Dusting Off an Old Manuscript

So I've been getting the itch to do some actual work lately. But starting a new novel is daunting, and I've been avoiding it. This evening, though, I remembered a long-abandoned manuscript, only half complete, that has been dying on my hard drive.

I opened it up tonight, and have been plugging away at it, off and on, for the past few hours. It's rough, getting back into something so long unused, but it feels great at the same time. I may actually finish this book.

Which is good, seeing as how it is one of my favourite story ideas, as well as one of the first ideas I ever had for a full length novel.

The Importance of a Good Desk

I do all of my writing on a laptop, in Roughdraft 3.0 (great, great software, I highly recommend it). Theoretically, I can write anywhere with these tools. Going for coffee? Take the lappy with you, bang out a few pages in the Horton's.

In practice, however, this is not really possible. I need to be in my chair, at my desk. The reason I need my chair is, as I have mentioned, that I need a specific squeak to my chair when I'm writing. When taking a break from the keyboard for a few seconds, I lean back, and if I don't hear that squeak, I lose my train of thought entirely.

For the past ten years or so, I have had the same desk. It was white pressboard, with two drawers, and was generally pretty terrible. But it served me well, and I wrote my first novel at that desk.

When my grandmother passed away, my aunt, with whom she was living, was giving away some of her possessions. My sister, bless her heart, took Nan's desk for me. She took it home, stripped it entirely, and revarnished it. It is old, solid, and absolutely beautiful.

She finally had a chance to bring it to me, yesterday. I cleared out a space in the office, set it against the wall, and transferred everything into it yesterday afternoon. I then spent the rest of the day sitting at it, organising it and just getting used to the difference. The thing is older than I am, and you can tell if you look closely. But my sister and her husband did a magnificent job restoring it, and I can't thank them enough.

This is a desk that I can get some serious work done on, I think.

Another One

You never know when an idea will hit you. See my earlier post, about always keeping a notebook handy. You could be driving to work, you could be watching the clouds, or playing in the backyard with your kid.

That last one just happened to me, over the weekend.

You never know what will trigger an idea, either. It could be something as innocuous as the position of a rock against a fencepost. Or more obvious, like a couple fighting for three hours next door, then going suspciously, and immediately, silent.

For me, it was the neighbour's garden. In their backyard, which faces my own, they have two decorative garden doors, right on the edge of their property. The way my backyard is laid out, these are in a small grotto, behind an aggressively overgrown dogwood bush, and under the low hanging, and far-reaching, boughs of a very old maple tree.

To look at it, it's a gorgeous sight. You're standing by a patch of daisies, looking into a shaded and secluded little clearing, and there are two doors, just standing there. There are no walls, no glass in the windows, and no handles on the doors.

I've been looking at them every day for a month, and nothing came of it. Saturday evening, though, I was outside playing with the Weenit, and it hit me like a bolt of lightning. The complete framework for a teenage-oriented fantasy novel. No meat to it, of course, that takes time, but the basis for it just fell into my brainmeats all at once.

I immediately wrote it down, of course, and will get to it when I can.

The point is, always be open to whatever comes into your head. You can't force an idea to come (unless you're Chuck Palahniuk, of course.... the man is a machine), which can be frustrating at times. But you can increase your chances by following those random thoughts that pop into your head. Follow them relentlessly, because you never know where they will take you.

The Library

No, not the public one that smells like hobos, though that one is awesome, too.

I mean your personal library. The one you have in your bedroom, or your living room, or, like me, in your office.

A person's library says a lot about them. Some people don't even have them, and that makes Neil Gaiman sad.

Why do you want to make Neil Gaiman sad?

What you have in your library, or, in my case, what you have room to display in your library, is pretty much a visual representation of yourself. Your interests, your hobbies, your deepest, darkest secrets are there, for all the world to see.

If only they could decipher it.

Mine is spread across seven bookshelves of varying size and description. This includes one shelf devoted entirely to The Weenit's books, granted, but I don't mind, as seeing her purple fuzzy Dora chair permanently sitting next to a shelf filled with her books makes me happier than I can adequately describe.

The rest are mine. Well, mine and the wife's, but mostly mine. I am shamed to admit that there are several shelves that are double-stacked*, which annoys the shit out of me, but there's no room, otherwise.

The two main shelves are about as tall as I am, containing five and six shelves. They are narrow, but that just means they fit in the room better. One one (the six-shelfer) I have the majority of my fiction, loosely categorized by genre and alphabetized by author's last name. The bottom shelf and a half is devoted to anthologies (Grimm's fairy tales, Norton Anthology textbooks from university, collected works of various people, etc...). The second is for non-fiction, categorized by topic (psychology, biology, history, occult {yes, this is non-fiction}, biographies, war, etc....). The remaining shelves hold, mostly, pocketbooks. Though my Robert Jordan set (almost entirely in hardcover, I'm working on the rest) is proudly on display. These shelves are the smaller ones, limited to two or three shelves each.

Now, the reason I'm describing this.... well, I'm not really sure. My fingers were itchy, and I needed to type something, to be honest.

When somebody looks at these shelves, they can immediately discern a few things about me. One, I like to read. A lot. Two, and more importantly, in my mind, is that I don't really care what I am reading about. I like to read on just about any subject, and often sit down in the bathtub with a university textbook just to read it.

Just because.

I get a lot of weird looks when I tell people that.

Regardless, what I'm getting at is this. You need to read. A lot. And you shouldn't care what you're reading about. Unless, of course, you're working on a specific subject. But if you're stuck for ideas, and you're looking for inspiration, just reach out to your shelf, grab a random book, and start reading.

*Double-stacked is when you have a line of books at the back of the shelf, and a second line in front of these, blocking them from sight.

It's My Book, Dammit, Not Yours

So, some recent drama over at a blog I read (The Over Educated Nympho, great read), has brought a few things to mind. Primarily, the notion of entitlement. A lot of readers will tell you that once they read a book, or a story, that it no longer belongs to the author. Hell, a lot of authors will tell you the same thing.

They are all completely wrong.

No matter what happens with it, anything you write is yours. Not only in a legal sense, but in a more personal, wholly intangible way.

When a reader has their mind blown, or their life completely changed by a book, they will hold it up as an example of great writing. Hell, I consider Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea to be the absolute pinnacle of English literature, unsullied by lesser hands. It has completely changed my life, and the way I approach the English language.

But it's not mine. Not even a little bit.

It's Papa's, and it always will be.

A writer puts more than just mental effort into their work. It's far more than just words on paper to them. It's far more than a moving story that punches you in the gut and fucks with your mind.

It is them. Body and soul goes into it, and a good writer, one who takes their craft seriously, will be able to look at any passage in one of their works and tell you everything about the moment when it was written down. Where they were, what they were feeling, what was going on around them. Which one of their kids was sick that day, and whether or not they were fighting with their spouse.

There is a connection there, existing between a writer and his work, that transcends just about every other. The only comparison I can make that would do it justice is that of a parent and child. It's fundamental, and forever.

So yes, you paid your $15 to have a copy, and you've read it three dozen times. But it's not yours. Physically, you own a copy, but it belongs to the author entirely.

The Wait

So you've finished your masterpiece. You've polished it, and edited it, and trimmed it down to a level of awesomeness that astounds even you, it's creator.

You've taken the advice that is offered on every writer's website, and waited three months before reading it again, just to make sure.

You've selected a viable publishing house, filled out the paperwork, and sent it off to them. And now you wait.

And wait.

And wait.

It takes most houses at least three months to get to a submission. Three months, if you're lucky. Most times, it's more like six. Most also ask, and most how-to guides agree, that you not submit it elsewhere in the meantime. If, by some chance, they want it, they don't want to get into a bidding war over it with another house. Which is understandable.

So you sit, and wait. You check your mail three, four times a day, hoping for that envelope. It's interminable. Your stress level winds tighter and tighter with each passing day that it does not arrive. You come to hate weekends, solely due to the lack of mail delivery. You count down the days, and do complicated math in your head, trying to determine how much longer it will take, based on the distance it had to travel, the number of submissions you suppose the house gets, and the length of your submission itself. You start to fantasize about the reasons it is taking so long. Perhaps they loved it so much, they are having a series of meetings with their VPs, trying to settle on just how many millions they want to pay you. Perhaps they hated it so much that they burned it, and refuse to contact you, hoping that if they ignore you, you'll go away.

And then it arrives. By the time it drops into your mailbox, you don't even care anymore. Not really. You're down to checking the mail just once a day, sometimes even skipping it for a day. You've convinced yourself that it doesn't matter what they say in the letter, as long as they say something. When you see it in the mailbox, though, your heart skips a beat. You take it in trembling fingers and read the return address a few times, just to make sure you're not deluding yourself.

Much like a college application response, you try to gauge the response by the weight and thickness of the envelope. Is there a contract in there? Could it fit? Perhaps a cheque....

When you finally do open it and read the first few lines, your reaction here will determine your future. I'm serious. Chances are, it's a "thanks, but no thanks" letter. Don't kid yourself, my friend; Hemingway you ain't.

Now, how you respond to this is very, very important. And you can't really prep for it, either. You can break down, and give up. Let's face it, this is the option that most people take. Or, you can set the letter in your desk drawer, fire up your word processing software, and start in on the next chapter in your latest work.

That second option? That's the one that Hemingway would take.

Just so you know....

Stephen King is a Douchebag

Alright, that may have been a bit strong.....

The man has some talent. Well, more specifically, he had some talent, got ridiculously wealthy, and has spent the rest of his life rehashing the same money-making techniques that got him rich in the first place. Which is fine for him, really. Whatever works, right?

But what pisses me off is his fans. Ever talked to a Stephen King fan? They're like fundamentalists. You can't get through to those people. You can lay out exactly why King has lost it, and where (about 200 pages into Firestarter, if you're interested), but it won't matter. You'll be shunned as a non-believer forever more.

He's a hack, writing the same stories over and over again, using the same half dozen or so characters, and always ending with some ridiculous deus ex machina that is proof positive that the man has no idea what he's doing.

Which brings me to my point:

PLAN YOUR STORIES!

Yes, I went all Billy Mays there, but I felt it was important enough to justify it. Plan your stories out, from start to finish. Get your characters in your head, flesh them out, and live in them for a while before you ever set pen to paper or fingers to keys. by "live in them" I mean just that. Spend a few days acting like your main characters. Approach every situation in the real world and ask yourself, "How would Protagonist deal with this?"

Know the story that you want to tell. Know how you want to tell it. Write all of that down first, and then fine tune it. You can tweak it as you get to the actual work, but if you do it right, you shouldn't have to do much of that at all.

The actual writing of the story should be the easy part. If you do enough preparation, it should just fall out of your fingers onto the page.

You should have notes. Reams of notes. You should have more notes than the actual work itself. That's fine. What you do with them when you're done is up to you. Personally, I try to keep mine, but scraps get lost here and there. Which kind of adds to the magic of it, I guess, but that's for another post.

As are Harry Potter fans. Fuck those people.