I love getting letters from readers. In particular I enjoy it when teens write to me and tell me they’re working on their own writing projects. They ask me some great questions, and even though they’re beginning writers, most of the principles that I find myself passing on are things that, beginning writer or experienced writer, even now that I’m published, still apply to my writing process.
So I’m sharing today a question from a reader named Grace:
I was wondering how you stick with writing on one topic for a whole book let alone 3 books. I have a slue of journals with stories that never quite passed the 50 page mark. I just lose interest because it is not quite time for the climax and back ground knowledge and thickening the plot can only go so far. How do you keep your self interested until the end of the book?
Interesting that she asked me this question, because it’s something that I struggled with. Before I wrote Prom Dates From Hell, I also had a whole mess of projects/books that I’d started but never finished, for exactly the same reason. I would lose interest and abandon one project for the next shiny thing.
Even now I deal with this; I don’t abandon the project, but there’s a point in every book (The technical term, for me, is “Chapter 4.”) where I bog down, convinced the book is horribly boring, and I suck, and writing a whole big book is an insurmountable task. It doesn’t matter than I’ve done it five times now. Every single book, I look at the mountain of plot I’ve got to climb, and wonder how I’m ever going to manage it.
Now, pre-book-writing, a couple of things helped me: I wrote a bunch of shorter pieces so that I got used to finishing things. A short story can be 4 pages, or it can be 40 pages. But it’s good practice being able to get a beginning, middle and end into a short space. There’s no space for the boring stuff.
For a book, the rise and fall of the plot makes for natural goals. I don’t just plan one climax at the end. I have several turning points that are like mini-climaxes over the course of the book. This is not just about plotting an exciting book. It’s about giving myself goals that don’t seem so waaaaaaaay far away and unattainable.
If you think about the book as a series of successively higher hills rather than one long, tedious climb up a mountain, it really helps. And since those parts are usually fun to write, it’s both a goal and a reward. (I love to write the scenes with the heroine and her love interest, so I tell myself stuff like: well, I have to get through this scene where they explain how magic works, but then Maggie and Justin get to fight then make out… er, I mean make up.)
And to Grace and everyone else (that is, ALL of you, because I’ve never met a writer who didn’t have books and books of scraps and starts and bits and pieces)… Whatever you do, NEVER throw away those journals! One of my abandoned projects turned into the idea for my September book (The Splendor Falls). Way back when, I had an idea for a story about a ballerina who breaks her leg and goes to stay in an old house with a ghost. The setting and whole rest of the plot ended up being completely different, but it all started from about 50 pages of story I began (then abandoned) in high school.
So, whether you’re a young writer, a not so young writer, beginning or experienced, on those days when the book seems too huge and the end too far away, just think about it in chunks. After all, you can eat an elephant one bite at a time.
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This is one of the reasons I like to know how the story ends before I start — I’m usually so excited to get to the end that I’m willing to plow through the difficult middle bits!
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Ditto that! However, I’m terrible at delayed gratification.
So this is the same principle on a chapter-long scale. I (almost) always know how the chapter ends, even if I don’t know how I’m going to get from the beginning to the end.
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I agree with you on this 100%. I am in chapter 4 and at the end of chapter three the doubts have entered my mind. I start wondering if i am bouncing around too much. I start thinking of all that yucky editing stuff, and I can’t move forward.
Now what do you think about an author (beginner) maybe writing 2 books at once, or is that a “Hell no?”
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See. It’s the dreaded Chapter Four Doldrums. (I’ve actually been known to skip to chapter five, just on principle.)
I never say “hell, no” because every time I say “never” something proves me wrong. Some people love working on two books at once. They like having something to go to when they get in the doldrums with one project. Some people tell me it keeps both feeling fresh.
For *me,* this did not work. I wasn’t successful at finishing a book until I said, “This is the book I’m working on until it’s done.” When I try and work on two things at once, I end up writing in circles on both of them. This may be my own style or process, but I need to stay immersed in a project, sort of live in it, if that makes sense.
Now, I always have things on the back burner, simmering on low. When I do think of ideas for those books–and I *invariably* do, especially when the “this sucks” voices start in about the current project–I have a notebook or computer file where I write those ideas down for later. Everything from snatches of dialogue to roughed out scenes, to a few paragraphs of action or description. But they just go in the mental pot to stew until I move that project to the front burner.
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i totally agree with you. actually if you go to paranormalchicks.com i just wrote about my notebooks. I have three of them. You might want to check this out. thanks though for your opinion. I love getting into my story also. I keep it all organized and the outline, characters, scenes for a chapter printed out in front of me. Then the characters start speaking and thats when the story takes off.
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Interesting post..and comments.
OK, this is crazy me, and not something I advise people to do, but I find that cramming works for me.
remember back in school when mid-terms or finals would come, and you’d cram everything into one weekend? I do that with my writing. I used to write a 75-90 k novel in three weeks because I did nothing but write. It helped me to get through the sagging middle when I I was under pressure and HAD to keep going. If I didn’t give myself time to think too much, I just pushed through.
Now, in order to save my sanity I’ve gone back to a part time job in the outside world (non-writing) and am focussing on health and happiness more. It did hurt my writing, until I learned that if I cram every weekend for three days, it still works for me.
I’m slowly working towards the write every day thing that so many people say works, but I admit my attention span has trouble with that. LOL The cramming works to help me get through a story without stalling, I just need to find ways to make it work with life too.