Writing Rule Questioned

Bootleggers Caught After Car Chase from Art.Com

If you attend a Q&A with an author - famous or not - inevitably an audience member will ask how the author finished her book. The author will answer along the lines of: butt in chair, fingers on keyboard; or, (my favorite) you can't fix a blank page.

It's all great advice but here's the rub: sometimes you gotta get your butt off the chair and leave the keyboard for a pen and notebook and go out into the world. A reporter can't write a story from her desk. My best interviews almost always happen face-to-face because you can hear the inflection of the person's voice, you can see it in their face and the way they move their body. And when they can see you, typically they'll open more than they would on the phone or God forbid, email.

I finished my NaNoMo book Friday, November 14th at 250-odd pages. (Clearly more work needs to be done to whip it into readable material.) One of the biggest challenges of writing a story, especially one that takes place in 1926, is experiencing it as much as possible. I've jotted down notes from conversations with my grandma, listened to oral histories in library archives, studied maps and read through newspapers. My imagination can only fill in so holes.

One of the best times I had writing the book was a sequence when my heroine smuggles alcohol across the Mexico border. But I could feel myself hesitating when describing the car she was in. I've never riden in a 1920's era car much less sat in one so when I read about the Automobile Driving Museum in El Segundo - where on Sundays you can ride around in a historic car - I realized that manna comes in different forms from heaven.

At this museum you can sit in a 1937 Piece-Arrow towncar and imagine you're Jean Harlow driving down from the Holmby Hills to work at MGM Studios. Or, you can sit behind the wheel of a Ford Model A and realize how much we take for granted with today's computerized, air-bagged, power-steered cars.

When you're stuck in the middle of your book, or you're thinking of revisions to a finished manuscript, I recommend that you get yourself out into the sun (it won't hurt, I promise) and experience what you can of your characters' lives. It works for me.

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!

When You Think You Know Everything

"Ask Newmann, He Knows" from Art.com

This happened to me when I wrote In Between Men ... I went through two full drafts and with each draft something died inside me when I hit Act II. But I was persistent back then and thought I could force the story to go exactly the way I wanted it to. Finally, I realized two things: stories must change and evolve (for me, anyway) and Act II is the place where bad ideas go to die.

Last week, the same thing happened with The Guy Upstairs. I finished the first draft, spent a lot of time fleshing out a revision plan and then got to work. I was cruising along through Act I, but with that dragging feeling in my gut that I ignored because I was convinced that I had the story down. But as I neared Act II, the threads unraveled and it became more and more apparent that the story wasn't working. Sure enough, it died at page 100.

But I'm glad it happened now as opposed at the end of a tepid second draft. With In Between Men, I had to go back into a third draft where I discovered that I wasn't telling the right story. (Originally, it was about Isa fighting for custody of her son.) The story that needed to be told was about a woman who falls victim to her own recklessness and yet, without that recklessness she would never have changed her life. This discovery made the writing more difficult, not to mention longer.

When The Guy Upstairs ran aground, I realized that I had better do a writer's version of stop, drop and roll. I stopped writing and went outside to work on my garden (we planted four types of tomatoes, squash and herbs). Within two hours of refusing to think about the book, I realized what The Guy Upstairs is really about. But I wouldn't take notes for two days because the other thing I've learned is that once you start writing it down, the committee upstairs starts hacking away at your babies.

I've been writing the new story since Sunday and the idea has been gaining momentum. The committee grumbles when I sit down to write (which it always does), but my gut tingles with excitement and the heroine's voice becomes much more distinct and alive. I've written about twenty pages of new material and I think this is it.

Or, I'm full of it and still have no idea what the hell I'm doing.

I guess I'll know for certain when I reach page 100.