Writing, Revising, Jitters

 I keep reading, trying to figure how to improve my writing. No more rejections this week, which does not mean they are not coming. I cannot seem to stop revising “Road Tripping.” Doubts are creeping in whether I know what I am doing – if I can write a coherent story; if it is coherent, is it communicating with my readers; if people are reading, am I being understood.

Here is what I have relevant to my questions and doubts.

 In Praise of Destruction: How Embracing Elimination Can Make Our Writing Better 

Much of this is deliberate. But at a certain stage destruction of a different order occurs. At some point the wrecking ball comes; an involuntary given-by-the-universe kind of destruction that is forced upon you. The wrecking ball smashes its way through the artifice of whatever thing you’ve been diligently carving: the precarious structure built over a sinkhole, the delicate story, the well-crafted protagonist, the coherent narrative. The wrecking ball smashes through whatever you have been trying to write in order to cover over, or avoid, or find a detour around the stuff that keeps trying to push its way through and which you cannot—for whatever reason—see clearly.

The strange or unpredictable or unwieldy story, the story you were trying to write yourself away from, the story you didn’t want to have to wrangle with and understand, that you were afraid of because you thought you couldn’t understand. The wrecking ball swings through once, twice, three times. Demolition will be insisted on. The ground cleared by whatever devious means—mysteriously deleted files, mis-directions, a dream, an error, an accidental conversation, a lost notebook—so that the other thing might be written.

The thing nowadays seems to be my constant revising. I seem to be the only writer to underwrite, or so it seems to me. I keep wrestling with the stories – sometimes changing the form, sometimes its expanding ideas. I have to wonder if I have a clue what I am doing. It is a madness. Which I recognize a variation in I'd Rather Commit A Murder Than Write One:

Like Dorothy Parker once said, “I hate writing, but I love having written.” Yet somehow, despite all my toilet-scrubbing procrastination, I have managed to write five bestselling books. Once they are published, I breathe a sigh of relief and reward myself with at least a month off, and maybe an extra month because the whirl of publicity, while enjoyable, can be draining. And perhaps another month to allow the well of ideas to refill.

The fact is that I don’t like writing and yet it is the only realm in which I display any talent. I show no skill in any other area of the arts. I cannot sing, paint, act, dance, or design. I can teach a bit, but only if I can tell each student that their work is flawless. I am not a good colleague in an open-plan office setting. (I never had my own office back in the day.) Besides writing, my skills are few and far between. I am, as it turns out, pretty thorough when cleaning toilets. But so far, there are no toilet-cleaner festivals. There damn well should be.

So perhaps you’re wondering one thing: Have I written one word of my next novel? The answer is YES. I have written 13 words—the opening sentence. I have a rough idea what type of character my narrator will be. Ideas are percolating in my head. No plot yet, but then again, I have never plotted. When I get back to the (now fully connected) Tyrone Guthrie Centre next month, I will splurge the rough first 20k words onto the page after I disable the Wi-Fi on my laptop. The house is always spotless, but perhaps I should pack some detergent just in case.

Pity my friends who I impose to read the products of my madness. Some think I do not take their advice seriously enough, I feel the need to ask questions because I need to see how far apart are my intentions and my work. I would assure them I knew this advice from How to utilize feedback to improve your manuscript before I read it:

You absolutely don’t have to take every single suggestion your editor makes, and I’m often very glad when my clients don’t listen to all of my suggestions and take only the best ones. If you don’t agree with a change, big or small, it’s okay to stick to your guns if you have a really good reason for it.

Only: make sure it’s really your gut talking and not your lazy bone. Or your bull head.

Maybe they do not believe that in the past 13 years I have finally learned the danger of being bull-headed. Lord, knows I was that for most of my life, and I cannot blame my friends for questioning my new way of thinking.

I spoke last night with my niece, who has read the finished parts of “Love Stinks.” Her reaction is different from KH. She did not feel confused by the changing format. I am the one confused.

 I have all this paper in this room that needs to be typed, and I have spent the past several weeks revising and revising. I even had an idea of re-doing “The Kids Are Not All Right” one more time. I have had a few stray thoughts this week, if I should not give up. I know what following that kind of thinking has done for me. That thought gets short shrift. I have Roland Barthes's Preparation of the Novel to back me up nowadays – there is a will to write that differs from the will to publish.

If Barthes is too much, try Why We Write, a Sneak Peek at Ready, Set, Write! by Melissa Donovan. I can see myself in all of her reasons for writing:

There’s no right or wrong reason to write—and there’s no good or bad reason to write. If you are compelled to put words on the page, then you should put words on the page.

At its core, writing is a form of communication, a way to connect with an audience. Some people have been fundamentally changed by a speech, a novel, or a poem. Almost everyone has been moved by a story or a song. And a few have been persuaded to new viewpoints or motivated to engage in some action or activity by the sheer act of reading what another person has written. In the hands of a passionate and skilled writer and in front of a willing and ready audience, a piece of writing can shake the world

But not all words are written to be shared. Many people use writing for self-expression or even for therapeutic purposes. Troubling emotions are often alleviated by putting them into words: feelings of rage, sorrow, pain, and suffering. And this gives writing an even greater power: the power to heal, to bring about inner peace and wellness.

Therapeutic writing doesn’t have to focus on the negative. For example, a daily gratitude journal emphasizes the good things in life, promoting a healthy attitude and positive outlook on the world.

And sometimes writing is just plain fun. You can make language dance. You can create worlds. You can explore the past and invent the future.

sch 8/5

An update after reading C.S. Lakin's Story Structure and the Essential Outline (a sign that I have not yet gotten over my jitters – not after revising “Road Tripping”, not after getting my head back on with this writing thing.

Of course the order is determined by specific story structure! If you don’t know anything about story structure, now’s the time to learn! You need to know where specific plot elements go, such as your inciting incident, twists, pinch points, midpoint, dark night moment … and more. And you need to know what happens in those scenes.

I am not sure if I know these things. She links to her other posts related. This is one I will be going back to other the next few weeks, and I suggest to you.

sch 8/9