rewrite

Writing conundrum: Leaving behind that outline without creating problems

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So, I’m back to cranking out chapters of my serial this week, and this time, I hope to do it a little faster. The quicker I finish the serial, the easier it will be for me to focus on other projects, I think. Anyway, something is happening as I write that I think is worth mentioning, because I sincerely doubt that I’m the only writer to experience it.

In the beginning, there was an outline…

serial title imageIn order to secure my gig to write my current serial for Binah BeTween (“Glixman in a Fix”), I had to prepare an outline. Once that was approved (along with character profiles, the summary, and so on), I started writing. Generally, I write the serial episodes — I might have mentioned this before — in blocks of three, basing them on the outline. Because I’m working from an outline, with characters who are now well known to me, the writing goes relatively quickly. Then I revise the rough drafts once or twice and send them together in a batch to the editor.

Recalibrating

We’re now more than a third of the way in, and more and more often, I find that I’m diverging from the outline. Continue reading →

Play-by-play: The Weird Things that Happen When You Write Under Time Pressure

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clock

Tick-tock…Quick, that deadline’s approaching!

Foolish me.

So, as I mentioned last week, I committed to produce a story just three days after Passover was over. I did prewrite before the holiday, and even had started a first draft in longhand (I often do). It was this surprisingly dark piece, written in second-person. A concerned family member was talking to “you,” and “you” (it becomes clear) are suffering from a clinical depression.

When I picked these materials back up after Passover had wrapped up,  the first thing I thought was: ugh.

  1. The tone was too dark, especially for this particular venue (Ironically, the theme I was given was “Put some spring in your step!” Right.).
  2. The second-person thing effectively pulled you in–making the dark subject matter even more depressing.

I felt like hyperventilating. Was I back to square one? With only three days to go?

AHHH!

Continue reading →

Some clear ideas from the author of Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell

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Wednesday’s L.A. Times online contains an intriguing interview with David Mitchell, the author of the novel Cloud Atlas, which has recently received renewed attention due to its film adaptation. Mr. Mitchell’s comments are worth reading, as they illuminate some of the points I’ve been blogging about recently.
On the topic of inspiration (see my original post here), Mitchell says:

I think Mr. Mitchell just blew some of those clouds away. It looks like smooth sailing ahead!

When I go to a place I get a number of free gifts. I get some good lines about the environment. If I was here for long enough, and could have a little time to walk around more thoughtfully, I’ll get five decent sentences. Or halfway decent sentences, or sentences I can make worthwhile. About the place; they’re textual photographs. I’m just in the habit of taking them. Maybe because it was a long time before I had a camera.

Do you jot them down?

Yeah. It gives you something to do in restaurants and not look like a sad sack. And also makes the staff nervous that you’re a reviewer, so they’re nice. You should try it, it works! If you get these free gifts, use them in the text, use them in the prose, use them in descriptions. Put them in and they’re lovely little things to find on the forest footpath of the story, of the book. 

What’s interesting about the process that David Mitchell so clearly describes is that its both what I’ve previously called “the flash” of inspiration AND “foraging” for it. Continue reading →