Neil Gaiman Says Write

Posted on May 19, 2012 by Pearson Sharp

I’m stuck tonight. It’s no use fighting it. Inspiration is an insipid mistress, and I can’t keep her fancy for more than a minute. Tonight, I don’t even have that. So I’m running with it. I’ve been having trouble with an aspect of my writing that I’m sure every author struggles with. That is the problem of developing well rounded characters. Every character of mine seems, to my eyes, to be the same character. They’re all intelligent, they’re all thoughtful, experienced, and considerate. Witty at times, often sarcastic, and usually deep and well meaning and helpful. The problem is that I seem to be writing characters with the one voice that I hear in my head: my own voice. While I won’t go as far as to say I am all those qualities above, I will say that they represent the ideal character to my mind, and that writing outside of that is incredibly difficult. Both of my main characters share similar viewpoints and find themselves in very similar life situations, and I’m really getting worried that, even at this relatively early point in the novel, I haven’t given the characters enough life of their own.

I did some reading earlier to try and help myself out of this hole. I came across some character building exercises on a few different sites, but a quote by Neil Gaiman made me stop and wonder. He said, “The main rule of writing is that if you do it with enough assurance and confidence, you’re allowed to do whatever you like. (That may be a rule for life as well as for writing. But it’s definitely true for writing.) So write your story as it needs to be written. Write it honestly, and tell it as best you can. I’m not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter.”

So, I’m going to do that. I’m just going to write, and write like I know how, with the confidence I feel in the world I’ve created, and hope that my intuition is right in guiding my decisions. The reception my book has received so far has been overwhelmingly positive, so I can only think that I’m doing something right. Or maybe my friends are all just really nice. I’m going to keep writing honestly, and in the best way I know how, and believe that somewhere in this confusion I’ll land on something approaching the truth—the truth of my characters, their lives, their stories—and it will resonate with readers and be successful.

Margaret Atwood added something sobering that I’ll finish with. She said, “Other people can help you a bit, but essentially you’re on your own. Nobody is making you do this: you chose it, so don’t whine.” I believe that’s basically true as well. And so while I’m not whining, it’s important to have a place to talk about these things. I don’t really expect you to help. You can be like the ceiling that I lie on my bed and talk to when no one else is there to listen.

Writing Versus Editing

Posted on May 17, 2012 by Pearson Sharp

One of the biggest things I struggle with in my writing is this: writing versus editing. I am something of a perfectionist, and getting it just right is something that has (so far) taken five years. I spend so much time going back through what I’ve already written, finding parts that don’t work, reworking them, finding out later they need to be reworked again. And again. And erased. And rewritten. And edited. I’d say at least ninety percent of my time spent writing this book so far has been consumed with editing. I’m not sure if other writers are the same, but I find my tastes in writing seem to be continually evolving, and so what sounds good changes frequently. When the time scale of evolution is distended to something like five years, the change is … well, considerable.

I came across this quote tonight as I was looking for something to spice up the post. “Make it great, no matter how long it takes. There’s no such thing as too many drafts. There’s no such thing as too much time spent. As you well know, a great book can last forever. A great book can change a person’s life. A mediocre book is just commerce.” That’s courtesy of David Shenk, author of The Forgetting and The Genius in All of Us. That kind of gives me a little reassurance that all this editing is going to pay off. Cause honestly? I feel like I’m moving at a slug’s pace here.

Today I tried something different though. For starters, instead of waiting until 11:00 at night to start writing and watching the minutes tick away until I get to tired to write at all and put it off until tomorrow again, I hit the ground running and started writing right out of bed this morning. Then when I was stuck with my writing, I took a long shower. Then came back and wrote some more. I had some really clever ideas and the juices were flowing. Then I got stuck so I had some lunch, watched some Frasier, played some video games, went for a walk, and came back and finished writing an excellent ending to my chapter. Normally I say, “Well, it’s time to write, so I guess I’ll write.” Then I sit there for hours until I have those sacred thousand words. But I’m pretty pleased with how my segmented writing session went today. Whenever I can update this site, and meet my writing goal for the day, it’s a good day.

So yeah, finished chapter thirteen, which bumps me up to 53,358 words so far. I’m not sure what the total will end up being. But I’m feeling pretty good about it so far, and I’m gearing up for a total re-edit when I hit 60,000 words. Maybe. There’s a significant part coming up that will be the conclusion to the first book in the novel. I’ll edit when I get there. But point is I’m excited, and even with innumerable hours of editing behind me, and countless yet to come, I feel somewhat vindicated. I’m editing because it will be a damn good book. And while it may not turn out to be as wildly popular as Harry Potter or Twilight, I’ll take comfort knowing that it wasn’t written for commerce.

Milestones and Motivation

Posted on May 3, 2012 by Pearson Sharp

“Discipline, after all, is motivation when you’re not motivated.” ~ Kenji Crosland

I came across this quote after hitting a milestone in my writing a few weeks ago. Most science fiction novels are between 100-150,000 words. I recently knocked over the 50,000 word mark. Since it’s taken me five years and as many rewrites to get here, I was pretty proud of myself. I’ve been slowly coasting down from that peak ever since, and after mentally rewarding myself for my (not insignificant) achievement, I feel I’ve been a little too lenient in the relaxation portion of my reward. It’s time to get back to work, and I’m finding it as difficult as ever to produce those ever-so-elusive words.

So I’ve been doing a little reading on the side to help me find some motivation to write. Kenji Crosland runs a blog (http://jimijones.com/blogging/finding-motivation-to-write/) and has some pretty good advice for budding writers. My problem, specifically (don’t we all have one?) is that the world in my novel is so complicated that writing about it is often times an absolute chore. I have 51,000 words on my novel, and nearly as many just in notes I’ve taken. Keeping all those notes and ideas and plans organised in my mind is nothing short of a headache, and I find I’m often overwhelmed with the sheer amount of material that I have on hand. Yet there’s always the nagging voice that, even with all my foresight and careful planning, I’m still going to miss something crucial—that I’ll inadvertently create a plot hole, or that I’ll overburden the reader with details—and so I’m continually wading between my notes and my novel, struggling to see any real progress.

I have a lot of faith that, once I finish this novel, the groundwork will be mostly laid for future novels and I can breathe a bit. In a way, it’s the opposite of having writer’s block. There’s simply too much for me to compile and compress and deal with at one time. Which is why I’ve found if I wait, it generally strings itself out in my mind coherently and I’m able to manage sorting it out on the page. But without practise and caution, this can easily result in days, weeks, and sometimes even months away from the computer. But for now, it’s dirty work in the trenches and when I glance at my computer as I’m walking through the room, and see that beckoning keyboard, it’s difficult to suppress a shudder at the thought of the gruelling work ahead.

Don’t get me wrong. Writing this book has a lot of very tangible rewards. I can’t remember the last time I was so proud of myself as when I hit that 50k mark. And ordering the chapters and seeing the page count grow is a real exercise in promoting self worth. It’s just that it’s hard, hard work. I’m sure many of you who are writers can relate. We all have our projects that we nurse along and have such high hopes for. Seeing these projects fall short of our (often times) unrealistic expectations can be seriously demoralising. So far, the only solution to this I’ve come across is this: just keep going.

Jennifer Egan, author of A Visit From the Goon Squad, had some excellent advice I read a while back, and I think of it every single time I sit down to write: “Be willing to write really badly. It won’t hurt you to do that. I think there is this fear of writing badly, something primal about it, like: “This bad stuff is coming out of me…” Forget it! Let it float away and the good stuff follows. For me, the bad beginning is just something to build on. It’s no big deal. You have to give yourself permission to do that because you can’t expect to write regularly and always write well. That’s when people get into the habit of waiting for the good moments, and that is where I think writer’s block comes from. Like: It’s not happening. Well, maybe good writing isn’t happening, but let some bad writing happen…”

…field of streams of consciousness.

And that’s it. After years of digesting Emmerson and Whitman and Twain and Poe and Hemingway and London and Herbert, I’m afraid of writing badly. I’m afraid I won’t live up to my expectations, that I’ll fall short of my heroes. It definitely holds me back, more than anything else I’m finding. But what can you do about it? Well, like Jennifer said: Give yourself permission to write badly. Odds are, it’ll be better than you think it is, especially after you get away from it for a while and check in to see what you’ve written later. Another one of my go-to writing quotes is by Frank Herbert, and he said, “Coming back and reading what I have produced, I am unable to detect the difference between what came easily and when I had to sit down and say, “Well, now it’s writing time and now I’ll write.” There’s no difference on paper between the two.”

I’m not sure I’m thatconfident, but I still think most of it is in my own head. Getting past that is 9/10s of the battle. And God help me, I’m going to win. There are more articles on the subject of writing and motivation on the internet than you could possibly imagine, so I know this isn’t a unique problem. That alone is encouraging. I know I’m a great writer. I can do this. And though it often feels impossibly hard, there’s nothing else I’d rather be doing.