Tolerating Uncertainty (and Inefficiency)
By Sarah Callender | January 14, 2015 |
photo by Flickr’s Claire L. Evans
I love having a plan, a detailed goal that I can accomplish based on my own timeline. When I was seven, for example, I made a list of things I wanted to purchase. 1. Olivia Newton John record 2. Red clogs 3. Beaded moccasins 4. Mrs. Grossman stickers.
I included the cost of each item, as well as when, based on chores and allowance and collecting out-of-town neighbors’ mail, I’d have saved the money. I got that Olivia Newton John record. The moccasins and stickers too. My parents gave me shiny red clogs for Christmas.
I kept up this planning into my adult years. After college, when my best friends started moving away to pursue promotions or grad school or men, I found myself happily teaching high school English. But I was lonely. Right around that time, my boyfriend, Fritz, dumped me (over the phone). Then we got back together. Then he dumped me again (over the phone). Without my besties or even a douche-canoe like Fritz, I needed a plan to combat my loneliness. So I made another list: People I’d Like to Spend More Time With. And then I set about the task of getting unlonely.
Along with plans and goals, I love efficiency. The day I found a chocolate chip cookie recipe where I wasn’t required to put the dry ingredients in one bowl and the wet ones in another, only to combine them? Halleluyah! Efficiency and one less bowl to wash!
I am equally efficient when I fold laundry or grocery shop or walk my kids to school. Some of this appreciation for efficiency is based on my DNA, some on my upbringing. Growing up in California where drought was common, I learned to take two-minute showers. These days, as it costs about $8 million to fill our old oil furnace, I wear a jacket to avoid turning up the heat. Why waste heat when I’m the only one home? If my husband leaves his breakfast plate on the counter, I brush off the toast crumbs and have my son use that same plate. My signature? Not Sarah Reed Callender, but SCall. I like to do things quickly, and I don’t like waste.
It’s unfortunate, then, that I am a writer. Even writers who are Plotters can never be truly efficient. Except for Stephen King. While I am not a huge fan of scary novels, I loved everything about King’s craft book, On Writing. Except for the part where he says he writes one book each season. That seemed a little braggy. With my WIP, I am roughly 26 months in, and I have roughly 10,810 words. That’s 34 pages. In 26 months. If you do the math, I will punch you in the throat.
My kids and part-time jobs decrease my writing time, but even if I wrote fiction full-time, I don’t think I’d be a threat to Mr. One-Season. I have to accept that my love of efficiency is not transferable to my writing, that I require a significant Muddling and Experimenting phase that includes staring out the window, generating charts and lists and plot arcs, color-coding and highlighting moments of tension and climax, only to realize I have been holding the metaphorical map upside down. I am lost. My story is nowhere to be found.
Square one-ing, I sigh and turn the map, hoping the improved POV will help me, first, find my story, and second, get my story from A to Z. Or A to B.
Muddling and Experimenting is a period of getting excited about brilliant ideas, only to realize the ideas are poop. It’s a period of yelling at my muses: “SPEAK ENGLISH PLEASE!” Because they are clearly not. Sometimes they are not speaking at all. Sometimes they are drunk or playing Minecraft or fly fishing in Montana.
Don’t even get me started about the thousands of pages I write, then realize they do nothing to further plot or heighten tension. Being a waste-hater, I tenderly swaddle these precious scene-babies in a file I call WIP-junkyard.doc, certain I will find a way to repurpose them in another story. Ha! Do you reuse your appendix after an appendectomy? No. Not even as a doorstop or a pin cushion. After filling (and never returning to) many WIP-junkward.doc docs, I have come to accept the same is true for these vestigial words. Maybe that’s OK. Maybe unused words are a necessary part of the process. Maybe experimentation is not a waste.
Regarding experimentation: I recently came across an article about scientists taking creative writing classes, and I thought of Heather, my friend who has an MD/PhD and her own research lab. Heather is devoted to the discovery of novel genomic disorders-conditions caused by small deletions or duplications of DNA, and she has been involved in the discovery and characterization of several new genomic disorders, including deletions of chromosomes 1q21, 15q13 and 17q12.
I don’t understand anything in that previous sentence.
BUT! Heather doesn’t write fiction. Heather may find cures to epilepsy, but we writers are the brilliantly creative ones. We are the artists. Scientists focus on one itsy-bitsy gene. We focus on the genetic make-up of an entire story. Take that!
This professor, however, was impressed with his science-students’ creative writing:
During the year of reading and writing and observing, students learn to tolerate uncertainty in process and outcome, embrace risk (creative, intellectual and performance) and practice humility – since writing is an exercise in failing better each time. Their writing is imaginative in theme and topic. They do not fall fatally in love with their work and will abandon experimental dead ends. Their killer work ethic sustains them through the endless revision that is essential to good writing.
OK. Right. Heather likely wouldn’t have discovered the deletions of chromosomes 1q21 (huh?) if she couldn’t tolerate uncertainty. It is risky to work on something uncertain. It can feel inefficient. But I bet even King Stephen of Efficiencyshire tolerates uncertainty in process and outcome. I bet he sees “practice” instead of “waste.” And he keeps writing stories, one each season.
While it may take several seasons to find my way to the story, and several more to find my way through the story, it seems to be a necessary phase in my process, a process that stems, perhaps, from a literary disorder due to the chromosomal deletion of 17q12. Oh well. I bet Mr. King also has a semi-quirky genetic situation, deletions or duplications that float around in his Carrie/Shining/Cujo/It/Misery-creating DNA.
Now will you share some details of your personal process? What do you call your various phases of story-making? How have you learned to tolerate uncertainty or found ways to increase your efficiency? Do you think “Fritz” is a pseudonym?
A Middle Grade novelist (and Middle School English teacher), Sarah Callender lives in Seattle with her family. Because Sarah dislikes cleaning anything that will just get messy again, she tidies the house and weeds the yard only when absolutely necessary. This allows her time to focus on her true–and somewhat fraught–passions: writing, Abe Lincoln, and Tony’s Chocolonely chocolate bars. Equally passionate about mental health advocacy, Sarah is a member of The Stability Network. Sarah’s first novel, LUCY IN BETWEEN, will be published by Margaret Ferguson Books/Holiday House in 2026.
Sarah – thank you so much for making me laugh this morning. I also have a WIP, my “embryonic novel” I call it, that is maybe up to 10,000 words after many, many months. And I suspect 9,000 of those words are not usable. The muses speaking drunkenly, I suppose.
I get a lot of messages on how efficient we’re supposed to be, how many words we’re supposed to churn out, how much we’re supposed to be publishing, but I’m not terribly efficient on that front. It’s nice to know that muddling can be part of the creative process.
Sigh. I also love efficiency — not to mention speed and getting straight to the point. The result? I ultimately stopped writing fiction (*for the foreseeable future*) and have been full-speed ahead publicizing other people’s books instead. It’s fast-paced with little waste, and I’ve felt much more centered, for the most part, being in that zone. Here’s a post I wrote about that for the blog Dead Darlings: https://deaddarlings.com/fiction-writing-dead-darling/
I do hope that maybe one day when I come back to a time in my life where my daily schedule and mind stop racing so much, when I feel more peaceful about spending time not ‘getting stuff done’ that I’ll be able to write fiction again. But for now, I’m just going with it!
OMG, Susan, you said it, muddling is part of the creative process. Sarah, your “uncertainty” is so true. My creative process changes with every piece of writing I do: each of my novels evolve differently and each short story I write has a new path. I’m still discovering and rediscovering my changing process. Maybe this uncertainty of how to get the story out, this muddling, has its merit? Pushing us to trust and go at it anyway?
Joyce Carol Oates says to have faith: “The first sentence can’t be written until the last sentence has been written. Only then do you know where you’ve been going, and where you’ve been.” [She’s big on surrendering to the subconscious.]
Yes, Paula (and Susan and Sharon)! I agree that muddling is part of the process. I wonder if it’s akin to getting to know someone. You can’t develop deep connection until you’ve spent considerable time with him or her.
For me, once I spend a year or two muddling, then I can know these make believe people well enough to write their story. There’s just so much time at the front! Arg!
Thanks, writer friends, for your thoughts and empathy. I think empathy is the single best gift we can share with one another.
Happy muddling!
Thank you, Sarah. I loved every single word of this (and could relate to every word, as well)! I needed to hear this today, to settle down and trust this process.
Muddling and Experimenting, realize the great idea is poop–thank you, Sarah. You’ve summed up my writing process. And yes, my preference, also, is to be efficient.
Although, I have to say, I’ve always been a daydreamer. So how does daydreaming and efficiency fit together? Those DNA chromosomes can get pretty quirky when mired inside the human framework.
Hi Lisa,
I think daydreaming is the collecting of possibilities. And there are SO many possibilities our minds can generate.
I really have written the “first” thirty pages so many times, probably because that’s the best way for me to get to know these characters. I am grateful for my patient agent who is willing to keep reading iterations of the First 30.
I am also SO surprised by how much the story changes and evolves. The idea I started with is a far cry from the current story. Same protag, but he’s both much more complex in important ways and much less complex in ways that don’t matter at all. It’s kind of exciting to see the evolution.
In other words, keep daydreaming. I think it’s like a lazy, do-anywhere form of experimenting. :)
Sarah, I loved reading this today. You didn’t marry Fritz? When I was a research scientist my sister used to ask me how in the world I could stand so much failure. I remember telling her how much I learned from those failed experiments, far more than when my hypothesis was correct and everything was as expected. Of course, I’d be elated when my first instincts were spot on. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen often in the lab nor on the page … and when it does, I thank God! I traded in my labcoat and pipettes for marriage and babies and hurried scribblings and find that my writing process is similar to the discoveries I made in the lab. Lots of flashes of inspiration followed by hacking my way through a thicket. Not always enjoyable, painful even at times, but always interesting. Sometimes I travel the same path and it gets easier to enjoy the fruits along the way. Certainly not very efficient. But I do love getting to the other side and into the light. I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t love it.
Oh, thank you for your comment. I love the idea of failure tolerance . . . and really, it’s hard to know even how to define “failure” in science and in fiction writing.
Failure-tolerant muscles are as important as rejection-tolerant muscles.
And no, I did NOT marry Fritz. He’d probably have divorced me (and rekindled) fifty times by now. And it’s a good thing. One of those painful blessings in disguise.
He did, however, name one of his daughters, “Sarah.” I think that shows he still loves me. ;)
Sarah–
Delightful post. Thank you for championing writers who muddle and experiment. I am one such, another lucky or unlucky person (your choice) who’s plagued with the S-for-scribble chromosome. Will your friend, occupied in the rarified atmosphere of genetic research, find a cure? If she does, will you want it? Surely not. What, after all, will you or I or all the other scribblers do with ourselves, once all the duties and obligations have been met–plop down in front of Duck Dynasty?
Like you and all other writers, I’m anal about what I write. Okay okay, maybe in this project it’s not so good having my protagonist strapped to a torpedo headed for Yamamoto’s flagship. But the idea’s definitely a keeper, so stash it somewhere handy.
Unlike you, though, I don’t write thousands of pages worth of experimentation. Maybe I should. That way, what I have written might not be so hard to change. This means that in my “case,” dithering over sentences is added to muddling.
Just one other thing: I don’t read him, think about him, or tune in to information related to Stephen King. I know this is heresy, because Stephen King is a fine, laughably prolific and successful writer. But I see him as a phenomenon, a prodigy talent mini-reactor whose scribbler DNA is not transferable. Instead, I stick with those whose brain waves bear some resemblance to my own.
Thanks again for this post. It’s definitely a keeper.
Thanks, Barry, for your wit and wisdom. And authenticity. I also love your suspicion that King is not like you or I or anyone else; therefore comparison is needless. There is great comfort in that!
Sarah,
I love your post. You wrote that very well, LOL funny in places. Have you considered that maybe you should be writing more non-fiction, reflections-on-life kinds of thing? This post appears to flow smoothly for you. If you are toiling over the same piece of fiction you wrote last time, but these kinds of things flow, ask yourself just what kind of writing should be yours.
Sarah–
I strongly agree with Lynn Bechdolt: you have a real flair for humor and for personal anecdote. Those two qualities–especially in the same writer–are in short supply. I hope you’ll find time to write more such pieces. For about two years, I wrote a weekly column for a Florida newspaper. A lot of lifestyle, and at-home pieces were published, very few of them with as much style as you have going for you in today’s post.
Thank you, Lynn and Barry, for your kind words. I love this kind of writing, but I also love what fiction does to me: takes me out of my head and helps me understand more about crazy (albeit fictional) people who share this crazy planet with crazy moi.
Writing fiction gives me a break from myself, I guess . . . or does it?
:)
I, too love efficiency, but I love goals and their attainment more. Writing fiction–I used to think there was a “perfect” way to tell a story–and I didn’t know what it was. But, I was compelled to finish each story, hoping that enlightenment would accrue. It did. After several books I realize, there isn’t a perfect way to tell a story. What a relief! As writers we just need to find a way that is good enough, that will not get in the way of the “real” story (the emotional journey) and will not detract from the reader’s enjoyment. Sounds easy. It’s not. But it’s a whole lot easier than trying for “perfect.”
It’s all worth it as long as we learn. Great post, Sarah. It’s so helpful to hear about another writer’s process and get pulled out of the “everyone else is doing it better” blues.
Stephen King writes a book a season? Good for him. And good also for the pulp writers who churn out six or more books a year–that is a special skill in and of itself to write fast and write well.
I’m right there with you Sarah. 34 pages in 26 months? Still, that’s 34 pages and I’m sure there has been so much thought that’s gone into your story that those pages reflect intimate knowledge of your story. When they reach 180, or 270 or whatever page “THE END” is on, I’m sure it’s going to be an excellent book.
Thanks for taking the time to talk about the importance of quality over quantity. It’s not about writing 1000 words a day and producing x books / year. It’s about writing a great story, and each of us have unique considerations when it comes to what it means to do that. I’m biased, of course, but I’m right with you on the joy of the journey versus the destination. Cherishing those simple epiphanies that change our world, like keeping dry and wet ingredients separate, is just as much a part of writing a great book as time spend crafting the words. My favorite is when I learned that segue is in fact pronounced “seg-way”–a word I’ve used many times while speaking but never written down–and that segue–the word I’ve read and written many times but never used in a sentence–is not pronounced “seg-oo”. (That made for a very entertaining writing group meeting.)
Junkyard.doc is an excellent idea. I have something similar, though because I write in Scrivener the program is designed to facilitate organizing information as you write it. I have a junkyard folder which I call “world” and at the start of the manuscript I have a folder called “characters” since I like to keep all those sorts of details separate. Info dumps are a thing of the past since anything that doesn’t drive the story forward just gets cut and pasted into its appropriate note in the evolving directory of categories depending on what that “something” is. If I go on about someone’s childhood and it’s an important detail but doesn’t belong in the current section, then it goes in their character profile. If I decide that there are 7058 troops to a legion in the army for a given city, that detail goes in the note for that city in the world folder. Having this sort of dumping ground–be it in junkyard.doc or elsewhere–is very useful because it helps us distill story until it’s absinth, all the while collecting and separating the sediments for a later time – and my how they are all useful.
I look forward to more of your posts, Sarah, and the eventual one which will be the announcement that you wrote the words “THE END”. That will of course be another beginning, because the journey never ends. There is no rush, just progress. Put the journey first: milestones are best appreciated in retrospect.
Seg-oo! That is wonderful. I, for one, am going to start saying it that way and see what happens. It has a very Mr. Magoo/Scooby Do vibe to it; certainly a more friendly pronunciation than seg-way.
I so appreciate this encouraging comment . . . and the reminder about Scrivener. I used it on my second book, and I loved it. I am not sure why I forgot about it on this book. I don’t understand my brain sometimes. It really is a fantastically helpful program.
Are you sure you’re not the guy in your profile picture? Your writing has that wise feeling to it, and that profile pic guy is obviously on the wise end of the spectrum. ;)
I’m glad you like my seg-oo, Sarah. (I’m glad also that autocorrect finally stopped correcting “oo” to “pooh”.)
On a good day (when the camera is not around), I look exactly like my profile picture. I don’t do selfies, so I’m still waiting for the right person to snap a good picture when my hair isn’t overgrown or messed up or where I don’t look like I am profoundly confused or about to rupture a blood vessel in my brain (seriously, why am I so unfortunate with cameras?). Meanwhile, consider me Leo. Say, where is your Fitzgerald picture?
Sarah, you are one of those WU contributors I’d love to hug. Really. We’ve never met, but when we do, heed my warning, I’m squeezing you silly. :)
“With my WIP, I am roughly 26 months in, and I have roughly 10,810 words. That’s 34 pages. In 26 months. If you do the math, I will punch you in the throat.” HILARIOUS! You made tea drizzle from my nose. Not pretty.
I tolerate uncertainty by giving myself a break. We are hardest on ourselves, and, quite frankly, I don’t find the pressure helps. I increase efficiency by delayed gratification. Instead of stressing myself to squeeze 20 minutes of writing in today, I use the time to finish a non-writing related project, something that needs to be done tomorrow. Do this enough and I gather larger pockets of time, say 6, 7, 8 hours I devote to working on my WIP. After one of THOSE days, I feel like I’ve had ___ and smoked a dube. :)
Did I just say that? Goodness, Sarah, you bring out the giggly in me!
Denise (Dee) Willson
Author of A Keeper’s Truth and GOT
I look forward to silly squeezes some day soon! Thank YOU for the giggles. And for the record, I know exactly what you mean.
:)
I laughed and laughed. Each one of your sad comments hit the mark–zingo!
I’m finding that hours of moodling regarding the life and character of those victims I’m coercing to live in my novel is the most efficient “waste” time in my writing. As they become more real to me, they become more real in the scenes I’m writing. And the arc of their transformation becomes genuine, authentic, compelling. To me, at least.
Thanks for the laughter therapy this morning. I feel cleansed.
Yes! That’s my deal too . . . I can’t seem to write about people I don’t know very well, and because I tend to be more interested in character-driven stories, I think I can’t get the story right until I know them.
Sometimes I worry that that’s just an excuse, but oh well. At least you and I have the same excuse.
Thanks for your kind comment, Edi!
Thank you for starting my day off with a laugh, Sarah. Did you see me nodding in agreement through the entire post? No? Well, trust me, I did.
I have pounded my way through a rough draft of a 90,000 word novel in nine months before. During nap times with my first child, no less. But those days of efficiency seem to be over now. Maybe it is hormones gone haywire. Maybe I have too much time on my hands.
My current WIP started out life as narrative nonfiction. I was 150 pages in before I realized it wasn’t going to work and I had to write a novel instead. I told myself that I could reuse a lot of what I had written with some tweaking, but a year later realized the result was stiff and overwritten – as appealing as poop.
I started over again. Two alternating points of view. Third person/past tense.
It needed more intimacy.
Two POVs, both first person/present tense.
Present tense was jarring, so back to past, but still first person.
All this to realize that the story is ultimately historical women’s fiction and that it won’t do to feature a male viewpoint 50% of the time. Why did it take me half a decade to come to that obvious conclusion?
I’m thrilled with how everything has come together in this rewrite, though, and believe all my muddling made me a better writer. I’ve come to think of my story’s journey to completion as a meandering scenic tour rather than a waste. It helps me sleep at night.
Gosh, did this ever resonate with me! Verb tense and the distance between reader and character are so important. I, like you, spend many months experimenting with that.
I (also like you) sometimes cannot believe how I don’t “see” something (like a man’s POV in women’s fiction) until I’m so far down the road. But then I notice that I have put the cheese on the bathroom shelf, and I realize it’s a miracle that I’m even dressed in the mornings, much less seeing my book as I should.
It’s good to be kind to others and to ourselves.
:)
This post was worth it just so I can add “douche canoe” to my vocabulary.
How have you learned to tolerate uncertainty or found ways to increase your efficiency?
I am one who values production quotas, so if I get to an uncertain point I have a shot of espresso and keep going. If I’m still uncertain, I fake like I’m not, and keep going.
Seconding the “douche canoe” remark. That made my morning.
And as someone who is inefficiently working through a new story, I very much appreciated this post. Thank you, Sarah!
Absolutely! I believe that most professions (ones that stretch us, at least) require a bit of faking it. We don’t fake to be deceitful, but so that we can survive.
I started teaching high school English when I was 22 years old. A few of my “repeating” seniors were 21. There was MUCH faking it during class and MUCH crying in the staff restroom.
You’ve cheered me immensely, Sarah! Thought I was the only one who re-used semi-clean dishes and wrote at a snail’s pace.
I’m all for saving scarce resources too, but it took me a while as writer to figure out not to apply this habit to words. My first novel took me four years to eke out. Along the way, my critique group kept telling me they wanted MORE…more emotional development, more atmosphere, more texture.
As for my pace, sometimes I’d stare at a sentence for eons, unable to move on until I fixed it.
On my new WIP, I am trying to write fast, to keep moving forward even though what I’m writing may sound like gibberish.
Sometimes it works. Other days, not so much. That’s when I practice humility and tell myself that today’s gibberish is better quality gibberish than what I wrote a year or four ago.
Wonderful post! I can so relate, as I love speed and efficiency. Writing fiction, at least for me, is anything but that. Thank you!
Stephen King may write a novel each season, but how many get published? Half, probably.
My process looks a little something like this right now: I watch too many Hallmark movies. I write novels that look like Hallmark movies. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
But seriously, I’m 13 days into a new WIP, with about 17,000 words down. I’m not a speed writer. I have two jobs. I’m a grad student. I’m just laser focused (or so it appears).
Perfect timing for this post! I have ended up changing my ending, and when I realized I was going to toss quite a few scenes/chapters, I kind of shut down, curled into a protective fetal ball and started rocking back and forth. Since it’s very hard to write and rock at the same time, word production halted. I’m trying to get back in gear, and your post makes me feel infinitely better about those lost words. I had to write them, so I could see the way to the end. And that’s okay. It’s not a waste of time, it’s all just part of the process. So, my story (and me, too!) thank you! Hopefully now I can push on through.
Oh yes! Rocking in the fetal position is an excellent idea until it’s time to stop rocking and get writing.
I am reminded of a great CS Lewis quote: “Crying is all right in its way while it lasts. But you have to stop sooner or later, and then you still have to decide what to do.”
Really, what’s the alternative? We stop writing? I think not.
Thanks for the great comment!
Sarah-
I’m for tolerating uncertainty but why not do so with confidence? The process works. Tools and techniques get us there. None of us is helpless.
Creative flow can be a tidal wave but it’s not a random accident or luck. We can switch it on. We do that every time we write. It’s okay to trust it.
Who knows? Trust it enough and with practice we might wind up writing a novel every season. Every year is fine too and what’s wrong with every couple of years?
Heck, Harper Lee and Margaret Mitchell only finished one each and I wouldn’t exactly say they wasted their lives. Just write.
So true. I wrote a blog post a while back about the need for doubt in every creative endeavor. Doubt, like uncertainty, feels scary and uncomfortable . . . until we realize how it’s really the element that propels us forward.
So we reframe things: Uncertainty is exciting. Oh. Are you sure? Yes . . . it keeps our stories fresh. Uncertainty requires that we dig into our . . . whatever it is that encourages us to keep going with the story.
There’s no point in being a writer who’s too scared to write, experiment, doubt.
You are me! Or, I am you. (Maybe that’s more respectful.)
I buy the biggest Daytimer I can find every December and can’t wait to start plotting and planning my new year. I LOVE organization, charts, sticky notes, and meeting deadlines. I’m am weird.
However, you are correct, my fictional characters just won’t stick to the calender. I dutifully write “1,000 words” on each weekday’s to-do list and more often than not I don’t make it.
Thanks for the post. It made me feel better about letting the creative in me relax a little. I’ll keep scheduling because I think James Scott Bell is right. Sometimes you have to be bossy with the muses. But, I’ll give myself a pass if I need to ponder instead of write every once in a while.
Yes, Greta! Boss those muses . . . I frankly think we create muses because it’s nice to have a scapegoat. More important than muses, I think, is trusting our subconscious. I love the trust required when we follow a story even when we don’t know where it will lead us.
And along with trusting the subconscious, it’s essential that we put our tushes in the chair and write! We cannot be writers if we don’t write.
Thank you so much for chiming in!
:)
Sarah. I did the math. I think you just doubled your output for the year with this post. And yes, Fritz is a pseudonym. He would have loved Facebook. One status change and you’re a free man.
It took me 15 years to write my first four unpublished novels. In 2014, my youngest child graduated high-school and went off to college (well…for one semester). Between January and June, I finished one draft. Between July and December, I finished three more.
Coincidence?
So my writing process has changed from “when I have time” to “kick the time-suckers out and change the locks.”
I am now in a phase where I am plotting the next novel, drafting one, and editing the last one. Okay, it’s now editing the last three. There’s a bit of a logjam at that end. My impossible goal was six drafts in a year. I’ve modified that to four. Apparently that editing stage is important and cannot be left out of the process.
I have hired a professional editor for the books I intend to self-pub. But there’s still my traditional hopefuls (I go both ways) that require my attention.
My first self-pubbed goes on Amazon next month. About that time, I’ll submit what I think is my best ever (humble I am) to agents. 2015 promises to be an insane year.
And I meet Donald Maass on Saturday in Lansing! Apparently there were no speaking gigs for him in Florida. Lucky me!
Thanks for the post.
Looking forward to that, Ron!
I laughed out loud with your Fritz-on-Facebook comment, Ron. You are SO right about that. He must be living the high life these days.
And wow, I am impressed by your productivity! Because I like you and your always-thoughtful comments, I will not punch you in the throat for writing more than I do. You do give me hope that once my kids are older, I will have a bit more breathing room. Until then, I snatch the bits of time I can find (as many of us do!).
Please do let us all know when you send your best baby to the publisher! Such happy news (especially when it happens to such a good human being).
Happy Maassing to you! Jealous am I!
I LOVE THIS POST! Probably because I write approximately 4 books before I publish 1. THIS just keeps happening, even with my third novel, coming out next year.
My agent gets to basically pick the one she likes best.
It’s wasteful, I know, but what can you do? Life is uncertain and messy and apparently my process is too.
Sarah, thanks for riding a merry sleigh through the boundaries of language: “douche-canoe” is timeless. You have also pointed out to me the problem with my own production: I have been mixing wet words and dry words in separate bowls. Today, together. Liberation!
(By the way, when I deleted chromosome 15q13 I couldn’t stop putting my chin—as though it were magnetized—in the cat’s bowl , so I had to put 15q13 back.)
Thanks as ever for your sweet, antic stuff.
I know, Tom. I NEVER knew that 15q13 was so essential. I’m so glad you figured that cat bowl thing out before you went out in public. Or did you?
I think your point (or am I overreading into your comment) is so good. We are born with the perfect arrangement of chromosomes. Perfect, at least, for us. It’s usually just good to go with what we’ve got, even when what we’ve got makes us a little pokey out of the writing gates.
Happy day to you! And muchisimas gracias.
Sarah,
You make me snort-laugh. While your efficiency is being (seemingly) inefficient, why not bundle your WU posts into a book and sell that puppy under Life Wisdom and Humor. Then, using the best-selling royalties, hire a nanny and a chef and write however inefficiently you want.
As conditions change, life reveals itself in blocks of opportunity. No doubt, windows of time will open up for you, or you’ll be seized by the story that runs you ragged until it’s written. The constant friend of the creative soul is passion–and let’s add confidence and joy. My dear, you have them all.
Tom,
You are both brilliant and crazy. (That’s my favorite combination.) Last night, I printed off my posts, stapled them together, and will start hawking them on FB and EBay this morning.
I’ve also hired a nanny, chef, personal trainer and Don Maass to help me.
My husband is traveling for work, but I think he’ll be so excited to hear about my change of focus. I’m sure he’ll be writing you a thank you note.
Thank YOU for the laughs and the very kind words.
:)
Hi Sarah,
I’m all about efficiency too, but I only learned about efficiency once the nurse at the hospital placed a sweet wee baby in my arms, then, it happened to me two more times. My three boys make efficiency a must.
Mr. King once said something like he doesn’t write down all his ideas, otherwise, he’d remember all the crap. If a story is a good one, it’ll stick with him, and he doesn’t have to write it down. I somewhat agree with this method (when it comes to a book idea overall), but when I finally have that big book idea, I do lots of stewing. In between dusting crumbs off plates, and being the laundry fairy, I’m off in la-la land thinking of what’s to come for my characters, plot, etc, for my night of writing to come. I’ll write these ideas down on little scraps made out of lollipop papers, or receipts, and they become golden treasures for me by the time I get to writing at night.
I think we all have our little methods, and you should be proud of those words you’re getting on the page. I always appreciate a book more when it’s been well thought out, and executed properly.
Keep up the great work!
Naomi,
First of all, thank you for your thoughtful words and your empathy. I loved the image of lollipop-wrapper notes.
Second of all, may I please steal and use your profile photo? It’s rather stunning, and I think I need more Stunning in my life.
YOU keep up the great work, too! Nothing easy or quiet about the combined energy of three boys . . . good for you to keep finding scraps and minutes to write.
(You can just email me the PDF of your photo. Thank you!)
;)
Sarah,
OF COURSE, you can use my profile pic, anytime, it’s a bit creepy though, not sure if you’re into looking creepy, but it’s yours for the taking.
Your pic is so bright and cheery, something I NEED in my life, so I’ll just take a PDF of yours as well.
I’m looking forward to more of your posts!
Naomi
Sarah,
Thank you for adding to my day!
I chuckled over your post, over the wit and humor you brought to the battle. And I smiled, hoping to have it sink in, as you brought the light to it, too. Writing can be a struggle. We creatives face the uncertainty of that empty page… again and again. I appreciate your reminder that process and practice are as important as efficiency and product.
I can’t get passed “If you do the math, I will punch you in the throat.”. I think my stomach muscles just collapsed.
Brian, that’s my favorite line, too. I *have* to use it in real life sometime. Have to!
Wow, Natalie, I hope it’s a friendly throat punch. Lol.
And if you know me, Brian, which you do, you know I am not kidding. Mr. Estrada did the math above, and I am heading over to his house later for the punching. Why did he think I was kidding?!?
Ole,
sarah
Efficiency to me is doing a clean draft. I remember someone giving me his three chapters to read and I was horrified — he’d left all the punctuation out! That just makes more work, and honestly, that’s plain silly.
I don’t outline, so I don’t know where my story is going. I’m also messy when I write. I might put something in while I’m following a train of thought and then I think of something better. So I can give myself credit for writing the words, I dump them into an Extras file. I don’t save the file or reuse the words. In fact, once they go in that file, I don’t look at them again. Eventually they get deleted.
Then, as continuing to write, I move around in the manuscript. I add description, setting, change story elements that are still evolving, fix typos, run spell check, and fix more typos.
Hi, Sarah:
I’m a firm believer of Own Your Process. I often tell my students that one of the most important things they will learn is how they (uniquely) approach the task of writing.
That said, just as we are not entirely genetically determined, but can make choices and obtain habits that significantly improve upon the talents we have, so we can revise our process to minimize the effect of distractions and digressions and enhance our focus.
Mindfulness matters. We can, with effort, get better.
Unless, you know, we’re a douche canoe.
Sarah,
Every time I am floundering with something, one of you WU contributors addresses the problem I’m dealing with and sheds new light on it. Thank you (and more importantly, as many others have pointed out, thank you for the phrase ‘douche-canoe’).
I am so with you on the efficiency (I hate the multiple bowls too! Probably why I loathe baking). No, seriously, sometimes I plan the path I will walk through my apartment based on what thing needs to go where or what room I need to get that other thing from first. It’s madness. It feels like OCD. And that should bother me, but secretly (or I guess not so much now), I’m grinning ear-to-ear because I know something everyone else doesn’t know: that I’ve just saved myself a precious 5 seconds and who knows how many joules (?) of kinetic energy in going about my more efficient path.
With the desire to be efficient comes the attempt to plan in advance. I try the character charts, and the tension and release graphs, and plot arcs, but King Stephen of Efficiencyshire makes a good argument when he says at one point, you just have to park your ass and write. I’ve learned that no amount of pre-plotting will ever make me feel ready for the venture of creating ‘precious scene-babies’ or *gasp* an entire novel. Sometimes you can only write your entire first draft before discovering that the most vital component of what you were trying to do with the novel is nowhere present, or not done correctly, or maybe what you wanted to do in the first place is replaced entirely by something else and you end up with this Frankenstein creation that you have to nurse to some sort of semblance of health. But that experimentation—you hit it on the head—it really does help. Eventually…hopefully.
While I am growing everyday with my word count productivity, and sometimes, subsequently my understanding of my process, I have been working on my first novel since I was–get this–thirteen. I am now twenty-nine. If you do the math, can our throat-punches just cancel each other out? Because I totally did the math on yours.
Finally, Vijaya’s comment was genius! I love the comparison of a novel to a scientific hypothesis you have to prove, or usually, end up disproving. I’ve been dancing around with just what the hell is wrong with me that I can’t get an idea, write it, and have it be all shiny and pretty when I’m done. Turns out, my hypothesis as to what I was writing about was wrong. And there is a lot to be said for multiple tries to get it right.
P.S. My muses are definitely off somewhere DRUNKENLY playing Minecraft :\ Douche-canoes…
Sarah, I really love the honesty in your post. It moves me. I really think that honest communication is a rare thing these days, with the rise of technology, and I like how you bared your heart and your writing process to us.
For me, I also change from one book to another. Some I outline, some I don’t. I have had a lot of fun with both methods. I, like you, take a long time to write the first draft of a book, and I also envy fast writers like King. I don’t know how they do it! It takes me long dreaming periods of lying down, long walks, and lots of scribbling and outlining, to get it all out of me. I don’t think I could do it a different way…even just having 1 chapter every 2 weeks done for my current writing group is a struggle – balancing writing with a day job. Ugh!
Currently I am having a miserable time with a second draft of my epic fantasy. The first draft brought me lots of joy, but the second draft is proving to be difficult. Perhaps if I change some parts of my process, it will get better.
Does anyone have any tips for second drafts? I could really use some.
Sorry to sound so miserable in my comment. I love this post. Got get off my whiny butt and just chug out something, anything, and stop being such a perfectionist.
Hey Sarah,
It took me all day to get here. I saw the post this morning on my way out the door and am only now getting home to smile upon your words. Douche-canoe. Is that like a French kayak?
My process, my process, my process. Hmm. Normally I’m quite efficient in other areas, and my organizational skills are enviable. I have actually held jobs in my temp life to specifically go in and organize an office in shambles. And I’m a plotter. And all the other things you said, muser, gazer, daydreamer. So yes, that blows my efficiency out the window.
And I also have a junkyard doc that I rarely visit anymore. I went back to old school scribbles on mini notepads, pinned to my bulletin board.
Very enjoyable read, and thanks for the chuckles. :D
Yes! French kayak! My husband was worried that I referred to Fritz in that way, but as you point out, it’s a compliment. All of my exes should be so fortunate. There was one, for example, whom I dated in between high school and college, and he was more of a North Korean raft. You can imagine what that guy was like. Terrible hair and a little paunchy.
I will know hunker down, alongside Seth Rogan, and wait for the North Korean authorities to arrest me.
It was nice knowing you . . .
Thank you!
LOVED this post, Sarah. It made me laugh out loud several times. I used to be a slave to efficiency, although I’ve never been a list writer. But then one day I realised that I was so busy focusing on getting to my destination, I never looked at the scenery. These days, I’m known around my son’s school as the person most likely to say either: “Sorry, I forgot about that. I’m a writer.” or “Sorry I’m late. I’m a writer.”
(Note: Apparently when you say you’re a writer, non-writers will forgive you ANYTHING.)
I do have a fairly structured writing process, though. It goes something like this:
– Dwell on a Shiny New Idea for a few weeks. Or a month. Maybe longer.
– Once I know (in my head) what the end scene will look like, start writing. Assume I’ll figure out how to get from the beginning to the end somehow.
– Completely underestimate the douch-canoery of my characters.
– Drink. Excessively.
– Stop writing somewhere between chapters 3 and 7, and tell myself firmly that this will go easier on everyone if I create some kind of plan.
– Buy more vodka.
– DON’T OUTLINE. Outlines are the soul-killer. Instead, write a detailed list of things that happen in each scene, and how those things are viewed by each major character.
– Make notes on how I need to change everything in the first 3 to 7 chapters, and then keep writing. Keep vodka handy.
– Finish first draft. Celebrate with vodka.
And then there’s all the revisions, but let’s not think about that right now. My liver may explode.
I loved this post. It made me feel much better about my attempted novel. I started it around 2012. I have no clue what the word count is – I have a plethora of lists and chapter outlines and character sheets and a story bible (mainly compiled by a friend so I can[t take credit for that) so it could be several tens of thousands, but not all in the same file. All are subject to question, and could be thrown out, so might not be part of the final tally. When I do get down to writing I write fast, and can write 2-4000 words in a day on a good day. And then might chuck \em all out and rewrite them the next. But that only happens once every few weeks anyway. Then I get furious because I get caught in time loops, because A has to happen before B can happen, which has to happen before C can happen, which has to happen before A…. or something like that, so I go back to the plot outline and spend a week or two muling on that, then find a major hole that I hadn’t spotted last time round. It is supposed to be Science Fiction, and I thought I had all my ducks in a row, then found I had misunderstood some of the basic issues. This after discussing with a few people, watching Cosmos and reading several books, a then realising I must be dumber than I though. It has been somewhat frustrating so far! And all the while I am trying to keep it humorous, like your post. Hah. Right. But at least I am not alone in gibberishing around while my muses drunkenly play-fishing on minecraft like a bunch of douche-canoes, having lost several vital genes by punching each other in the throat. Or something.
No worries, I won’t do the math. I hate math, hence the whole writer thing. However, I am still laughing (and nodding) thinking about that line!
I am not a planner, in any aspect of life. I write far too many words until I veer off to where I was supposed to be in the first place. But I also hate to waste so I have files and files of bad ideas and embarrassing writing that I just can’t toss, yet.
Thanks for this!
You were on a roll when you wrote this, Sarah. I snort-laughed about twenty times.
I have the abcdefg-z chromosomal disorder. Please ask your friend to turn her work ethic, upward failure and creativity towards discovering a cure.
My process? Chaos. Absolute chaos.
Sarah,
I really enjoyed this article. I guess as a writer, one who daydreams, it shows I am not alone in this world. My favorite part, perhaps the most mind boggling were scientists taking creative writing classes. As a fan of science fiction, I can’t see how they would make a story work. I am sure that goes for a lot of writers.
Danielle
Sarah I’m so horribly behind on my blog reading. I hope you see this message because I want to tell you I love this post with all my heart.
I am a slow, methodical writer at heart, loving the process of discovery and layering in all its glorious uncertain richness. Took eight years to write my first published novel, and 10 months on contract for the second. It needed the time it needed though, resulting in 15-hour writing days.
I’m willing to do that one more time in order to get three books out, with the hope that they can start earning some moola. It is stressful as all get-out. But I yearn to write again in that completely inefficient, exploratory way!
Even though I too am an efficiency queen. But some things just need to take their sweet, sweet time.