A twist of the knife

"The Grave" has changed the entire direction of the "In Caves & Catacombs" series, and I love it. But the more you love something, the more frightened you are of it, for it, by it. It scares me because it's dark, but is it dark enough? Does it honor the veteran experience enough? Does it honor the struggle of being homeless enough? Is it, in and of itself, enough?

I'm afraid the truth is that it isn't enough. I fear that I haven't done it justice, and that bothers me. There's that twinge of regret, that twist of the knife, that if I held onto it longer, if I worked it more, that it could be so much better. The same goes for "The Boat", and the same will go for the next three or four installments in the series. Hell, the same thing will happen to the Efrenen Sea series. I could hold onto it for ten more years. Perfect it. Coddle it. Shield it from the light and critics alike. But it'll only make me fear it more. And I'm the most afraid of letting the fear hold me back from accomplishing all the things I want to accomplish.

Now that I've said it, it gives me peace. Because nothing I write is ever going to be good enough, and that's okay. My husband tells me that I'm too hard on myself, and he's right. I push and push because I feel like I don't measure up. But that's good, in some ways. Because that's what motivates me to keep going. I don't expect anything big to happen. I don't expect to be able to quit my day job to write full time. What I want from this venture is for people to read what I produce and to enjoy it. It's so simple--I just want to entertain you. And there's a darkness in that, all my own.

Bo Burnham hits the anguish of it absolutely perfectly... hang with this all the way through to the end (it really happens around the five minute mark, but seriously, watch the whole thing), and you'll see the connection: 

Full show available on NETFLIX.

I don't think I can handle this right now, either. So I'm going to go back to writing the third installment, God help me.

Evolving Process

As I edit the draft of my novel, I've noticed my writing process is evolving. My previous process went something like this:

Me, staring angrily at my computer screen instead of writing.

But my writing process changed, and now I've been able to write a full length novel and several short stories. There were two Big Things that changed to liberate me from angry staredowns with my laptop. The first is outlining, and the second is counting my words.

Outlining. *Shudder*. The word brings me back to middle school. All of my English teachers taught me that step one was to create an outline for my essays. I hated it. I much preferred writing out all of my ideas, and then going back to organize them. I hated outlining so much that when I had to turn in my outlines for points, I sneakily wrote the essay first, then crafted the outline to turn in. Thus, when I began writing creatively (not for points, and not for dollars), I still shunned the very idea of an outline. It seemed antithetical to include something so academic in my creative outlet. 

I don't even know how I'm going to finish this blog post with this image in here, it's that uninspiring.

Eventually, I decided that I would finish a novel, but I didn't know how. I had so many beginnings, so many ideas scribbled on looseleaf, so many chapters saved onto my hard drive, and not one full story arc to my name. So I began outlining instead. I found it deeply satisfying to create a story from beginning to end, and it made me excited to fill in the gaps. It directed my energy, because I knew what had to come next, and even if I wrote like crap to get from Chapter One to Chapter Two, at least I got that far.

Outlining gave me direction, but it was counting words that pushed me to follow through. I became obsessed with my word count when I began NaNoWriMo, but what's in a word count when you're writing something that's not a minimum of fifty thousand words? Motivation, that's what.

Not that kind of motivation. REAL motivation.

But if outlining is academic, surely adding math would ruin the artistic process, right? Nope, not for me. I'm so Type A that I find meeting my word count goal inspiring. And the truth is that I tend to think I'm finished with a chapter with only half of my needed word count. That's where I push through. I look at my count, review my outline, and more often than not, it turns out I haven't written enough or described enough, and my characters haven't developed enough. And that's where my best writing comes from. When I'm motivated to meet this tiny little chapter word count goal, it gives me what I need, piece by piece, to meet my hundred thousand word novel goal.

So try combining that crap from school that you hated with your writing. You might be surprised by the results!

"Throwaway" Writing

I am easily distracted. I tend to get started on something big, then when that long-awaited moment of writing inspiration strikes, it has the potential to sink me into a whole new project. I have a word for these harried, late-night scribbles--I call them my "throwaways". These are the dream inspirations, character examinations, setting descriptions, or illustrations of a feeling, like so:

If you click the photo, you can support my writing habit

“We’re almost there,” I say cheerily, strutting ahead despite my own frustration, and we continue along the road, withdrawing from the seasonal colors of the meadow into open countryside, complete with lush, fruited grapevines lining the road. I approach a climbing vine on the wire fence and stare at one dark, fat cluster of grapes that dangle obscenely. My mouth waters and the color skips like a missed heartbeat, it’s purple purple purple blue, and I have to raise my eyes away before it lifts me off the road.

I got in trouble for calling that a "throwaway". An author friend of mine had to sternly set me straight on it, not once, but twice in the last week. And honestly, does this particular scribble have promise? Heck, I don't know. But I do know that referring to these as "throwaway" pieces is a terrible misnomer. It's self-deprecating, it cheapens the work, and it fails to highlight the opportunity they present. Sometimes it takes someone outside of ourselves to point it out.

Don't be afraid to scribble, even if it's just an exercise. But don't sell yourself short. Every moment you spend creating shouldn't be thrown away. And maybe, if you're really onto something, it'll be the seedling for your next poem, short story, or novel. Whatever it is, don't let it wilt and die. You never know what it can become if you take the time to breathe a little more life into it.

Motivation

One memorable night several months ago, I lifted my tablet off the nightstand. It was late, I was over it, but I was going to get through Chapter 12, damn it. But I felt like the story was meandering into a dark, uninteresting hole. So I told myself, "Let's see what Writer's Digest has to say." Instead of clicking on their actual Facebook page, I accidentally loaded everything that had been tagged with #writersdigest, where, lo and behold, someone had tagged a friend with this: "Elle, could you provide a link to the quiz?" 

I am not ashamed to admit that I clicked to see what the heck they were talking about. Divine providence, I thought. It took me to a quiz on character motivation, designed to uncover your "storytelling superpower". Seemed innocuous enough. I started the quiz.

At first, the questions seemed kind of silly. "Pick a season". Okay, sure, whatever. Now I have to pick a color? *sigh* Fine. A photo? Between the ocean, mountain, and desert, duh, I'm going with ocean, have you even read my book description? I made my selections of that and other such nonsense for another thirty seconds or so, and submitted the quiz, feeling like I'd wasted a good half minute of writing time. And then it gave me a result that blew me away: 

Superheroes? I never, ever, ever- are you listening? EVER- thought of myself as writing about superheroes. But when I read the description, I realized that they nailed it. My leading lady, Mida Efren, wears sealskin, not a supersuit. But she has an underlying motivation to protect those that she loves. And that motivation seeps into every scene, every interaction, every moment she shares with the reader. Mida wants nothing more than to end her people's suffering, and she'll accomplish it by any means necessary.

You know, I don't know that I fully appreciated my main character before I took this quiz. She seemed sort of selfish and inexperienced; at odds, even, with Efrenen tradition. But once I began critically examining her motivation, her reason for being, the story pretty much wrote itself. I wonder if that affects how we live our own lives in the same way. Once we uncover our deepest motivation and follow it above all else, do our own stories pretty much write themselves?