A Detailed Outline

You wouldn't go to a football game without pregaming. You wouldn't go to a protest rally without a clever sign. And you wouldn't begin a novel without a game plan unless you want to drive yourself completely batshit crazy.

I've tried to write novels before. I know all too well how easy it is to draft scenes over and over again, until that is all you really have. I didn't have a game plan.

This time, I took some advice from an old English teacher. After putting myself into serious writer-mode, I took a pen to paper and wrote down what the story was about. In writing a detailed synopsis for each section of the novel (plus the prologue and epilogue), I solved plot problems, I was able to see the entire scope of the novel and I was allowed each section to rise and fall with the larger story. Characters started talking to me, explaining why they did things, giving me insight on why they think the way they do, and stories of what kind of people they're like and hope to be.

I wrote a good first draft of the prologue last night and this morning, I finished the first quick edit that made things flow together nicely. I've drafted the detailed plot outline of Part One, and taking notes on things that need to happen in Part Two for Part Three to have the impact it needs. I've been plotting and planning Part Three the longest, because it's the entire crux of the novel. Everything happens in Part Three. Part Four is the long resolution of everything that happens in Part Three, and Part Five ties everything together very nicely.

I wrote a message to myself, dreaming of the highest compliment I could receive, and told myself to earn it. To make it as good as that fake review said it was.

I've settled on a strategy. I'm going to write a clear, concise outline of everything that happens exactly as it happens in that particular section. When I'm satisfied, I'm going to write a quarter of that section for four days. In a week or so, I will have a complete rough draft of the entire section, which I will guesstimate at 40-50 pages each. I will repeat the process for the other four sections, and with any luck, I will have something that vaguely resembles a completely drafted manuscript. The final manuscript, of course, will come with a heavy editor's pen (lucky for me, there is a beautiful and brilliant English teacher friend on the other end of it). And then I will publish it on lulu to have a bound copy to edit and tear apart and take copious notes in to rewrite and rework it until I'm satisfied.

Writing a novel is like coming up with an exercise regimen: If you want to achieve your goal, you have to come up with a feasible game plan you know you can stick to. I know I can finish a quarter of a section in a day. Most people can't.

Find what works, and do it.

And never stop writing.

Encouragement from the Peanut Gallery

Background: I've been working on my novel ("With a Saber and a Gun" - a sort of historical fiction involving Chicago in the late 1960s) for a little over two years now. I have a great cast of characters, my MC's first kiss with my Leading Man is arguably the most romantic thing I've ever written, and the research has been absolutely fascinating. This is the story I always knew I would write someday, ever since I fell in love with history at the age of ten, something that has been inside of me since I discovered rock music, Beat poetry, and was old enough to start making well-informed rulings on social issues. I knew one day I would write a novel about a girl finding her place in the world in a very tumultuous and fascinating point in history, and would be a not-so-thinly veiled commentary about all I believed about sex, drugs, religion, the immorality of war, family, friendship, and love. It would by my fictionalized manifesto on social issues. This was going to be my "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" (my favorite novel), the novel I always hoped to read but never found in my favorite used bookstore, and I would write it, (dammit), even if the only people who read it were my friends and family.

But after two years of slogging away on this thing, I couldn't figure out a way to tie everything together and, well, finally finish the damn thing.

Sound familiar?

About a month ago, I had The Breakthrough.

It happened while staying at a friend's house, while he all but ignored me and played video games. The notebook in which I have kept all of my notes, research, and a spattering of scenes I've been working on while my laptop is in the shop, is currently at home, and I'm still at my friend's house, watching him and his roommates play video games. Around Hour Eight of the gaming marathon, I was lamenting the absence of my beloved notebook to my girlfriend. I was telling her how badly I wanted to write and knew there was no way I would be able to type even part of what I had in mind for the third part of a five-part novel on my little iPod device. And that's when I got...The Idea.

I took advantage of the fact that I didn't want to type much on my little iPod device. I went outside, listened to the song where the title and much of the theme came from (I Ain't Marchin' Anymore by Phil Ochs, a protest singer of the time I'm writing about. Awesome awesome awesome song.), got myself into writer mode, and began to type.

What did I type, exactly?

I know it sounds crazy and someone is bound to make fun of me for this, but everybody has been guilty of reading soap summaries in the TV Guide, even if we don't watch them. I asked myself, "Okay, Jen, what happens in Part Three?" And I started writing the shortest, most concise sentences I could (again, because I didn't feel like writing twelve pages with my thumbs on a tiny little iPod) that would basically hash out every major event that happens to every major character in that section.

Later, when I go home and have access to my beloved notebook, I will be able to make a list of everything I wrote down, put it in order, and ask myself a series of questions about it.

Actual Example:

"Andrew dies."

Okay, how does he die? Who is told first? What are the reactions of his close friends and family members? How does my MC (his sister) find out? How does she react in the days and weeks to come? Does my leading man go with her to the funeral?

These are questions I will write down and force myself to answer before I sit down and then write it for real, and I will do this for the other four sections in the novel, even the ones for which I've already finished the first rough drafts.

I'm going to finish this damn novel once and for all. And you will finish yours, too.

Keep writing.

The Scene of Doom

I've come to the conclusion that writing is to be done in private. We write and write, whatever is inside us. We write until we can write no more and must reemerge from our writing cave in search of sustenance (beer, pizza, ramen), only to do it again the next day. And the next. And the next.

I tend to get very grumpy when I'm writing. It's really best for everybody involved to be far, far away from me when I'm in the thick of writing a complex scene or doing a massive overhaul of a section. the littlest thing can send me storming out of the room (like, say, my roommate laughing at something on The Daily Show while I'm trying to take notes while watching old newsreels and figure out how I'm going to incorporate fact and fiction.) and I just have to remember to resist the compulsion to throw my computer out the window whenever it eats a file I worked on three days ago. And hug my roommate and let him know I'm not mad at him.

Yesterday, I wrote the ending of the heart of the novel, where four major events happen all at once.

I had always intended it to be this way, but it took approximately twelve hours longer than it should have. My computer ate the part of this section I had been working on a few days before.

But it's over.

Bobby Kennedy has given his speech at the Ambassador Hotel and everyone who has been working on the campaign (including Ben the leading man) is at Jimmy's (a real bar in the neighborhood of Hyde Park in Chicago) celebrating his likely win.

Moments after Kennedy says, "And now it's on to Chicago and let's win this." Ben's father comes into the bar and tells Ben his wife is in labor. And they go on to the hospital.

Kate the wife is in labor. Ben is pacing the waiting room (since men weren't really allowed in the delivery room) and as a nurse comes in and tells him his wife has had the baby, he happens to see on the television in the nurse's station that Bobby Kennedy has been assassinated. His father grips his shoulders and tells him to take care of her.

After he spends some time with her, he sees his brother Phil, who has been in long-term treatment in the psych ward at a VA Hospital because he was suffering from severe PTSD and tried to kill himself.

The scene (and the entire heart of the novel) ends when Phil and his girl Diane, Ben, and the professor are standing around Kate's bed talking to her and the baby.

It took forever. And now on to Part Four, which has each character in turn asking themselves "what next?". I'm excited.

RE: Goal of the Day

Okay, so it turns out I have lost all concept of time. It's Sunday. The library is closed. And we're out of printer paper.

Feck.

You know you're a crazy writer person when...

Goal of the Day

I have a tendency to write scenes out of order to see where I want to take the book at a later time when I get there.

Sometimes Lucy (my laptop) and I like to take long rides on the El to visit friends and I like to write what I see. And sometimes, I can incorporate these observations into my writing.

The problem with this is that when it comes time to squeeze them into an appropriate place, I have either obnoxiously long file names like, "Kate stood and led Brian down the stairs into the yard" or short, non descriptive file names like "Dr". Or worse, "Doc14" because I have fourteen files of the same name.

Am I the only one?

My files are a mess.

The only way I see to rectify the situation is to print these passages (which are rarely more than three pages each), delete the files, put the passages into a notebook of some kind, and use them when I need them.

This is the goal of the day: Consolidating all my random loose files into a notebook, and then delete them off my computer so my files are less cluttered and I might be motivated to write more.

I've been making slow and steady progress. I'm writing a very difficult section, so it's been especially hard to sit down and force myself to keep slogging through it, but it's coming along.

I wrote almost 4k yesterday, which is more than I ever wrote for Nanowrimo, so I'm pretty pleased with that.

My goal for next week is to have as clear a plan for this section that I'm working on right now as I do the ones that preceded it. By the end of next week, I want to have it finished, like I did last week with section two. I need it to be clear, concise, and in one file, and it is none of those things right now.

So now, it's off to the library.

Crazy Writer Desk

I mentioned this in a previous post, but I thought it deserved some kind of definition.

Do you have eleven spiral notebooks in a pile (not a stack, a pile) on your desk, and only one of them might be in any way relevant to your current project?

Do you have a cluster of empty beer bottles, a stack of plates with stale crumbs, and a flask of whiskey in the bottom drawer, just in case?

Do you find yourself unable to stand the clutter but know you can't clean it up because you will never find anything again?

You have Crazy Writer Desk.

Good. I'm glad it's not just me.

With a Saber and a Gun

I had always wanted to write a novel set against the backdrop of the 1960s. I've always been fascinated with all aspects of that time in history, and thought I had seen enough documentaries, listened to enough music, read enough books to where I thought I could do it justice.

The initial seed of the idea came from a short story idea I had, but it just wasn't working in the way I wanted and needed it to work, I didn't think there was enough I could give to it, and I abandoned the project.

I don't know what happened next, exactly, but in November of last year when I sat down to write for Nanowrimo, I decided that it was time to write the novel I had always wanted to write, the novel about the 60s. As I started planning the novel I would write, I decided I could turn that abandoned short story idea into the major hurdle my main character would have to overcome in order to get what she wants.

That's the idea that really got me going. And I began, that first day, writing a clear, concise plan that would get me through the writing process. I didn't care so much about finishing by November 30th, so much as I wanted so badly to finish a project. This project.

In the introduction to the Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams wrote, "I became a writer and worked on a lot of things that were almost incredibly successful, but, in fact, just failed to see the light of day. Other writers will know what I mean."

I think every writer knows what he means. I certainly do.

But what to call this project, the one I had always wanted to write, the one I needed to finish?

As I delved further into the protest music, the chorus of a Phil Ochs song struck a chord in me that resonated so strongly, I knew that was it. I got so excited because not only did it represent the theme of the piece, it also summerized my own personal feelings about war that I couldn't quite articulate.

This is the chorus:

It's always the old to lead us to the war
Always the young to fall
Look at all we've won with a saber and a gun
Tell me, was it worth it all?
- Phil Ochs, "I Ain't Marchin Anymore"

So in case anyone wants to know why a novel that questions the motive of going to war is called, "With a Saber and a Gun", that's why. It's from a protest song. An anti-war protest song.

And a damn good title, if I do say so myself.