After seeing a letter to my 6 year-old from someone named “Eddie”:
“Who’s Eddie?”
“A silly boy in my class.”
“What’s he like?”
“He wants to be a clown when he grows up. And Sarah wants to be a State Fair owner. She’s going to have Eddie come and be a clown at her State Fair.”
I used to be a pretty good athlete, decades ago. In high school I was the Oklahoma state champion in the pole vault 2 years running, and took second place another year. Over the years, I’ve kept in shape by approaching workouts like eating, or sleeping: something that has to be done almost every day, no matter how small or insignificant the workout might seem.
After the holidays, getting back into the gym can feel demoralizing. Whereas before the break you might have been running 3, 4, even 5 miles a day on the treadmill, after all of the eggnog, turkey and chocolate from Xmas you’re lucky to get 1 or 2 in. I used to beat myself up about a bad day at the gym, which would make me want to go there less and less, until I realized that the important thing is not “how hard” you work out when you’re there, but just that you motivate to get yourself there in the first place.
Writing is very similar. Some nights I pound out 1,000 words in nothing flat and feel great – others I goof around in my notebook writing down vague ideas that may never turn into anything at all. The important part is not “how much” you’re getting onto the page, the important part is just showing up at your desk in the first place, ready to think about writing, ready to actually write, ready to edit, ready for whatever happens.
Someone told me once about a playwright who would write for at least an hour, every day (I can’t remember his name). One day he sat down to write and wrote “The …” – then paced in his office for 60 minutes, finally finishing the sentence “… hell with it.” But at least he was there, ready for the lightning bolt, should it strike. Ready to run with it if the ideas were flowing.
*Update* 05/31/2009
In a surprising development, my writing regimen is cutting into my running regimen. I’ll need a new belt soon at this rate.
It’s been a trying couple of weeks here in Aspiring Authorland. After plodding along at a pretty regular clip on a novel and completing about 1/3 of the first draft, I submitted it to an editor and asked for some objective input on how it was going.
Needless to say, his eyes didn’t open wide with delight like Simon Cowell’s did a few weeks back when Susan Boyle opened her mouth to start singing. His feedback was to stop, go back to the beginning, and start over from scratch. As hard as that was to hear, I actually agreed with him.
But while he was evaluating the manuscript, I shot out of bed one night with a perfect idea for a short story. I finished the final draft last night. It’s called “Animal Control” and it’s beautiful. Really. I showed it to this same editor, worked with him briefly on it, and submitted it this morning to “The New Yorker.” As crazy as this sounds, I think it actually has a shot at being considered for publication there, or I wouldn’t have sent it in. I’ll post an update here once I hear back from them.
What did I learn from all of this?
Write what you love. I was writing a formulaic novel because I had been reading agent blogs, editor blogs, publisher blogs and the like for months, and thought that if I could just piece together something that made sense and had a semi-interesting hook, it would sell. The problem with this approach? My heart wasn’t that into it.
The exact opposite happened with the short story. It appeared one night, fully formed, demanding to be written. I will probably not make much, if any, money off of it. But it’s pretty damn good. It’s heart is in the right place, because I put all of myself into it.
Today after karate class the girls and I were eating dinner at a greasy spoon, waiting for our grub, and talking about imaginary karate techniques. It went something like this:
“I’m training for my rainbow belt.”
“Well I’m training for my one thousand black belt.”
“The rainbow belt is after that. Duuuuh!”
“It is not.”
“Is too.”
“Then I’m training for my pink belt.”
“Do you know Red Apron?”
“No.”
“Then you can’t get your pink belt. That’s required. You know … RED. PINK.”
“And so is Evading Form Seventeen.”
“Do you know Shattering Mirror?”
“No, but I know … Dubious Reflection.”
“What about Stare of Death?”
“So what you just … look at them funny and they die?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know that one either.”
“You better get on that.”
We went camping this weekend, 7 (or was it 8?) families at a beautiful lake in west Texas. I was stressing about losing the weekend, which is usually prime writing time, to the fun but mindless task of packing, driving, unpacking, cooking, herding kids, organizing hikes, etc. and worried that it would eat into my weekly page goal.
But the opposite actually happened. Getting away from the city and the computer for a few days was the best thing that could have happened. The overdoses of sugar, junk food, hyperactive children and fresh air acted like a kind of spa treatment on my brain, flushing all of the crap out of there so that when we returned last night I was working with an almost blank slate.
I’ve just started a new section of the book and am switching POV for awhile, and was having trouble settling into the new character’s skin. Today when I sat down to read what I’d completed so far, I scrapped the whole thing and started over. The result is much, much better than what I had going into the weekend.
It takes a ton of routine and discipline required to plug away at a book which could never see the light of day, but I’m finding that it’s going to be important for me to step back and build in regular “off the beaten path” experiences as well to ensure that the creative juices keep flowing.
Some notable quotes overheard this weekend … maybe future fodder for a story line or scene:
My oldest daughter has been observing my novel writing process with the eyes of a hawk. The other night she sidled up to me as I was working and asked if I would help her write her own book.
“What do you want to write about?” I asked.
“Books.”
“What about books?”
“I don’t know,” she sat down. “Something with magic.”
We talked about it for a few minutes and, once I realized she was serious about the project, I helped her outline the book. We created a ten chapter outline on a single sheet of note paper and I quizzed her on what she wanted the book to be about.
“Well, there’s this girl, you see, who really likes books. She loves how they take her on adventures and stuff. And then there’s this evil wizard who starts making the books disappear. And maybe there’s a magic necklace or something that she can use to fight the bad wizard. And then she’ll get to read all of the books that disappear. And the girl has a best friend who is a princess. They get to play together at the end. I want a whole chapter on that.”
We gradually outlined the thing, settling on a title of “Journey to the Heart of Books,” a YA fantasy that will obviously be heavily influenced by her current reading choices of “Harry Potter”, “Inkheart” and “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”, and started a manila folder where she could keep her notes and ideas.
After finishing the outline, we labeled ten 3X5 index cards with the title of each chapter.
“Now you need to write down 5 things that should happen in each chapter,” I told her, “starting with chapter one. Who is this girl? What’s her name? What does she look like? What does she like to do? What is she afraid of? That kind of stuff. Once you’re done, move on to chapter two, and so on until you have 5 things for all 10 chapters.”
“Then what?”
“Then we can write the book.”
After she had the basics, I left her alone to work on it.
Then our youngest daughter sidled up to me as well.
“Daddy? Will you help me write a book too?”
Here we go again.