Musing on Writing

Sometimes I wonder if other writers have organized methods of writing, and whether they write one book at a time, and how they know when they’ve come to the end, and how they feel about exposing themselves in their words. Right now I’m looking at a stack of proof pages three inches high (Secret of the Shroud). And I’ve been working day and night for weeks on a revision of Dancing on Glass, due out next July. And in order to work on these two books, I’ve set aside the sequal to Dancing On Glass and that story’s just humming away in my brain, wanting, wanting to get out and onto the page.

But I’ve never been able to set a rational schedule for writing. For every book except Faith On Trial, which was non-fiction, I’ve started by writing a first draft which is really stream-of-consciousness straight through from beginning to end, writing over a period of about a week and knowing that no one will ever see it but me. Faith On Trial was different because it was non-fiction. With that book the in-depth research gave more structure to the first manuscript. I was setting out to test a thesis. But ficton is wild. A story sets its own rules. 

Here’s a strange thing though. You’d think the first draft (fiction) would be the most honest one. And yet, that’s not what happens in my writing. I usually have a vague idea of the plot in the first draft. I usually also have a good idea of the beginning and the ending of the story, and a sense of the characters that will carry it along. So I’ve found that in the first draft, my main focus is the plot. Only after I’ve gotten the first try down on paper do I begin to shape the story and really dig into the characters. And that’s when the trouble starts. Because your characters expose you to the world.

If you look at my blogs under ‘Behind the Mirror’ you’ll see what I mean. There, my characters speak out. Each one has such a different voice, a different style, perspective, view of life. And each one has bits and pieces of you–the writer–in them, for better or worse. I find that each time I rewrite a story more truth emerges. It’s almost like painting–you start with a blank canvas. Sketch in the lines. Fill in color, then shade, enhance. Layer by layer you add depth to the picture. Rewrites work the same way. I think rewrites are the key to a strong plot and interesting characters.

But the deeper you go with a story, the more you tell about yourself. Sure as anything your flaws come out in your characters. And your philosophy of life, your faith (or lack of faith), your politics, your questions and fears and joys and idiotic mistakes–they’re all out laid out with no place to hide. In writing The Moon in the Mango Tree this was a big problem for me because the heroine was my grandmother who I adored and I wanted to get everything right. I wrote from my heart. The biggest struggle was trying to show the reader who she was, without infusing her with my own flaws. And at the same time, I had to be honest about her own shortcomings and mistakes when the temptation was to gloss over them.

Rewrites cause another problem–knowing when to quit. Which is what started me on this tangent in the first place. I have a deadline for Dancing On Glass and it’s looming. Deadlines are stressful because every time I read the ‘final’ … ‘this is the last draft’…draft, I find something wrong, or something more I want to say. For me, this could go on through infinity. So pretty soon I’ll turn in the ‘final, final draft’ and just hope and pray that I got it right. And hope that you’ll think so too.