Pushing Through the Mushy Middle

As promised (here) I'm back to give my middle of the month NaNoWriMo pep talk. Saturday I spoke to a group of gung-ho authors hunkered down at the Thurber House for a Columbus area write-in, and Wednesday night I met with writers at the local library in my town. I was blown away by the number of people who showed up for both of these sessions.

Everyone and their mother seems to be participating in NaNoWriMo this year.

Okay. This is a slight exaggeration. I am not signed up for NaNo this year. And neither is my mother. But it does sorta feel like there's been an uptick of interest. (Just checked and there are almost 300,000 people plugging away on novels according to the NaNo site.)

Many of those people may be floundering around at this point in the process.

All of that energy and excitement you had on Day One--the cool ideas, the interesting characters, that brilliantly worded first line--all of that tends to fall away on like Day 5 or 6ish, and suddenly the ideas seem dumb, the characters are meh, and what the heck were you thinking? the first line is ridiculously pretentious.

But I am here to tell you to keep writing anyway.

Some people say that writing a novel is like driving through Texas.

It's a freaking long trip and maybe your car will break down, or you will get lost, or you will veer off the road to avoid hitting an...um...armadillo. You'll wonder if you should turn back, quit driving, and perhaps check out the condo rentals in this little town in Texas where your car has overheated.

Don't.

Have your car tuned up by a local mechanic, get a bite to eat at the Waffle House next door, then get back into your car, set your GPS, and go. New Mexico is only like, 400 miles away.

Wait. What were we talking about again?

What I meant to tell you is KEEP WRITING. As Robert Frost famously said: "The only way out is through." Yeah, I know what you're thinking. Who is the poet Robert Frost to be giving us advice? He wrote poems for God's sake, which everyone knows are MUCH MUCH shorter than 50,000 word novels.

Sigh. Somehow these "inspirational" talks of mine always devolve into commiserating with people about how HARD it is to write a book. Yeah, you're going to have finish this first draft and it's going to be a big messy thing and you're going to have to revise it. Multiple times. And then it's likely never going to be published. Blah blah blah, and instead of being inspired, everyone's depressed.

I promise I did give these hunkered down writers what I hoped were a few practical helpful tips.

The big one, something that has helped me in the past, is to take a look at the Hero's Journey. For those of you who have not heard of it, the Hero's Journey is basically an outline behind every story ever told. The hero leaves the comfortable (or not so comfortable) Ordinary World and sets off on his real (or psychological) journey.

Along the way he meets friends and fights enemies. He learns the rules of the Special World and faces his demons. At some point he approaches danger and what seems to be certain death, but he fights that battle and emerges with his reward.

In the end he returns home a changed person.

There's more to it and you can read about it Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Another helpful resource is Christopher Vogler's The Writer's Journey.

Many writers use the Hero's Journey template to structure their books. I see it more as a guideline, though, something to keep in the back of your mind while you are writing, especially if you are the type of writer who does not outline extensively before you begin. If you're stuck, it can't hurt to see where your main character is on his journey.

And it can't hurt to see where YOU are on your Writing a Book Journey.

If you are mired in the mushy middle--if your story has veered off and what you thought you were writing about has turned into something else, or if your main character has disappeared, or if new characters have mysteriously plopped into the narrative on page 100, or if the realistic novel you thought you were writing suddenly evolves into a Sci-Fi thriller--there is no quick fix, no magical secret.

Worry about that stuff later. Make a note to yourself and move on. Get back in the damn car and keep sputtering down the road.


PS. If you're really blocked, you can always kill a character or blow something up.

Tune in next month when I give you every trick I know for revising your messy first draft and for one day, possibly, hopefully, getting it out there into Publishing Land.

In Which I Attempt to Kick Resistance's Butt

I'm glad I keep a journal as I write a book because I can look back and see my writing process in all its up and down glory:

The excitement when I get an idea and start to play around with it.

The drudgery that hits some point in the middle and I think how the heck am I going to make it through this one? (This is usually around the time when I realize I have no idea what is going to happen in the story, and worse, I don't even know what the thing is ABOUT anymore. Because it changes, see? What you THOUGHT you were writing is not actually what you're writing.)

And then there's the cool moment when it clicks. Still not sure how this works but believe me, I am not complaining. Dumb luck. Magic. The Muse. My awesome subconscious mind playing around while I sleep. Whatever. I'll take it. When I reach that point, I know I'm nearly home free. I get the book now. I know where it's going. And I go with it.

But this part of Writing a Book is only the first part. It's just the first draft. Next comes the Putting It Away In The Drawer part because that is what Stephen King told me to do and I like to follow his instructions.

Then there's the nauseating First Read Through where I see the flashes of my own brilliance while at the same time fighting to stay awake through boring sections and over all of that is the ever present worry: how am I going to FIX this giant freaking mess?

Somehow I do.

I revise. Once. Twice. More.

And each time the rollercoaster process begins again. Doubt that this is any good, that it is worth doing, that anyone will ever even read the damn thing. Anxiety that I can't write. That if I ever even had talent, it's long gone. But also love. For that kernel of a story that made me want to write it in the first place. And love for the characters, who are REAL by this stage, twittering away in my head, saying lines that don't sound like things I would say. So how cool is that?

It's enough to make me want to work on the book again, to get it right. And when that book is marinating in my Stephen King drawer, it's enough to make me want to start another one.

What was my point again? Oh, right. This is why I'm glad I keep a journal. So I can remind myself of my process.

Which brings me to this morning. I am somewhere in the middle of a revision--a revision, I might add, of a manuscript that I started writing like, three years ago. This is revision number four maybe? I don't even know. I read through it a few weeks ago and I loved it. Today, uh, not so much.

But I reread an old writing journal and realized that I was right on schedule. Ah, it's the middle where I-think-the-book-blows-and-wonder-if-I-should-quit. Been there. Done that.

Here's a nice little nugget of wisdom I picked up from Steven Pressfield's book on writing, War of Art. He calls the doubts and anxieties that accompany writing a book--the nasty stuff that can potentially derail writers--a sign of Resistance. Every day, he says, it's a battle between you and Resistance and the only way to win is to keep writing.

Today, as I pick my way through what's got to be the worst pile-o-junk I've ever written--boring and absurd and pointless and probably unpublishable--I am keeping Steven Pressfield in mind, and writing anyway.

Take that, Resistance.

Digging up Story Bones

On this glorious, bizarrely sunny and 80 degree day in Columbus, I find myself smack dab in the middle of yet another first draft (ten. But who’s counting). So right on schedule I’ve got the usual negative thoughts burbling up. This sucks, who am I kidding? Why am I wasting my time with something that inevitably will never see the light of day? Blah blah blah. It’s kind of sad. Because when I started this first draft, I had such high hopes for it:

1. The idea is the best one I’ve ever had.

2. This book will be THE ONE.

3. I can’t wait to get going on it first thing in the morning. Etc. Etc. (Warning: if you DON’T have these feelings upon beginning a first draft, you may want to reconsider the project. Later, when that excitement has faded, you’ll need every little nibbly remnant to keep you going.)

Another thing that keeps me going is setting a word count. For this draft I’m taking a page from Stephen King and writing 2000 words a day. And every day I meet the goal. I am not saying these are GOOD words. First Draft Land is all about the quantity, people. It’s not magic. It’s not a secret. To write a book you have to sit down and um, write it.

My friends tell me I must have a lot of self-discipline. Maybe. But I think it might have more to do with the stubborn/OCD combo streak that I’m blessed and/or cursed with. I have the hardest time quitting something. And I rarely fail to follow through on something I said I would do. Hence, if I say I’m going to write 2000 words today, then damn it, I’m writing 2000 freaking words. This is not to say that it is easy. But what is?

The truth is, anyone who can read can write a book. Just like anyone who has two legs can run a marathon. It has to be something you really want to do, and you’re going to have to make some time to run every day. Full disclosure: I have never run a marathon. But I have run some 5Ks and they’re hard enough. Two minutes in, usually, I want to die and I’m cursing myself for signing up. What the hell was I thinking? Why did I think I could do this? Still, I keep moving my feet, slapping them down again and again, breathing in and breathing out. I start making little bets with myself: Just get to the lightpost. Don’t stop til you pass the pine tree. I can do anything for thirty minutes, right? And lo and behold, it’s true. I’m not trying to win the race, mind you. I’m not even trying to get an impressive time. I’m just trying to run at a steady clip until I cross the finish line.

If there is a secret to writing a first draft, this is it. At least for me. Another full disclosure: I do not outline a book before I start. Instead, I have an idea or two—a character, a line that gives me the narrator's voice—and I start writing. I set my words. I go. I resist the urge to fiddle and revise along the way. That’s the key.

Stephen King, in his book on writing, entitled, shockingly, On Writing, compares writing a book to digging up a fossil. The first go around, he says, you’re just trying to dig the thing out, as many of the pieces as you can without breaking any, without missing any big important chunks. You certainly don’t stop halfway through and start dusting the bones off and snapping them together. That’s for later—when it’s all laid out in front of you and you can see what you have. Only then do you arrange. See what’s missing. Throw out the bits of rock that you thought were bone. Or maybe those things belong in some other fossil instead of this one.

Looking at it this way, it’s easy to write a book. Just pick up your shovel every day and keep digging.

(The secret to writing a book)

The Mushy Middle. Otherwise known as Driving through Texas

Ah, the mushy dark sprawling space that is the middle of a novel. If you’re plodding along writing your certain number of words a day, you’ll inevitably reach the point where you are halfway to somewhere. The problem is you still might not know where you’re going. You may not remember where you’ve been. You’re wondering if you should stop, turn around, forget this trip. Maybe go someplace else.

Writer Laraine Herring says that writing a novel is a lot like driving through Texas. You’ve got a long way to go to reach the border, but if you keep driving, you’ll eventually get there. I’ve never driven through Texas. I’ve never even been to Texas, but I have driven from one corner of Tennessee to the other corner and I know that takes a long time, so I trust Laraine’s metaphor.

One of the nice things about signing up to do National Novel Writing Month is they send you these cool inspirational emails from authors who’ve been there in the trenches. Today’s was from one of my favorite young adult novelists, John Green. He was trying to be inspirational, but he started by lamenting about how hard it is to keep writing when you’ve reached the middle of your book:

“Why do I quit halfway in? I get tired. It's not fun anymore. The story kind of sucks, and it's hard to sit down every day and spend several hours eating from a giant bowl of suck. And most of all, like the kid who spends hours preparing plastic armies for war, I enjoy setting things up more than I enjoy the battle itself. To finish something is to be disappointed. By definition, abandoned novels are more promising than completed ones.”

I hear you, John. The story in my head is always a million times better than the one that gets put on paper. Unfortunately, the story in my head doesn’t exist. And it never will exist if I don’t keep writing it. John Green’s pep talk does eventually get peppier and he ends by reminding us that Robert Frost once said: “The only way out is through.” Now that I think about it, Robert Frost was brilliant. He wrote poems. Which would be more like driving through Rhode Island.

But I’m still driving through Texas. Tumbleweeds are blowing around in the desert alongside my car. (This is me, imagining Texas, because I’ve never actually been there.) I see a lot of cactuses (cacti? too). The road stretches off into the horizon. There’s one gas station ahead and it’s only got one fuel pump working. But that’s really all need. And maybe some snack food and coffee.

I’ve made it this far. No way am I turning back.

Crossing the Threshold

When you’re writing a novel you inevitably find yourself at a certain point where the story takes off. You’ve set up your world and you’ve created your characters. You’ve thrown a few cool conflicts at your hero. He wants something and he can’t have it. He’s going to have to leave the safety of the world he knows and strike out after it. Maybe he has a few false starts. Maybe he turns back a couple times or some other character shows up to shoot him down. But somewhere around page fifty or so of your 200-page novel, your hero is going to make a choice. He’s going to cross the threshold and begin his journey. Woo hoo! It's about time!

I’ve been thinking about crossing the threshold this week because I have just crossed it myself in the book I’m working on for National Novel Writing Month. It’s a cool feeling when you reach this point. It means you’re officially entering the section known as: The Middle of the Book. The place where all the action happens and where the strands you’ve set up in the first part of the book begin to come together.

Starting a book is tricky. There are so many decisions to make. Most of the real work of the first draft is just trying to figure out what’s going on. You’re introducing characters that you, as the writer, don’t really know yet. You’re describing a world that you’re still trying to imagine. It’s possible that you won’t understand it all completely until you reach the end. I heard someone speak at a writers’ conference once about how an editor read her 200-page manuscript and told her that the story didn’t really start until page 100. “Lop that first part off,” the editor said. “And start there.” The writer was horrified, (and I, in the audience, was horrified for her, imagining all the work she must’ve done and thinking about how it was all apparently for nothing). But the writer surprised me by saying that it wasn’t a waste—those 100 pages—they were a necessary part of figuring out that story. It was how she found her way in.

Sometimes you discover that you’re writing a different story from the one you thought. You’ve got a conflict set up and halfway through the conflict morphs into something else. Or maybe you realize the wrong character’s telling your story. This happened to me. I wrote a book from the point of view of a particular girl. I saw it all very clearly in my mind—her conflict, her journey. Then twenty or so pages in this boy showed up out of nowhere and basically took over the story. I kept going with my girl, plodding along, trying to wrest the story back to her. I finished the draft, patted myself on the back, put the manuscript away for a while then read it with a fresh eye. But I couldn’t deny it. This story wasn’t the girl’s at all. It was the boy’s. Never mind 100 pages. I wrote a whole book so I could find my way into the book I was supposed to be writing.

No big deal. It’s all part of the process. Maybe you change your mind about the plot and your narrative takes off in a completely different direction. Maybe you have no idea what the point is until you write the conclusion. Maybe you add characters or cut them. A writer friend of mine has this scene her first draft:

“Where’s Lindsay?”
“Oh, I think she’s not going to be in this book,” I said. “Kevin and Kristy are enough, don’t you think?”
“Yeah, probably.”
Sometimes you add plot strands. Or take strands away when you see they’re not really going anywhere. The point is you’re not going to see most of this until you’re well on your way.

So cross the threshold with your characters and keep moving forward on your journey. Do not go back. Find your way through the story, to the story. You’re going to have to redo a lot of this stuff anyway; you may as well keep going all the way to the end.

Up next: The Mushy Middle: otherwise known as Driving through Texas