It's All About Follow-Through

I'm coming to the end of a significant revision of my manuscript--the last one, I hope, until I have a book contract. If you're a regular reader of this blog you'll know the first draft took me close to ten years to finish (not because it's a work of epic genius but because of family commitments) and I've spent the past year going through multiple revisions. I am more than ready to move on.

I already know what my next project will be and I'm really itching to get started on the research. I have a couple of books on the subject and every now and then I look at them with longing and think,  "I could just do a little reading--what's the harm in that?"

But I know better.

The minute I start dipping into the research for the new idea I'm going to stop being interested in the project I'm currently working on. Odds are the new idea is so seductive because I'm approaching the final act of my current novel and it terrifies me. On a subconscious level, I want to be distracted. If I get distracted, I won't finish; if I don't finish, I don't have to face the possibility that no one will publish it.

This is a problem that all writers fall prey to now and then. Just when one story starts getting tough, a new and more exciting idea pops up that suddenly begs for attention. It's no coincidence. Your subconscious is protecting you from failure. It's also keeping you from success.

There comes a point when, in order to progress, a writer must stop beginning projects and start finishing them. This is the true test of a writer's mettle. This is what separates the amateurs from the pros. Anyone can start a story and call themselves a writer--but how many actually see it through to the end of the first draft? Not many. How many know when they've finished enough revisions to take the leap and send it out to an agent or publisher? Fewer still. It's much easier to let a half-finished piece sit in the drawer or start something new than to risk rejection.

When you start to have the itch to begin a new project--pay attention. Instead of giving in to the urge, use that desire to finish your current project. Make it a reward. Tell yourself you can start that next story as soon as you finish the one you're working on. Follow-through is one of the most important parts of the process.

Do you use new projects as a way to avoid finishing a piece? Do you revise a piece over and over and never send it out? What are the ways you keep yourself from taking the next step?

There's Never a Perfect Time

A friend of mine, who is a school teacher, once mentioned that when life settled down she would love to write a children's book. "Why wait?" I said. "There will never be a perfect time."

My answer was a bit simplistic, I know. My friend is very busy with the demands of work and family.   I understand what it's like trying to find a little time for oneself and how the muse doesn't always cooperate when that sliver of time opens up. Right now, I'm watching my daughters run through the sprinkler on the front lawn and I'm holding my breath, hoping it will occupy them long enough for me to jot down a few thoughts. This is the only quiet time I will have today. If I don't seize this brief opportunity this week's blog post will never happen.

This is life. We have so many responsibilities we forsake the things we really want to do. Yet how many of these responsibilities are truly necessary? Maybe fewer than we think. How much free time do we actually have? Maybe more than we realize. A little web surfing, a little TV. There is breathing room in our days, but we've found ways to fill it. Ways that might feel like we're doing something substantive but leave us feeling drained, dissatisfied. Why do we compulsively check our email all day long when we say we'd like to spend more time reading? Why do we rob ourselves of even things that bring us pleasure?

Time isn't really the the obstacle--it's fear. It's easy to postpone our dreams by blaming our schedules. It takes the pressure off. Deciding to finally take that leap into the unknown is terrifying. We are afraid to fail. Committing to action is to court disaster. So we hide behind our to-do list. It's safer that way. The decision seems to be made for us.

Time is our enemy in that we have only a finite amount of it. How much? No one knows. When we are young, we foolishly believe time is a luxury. This is not to say we should spend every minute being productive. We should spend as much of our time as we can doing what fulfills us--not on empty habits or on pleasing those who do not occupy a place in our immediate circle of family and friends. If we don't act now, then when? There will always be a problem or two plaguing us, an inbox that never empties, another holiday around the corner. There will always be an excuse we can point to  if we allow it. Years can slip away before we notice.

The perfect time is now. But it doesn't have to happen all at once.

I suggested to my friend that she buy a beautiful notebook and a pen just to jot down a some ideas. Spend a few minutes every day or week on it. Let go of outcomes, expectations. Make it fun. Just start.

Now.

The Mid-Book Crisis

Now that my novel is chugging along well past the midpoint, I've decided to plunge back into social media--and I'm quickly discovering it's still the same time-suck that made me temporarily abandon it in the first place. I've just joined Twitter (@stephdoyon) and I'm thoroughly enjoying the distraction. When I start looking for ways to procrastinate in the middle of a project it's a sure sign that I'm facing what I like to call "The Mid-Book Crisis."

For those of you who don't know, I spent my formative writing years as a ghostwriter for a teen series called Sweet Valley University. I also wrote a few books for a series called Fearless and a quartet of my own called On the Road, about an eighteen year-old girl who takes the year off before college to travel the country (or at least she was supposed to, until the series was canceled--but that's a future blog post). The point is, I've written fifteen books and it doesn't matter whether the story outline was handed to me or I developed the plot on my own, whether it was a teen book or a literary novel, I've always run into a crisis of confidence at exactly the same point in every book--right around the middle.

Beginnings are tough in their own right--there's nothing tougher than facing a blank page. On the other hand, there are so many ideas and hopes and characters that beginnings are also full of excitement and energy. An unwritten story is full of limitless potential. Characters develop and situations unfold. It's an exciting process of discovery.

After the beginning is established, characters assert themselves and conflicts arise. There are past details to fill in, threads to follow. Tension mounts. Then the plot starts moving toward a climax and  characters must make a key decisions. Action must be taken. This is the big moment...

And that's when the crisis hits. This is the moment when I freeze.

I know when I start to approach the midpoint of a book because suddenly I'll find myself cleaning the house, surfing the Internet, blowing off my work schedule. I'll get an idea for another book or a short story and start writing that, instead. Right now I have an idea for a humorous memoir about the writing business and I'm just itching to get started on it. And before that was an epic I started set in San Francisco and Shanghai at the turn of the twentieth century. Both of those sound like more fun than what I'm currently writing. Anything to avoid the work at hand.

Why is this the midpoint so difficult to face? Because it signals the death of possibility.

Every story starts with an infinite number of choices (characters, genres, plots, point of views, techniques, voices, etc) and slowly, through decision-making and the process of elimination, I am now confronted with the product of my choices. Worse still, if I'm true to my character, there is really only one perfect choice he can make at the climax. It's all been building to this moment. The grand story that used to exist only in my imagination is now specific and concrete. It's also flawed and not quite what I thought it would be and there's a fear that all the work I've put in is not quite adding up to something worthy of all the years I've spent on it.

But here's what I've learned: No creative endeavor ever quite lives up to our lofty visions. Every artist is afraid of failure. Some believe that it's better to shelve the piece and always wonder, than to complete it and be disappointed.

This is the real point of failure for most. Ask any writer and they'll admit to having at least one unfinished manuscript tucked away. But you have to press on. You're so close. The groundwork has already been laid, the hard part is over. Once you reach the climax of the story, the consequences of the characters' actions are inevitable. And then a beautiful thing happens--the last third of the book nearly writes itself.

Do you have a story you're afraid to finish?

Knowing When to Stop

I just received a nice e-mail from a fellow blogger who describes herself as someone who has spent nearly four years working obsessively on a single screenplay, writing and re-writing it in various genres. Without knowing very much about her or the screenplay it’s hard to judge if all this re-working is necessary—it very well could be. But her situation did get me thinking about a question that all artists are forced to answer at some point: When is it done?

While I’m a firm believer in meticulous and sometimes drastic revisions, there comes a point in the creative process where re-writing produces nothing but diminishing returns. Perhaps you dwell too long on your choices, changing a word here and there, over and over again but not adding any real meaning or quality to the work. Maybe you hack the piece to death repeatedly every time you’ve found yourself stuck, hoping a new approach will help you find what’s missing. Or maybe you’re like Grady Tripp, in Michael Chabon’s WONDER BOYS, who just keeps writing and writing until he has a 2,600 page manuscript with no end in sight. No matter what the problem is, there comes a time when you have to think about letting go.

Unfortunately, writing is so subjective that there’s no definitive way of knowing when a piece is finished. There is no such thing as perfection, so one could argue that there is always room from improvement. That said, if the story is solid and the voice is clear and you’ve re-read the piece for mistakes, it’s fair to say it’s ready to send out. Don’t fret about a word here and there. If you use that as an excuse, you’re doing nothing but procrastinating.

If your story runs on and on with no end in sight, it’s time to take stock. Three things could be happening: 1) You love your story so much you can’t bear to see it end 2) Your self-worth is so tied-up in this project that you’ll be devastated when it’s over, or 3) You took a wrong turn somewhere and kept going when you should have ended it.

The third reason is easy enough to remedy; just find the point in the story where it should have naturally ended. The other two reasons are a little more complicated. I would suggest a trial separation. Put the piece away for at least three months. Give yourself a chance to fall in love with a new story. If you invest your energy in something else, you’ll have more clarity when you return.

Finally, if you’ve tried every which way to make a piece work and it’s still not happening, it might be time to call it quits. Perhaps, somewhere down the road, you can return to it again and you’ll have no trouble seeing the problem. Or, better still, there are probably a few parts that are worth salvaging, pieces you can take away from the story to create something new. It’s painful to give up when you’ve invested so much emotion, time and energy, but even with the best of intentions, but the truth is that sometimes stories just don’t work. Sometimes you’re better off just letting go.

Maybe This Cookie Will Help Me Write...

My previous post about the difficulty of filling the blank page reminds me of a conversation I once had with an agent about a certain superstar of the graphic novel world. The writer apparently told her that one of the biggest struggles he faced every day was forcing himself to sit down and work. Hearing that procrastination is a problem for someone of his caliber has been a great source of comfort to me over the years.

I’m one of those writers for whom settling down to work involves a lot of avoidance and no small amount of superstition. I liken it to a professional baseball player up at bat, with all the spitting, helmet-and-elbow-touching, dirt kicking and glove adjusting that needs to take place before he feels psychologically and physically comfortable enough to swing. In order for me to work, I need a glass of water and a comfortable room temperature. The house needs to be completely quiet. The weather can’t be too nice or I’ll want to be outside instead. I can’t be too tired or even a little sick. Then, if all these conditions are right, I have to check my e-mail, my favorite blogs, and do an online crossword. Then I might check the weather, and then my e-mail again. If no one has written to me or I haven’t received notice of a sale at one of my favorite stores, I’m good to go.

Once I begin writing, if I get stuck on a word, I find myself “write walking”--a phenomenon closely related to sleep walking, in which a writer gets up from her desk and suddenly finds herself standing before her open refrigerator with no recollection of how she ended up there. This occurrence is usually followed with an unhealthy snack and a wave of guilt, and can sometimes be repeated several times during the writing of a particularly difficult passage.

If writing is one of my great passions in life, why is it so hard to be disciplined? The best answer I can come up with is fear of failure. When I’ve written nothing, that nebulous masterpiece floating in my head retains all of its perfection; the moment I try to write I realize just how far my work is from my vision. Yet this should never be a deterrent, for it is extremely rare for a work to perfectly echo one’s vision. I wonder if artists in other mediums have the same problem with procrastination. I can certainly see songwriters having similar angst, but what about painters and sculptors or performance artists? Does fear of facing their limitations put them off, too?

Today, I might get down one good sentence if I’m lucky. Or maybe a particular word choice might sing. Or maybe it’ll all sound stiff and boring. So be it. Tomorrow I’ll sit down at my desk, with my water and silence and optimal room temperature, check my e-mail and play my word puzzles. And when all is right I’ll settle down to work and try again.