A Fruitful Absence

It's been a while since I've blogged regularly. I've put up some quotes-to-think-about on Mondays, and soon will be hosting a series of guest interviews from the contributors to Realms of Fantasy.

This does not mean my writing has come to a screeching halt, however! Quite the opposite: I've been working on two and sometimes three projects. One is the next-next Darkover novel (Thunderlord is scheduled for this August, so this is The Laran Gambit, which I hope to turn in by the end of 2015.) I'm about 10K words into it; it's got some forward momentum building to the first thing-changes-everything moment. I've heard writers say they don't like to talk about a new project because their creative energy goes into the talking, not the writing. That's somewhat true in this case. And besides, why talk about a book that isn't even finished when one that is ready to go will be coming out soon? This is what happens when writers turn in one book and dive right into the next, while publishing takes its sweet time. If you're curious about Thunderlord, check the blog archives here. I posted snippets of chapters from the first half of the book. And I'll blather on about it as the day approaches.

The other big project is a combination of fiction (sword and sorcery) and non-fiction (commentary on my own sometimes very dark journey of healing from my mother's murder). I've spoken about the latter, sometimes to large audiences, but writing about it, especially as intensely as I have been doing in the last couple of months, is much more immersive. I have no idea if anyone will want to read it, but the writing has been filled with revelations for me. Here's a bit from the introduction:

Because I am a writer, much of what I experienced — not the external circumstances but the emotions and insights — made its way into my stories. In the first few years after the murder, I wrote a short story, “Rite of Vengeance” (Sword & Sorceress V, ed. Marion Zimmer Bradley, DAW, 1988) about anger and revenge; it also contained a glimmering of understanding of how these could destroy me. I followed the same wounded heroine in “Crooked Corn” (Spells of Wonder, ed. Marion Zimmer Bradley, DAW, 1989) and eventually used these two episodes as the basis for a novel-length work, The Haunted Ring. The good news was that this gave me a sense of completion; the bad news was that it simply did not work as a novel. Eventually, I set it aside as a poignant but essentially dead-end exercise. 

Years and much recovery later, this book presented itself to me again. I was speaking to a class of law students, trying to explain what it was like to live through the violent death of a loved one. I scribbled a few notes on the “stages” of healing — numbness and shock, anger and vengeance, letting go, re-engaging with life, and so forth. It occurred to me that The Haunted Ring was not a deeply flawed, episodic, meandering novel. It was a healing journey disguised as a fantasy-adventure.

Here then is that story, with my own commentary about how I now understand what all this was about for me, and some queries that have been helpful to me. Stories keep our intellects busy while the deeper parts of our psyches resonate with things that are not easily put into words. Every person's experience of tragedy is different. How we make sense of what has happened to us also changes with time. A reader brings his or her own history and temperament, beliefs and visceral reactions, to the tale.

The way I've structured this book, each chapter of story is followed by commentary about my own experiences, reflections on larger issues of clawing my way out of the darkness and then creating the life I want, and queries for reflection. I'll keep you posted about the progress of this piece. It's in revision now, but because it is so emotionally intense, it's hard to predict when it will fly along and when I have to take a breather.

The Writer's Life: Interruptions

When I first started writing, way back in fourth grade, I worked on one story at a time. It never occurred to me that it was possible to have multiple writing projects in different stages. As I got older, the pile of stories begun and then abandoned grew, too. I noticed how rare it was for me to return to a story once I’d run out of steam. I either wrote it all the way through or it ended up on the Pile of Doom. Through high school and college (summers), I completed more of what I began. My gift to myself after graduating college was to write a novella, and after graduated school, I finished my first novel. (All of these were utterly unpublishable, but they had beginnings, middles, and most importantly, endings.) I was still at the stage of On/Off writing.

Shortly after my first child brought joy and unanticipated chaos to my life, my writing career shifted into a new gear, with both fanzine publications and my first professional short story sale. Over the next decade or so, I had to learn a new mode of writing: On/Off/On/Off/On…. For one thing, I often had only very short periods of time in which to madly type out the scenes I had been rehearsing in my head (see my article, “How I Write When There Is No Time” in Book View Café’s Brewing Fine Fiction.) For another, I was writing both novels and short fiction. Sometimes I’d stick the shorter works in between drafts of the novels, which was helpful in terms of “clearing my head” so that I could return to the novel with fresh eyes. Sometimes, I had a specific market and deadline for the short story and had to set aside the novel in whatever stage it was in. I would do just that, with no special preparation, and then re-read what I had written to “come up to speed.” Most of the time, that would be sufficient to jog my memory about what I intended to come next. Occasionally I’d be left with the vague and disquieting feeling that I’d forgotten some brilliant plot twist or other element. Such are the risks of being a “pantser” (writing “by the seat of the pants”) instead of using outlines.

Gradually I made more sales, novels as well as short stories, and improved my skill at alternating projects in different stages (Project 1 first draft – Project 2 – outline – Project 1 revise – Project 2 first draft… revise). I experimented with sequential leapfrogging and with handling different projects at different times of day (mornings for revision, afternoons for first drafts, or vice versa). So far, so good.

When A Story Isn't Ready Yet

Most writers who have been at it for any length of time have the experience of a story not being truly finished. It may come to an end, but it has not yet come into itself. My version of this usually involves my initial concept being wrong. I will start with an idea in what I call the "front part" of my brain--a notion, a conceit, an image from some visual medium (painting, film) and spin it into a plot. I labor under the delusion that this is what the story "is about." More often than not, I'm wrong.

I'm wrong because I'm going for the glitz, the superficial attraction. The truth is, I'm a better writer than that when I listen to what's underneath the glitz. That's where the emotional juice is, the deeper resonances, the Deborah-vision.

The symptoms of this mis-step are many: characters that refuse to follow the pre-arranged script, story elements that just won't come together, plot idiocies that are not just holes but dead-end canyons. I've learned to rip all that stuff out (leaving chunks of bleeding, burning manuscript strewn about) and dig deep into the core. That's part of my revision (re-vision, right?) process, and although with time (read: decades of practice), I've gotten better at writing first drafts that are less superficial and more true, I still value this process. Throw away the chaff; be ruthless; seek the nuggets of treasure and bring them into the light.