An Empty Room in a Half-Constructed Castle

:Stashing the Discovery Writer into Constricted Chapters and What Happens After

 

There is little advice out there on how to edit a book when you are a discovery writer. Unwritten chapters are always unruly and unpredictable, and we discovery writers thrive in that kind of play field. 

Already written chapters, though, these are much too ordered and familiar, and thus, can feel like a bore, especially when at the end of a series of unedited chapters, empty and unexplored ones await. The discovery writer hopes to make quick business of them, editing them in rapid succession. 

Few things are worse than coming across a chapter and finding that something unnamed is missing. A chapter that feels incomplete can drive the discovery writer to madness. 

For you see, we cannot simply craft good chapters. We unravel them, unearth them from some unknown place. Thus, at times, no amount of skill or experience can capture a thing that does not want to be found out so easily. 

After all, the discovery writer rarely discovers the same way twice, and thus, knew methods of discovery need constantly be found. 

The constricted playing field of an incomplete chapter soon starts to feel like a prison when there is so little room for new things to be stirred. 

 

 

Another writer once said that the first draft of a book is like shoveling sand into a box so that you can build sand castles later.

But being a discovery writer means getting carried away sometimes, and, most of the time, the first draft looks more like a box of sand with half constructed castles left abandoned.

We are much too playful a lot to be expected merely to shovel, and when an exciting idea comes to us, we do not like to wait before the fun can begin, and so, we build fractional castles in the pits we find. If we get bored we simply tell ourselves we will be back later to complete them, and so, we leave them behind, at least, for a time.  

 

So, the discovery writer will inevitably continue on with the brief thought that the castle was almost done anyway and that it shouldn't take too much work later to complete it. 

We can all imagine what happens next: time passes, the writer has many adventures and eventually returns, finding to their dismay that the castle does not look nearly as complete as they remember. 

 

 

 

There are so many things to consider when writing a book. It is easily to forget to note them all. Naturally, there are some things that you do not discover until the second time you pass through. Some things aren't noticed until one has spent a great deal of time speculating and possibly obsessing over a chapter, feeling a bit like a half baked detective who knows in their bones that some detail is being missed but can't quite make out what it is. 

We know still that we have been here. We have vague memories of the fun we had. We do not, however, know what has changed. Is it our perception or the creation that has been altered and left unsatisfied? 

More often than not, once the thing which has so long evaded you is discovered it will be so jarringly obvious you will not be able to think of anything else. Sometimes it is a quick fix of the narrative, a thread with a unintentional loop straightened out or line with a small rift that needs mending. But, sometimes, and that is to say this particular time to which I am referring, one finds oneself inside a small void. 

 

I myself recently came across one. 

I must say, I thought it suspicious when, pausing inside a chapter near the end of Part One, I found that I had carelessly left a whole room utterly devoid. Not a line of description was in it. 

I knew that there was something missing. But how, I wondered, could one misplace an entire room, especially when that room is at the top of a tower? 

 

Now, this would be little to fret over under normal circumstances. The details of a setting are something I do not tend to until I've come through at least twice. But I have been here in this chapter (and thus, in this chamber) at least four times now, and never had I noted the gaping hole that was this rather large, rather baffling space. It utterly escaped my attention, and so, it immediately peaked my interest.

 

The size of it was one thing to consider, for I knew it be a colossal space. I had discussed the view from its windows and drawn the reader's attention to its rising form on more than one occasion. But the inside, I realized, was otherwise a mystery. 

 

I admit, the discovery put an abrupt halt in my progress, and even now, weeks later, I am still here, lost in this empty room, trying to decipher what it means.

 

It is a different kind of discovery I am experiencing now, for in my book I have found a narrative gap in the form of a large room, which, beyond its vastness of size, is much too mysterious and strange to not also have some secret vastness within the plot. 

What ever I fill it with, I know it cannot alter the plot too consequentially; cannot even stray into the chapters surrounding which were completed long ago; it cannot do much but be, and add; cast shadows into the narrative and give flickers of the story.

What else could be stashed away into secret chambers where characters don't so much as utter a line? What else but secrets of the plot?

So, as I shift through its contents and study its walls, I see shadows and secrets unfold. 

I know I have seen these shadows before, in my musings and vague designs; I have plotted these schemes; I wrote these secrets into private notebooks once, and so, it is not their existence that surprises me.

I did not, however, expect to find them here. For the life of me, I cannot remember stashing them all away up in this tower, in this room which, day by day, becomes less empty, but no less puzzling.

That is, perhaps the most perplexing part of it all: for, if I didn't stuff them in this chamber, who did?

 

 

The Wordless Writer's Worthless Hours

A writer walks across a field and suddenly a flash of lightening strikes them: I want to write is the only thing that remains in their mind after the shock fades. 

Their spine tingles a little with the electric snap, and their neck feels stiff. No one else around them seems to feel it. No one else seems to notice that they have come to an abrupt halt midfield. But there it is, clear as day, astounding as the clear sky above: I want to write. 

 

They leave the field, not caring which it is; soccer, football, or wheat. They leave the field, and they drive home. 

The shock seems to be the only thing that matters. They can feel it flowing through their veins, pulsating in the back of their skull. Word, words, words, they course through the awakened writer; their brain, their hands, their heart. 

Every word the world is wrapped in is suddenly at their disposal. 

 

Word. Words. Words. They flicker on their laptop's screen; writing, then erasing.

After a while their hands no longer shake. After a while their eyes become tired. Their spine aches from sitting hunched in the kitchen chair. Soon their hands start to tremble; the writer probably hasn't eaten since noon. 

They eat a quick amount of nothing. It doesn't matter what goes in their body, unless its books to fill their mind or vocabulary snacks to sink their teeth into. They browse dictionaries or an online thesaurus, glowing on their face like a fridge, searching it for something to fill themselves with.

 

Their eyes look back at the page. There is nothing on it for them to read.

The darker it gets, the brighter their screen seems to glow; words fizzle and flounder, unattainably there in the bright white page. They burn like on the sun's scorching surface. The writer blots them out as they try to grasp at the vapor before the words sizzle away and all that's left is water marks, like their dusty laptop screen.

Probably the writer will not write anything that matters that night. Their brain is tired and clumsy, and their heart is on repeat. (I want to write, it says. I know, the writer whispers.) 

 

After hours of typing and trying, they grab their laptop, and they drive back to the field. 

There, in the cold, in the same spot where the need to write struck them, the writer sits under the stars and lets their laptop glow on their face. 

The people are gone. It is only the writer and the stars now, the writer and the stars and a gaping desire within them to write something down. 

But, after hours of trying, the writer realizes that there is nothing to say. So, they close their screen just to open it again. The light of their laptop pulsates in their tired eyes, pouring its white vacancy into them. 

They realize that they are no longer looking at the screen. It is more like it is looking at them, trying to figure them out, trying to decide why they stay so long when they have nothing to say. 

 

The glow fills the writer through their pupils, like the morning sun on white sheets; it fills the writer up and smooths them out, softening all their crinkles, every wrinkle, every fold. 

 

The white page peers at them. 

 

I want to write, the writer says. 

 

Only after the screen closes its eyes and goes to sleep does the writer at last go to bed, thinking as they fall asleep about how much they'd rather be writing, and how much they might say.

The desire to write doesn't always come with the words. But the yearning makes it ache sometimes. It drains out your hours and your sleep; it makes you forget to eat sometimes. The writer spends these worthless hours writing worthless things. Words, words, words sometimes lead to pages. But there is only one thing of value on the laptops tattooed face on nights like these: Words, paragraphs, pages, filled with every word the world is wrapped in; all new ways to say with the attainable alphabet how much the writer wants to write.

 

So, as the sleepy writer slumbers, the heat fades from the tired laptop, and the books on the shelves whisper in their sleep, like distant owls in the night. The cat snores softly. 

The desire doesn't sleep, though. It is the first thing on their mind when they awake. 

I myself have spent endless hours in that field, searching for the words like a lost wifi connection and looking out for lightning, hoping that the flash will strike, and I'll be able to write at last. 

The Night Before Halloween

Writing Horror on Halloween

 

It was the night before Halloween on which I sat up late, editing a scene which I'd written many moons ago. 

It seemed to get dark earlier that night, and the only thing that was to be seen in the windows was the reflections of the candles I had burning within. 

 

 

Ironically, I wrote about the darkness too. In the scene in which I dwelt that night, there was no light to see by. But, if there is not sight to write about, the writer's pen takes up other senses. The touchless dark has no surfaces or scents. But sounds it has aplenty; sounds to make the imagination go wild, conceiving apparitions, fabricating frightful fancies. I forced them all onto the poor soul who had wandered into the pitch darkness of my scene. 

 

I paused. 

It's dangerous to live this way, I thought, to be so immersed in the page before you that you do not see what goes on around. Anything could happen when the writer is so engrossed in the fictional; anything at all. 

People might be peering into their windows; a cat might creep by through the flickering shadows; a raven may call on the tree just outside. 

Would the writer notice?

Probably not. 

 

Its dangerous to live this way, to take up one's laptop and sit in a chapter all night, neither seeing nor hearing what goes on behind you, or underneath your chair. 

Better not look, that's what I say. It'll only distract you. It'll only give you a fright. 

 

And what goes on in the night is better left up to the imagination. 

To the Character I Had Killed Off

Dear Deceased Character,

 

I don't know why I had you killed off. Perhaps your time was simply over. Perhaps I was simply bored. 

I admit, you bothered me a little. Your practices disturbed me. I think the story will be better off without you, if somewhat less interesting. 

I must also confess that I killed you off on a whim. I guess you bothered me more than I thought you did. If it helps, you were probably going to die sooner or later. I think that much we both knew. You were a frail creature, and I never liked you. 

You were so pesky, such a persistent nuisance to me and to others. I don't think the reader will miss you. In fact, I think they'll feel a lot better now that you're gone. Even if other things continue to go wrong, they'll have that solace.  

 

Even though you're dead, you're vivid to me still. Your face is one I see clearly. Where other's are sometimes blurry, your face shines through. 

Don't worry, I won't give you away. I won't spoil your ending; won't go so far as to describe the features of your face and deem you recognizable. Who knows who might read these words once I post them on the internet. But what can I say, you were fun to write about; you and your vile ways and your vile, vivid face. 

Now you're gone without a trace. Left only in my mind. The images will get old soon enough, now that I won't be writing about you anymore.

As of yet, no one else knows that you're dead. No one but my most trusted advisor who said with a smile that your death scene was one of the best I'd ever written.

What can I say, dear Deceased Character, killed by a the writer's whim: you were fun to write about, that much I've admitted. 

But the truth is, killing you off was more fun still. The second I thought of your demise, I was committed, and the plot permitted it just as well. 

And so, I thought, I might as well do it. As they say, all's well that ends well. 

And you know, I think you ended well, ended in good glorious drama. And because all's well that ends well, you've become better for it; become more sufferable now that you've ended, more manageable, really. 

I like you better now that you're dead.

 

And if I write a flash-back, well, all I can say is that I hope you're not in it; I pray the plot will not permit it.

May we never meet again,

                                             

Writing in the Rain

Everyone has got their muse. Mine just happens to be the rain. 

 

 

 

I don't know how this really started. I just know that one day I convinced myself that all the best things I'd ever written happened on rainy days. 

Over time, I have come to rely on it for that; that when the rain comes, the scene will get written, the chapter completed, writer's-block beaten. 

 

Occasionally something good will come to me on a sunny day, but it takes a dedicated kind of focus and a calmness of the mind to bring me there. That being said, all my sunny-day-scenes tend to feel more peaceful, sometimes sad. Rarely are they of the same kind of impact or vitality as the things I write when it rains. 

 

Writing in the rain has its upsides and its downsides. It's both erratic, and reliable. 

When it doesn't rain for weeks on end, I feel as desperate for it as the earth around me. I feel parched, dried up in my creativity, like the thirsty plant shrivels. 

And yet, when the clouds come over me, I know that today I may write again. It always rains eventually, and when the drought ends, so does my writer's block. 

 

Over the years, the metaphor has only become more perfect. How sporadic rain can be. Just like inspiration, it sometimes comes when you least expect it, or don't want it at all; when you have prior engagements and you have to chose to either duck-out and feel guilty for missing life, or miss out and feel regret for the words that might have been written. Inspiration waits for no one. And the storms don't plan their schedule around me.

And so, I plan around it, when I can. I look at the weather forecast and make excuses on days when I want to slip away; do nothing but listen to the tap of the rain on my window and the click of my quick fingers typing, nothing but cross empty pages, showering them with curled letters, little dotted words that drizzle and then drench into paragraphs.

Ah, yes: the rain, it comes like a river. 

But then there was a day this summer when it rained so much, buckets filled and spewed over, saplings drowned, every dirty window for miles was washed clean, and all I could do was sit and look, and watch the rain fall. I don't think I wrote more than a page that day. 

 

 

 

 

I don't know what the lesson here is, other than that maybe there's a balance to everything. Just like words don't always come when it rains; just like how, a few weeks after that rainy day on which nothing was written, I wrote the best scene I'd written all summer on a hot humid day; in the same way that long busy winters always give way to rich and rain-full summers in which so much is written, writing comes with ups and downs. 

Rain and sun, inspiration, depression. Sometimes it rains, and words fall like a waterfall. Sometimes there are other things to do, like to sit and simply watch the rain fall. 

 

When it comes down to it, I'm a writer on rainy days and on sunny ones; I'm a writer in winter, and in summer, whether I'm writing or not. 

For all of these things are part of it, you write, and you live, and then sometimes you write some more. And occasionally, all it takes to be a writer is to sit and listen to the rain fall and let your keyboard be still.

 

 

 

Looking for a Protagonist

:A Letter to Protagonist I Once Misplaced

 

Seeing as I've come to a new pit-stop in my writing, I thought I'd share this entry from one of my private notebooks, written on January 20th of last year.

Finding my main protagonist has been a longtime coming. In all the side-treks I had to take on the journey to get where I am now, I often wondered if I would ever get to him. At times it seemed he was reluctant to enter the story; at others, it seemed I was merely reluctant to find him.

January 20, 2019

Something has to change before I find you.

Something is not quite right yet or I'd have found you already. I need to grow as a person and as a writer before I can do you justice; before I can do myself justice by you.

You are my main character, after all. You will be my most real creation. And yet, you will also be the hardest to obtain, the hardest to keep around, the most difficult to make tangible in your paper-existence. You will be a long time coming; a long time in the making.

I created you out of pain, and disappointment, out of addiction, and regret, and I cannot do you wrong.

You could be the most real thing that I will ever write. Perhaps. If not to others, then to me.

Perhaps that is why I write your name in the gentle whisper of a pencil, so easy to erase. Perhaps that is why I read it like a secret, cross it out when I find it on lost pages. I keep you locked within my mind, turning, lingering, still in the unwritten pages, or rather, in a draft left unedited, lost in the version of a story I am no longer working on.

It is only when I write your name I know that you're still there waiting on the edge of a story that is not yet ready for you.

I am getting my story ready for you. Till now, you have been like a ghost, a half-remembered name, written, but unspoken.

I have searched the pages for you, knowing that a word had the power to pull you forth from beyond the fringes of a paper too often unfolded. I could tug at you with my words, pull you out, pull you in. But nothing good ever happens without patience, without time.

Looking for you has been a journey in itself. Finding you again will be a more challenging and exciting journey still.

Running Away with Fictional People: Writing Advice to Take you Off the Beaten Path

What to do When your Characters Don't Want What you Want

I read a quote once that stuck with me. I cannot for the life of me trace it, but this is the line as best as I remember it.

"I can't stop reading. The characters might do something without me."

This little line never fails to make me smile, for it perfectly captures the excitement of reading a good character driven story; of running off with fictional friends; of having grand adventures with a band of fanciful troublemakers, painting fences, or seeking treasures; sleeping in hay-stacks with wandering orphans; chasing characters who chase rabbits down holes, or crawling after them through little doors. In these situations, I don't mind feeling like the quiet friend in the bunch. In fact, there is never a better time to be the quiet friend, because everyone knows that the reader is the protagonist's closest and most reliable friend, usually being the one that follows the protagonist most closely, (till the pages end, that is).

But there's more to this simple line, where ever it comes from. It doesn't just capture the thrill of being a reader. It also encapsulates something I believe firmly about writing. In short, it suggests that characters can all too easily get away from us, go on without us, and undergo adventures or shenanigans long after the book is closed, the lights out, and the reader sleeping. 

 

Yet, while this idea is a thrill to the reader, it can keep a writer up at night. Indeed, the writer is in much closer association with the character than the reader that will later come to know them. For the writer, it can feel a bit as if the character is asking them if they can come out to play, or rather, pestering them with questions in the hope that the writer can explain their existence. Why did I have to do that? Why are we going there? What's the point of all this? Where is this story going? –These are the types of questions I imagine the character might be asking. But, of course, it isn't the character that is asking these things at all, but I, myself, the writer, the one spinning the character into their paper existence. Furthermore, the reason I am asking myself these questions is likely because I doubt the character's existence; doubt that they are in fact believable; that their actions make sense; or that they will feel real enough to the reader. It is a constant worry for any writer that their characters don't feel convincing enough, and frankly, it would be a great insult to hear that they were not.

I am fond of my characters, as any writer is. And I have come to be rather fond of these late night conversations with my characters, even if they often result in sleepless nights, in many ons and offs of the nightlight, and many quick scribbled notes, brief lines of dialog or descriptions of body language I do not want to forget in my sleep. I have come to enjoy these nights for the simple fact that I rarely get such one on one time with my characters; times in which I remove myself from the voice my narrator speaks in and start thinking in my own; start looking at my creation from the perspective of me, the life that created it. And, ironically, it is these late nights in which my characters keep me awake with the doubt that they are not real enough that my characters seem most alive to me.

I can honestly say that my wrestling with my characters does not go beyond these nights, and when the words and the rain comes, my characters take over the page. It is then that I feel a thrill like no venture as a reader as ever given me, for nothing will ever be quite as risky and as wonderful as setting a character free on the page and letting them do just what they want.

I have often heard the writely advice that a writer should control their characters, and while I understand the reasoning behind this, I cannot say that I agree.

In writing about fictional people (if that is something you have ever done, you will know what I mean), you will often find that your characters will try to get away from you. "My characters don't want to do what I want them to do," goes the complaint.

To this the sensible writer will say something like "What do you mean, they don't want? You created them, didn't you? Your characters will want what you want them to want." This is fine advice, over all.

It is, in fact, a logical argument. But the argumentative side of whether you should wrestle with your characters by editing out the parts of them that defy you and your vision for the plot is beside the point. What you should really ask yourself is this: What kind of story are you really writing? Are you writing about people, or about situations; about personality, or plot? If your characters aren't enacting the plot the way you imagined they would, maybe there's a reason for that. Maybe you should go with it. It is the character driven plot, with all its curious children and never-yielding tricksters that makes readers feel like they're adventuring with a friend, as the quote above suggested. Readers, after all, love to read about people, about fictional personalities, both grand and wonderfully simple (think of any Hobbit you ever met). When a character makes decisions which have been forced onto them by the writer, the reader can always tell because the reader is themselves a person; and when a heart tugs at you or a curiosity probes your mind we can rarely ignore it.

Ultimately, there is a very simple reason for this. We humans, while still capable of intense logic, are at the core of our being creatures of wants, of dreams, of desires. That's why history, both real and mythological, is full of people falling prone to the illogical sides of themselves; making mistakes because of it; wheeling in mysteriously gifted horses through our gates; ringing bells to awake long-sleeping witches; eating forbidden fruits; kissing sorceresses; crawling over walls to break into locked-up keeps. Characters, like people, make irrational decisions. And while I am not arguing that you should allow irrationality to rule the plot, I believe nonetheless, and very firmly, that a wonderful and wild story is created when we allow our characters to make these decisions, even if they are irrational or inconvenient to the narrator.

Consider, for example, Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. This is undoubtedly one of the most famous fictional epics of all time, and it was written because a man (namely, Tolkien) followed a Hobbit out of the Shire totally unknowing what he would find outside its borders. I myself am convinced that if Tolkien hadn't set his protagonist free from his outline and the plot's expectations Frodo would still be named Bingo and the world would have lost one of its biggest fictional adventures ever put to the page.

Maybe my advice to you is simply to write like Tolkien. Because, although the edits later on might be extensive, I believe the most unpredictable and unexpected stories occur when not even the writer can foresee exactly what lies ahead. Yes, this may be risky, maybe it's even dangerous. But you can't have adventure without a little danger. And, if you're one of those writers who writes because they first loved to read, then write like you love to read. Don't just take a reader on a journey. Go on a journey yourself. Even if you know the destination, or plan to make a few stops along the way, at least be daring enough to be curious, to run off from the charted course, to explore un-plotted territory.

What it comes down to is this: If your characters are trying to run away from you, maybe you should let them. You never know where they might take you. After all, what more could a writer want than to write about characters that actually have wants of their own.

Editing Madness

I've been back home for a while now, but between work and late night writing/editing I haven't gotten to updating my blog. 
But I thought tonight would be the perfect time.

Tomorrow is a big day because tomorrow is the day I intend to finish editing part one of my book.

The editing process has been slow and at times downright idle. But one thing has kept me going through all this; through all the inconveniences and the frustrations; through all the times when I felt like life was against me and it just didn't work. 

I come home at the end of the day and I wish I could just crash. I wish I could go to bed, or read a book, or waste away in front of the T.V. 

It's so much easier to feel sorry for myself and make excuses. But then I realized something: This is my purpose. It doesn't matter if it's inconvenient or hard. It doesn't matter if I have to stay up late night after night or write and rewrite scenes till I go mad. It doesn't matter, because in the end, all this, all the late nights and the long days, are just a means to an end. 

Because this, all that I'm working for, this is gonna be so worth it!

Anyhow, it's getting late, and I have a big day in front of me.
Goodnight.