Process Archives - Page 10 of 13

Total Control

August 16, 2012 By Kerry Gans 6 Comments

Have you ever thought you were totally in control of something, only to find out you weren’t? I had that happen recently. I thought I had absolutely everything I needed for a meeting at my daughter’s school, only to find I didn’t have the proper immunization records, the registration form they had mailed me, AND that her birth certificate had disappeared.

Sometimes the same thing happens in my manuscripts. I am a partial-pantser (writing friend Marie Lamba calls us “thongers” but that’s just not an image I want burned in my brain), so there’s plenty of space in my manuscripts to go off the rails. Reading over the rough draft, I find things like neglected plot clues, inadvertently changed place names, and minor characters left in the bathroom from chapter 2 until the end of the book.

So what to do when things firmly in hand spiral out of control? The only effective way I’ve found to deal with this is to concentrate on fixing one thing at a time. I called my toddler’s pediatrician and got her records, picked up another registration form at the meeting, and still haven’t found the birth certificate, but I can pick up another copy from the vital records office.

As far as mistakes in the manuscript, the same rule applies: tackle one thing at a time. I always go from big picture to nit-picky because changing big picture items will inevitably change the smaller things. Why waste time fixing commas in sentences you might cut out altogether?

Sometimes I can’t have everything as under control as I’d like. (This is a lesson I am learning over and over as the mom of a toddler.) All I can do is control what I can, not beat myself up for what I can’t, and fix what needs fixing.

Total control is impossible.

Getting to the goal by tackling one issue at a time is not.

Rebooting the Writer’s Brain

August 2, 2012 By Kerry Gans 2 Comments

Every writer has a distinct way of “rebooting” after they finish a long project. Short projects, or going back and forth between several projects at one time is one thing, but being completely immersed in a project and then suddenly having it finished is a different mental process. Some writers like to dive right into the next project; some prefer to take a little time off. Everyone has a unique spin on what recharges their creative brain.

As for me, for the first few hours after a project is finished, I find myself at loose ends, almost lost mentally. I’ll find a few spare moments and then have no idea what to do with the time since my project is done. Solitaire sees a lot of me in those first few hours!

Once the fuzzy-headed period passes, though, I go on an organization spree. I’ve just spent a month intensely editing my middle grade manuscript, and finally finished. Like usual, when I get deep into a project, I let everything else go except what is necessary. I had piles on my desk, non-writing household projects that have backed up, and EastEnders TV shows clogging up the DVR.

So far I’ve cleared my desk piles, finished a non-writing project and a half (and added a few more), and have checked a score of other items off the never-ending To-Do List. I haven’t gotten to the DVR yet—mostly because I’m watching the Olympics instead.

I find that taking a few days to catch up and organize clears my brain. It resets the switches so I can come to my next project focused and ready to roll. Not having all those loose ends takes the pressure off so I can have some fun with words.

How do you refocus after a long or intense project? What rituals work for you?

Writer’s Guilt

June 21, 2012 By Kerry Gans 5 Comments

I stole something last week.

Time.

Time to work on my own writing.

I have been ready to dive into my major revision on my MG novel for weeks now, and have been frustrated at every turn. Nothing tragic happened, no sicknesses to contend with, just busy with the 100 things on my To-Do list, and the 50 other things that popped up that weren’t even on the list. So finally, I said to myself, “That’s it. Today and tomorrow everyone else’s stuff can wait, and I am working on mine.”

And I did.

I flew through nearly a third of the “new rough” draft. Exhilarating! I confided to a writing pal that I had done this, and she said, “You say that as if you did something naughty – heck, it’s your work!”

Her comment got me thinking: Why do I always feel guilty when I put myself first?

I tend to take on too much because my brain still lives in the time before toddler. Before toddler, I really could do it all, never dropping any balls. Now balls are dropping, rolling away, and hiding under the sofa next to the dust groundhogs (they’re too big to be bunnies). The balls I tend to drop first are the ones that apply to me – my writing, my sleep, my free time. Not because I’m an incredibly selfless individual, but because they are the easiest to deal with dropping. No one is affected by the dropping except me.

I also take on too much because there’s so much I WANT to do. Do I want to read a friend’s manuscript? YES! Do I want to edit someone’s work? YES! Do I want to be actively involved in my daughter’s MOMS Club? YES! Do I want to be part of wonderful group blog? YES! Do I want to spend time with my husband? YES! Do I want to spend time with my daughter? YES! Do I want to clean the house? Well, not so much, but you get the point.

So many interesting and exciting things to do, it’s hard to say no! So I usually don’t. And I usually get them all done. But look at what’s not on that list above: my own writing. Do I want to get my own writing done? YES…but…but… There’s always a “but.”

Writer’s guilt.

As if taking the time to write is “naughty” or selfish. As if I have internalized the common notion that what we do isn’t “real.” That it isn’t “work” if I’m not getting paid.

Well, I don’t get paid to be a stay-at-home-mom, either, and that certainly is real work! So I think I will work harder at giving myself permission to write. Permission to put my work first.

Because it is work.

And it is real.

Do you suffer from writer’s guilt? How do you cope?

The Horror! The Horror!: Write Your Fears Away

June 7, 2012 By Kerry Gans 4 Comments

I am not a horror fan. Even in the absence of gore and blood (which will cause nausea in no time), I have never been able to deal with the horror genre. In a discussion in a workshop last month, I finally realized why I don’t like horror – and it isn’t because I’m scared.

As long-time readers know, I have an anxiety disorder. Aha! you say. So you are scared!

Not really. It’s not the fright that gets to me, it is the disturbing images/thoughts that horror deals in so deeply. Disturbing images stay with me far longer than with the average person—sometimes to the point of obsession. I can get trapped in a downward spiral of darkness that takes me to places I really shouldn’t go. It’s not healthy for me, and it’s very hard to break out once the spiral begins. Not only can it lead to disabling physical panic attacks, but it affects my mental state to the point where my daily activities are disrupted.

So that’s why I don’t read horror.

That said, I actually wrote a horror story last week.

Jonathan Maberry, head of our Advanced Novel workshop, had our class brainstorming outside our usual genres in the last class. One of the things he asked was, “What scares you the most?”

My answer was, of course, something happening to my child.

And that opened the floodgates in my head.

Terrifying visions of things that could happen to my toddler are nothing new for me. I shove them away quite often. They pop unbidden into my head, and I must use my coping mechanisms to turn them off and keep them at bay. Even though I know most of them are extreme and unlikely to happen, the terror is there in my brain. So I have no need to go there intentionally.

Opening that box in my brain even a little bit, one scenario leapt fully-formed into my imagination. I tried to put it back in the box but it evaded me, growing stronger during the long ride home from class. By the time I pulled into my driveway, I was on the verge of an all-out panic attack.

Over the next few days, I wrestled with that scenario, but whenever I closed my eyes it would jump up and laugh at me. My brain could not let it go. So I did the only thing I could do.

I wrote the thing down.

In an hour and a half, I knocked out a 2,000 word rough draft. I poured that horrendous vision out of my head and onto the page, and sent it off to a friend of mine (who was so scared by it, I am surprised she is still speaking to me.)

And, finally, the feedback loop in my head stopped, and the images went away.

I’ll go back and polish it up, and maybe see if I can get it out to the public anywhere, but I can tell you right now any horror stories that comes out of my pen will be few and far between. I can’t live in that place in my head—not if I want to have a healthy life.

So, do you love horror or hate it?

Brainstorming: Inspiring odd connections

May 31, 2012 By Kerry Gans 7 Comments

I have never been one for brainstorming—just sitting down and pouring out ideas and random thoughts and then looking back to see what interesting connections my brain made. I don’t know why I haven’t done more of this in my writing life. I guess it doesn’t feel natural to me. It was never part of my writing process.

Not to say I have not done unconscious brainstorming. All writers do, because our brains never stop chewing over the details of the story we are working on. Once, while working on a novel, I struggled to explain why a character was acting the way she was. Suddenly, I said, “Well, of course, it’s because she’s his daughter.” Of course, she hadn’t been his daughter until that very second—or had she? Had my brain always known that, and it had only just then come to the surface? Looking back at the WIP, certainly all the hints and details were there to support her “new” parentage.

So I do appreciate the value of brainstorming, even though it is not something I find I can do well on my own. While I do not brainstorm alone, I love to brainstorm in a group or with another writer. My own ideas usually come at a slower pace, but when I have someone else to toss ideas at me willy-nilly my mind leaps to connect all the ideas. New ideas spring to my brain much faster than when I try to brainstorm on my own, and the conflation of two seemingly unconnectable ideas is a challenge I love to conquer.

The way the brain works is absolutely amazing. It fits seemingly random ideas and data together and forms flashes of brilliance, ideas that never seemed possible. I am currently reading Isaac Asimov’s short story Sucker Bait, where they have people called Mnemonics who are trained from childhood to remember everything, to gather any and all data they come across, with the idea that the human brain can and will make connections between data when computers will not–because no sane person would ever ask the computer to pair those particular pieces of data. This is what brainstorming does.

We did a brainstorming exercise in Jonathan Maberry’s Advanced Novel class last week, and my brain hurt afterward. Stretching my mind, breaking out of my comfort zones by thinking up ideas for genres I don’t usually write, and integrating numerous ideas from my fellow workshoppers exhilarated and exhausted me.

Of course, turning on the creativity spigot in class inevitably means my brain will be in overdrive my whole way home. I can’t just turn it off, and my 50-minute drive lends itself to a lot of thinking. This is why I continue to take this Advanced Novel class after all these years – the people stir my creativity, push me to go farther, higher, to be better than I was when I walked in the door.

It’s useful to know that brainstorming works for me in a collaborative setting. I get a thrill, a physical high, from bandying ideas about with people. It can be a tool I use when I need to break writer’s block.

And even better, fellow Author Chronicler Nancy Keim Comley and I are toying with the idea of writing a novel based on one of the ideas we brainstormed in class. We’re at the very start of the idea, and it may come to nothing, or may need to wait until other projects we’re working on are completed, but the energy generated by the brainstorming session will carry me through many hours of work—whether collaborative or alone.

Some people swear by brainstorming – how does it fit into your writing process?

Detours on the Writing Road

May 24, 2012 By Kerry Gans 4 Comments

I have to admit that for a creative type, I am pretty type-A about some things. In many ways I am highly routinized, and in some ways I’m just a touch obsessive-compulsive. I like to set goals and reach them in an orderly fashion. I like things to progress steadily, to be able to count on a schedule, to be able to move forward at a predictable pace.

Then I had a baby, and all that went out the window.

Now my toddler is two, and I have learned a lot about rolling with the flow in the past 2+ years. My daughter does not nap predictably. She usually sleeps well at night, but some nights (like last night) she was up from 3-5 AM. I don’t know why. So my “free time” and my state of exhaustion varies quite a bit.

Therefore, I can’t count on moving forward steadily on my writing. This has been an incredibly hard thing for me to deal with. Before my daughter, I could churn out words like nobody’s business. Now I struggle to get a few hundred a day. It is frustrating, and at times I am impatient and irritated as my type-A facet conflicts with my Mommy facet.

But on the whole, I have learned to be a little more laid back. Being more flexible does not mean I am not as driven as I’ve always been—it just means I’ve realized the drive will be longer than I planned. I also have learned to be more forgiving of myself when I don’t hit my goals. Partly because I have realized I often set unrealistic goals, and partly because sometimes there are simply things out of my control.

For instance, two weeks ago my daughter had vomitus eruptus. For a week. Then I got it. For a week. I did manage to get some work done, but I was nowhere near as productive as I normally am. Things like this happen when you’ve got a kid. You can’t plan for it, and you can only get through it as best you can. So instead of beating myself up for not getting as much done as I had hoped in the past two weeks, I can choose to look at how much I DID accomplish and be proud of that. (Thanks to writer pal Jerry Waxler for teaching me the value of perspective!)

Perhaps at this time in my writing career, a weekly goal would be more productive than a daily goal. With toddlers, the doctors say not to worry about how much they eat in a single day—because that can vary widely—but to look at the weekly consumption to make sure they are eating enough. So with my writing. My daily writing can vary widely in productivity, so making a weekly goal may suit me better. Certainly looking back over an entire week will leave me feeling more positive about my progress than some single days do!

As I try to plan how to reach my goals from my current position, I do so knowing that there will be detours along the way. I hope to face such detours with calm and with an open mind.

After all, the same thing that makes a detour scary is the thing that makes it exciting—you never know where you will end up or what you will find along the way.

Old Fashioned: Writing with Pen & Paper

May 17, 2012 By Kerry Gans 15 Comments

I used to write everything longhand. I still have copybooks filled with my young scribbling. But once I got to grad school, I found that between school and working full time, I had no time for the luxury of writing longhand and then typing it in. So I’ve switched to writing everything on the computer.

This year, I attended some writing sessions with Kathryn Craft. These sessions involved writing exercises. Because I don’t like lugging my laptop around, I elected to do this writing on paper. The funny thing was, I loved the experience of returning to paper.

There is something visceral in writing with pen and paper. I feel the words more intensely through my fingers. The smoothness of the paper is soothing. The pen pressing into the pulp lends the words a tangibility that the computer screen lacks. A permanence exists, too—no computer glitch will randomly erase your work!

The visual aspect of writing creates creative energy, too. Not only do the letters themselves have shapes that I am creating, I can deviate from the linear plane by writing in the margins, adding arrows, or writing sideways. This is akin to using another creative outlet such as painting or music to release writing creativity. I find that simple starting to write, even if I don’t have a clear idea where I’m headed, acts like doodling for me—and sometimes I will doodle as well, while I’m thinking.

I have found that writing on paper meshes better with the speed of my brain while doing writing exercises. Certainly, when in the writing flow state, typing is faster than writing. But when I am trying to come up with an idea, trying to create a scene or character on the spot, writing on paper is a good speed. I don’t get frustrated because my writing outpaces my ideas and leaves me staring at a blinking cursor on a blank line.

To my great surprise, I found the writing from these sessions to have a different tone from my usual writing. In many cases it was infused with a humor I struggle to find in my writing. I often felt that the writing was more powerful, even in its unedited state, than what I normally wrote. Perhaps this is a fallacy, perhaps it was because the writing was meant to be experimental and I felt less constrained, or perhaps there was a raw emotional connection facilitated by the physical connection of pen and brain.

I hope I can import this new depth, feel, and humor into my computer writing, but if I cannot, I know I can revert to the pen and paper. And whenever I am stuck, or struggling with a particular scene, I will try this simple change of medium and see what sparks in me.

Writing on pen and paper may seem old-fashioned, and certainly is no longer the norm, but it still has power and uses that should not be overlooked in our pixel-dominated lives. I look forward to incorporating it into my writing process and letting the ink flow!

Using the Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook

May 10, 2012 By Kerry Gans Leave a Comment

I’m currently about 2 revisions into one of my middle grade books. It’s about this time, when I know my characters and have worked out the kinks in my plot, that I turn to Donald Maass’ Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook. This is only the second time I have used it, and I am having a heck of a lot of fun with it!

The workbook forces me to look at my novel from different perspectives. It can help pinpoint problems I didn’t know you had, and point out my strengths as well. I thought I knew my characters well? Think again. Thought my plot was as strong as could be? Think again. Using the workbook is humbling, frustrating—and exciting!

It’s humbling because I find out how much about my novel I didn’t know. Because it shows me how much I have to learn about the craft of writing. I will admit that there are a few chapters where I simply do not know how to do what he is asking. I understand what he wants—I can clearly see it in the examples he uses. But I have no idea how to find appropriate moments in my own work, and even if I could locate them, I wouldn’t know how to do what he suggests. But I will learn.

Mostly, I find using the book exciting! It stirs the creative pot and sets it boiling. I start seeing the book with different eyes, and my brain begins making all sorts of new connections. I know immediately that most of the new ideas bubbling up are better than what I have, will strengthen what I have, and will elevate the end product.

So where’s the frustrating, you ask? I end up with SO MANY new ideas! Volume of ideas is not bad, mind you. It is precisely these new ideas that make using the book so exciting. The problem comes when I look at all the new ideas and contemplate putting them into practice. It’s not the doing that I find daunting—it’s finding the TIME for doing this major revision.

Like many writers, Time is a four-letter word for me. When I look at the amount of revising I will need to do on this book, I don’t see how I’m going to get it all done before my toddler graduates high school. I despair sometimes that I will be the first 90-year-old debut middle grade author in history.

But then I gather myself. I remind myself that even though I have 6 pages of typed notes and a copybook with even more hand written, all I need to do is focus on one change at a time. Do one thing at a time and eventually I will see the end of the road. I have done it before, I can do it now.

By cutting that daunting revision down to size, the despair lifts, and I am left with the excitement I started with. New ideas, new connections, new depth…

I can’t wait to dive in!

Do you use the Breakout Novel Workbook–or a similar book? Has it helped you?

The Fear of Writing Badly

April 19, 2012 By Kerry Gans 11 Comments

I have heard many writers say that part of writer’s block may be the subconscious fear of writing poorly. Of turning out dreck. And this is also the reason some people never start writing in the first place—if it’s not going to come out perfectly the first time, it’s too much work.

I can honestly say I have never been plagued by this particular writing demon (which is rather shocking given the plethora of anxieties I DO have). My key to freedom is twofold:

1) I cannot help but write poorly.
2) Anything I write can be fixed.

Number one is important because nothing we write will ever be perfect. There are some days the writing flows, but then there are the days when every word is a struggle and what comes out is utter blech. It is unavoidable that you will write poorly sometimes. Worrying about it is rather like worrying that the sun might come up in the morning. It’s going to happen no matter what you do.

And that’s okay.

Did you hear me? It’s okay to write crap. We all do it. And why is it okay? Because of statement number two: Anything I write can be fixed.

I am learning and growing as a writer all the time, but there are still things I need to work on. There are still facets of the writing craft I don’t fully understand. And much of my poor writing comes from these gaps in my continuing education. I make mistakes I don’t know I’m making, or even mistakes I know I am making but do not know how to fix.

Sometimes I learn what I need to know and can fix the poor writing myself. More often I need crit partners or editors to point out to me just what went wrong with the writing. By the time I have finished taking all of the feedback from my readers, crit partners, and editors and put it into practice, a wonderful thing occurs: My poor writing improves! And the more I work—the more I learn—the more it improves!

So don’t let fear of writing poorly hold you back. Write. Write well, write poorly, but just write. Because once the words are on the page, even the worst writing can be fixed. But if the words stay in your head, you can’t improve them. You can’t learn from them. You can’t transcend them.

Don’t fear bad writing—embrace it as a necessary step toward excellence.

Bad writing is never a failure—unless you don’t learn from it.

When Should You Care About Your Audience?

March 15, 2012 By Kerry Gans 2 Comments

I attended a workshop given by actor/author Keith Strunk. At one point, when describing how an actor decides what actions to use to convey his character appropriately, someone asked him, “Do you consider how your actions impact the audience at this point in the process?” Keith replied, “Absolutely not. To think about how you are impacting the audience at this stage would be death.”

This got me thinking about the writing process, and at which points the author should consider the audience. Because Keith is right—there are some points at which we cannot think about the impact we are having on the audience.

When we are writing the story, that first draft, caught up in the creative passion, bringing it to life, we cannot consider an outside influence like the audience. The story needs to speak for itself, we need to hear what it and the characters need to come alive. If we start considering the audience, we run a grave risk of forcing the story into directions it should not go, or creating puppet-characters that only do what we think they should do. We risk taking the vitality out of the story.

After that draft, when the revision starts, that is when the audience should enter our thoughts. Are the characters relatable to the audience we are targeting? Is the language and content appropriate for that audience? This is where how we impact the audience comes into play.

I also think that we need to consider our audience in the initial idea phase. If you primarily write middle grade and you come up with an idea, you need to consider 1) would/could this idea make an appropriate MG story? and if not 2) do I want to write a story for a new audience and try and break into a new market? I do not think at this point you should try an shoehorn a non-MG idea into an MG idea, since then you end up with the problems mentioned above. But I do think you need to know before you start who your audience would be for this book. That way, if you do not want to break into a new market, you don’t waste your time on a book that you can’t sell to the market where you are already established.

To write your absolute best story, you need to listen to the story—not worry about your audience. So when you sit down to write, just write the story as it needs to be told. Listen to your characters. Be bold and explore.

Chances are, if you do that, your story will be so good that any audience will devour it.

When do you think about your audience?

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