Making a House a Home (and What It Taught Me About Writing)
By Kristan Hoffman | August 31, 2016 |
My Dining Room
Maybe it’s because I’m the daughter of two architects, but I’ve always thought of writing a book as being like building a house. You pour the foundation, frame the walls, install the roof, rough-in the plumbing and electric… etc. etc. If you’re a plotter, you’ll do all this work based on blueprints you drew up ahead of time. If you’re a pantser, you’ll just rent a cement truck, buy some lumber and bricks, and hope for the best.
But the reality is, most of us will never build a house from scratch. So maybe a more relatable starting point for the analogy is moving in and decorating.
Last year, my husband and I bought our first house. It was much bigger than where we’d been living, and had a completely different architectural style, so furnishing it was going to be a challenge. I wanted to take things slow, consider where each item should go before committing, and if that meant living out of boxes for awhile, then so be it. My husband, on the other hand, is a firm believer in “better done than perfect.” He wanted to hang artwork on our very first day in the house, and he invited his parents to visit the weekend after we moved in.
I couldn’t very well let my in-laws sleep on the floor, so my husband won by default. I did my best to quickly decide where everything should go — couch over there, TV on that wall, bed centered on the windows — and reassured myself that I could change things later. Even those holes that my husband put in the walls for the picture hooks. (Sigh.) Despite my reluctance, I had to admit that within days, our house actually looked like a home. It wasn’t perfect, but it was someplace you could really live. Comfortably. Happily.
We’ve made some changes in the months since then, but fewer than I thought we would. That doesn’t mean my husband’s approach was “right” and mine was “wrong” — but it did cause me to reflect.
Because the way I wanted to decorate the house was the same way that I write: slowly and deliberately. I labor over each word. I reread sentences to myself over and over until I’m comfortable with both their meaning and their rhythm. Editing as I go gives me a sense of confidence in the work I’m producing, and that motivates me to keep going. However, experience has taught me that even the cleanest of first drafts will require revision. Possibly even large-scale rewriting.
Meanwhile, decorating my house taught me that sometimes rough ideas aren’t so off-base from the desired final product. Also, little things — like artwork on the walls — can have a big impact. The process gave me greater faith in my instincts, and a strong desire to apply all these lessons to my writing. So for my next manuscript, I’m going to try to embrace the “vomit draft.” If it turns out half as good as my house did, well, I’ll consider it a success.
Do you prefer to take your time and craft each word carefully, or to get something messy down on the page quickly so you can fix it up after?
Originally from Houston, TX, Kristan Hoffman studied creative writing at Carnegie Mellon University and later attended the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop. Now she lives with her husband and two children in Cincinnati, OH, where she writes both fiction and nonfiction with a focus on feminist, multicultural stories. Her words have appeared in the New York Times, Switchback, and the Citron Review, among others. She is currently at work on a Young Adult novel. For more, please visit her website.
I like to get the words on the page quickly, but not in a panster sort of way. And, thanks to awesome people like Steven James and Lisa Cron, I now take a more hybrid approach to my writing. Story, as we’re so often told, trumps perfect sentence structure and elegant prose. If a house is functional and interesting, it won’t matter that your pictures aren’t hanging where the light will strike them at a perfect angle. We can fix those little issues later…or not. After a few drafts, I think we’re probably writing for ourselves and not so much the reader anymore. He just wants a place to sleep and we’re keeping him waiting.
This exactly! 110%.
I’ve been struggling with this very problem, Kristan. In fact, recently I’ve been avoiding writing altogether because I’m just not sure where things need to go. In a sense, I’ve been living out of boxes because I’m afraid the boxes don’t really have what I need in them.
Thanks for this post. I feel not quite so alone and am encouraged today to take something… anything… out of the box and see what happens with it.
So glad to have made you feel less alone. <3 And I love and relate to your boxes analogy.
One trick I read about from author Laini Taylor is to write ABOUT what you need to write about.
Another trick that I've heard from a few different sources is to decide what you're going to write before you sit down to write it. A small goal, like, "Conversation between parents," or "Scene where protagonist quits her job." It can make the blank page less daunting to at least have some idea of what, specifically, you're going to fill it with at that particular writing session.
I often write About what I need to write about. In any given scene, you can find blocks of text all in caps where I am essentially talking to myself about what needs to be happening. Usually, I can transition right from that into actual scene text, but often it ends there–a bunch of ideas in caps waiting for the right words to come along the next time my project is opened.
Beautiful picture, but where is the clutter? Oh wait, your daughters are grown. And architects. Ah.
I like a sense of order too. I’m a neat, organized guy. But there are times, like now, when things need to be messy.
I’m starting a new novel. Big pieces of it are missing. There are a variety of approaches I could take, from paranormal suspense to upmarket literary. I’m researching the mathematics of extreme improbability. My hero lacks a voice but the heroine, who goes missing for most of the thing, is chattering away in my head.
I am trying Barbara O’Neal’s collage method. It’s fun but so far all I have is a nice collage.
At the ACFW conference last weekend, Ted Dekker advised using fiction to answer your own questions. I immediately thought of my questions. And answered them. I now have half a page.
In other words, for this stage everything is exactly as it should be. My challenge here is not to organize the story into a coma. My challenge is to keep things messy. Open. Flowing.
I like being a neat, organized guy but right now my new novel is not yet a home. It’s not even a house. It’s potential. A promise. A messy joy.
Oh, to clarify: I am the grown daughter, my parents are the architects!
But yeah, haha, I do NOT like clutter. Both from an aesthetic standpoint, and from a mental standpoint. I work from home and find it very difficult to focus if there’s too much STUFF around me. :P
I love that you’re embracing the mess, and I think it’s great to try different approaches! I do that constantly, and I like adding each to my toolbox. I hope you find similar pleasure and success.
Kristan, you said it: “greater faith in my instincts.” I pour it all out on the first draft, sometimes researching as I go along as needed so it’s very choppy. This is the time when the story is telling me what it is, who is in it, and what they all want. Sometimes I fuss over words but it’s usually because certain words are telling me something that leads me on the path. Or leads to a detour. Love the detours! There’s always a treasure to find there. Then several more drafts of lots of rewriting. Love your post today.
Gah, and I love your comment! All of it is so wise, though this line probably stuck out the most: “This is the time when the story is telling me what it is, who is in it, and what they all want.”
Thank you so much. <3
I’ve found that each project requires a different approach. Sometimes I go to bed and in the morning I have a book. Other times it takes years. For me, the most important thing is to take my time and give the project what it needs.
Yes absolutely, that’s another of writing’s many challenges — and joys. The fact that every story asks for something different from us, and we have to figure out what that is. Patience is a virtue in that process for sure!
It depends. There are moments that are gifts of understanding where the words tumble so fast it’s hard to keep up with the cosmic reckoning of it all. But these glimpses of higher power are strung sporadically between harder won words. Words that have been painstakingly honed and etched with the choice of deliberation on how to convey my story in the clearest and most beautiful way.
I like both your house building and house decorating analogies. Reminds me of that song…for everything there is a season…turn, turn…
Thank you!
Yeah, I rarely tap into that “gift,” that zone, that flow. When I talk about a vomit draft, I mean more the drudgery of pushing through and putting words on the page, even when you know what you’re writing isn’t quite right — possibly even garbage — just because you need to get it out in order to take a step back, look at it, and fix it. It’s not a gift, haha, it’s a slog. But somehow, at the end of it, there is still a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment.
Congratulations on your first new home Kristan! It’s a big milestone. I must admit that I’m the throw things together type person, tweak later. Like your husband, I was hanging up pictures the weekend we moved. My in-laws came to help with that first house and we moaned and groaned about the boxes being heevy (that’s not a typo since I was pregnant and out of breath).
It’s the same with my writing when it comes to fiction. I know the story and the major highlights so I just write, often making an outline after that exploratory draft. With NF, I’m as methodical as I can be with outlines, resources. But when I first pitched my NF ideas, I wrote a quick draft to see whether I could deliver what I was promising. Now, I’m much better at gauging how much space I’ll need, so I outline first, then write.
Ah yes, I’ve heard about outlining AFTER drafting, and how that can really help a writer take stock of what the story is aching to be.
When it comes to writing, I know I poured it all out doing the first draft of my current WIP. I didn’t really know exactly where I was going. As I work, I learn–from this site, from classes and reading. I have never built a house from the ground up, but we did totally remodel one and after moving in with our furniture from our old house, I saw changes I had to make. That’s not dissimilar to rereading that first draft and seeing needed alterations. It’s always a process. To this day I love both: playing with my house, I call it, and making my WIP the best that it can be. Thanks.
Ah yes, remodeling can be a great analogy too, particularly for revision. I’m glad you enjoy the process! Both of them, really. ;)
My writing turns out much better when I fast-write the first draft, take a break, then go back and fix it later. When you agonize over every detail in the first draft, you’re then too close to be able to edit it objectively–the mistake I made with my first novel. Taking breaks and getting objectivity are crucial for me.
That being said, I do take a different approach to home decor–I’d rather wait and find the right piece of art/rug/bookshelf than buy something crappy then have to replace it. It’s not expensive or time consuming to delete a sentence and rewrite it, but it is expensive and time consuming to buy the wrong stuff then have to replace it :)
Haha, yeah, my husband and I have had some disagreements over whether to just buy something that worked — rug, light fixture, couch — or wait until we (*I*) found the perfect option. I think we’ve done a decent job of compromising… At the very least, we haven’t killed each other yet. ;P
Your process sounds like my ideal! I’m working my way there…
So much of this discussion applies to me and my writing –the comments on living out of boxes and organizing a story into a coma are direct hits — a treasure trove of good advice. It’s just after midnight as I type this, but I feel too inspired to knock off for the night. Thanks to all!
So glad you found inspiration here!
Interesting analogy, Kristan. Whenever I move, the very first thing I always do is set up and make the beds and place the bedside tables and reading lamps. Once I’ve got the night-caves in place, I feel as though I’m THERE; everything else can happen as needed.
Not sure how this fits with your analogy. Perhaps that I need to know the heart of my story before I can start. And I need to have room to dream.
Hahaha, the “night-caves,” I love that!
I think your extension of the analogy is perfect. <3