Getting Back Into Fiction

It’s a little painful.

I described it to Daniel last night like this: it’s as if I was training for a marathon (writing the novel). Then I switched to sprints (the Nor Cal book, written in 200 word segments). Now I’m ready to run that marathon, and I set out to run each morning and I’m tired so quickly.

Yesterday was a little better. I actually managed to write a whole scene, but it took me all day. And many, many times throughout the day I thought “I’ll just go do (laundry, facebook, anything but this),” but caught myself trying to avoid the task at hand and forced myself to work a little longer.

This was a good week to jump back in, as the freelance work was light (just that short magazine assignment), but Monday I have a meeting with a client that will hopefully bring on a new wave of work. So I’ll just try to enjoy today, lounging (battling) with the fiction.

The good news is that I’m actually not too far from the end of this draft. All the basic parts are in the right place, I think. I still need to develop some of my subplots, but all in all I feel like it’s coming along.

Here’s hoping.

Indonesia, baby.

This is my first post since the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Did I fall off the map, you ask? Kind of. My guy got a call that Saturday, one week ago today, asking if he could come to Indonesia immediately to help out on a film.

Do you remember the scene in Ghost Busters where Bill Murry’s character says “if somebody asks if you’re a God, you say yes.” That’s always been my take on travel. When someone says “hey, would you like to go to ______,” you say yes. It won’t always work out, but I always start with yes – I want to go.

So when Daniel told me he would be gone for the month of December, but would only take the job if we (me and the kids) could come with him, I said yes, only half believing it would work out anyway. And here we are. We arrived Thursday morning after about 30 hours of travel. Talk about whirlwind. I still can’t really believe we got all four of us here for such a long stay on such short notice. And just in case you’re thinking about robbing us while we’re here – let me just say for the record that we were able to find a house sitter – I wouldn’t be announcing all this to the world if we hadn’t.

So far, it’s awesome, though the jet lag has been pretty rough on the little one and (as if that wasn’t enough) he seems to have come down with the chicken pox. We’re staying in a hotel on the island of Batam, just a short ferry ride from Singapore.

The most wicked storm just passed over. I mean, it’s probably just another day in paradise for anyone who lives here all the time, but it kind of blew me away. The thunder and lightning and deluge of rain that came out of nowhere were amazing. Three hours ago we were in the pool and I was worried about getting sunburned through my spf 50.

Because Janet Fitch taught me well, and because I was lucky enough to have both kids down for a nap, I took some time to write about the storm as it built, rattled the windows and eventually passed over, and the process of getting it all down made me miss my fiction so much.

I’ve enjoyed the other writing that I’ve been doing, but there’s something so engaging about writing a scene. Teasing out just the right words to paint a unique time and place – the sounds, the smells, the light. I just love it.

So that’s what’s up with me. I will make every effort to keep up the blogging, but frankly, we have a lot of exploring to do. You’ll have to forgive me if I put aside the cyber world for a while to indulge in a slice of real world that I’ve never seen before.

Carving Out Time For The Fiction

I met with my writer’s group on Wednesday and we got to talking about how hard it is to focus on our fiction sometimes, in the light of all the distractions that are available via the internet. One of my writing buddies told me that she sets aside time every morning to write before she allows herself to do anything online.

For her that means sitting down to write as soon as she wakes up around 8, then by 10 she clicks over to check emails and start her regular business day. She told me that really, there’s nothing in her life that can’t wait that one business hour for her to attend to it. 

It made me realize that my life is in a pretty similar spot. I can’t start writing until 9 when I sit down in my office (I’m busy with the kids before that), but really, most of the time, my career will not collapse in on itself if I don’t check my email for two hours.

So it’s been two days now. I come into my office, sit down and just start writing. It sounds like such a small thing, but it’s been awesome. Something about giving my creative work priority – before my brain is cluttered with daily life – allows me to make some real progress. I hope I can keep it up. 

I know at some point I will have clients with a rush job or some other thing that demands my attention early in the day, but generally speaking, this is a habit I’m going to try to keep.

So if you need me (I mean REALLY need me) before 11, call me. 

It Only Works If You Work It

I blogged a while back about my writer’s notebook. It’s something I learned from Janet Fitch in a class at USC. Write down everything. Any time a verbal tick or landscape catches my attention for any reason I pull out my handy little notebook and write it down. Unfortunately, with all the distractions in my life, I have fallen short on the second, and vitally important part of transferring those notes to some sort of organized filing system. 

This morning I am working on a scene where my character’s crush is blossoming.  A few months ago I had this very visceral memory of a crush I once had. I don’t know what sparked it, but I was smart enough to not question and instead just pull over and write down what I remember it feeling like. 

The trouble is, this morning, when I could totally use that note, I can’t find it. I have two notebooks and two separate files for notes that I tear out, and it doesn’t seem to be anywhere! Arrrgggg! I wrote it down so I wouldn’t HAVE to remember. 

On the plus side, as I was sifting through my notes, I found I actually have a wealth of story ideas and character quirks that I might be able to use. I just need to get more organized so I can find them when I need them. So I guess some time soon I will need to go through the files and notebooks and type everything up. Then I can print them out and stick them in a binder I keep (or used to – it hasn’t been updated in a long while) for that precise purpose. 

Sweet. Another thing to add to my to do list.

Run, Baby, Run

I‘ve decided to become a runner.

After three months on bed rest and then actually squeezing the little guy out, my body is not the body I remember. I feel weak, and I’m tired of it. So I googled up a storm and designed a plan to ramp up slowly into a running practice. Yesterday was my first day – I did thirty minutes; three walking followed by two running, repeated six times. It felt good.

The best thing about this plan is the two minutes. Running is hard, but for two minutes I can do just about anything. And unlike my usual attempts at running, I wasn’t playing the mental game of “how much further can I go” I knew exactly how much longer I would be running, which allowed me to switch my focus to the act of running. I spent the two minute intervals of running time trying to find a groove, a comfort in the motion of it. It was cool.

It reminded me of my writing. Just like exercise, writing is hard to get back into when you step away from it for any length of time. And that’s why a writing practice is so important. Rather than pushing myself to get through this chapter or word count or what ever, when I set aside time to write, and I accept that writing is what I’m doing, I can free myself to settle into it, to find a comfort in the challenge of it. By embracing the act of writing and ignoring the part of me that whines “this is too hard…” I can let go and fall into that zone, the one where words just pour.

And on that note, time to stop blogging and get back to the novel.

Novel Update

It’s been a while since I gave an update on my actual writing. The novel I mean. I am about halfway through the third draft, though I kind of consider it my second draft since the first was so bad that I scrapped it almost entirely.

The hardest part about the work I’m doing right now is getting over the idea that sections are almost done. For instance, right now I’m working on adding a character. I’m glad he’s come into the story, he brings a sense of balance, but I get really annoyed when I have to go back into chapters that I thought were getting close to done and pull them apart to insert this new guy.

My latest trick is using the XX tag. If I’m writing something new and it occurs to me that there are revisions that need to be done in another section, but I don’t want to get side tracked from the work I’m actually doing, I type “XX – need to make sure this is consistent throughout” or “XX – should they kiss?” and just move right over it. Then, later, it’s easy to do a search for “XX” and jump from one note to the next.

It occurs to me, just now, that I could also just use the “note” function in the new word program. That would probably be even easier, as long as the notes print out along with the body of the text. Anyone out there know how that works?Funny I never thought of that before. I guess I’m just a creature of habit.