I spent several months in the weeds of a revision of my latest novel, Above and Beyond. It felt like I was circling Detroit Metro Airport, low on fuel, after a particularly harrowing trans-Atlantic flight punctuated by vertiginous microbursts over Lake Erie (if that sounds like an oddly specific simile, ask me about it sometime when we’re within arm’s reach of a bar–I’ve felt safer jumping out of a plane than I felt on that flight). This morning, during another session of a wonderful Zoom writing group I joined earlier in the year when the revisions had stalled, I printed out the full second draft. This is what I consider a readable draft, and whenever she’s done with her teaching responsibilities for the semester, my fantastic beta-reader Christina will read it through and share her thoughts. Is it a story? Does it work? How do you feel afterward?
It’s not as though I can’t answer these questions for myself. In fact, I’m getting better and better at being my own editor with each project, as one would hope. But pretty much every writer will tell you some version of how crucial it is to get out of your own head at some point. I’m not yet ready to let this story go and declare it finished, but I do want to know what someone else thinks of it. In some very real sense, I want every manuscript I give her to be better than the one before it, even though I know it’s not perfect or polished, and I am all ears when it comes to suggestions from a smart and earnest reader.
And just in case you’re wondering, the problem is not usually that I really like what I have written and maybe need to be brought down a peg or two hundred. Rather, I usually need to be convinced that it does not suck, because that is what it so often looks like from the weeds. Christina already knows the general shape of the story, so she’ll be able to look past the big picture and react to the execution, too.
Assuming that my my view of the weeds is not representative of the overall effect of the novel, query letters will go out within the month, giving me plenty of time to tinker with the issues Christina and I identify.
The author, hitting Print on his novel manuscript.
This past Wednesday evening, Leeman Kessler had me on Ask Lovecraft After Dark, the sister program to Ask Lovecraft, to talk about Memento Mori, weird fiction, gaming, the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival, the new novel, and all sorts of other fun stuff.
My profound thanks to Leeman for having me on his program. It was a real pleasure to be able to talk with him about so many things that I love.
My only regret is that I missed the opportunity to call him Mr. Mayor!
Ask Lovecraft After Dark, Wednesday, November 6, 2019.
The initial typescript draft of The Hermit, coming in at approximately 300 pages.
So, yeah.
I wrote here previously about planning to draft my next novel in seven weeks, writing 2,000 words a day, six days a week. And, well, that’s pretty much exactly what I did. Here it is. That’s all you get to see for now. Sorry. It looks hella nasty under that title page, and the more fastidious among you will agree that the title page looks none too prepossessing either. Nice stack, though, right?
I’m not going to lie; that was not easy. I had many MANY advantages going in, all of which I readily acknowledge. I had time. I had the support of my partner. I had my health. I had a solid idea and a super-sketch outline. And there wasn’t anyone out there, at any time in my life, telling me that I couldn’t do it or that no one wanted to read it (well, except maybe for that one First Sergeant, but fuck that guy). On one level, this novel draft comes to you courtesy of all of the privilege.
Even so, this step was a major one in terms of personal confidence and discipline. Aside from a couple of Weebles(TM), I had a smooth run through this story, which allowed me to learn a few things about my current process.
First, the most productive way for me to write is to have just enough of an idea to give me a general direction and then GO. I learn a tremendous amount about what should be on the page by putting a lot of stuff on it that will not stay there. I would write entire chapters, and sometimes in the middle of it I would already be aware of how a character or even a whole theme should change. I made those notes quickly (sometimes right in the manuscript) and then kept going. Momentum is all-important in the first-draft stage.
I can write A LOT fairly quickly, but I cannot write all day long. My sessions usually clocked in around two hours in the morning. Sometimes, especially if I was essentially writing a double, I would go longer, and sometimes I could write my day’s goal in less. Two hours was a safe average. I can also move the timing of the writing block, but I need to be clear-headed for it if I want to be that productive.
Finally, I reinforced what I already knew that my daily writing practice (30 minutes, by hand, every day, first thing) is essential to maintaining the momentum on the WIP. I need that space outside the manuscript to think and write ABOUT the manuscript.
From here, I will set the draft aside for a few days while I get ready to finish my home office. It’s still filled with boxes from our move. I will be putting in the new floor myself, and though home improvement projects always come with their share of frustrations, I’m looking forward to this one. This will be the first office that I will have done so much to craft myself. I mean, I didn’t build it, but we will have transformed it by the time all is said and done. Once that is done, I will read what I have several times, making all sorts of wild notes and generally deciding on a plan for what needs to be researched in greater detail before I come up with a plan for layering. More on that when we get there.
Astute readers will also note that the novel title no longer sensibly abbreviates as TPS, as I indicated in my initial post about it. The new title, The Hermit, is one that I am happier with. It is the first of a planned trilogy along with The Elephant and The Messenger.
Apologies, but no story details just yet. This draft is a Federation crew member in the middle of a dicey beam up, and this engineer has to focus all his attention on making sure they don’t arrive on the platform a steamy and gooey mess. Horrifying is fine, but I want to get it here in one piece before I go introducing you to it.
I’ll also use this opportunity to remind you that tomorrow night, Wednesday, November 6, at 9:00pm EDT, I will be Leeman Kessler’s guest on Ask Lovecraft After Dark. If you are or become a member of the Ask Lovecraft Appreciation Society Facebook group, you can watch it stream live and message us with questions. Otherwise, I will post the conversation here and elsewhere after the fact.
This past week was the first of a seven-week sprint to a first draft of the new novel. An acronym for the working title is TPS, so I’m sure many of you will sympathize with my desire to call these blog posts “TPS reports” (and, hence, why you are seeing this on a Saturday).
I’ve set a fairly ambitious goal for myself on this project: 2,000 words per day. That’s eight, typed, double-spaced pages. At six days a week, if I stay on schedule, I will have an 80,000-word draft in just under seven weeks. It’s also possible that I will have angry neighbors. The weather in central PA is still gorgeous, and most days are open-window days. My neighbors are old enough to know what that sound is they’re hearing, but there’s no telling whether it fills them with wonder or annoys the shit out of them.
For all but one day this week I was able to sit my butt in the chair and work more or less uninterrupted. When I have good days like that, I usually complete the 2,000 words in two and half to three hours. Given the plan, that is half a chapter every day, so each week I get into a sort of day to day breathing routine: open the chapter, close the chapter. Open the chapter, close the chapter. Open the chapter, close the chapter. And then a brief rest before I start again on Monday.
There was that one bad day, though. Wednesday. Fuck Wednesday. I eventually got my words in, but man they did not want to come out. But no, you know what, that’s not right. The problem was that on Wednesday the voices were too loud. Not the creative voices, the daemon, but the critical voices. The voices that cut and draw blood in the form of shame. The voices that very, very convincingly argue that there’s really no point in writing, because it’s all crap. The story doesn’t hang. I don’t know enough about these people or these events to write a single word, so maybe I just ought to stop until I can figure it out.
Nope. Not having it. 2,000 words or bust. I’ll know what I’m doing after I’ve done it.
Some of the writers reading this might find the numbers incredible, because some writers are having a solid writing day when they get out 50 or 100 or 200 words. On that score, let me assure you that I am a filthy, disgusting swooper. Kurt Vonnegut divided writers into swoopers and bashers.
“Swoopers write a story quickly, higgledy-piggledy, crinkum-crankum, any which way. Then they go over it again painstakingly, fixing everything that is just plain awful or doesn’t work. Bashers go one sentence at a time, getting it exactly right before they go on to the next one. When they’re done they’re done.” –Kurt Vonnegut, Timequake
Vonnegut also ventures that most men are bashers and most women swoopers. Whatever, bruh. This is how I get shit done, and though I have not always embraced it, it has ever been thus. These drafts are so unwieldy and amorphous that it is completely fair game for me to write something like, “blah blah blah, and then the magic happens.” Laughable. But I keep on typing. When that draft is done and I come back to revise, I will have a much better idea about what “blah blah blah” means and to what in fact “the magic” refers. Sometimes I just don’t know, but I do know that the magic needs to be there. You expect the magic. You’ve come for the magic. It’s my job to deliver.
Now I know that this is how I work, but I still try to optimize. For instance, I will work on the concept of a script or book for months, building characters and getting a sense of the plot, before I ever actually sit down to write any prose. Normally, I will have something that looks like a plot outline, but rarely is it much more than a single sentence per chapter. It’s not a lot to go on, but it’s usually enough. When I do sit down, it’s like I am taking the idea of a car out for a drive. It generally doesn’t handle well; the steering may not even be connected to the wheels at all. And yet, I know how to drive, and I know (more or less) where I want to go. So sitting down and churning out 2,000 words inspired by a single sentence is both terrifying and freeing. I can kinda write anything. Why not? Why do this at all if I can’t just write whatever the hell I want sometimes? And yet, eventually, it does all need to come together and make sense (hopefully in an entertaining and/or fascinating way) to someone other than me.
But for this first draft? SWOOOOOOOP! SWOOOOOOOP! You get 2,000 words! You get 2,000 words! Everyone gets 2,000 words! Mostly because I have zero shame about each and every one of those words. Total shitbag, this draft. Couldn’t pass a PT test to save its life.
The truth is, I need this draft in order to know what I have to put in it and what I have to take out. I am, for whatever reason, not a writer who can figure all of this out cleanly before I sit down to write. If there is a way to cut that knot, I have not seen it for myself yet. I need to create the lump of clay. The blank page is not my lump of clay. The blank page is the workbench that doesn’t have any sculpting materials on it yet whatsoever.
