CREATING THE RIGHT MINDSET FOR WRITING

Each time I sit down to work on revising a manuscript, it's different, and I'm trying to do something different for the story. I'm not talking about editing - that's a different process. I'm talking about what the story needs from me. Do I need to get the chronology, the timeline, clear? See how each character ends up where they are at each point? Understand how the conflict affects each of them? 

This time, I am looking at the hardest revision of all: Re-visioning - the entire story. Seeing it whole, and, simultaneously, taking it apart piece by piece.

And putting it back together, maybe adding, maybe cutting, but re-shaping, re-writing, re-encountering each character, each scene, each moment as though I'd never encountered them before and discovering their true nature.

Every time I get to this point with a manuscript, how I get there - how I get in the frame of mind that will let me re-envision a story that has lived in my bones for two years - is different. And harder every time.

I've read many things about how other writers manage this - getting in the right mind-set for the work you have to do.  Ursula Le Guin has said that she washes dishes.  Raymond Carver isolated himself in his office.  Others go for a walk, paint a wall, run, knit, build, go on a trip.   I think the particular thing that you do is important in only one way:   that it works for you.  Experiment, find what brings that frame of mind, that intense focus on the story you are telling, and do that thing.  Mostly, for me, it's been walks.  This time, however, I'm finding that I need the right piece of music.  
During the time I've worked on this manuscript, that "right piece" has ranged from Paperback Writer by the Beatles, to Mozart's Concerto No. 20, to Gotta Get Up by Harry Nilson, to the current selection, the one-hit wonder Spirit In the Sky.
 
The point is, as my Zen teacher used to say:   PAY ATTENTION.  Do what's working, and only you can know what that will be  Maybe you will need to try something you've never tried before., maybe it will mean returning to or recreating an environment that is safe and comfortable for you. But pay attention to those moments when strong focus and insight come - don't let them get away.  Stop.  Look around, and take note of what the conditions are.  Then try re-creating them for yourself as often as possible.   

I was stuck on my current novel some weeks ago, and went to a local bar just three or four blocks from my house.  I sat there drinking coffee (it was in the early morning) and eating eggs, scratching at the yellow pad I'd brought with me.  Nothing happened.  Spirit In the Sky came on the jukebox, and suddenly I was writing like a maniac.    Writer's block broken.

THE STORY BOARD

My current writing project began with high energy - I took voluminous notes and made character sketches, back-story for characters, and let all three of the main characters 'speak' on the page for weeks and weeks.  At one point, I had filled over 14 yellow pads with research notes and development work.

When the story itself began to form, it didn't happen in linear fashion.  This did not bother me, as I'd had that experience before writing a novel - I'd write the central scenes, the pivotal ones, and then the other scenes would come.   At some point, then, I began to need to get a view of the story over-all, to begin to see it's linear, chronological flow.  So, I did the first of what are now many story-board attempts - I spread all the different scenes, some handwritten, some typed,some done on the computer and printed, out on the floor, and began to arrange. 

This stayed this way for many days (perhaps one of the reasons writers should live alone).  In time the arrangement changed, the flow of the story, the central points of tension began to emerge.  Some scenes were eliminated, new ones written, and I began to take notes on the scenes as I arranged them.

I haven't done story-boarding for every piece I've written, though I now wish that I had.  I have always recommended it for my writing students, and when I have done it, I always come out not only with a stronger sense of the story itself, but of my purpose in writing it.  I write in a way I suppose many would call intuitive.  I don't use outlines or even think about things like story arc or plot points while I am writing.  What I always seem to start with is one central idea.  Once, it was the final scene of a novel.  Another time, it was the a transformational moment.  Most often it is, at least for me, a character and her or his situation that emerges, often in a very vivid scene context.   I go with that, and let it build.

Having taught writing for many years, I know all the arguments both for and against such a process, from those committed to a strict discipline or style, to those we might call more free-wheeling in their approach.  I've found that being tied to one approach doesn't work for me.  I have to listen to the essential nature of a story, and work on it in the way that this particular story demands.

I even change my medium - some first drafts written entirely by hand, others entirely on computer, this current one mostly on an old manual typewriter.  But listening to the form and process for an individual story doesn't mean giving up being a disciplined writer.  Far from it.  The more open I am to form and process during the initial draft, the more attentive I must be to detail and careful editing as I go through revisions.  The current manuscript is now on its ninth revision, and there may be more.

Once when Hemingway told a group of aspiring writers that he had written the last page - just the last page - of A Farewell To Arms something like 37 times, a curious youngster present asked him why.  What, he inquired of Mr. Hemingway, were you doing?  Hemingway's response?  "I was getting the words right."

The stuff that happens

Almost two years ago, I had an idea for a book.  It wasn't the first time this has happened to me - I've written many books, published six of them.   Each idea presents itself differently.  This one niggled around the back of my brain for many months.  I wanted to write a story that showed what can happen to very talented young people when they are taken on by the wrong mentor.  As a teacher in a college, I've seen this many times.  The results distress me, and I wanted the story of these young people told.  But the idea wouldn't take any more form than that.

What followed was months and months of false starts and attempts at character development, and, finally, a central character began to emerge:  Samuel Joseph.  I didn't know much about him at the time except that his profession had been stand-up comic.  I was thinking, at that point, that this could be a fun book to write.  I read biographies of different performers, past and present, watched documentaries, trying to get a take on what working in that industry was like.  I knew that Sammy (as I began to think of him) not only was a comic but he also sang, so I focused my research on musical comedy acts.

As I worked on Sammy's voice, it became clear to me that he had lived and worked in the sixties, and that there was another great love, other than performing, in his life.  After more character development work, it became clear to me that this great love was flying, especially hang-gliding.  So I began to research hang-gliding, sky-diving, flight school, etc.  At this point, the characters in Sammy's family, and the people he worked with began to take shape, especially the character of a good friend of his, and a fellow performer he worked with closely:  Whip Charles, a gospel singer.
Sammy's life was beginning to take shape, but the story itself still remained vague in my mind.

Then Davy Jones died.  In my teen years, I had been a Monkees fan (though it wasn't 'cool' to be one at the time), but in the intervening years since their cancellation I hadn't really thought about them at all, except for the occasional time I would hear Pleasant Valley Sunday or Daydream Believer  playing in a cafe somewhere.   On the death of this man (who I hadn't even thought of in years) I reacted rather strongly - I cried.  More than I would have thought, as I have never been "that" kind of fan - of anyone or anything.  So I began to wonder about that.  Here was a musical comedy act, and a wonderful talent, who had simply disappeared after the height of their fame.  So I began to research, not only the Monkees, but dozens of other musical comedy acts of the 50s and 60s.   I read biographies and autobiographies - Martin & Lewis, Ozzie & Harriet and Ricky Nelson, Dwayne Hickman, the Smothers Brothers, and more .... and more and more.   As I read, I also was brainstorming, drafting, developing Sammy's voice and his story.  And then, really quite suddenly, the whole story came, and Samuel Joseph began to speak on the page.

What followed were months of high creative energy, the first draft falling onto the page like I was writing my own diary.  The daily life, the childhood events that formed his character, the challenges that happened when a degree of fame came, the fall from grace.   In the end, the story was more about a man whose main passion in life was shunted aside in favor of opportunity than it was about talent with the wrong mentor - though that element is in the story.  But what struck me here was the process -  Samuel was his own character, certainly reflecting elements of all of those I researched, but unique in and of himself, so different from all of them, but sharing parts of all their stories.

This book - now in its ninth draft, has taken more research than anything I've ever written, and has come closer to my heart than most.  Samuel feels like someone I must take care of, so I want to get his story right.  Therefore, I've taken risks with this story, and stretched and changed my own writing process, more than I ever would have dared to, before.  As I've been posting occasional updates on the process of writing this book on Facebook, I've repeatedly gotten comments about how fascinating people find it, along with questions about how elements of the process work.  So, I've decided to explore it here.  

So, the purpose of this blog is to explore process, and to share those explorations.  This first post is mostly for myself - to give myself permission to share my own process - something intensely personal to me - and perhaps to help others have the courage to explore their own.