Great is the art of beginning, but greater is the art of ending.
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Some of you are no doubt nearing (or have already reached) the end of your projects. How did it go? I find that I’m a writer who loves writing endings. If I’ve gotten everything in place, ends barrel at me, unstoppable, inevitable. I liken it to setting up a field of dominoes, then watching them fall.

Beginnings, on the other hand, are trials. I suffer mightily over the best way to start a story. I suppose this is because I’m designing my domino field. Other writers I know love beginnings but hate endings. Or love beginnings and endings, but hate the middle.

What’s your favorite part? Have you reached it?

“You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.” ~Ray Bradbury

It’s crunch time. Real world has kept me from writing for too long. I need to shut out the entire world and write write write!

How do you stay “drunk” on your own work? How do you make sure it’s what fills your mind and heart both day and night?

Quoth Jaci, yesterday:

Imagine that with every book you write, you hit the wall, stop, dump the entire thing and start over with a brand new project, one you love. It’s so much better than the last one that wasn’t working. Your fingers fly, the story shines…

Quoth challenge participant Jen Hayley on her own blog yesterday:

So, I sat down tonight to do some writing on the middle of CLASH. Middles are hard. Instead of coming up with brilliant prose and writing the next scene I have mapped out, I kind of sort of fiddled around with a New!Shiny! Idea that popped into my head tonight.

Hmmm…. appears to be an epidemic of shiny things floating around in the collective unconscious, does it not? Jen’s even got a new status bar up on her page tracking her progress on her new project, a codification which (and I’m not picking on Jen) may make it even harder to realize that it’s not what you’re supposed to be working on.

I am familiar with the allure of the shiny new thing. The new book has no mistakes in it. The new book is a thing of beauty and a joy forever. The new book won’t have these truculent characters or difficult middle or sticky wicket of a transition scene. The new book will be all things wonderful, so why the heck am I working on this old piece of dreck?

Someone once told me the best way to think up a new idea is to get stuck on an old one.

Sometimes it’s best to ignore these ideas, to stick them in an “idea” folder and promise that you’ll get back to them later. (The “promise” part is very important — otherwise they won’t believe and will keep on nagging.) But what if this idea will not be put away? What if it won’t be told to shut up? That’s when I use a different tactic.

I had an idea like that once. I was in the middle of finishing up one novel that had been requested by a bunch of agents, and doing editor-requested revisions on another. This idea would not leave me alone, however, It was the first thing I thought about when I woke up in the morning, the last thing I thought about before going to bed. I had industry professionals waiting on me for two other books, and I really, really needed to shut this project up so I could concentrate on my requested work.

So I turned it into a carrot on a stick. I made myself a schedule: X many hours of work a day on the requested project, and then I was free to do whatever I wanted on the bright, shiny idea. Here at 70 Days of Sweat, we already have a schedule. You’ve already agreed to write 900-1500 words a day. After that, you are free to work on whatever you’d like. Indulge yourself in your bright, shiny carrot on a stick — after you’ve finished your other work.

That’s what I did. I worked on my requested revisions and full manuscript, playing with my new idea in a few scraps of leftover time. Once I turned them in, I went after my bright, shiny idea with gusto.

Now, I probably shouldn’t tell you this part, because it will make you even more certain that you should dump your current ms for the new idea, but those other books didn’t end up selling. The new one, however, became Secret Society Girl, my first published book. But here’s what I think. I learned things finishing that one book (which was the hardest book to bring home!), and revising the other (my first editor requested revision!) that I think helped make Secret Society Girl “the one.” If I hadn’t done it the way I did, maybe I wouldn’t have had the skills to turn the shiny idea into the saleable project.

The publishing world was rocked with bad news yesterday. Huge reorganization at Random House, massive staff cuts at Simon and Schuster, the Harcourt situation remains dire… by the time I was done hearing about the doom and gloom, I wanted nothing more than to curl up with my puppy and watch comfort TV. On a forum like Sven, however, it’s not the topic. We’re not here to talk about the industry! That’s for other blogs. We’re just here to talk about the art of writing. All that publishing stuff comes later.

Right?

But we talk about the forces that keep us from writing. The holidays, the family commitments, our inner procrastinator — the market downturn can also be a block. Is it the elephant in the room — the one even Sven can’t budge?

Writers live in two different worlds, and sometimes the balance is hard to maintain. The first world is in our head: we think up stories, we write them down. The second world exists in the here and now (or the here and 9-18 months from now): we study the market, sell our stories, try to predict how best to fit the creative world into the business one. When the second world becomes too overwhelming — a line folds, a recession hits, you get twenty rejection letters in a row — it can’t help but affect our ability to keep our heads in the first.

You look at your half-finished manuscript. What’s the point? You may ask yourself. This one will get rejected, too. No one is acquiring stuff in this market. Even authors more established than I am are worried about their careers. (You can think this at any level. There’s always an author more established than you.) I indulged. I moaned. I whined.

And then I took out my manuscript and started work. The first world, the head world, was there…somewhere, a glorious escape. It was a breath away, out of reach, these characters, these images. Far away from sell-throughs and options and publishers and contracts and booksellers. The real story, the real work, it’s there, and it’s there independent of the market. At least for that moment of creation.

In the Wizard of Oz, Dorothy is concerned with the practicalities of her quest. She wants to go home, as the Wizard is concocting ever more fanciful excuses for why he can’t send her there. “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!” he tells her. This little guy, crouched behind the curtain, pulling levers and cranking cranks, making the “Wizard” speak — he’s unconnected to the girl in the real world.

Well, today, we’re the Wizard. We’re going to stay behind the curtain, and create the magic, and pretend, just for a moment, just long enough to make it all come together, that there’s not a shoe-stealing chick from Kansas waiting outside with no way to get home.

This post is late. So am I. In dealing with the cold from H-E-double-hockey-sticks, I am late with setting up my house for the holidays, late turning in my revisions, late starting my Sven project, late late late.

When I fall behind, I have a tendency to start wondering why I’m bothering. I look at some of the Sven totals from Sunday and go — wow,I can never catch up to 25k already! Why bother trying?

But then I think about the term, “running behind.” The key here is running. We can’t compare ourselves to the other challengers (or to our friends who work full time, have newborns, decorate their homes for the holidays and STILL manage to send out those chatty Christmas cards!) We just have to run at our own pace. I may only have 1,000 words on my Sven project, but I am still running back here.

So if you’re behind, don’t give up. There are others, like me, who are a bit behind the pack.

Have any of you sweaters seen the Write or Die website? It’s a little internet tool that encourages — even forces — you to BICHOK.* There are different modes you can set it for, depending on whether you need a little gentle prodding to stay focused, or whether you need the threat of something serious to keep you typing. In kamikaze mode, if you ignore your words for too long, they begin to erase themselves!

Here’s a YouTube demonstration of Write or Die:

I’m not sure I can make the commitment to kamikaze mode myself — deleted words? When I accidentally close without saving it can send me into a depression! (This is why I use Scrivener now instead of the evil Word. All it took was one “corrupted” file and I was a convert!) But I know a lot of people who use tricks to make themselves stay focused on the writing.

Maybe for you it’s an egg timer. Maybe it’s a carrot at the end of the stick: write for thirty minutes, then check your email. No matter what kind of trick you use, all that matters is you get the words on paper.

Yes, we’d all like to be the kind of pure, muse-driven author who sails through hours and hours and pages and pages every day. But this world is filled with commitments, distractions, and speaking as someone with a PhD in procrastination, sometimes I have to trick my brain out of its acquired ADD.

So today, try a trick. Try Write or Die, or an egg timer, or promise yourself that you can’t go to the bathroom until you’ve finished a few pages. Make it hard.

Your book is worth it.

Then come back and tell me what you did and if it worked!

___________________________
* Butt In Chair, Hands on Keyboard.

Keep in mind that neither success nor failure is ever final. ~Roger Babson

As we approach the end of the challenge, I’m sure that some of us have dropped off, sure we aren’t ever going to reach our goals. Others have finished, and are relaxing (or feverishly doing edits, like me). Still others are striving for that brass ring.

No matter what camp you’ve fallen into, you’ve accomplished something. Maybe you’ve learned that writing marathons aren’t for you. Okay: check that off the list and find another way to achieve your goal.

Maybe you’ve found they work great. Fabulous! Now do it again.

And to those of your still working, huge hugs. Now scoot! You’ve got writing to do!

No matter what you’ve done (or haven’t done), it’s not over. There’s always another day, another page, another chance, another book. Keep your eye on that goal!

If you haven’t seen me around the Sven blog in the last few check-in posts, it’s because I finished my challenge book, and I’ve been recuperating and waiting for the edits to come in. Which they did. And now they’re due, too.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but typing “The End” (yes, I type “The End” on every one of my manuscripts, and I don’t care what the purists say!) is far, far from the actual end. It’s the first step, and a phenomenally important one, but there’s plenty more pain work fun to come.

It is often said, “Books are not written; they’re rewritten.” Also often said is, “Wanna knuckle sandwich, smart mouth?” I’m not one who loves revisions. I’m one who… has acquired a taste for them. I know they are necessary, and they make my book better, and they are to be appreciated with all my heart and soul. But it’s rarely “the fun part.”

Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever be able to figure out how to “write it right the first time.” I know I can do it on a small scale. There have been scenes in every one of my books that are never touched in any round of revisions. When I’m in the midst of editing, I live for those scenes, those precious little chunks I can glide right past on my way to the next tangle.

But they are a gift, and what is more, I don’t know if I’d even want something like that on a grand scale. Knowing that my drafts are not yet perfect, and that’s okay, is occasionally the only thing that keeps me going. Otherwise, I might get stuck in that need for first-time perfection, and never finish anything.

Sometimes, the answer can’t come until after I’ve moved past that scene or plot point, and can look on it from beyond, or even look at it as part of a whole.

It’s only recently that I’ve truly learned to appreciate Nora Robert’s adage, “You can’t fix a blank page.” Yeah, I used to mutter, but you can’t screw it up, either.

You know what else you can’t do? You can’t read it to friends, or sell it to a publisher. Don’t be afraid of imperfection. Keep writing. There are always edits.

You do not like them.
So you say.
Try them! Try them!
And you may.
Try them and you may, I say.

- Green Eggs and Ham, by Dr. Seuss

My husband and I are house-hunting. (bear with me, folks, I swear it relates to writing!)

Our realtor is showing us massive lists of houses in our town that fit our search criteria. We’ve been scrolling through the lists, kicking out the ones in neighborhoods we don’t like, dismissing the ones with too few pictures or not enough curb appeal.

Yesterday we went to look at houses, and on the way home, we passed another house with a For Sale sign in the yard. Why wasn’t THIS house on our list? It was perfect! Perfect neighborhood, perfect price range. We went home and looked it up online — the inside was perfect too!

And guess what? It was under contract.

Well, we went back to the list and discovered that we’d zoomed right past it because the website picture didn’t do the house justice at ALL. So I spent several hours last night going through the list again and investigating every house in depth, even the ones that we’d ignored earlier. And I found some more possibilities.

Often in writing, when we hit a scene and we’re stuck, we dismiss ideas of where to go because it’s too outlandish or too extreme or too ugly or too [insert adjective here]. But maybe we should try it. It doesn’t hurt us to look at a house. It doesn’t hurt you to write a few hundred words and see if there’s any potential. If it doesn’t work out, you’ve wasted a twenty minutes, and you can delete it with a click of a button.

But maybe you should try it, because otherwise, you never know what you might miss.

Over at my personal blog today, we’re discussing various and sundry writing tips, particularly the ones about there being only X-number of plots.

Are there? Sure. There are only two, or seven, or twelve, or 39, or 69, or 142, or however elemental you choose to get with your analysis. The internet world is full of writing advice. It can get pretty daunting. I’ve received emails from folks who say they couldn’t have written their books were it not for my plotboard, and I’ve gotten desperate questions from folks wondering if they’re “still real writers” if they don’t.

Of course you are! These lists or interview sheets or plotboards or collaging techniques — these are just tools folks, no different than the handy-dandy kitchen gadgets. My friend is a chef, and he laughs at all the corers/peelers/slicers/shredders/choppers/etc. that they hawk on late night television (and that I have a kitchen filled with). He’s got a knife. (And an immersion blender, but that doesn’t fit my metaphor, so let’s just ignore it for a moment.) And with his knife, he can do all that other stuff.

So, if the Salad Shooter works for you, makes YOUR life easier, and is something that you like to use (I love my Salad Shooter), then use it. If not, take out your knife. You don’t need to cook like everyone else.

Whatever works for you.