Category: Writing

Figuring it Out as You Go

Essay / Writing

Figuring it out. I envy those people that plot and plan and use a date book religiously. Alas, I am not one of them. Every year in January I buy a day planner and vow to write things down and have a handle on dates and deadlines. I plow through, marking haircut appointments, doctor visits, and social media posts to put up. Sometimes in pen, even.

About March I forget to flip through the planner. I found I’m much more comfortable with technology. I set up Google Calendar to nag me about things. More than once. I think that if it comes in on email, it’s real and important. Ditto text messages. For some reason that felt … wrong. I’m a writer, I should be firmly wedded to paper and pen. Once I cast that mindset aside it became easier to get through the day/week/month. 

Computers are orderly. But even with nag reminders, I tend to worry. The same applies to writing. I do a loose plot outline, maybe 30,000 words of backstory, and barrel ahead, knowing my brain will drop chunks in as needed. I also don’t mind going back and rewriting, filling things in, smoothing things out. The process is soothing. Meditative almost. I figure it out as I go. 

You’re Doing it Wrong

According to lots of writing books that’s wrong. I should plot a book out meticulously and then adhere to the outline. I’ve tried that. According to my brain, it’s also wrong. My brain is wired somewhat differently, as blank pages in the day planners attest. I function from a different place, a place of neurodivergence. Wanting perfection and having to learn it’s mostly unobtainable.

My brain fights itself. (I obviously can non-perfect on the first draft, though. Curious.) But it’s really not the rules, it’s the anxiety over figuring out if I’m following the rules exactly. I like rules when it applies to certain things. Like submitting. I want consistency. I also want a purple unicorn. (Who doesn’t?)

Take querying, for example. I’ve started querying with my newest fantasy novel. The diversity of methods to query is overwhelming. What’s worse is everyone wants something different, from the number of pages to submit to whether to also submit a one-sentence blurb, a one-paragraph blurb, or just a summary. Or all of it. Comp books, bio (How long? About me or my writing? Both? Neurodivergence fueling my writing? etc.

I figure it out as I go but not without a lot of stress. “Submit a synopsis.” Easy, right? Not for my perfectionist brain. How long? 500 words, is 537 words okay? 1000 words, one page, two pages? If a sentence runs onto page three, am I doomed? In what format do I put everything? Single spaced, spaces between paragraphs or indents? I go research—and get conflicting answers. Depends. There is no right way to do this, I found out. Only wrong ways. So. Many. Wrong. Ways. If I don’t do something exactly right will it wreck my chances? My brain says yes, and is firm about it. Stupid brain.

Figuring it Out Piece by Piece

It may seem like small stuff but it looms larger and larger. I close out and run away until I feel ready to start over. I want to know the exact parameters of the box, and that isn’t an option. Figuring it out as I go from site to site is exhausting. This is where the stubborn side comes in. I will not be defeated by my overthinking brain. It’s also where the calendars come in.

In order to beat my own thought process, I assign myself a day to submit. I target the agent, study the parameters, and figure it out as I go. Copy it down. Refer back to it a million times. One section at a time. I can do that, oddly functioning brain or not. One down, I schedule a time to do it again, recovery time in between, and make a folder full of the snippets of things I need so I don’t reinvent the wheel. (I love reinventing the wheel. This new wheel might be better than all other wheels ever made.)

Slow, but it’s what works. I grew confident enough to do multiple submissions on the same day.  There’s drinking copious amounts of coffee to calm my anxious brain and jump-start productivity. I corral the OCD tendencies and promise them chocolate when it’s all through. The Brain draws pictures of unicorns on the blank pages of my day planner. I quit asking myself, What’s the worst that can happen? Kick All or Nothing to the curb. I gently urge perfectionism to the side and give it a Corgi puppy. I’ve made peace with Figuring It All Out As I Go. At least for now.

Some of My Similar Essays:

My WIPs Get an Intervention

Sometimes You Just Need to Get Out of Your Own Way

Finished and Starting Again

Staying Afloat in a Writing Ocean

Some Links for the Essay:

Not Perfect, But Good Enough

Five Sneaky Ways Perfectionism Sabotages Your Writing

Writing When on the Spectrum

How We [Actually] Write

What I Learned From Editing

Essay / Writing 
Writing without revising is the literary equivalent of waltzing gaily out of the house in your underwear. — Patricia Fuller

What have I learned from editing both a novel and poetry? They aren’t as far apart as I thought. I learn from editing poetry how to make novel sentences more succinct and to punch up the imagery. From editing novels I learn to look at the big picture of a poem and how to decide whether to cut or expand to enhance meaning. 

It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in a whole book. 
— Friedrich Nietzsche

Poetry editing may take two, twelve, or twenty passes. (At least for me) The novel can take 100. They need what they need, but poetry tends toward more instant gratification. Editing a novel can make despair set in. Will this furshlugginer thing ever be done? As with poetry, eventually, you have to abandon your work and declare it done. Continual editing is counterproductive. That way lies madness. 

The writing itself is no big deal. The editing, and even more than that, the self-doubt, is excruciatingly impossible. 
— Jonathan Safran Foer

I like editing, smoothing out the big, glorious mess that’s a novel, or paring down a poem to the essentials. Hopefully, I don’t wind up with haiku, because haiku have their own baggage to contend with. On rare occasions, the prose needs to be added to instead of cut. When I go into editing swinging an ax, I can overlook spots where more is better. Problem nail, meet hammer.

“Editing. It’s like dieting; except a lot more violent.” 
― Leya Delray

Poetry and novel writing both share the same problem. In editing too much, the freshness evaporates into a saggy old balloon. I think it’s true you need to put new writing away for a while to look at it with new eyes, untainted by the story you had in your head. Poems, from anywhere from a week to a month. Novels for a month or more. But writers are impatient. We want to see our poetry in print as fast as possible. Ditto novels. 

While writing is like a joyful release, editing is a prison where the bars are my former intentions and the abusive warden my own neuroticism. 
— Tiffany Madison

I don’t write or edit to music. I’ve done it before, but even 10 years on I can still hear the piece of music I wrote a certain scene to playing in my head. After 10 years, I still hear every word and guitar riff, and I can’t write a similar scene without the piano refrain rearing its head. (Correction, my music is the chirp of birds outside my window. I even recorded 10 minutes of it and looped the redwing song into an hour-long feather-filled backdrop for writing.)

I am one of those strange writers who can actually derive pleasure from the editing process. 
— Cindy Matthews

However you edit, dive into it with open eyes — and a glass full of your motivator of choice. Novels, poetry, the rambling essay, they all benefit from a good nap before you edit your way to success. How do you like to edit? 

Writing is not like painting where you add. It is not what you put on the canvas that the reader sees. Writing is more like a sculpture where you remove, you eliminate in order to make the work visible. Even those pages you remove somehow remain. There is a difference between a book of two hundred pages which is the result of an original eight hundred pages. The six hundred pages are there. Only you don't see them.
— Elie Wiesel

Other Essays on Editing

Pulling Words Apart to Smash Writing Together

Revising 101 (Housekeeping)

Advice Paralysis

Author Places to Learn About Editing

Nathan Bransford Blog

Holly Lisle Articles

Janice Hardy’s Fiction University

Using Weaving for Bursts of Writing Creativity

Essay / Writing

It’s been a few months of frantic creativity – both with writing and a favorite hobby, weaving. In the past few months, I’ve woven 12 regular towels, 2 kitchen towels, 4 hand towels, 2 washcloths, 1 shawl, and 4 scarves, with the 5th on the loom. Oh, and made 24 bars of soap. The towels needed accompaniment. (No, not the Zombie Apocalypse, just holiday presents.)

Weaving - Woven Towels
Sets of regular cotton towels

Why this frantic activity? I finished the outline of the Sequel Fantasy Novel, wrote the first several chapters, and paused, needed to parse out what the outline said next. My usual method is to read the outline, ponder the scenes, then write and refine them in my head. The best way I found to do that is while doing something else. Some people use music or jogging. I use weaving (and knitting). I find the repetition soothing, especially the back and forth of the shuttle between the yarns. 

Weaving - Kitchen towels
Cotton Kitchen towels in fall colors

Off the Loom (Brain)

Weaving is kind of mathematical in nature and the orderly arrangement of calculating warp and weft is much like outlining a story. Once warped on the loom, all that’s left is to weave so many inches until it comes to the designated stopping place. The same with the scenes I write in my head. Once the weaving is done, I hemstitch the ends or make fringes and remove the item from the loom. Once done working out the scene, I remove it from my head to paper. Then start all over again. 

Weaving - 4 scarves
Tweed scarf, windowpane wool scarf, milk-protein scarf with Brooks Bouquet lace, wool and silk scarf.

It’s been a great method for me. Warping the loom involves a lot of walking back and forth from loom to warp peg to loom, sometimes for 220 strands of yarn for each item. (My Fitbit loves this.) It’s all very meditative, including the part where I separate double strands into singles and slot them through the holes in the reed. (Don’t worry, you don’t have to remember all the weaving lingo, there is no test at the end.)

Woven Shawl
Summer shawl, cotton and Tencel

Since my mind is ordinarily moving at warp speed on different things, the meditative rhythm and silence slow it to a gentle hum. When I feel the need to throw rocks at a character, I just look for the mistakes in my work. Because there will be mistakes. Such as warping 200 slots and missing one in the middle. But it’s fixable, just like the writing is fixable if I ponder long enough. What other ways have you come up with to work on your writing while not actually writing? 

Rigid Heddle Loom
Image from Weft Blown

Weaving Terms for the Curious

Fringe = A fringe is an ornamental appendage to the border of an item, twisted or left loose. It is the ends of the warp, projecting beyond the woven fabric.

Hemstitch = The hemstitch is an ornamental thread work technique to finish the ends of the woven item, just like you would hem the edges of clothing.

Reed/Heddle = The comb-like device that holds and separates the warp threads. It has slots and eyes/holes which allow every second warp thread to move up and down and create the shed. It is also used to beat the weft into place.

Warp = the threads going lengthwise

Weft = the threads woven across the warp threads

Shed = the space between the warp threads when the reed is up or down

Shuttle = yarn is wound onto the shuttle. The shuttle carries the yarn through the weaving

More Posts on Writing and Thinking

A Meditation on Walking and Writing

The Value of Silence in an Uncertain World

This is Your Brain on Writing

Some Links on Weaving

Need some looms? Mine are all Schacht. I have a Flip Loom, a Cricket Loom, and Inkle Loom, and I’m eyeballing a Tapestry Loom.

Things you can weave with a rigid heddle loom (Pinterest)

Everything about rigid heddle looms in one place. Gist Yarn

Writing in Dual POVs (or more)

Essay / Writing

I’ve always loved Dual Point of View (POV) stories. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s because that’s the way my favorite authors wrote. I have no problem switching characters, I can hold them and their storylines in my head readily. I thought everyone did this until I found out from another reader that they hated multiple POVs because their brain didn’t switch gears very well. They wanted a linear storyline.

Huh. 

That made me take a few steps back. I’m not a fan of first-person novels. I don’t like the intimacy. I don’t like the singular POV keeping me from knowing more. Is this how people react to multiple POVs? With exasperation? As much as I hate being trapped in a first-person POV, do they hate being trapped with multiple character’s thoughts? Let’s not even talk of alternating First Person and Third Person novels. The stuff of nightmares.

Digging Deeper

Dual and multiple POVs satisfy the need inside me to examine a story and its characters from different angles. How a character visualizes herself versus how another character sees her. The dawning realization of a character finding out the world might not revolve around them. Other people have problems, too. I like getting deep knowledge from more than one person. Everyone has secrets and it’s interesting knowing what one person is keeping from another and why. I think I’m a frustrated psychologist at heart. 

Even though I write multiple POVs, I have a primary protagonist. Their POV is the one I most readily identify with. The other POVs are the ones trying to understand the protagonist and help/hinder them. In one novel I also have the antagonist as a third POV but with less page time. My favorite writers often had far more POVs. Yes, I admit to being frustrated at times when a chapter ended and we flipped to another POV—but only because the previous chapter stopped at an exciting place. It forced me not to gulp down novels like candy. I had to learn to savor one chapter at a time. 

Ditching the Daily Grind

I used to be one of those people who slogged through a novel to the bitter end, no matter what. Now I allow myself to say it isn’t working for me and stop reading. I’m better at analyzing what made me stop reading. Since a tremendous amount of current novels are written in First Person, I know part of my problem. They are too intimate and make me uncomfortable. I dislike First Person multiple POVs even more. It’s like torture. I like the distance Third Person novels offer me, even deep third POV. Could be a neurodivergent thing. 

Maybe that’s why I like switching gears for another POV. It gives my brain a break and time to reset from its usual squirrel mode. I tried writing my latest fantasy in First Person and had to retool after three chapters. It didn’t work for me. I’m trying again with the idea for a new fantasy/superhero novel, where a First-Person POV makes sense because the whole story can be told from her POV. (I think) 

This essay has all been from my biased POV. Your Mileage May Vary. What’s your preferred voice for reading? Do you actively seek out books in that preferred voice? Or do you read whatever the wind blows your way, and deal with it?

Back to Top