Yes, It Is All My Fault!

It’s been a hectic month here at the Slutbarn and Dream Cafe. I’ve been doing a lot of shop-work, and a lot of writing work. All seems well on the shop end of things, with some minor stresses that should be gone by the end of the month. I’d prefer to babble a bit about the writing-work end.

If you haven’t heard it here before, you have now and will again, but I’m currently in the middle of a novel work-in-progress. As Steve puts it, it’s my “second first novel” so perhaps a bit slower going as I figure out my writer processes and more about how my creative mind works alongside discovering the actual characters and story. I feel I’m past most of the early writer angst hurdles, as part of my work goes toward establishing a foundation of healthy writer habits wherever possible. Last month and this month I’ve learned that blockage or slow movement in my other daily work will definitely slow down my creative writing, just as a certain level of clutter in my home will also slow down the flow of creativity.

My super-cool project of the month is what I want to spend the most time chattering about tonight. I’ve come up with various tricks and approaches along the way (I’ve been working on this book actively or passively since April) to keep me moving forward and undaunted by the ever-growing scope of the project. Most of these involve taking the oh-my-gods huge giant novel thing and breaking it down into smaller manageable less-scary bits. I have notes and colorful brainstorming posterboards and outlines and am on Chapter 5 in the actual novel work. The past month I’ve been doing a lot of thinking and working on some of the thematic elements, setting, and worldbuilding aspects of the story, and I found to my dismay that since I was writing fewer daily pages during this time, I felt like I was drifting further away from being able to “get into the heads” of my characters. Since this piece is all about the cool cast of characters, continuing this trend would be tragic.

First I compiled a master list of all the characters that have shown up for this novel so far. I labeled individual 8.5×11 sheets of paper each with a name of a character from the list, though I only pinned 2-3 sheets to the wall at one time. Next, preferably as part of a brainstorming session with other smart writers, I wrote down onto the labeled sheets several questions about the characters and how they fit into the world and the story, and left the papers up to stare at for a day or two. Then, preferably in another verbal brainstorming session (that’s how I primarily work; yes, Freak Writer here), I picked the answers to the questions, or at least ones I can be happy enough with to get me through the first draft, writing those down on the sheet as well. Finally, to help make my connection with the character more concrete, I wrote a scene (or a story, depending) with that character as the focus, given all the new information I have gathered in the character “interview”.

Now that sounds like a lot of work, and it is, so I won’t make any promises to stick it out for the whole master character list. However, so far it’s quite fun and working smashingly well; tonight I just finished a 15-page 3500-word short story about the first of the characters examined in this manner. Though I don’t think it will work out this smoothly for all the characters I interview, this particular story seems to be relevant enough that if I can likely either sell it as a “standalone” short story then incorporate it into the novel after, or provide it as “bonus” material to promote the novel. Or both. Or something.

I hope after completing a couple of the character sheets and having a feel for the process, that I can continue that work while also actively producing pages directly on the novel more consistently. Sometimes it’s hard to have patience and give the proper space and time for the story to grow; so far I seem to be maintaining the balance well.

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