The Writing Process

Everyone does it differently.

This is something I knew going in, but hadn't fully grasped upon after starting.  I mean, usually you only deal with the end product; the book reports and essays and such you did in school, those "don't really count."  Because a paper is a paper and a book is a book, right?

I sure hope so, because I am not writing this thing the night before it is due.

It was something that really struck me after looking through some favorite authors' work; in this case, I was looking at the authors of The Tenth Planet, specifically Kathryn Rusch.  I've got the books in paperback, because this was from a time when mp3s were still A Big Deal Gosh Darn It, and while we wrote and read things on the computer screen, the idea of reading (or writing) a book on a computer screen seemed nonsensical.  What are you doing? we'd say.  Print that out.  (If you were my Chinese mother, you'd also make a comment about eyes being more valuable than trees).  The books dealt with... well, I guess I'm still within the statute of limitations for spoilers, so never mind.  But nanotech swarms are a feature of the storyline, so I wanted to brush up on that one again.  I remember liking the first book quite a lot, the second one not as much, and found the third and ending to be rather disappointing.

I know, I pretty much just jinxed myself right there.

Anyway, Rusch also has a number of novellas (which, as everyone knows, are female novels) out.  I was reading her foreword in a sample of a collection of novellas when it really hit me how different the process can be.  She was detailing her experience with a publisher who was hesitant to offer a deal because she had published short story versions previously in sci-fi magazines.  From there, she talked about her process, writing for a living universe, and how stories come together for her; listening to her characters, etc.

Previously, I'd been writing in Dream Weavers and had hit a pretty serious block - I didn't know my main character.  I couldn't decide on a name for him because I didn't know what kind of person he was.  Rather, he was presenting himself in a way that was completely at odds with my idea of him.  Young guys don't really act or talk in a film-noir sort of way.  There's a reason it's Mickey Rourke and Bruce Willis in Sin City and not, say, Justin Bieber and Ashton Kutcher.  Other aspects aside, you can't take them seriously acting in that sort of role because they simply look too young.

I already knew that for my two story concepts... well, that's the thing.  They are concepts.  I don't have some kind of timeline or flow chart or whatever else annotated before hand.  That worried me somewhat, because I had vague ideas of the story I wanted to tell, but no real clue of the players (and thus, their actions and motivations) in those stories.  Normally, I'd get hung up over that, blow it up into an insurmountable problem, and then just sit and sulk and never follow through on it (no really, I have practice).  Among the many things in life I'm trying to come to terms with, trying in spite of perceived obstacles is something I'm trying to become more comfortable with.

So I had stopped (could you tell?) for a while with vague plans to flesh out characters and motivations, and then just sort of smash everything together and see what happened.  Of course, that's not always so simple.  You come into a George RR Martin-esque sort of problem where you aren't necessarily sure how many characters you really need, and it all sort of spirals out of control (it is known).  And you know what? Coming up with names is REALLY GOD DAMN HARD.  I mean, it's hard enough when you have to pick an account name or forum name, or when you have to name your character online AND ALL THE GOOD ONES ARE TAKEN SO SCREW IT or you are playing an RPG and they are like, "hay, naming is hard, so name these four characters and all the other random guys you pick up along the way."

Except for me, it was getting to be like, Name this planet.  And it's solar system.  And it's dominant race.  And make a consistent naming convention for it's people.  And then name the galactic alliance they lead (the Ascendant Milieu and the Nihil (Cooperative), I'm really happy with those two, SO DON'T STEAL OR JUDGE).  Ok, Now do that again for like, the other 8 or 10 alien races you invented.  And then the human characters.  And the PDAI/AIDE (Personal Digital Artificial Intelligence / Autonomous Intelligent Digital Entity) assigned to each one.  And that was just for Digital Entities.

But I think you can see what I mean when I said sometimes problems run away from and grow into giant monsters that I can't seem to deal with.

With Dreamweavers, it's sort of an Alt-Earth scenario, so on the one hand, you have it easy because human names come pre-invented.  They have books of them, I'm told.  Indeed, everyone you know has one; sometimes more than one.  On the other hand, you can't sort of just rub your cat against the keyboard and call the result "Elvish" or whatever.  And picking names can be just as hard - especially last names, because I'm always encountering new ones on facebook, etc.  Like, wow that's a surname? And you don't want to call everyone "Smith."  And you want to pick the right name that sounds right, without being cheesy-obvious.  Like, John Stryker; he's a boxer.  No shit, really?

Anyway, Rusch was talking about how she'd write bits and pieces as they came to her... and they wouldn't necessarily be from/for the same story either.  It was an approach I hadn't fully considered, but which resonated with me.  But I do still need to define/describe my mains, give them names.  Then they can tell me what happens during the parts I don't know.

....I wrote all that, But basically all the important stuff was that one paragraph at the end.  Oh well.

As for the process... I'm always a little weird and particular about writing things.  Even when it came to term papers for law school (and yes, I did actually plan, research, and write a 20 page paper the night before it was due because I'm a moron, and shut up, it was excellent, it got an A-).  For me, I really like the kinesthetics of writing; I like to write by hand, on paper (preferably lined, yellow, legal pads) beforehand.  Usually I will use indentation-note taking style to outline what I want to say, fully writing in the parts I know with certainty.  This has been a habit for a long time; when I was in Japan and did a travelogue blog entry per day, I always wrote it out beforehand on paper, and then copied it onto digital format.  I did that for something like two months, each day, everyday (or equivalent thereof; sometimes It was a day or two before I got the post written and published, but there was an entry for each day is the point).

Right now I've got a little journal with all kinds of notes in it; it's a bit jumbled, because it has two stories worth of notes interspersed amongst each other, and also it's a little waterlogged from rain/Taiwan air.  I may have to transfer into two books, which is as good an excuse as any for my little-book-collecting habit.