When and how students write

Adam Gulla maximized his word count by
"counting" journaling each week.

Here's a post over at my blog The Big Thing about the students who drafted the most words in my class during Spring 2013: Adam Gulla and Veronica Sipe.

Here's a sneak peek:

I found this great article the other day, “Seven Effing Great Ways to Build Your Writing Routine.”  The author encourages us to find our writing “sweet spots” in order to maximize our daily/weekly output.

Consider the following questions:

• How long does your typical writing session tend to last?

• How frequently do you sit down to write?

• On average, how many words do you write per session?

• At what time of the day do you do your writing?

Redefining Writing

James Gartner

        I had finished two drafts of novels before I took my first creative writing class.  People still argue about teaching writing, and some believe that writing is something that can't be taught.  They should try and read those ancient drafts and see what they think then.  Of course, I'm sure that more things than merely education have contributed to my writing.  I did write far more regularly back in those days, but then, everything was more regular then.

This book is very helpful whether you're
a pantser or a plotter.

     Needless to say, I had never heard of "pantsers" and "plotters" when first I started writing.  I just did what I felt like doing, usually starting off just writing and making stuff up as I went, and maybe outlining a few things later on.  I used to picture my story as a kind of movie then, and I still do sometimes.  I'm a very visual person and I'm studying film as well as writing.  As I write more, I tend to see things a little differently.  Pantsing seemed to work out all right, but then I'd go back and look at my work and find all kinds of problems.  But what trouble is that?  It was just a draft, after all.  Yet every time I plugged one hole, something else opened up.
       So, ninety pages into a new draft of a new novel, one I'm considering working on for this class, I decided to start fresh and try and build a solid foundation before I begin to write.  I'm trying to be more organized.  But I'm young, and I've always found trial and error to be effective if time consuming, so I'm trying something and seeing how it goes.
       I think that's also some of where I get blocked up when I'm trying to write.  As I'm looking ahead, I'm thinking I'll probably do lots of different outlines.  Just let things go and see where they end up, then shuffle some things around and start again.  Eventually my outlines will look like one of those choose your own story books probably, but it's an experiment.
       In my last blog post I talked about being a binge writer.  That typically goes with being a pantser.  And honestly even if I have outlined something, the details of the scenes come as I write, at least so far.  Sometimes that takes me in different directions from where I had plotted, but I'm pretty flexible.  The problem with writing a novel is that sometimes it takes a long time to figure out that you're wrong.

Redefined implies that there is nothing more to do.
Perhaps a better slogan would be "Redefining Education,"
but maybe that was already taken.

       So I'm still searching to improve the way I go about writing long projects.  Who knows if I'll ever be satisfied.  I don't always stick to a certain path, even if it works.  Most of the excitement is in the experiment, in the search.  There always might be something better (which, by the way, is particularly frustrating when writing because I'm never really satisfied).  I don't think anyone is too old to keep learning.  Then again, I'm young, so that's easy for me to say.
       Perhaps I should have put this disclaimer toward the top, but if you came here looking for advice, you'll find that I'm still figuring things out myself.  Check out the other posts on #amnoveling and you may find what you're looking for.  In addition to Plot & Structure, James Scott Bell also has a blog.
   

Walk the Line or Dance Around?

by Rachel Rump

For many writers the challenge of writing for a novel comes not from what the story should be about but how in the world they are going to write it. Every writer has a technique. Some write in a linear fashion while others write whatever comes to them and only put the story together later. 

Unable to decide how to write my novel, I decided to try both techniques and see which one worked best for me. I worked on two novel pieces during the time of my Advanced Fiction Class. One was written in linear fashion (we shall call it Z) and the other was written in chucks of scenes as they came to me (this shall be known as S). Now that the semester has ended I am able to look back and evaluate which technique is best for the way I write.  

For my Z novel, I wrote in a straight fashion of how things were presented on my storyboard. I found that this took some time because I was already thinking further ahead to the climax or ending of the story and found that a couple parts were difficult to make it through before I got to a part where the words flowed. But I also found it easy to keep track of where I was in the story because I followed my storyboard and the story was put together with all parts included. I am roughly at the halfway point with a few revisions still needed but that will be addressed at a later time because my story must continue. I must continue to “walk the line”. 

Since I seem to always be all over the place I decided that I would try writing whatever scene came to mind for my second novel S. For this one, whenever I had an idea no matter how long or short it was I would write it down and save them all in a word document. I tried not to go back and revise these parts and just made sure to keep writing everything I thought about with the story. Looking back over all the word documents that I had written I noticed that many of them seem to overlap and describe a scene more than once. I have tried putting what pieces I have together but I find that there are many holes in between scenes. At this point I seem to only have a third of the novel down.  Luckily it was all on computer or it would have been a mess of paper.

A constant theme throughout these two novels? I have written a lot of words. Given that one story is more progressed than the other doesn’t mean this is the only way that I will ever write. I feel that linear is easier to do because I can see the novel come together, but I also liked just writing what came to me. It helped take all the scenes out of my head and put them on paper so that I could find where they fit into my story. I encourage anyone to try out these techniques just to see if maybe one of them fits better than the other.

Turning a Giant into Many Dwarves: A Novel-Writing Approach

by Clay Carter

When I tell people that this semester I am in a fiction class focused on creating a 50,000 word manuscript they are astounded and fearful. Many times I’m hit with their doubt, that they could never do this, that it is too much work, or that their ideas will not be able to cover enough space to fulfill the required word count. I understand that students are often frightened of large assignments, and that such a task can deflate confidence and reduce their drive to succeed.

My head was filled with these same thoughts in the summer months before entering this course. How will I ever complete my words? Will I be able to keep up? Can I imagine all the characters and plots and settings needed to communicate clearly the world of the story? In all honesty, I began to doubt myself and the story I wanted to write. Luckily I encountered a quote that allowed me to look at this project as composed of dozen of parts rather than thinking of the whole all at once, T.S. Eliot says:

“When forced to work within a strict framework, the imagination is taxed to

its utmost – and will produce its richest ideas.”

The framework that Eliot mentions is crucial to tackling any large work of writing, whether it is an epic poem, a memoir or a piece of investigative journalism. His words also assuaged my worries. From here I felt more confident in my ability to create this world that I had begun to imagine by dividing my novel in smaller, more manageable sections. In the remainder of this blog I will outline the process that I feel has been effective in keeping my thoughts fresh and my fingers flying.

Developing a storyboard and a list of characters was the first step I took during the pre-writing phase. This is mainly an organization tool. It is daunting to remember characters and their plotlines. The storyboard is especially helpful to me because it allows my plots to become visual all at once. I used note cards to color code each character. When I lay them all out I can trace how any particular character moves through the course of the story. In times when I see that a character is not well rounded, meaning the character is static, I lay my cards out and find areas in the plot that would be conducive to the expansion of that character’s traits, flaws and desires.

When it comes time to writing I stay on a straight and narrow path with a planned destination because I have my cards in front of me. Before I write I know what scene I plan to write, which characters are going to be interacting and the conflict they confront. Knowing these three things allows for my mind to fill in the details of only this scene rather than thinking about how it might influence the rest of the novel. To reiterate, the storyboard provides a framework in which I can write and explore the minds of my characters. Structure will work wonders!

In conclusion I want to leave you the reader with another quotation I found to be most inspirational. It gave me the drive to push my creativity to its utmost and never shoot down ideas before I give them a shot. This bit comes from the film director Jim Jarmusch:

“Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery - celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from - it’s where you take them to.”

[Editor's Note: To hear about experimentation in the framework of a novel, check out today's other blog post by Rachel Rump. - Lauren Burch]

Just Keep Writing

by Anne Haben

Just keep writing. Just keep writing. Just keep writing, writing, writing, writing. What do we do? We write, write, write.

I know what you’re all thinking “how am I supposed to write a novel in a semester?”  Well in all honesty you probably won’t.  Instead what you will have is a pretty solid first draft but that’s only if you can crank out enough words to get you there.

Writer's block: It's kind of like that.

What about writers block, or lack of focus, or losing interest in what your characters are doing?  Yes these are all obstacles you will have to face but there are ways to get past them — trust me I’ve done it.

           

You need to find ways to keep you motivated and keep yourself invested in telling your story.

1)      Try writing at different times in the day to figure out when you’re most creative.  Unfortunately for me this is usually really late at night when all of my roommates are finally asleep.

2)      If silence doesn’t work well for you try listening to music.  TVs can be too distracting for some because there are images you want to see but with music a single lyric can spark an entire scene.  Music can also get you into the right mind frame to write.  Say you are a generally happy person but one of the scenes in your novel is particularly dark listen to music that portrays this mood.

3)      Go to different places to write.  It isn’t good to just sit at the same desk day after day staring at a blank screen.  It gets frustrating and you feel like you aren’t accomplishing anything because you probably aren’t.  Take your laptop to the park, or a coffee shop, just go somewhere different.  You never know who you are going to bump into or what you may see that will spark your imagination and have you writing a thousand words before you realize where they are even taking you.

4)      Search the internet for random pictures. Inspiration is just waiting to be stumbled upon so go find it.

5)      Look up famous quotes and even some that aren’t so famous.  Sometimes all you need is a line and then all of the sudden you have a full conversation between your characters.

All of these can help with writers block.  It isn’t about writing something perfectly at first chance or about sitting in one place to get things done.  You have to explore what is around you so you have more to write about.

Don’t bother constantly revising what you wrote either.  Concentrate on the new.  Get your words down before you lose them for they may never come back.

Try writing without thinking, sounds strange I know, but when you write without thinking you don’t second guess yourself and what you write may surprise you and what your characters do can surprise you.  This is something you want because when you surprise yourself you have a better chance of surprising your readers. Having the element of surprise is one of the things that will keep your readers invested in your story and causes them to want to read on.

Maybe for some sitting in silence in the same place at the same time works for them but we are all different writers and need different things to keep us chugging along.  I hope these suggestions/tips will help some of you in your noveling process and if you have any other advice on what keeps you writing and focused please share them in the comments.

[Editor's Note: If you're having trouble managing your inspirations, check out today's blog post by Aaron Wittwer.  And be sure to tune in tomorrow for Spencer McNelly's post on queer literature! - Lauren Burch]