Writing Process

Handwriting vs. Typing

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According to research, there’s a huge difference in the way our brain processes handwritten things versus typed.  I know lots of authors prefer to handwrite their first drafts, then type up the edited and revised story.

Not me.  I always type my stories.  Part of it is that I type much faster than I write.  When I handwrite things, I have a difficult time keeping up with my thoughts.  Words tend to pour out of me in quick bursts, and trying to write it all down by hand only ends in things left unwritten and lots of hand cramps.

On the other hand (no pun intended), when I write poetry or songs, I always write them out by hand.  The few times I’ve tired typing a song instead of handwriting it, the lyrics have turned out absolute crap.  Of course, this means I end up with snatches of lyrics and ideas for choruses written on random pieces of paper and stuffed into pockets or my backpack.  But that’s the price I have to pay to chase my muse, I guess.

Back in the Saddle

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As of this moment (Friday, August 26, about 10:30 in the morning), I’ve been back at work for a little over two and a half hours.  I know what classes I’m teaching for the coming school year (team-taught World History II and Government), what classrooms I’ll be in (I’m a nomad this year, bouncing from room to room like a man without a homeroom), and who I’m teaching with (one veteran teacher and one fresh-faced second year).  It looks – admittedly, from what little information I have so far – like it will be a pretty good year.  I’m feeling re-energized after my summer off, ready to tackle new topics and get down in the trenches, as it were.

Of course, that means we should probably review the summer’s activities and assess my performance, yes?

I had three primary goals this summer:

  1. Start exercising again so I don’t die of a heart attack or something similar before I hit the age of 40.
  2. Drive for Uber to make some extra cash.
  3. Edit book 2 and maybe even finish writing book 5.

I can say item #1 has been going pretty well.  I’ve been exercising consistently, and I’m up to running a mile most every day.  Should be up to two miles by the end of September.

I did a bit of driving for Uber, but it wasn’t as productive or profitable as I’d imagined it would be.  Part of it was because I was usually busy chauffeuring my wife to and from school during the times when I’d have been able to make the most money, part of it was I didn’t really want to drive in DC much (where the demand and thus pay were usually higher than out in the ‘burbs), and part of it is just the flaws inherent in the ridesharing app and business.  I’ll probably continue to drive for Uber once in a while during the school year, but I don’t see it being something I do as a steady source of income.

I edited a grand total of 11 (eleven) pages of book 2 this summer!  That’s…not great.  However, I did do a lot of plotting in my head for book 5 and beyond, and came up with a couple of short story ideas in the Hazzard universe, so it wasn’t completely wasted time.  And I tend to do better when I’ve got a full schedule anyway.  My ADD brain just works more efficiently when there’s the pressure of lots of external deadlines, so I’m sure I’ll get the edits done on book 2 pretty fast now that the school year is upon us.  Heck, since my classroom is already set up, I may even be able to get some editing done today.

#amediting

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I’m still neck-deep in the first draft of Book 5, but I was chatting with my publisher the other day and she asked when she could expect to see Book 2.  She wants to go ahead and get it placed on the calendar for next year.  The publisher has added a couple of new authors in the past few weeks, which means more releases, which means forward planning becomes a must.

And that also means that, today, I started going over The Hidden Throne and doing some edits and revisions.  It’s going to take some time – there were a couple of plot threads that I left dangling in The Invisible Crown that I want to pick up and weave into Book 2 (see how I extended that metaphor?  Yeah, that was good), and just some general clean-up and revision on a book that I haven’t touched in over a year.

I have an uneasy truce with editing.  It’s far from my favorite part of writing, but I recognize its importance.  Sure, I know an editor will look over the manuscript once I pass it along to the publisher, but it’s sorta like those folks who clean their houses before they have a cleaning service come in to clean.  You don’t want the pros thinking you’re a complete slob or crap at this thing, so you do your best to have everything all tidied away and make sure the proverbial underwear isn’t hanging from the metaphorical lampshade when the house cleaners arrive.  It’s sorta like that.  I’m sure there will still be a few missing words here and there, typos and misplaced commas and run-on sentences and things like that.  I’m sure there will be bits that need revision and work when the manuscript gets back to me.  But I still want what I send out to be as polished as possible.  Plus, there’s the new bits I want to work into it before it goes out.

So, the long and short of it is, I’m in editing mode for the next week or two at least.  It’s probably for the best, because I was about to hit a wall in Book 5’s progress, and I need a little time to recharge the ol’ batteries.

Anyway, if you hear a scream of eternal suffering from Northern Virginia, that’s just me editing.

Discipline and Inspiration

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A lot of my writer friends like to treating writing like any other job: there are deadlines, quotas to meet, specific goals to achieve.  And I get that.  If you just keep endlessly working on the same book forever, you’re never going to get to publish it any move on to something new.  But I also feels like it gives short shrift to the creative aspect of what we’re doing here.

Everyone decries inspiration as a fickle, fleeting muse, as though waiting for it to make an appearance is a form of weakness in a writer and a sign that they’re not a True Author (TM).  As if the only way to really, truly being a professional in the field is to spend each day putting words on the page, some good and some bad, and then going back and editing them to make them all polished gold or something.

That strikes me as a bit disingenuous.  Each of us started writing because we were struck with some bit of inspiration.  Maybe it was just a scene, or a character, or even a word or phrase.  Maybe it was a line of dialogue, or the brief description of an action or something.  We all started from a place of inspiration, not a place of discipline.  And while I think it’s great that some writers can crank out words every day without concern for whether or not they’re good words (or they’re words that can be fixed in editing), I’d still rather take my time, maybe not get something on the page every day, and make sure I put down the right words the first time ’round.

And maybe that’s arrogance on my part.  Maybe I’m not being as clear here as I’d like to be.  Writing about writing is always fraught with hand-wringing and sounding full of yourself.  “The Process,” y’know.  I always roll my eyes when creative folks talk about their Process.  It sounds so pretentious.  And I’m sure talking of inspiration sounds that way, too.  It’s a lot more down-to-earth to talk about being a writer through the self-discipline of writing.  You sound like a human, or like anyone could do what you do if they just built that discipline themselves.

But I’m not sure that’s true.  Maybe it’s a bit elitist, but not everybody can do everything, even with discipline.  I could practice every day, hire the best trainers and go through intense regimens, and still never be a better basketball player than LeBron James or Michael Jordan.  I could push myself to practice for hours a day, doing riffs and runs and arpeggios, and never be as good a guitar player as Prince was.  Those are (or were) all highly-disciplined people who spent years honing their crafts, but they started with the inspiration.  I’m just saying maybe we shouldn’t discount that part quite so much.  Discipline without inspiration is just so much hard work for nothing.

Plottin’ and Schemin’

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I’ve…never been good at organization.  If any of my previous English teachers are reading that sentence, they are muttering to themselves that it is the single greatest understatement in human history, ranking up there with “the Beatles were a pretty good band” and “maybe Hitler was not a very nice man.”  I’d like to blame it on my ADD (like that guy from AWOLNATION, who capitalizes the entire band name for some reason?  Maybe that’s the ADD’s fault, too), and it’s probably a significant culprit, but executive function has just never been my bailiwick.  It bleeds over into my planning and plotting on a book, too.  A few months ago, I wrote a guest post for Hart’s Romance Pulse where I talked about plotting by the seat of my pants.  I’m not going to completely rehash what I’ve already said pretty clearly somewhere else, but I did want to address it a bit here on my own site.

Some authors, of course, craft very detailed, very specific outlines, with plot beats planned and scripted in a rigid text that is to be adhered to like a holy book.  I am not of their ilk.  A lot of my plot beats are created in the spur of the moment, following a general theme of, “I’m kinda stuck at the moment, what if someone started shooting at the protagonist?”  It’s served me pretty well so far.

Generally speaking, when I’m writing, I’ve got a couple of plot points that I know have to happen.  I usually know how the story will end.  What will happen between my starting point, those important plot beats, and the ending?  Only God knows for sure, and He likes to make me work it out for myself.

Mostly, it’s a lot of bad guys shooting at the hero.

Tunes!

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If you’re like me – and you should all be so lucky – then writing is a process that involves music.  Lots of music.  But not just any music!  No, you must listen to specific songs or specific styles to help set the mood for your protagonist’s adventures.  Or misadventures.  Or what have you.

I have a constantly-evolving playlist on my phone of the songs I listen to while writing.  Some are on there because they fit a specific scene, while others are more about describing the characters or the mood.  The following playlist was developed while I was writing The Invisible Crown and another novel that will appear later in the series, tentatively called Death and the Dame (that one’s a love story.  Sort of).

1. Anita Kelsey, “Sway”: There have been times I’ve just written to the Dark City Soundtrack.  This is still one of my favorite songs off that collection.

2. Sting, “Perfect Love…Gone Wrong”: On there because of the smoky, steamy city jazz feel, and also the extended metaphor where Sting is a disgruntled dog amuses me to no end.

3. John Mellencamp, “The Full Catastrophe”: Perfect summation of my protagonist, Eddie Hazzard.  His life is a bit of a rolling catastrophe, and there is a minor chance he was accidentally loving your wife while you were loving his.

4. Soul Coughing, “Fully Retractable”: One that’s on there for tone/mood.  There’s a dark undercurrent, a sinister feel to this song that’s just really fitting.

5. Muddy Waters, “Rolling Stone”: Life in a blues song always sounds like it sucks.  I imagine Eddie’s life is much the same way.

6. Bob Dylan, “What Was It You Wanted”: Either the narrator is stuck in a world that makes no sense, or the guy took a shot to the head.  Either way, a Dylan song is a must-have on pretty much any playlist I put together.

7. Gorillaz, “M1A1”: Fight scene song!  Love the energy, the staccato burst of the snare, the spiky guitars…great soundtrack to a fistfight.

8. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, “Red Right Hand”: Another mood setter.  Creepy, dark alley vibe that I dig.

9. EL VY, “Happiness, Missouri”: Like I said, a lot of songs I stick on these for the general mood they set.  This one fits with the general feel of the city of Arcadia: dark, slightly mysterious, vaguely threatening and sinister.

10. Arcade Fire, “My Body is a Cage”: The contemplative, protagonist considers his actions and his destiny before launching into the story’s climactic scene song.  Love the build of it, the sense of determination and all that.

11. The Dead Weather, “Hustle and Cuss”: Basically the Eddie Hazzard theme song.  He has to be out there hustling, working his tail off, because his enemies are always a few steps ahead of him.  And cussing…well, you have to express your frustration somehow.

12. David Gray, “Dead in the Water”: While The Invisible Crown might be the first of Eddie Hazzard’s cases, it certainly won’t be the last.  I’ve got three other novels already written in the series, I’ve started working on the fifth novel, and I have plans for the sixth.  The core idea for the sixth book came from a short story I wrote a couple years back about Eddie and a particularly disturbing case and a mis-remembering of a lyric from this song.  Expect to see that book in…um…2022 or so, maybe?  I dunno.

13. Adele, “Rumor Has It”: A private detective works with whatever information he can get.  Sometimes, that information is merely rumors.  Sometimes, those rumors turn out to be true.

14. Tom Waits, “Way Down in a Hole”: Tom Waits sounds too ludicrous to even be one of my characters, and I have one antagonist who’s a head in a jar named The Fish.  Honestly, when developing characters, I just ask myself, “What would Tom Waits do?” and go from there.  It’s served me pretty well so far.

15. Modest Mouse, “Bukowski”: This always struck me as driving music, the sort of thing you’d hear on the soundtrack if TIC was turned into a movie/TV series and they had a scene of him driving from the office to an informant or chasing down a lead.

That’s my playlist!  What do you listen to when you’re writing?