Karen Sandler

Tag: nora roberts

  • A Literary Schlep–4…er…5 Tips on Finishing Your Novel

    Awakening Final cover-sI flew from DC to Northern California today. I bring this up because I was contemplating how odd it is that at 6am this morning (3am PST), I was heading off in my rental car to Dulles Airport, and at 2:10pm PST, I was pulling into my own driveway. Door-to-door, about 11 hours.

    Which might seem like an excruciatingly long time. But truly, if you think about it, my plane ride was barely a blink of the eye compared to crossing the country in a wagon train. A quick Google search tells me that a wagon train trip (which generally left from Missouri, not DC), took 4-6 months. Tack on the extra 40% farther DC would be and you’re talking 6-8 months.

    What does this have to do with writing a novel? That plane ride I took is a lot like, say, writing a short story. The cross-country wagon train trip is like penning a novel. It’s a long-term commitment with pitfalls and setbacks around every corner, and if you’re not fully prepared, you just might not make it.

    So how can you improve your odds? Here are a few tips I’ve learned along the way:

    1. Write at least a rough synopsis. Yeah, I know, some of you are thinking, But that’s just not how I work. I just have to let it flow. My answer to that is, if it really, truly works for you, if you find yourself able to finish that book, then another, then another, and they’re all reasonably coherent stories even before you start your re-writes, then okay, I’ll give you a pass. But if on the other hand, you start one book after another, get a few chapters in, or even half-way through, but can’t seem to close the deal–write a synopsis. Even if it’s so ugly you won’t dare show it to anyone else, get your story structure mapped out.
    2. Flesh out your characters. I have a variety of character sketch formats that I’ve used over the years. Twenty-plus books later, they’ve gotten a little abbreviated, but I still like to know a) physical characteristics (don’t want to change eye color in mid-stream) and b) conflicts and goals. This helps me get to know the character well enough that when I plunk them down into a scene, I know how they’re going to behave. I know what they’ll say, how they’ll say it, and what they’ll reveal and won’t reveal about themselves. They’re not just blobs moving through my invented universe, they’re real, three-dimensional people.
    3. Turn off that infernal internal editor. Shoosh her away. Put duct tape on his mouth. Lock that hyper-critical, opinionated loud-mouth in a dark closet in the corner of your mind. Because she will freeze your hands on the keyboard. He will convince you to turn your back on that story that you could see like a movie in your head. That cantankerous soul will make you doubt every word you put on the page. Your internal editor has his place in the process, but it isn’t now. Give her a margarita and tell her to wait her turn.
    4. Just keep going until you get to the end. Well, that’s pretty stupid advice, isn’t it? If you could get to the end, you wouldn’t need this blog post. But this goes along with tip #3. Just keep going. Without worrying too much about how it’s all going to hang together. Without stopping every paragraph to polish the prose. Without going back to chapter 4 and adding that crucial information you didn’t figure out you needed until chapter 18. Just make a note to yourself about what needs adding and keep going. The time for worrying about those changes, for letting the editor out of the closet and taking away her margarita is at the end. Because after you’ve written right to the end, you have a book you can re-write and fix and polish. As author Nora Roberts said (my all-time fave writing quote), “I can fix a bad page. I can’t fix a blank page.”

    So, there you go. With these four fabulous tips, finishing your novel will be easy-peasy. A do-it-with-your-eyes-closed cake-walk. Heh. Yeah, right.

    It isn’t easy. It’s cholera-just-broke-out, the-wagon-wheel-broke, early-winter-has-us-snowbound hard. So here’s one more tip to keep you going.

    5. Don’t beat yourself up over the bad days. If all hell breaks loose at home, or you’re exhausted after work, or you have a stack of student essays to correct and you can’t get even one word written, let alone one page, cut yourself some slack. You’ll get back to it tomorrow. And you’ll be one more paragraph, or page, or chapter closer to The End.

    Anything to add? Tips you’ve discovered that keep you going? Please share.

     

  • RTW – Writing Books & Writing Advice

    This week,  YA Highway’s Road Trip Wednesday asks us to Share your most inspiring and/or motivational video, book, or quote on writing. All those NaNoWriMo participants out there nearing November’s half-way point could probably use an extra push toward the finish line.

    I have not read very many “inspirational” writing books. Back when I was just starting out, I tended to buy the nuts-and-bolts how-to books, read partway through, or just bits and pieces, then set them aside. I did read The Elements of Style (by William Strunk & E.B. White) cover to cover many years ago (it’s a real hoot), and back in 2000, I devoured Stephen King’s On Writing. I highly recommend both of those.

    There are a couple of inspirational/how-to-write books that most people rave about, Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott and Story by Robert McKee, that I started but couldn’t finish. I’m a severe plotter who does lots of advance prep. Then when I finally start chapter 1, I switch gears and become a very instinctual writer. Lamott’s and McKee’s books just made my eyes glaze over. However, many, many people have recommended these books, so I’m sure they have much of value in them. Just not for me.

    Now on to some writing advice. The first is from romance goddess Nora Roberts, and came to me via a talk given by the incomparable romance author, Anne Stuart. Back when I was writing romance, I belonged to Romance Writers of America, and Anne came to speak to our local chapter. She quoted something Nora Roberts had said: I can fix a written page. I can’t fix a blank page. This one piece of advice has pushed me through book after book, shutting up the little editor in my head with the clear knowledge that I can fix it later. Nothing is set in stone. Nora said so.

    As a companion bit of advice, Anne herself said something that night that has bolstered me many times when I have struggled to write even one page, when the words sit sullenly at the back of my head and refuse to step into the light. Anne said (and I paraphrase here), If you look the pages that were like pulling teeth to write and compare them to the pages that just flowed easily and beautifully, you won’t be able to tell the difference between them. In other words, even though you’re certain that pages you struggle to write are awful crap, they’re not. They’re just as good as those breeze-to-write pages and just as ready to be “fixed” as advised by Nora.

    If I may, one bit of my own advice. As I mentioned, neither Bird by Bird nor Story resonated with me. By the time they came along, I already had a methodology that worked. I’ve tweaked my writing method over the years, but the basic system has remained the same.

    If you’re just starting out as a writer and checking out various methods/structures to find what works, that’s great. But every writer is different. Some things you try will not work for you. Other methods that you find are perfect for you won’t work for others. Never judge yourself because you’re, for instance, a pantser, when everyone else in your critique group insists you should always plot first. Don’t freak out when you go to a conference workshop and the speaker tells you about a work style that doesn’t sync with yours. You’re not necessarily doing it wrong just because you’re doing it differently. The only real must is to continually improve the quality of your writing and storytelling.

    So how about you? What books or advice have inspired you?