Today I sent off my proposal for book two. I’ve spent a long time working out the plot lines, but still it seems that something is missing. My agent is not quite satisfied and I know he has a point, but I’m not sure what to do about it. We’re hoping my editor can put her finger on the weak spots and help me improve them.
I must say that I find it incredibly difficult to work out the subtleties ahead of time. I’m usually four revisions in before I figure out what the hell I’m writing about, or am able to articulate why certain things matter and others don’t. I’m just messy that way, a messy thinker. I’ve got notebooks and scraps of paper, pages on my laptop and all over my desk, my abandoned index cards and a composition book half-full of sloppy work I suspect I wrote when drunk.
I’m in full avoidance mode at this point, flailing around, which August says is something he does when he’s not confident about the story. Definitely, I’m not confident about the story. I’m never confident about the story, or about much of anything else for that matter. Confidence is one of those fleeting emotions, like joy or bone-deep fear, that sweeps over me in an shivery rush, then subsides as if it had never been. It’s untrustworthy and tends to lead me in the wrong direction, like that time I thought I’d sell insurance for a living, because I aced the tests and had a new wardrobe of pinstriped slacks and shiny belts, and earrings made from silvered leaves—only to realize I’d have to ride shotgun to some cowboy Mormon dude who grinned and leered and wondered aloud if it would be possible for us to get a room. Gust of confidence, blown away.
I’ve learned to write without confidence, with something I can only call belief. There is a story here. Whether I can tell it, I don’t know, but I believe I see a story and that’s all there is for now.
Are you confident about your work?
Photograph by Mary Ellen Mark
No.
You should be.
I’m like you. When I am feeling big and full of myself is when I fall flat on my face. By now, I’ve been trained to know that when I feel good about something, I should start to worry.
Oh– and I have complete and utter faith that you will figure this out. It just takes time. Don’t worry! Ideas are like stews, they get better with time. (I don’t know why all these people have to be involved yet. Sounds completely inhibiting, to me.)
Time, bah. I have no patience. I want everything now or sooner.
(This book is under contract, you see, so things work a bit differently and according to a schedule. My editor could not be nicer and she’s not at all intimidating, it’s just me.)
I always had a helluva time planning it out ahead. Hate doing it that way. I don’t mind once I have a first draft, but earlier than that? Awful. I commiserate.
If I’d been smart, I would have blitzed out a first draft before even attempting an outline. But it didn’t work out that way.
I’m not confident about my writing, but if you want me to make a gazillion copies for you, I’m your gal.
I once did the office version of Lucy in the chocolate factory, and walked away from a copier that was set to make a gazillion copies when I only needed one. And then I panicked because I couldn’t MAKE IT STOP. Papers were everywhere!
Um, no. Especially not before it’s written, and frankly not even now, all these many drafts in.
I will say that being forced to map out the “plot” of my memoir while writing the first draft helped. I fought it all the way. Fucking hated every second of it, as it seemed I was pretending to know what the plot was, that I was making it up as I went along. But … in the end, having that map helped. This is all to say, can you just put some ideas out there and map it out, even if that ends up not really being the end product?
Yes, I mean they do understand that a book takes shape in stages and no one is pressuring me, but sharing an outline feels a bit like getting undressed at the doctor’s office and awaiting a diagnosis. August was the only person who knew what I was up to with the last book, and as we know I have no dignity where he’s concerned so it wasn’t too bad. This time it feels more structured—I am so NOT structured.
You’re right, though. It’s going to be good for me in the long run.
Yeah, but “good of me in the long run” always, always sounds horrible. Like …. eat dry lettuce everyday and you’ll lose weight, in the long run; or, train for a marathon and you’ll get more fit, in the long run.
Typing this I can see there’s a reason why it’s called “the long run.” Yuck.
How did you know I’m on a dry lettuce kick?
“Are you confident about your work?”
Generally, yes. Sometimes too much. I’ve written some real elevator-farts in my day, only to later sniff them and think, “Who let loose that stinker? I did? Oh, God….”
But, I gotta hand it to me, when I’m good, I’m pretty good. Sweet as lilacs, strong as Mace.
Yes you are good, you really really are.
XO
I’m confident until the time comes to send it away . . .
Be strong, chickadee. You can do this.
Hell no. I’m not confident in the before, during, but especially not the after. Correction, I’m okay during (I’m in a passionate frenzy and the story is alive), but right before and after I feel like I’m the stupidest person ever. I always think, “What was I thinking?” and the answer always is, “You weren’t.”
Maybe we shouldn’t re-read our stuff. That’s the answer to all our angst, I’m certain of it.
Oh the four drafts thing is awfully familiar. I’m on draft no. 4 of this second book. I’m only now getting my teeth into it. Thanks to an outline. Outlines are the worst part. I absolutely hate them. But I too am a messy thinker, and with this shabby scaffolding I feel I can climb the cathedral, you know? I’ve no fear of falling, having fallen so many times before.
I’m waving at you from ground level. Ring the bell for me, will you?
Usually as I write it (which is usually at night) I feel confident and even excited. But when I wake up in the morning and recall what I wrote or reread it, I’m wincing. Never sounds as good the next day.
Oh, I hear you. Usually I get that feeling after a blog post, and by then it’s too late.
same here. i think my blog posts and comments are where a true, scarcely edited version of my several personae spring forth or ooze into view. i often do not care for the me thus displayed.
Unlike you, I’m pretty confident about my work, but like you, I have very little idea what my story is about until I’m well into it. With my series, book 1 I really sort of flopped around. Books 2, 3, and 4 were clearer–I’d done so much of the work in the first book–but even still, things happened and evolved that I didn’t anticipate. I did my first bit of outlining with those books, and it’s interesting looking back at them. “Oh yeah, that wouldn’t work by the time I got there. Had to do that other thing. Oh yeah, that too. Whatever.”
Right now, I’m again writing something that I have no idea about whatsoever. I’m just writing it. People have asked me, “So what is it about?” I shrug and say, “Dunno.” If they really press, all I can give them is, “There’s these two women and they… well, I don’t know.”
Actually, I’m fairly certain that what I’m writing now will never be published. So here’s a question for you: Is it worth it? Would you bother to work on something that could never see the light of day?
That’s a good question. It depends really on what you want to do with your writing. If you’re in it for your own personal enjoyment or fulfillment, then write whatever you want. But if you want to get published—and I do, obviously—then you have to make some choices about what to spend time working on. It pisses writers off, I know, because we’d all like to pursue our personal interests and have other people also be interested. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. You have to consider the audience if you want to have one, it can’t just be for you.
I’m trying to find a way to explore the topics that move me, but put them into what I hope is the kind of story other people will enjoy and relate to. That’s the biggest part of the challenge, frankly.
Why do you think your WIP won’t sell?
It’s not that it wouldn’t sell. The issue is that people close to me would be hurt by it. Yes, it’s one of those only vaguely fictionalized stories. But it’s helping me to write it. I think.
Pretty confident. Sometimes overconfident. But not nearly as much as I used to be. That’s what writers groups and rejection will do to you. I guess that’s a good thing in the long run.
God yes. I was giddy with myself during my first attempts at writing. It was all so wondrous, creating characters and whole worlds out of my own head. Later, of course, I came up against the reality that what felt so satisfying was not translating to the reader as planned. Cue the sad clown horn.
“Confidence is one of those fleeting emotions, like joy or bone-deep fear, that sweeps over me in an shivery rush, then subsides as if it had never been.” This.
I guess what I feel more than anything when I’m flogging through a first draft is faith, and it’s pretty blind. Like, the story in its perfect form already exists, and I need to find it. A scavenger hunt. A dumpster dive. A whole bunch of metaphors involving trudging through waist-deep stink (like that screwy reporter standing in Sandy-generated seawater).
Speaking of seawater, anyone else worried about Betsy? They are in a helluva mess over there.
I hope she’s ok…
I’m sure she’s fine. She’s in her penthouse suite, eating bon-bons by candlelight and writing stormy poems.
You’re right. But I miss her when she doesn’t post. What the hell are we gonna do when she hangs it up for good?
i’m not even at the confidence station yet (i’m picturing me standing in front of a giant departure and arrival board) …still waiting around for the action bus to arrive.
in lieu (that’s the second time i’ve used that phrase today, something must be wrong with me) of writing something original and my own, i’m going to copy and paste a quick bit from Stephen Elliot’s daily rumpus email yesterday:
“When I write I write towards things. Yesterday I had coffee with a friend who spoke of the importance of knowing what a narrative was about. I said, That isn’t how most novelists work. He said that most novelists weren’t very good with plot. I countered that most novelists who wrote from outlines didn’t write very good books. Books that were very well plotted were often lacking something else. The outline comes with a sacrifice. There are exceptions, for people like James Elroy. And there are writers who don’t use outlines who are very good with plot, like Stephen King.
But I think it’s better just to do the work and figure it out later. It’s inefficient, but it’s how you get at the good stuff. Unless I’m totally wrong.”
Gordon Lish, who was a superb writing teacher, didn’t much care for plot. He taught a method of novel-writing that was more organic. As for plot, he said, You wouldn’t make a cage in the shape of an adult, imprison a child in it, and demand that the child grow up to fit the cage.
That last sentence cracks me up. No one knows a thing about writing! Plot or don’t plot, write by the seat of your pants or plan the whole thing out, it either gets written or it doesn’t. Whatever gets the fucker finished is a successful modus operandi as far as I’m concerned.
“Whatever gets the fucker finished is a successful modus operandi as far as I’m concerned.”
May I quote you on that?
Absolutely. I’m nothing if not profound.
Me too! Finish the fucker! Finish it! (I’m screaming this at myself….)