Author, Historian, Storyteller

I am reading the book On Writing by Stephen King. Okay, technically speaking I’ve been reading this book for over a year. It’s one of those that I carry around and when I have a moment I pull it out and read a bit. Therefore, it’s taking me a while to get through it. It also isn’t exactly a thrilling page turner, not that I think you could make a book about writing thrilling, but if anybody could, it’s King. So since he couldn’t, I’m going to say that it can’t be done. It is an excellent book though, and even if you only consider yourself a some-time-writer, you should really grab it from your local book store. Or Amazon, do local book stores even exist anymore? That totally made my heart hurt, writing that sentence.

At any rate, I’m reading the damn book, and I just read a bit about how as a writer, a large part of your job is simply sitting back and letting the story and characters do their thing. It will write itself if you let it. Now if you had said this to me five years ago, I probably would have laughed at you. Not in your face laughter, while pointing my finger, but walking away, “Boy is that guy a kook,” laughter. For me writing used to be a laborious task. I had this never-ending impulse to do it, but it was laborious. I worked for every word and debated over every plot point. It’s no wonder I never wanted to share my work with people. It had taken blood, sweat and tears to get those words on the page and that was obvious even to the reader.

I had been trying for months to write the first chapter of my novel. I had ideas bursting out of my head for this novel, but none of them were the first chapter, and as all books start with the first chapter, clearly that is where I needed to be starting. Or so I thought. Then one day everything changed. Tired of literally banging my head on my desk – sometimes it actually works, you should try it – I said, “Fuck it!” and started to write the first chapter that came to mind. Now that all is said and done, it is the eighth chapter. I wrote my eighth chapter before my first, and when I did something magical happened. My brain and fingers started the chapter, but the story and my fingers finished it. I didn’t have to think about what happened next, or what such-and-such character would say, because they were simply doing it. I was a conduit for the story. It was the most exhilarating and exhausting moment of writing I had ever had. Needless to say, I continued to write my novel in this out of order, whatever part was on my mind fashion.

I would love to say that the whole thing came that easily, but that would be a gigantic lie. There were definitely chapters that I had to fight for. My blood, sweat and tears hit those pages, and unlike some of the other chapters, they required large amounts of finessing in the subsequent drafts to bring them up to snuff. But the absolutely beautiful thing, was that every time I would get stuck, or I when I couldn’t figure out what was missing, all I had to do was stop thinking about it and work on something else. Eventually my muse would return and the story would inform me of where it needed to go.

I have been stressing all week about the opening of my novel. Unintentionally, my two main characters didn’t make an appearance until the fourth chapter of the book. I went backed and asked some of my readers and across the board they all agreed, it was a little odd. None of them said it was bad, per se, but definitely unconventional. The more I thought about this, the more I started to worry that I was starting my entire novel off on the wrong foot. I need to fix that! So I started looking at my opening chapters and investigating a rearrangement of the chapters. Remember when I said I wrote this thing out of order? This is not the first time I’ve rearranged the order of chapters. I finally came up with something that I liked, but realistically it was going to require the addition of another chapter. Cue prepping the blood, sweat and tears because Lord knows, I thought I was done telling this story, so I have no clue what is going to go into that additional chapter. That’s when I decided to hold off, and work on something else. Lo and behold, the next thing I know my muse is back and whispering in my ear what has been missing this entire time. The missing chapter is here! I guess I’m not done telling this story yet.

I have been getting quite a few questions since my announcement that I finished writing my novel, and figured I would share the answers here. The novel, In a Time Never Known, is historical fiction based during the American Civil War. My two main characters are female spies for the Union, however they are both married to Confederate officers. Without further ado, here are the questions I’ve been asked.

Q – How long is the book?

A – 113,000ish words which breaks down into 450ish pages, broken into 50 chapters.

 

Q – Was this part of NaNoWriMo?

A – Nope.

 

Q – Where did the story idea come from?

A – I was in Richmond, VA visiting a friend and we were out one day doing the obligatory touristy stuff, which meant we took a tour of the White House of the Confederacy. In the gift shop, I found this tiny little 48 page pamphlet about female spies in the Civil War. I was fascinated, so I bought it, took it home and promptly forgot that I had it. However, the seed had been planted. My brain started to formulate a story, and about a year later, I dug out that pamphlet and began my research.

Q – How long did it take you to do the research, and what were your sources?

A – There is no way that I can come up with a quantitative number for that, I spent too much time over too many years to count. I did research before I started writing and while I was writing all the way up to and through the final rewrite. For the research, I read books both fiction and non-fiction. I watched several multi-part documentaries – my favorite by far was by Ken Burns and I also bought and read the companion book that goes along with it. I also did significant amounts of research on the internet. Before you ask, not Wikipedia. NEVER Wikipedia.

 

Q – How did you stay organized?

A – Copious amounts of notes and spreadsheets, baby! As I had multiple things that I was keeping track of at any given point in time, I created a spreadsheet and would alter the parameters of it depending on where I was in the process, or what I needed to focus on. This is the last incarnation that I used. Yes, it is color coded.

Q – How long did it take to write the novel? Did you work chronologically?

A – From when I started writing the book, five years. However, only the last year and a half of that was focused work. Before that I would work on a chapter, then ignore it for a couple of months, then work on another chapter then ignore it, etc. And no, I did not work chronologically. I wrote the last chapter of the book, before I tackled the first chapter. My style was more Memento-esque.

 

Q – How many editors did you have?

A – I haven’t yet had a full grammatical edit done, but I had the help of around ten people for content edits.

 

If I missed yours, please feel free to ask!

I find that I get asked on a fairly regular basis to read and comment on people’s work. Both from people I know, and people I’ve never heard of before. To be completely honest, every time someone asks me, I cringe. Not because I don’t like helping people, or I think I’m above that or something. I feel honored that people think highly enough of my writing to want my opinion on their own. That’s a nice little stroke to my ego every time it happens. I cringe because nine times out of ten, it is not a pleasant experience for me. I feel that a large part of this is due to the fact that people don’t understand that there is an etiquette that should be followed.

1. Don’t hand me your rough draft. Don’t hand me your first or second draft either. In fact, I better be pretty far down the list of people you’ve asked to read and critique your work. If I got to present one of my recipes to a chef, you can be damn sure it wouldn’t be the first time I’d made the dish. Same concept.

2. You might have an absolutely amazing and fantastic idea, but don’t assume I want to collaborate with you. I have my own projects and enough ideas written on pieces of paper to fill a shoe box. Chances are pretty good that I’ll want to work on those, before your idea.

3. Do your own research. Writers have their areas of expertise. If you are writing within that area, make sure your research is accurate. I’m not here to act as your fact check, that’s what Google is for.

4. Janet Jackson said it best – What have you done for me lately? Chances are, if I don’t know you, not even in the ‘we interact on social media’ sense, and you send me a request to look at your work, I’m not going to. This does not make me selfish. I am busy with my own life and my own work. If you want my advice, make yourself known to me. Comment on a blog post, share my tweets. Do something to show me that you are looking for a mutually beneficial relationship.

5. Keep genre in mind. If you look on Goodreads at the books I read you will notice a distinct lack or horror, poetry, sci-fi, etc. That’s because I don’t like them. Therefore, I am the last person you want critiquing your work in one of those genres. Unless your piece is better than freshly baked bread, I’m not going to like it.

6. Keep length in mind. If I am truly doing an in depth critique of a piece, it can take me over half an hour to get through five pages. Your twenty page short story will take me at least two hours. If you’re not going to take the notes I give into consideration, don’t waste my time.

7. Understand that there is a difference between a pat on the back for doing a good job, and a critique. Know which one you want. And if you’re asking me, keep in mind that I was a theater critic for four years. I don’t pull my punches. If it sucks, I’ll tell you.

8. Don’t reply to one of my notes/comments/questions with, “But my teacher said . . .” Unless your teacher is someone like Stephen King, I couldn’t care less what your teacher said, and if what they said is so profound, why are you asking me.

9. Don’t get defensive or try to explain yourself. Critiques are not meant as comments on you as a person, they are meant as comments on that particular piece of work and meant to help you improve it. That’s great that you were trying to depict despair through your use of cool colors and dreary settings, it doesn’t come through in the text. Don’t explain it to me, explain it in your piece.

10. Remember that there is no end-all authority on writing or storytelling. Every critique you get is someone’s opinion, and as such you are free to do with it as you please. Take what is useful and toss out what doesn’t fit your story. However, always, always say THANK YOU to the person. Whether you find their notes helpful or not, they spent quality time on your piece in an effort to help you. I have lost track of how many people failed to say a simple thank you. Don’t be that person.

Those are my top ten. Other writers, what are yours?

It occurs to me, that I have been sorely neglecting my blog as of late. Thankfully, it is not because of the subject matter of my last blog. I am actually doing better on that front. Still not great, but better. Baby steps.

It is because, I set myself a challenge. Instead of finishing up the rewrites on my novel by mid-December, I decided that I wanted to have it done before Thanksgiving. Which means I am tackling twice as many chapters every day than originally planned. Which is daunting, but has been unexpectedly exhilarating. Diving in head first, no holds barred, down and dirty, and every other cliche you can think of for getting shit done no matter what it takes. Apparently what it takes is pushing everything else to the back burner, including my blog. But never fear, I will be back. I just have to see this baby put to bed first.

Now that we’re getting to the end of my novel in book club, I have noticed a distinct shift in the attitudes and comments – see my blog from earlier this week for those. However, what I’ve noticed even more so, is that my attitude toward working on the book has changed. Lately I have found myself darn close to terrified when I sit down to work. There is something about working on the end that feels much heavier then working on the beginning or the middle. It’s almost like the first couple of pages are important, the end is critical and everything in between can be kind of mushy. I don’t truly believe that, but I’m starting to think that subconsciously I do!

It’s as if my brain decided I have leeway on the middle bits. If there’s a chapter that isn’t great, meh! Whatever, the next one will be better, and it’s all just driving to the end anyway. Therefore, the end has to be spectacular. Every word carefully chosen, every sentence constructed with precision, every paragraph modeled with meticulous care. It must be EPIC! Now I get that endings are important, but if the middle of the book sucks, no one is going to get to the epic ending.

Not to mention, I find it highly ironic – real ironic, not Alanis ironic – that my book takes place during the Civil War and I’ve built the end up to be huge. When in real life, the Civil War just kind of petered out as Grant wrapped his troops around Lee’s siege of Petersberg and squeezed them like a python. Lee and Grant had no breathtaking victories or sweeping campaigns in 1865. They were all camped out in Virginia. Grant recognized that his greatest resource was men, and he kept throwing more and more men at Lee, until Lee had too few to continue. The end of this war lacked the dramatics that say WWII had.

Yet subconsciously I think that I have built the end of my book up as if it were a Hiroshima or a Nagasaki. Not a siege that slowly collapsed like a flan. Not that I want the end of my book to slowly collapse, but I’m trying to get my head space somewhere in the middle. A nice healthy space that is not sad deflation, but also not atomic bomb. So far, I am not succeeding at all and find that I am highly intimidated by my rewrites. Therefore, I have come up with a new mantra – “Trust the outline, and focus on the chapter, not the end.” We’ll see how it works.

Do other people blow the importance of the end of something out of proportion too, or is that just me?