a series of precious scenes strung together like beads on a cord, it's a whole, with scenes and dialogue, narrative, transitions, flashbacks, all of it, knit together so tightly and so multi-layered that often several things are happening at once, nothing is removable, but nothing more is needed.
So I try to love the moment. Every moment of the story has to be interesting. Has to be worth writing about, has to be worth taking the reader through. I don't mean it all should be slaptastic melodrama, or lurid description. But it does all have to mean something.
Loving the moment means finding the interesting, beautiful, remarkable, noteworthy elements of everything, and then writing about that. Because every moment of the story should be relevant, important, even critical to the story.
It is also, I suppose, a worthwhile principle for daily life as well. Love the moment.
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