To Think or Not to Think

Most people don't equate creative writing with thinking. In many minds - or at least this is the way it seems to me - people think of creativity as happening in a flash of light, or as a flow of brilliance. Yes, there are flashes of light and moments of brilliant flow, but creative writing is actually hard thinking. I believe that good thinking equals good writing. Whenever I get frustrated with a writer, inevitably I can trace it back to faulty thinking.

No matter what kind of a writer you are, your story must be internally consistent for the reader to believe in it. You can't create zombies with sensitive stomachs on one page and then have them chowing down on Big Macs and french fries on another. Or, if you're a more realistic writer, your bullies can't suddenly become kind and thoughtful. Would your main character really dance on his best friend's grave? Maybe, but you have to think of reasons why. Think about your setting: a landscape of snow, ice, and frightening predators will create different dilemmas for your characters than a sunny beach-side village. Or your dialogue: a wealthy shoemaker from the middle ages will speak differently than a rich venture capitalist from the twentieth century. They might both have wives who run away, but their responses will be very different. You won't describe them with the same words, either...

There are millions of invisible choices that every writer continually makes as he or she is writing. It's as if we're holding our imaginary worlds up to the light, examining them from every possible angle, thinking out the consequences of each choice, trying to see our creation in as many different ways as possible, so that we can make it as real and believable as we can. Thinking isn't the opposite of creativity - it's essential to it. Once you start thinking deeply, your focus becomes more powerful. That's when moments of flow and flashes of brilliance happen.

The Five Best Things I Learned About Writing, I Learned While Asleep

Growing up, my daily wake-up call was the sound of two big electric typewriters. I could hear their furious clicks, dings, and noisy swings as I emerged from sleep, and knew that my parents were writing in their bedroom on the other side of the house. They had a comforting rhythm and reassured me that all was well. From kindergarten to middle school, I awoke to these sounds, until my parents finally earned enough money so that my father could quit his job and they could both start writing during the day. Then the typewriters pounded behind two locked doors. But to me as a child, writing was boring, obsessive and isolating. My own interests lay in reading. (Strangely, I never connected the two.) I read everything in my path, like a kind of devouring book machine, and never thought about those two noisy typewriters or what they might be saying to me. Years later, when I decided to start writing myself, I realized how much I had learned:

1. If you want to be a writer, WRITE! 

My parents talked about it for many years, but finally they sat down and did it. They wrote every morning, no matter what. It took them years, but they were finally able to achieve their dream of becoming full time writers.

2. Set up a schedule. 

Don't leave your writing to chance; make sure you have a dedicated time every day. My parents started with early morning writing sessions; I started with late evening ones. (There was no way I was getting up at 4:00 a.m.!)

3. You might have to fight for your time.

No, they didn't have to wrest the hours from our slippery little fingers, they probably had to fight their own fatigue and urge to sleep. My father had a full-time job and my mother was engaged in caring for three young children, all under the age of five. But they still managed to carve out the time to write. When you start to write, obstacles always seem to pop up. Don't be afraid to fight for your time!

4. Make writing a habit.

Once writing is a habit, everything becomes much easier. You don't have to think about it, schedule it, fight for it, you just DO it. It becomes part of your nature. I am, therefore I write. I saw my parents turn writing into a habit, and after many years of adhering to a writing schedule, I did, too. After a while, writing was so deeply a part of me, that even if I wanted to stop, I couldn't.

5. Writing is a slow process.

One of the best things I learned from waking up every morning to my parents' typewriters was how long everything takes. It takes a long time to write a book; it takes a long time to publish one. I never expected quick results or easy success. My parents wrote for at least seven years before they were able to make a living at it. It was another five or six years before they published their first young adult novel. 

Finally, let me give thanks to the typewriter gods, wherever they are. If my parents had been using computers, the gentle tapping of a computer keyboard would never have reached me at the other end of the house, and I wouldn't have learned some of the most important lessons of my writing life.

True! Genuine! The Bizarre Workings of a Writer's Brain

click on image for more wierdnessclick on the image for more strangenessIn search of insight about my "creative process" (why does this phrase always make me think of cheese?), I went through my papers and found these scraps. They are papers where I wrote down ideas as they came to mind.

You may take them as evidence of insanity - or at the least a very mixed up mind - and you may not be wrong. However, I'm a fiction writer. Disorganization, angst, confusion, and messiness are sometimes my best friends. In the creative process (ugh, that phrase again), I often jot down ideas as they come to me - and if they come in a wild rush, that's fine. In fact, that's usually the way they show up. All of a sudden my brain is teeming - and then, a few minutes later, it's blank again. Now there's a mystery. Where do ideas come from? And where do they disappear to? Hmmm, maybe that's another blog post. click on image for closer look

Anyway, I kind of like the way these look. They show the inner workings of a writer's brain. Come to think of it, I really don't want to have a "creative process" which surely has to be square, compressed and hard like a brick. I'd much rather have a creative moment - or a succession of creative moments. Moments are loose and free and alive. When I'm writing something, I have a LOT of creative moments. They start with crazy pages like these.

P.S. Two of these pages are brainstorm/doodles from when I was writing Abby Hayes; the other is from Spilling Ink. 

Why Don't I Care about the Mystical Dental Floss of Bagombia?

Many authors today have mastered the art of writing a great opening chapter. More often than not, I'm gasping with delight, envy and awe as I read the first pages of any book. OMG, I think, this person has such an imagination! What an original setting! What inventive details! What intriguing characters! Settling myself into the best chair in the house (which happens to be my husband's), I lean back and prepare for an evening of delicious absorption in a book. But, then, more often than not, half an hour later, I'm tossing the book onto my discard pile. The book failed to hold me. After such a promising beginning, WHAT HAPPENED? With all the dazzling talent and skill of its author, how did it let me wriggle away? 

It's wonderful to write lively sentences, to have an inventive mind, to create snappy dialogue and odd characters, but if the writer isn't telling a story you care about, the reader will shut the book. Writing skills don't equal storytelling skills. Storytelling skills are more essential. They're what keep you turning the pages, waiting to see what happens next, or what will become of a particular character. And it's not just about creating excitement, either. "Wait a minute," I say to myself, stifling a huge yawn as the main character steps into yet another death-defying adventure, "Why I am so bored? Why don't I even care if he or she finds the magical ruby anklet that will save the world from ecological destruction?"

In the books I've read lately, many of the characters never come to life. They are given a few quirks, a pat on the back and off they go! "Why should I care about you?" I think. "You're shallow, you don't have any complexity or depth or individuality. The author clearly hasn't invested much thought in your creation. So what if you're going to save the endangered kingdom of Bagombia with the mystical dental floss that your twice-dead cousin Louie left you...  Who cares?"

Sometimes the author has created a fascinating character, but then doesn't allow that character to live. The author becomes a master puppeteer, and yanks the character's strings so that the story will come out the way the author thinks it should. As the reader, I'm screaming, "This doesn't make sense!" when the confused and angry main character (who I liked quite a bit) suddenly becomes full of saintly forgiveness. The key word here is "suddenly." The author moves the character around like a dummy, without thinking deeply about how the character might feel or act.  

To me, it all amounts to an author not taking his or her imaginary world seriously enough. Big mistake! Never write from "above" your material. Plunge in - even when it's uncomfortable. And it will be. Writing is the most humbling work I know. The mere sight of a blank page reduces thousands of beautiful visions to rubble. I often feel as if I'm crawling on my hands and knees through a dark tunnel when I write. But that's not really the point. Whether writing is hard or easy for you, the most important thing is to take your characters and their story seriously. Invest yourself in the world you create. Try to write from the deepest part of yourself. Because... I really WANT to finish your book.