How Kathy Writes a Book: Part 4… The Writing of All the Words

Tags

chaos, drafting, finishing a first draft, notes, the writing process, thoughts, writing

Welcome back to my series where I share how I write a book.

A little informative. A lot entertaining, hopefully. A bit of insight into how my creative brain works.

This process is different for everyone. And hearing how each writer approaches their work is fascinating.

So parts 1-3…I’ve had an idea, which grew and threw a tantrum until it got all my attention. I wrote all the notes I could, from characters, to the theme, to scenes, to the story, to the world until a voice in the back of my head called for me to JUST WRITE THE THING.

I pushed through my fear of messing it all up and wrote that dreaded first chapter.

Once that first chapter is down and I acknowledge that I’ll have to rewrite it a million times (and who cares, been there done that, right?), I can move forward.

I CAN WRITE ALL THE WORDS.

Now that doesn’t mean it all flows out in an easy wave. Some scenes come pretty fast and others like to torment me. Some days I write 0 words and others 3000…that’s right, I don’t write every day. Don’t want to. I have a family who I kinda like. I have places to go. You ever see those tweets where someone wrote 10,000 words that day, yeah, that’s never me. Never. If I write 1000 words, I am a very happy camper.

Though I never know how many words have been added until the end of the day, until just before I close the word doc. If you remember, I keep my word count covered while I write, otherwise I focus on that tiny number in the corner of the screen and not on what I’m doing. At the end of the day, I peel back the paper and write that number on my calendar. Whether it’s 1 or 1500, I watch the word count grow.

All words are good words.

Seriously, in the first drafting stage…ALL WORDS ARE GOOD WORDS.

I write them. One after the other. As I write a scene, the next one comes into focus. Characters show up, they talk, they cause things to happen, they reveal who they are. I’m pretty sure aliens beam the story into my brain or faeries magic it into being.

As each chapter is crafted, I write down what happened in a notebook. Helps me keep track of where my brain wandered.

I write linearly (is that a word?). Every scene is in order. I even write the transitions, though I find those the most difficult. I leave myself notes to check world building, to check what someone said previously, to write something better later, to add more detail.

What great notes I leave myself. Future me loves it.

That mess of chaotic notes from part 2? You’ll find my flipping through pages like a maniac, searching for one bit of information I scribbled in the margins somewhere. I rip out pages to shove them in-between other pages to keep like information together. I look through my list of scenes all the time, checking to make sure I’ve included the things I want. The computer glares at me as I dive into the chaos. But it’s all part of the process.

A process of typing…

of staring…

of thinking…

of procrastinating…

of giving up…

of searching through the chaos of scribbles…

of letting my brain work on the story even when I’m at the store or working out or falling asleep…

And I write. Chapters whisper when I have reached their end. New scenes emerge. The story develops. The story changes, grows into what it is meant to be. I make a list of what to check and what to add when I revise.

And this goes on and on…for months. Until I reach the end.

And have a first draft. The longest, hardest part for me. Filling the blank pages. It feels darn good to have a first draft. I’ve piled all the sand in the sandbox and have what I need to work with.

What’s next? Stay tuned…

 

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How Kathy Writes a Book…Part 2: The Notes

Tags

calendars, character development, notes, thoughts, world building, writing, Writing process

Writing is a solitary process. Everyone does it differently and ISN’T IT WONDERFUL!??!!?! How all writers sit and end up with so many words on the pages and no one approaches it or executes it the same. No one. Well, one thing is the same. The blood, sweat, and tears. So many tears.

So here’s my tale of how the stories magically (okay not really magic, like I said, there’s a whole lot of blood, sweat, and tears) become stories. It’s fun to know how others do the wording. It can be helpful. It can be entertaining.

So last time on How Kathy Writes a Story, I shared the beginning of the process…the idea. How one tiny spark…an image, a sentence, a question…grows until it starts to scream in my head.

Then I move onto the next phase.

*cue dramatic orchestral music with lots of brass*

The notes.

The scribble-scrabble days or weeks or months of taking pen in hand and putting thoughts on paper. Yup. Paper.

Gimme all the notebooks. All the glorious blank pages full of possibilities.

I set out to neatly arrange my notes. A place for characters. A place for world building. A place for everything and everything in its…

Yeah, well, that lasts for about two seconds, then I let the mess happen. That’s how I work, in chaos.

I write whatever my mind tells me to write. My thoughts flicker from characters, to emotions, to the world, to bits of dialogue, to scenes…it’s a great ball of tangled string that I get the pleasure (really, me, pleasure?) of unwinding as I write.

ALL THE NOTES

Characters. What do they look like? What is their background? What do they like? What do they hate? What do they want? And for my main character…the character arc.  How do they grow and change during the story?

World. This can get complicated. I have created so many worlds…most for a series of three books. From fantasy to reality-based, the world is important and, for me, can be a character in itself. For fantasy, I design worlds based in a purely visual sense. I paint it in my head, making sure the colors and textures all play with each other. I add the people, the creatures, the flora. If it’s a fantasy world, I bring it to life with a history, religion (if any), government (if any). In both reality-based or fantasy, I need to know what the characters believe. I draw maps, of the worlds and towns and neighborhoods. I draw houses and jot down what color the rooms are, where the furniture is. I need the visual reference. Class schedules. Work schedules. There is so much to know.

The action. Any scenes that pop into my head, I write them down. Any snippets of dialogue are recorded. Pages of scenes, all needing to be put in place.

Any thoughts that come into my head are scratched onto a page.

All the thoughts.

All the things.

If I think it…I write it down.

That organization thing I pondered at the beginning gets completely lost. I rip out pages and shove them here and there to try and keep the illusion of organization. I keep important pages separate.

Though I do spend a lot of time going through those notes searching for that one thing I KNOW I WROTE DOWN SOMEWHERE WHERE IS IT…

But, hey, when you live in chaos, embrace it.

So where’s the outline? Yeah, nope. Outlines don’t live in chaos. I have a different method. The calendar. For reality based, this is easier with a calendar already in existence. Months, days…I know what happens when. I pencil in events that I know happen, leaving all sorts of blank days for all the things surprises to happen. For fantasy-based, this is harder. I have made up calendar years for worlds, but I have run into the problem that structured time just doesn’t work. In my Doors books, going from world to world makes it impossible to have a calendar.

Note writing is the most fun. Listening to the characters, asking them questions, dreaming up the whole thing is a happy place for me. Though most of it never makes it on the page, it makes the world better…deeper, stronger.

But, eventually, the note writing moment ends. I have to start writing. Do I know everything? Nope. But I know enough. Let the games begin.

To be continued…

 

A Series of Unfortunate Lessons

Tags

continuity, fantasy, notes, publishing, series, thoughts, What I learned from writing a series, writing

Book series are so much a thing…the thing? Something. People want characters’ stories to continue, they want to live in a world longer than the span of one book.

We love series! LOVE THEM!

I mean…Harry Potter…

So, many authors are writing them.

When I wrote DOORS, oh so many years ago, I wrote it as a stand alone. I wrote it because at the time being a new author meant the chances of having a series published was zero to none.

“At the time” means before self-publishing was a choice, before the big publishers closed to unagented queries, before small presses had grabbed their piece of the novel pie, before Twitter, and back when querying meant a letter on a piece of paper (ah, snail mail) and a SASE (self-addressed stamped envelope, for those who don’t speak the language of long ago).

I began my writing journey with a series, one that had been rolling around in my head for years.

I wrote three out of four books. I queried the first book (way too soon, but a mistake so many make, so many need to make) and as I waited, I researched this whole getting published thing (without the Internet help that exists now, without writer friends on Twitter, without a writing group…ugh, seriously the stone age). I read publishing books and took classes. First time authors were less likely to be signed with a series, publishers were not willing to risk that much on an unknown. Funny how different the publishing world is now…

So I wrote a stand alone.

But it wasn’t. The story wasn’t done. I had told the very beginning.

Book two is drafted and book three is very close to being drafted…like two or three chapters close! OH MY GOOD GRACIOUS PLEASE LET IT END SOON!

Book one is signed with Reuts Publishing and is waiting for its turn in the edit cave. Books two and three? We’ll see if Reuts wants them. Why write them if I don’t know? Because I needed to.

However, writing a series has been taxing. Frustrating. An adventure. Pure insanity. Writing this series has been one mighty big mess.

Because I didn’t have a series in mind when I wrote book one, I had no idea where the whole story was headed. As I scribbled notes and began writing book two, I had an idea of where the series would go.

But…well…I was wrong. I’m not sure when I realized this…somewhere in book two…somewhere in book three? Both? Yeah.

The story evolved into a beast. A beast with wonderful backstory, a lot of history. A massive tangle of emotions. A web of people and actions. When the Darkness showed up…it all went awry. In a good way! But awry. As I talked to characters, as I delved into the worldbuilding and the past…the story came to life.

And wow, I am exhausted. I am ready to have this thing drafted so it can go sit in a corner.

But I am wiser.

What I have learned from writing a series:

1. Paging through books one and two searching for what you previously wrote is fun. Not incredibly tedious and frustrating. Nope. OKAY YES IT IS
2. Continuity. Is. Hard.
3. Be prepared to go back and change everything in book one to match what ended up happening. Be prepared to add things to book one for the same reason. (Sorry, Kisa…well, not change everything. BOOK ONE WILL BE FINE I SWEAR…IT WILL BE BETTER!)
4. Get really good at making notes that say things like, “DID HE EVEN SAY THAT?” “WHAT DID HAPPEN THEN?” “WHAT DID THIS PLANET LOOK LIKE?” “GO BACK AND CHECK THIS CHECK THAT CHECK EVERYTHING.”
5. The end is going to be quite different than I thought. THIS IS FINE. Go with the flow. Go with the story. To be honest, my story is much better now than it would have been.
6. CONTINUITY. IS. IMPOSSIBLE. Did I say that already? Did I? This is my main struggle BECAUSE MY NOTES ARE A BIG MESSY PILE OF MESS.
7. Never do this again. Okay, that’s a lie. I will do this again. What I hope to not do again is start a series without knowing, though controlling the voices in my head is not something I can…or even want…to do. The next project will be a series BUT I KNOW IT WILL BE. Knowing is half the battle. *gets my sword*

 

I cannot guarantee that my next series will be easier to write. I’ll still have a mess of notes, cause that’s how I roll. I’ll still open myself up to the possibility that I don’t know how it ends and will have to tweak the beginning to fit the surprise ending. Though this next series won’t take place on a million different worlds. So there’s that.

I learned so much. The best thing I discovered, was that I can do it. All the things that have to be changed, tweaked, or added will be done. Revisions are where the miracles happen. First, I need a break to untangle my brain from the web of everything.

Want to write a series? Do it. Scared? Don’t be. Let the story talk to you. Let it evolve into everything it is supposed to be. And fix all the things in revisions.

With my entire series drafted it will be easier to fix. Because I KNOW WHAT HAPPENS NOW! OH GLORIOUS KNOWLEDGE!