Photograph by Ellen Von Unwerth
This morning I got back on the pony and started writing the new book. Oh, beginnings, how I hate them. It’s like learning a foreign language every time I start a new project, it’s like arriving overdressed for a party. I’m painfully, horribly shy at the beginning, as if my characters already exist and are disdainful of my intrusion. I’m the three in the threesome, a kitten amongst the wolves. I’m lost, misguided, a nerdy virgin in the boys’ locker room. I am several other awful metaphors. I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing.
I hate this part.
What part do you hate?
Yes! Precisely– I always feel stupid at the start, like I”m not smart enough to tackle this story I have in my head and how dare I even think of trying. It takes cojones. Giant grapefruit sized iron clad ovaries. You got it, girl. Maybe you should put rocks in your pocket as a reminder.
Ha! Oh yeah. A couple of river rocks I can constantly ‘adjust’.
I feel that way whenever I try to write anything, let alone fiction!
Interesting. I start out lost with other kinds of writing too, but it’s a ‘wandering through the forest’ kind of thing, a peaceful exploration. Fiction feels unbearably social to me, which I think is where the anxiety comes from.
I hate thinking that the idea or the line or the scene or the whole fucking finished thing is better than it is because sometimes as we all know it just isn’t.
And I have trouble with endings sometimes, getting the ending right. Endings can be the most difficult part. Just yesterday I got an email from an editor who had a problem with the ending of the story she’s considering because as she perceptively pointed out, it just wasn’t right. She helpfully suggested a better ending which I pounced upon like a junkie on a free fix with a clean needle.
And. What. The. Fuck– Just what in the fuck is going on with my randomly-assigned gravatar or avatar or whatever the fuck those little digital trinkets are called? Have the fucking six-year-olds taken over at WordPress? What in the fuck… how do… lemme see how I can get that insult, that canard, to not be associated with my name, upon which I can cast plenty of aspersions myself, thank you.
Okay. That took too many minutes but I think I got it fixed. I’m at the office, dicking around as usual, but I see I have an acceptable gravatar linked to my office email, from a few years back when I prowled the precincts of Wonkette as slappypaddy, a cat in a cardboard box. Her goes nuttin’.
Shit! Sorry, Tetman, the six-year-old monster thing was a failed experiment on the part of your hostess. I’ve changed it back so the coast is clear. Though I do like the kitten.
(I still see ‘slappydaddy’ when you write ‘slappypaddy’. Awful, the way my mind works.)
I hate that, too, thinking any of my writing is better than it is. I’m sure that’s why I go around pathetically asking almost anyone I’ve met to read things. I keep hoping I’ll discover a secret in what they have to say, something only I can hear that will explain what my problem is once and for all so this aggravating thought can just go away. But I know it won’t. Ever.
That’s also why I want all writers with natural talent to get better quick, so they help me figure out what’s wrong with mine. I fight selfishness all the time.
Sparks, Matthew Salesses is guest blogger on Necessary Fiction this month and is running a series on revision. The site’s main page is at http://necessaryfiction.com/, then there’s a blog tab. I’m finding the revision information interesting and useful.
Thanks!
I see it as “slapdaddy.”
Tetman as the kitty in the box makes this gloomy, low-slung morning a littler cheerier.
Oy, I have that feeling all the way through most WIPs–like now, I’m hitting a wall with my new MS–about 3/4 of the way through and I thought it was smooth sailing–big mistake, of course–I keep forgetting that terrifying feeling of losing my place/where am I again? happens at any time for me in a WIP. It’s scary, but it usually passes–and then we’re back on track. I like that part better, of course.
I love Stephen King’s description of being lost near the end of The Stand: “I’m losing my book! Ah shit, five hundred pages and I’m losing my book! Condition red! CONDITION RED!”
It will be okay. Breathe.
XO
I hate the last few chapters. I’m swamped in them right now and being flogged to death with all the loose endings . . . And I’m really, really afraid I’ve done a Deus Ex . . .
Rats. Well, better to realize it how than when you’ve shown the work around as I did, with your Deus Ex hanging out there for all the world to see. Can the characters fight it out some other way, or does it all begin to unravel when you change that part?
I’m trying to turn the Deus Ex into a reasonable, documented, backed-up event.
I could just ditch the HEA . . . but I won’t.
Never say I’m not stubborn.
Keep after it, Sarah. You’ll work it out, I know you will.
HEA?
Happily Ever After.
Which, in my stuff usually means, “happier” ever after, for a given value of happy. But still.
Flogged to death. It is like that, isn’t it. Hang in there Sarah!
I’m a-hanging. I’m just a bit tired . . . Why is this one book making itself so difficult? I’ve quit easier WIPS than this.
There’s something in this work that won’t let you quit. I think that’s a very good sign, though a complete pain in the ass while you’re working through it.
Thanks, Averil. I hope so.
I dislike the end. The start flows out, I occasionally get caught in the middle but can push through, but the end is what snags me every time. I always worry it sounds trite and forced.
I’m not sure why I feel so envious of your early flow. I suppose I’ll be jealous of you now, until I reach the end and find I’ve fucked it all up and realize I’ve actually got no safe zone in writing the story.
I’m so jealous. Maybe you could get it started, I could mess around with the middle, and Averil could finish? Team novelists.
Yes! Splendid idea.
Right ON.
I love the beginning. Love, love, love it.
Hate the middle. Hate, hate, hate it.
Adore the ending when I feel like a tire rolling down a hill, gathering speed, whoosh!
I love the end as well. It’s like drawing a circle with a compass and watching the lines come together on the page. Very satisfying.
I LOVE the beginning. The ending is exciting but also scary as I feel I have to deliver. The middle though. I HATE the middle.
You do have to deliver, but by the time you reach the end it’s fairly clear whether you will or won’t. I mean, the story has either risen or not. If it’s reached a certain height, I always feel there’s a way to descend. It’s when the story is flat in the middle that the ending is difficult.
I may start ending them in the middle. I tell the book it’ll be 100k words, then at 50k, BAM, ending.
I hate starting. I LOVE being in the muddle of the middle. I’m always both elated and sad, in the end, when it’s time to stop this and start something else.
I’m glad you’re back on that pony, my dear Averil. He’s been waiting for you.
Waiting for me with his ears back and teeth bared. I’m coming at him with a bucket of apples this time. Nice pony.
I like the muddle, too, except when it’s all going sideways. Well, when is it not? Maybe I hate the middle too!
It is always going sideways. Maybe it’s that slip-n-slide feel that makes me love it.
I love beginnings. I think I understand something about them that I haven’t completely dissected yet. But they thrill me, like first dates with people who hide their warts well.
The endings I’ve come up with sound good in my head, but I rarely get to them because it’s the middles that vex me. I think middles are about integrating old information with the new and making it work for the story’s purpose and the reader, but making the reading interesting while I try to do that feels like, well, feels like those waves of labor pains we talk about when we liken writing to giving birth.
If I weren’t so busy trying to figure out the ‘chicken or the egg’ question for my whole life, I might be able to work on that last idea I had for a novel a couple months ago. (I can’t seem to add to it in small pieces as I hoped I could.) I used some embellished chunks of my past for first chapter fodder, and I’m pretty sure I could get through the middle of it by throwing in more real life when I can’t make up something better. And so far, I know how it ends.
If I ever finish my pressing project, I guess I’ll see if I can get past the middle of a novel.
The middle’s not so bad if you have a predetermined reversal; it’s like a mini-ending, which makes it automatically more exciting than a middle that plows along without a marker. I always try to write toward then away from the reversal. It helps me, mentally, to get through the work.
i have patches where i hate it all.
patches where i love every word. i do like the first idea. i like cutting a whole chapter and realizing it makes a world of difference for the better.
right now, what i hate the most is not knowing whether i’m revising or in need of a total rewrite–a new/different story using what i started with as a backdrop. i don’t know where i am and that’s the part i hate the most.
You’re in no-man’s land, in need of a compass. I went through that with this last WIP, and it was a miserable time. I thought I should scrap the fucker and start something else. What helped me (and I keep giving this advice, though who the hell do I think I am?) is to set the WIP to the side and start extracting scenes to build something new. I can’t tell you what a difference this made. Cutting scenes is different, also good, but rebuilding a new piece out of the train-wreck first draft was what saved my project. I’ll be using that technique over and over.
I always feel so rude in the beginning, yanking these strangers out of their comfy beds and making them do things. “Err, I don’t really KNOW you, but … um … go on this quest.” Eventually, everyone starts to get into it, and we’re all the best of orgy pals. But it’s a dry start.
Yes! Exactly, it does seem rude. (Note to self and Ms. Marshmallow: These are fictional characters.)
Because I’m such an ADD hedonist, I love starting shit. It’s the second act doldrums that get me …
Averil, given the huge upheaval relocation everything new piece of your puzzle, I’m guessing that your new project will be full of surprises and amazement. Can’t wait to fly-on-the-wall you as you report on its progress.
I hope it will be. I’m pretty jazzed about the new idea, and I do feel a lot more fresh and full of energy for being here in Portland. What a gorgeous summer we’re having!
(I’m going to check out Vintage Pink tomorrow. I’ll report back on any treasures I discover.)
It’s the pause. It’s that time between thinking I have an idea of what to write and subjecting myself to the self-doubt, the why bother? The pause. I should grab the tail of the idea’s momentum and go.
The pause is a killer. Once you get used to an idea, the impetus dies. And like you, I can talk myself out of anything if I ruminate long enough.
Grab the tail next time, Lisa, let it pull you along. Like waterskiing. Up you go.
I hate the rejections the most. And I actually enjoy the beginnings–so full of ideas and new life and hope. The good news is, you have a great new partner in an agent to help you through this shit. Send him the first few chapters, and he’ll help you mold it into gold. Not that you need much help, my friend.