This blog is now entering an awkward transitory stage. Excuse the mess.
Page 8 of 11
In this final week before I embark on a new novel, I’m working to lay out a trajectory—get a sense of where I’m going and how I’m going to get there. Problem is, in ways, I don’t have much.
This project is different from others in that it’s grounded in place. Setting has never been a strength of mine, although I can’t claim I’ve given it due attention. Typically my settings amount to “nondescript city,” and outside passing references (to the weather, or traffic patterns at rush hour, or the bar where all the underage kids go to drink) it doesn’t come up. This, though … this is (literally) another story.
Several months ago, I read China Miéville’s The City & The City. We follow Inspector Tyador Borlú, a resident of the fictional European city of Besźel, which is mixed in with the city of Ul Qoma. Both occupy the same geographic space, more or less, with areas that are wholly one or the other and areas that are “crosshatched” blends of both, but they are politically separate, complete with a sort of border security and a customs office one must pass through to legally cross into the other city. Without this setting, the story (a murdered girl found dumped in a lot) becomes generic; with it, the story is deepened and complicated. Enriched. The City & The City could not take place in Anytown, Midwestlandia, or be transplanted to London; its development is predicated upon the complexities of Besźel and Ul Qoma, to the point where the cities become more than a simple backdrop.
So what of my upcoming project? Without going into details—something I don’t like to do before getting a first draft down—I can say that the story, like The City & The City, relies on location in an active sense. At least, it will, once I come up with it.
It’s a new year. It has been for eight days now, and I, like so many well-meaning people, am struggling to keep to resolutions. This is in part because my resolution is a very systemic one, amounting to develop a routine.
I do well with routines. Some of my most productive times have been very routine-based. The difference between those times and now is that those past routines developed naturally, whereas now I’m attempting to engineer a routine.
I’m entering what I hope will be my final semester of my undergraduate studies, this one primarily dedicated to finishing my second major in psychology. I have a final piece of my creative writing major to finish too, though, in the form of a Capstone project, an open-ended assignment meant to encourage individual and one-on-one work with a professor. Last year, I helped a friend of mine make a short film for his Capstone by plunging into a cold river to play a corpse. Now, I come up with something of my own.
It’s hard to ignore the thrill of a fresh start—a new year, a new semester, a new project, a new notebook, a new pen, whatever. Also hard to ignore, at least for me, is the pressure a fresh start presents. (My notebooks, for example, all have a blank first page, because I never know how to “dedicate” them and so skip to the second page to spare myself the stress of finding a worthy opening.) Starting a new anything can feel like being a small child who’s given a nice outfit and told, “Don’t get this dirty!” I’ve never understood the appeal of $236 Versace jeans for eight-year-olds. I’m supposedly an adult of some sort, and even I can’t be trusted to keep jeans from getting dirty, so maintaining the pristine condition of the new year? Daunting.
Only here’s the thing: It isn’t about keeping things pristine. It’s about finding your dirt wisely—or, if not wisely, deliberately.
At least, this is my theory.
Previously, I made the reckless claim that I would lay out and demonstrate some of the ways I prepare to write a novel. I came up with five methods, but I’m realizing now that the approach I had planned to take in explaining these methods ignores a few key issues:
1. These methods often bleed into one another, rather than being discrete units.
2. They don’t fully represent my preparatory strategy.
3. Some of them, I don’t use.
As such, I’m going to scrap my previous plans. If you’re curious about the methods anyway, I made a page with brief discussion.
I’ll still be coming up with a novel concept of my own. Perhaps I’ll talk through my (much messier) actual process when that time comes.
I call myself (i.e., have come to accept being called by others) the tiniest writer, but my writing tends not to be tiny. (I have talked about this some in the past.) Most of the projects I take on with excitement are novels, as opposed to short stories, and a few years ago when I experimented with screenwriting, I did much more with full-length screenplays than shorts.
I’m not a novel-writing expert. I’ve never sold or published a book, and although I’ve finished several drafts—both first drafts and revisions—I’ve never felt like a project was really and truly complete (although from what I hear, it’s possible I never will). Still, I have finished several drafts, so that bumps me a step ahead of other aspiring novelists who have shoe boxes (or, I suppose, computer files) full of first chapters and nothing else.
I’ve been talking to a writer friend recently about doing our own -NoWriMo—the write-a-novel-in-a-month deal. She’s made a couple novel attempts in the past, but she always loses direction/momentum/something part way. She asked about my preparation process, which got me thinking about it in specific terms, trying to articulate it.
One difficulty I have in explaining this is that my drafting process is often sprawling, in a sense. I can finish a draft in relatively short order, but I often find a deep structural or conceptual flaw with it during the revision process and end up setting it aside for anywhere from months to years. My most recent project is a reworking of one I first drafted in 2008, and perhaps four years is the magic period, because in 2010 I re-envisioned a novel from 2006. This is how a lot of my writing goes—I go through multiple iterations before settling into a final form—and as a result, it’s hard for me to point to one outline or preparation process, because I draw from multiple processes.
I was able to point to a few techniques I’ve used, sometimes in combination, that have been useful in helping me develop direction so that I can progress through the first draft without losing momentum. I find that this—momentum—is the most important factor for me in determining whether a novel gets written or not.
I need to start coming up with a concept for our small scale -NoWriMo, tentatively slated for February. As such, I think my next several entries will be dedicated to presenting each of these approaches and testing some of them out.