BLOCKED!

A deadline approaches, nearer now than last week.  I have been staring at the screen for days and fret, my mind remains empty of ideas and the blank screen beckons me to fill it, but I cannot.  I am blocked!

It happens, this absence of thought, my mental state a wasteland and barren of ideas.  When this sort of thing happens the screen seems an infinitely deep pool at the bottom of which there might lurk an idea, a spark, some hint of direction.  But no, nothing rises from the depths. I can detect nothing that might help relieve my frustration. Despite all my practice at this writing business I find that my cupboard of ideas is depleted, discover that the horse has flown the coop, understand that my muse's dog howls at nothing in the dark of despair, and that the barn door swings open to reveal that all occupants have departed.  Worse yet, I've suddenly devolved into miserable inept metaphors.

Usually my mind is brimming with story ideas, of things I want to explore or test, and of techniques that might expand my repertoire a bit. But for days I've sat bereft of thought, knowing not what words to type or where they might take me.  When a scene does pop to mind with bright promise I hope that it is part of a larger narrative that I do not yet see, so I pursue the lines, troweling one brick of a paragraph upon another, building a foundation only to discover that what I have constructed teeters and falls into incoherent directionless dribble.

Frustrated at the wasted effort I still think that some of that failed attempt can be salvaged.  So I embark on another thread that might lead to some sort of resolution, only find that once again the narrative fails to gel.  There is no light at the end of that tunnel.

Daunted, I roll another sheet into my blank screen and begin to free associate, producing fragments of scenes, bits of dialogue, snippets of description - a scrap of hair there, a plaid vest here, perhaps a pocket watch or a robot - all of which fill pages with no rhyme, reason, or relationships.  Despite how much I type, I can produce nothing more than blocks of unconnected words, words, words!

 I consider holding on to these random pieces and then, sometime next week, maybe, I can brilliantly tie them together in a neat package to meet the deadline as an entire story. But then, how can I depend on the future me to be any more competent than the extant model of the here and now who can't get this damn piece done?  I stare at the computer - a stone of a thousand tons that my fragile writing chisel cannot  hope to pierce to find the story within.  So I continue to stare at the white screen, hoping and waiting for my muse to return.

This is writing.

Feed the Beast

It's an insatiable beast, the expectations.  Not only your own but those of the readers,editors, publishers, friends, and, worst of all, other writers. You sell one damn story and find that the editor anxiously "awaits your next." Have two stories published and everyone wants to know why there aren't "more."  It's insane, as if  you are a frigging fountain that only needs a touch to have you pour forth endless streams of narrative. The beast always wants another bite, raising expectations of more, more, more, and on a regular basis.  Crank it out, writer - it's just words and you string them so well so keep doing it. Dance marionette, dance!

Novelists and short story writers alike soon find the beast's appetite enormous.  Once you start feeding it there's an obligation to continue, offering it ever more to consume.  Besides outside demand, a writer worries that delay in production for too long will mean lost momentum of sales, of publications, of (scant) adulation.  A writer is also concerned that the fickle public may shift their attention to another should they fail to produce.

The worst is the goad you administer to yourself.  Were those sales mere flukes, accidents of luck and the fickle taste of a slush reader, the momentary inattention of an editor, or the slip of a copy editor's pen? You feel impelled to write another, just to prove that you can, just to prove to yourself that ....

Neither you nor the beast is ever satisfied.

Revisions

I've said this before, that the real writing begins with the editing of a completed story, of revising, correcting, polishing, and structuring the mess of words that first draft produced.  It isn't getting the bare bones down, the underlying skeleton of a story but more about making the draft into a story.

Of course you are going to do minor edits as you write - bring the hand back to change a word, a sentence, or more.  Some do not do this, preferring to plough along headfirst, often sacrificing logic and sense on the altar of flow.  I tend to dither over a word, a fact, a sentence, and frequently change something already written. Regardless of which method is being followed you finish with a block of text, subdivided into sections, paragraphs, and sentences.

The real editing starts when you revise the structure of the story, putting scenes into their proper order, and generating the logic that brings the story together.  Do not confuse sequence with order - a good story often jumps about chronologically, the better to influence the reader's view.

When the story has the proper sense I try to make the language of the story fit the circumstance.  This is where word choice, lyricism, and rhythm are put into play. These revisions require a sentence by sentence examination, criticism, and adjustment. Here taste matters more and each writer should mind their own muse.

The worst/best revisions leap into my mind in the dark of night; these are the  "I should have said...", "Why not change....", and "Oh God, why did I ever start this ...." thoughts. They occur with disturbing frequency throughout the life of a story, even after submission, always after publication, and never without a wish that I could have written it BETTER.

Fringe

I just read Barry Maltzberg's piece on being part of a "big f-club" and, boy, can I relate to his sentiments, just as I saw myself in the character of the protagonist in Jo Walton's Among Others! It's miserable, being on the fringe, where you look with longing at the table of the neat kids who seem to "get it' and realizing that you will never sit there.

I know I am one insecure son-of-a-bitch, worrying about whether anyone reads my stories, concerned that they may not get the point (and not always the obvious one), worrying about where my name appears, worrying about whether this or that young upstart squirt, still living in his parent's basement, is writing and selling better than me, worrying about my ability to build a coherent story ( I've  never really thought about plot, but one never fails to magically appear), worry about when the next BIG idea might come along, or if, worrying about whether I should waste time going to conventions where mostly I stand around chatting with whoever passes by and become embarrassed when recognized by ANYBODY and even more when any praise is involved.

Is this  a way to live?  After few hundred stories (some sold) and over a jillion words edited away I still feel like that young (I started writing seriously at 51) scribbler struggling to learn his craft, reaching out to make connections, and envying all those who I saw as more successful in the field and whose excellent writing I hunger to emulate. My watchword has always been "Gods, I wish I could write like [fill in your favorite author here] who must NEVER ever pen an unsalable word."

It's horrible to feel this insecurity, of being an outsider, of sitting at the side and watching the others.  Yet I wonder if it is that feeling of unworthiness, that embarrassment I feel at undeserved praise, that burning desire to be one of the neat kids is what keeps me striving, keeps me creating, keeps me writing, even if it doesn't always produce salable stories.

Will I ever "get it?"

Sand Castles

As a very young kid I carried a pail and shovel and loved to build sand castes on the beach. Crude at first my sand castles grew more complex, more detailed, and larger over time until, one day, I realized that my time for building sand castles was at an end.

My approach to writing was very much like those early attempts.  My pail were the few words and my pail the constructions. In concert these two tools could be used to arrange the sand of creativity into nearly infinite combinations to form a simple story.  The first few stories were modest efforts, hardly complicated in form and content, lacking in detail for the most part, and most failed to impart anything of lasting value.  Later, like the sand castles of my childhood, the stories gained increasing detail, the structures became  more rigorous, and, but only occasionally, I managed to craft something meaningful for the reader.  I even learned to elicit an emotional reaction.

Eventually, as it will with any craft, practice gave me better control over my virtual shovel and pail, and I began dealing not only with background and environmental detail but with more convoluted plotting, increased depth of character, and, hard to believe from this point, actually making conversations sound like, well, conversations.

The one thing that links those first sand castles to the modest body of work that I have built over two plus decades is that neither the sand castles nor the stories last: changes of taste, style, and fablation will eventually wear them down to where they are no longer discernible.  The tides and winds turn the castles into mounds of sand that first mark where they might have stood and later become a faint residue that eventually will become part of the ever freshening sand.

Where the new kids will build their own sand castles.

A Plague of Worms

Just when I felt in the groove, so to speak, those little worms of doubt once again began to nibble at my psyche. Made some sales, work-in-progresses going well, got galleys to proof, etc. I even made another couple of submissions to keep the flow going. Things appeared to be going great, I thought, and that's where the little bastards bite me in the ass and bring me back to Earth (as opposed to Greater Bingattra or wherever my brain happens to take me.)

The worms had lay doggo for so long that I was barely aware that they were still with me.  But they were doing the nasty down there, below my level of consciousness, working their insidious way into my brain, waiting for an opportunity to pounce, waiting for that first hint of vulnerability. That happened within hours of submitting a story to the steely eyes of an editor and their demonic horde of slush readers.  (Or maybe that's the drugs talking? I just had back surgery and they give really, really good pain pills.)

The first bite came from the anticipatory fear that I somehow missed an irreparable error through ignorance or haste.  Would that obvious error be gleefully pointed out by the knowledgeable editor? Or perhaps my protagonist had inexplicably acquired a new name halfway through the text and I, being sick to death of proofreading the same damn lines over and over and ..., well, did I make that rookie mistake or not?  Back to reread the draft too make sure and, on that rereading I wondered if the protagonist was behaving out of character, or - worse - had knowledge of something they have no way of knowing?  Why did these minor characters randomly pop into existence? Did they emerge from the quantum foam, without any justification within the story?  Worse, I worried that the plot twists and turns might appear illogical, as it they had been made simply to provide continuity to the story.

I go through these periods once in the while and, somehow, sharing the misery lessens the pain. I know others suffer the worms as well and to those of you who do, I want you to know that you aren't alone. On reflection, perhaps these sorts of doubts make me more attentive to details, to perfecting the craft that I being to my work,

Perhaps I see the peanuts and not the elephant.

Letting the Muse Take the Wheel

For years I've sort of plotted stories in my head before embarking on writing anything.  Sometimes it's taking a simple idea like "what would happen if...." or "let's torture some characters this way and see what happens." At some point in the rough draft I have enough materials to start assembling it into scenes, figure out what's missing, and start figuring how that will work to reach a conclusion, which five times out of six, turns out to be something different than I intended.

In other words, I generally work from a plan - dynamic, vague, and imprecise plan - but generally one that is continuously improving.  I have prepared a full outline on occasion and forced the story to conform, despite what my muse wants to do: A writer must crack the whip once in the while to show the muse who is boss of this outfit.

When the muse failed to contribute to two works-in-process recently I decided it needed a break, something to fire up the imagination, something that might spark the solutions to the WIP conundrums. With that thought in mind, I put both drafts aside, brought up a blank screen, and let my inner muse free-associate.

"Why not a fantasy," thought I as I typed the word "incantation."  My muse apparently veering toward  something Randal Garrett-ish, with a touch of Sam Boone perhaps.  I continued typing, letting muse go on for pages unimpeded by common sense.  On occasion my rational brain took command to establish a character when needed or scribbling in a little about him/her, maybe about what he did at work, who his friends might be, and what might take place in his environment.  When that rambling mess dribbled out I put the muse back to work.  The meandering story rolled out in a continuous stream, page after page as I let my muse dictate where and how it would go, darting this way and that into diversionary paths.

Surprisingly, at about ten thousand words, a story started to emerge. I hadn't thought of what might result when I let the muse push the characters around but along the line a romance seems to have emerged, as well as theft, a gruff detective, an escaped criminal, german spies, dirigibles, pay phones, a College of Psychomancy, and a dispute over academic funding. I have no idea of where this is going at this point (17,000 words) but the ride is thrilling and I am going to see it to the conclusion, it there is one.

Unable to resist going back to my regular practices, I've already started editing the first seven thousand words into a smooth second draft replete with back stories, historical notes, character sketches, descriptions, and local color.  Based on that, the first draft pieces I have yet to edit, and an estimate of how long it will take to get to the end, I figure this might come in around 25,000 words, but I could be wrong.

It might be a novel.