Fasting Story by Joanna Roddy

Photo by: Marco Ottobelli, Source: Wikimedia Commons

This fall, I was up to my eyebrows in work commitments with very little time to write. I knew the new semester in February would bring half the teaching load and twice the scope for creativity. In the months when my fiction writing lay fallow, I came to terms with the end of a long-hoped-for project and realized that the time I wasn't writing was actually rich creative time in a totally different way. 

Freed from the responsibilities of writing, missing writing and wishing I could have the time to do it again, I was suddenly filled with new ideas for stories. I've never felt like much of an idea factory, but it seemed like every day I had some new exciting thought for a character or setting or plot element. They were all thoroughly disconnected, of course, but I was swimming in a rich primordial soup of creative life. It felt like I was on the edge of something new, and I leaned into that with the total freedom of someone who doesn't have to do anything about it yet. 

Finally, in December, with the new semester coming and past projects shelved, I realized it was time to channel the next story. I didn't know what it would be, or if any of the myriad ideas I'd been entertaining would play into it, but I knew it was time to start dreaming something larger. 

Then I did something weird--something I've never done before. First you have to understand that I'm a total book gobbler. I get audio books through my library, I have several e-books on my phone or printed books on my nightstand (or in my purse--anyone else? Lit. nerds unite!), and at any given time, I am voraciously reading at least one or two of them at every possible opportunity. But in December I decided that if I wanted to receive something new, I needed to get other people's words out of my head. I needed to carve out quiet, empty spaces where my own words and ideas could form. So I decided to fast story. 

Yes, fasting. Like a spiritual practice, or a diet. That meant no books, no audio books, not even podcasts. I also took a break from mindless phone games that I sometimes play while listening to an enthralling novel. Instead, I sat with the silence and I waited. 

I'm not a saint, and I'm not a liar, so I'll be honest: it was uncomfortable. There were times I cheated with a podcast. But I pressed into my story fast anyway with the kind of dogged faith we creative people have to have, believing that there are stories for me to tell and trying to make my mind and heart open to receiving them. I had a piece of paper on my dresser that I looked at every day that said simply, "Let it come."

One night at the end of December, I lay in my bed, very tired and a little sick after all the holiday hoopla, and it happened. A story began to come into my mind in a series of images, scenes, characters, and plot twists. I could see it all unfolding in front of me. I was a bit bent on getting a good night's sleep, so I actually fought the idea of getting out of bed to write it down for a good ten minutes. But the idea was so vivid that all hopes of sleep had fled, and finally I went out to the dark dining room, sat down at the table, and filled a page in my notebook with lines and lines of small print as I shaped the idea into words.

And I'm excited about this new story. I feel it burning in me, waiting for the chance to move from my mind to the page. 

I don't know whether all this is merely coincidental--perhaps it is--but I think there's something true in the idea that our lives are so full of clamor that we miss quieter voices within us that would guide us in transformative ways if only we stopped to hear them. I know that for me, the act of faith precedes the miracle. If inspiration is to find a way in, leaving the door open to her can't hurt. 

Technical Difficulties: Do Not Standby, by Kell Andrews

There's never a good time for technical difficulties to crop up. One of those not-good times is when drafting a new novel.

This doesn't happen that often for me. I am not the most prolific writer, generally requiring the most perfect circumstances to feed my muse, which of course, rarely happens. So when I finally got on a creative roll  and my Macbook starting spontaneous deleting passages and opening new windows, I despaired.

I know what's wrong with my Macbook because I've had it fixed before -- a swollen battery putting pressure on the trackpad, causing phantom cursor movements. But this computer is past its expiration, and I don't want to pay to fix it again, and I don't yet have the funds set aside for a new Macbook.

So what do I do? Trust me, I've tried everything, and this is what works (sort-of).

Plan A. Bang Macbook. 

This is effective some of the time, the impact nudging the battery back in place. Plus I feel better after I knock something around.

Plan B. Massage the back of the Macbook. 

I think this also puts the battery back in place, but it might just put the Macbook in a better mood -- the Good Cop to Plan A's Bad Cop.

Plan C. Drafting on my Kindle Fire with a Bluetooth keyboard. 

A Kindle Fire is really an Android tablet, and this one is poetically appropriate -- ashes to ashes, Kindle to Kindle. Most books end up there eventually.


So far a combo of these strategies is working. I write on the Kindle, and transfer my working sessions into Scrivener on my Macbook, when it's working OK through my efforts at Plan A and B.

At first I used OfficeSuite for Android. Then I lost a whole morning's work due to lack of backup function in OfficeSuite and my own poor work habits. In addition to not being prolific, I'm also not very resilient. So I tried to recover the document, and when I couldn't, I could either move forward or not, so I rewrote it. My document did not recover, but I did.

Now I'm using an Evernote app for Android, which backs up itself and makes it easy to transfer scenes between Kindle and Macbook. It's actually not bad -- I am not as distracted by other things when I'm using my Kindle. My focus is better. And I'm halfway done with drafting -- 37,000 words.

The halfway part is where it gets easy, right? Right??? Like rolling down a hill (tell me I'm right, please).

But if it doesn't, I have gotten myself to the place where the perfect circumstances for writing don't matter. I could use my Bluetooth keyboard and write on Evernote on my iPhone if I had to. I could write with a pen and notebook. I could write in a box with a fox on a train in the rain, preferably while rolling down a hill.

What's your worse technical failure? Does technology matter to you when writing, or are you platform agnostic?

Thoughts on Scrivener, by: Marissa Burt

Photo Credit: Barry Gregg 2011

I am knee deep in revisions on my yet-to-be-titled fourth book, the sequel to A SLIVER OF STARDUST, The writing process for each manuscript has been very different. For my first novel, STORYBOUND, I wrote snippets on the odd afternoons I had to myself, patching together a myriad of scenes to make the final book. The drafting of my second novel, STORY'S END, is a bit of a blur. My husband and I had just moved across the country to a two bedroom apartment with a four-year-old, one-year-old, and a newborn in tow. What comes to mind is frenetic sleep-deprived writing marathons fueled by coffee in the corner booth of the Panera near our apartment. Out of all my books, STORY'S END is probably my favorite, not least because I remember the writing of it so foggily that it's like reading someone else's work.

I drafted my third novel, A SLIVER OF STARDUST,in small chunks of writing time, 30-45 minutes a day, but, having learned from the endless rounds of revision STORYBOUND needed, I did work from a general outline. I wanted to try a different approach with this latest book. I wasn't ready to work from a heavily detailed outline, but I did want an alternative to my cluttered stacks of Post-its and spiral bound notebooks full of scribblings. So I turned to Scrivener.

And then as soon as I watched the tutorial I turned off my computer and quit for the day. Seriously. The tutorial is daunting and makes it seem as though writing a novel with pen and ink would be easier. But, having already invested my $40, I forged ahead, and I'm so glad I did. I am quite certain I don't use even a third of all the features (that would mean revisiting the tutorial - gasp!), but the ones I do use I've found to be a great help and want to highlight them here:

The visual layout. I love that the screen is customizable and includes the Binder View which I use to organize scenes within chapters.

The corkboard feature that allowed me to stay with the general Post-it outline that's worked well for me in the past and yet include much more detail.

The way I can import content from the internet that I want to reference while worldbuilding.

The templates for setting and character development were very helpful in the early stages of drafting. As my story got going, I used these features less, but they helped with unwelcome writer's block.

The project targets window that allowed me to see my total word count creep up and my session word count go down.

Editing within the project was very streamlined. Because of the outline structure, it was easy to move whole scenes around without worrying about losing text or having to skim through an entire document to find the scenes.

At the end of drafting, I compiled and exported my manuscript to MS Word to do a final read through there. While the process itself was streamlined, there were a few odd formatting things that ultimately needed attention. I'm guessing that if I revisited the tutorial I could remedy this, but I think I'll save that for the next book. Because, yes, I liked Scrivener enough to use it again. In my opinion, it's well worth it.

What about you, fellow writers? Any Scrivener users with tips to share?

First Drafts by Joanna Roddy

 *All photos are from my writing residency last week at Fort Worden on the Washington Coast. 
  

This past week I've been holed up in a cabin working on the first draft of a new novel. I've taken writing retreats in the rewriting/editing stages of a project, but not really for drafting. I had thought that the time and space and silence would make the writing process fly by, the way it had for my previous editing efforts, but in fact I've found (surprise, surprise!) that each movement forward on a first draft is just as hard-fought, just as murky, just as slow as it is at home. I just have more time all put together to agonize over it. (Lucky me!)

In all seriousness, I am immensely grateful for this time. This is now my second time working on the first draft of a full-length fiction project and I'm learning a lot that I wanted to share with you.

1. Freedom. Now that I know what an editing process looks like for me, I'm not so hung up on perfecting every aspect of the draft. With my first novel I would get very focused on progressing through the story correctly so that I spent a lot of time hesitating, nit-picking, or completely stalled out. Now, I'm just getting the story down as it occurs to me. I do pause to think through the next sequence or to research a place I intend to use for a setting, but then I try to keep moving forward, step by step. I know that later I'll be deconstructing everything, combining, tightening and expanding, and that it will all be clear when I have the whole, finished story to work with. 

2. Trust. I've learned that the story has a life of its own through my creative subconscious, through my characters, and through themes that arise of their own free will. The only way to learn these things is to write the story down and to see what happens in the process. It's ok if I can't see too far ahead. The story will unfold before me.

3. Respect. I understand where the "crappy first draft" idea comes from and it's so necessary for people like me, who need to know that getting the thing down is more important than getting it perfect. But I also think there's a counterpoint to that idea. Because I need to respect the work I'm doing to be able to trust it. Getting it down and moving forward doesn't mean (for me, at least), rushing it or settling. I need to be fully immersed in the story and I can't do that if I feel like my main goal is just amassing words. I need to simply do my best with what I know right now. But I also can accept the imperfection, trusting that when I know more, I'll do even better on later drafts.

My visual reward chart: 1 sticker = 1000 words

4. Grace. I've tried to sit down and pound out 2000 words before lunch like Stephen King does every day. I've tried to write 5000 words in a day like Laini Taylor did on a retreat she blogged about. What I'm learning is that I'm me and my success can only be measured in my own terms. In five full retreat days so far I've written just under 10,000 words and doubled the size of my manuscript from when I arrived. It's not the 17,000 words in three days I accomplished a year ago during a rewrite, but for a first draft, I'm realizing this is a huge success for me. As long as I keep moving forward, despite the not knowing, despite the inner-resistance, despite the challenge, I'm winning.

I'd SO love to hear what's been helpful for others in the first draft stages. I'm a sponge right now for any good advice and I love hearing other people's processes. Please share! 

Oh, and in solidarity with Laini Taylor, apparently she just took a first draft writing retreat too! Her advice, as always, is golden.