Monday is a holiday for the Charter school. Thank heavens! I haven't had a whole lot of time to write these last couple of weeks. Charlie's in the middle of wrestling season, and Wesley's been sick with an ear infection. I did take a day off last week to write, and it felt really good. In fact, I had two major epiphanies concerning Lizzy and Renn and the secret; that was a major "Wow!" moment, and I always like having those.
This Monday, I plan to hide away in the shed and reconnect with my characters. I finally figured out a way around the troublesome baseball scene in the sequel, so I'll probably spend the first couple of hours revising that chapter. Flashbacks can be extremely useful. I've been writing in flashback format for a while now, thanks to Lizzy, whose story is told mostly in flashback. And now Wil will be having his own flashback. Overkill? Perhaps, but Lizzy and Wil belong to two different worlds (stories), and it really is the only way to fix that scene. The sport is important to both Wil and Scott, but I learned from The Secret Keeper that it's probably not necessary to give a play-by-play re-enactment. Besides, there are about a dozen things that occur during the game that are much more important than what pitch Wil is throwing.
There - a moment of growth as a writer.
I'm really looking forward to resolving that scene; afterwards, who knows? I might finish the crucial scene with Lizzy, or I might try to fill in some of the gaps for Wil and Cassia (I left a lot out of the second draft trying to limit myself to a certain number of pages). I did set a goal for myself to have the sequel to the publisher's this year, so it might be time for me to crack down on the revisions. Who knows? What I do know is that I'll have all day Monday to play and meddle in my characters' lives. What fun!
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
The Trust Factor
As a writer in a writer's group, one of the hardest things to do is to trust that one's fellow writers know what they're doing. Each story follows a path; sometimes that path is short, and othertimes, that path is long. Writers like me, for example, take the long path. Everything has to be spelled out; the story has to be told in its entirety (every detail, every emotion) before it can be edited. I'm always wordy in my writing. It's how I figure out the crux of the story, and sometimes that makes for long reading sessions for my peers.
Case in point - Lizzy has to grieve. Granted, it's been - timewise - four months, and on paper, about 60 pages. One of my fellow writers asked me the other day if it wasn't time to make Lizzy happy and move on.
No, not quite.
The main reason being that, for me, Lizzy's grief, her struggle to find and hold onto a family, is the crux of the story. I know it's hard for certain members of my group to trust me with where the story is going. This one fellow writer - and I love her dearly - keeps writing for me, for all of us in the group. It doesn't bother me that she does this; it's how she works through her critique, and like me, she loves the process of writing. Besides, she usually has a golden nugget hidden in her rewriting of my story and her re-handling of my characters. I probably do the same thing with her story and her characters; I think it's ingrained into the writer's psyche to do that with any manuscript he/she picks up: How would/could I have done this differently?
Which is where the trust factor comes in. I know it can be tedious reading some of my drafts; after all, I do spell it all out initially and then have to work like hell at editing (because I really, really, really hate to cut stuff). However, that's how I hit the stories - detailed. Others are able to write much more succinctly and make it work somehow. And as much as I want to take some of the characters - like JR, who belongs to my aforementioned friend - and move them far, far away from some of the less likable situations and characters - like Sr. R (again, belonging to my friend) - I know I have to trust the writer to tell the story he/she feels compelled to tell. In the group, my job as reader is to help the writer achieve the best possible telling of that story. As the writer, my job is to be open to the suggestions afforded by my group. Both tasks require trust, and that can be a scary thing.
But nobody will ever love my characters the way I do, and I will never love their characters the way they do. It's just the nature of the beast. I just have to trust that they will find their way (hopefully, with my help) to telling as interesting a story as possible, and I have to trust that they will help me reach my goal - even if that means that we all have to suffer through the "Will Lizzy ever be happy again?" phase of writing.
Case in point - Lizzy has to grieve. Granted, it's been - timewise - four months, and on paper, about 60 pages. One of my fellow writers asked me the other day if it wasn't time to make Lizzy happy and move on.
No, not quite.
The main reason being that, for me, Lizzy's grief, her struggle to find and hold onto a family, is the crux of the story. I know it's hard for certain members of my group to trust me with where the story is going. This one fellow writer - and I love her dearly - keeps writing for me, for all of us in the group. It doesn't bother me that she does this; it's how she works through her critique, and like me, she loves the process of writing. Besides, she usually has a golden nugget hidden in her rewriting of my story and her re-handling of my characters. I probably do the same thing with her story and her characters; I think it's ingrained into the writer's psyche to do that with any manuscript he/she picks up: How would/could I have done this differently?
Which is where the trust factor comes in. I know it can be tedious reading some of my drafts; after all, I do spell it all out initially and then have to work like hell at editing (because I really, really, really hate to cut stuff). However, that's how I hit the stories - detailed. Others are able to write much more succinctly and make it work somehow. And as much as I want to take some of the characters - like JR, who belongs to my aforementioned friend - and move them far, far away from some of the less likable situations and characters - like Sr. R (again, belonging to my friend) - I know I have to trust the writer to tell the story he/she feels compelled to tell. In the group, my job as reader is to help the writer achieve the best possible telling of that story. As the writer, my job is to be open to the suggestions afforded by my group. Both tasks require trust, and that can be a scary thing.
But nobody will ever love my characters the way I do, and I will never love their characters the way they do. It's just the nature of the beast. I just have to trust that they will find their way (hopefully, with my help) to telling as interesting a story as possible, and I have to trust that they will help me reach my goal - even if that means that we all have to suffer through the "Will Lizzy ever be happy again?" phase of writing.
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