craft – Page 5 – Julie Liddell Whitehead

Hard-Won Knowledge

Well, something interesting happened yesterday. I have always been a very particular writer. I write it out and don’t finish a piece until every word is as good as I can make it–the first time I write it. I am used to turning out very clean copy in a first draft and not having to revise. I’ve never been one to subscribe to the “crappy first drafts” mode of writing–where you just get a bunch of stuff on the page and sort it out later.

But yesterday I did exactly that on this fiction project. I was writing one of the last stories and wanted to get everything down that was in my head about this scene, but I realized halfway through that it needed more attention than I was giving it–I was “telling” a lot in summary when I needed to be showing it in scene.

But I just kept plugging along and finally finished what I could do that day. I went back and read it and made a big cut, and immediately the scene felt a lot better. Now I need to go back and put in the scenes I was summarizing. I have never really been able to revise my own work–I think it’s all good until someone tells me otherwise, then I can see how to fix it. So I think yesterday was a step forward for me as a writer in that I know I have to fix it and know what I have to do to fix it. Instead of just thinking it’s wonderful from the get-go :).

So today’s craft tip–go ahead and write the garbage. At least sorting through it later will help you separate the recyclable from the trash and find the treasures within that you didn’t notice at first. I’m awfully late to this awareness, but I’m glad I finally have it. Happy writing!

Protecting Characters

I have fallen into a peculiar trap I don’t think I’ve ever made for myself before. I have three characters whose stories I am trying to write more of, give them a voice–Holly Seabrook, Cindi Edwards, and Tommy Hebert. I suddenly don’t want anything bad to happen to them in the endings of the books.

I never felt this way about characters in the first drafts. And where I have let other characters experience consequences, I haven’t taken a lot of thought about it. But suddenly I’m very protective of these three.

I think I’ve gotten over it with Tommy, who is one of the new characters I am spinning out his story from bit player to major player. And his girlfriend Cindi I am thinking I just don’t know very well yet. And I feel a lot for Holly because of what she is going through in the story. But I think I need to remember three things:

Number One: I am not dealing with real people. I am dealing with figments of my imagination. If I were writing about real people, it wouldn’t be fiction. But one of the goals is for everyone to come off as very real, so I suppose I’ve fooled myself into thinking that as well.

Number Two: I am not chronicling real events. The book is based on a real event–Hurricane Katrina–but everything thing else is fake. Invented. By me. I am master of the domain. Don’t like what happens when I get through writing it? I have a delete key for a reason.

Number Three: Static characters are boring characters. Change has to come. They have to come to earth-shattering realizations. They have to see things fall apart and somehow rebuild them. So we will stay invested in their stories.

So that is what I am going to be working on–how to think about my characters as characters in a book instead of the living, breathing people I’ve come to think of them as. And that’s going to be interesting.

Downslope

So I feel like I am on the downslope of drafting the last three stories. I know what I plan to do in them, and unless I have somehow misjudged the characters and they surprise me in some way, I should have no trouble rounding out the final few scenes I have to do. I am still waiting on other beta readers to send me comments, but I am satisfied with the changes I have made so far.

I am going to continue to revise and edit up until August 1, when I will switch manuscripts with another writer I have connected with in my workshop this summer. Then I will revise based on her feedback and start submitting to presses in mid-September.

I am really excited to hit this part of the drafting/revising process. I don’t know as the process has been very orderly, but it has worked so far to take the stories in some unexpected directions and that is always good. I will keep you posted on my progress in the coming weeks as usual! Thank you for reading.

Story Continuity

I have been having fun writing the new installments of Hurricane Baby and cleaning up what I call “continuity problems”. Since I am adapting a huge mass of already-written material to a new purpose, I have to watch for continuity problems.

These could range anywhere from calling a character a wrong name to putting someone in the wrong place at the wrong time. For example, one story had been set between Thanksgiving and Christmas. And I didn’t realize that until I was doing yet another read through and realized that it couldn’t be set during that time because of changes to the timeline occasioned by the new stories I’ve written and other changes to the timeline of the book itself.

How to solve? I’ve started keeping a list that consists of when each event happened and what it was. So if Lelani announced she was pregnant in early January, if she went into preterm labor in the sixth month, the baby would be born in June. If, if, if. Asking a series of If questions make the dominoes of the story fall into place with minimum disruption.

Drafting Tips

Writing your story from beginning to end sounds like the right way to go, right? You write the beginning, the middle, the climax, the denoument, and the end. Joseph Heller, author of Catch-22, once noted that the last third of a book usually took up only the last ten percent of the time to write, either from confidence in your story or maybe the narrowing of options for alternative endings.

But what happens when you don’t know what happens in the next chapter? My solution for that with Hurricane Baby was to write sections as I thought of them. I wondered about if Judd and Laine divorced over Wendy, how long would it be before Judd started dating again? I knew not long—he had a reputation as a womanizer in college and was still relatively young. So I wrote a scene where he met his second wife six months after his divorce was final. Ray would eventually figure out that Judy Ray wasn’t his—studies show that a child’s similarity in looks to their father peaks around two years old, so Ray would notice she did not favor him or his family in any way by then. What would he do?

I put the scenes I was writing in sequential order in the original manuscript as I drafted each one in my notebook. I would fill in what I thought would connect them as I went. The final scenes were the third ones I wrote. I knew where the story was going to go—but how did I get it there?

Sometimes the characters up and surprised me. Dr. Jack Rawson turned meaner and meaner with every scene I wrote him into. His playing-God ego was huge, and it led to Wendy being so uncomfortable around him that the scenes were excruciating to write.

So instead of writing linearly, where you write the first scene first and the last scene last, try going where the answer to the question of What happens? is burning a hole in your imagination. Write that scene. You may keep it, you may not. Pencils have erasers, and a computer comes with a delete key for a reason, right? If you’re blocked on the Next Thing, try the next Next Thing and see what happens.

Eyes On Your Work

What do you do with a manuscript once you finish it? I always try to get someone else to look it over. I am about to reach that stage where I will be finding another pair of eyes to read and see where the story needs revising. I have a few more pages on my last story to do and then I will be ready to get another perpective.

You can go about finding readers several ways. One avenue I have taken is to go to my MFA mates that I still stay in touch with and offer to switch manuscripts–I read one of theirs, and they read mine. Both of you get a new perspective. and all you’re out is a little time. Cooperation is a wonderful thing. Maybe you have a writing group or people you met in a conference or workshop. A swap can really work in your favor.

Getting different perspectives from your readers is something else to think about. I am getting another writer’s thoughts from my MFA friend. I have another friend who dabbles in writing but also reads voraciously. He can give me a reader’s perspective–does the story hang together? Where is he tempted to put it down because it’s boring? Etc.

Free options are the best options–but if you want a little more professional opinion, Facebook groups or Twitter searches are always a option to find a professional developmental editor. Be sure to vet someone first–see if other books they have worked on have eventually sold or if they are good enough editors for their own work to sell. If you’re paying for it, make sure it money well spent.

So when you finish a manuscript, celebrate your accomplishment however you choose. But know that the work is not necessarily done; getting other eyes on it is the next step.

Fear Redux

I am trying to finish the last two stories in my manuscript this weekend and have been panicking every time I open the document. Thinking that I’m an idiot for believing I can finish a big fiction project like this again. Thinking that no one will ever bother to read it and care about the people I’m writing out or about the story I’m trying to tell.

I am just going to treat my self-imposed deadline as a hard one and pretend it’s going to be published do-or-die the day I finish it. We will see how well I can hoodwink myself into believing that. Fear is strong. Fear has bedeviled me my whole life. But I am going to be strong, and I am going to defeat the fear. No matter what.

Fear

So why was I afraid to pick this project back up and write on it when I got the idea for linked stories several months ago?

Number one was fear of failure. Would I start it only to find that it was unworkable? That it wouldn’t turn out as I envisioned? That fear is largely gone. I have ten stories completed in the conversion–several of which had been published in stand-alone form over the past few years. I need to have faith in my ability to craft something new out of what was already strong material.

Number two was fear of the blank page. This one is harder to fight. Where I have had to create almost an entire narrative from near-scratch, I have had a ton of problems. In fact, I have two stories left half-done after I pulled source material out of the main manuscript that have been a challenge to work on.

Number three is imposter syndrome. Many of us writers, when faced with a challenging task, can draw on past success at our craft as a reason to believe that we can face this new challenge, too. So why don’t we? Often it’s because we live in a culture that says simple success in completing a project is not enough; more must be done to make it “successful” by someone else’s standards.

Number four is fear of wasting time. This belief whispers to me that my paid work is more valuable than my fun work because it pays off financially. When I have paid work pending, it’s really hard to give time to unpaid work. This fear tells me that I am only a valuable writer when I’m earning money. I still work to overcome this obstacle.

Number five is fear of losing my mind. Many writers write from a place of trauma. I do so in my memoir work. Well, the first writing on this story came out of the trauma of Hurricane Katrina, which ultimately consumed me and resulted in a psychotic break. Many writers report re-experiencing their trauma when they write about it. I don’t want to go back to that some place I was when first crafting this story.

How am I working to overcome these fears? I remind myself that I am successful by my own lights and that is all that matters. I remind myself that computers come with a delete key to erase a poorly written sentence or paragraph or whole scene. I remind myself of Anne Lamott’s advice that no one cares as much as we do, and others do not live to tear apart our work.

Concrete steps I have taken have been to sign up for an extended flash fiction writing workshop where I can learn more about my craft and get used to the flow of writing fiction again in a low-stakes environment, one where my work is supported, and I am not writing only for my own satisfaction but for others who want to see me succeed. It basically comes down to getting my own confidence back.

I’ll keep you posted on how it goes.

Category: craft