Did You Say--Gasp!--Outline?

Good freezing morning to you today! Not only is it one of the coldest mornings of the year so far (outdoor thermometer says it's zero right about now), but my thermostat continues to prove that it needs to be replaced: for the third time in four nights, it failed to tell the boiler that heat was needed, and it's really freaking cold right now! Good news? It must have worked at least partway through the night, because it was 'only' in the mid fifties in the house when I got up. Still, that's too freakin' cold. The thermostat is one of those old, mechanical types with a coil and a mercury switch. I see a digital upgrade in my short-term future.

Around this time each year, Agent Carrie schedules calls with all of her clients to plot and plan for the upcoming year. It's a chance to set goals, discuss how things are working, and map out where we want to go and how we're going to get there. My call was yesterday afternoon. Through the magic of cell phone technology, I left my family in a supermarket and sat in the car while we talked. Best thing of all? When our conference was done, I stepped out of the car and saw my wife pushing a laden cart across the parking lot to me--we were done! Timing is everything!

Carrie and I last spoke in mid-September, when we discussed the editorial feedback and "near miss" of the novel I'd last completed. At that time, I mentioned my new project, something I'd started working on over the summer while on submission. Her reaction was...cautious. She expressed concern that it didn't sound like what I typically write. Admittedly, my poor description of it probably made it sound a bit like an action flick, which is definitely not my style, but I also don't talk about my writing as well as I write about it! I did understand where she was coming from, however, and when I went back to the WiP while avoiding the RiP, I made some changes based on what Carrie had put in my mind. I then abandoned the WiP during NaNo month in favor of the RiP, which I finally sent back to Carrie in early December.

In the last two weeks, I made substantial progress on the WiP. On Saturday morning, prior to a pre-Christmas cleaning binge, I added nearly 2000 words on to the end, and found myself happy with the progress. I have a little over 200 pages, almost 65,000 words down, and the full sense of what happens. Which brings me to yesterday's conversation with Carrie. On Saturday afternoon, after the pre-Christmas cleaning binge, I decided I wanted to send Carrie a synopsis of the WiP in advance of our conference. This way, she'd really understand the WiP in the likely event I garbled my way through the conversation. So I started the synopsis.

If you're an author, you've probably dealt with the synopsis. This is something many agents and editors ask for, where you condense your 100,000 word opus into three to five pages--or, worse yet, one page. It typically includes mentions of all the MAJOR CHARACTERS, all the major plot events, and the ending. It's something that causes as much angst for writers as a pitch letter, maybe more: if you're not an author, it's hard to write these things, trust me. At any rate, I got to a point on Saturday evening where I liked my synopsis, then touched it up again on Sunday morning and sent it out. I'll admit, I broke some rules: my synopsis is not a one page quickie, it's three pages. And I didn't mention all the characters, and I didn't put them in ALL CAPS. I'm daring. A maverick. A rule breaker. But it worked. When I talked to Carrie later, she seemed really excited about the project, and didn't express the same sort of reservations she had raised when we first talked about the project. Score for me!

It also helped me, however. If you've been reading this space at all, you know I'm a dedicated Wingman, a Discovery Writer, a man who hates the concept of outlining. Yet, the synopsis is, in fact, something of an outline. It lays out the major events of the plot, and in summarizing the plot, it's possible to see where some of the holes might be. Since I haven't read over this manuscript from start to finish (and trust me, this one is a hot mess in many ways) yet, I was running largely off of memory, and what I thought should happen. There are a couple of spots where the synopsis comes across as a mumble, the literary equivalent of "la la la'ing" your way through the line of a song when you're not quite sure how it goes.


10 Beatles Classics You Kind Of Know The Words To by jeremeey

This synopsis, or "after the fact outline," has helped me see where I need to beef things up, expand on things, fill in the details. I'm not ready to call myself an outliner, not by a longshot, but I certainly can see where outlining in the middle of things can help bring it all home.

That's it for me for this week. I hope you all have yourselves a beautiful holiday. See you next time!

Inside a Wingman's Brain

When it comes to writing, I am a wingman. My completed novels were started on the basis of simple ideas and written without the benefit of any outlines. I started one with a character in mind, and the other based on a situation. While I thought about both stories in advance, when I sat down to write I had no real clue as to what would happen, how either would end, or even who was in it. There's just some opening image (which doesn't necessarily turn out to be page 1 in the completed work), and the story is revealed as I go.

Once a week I get together with a group of folks for a writer's group. We use a prompt and do about forty-five minutes of freewriting, which we share at the end. Commentary is pretty light, we aim for encouragement, and I'm fine with that. It's fun, it's good practice, and I've come up with some usable material for short stories. Parts of both novels were written there (Barton's Women, in fact was actually started there).

Two weeks ago we read "La Recoleta," a poem by Jorge Luis Borges, as our prompt. It was a funny day; I was 'in charge' that day and was distracted by the unexpected arrival of three teens and a young adult from a different writing group who showed up wanting to 'sit in' (though the leader said, "We'll just watch." Huh? Why would you go to a writer's group and just watch? But I digress.). I also had the pressure of trying to end on time (for once), so I had to watch the clock. The prompt didn't quite grab me, and I stared out the window, trying to find something to write. A curtain of icicles hung outside the window, and as I watched the drip drip drip of droplets off the end of one of the icicles, and it started. What I'm going to do is mix what I wrote that day with commentary on what I was thinking (when I was thinking at all, that is). This piece is not edited beyond what I did at the time. Maybe because I was so distracted, I was able to remember the shifts and turns in my thinking. Anyway, here it is.

'Water drops bulged at the end of the icicle, fell with the same steady rhythm of the a saline drip pumped into Frank's arm. He watched it—the ice, not the saline drip, he got faint light-headed every time he thought about stuff getting pumped into his arm—and decided he'd officially bottomed out.'

Three things. First, I noticed how steady the drip off the end of an icicle is, and that put me in mind of IVs, so I worked that in. Also, less conscious, those were pretty damn sharp icicles hanging off the roof, which perhaps put me in mind of needles in veins. Frank is a definite reference to a a character in a lengthy piece one of my writer's group colleagues has been working on. And, in hindsight, I'd say that 'bottomed out' may be a reference to how I was feeling at the moment. When I resort to writing about things I see and hear at the writer's group, it's a sure sign things aren't working too well that day. Though writing about icicles isn't as bad as writing about pens, though. When I write about pens, that's bottoming out.

I still had no idea where this was going, by the way, but I kept up with the idea of bottoming out in the next paragraph.

'This is what my life has come to, he thought, as a drop grew fat at the end of the razor needle*-sharp ice. I'm watching water fall off an icicle and it's the most interesting thing that's happened all day.'

*I initially used razor, but razor is the wrong word for icicles, isn't it? Icicles are needles, not razors, and the hospital setting and the IV meant 'needle' was the right word. This was a conscious cross-out made before I went any further.

Now, at this point, questions came up. Who is Frank? What's he doing in the hospital? I didn't know. What's more, Frank didn't know. I suddenly had an idea that Frank in this place with no idea why, and no memory of anything, really. I was writing myself into something. It's great fun when it happens. On I went.

'And it was, too, that was the sad thing. He couldn't remember how long he'd been here. He couldn't remember why he was here. He couldn't remember the last time he'd seen a familiar face, besides the dark-eyed nurse stern-faced nurses and orderlies who took his pulse, checked his temperature, and asked him how he was feeling, that is. Once today the they switched the bag of saline had hung from its hook like a deflated balloon. Frank had seen caught sight of it and nearlythe room had gone gotten grey and spinny. Later, the curly-haired nurse in the Snoopy smock had entered with a full bag. Frank looked away and discovered the icicles out the window, and that had occupied his mind for some time.'

So, at this point I tried to tap into the hospital experience a bit. I've never been a long-term patient myself, but have seen enough of hospitals in the last ten years for a lifetime. In this and the next paragraph, indeed, in all of Frank's interactions with the nurse, I tried to bring in the feeling of being in a hospital, so any potential reader might nod their heads and think, "yeah, that's it."

I'm not 100% sure why I opted out of 'dark-eyed nurse' in favor of a more generic person. In hindsight, it works better. The bag of saline was something where I started to write a simple "they switched it" but thought I could use more description, so I went for the deflated balloon thing. I was going to write 'had nearly passed out' but went for the slightly more showy 'grey and spinny.' That whole section needs more cleanup, but I was on a roll. No time for revising!

Something began to work into my head about this story, and I started to see both a possibly sinister reason for Frank's hospitalization and a way to end the story. I saw a man who knows something, or almost remembers something (I still didn't know what), but can't quite get to it, and I wanted the IV to be why he couldn't remember, and tie it all to the imagery of the dripping icicles. There was a little more interaction between Frank and the nurse that I'll skip.

'Cold fingers pressed against the inside of his wrist. His pulse beat hard against them. There was something he was supposed to ask. It dangled there in his mind, not quite seen.The idea of it grew bigger and bigger, but he didn't know.

The thermometer beeped. The nurse pulled it out of his mouth and ejected the plastic sheath. Another note on his chart.

"I'll be back in a little while," she said. "If you need anything, just hit that button."

She was halfway out the door when Frank called her. "Nurse." His voice was rusty in his ears.

She stopped and regarded watched him, her eyebrows up.

The idea, the question, grew in his mind, bigger and bigger, but he couldn't form the right words. Then it fell away. He looked out the window as if the words would be there, floating in the air, but there was nothing but a curtain of icicles and blue sky beyond. As he watched, a drop of water glistened and fell.

Frank looked back at the nurse.

"Nothing," he said, and went back to watch the icicle.'

In the end, it didn't quite work the way I wanted. Like Frank, I couldn't quite grab the right words, the right ideas, to wrap it up quite right, and I didn't have time to go back and craft it. Still, I wasn't unhappy with it then, and I'm not unhappy with it now. This is one of those pieces I can see myself polishing. So that's a glimpse into the brain of a wingman. Writing on the fly like I do for my writer's group is different than what I do with novels, and I'll probably do another post somewhere along the line talking about that (no promises on when, though; I know better than to do that). How does this compare to your process?

Across the Sound

I've already told you once before that I used to live in this magnificent building:

It's bigger on the inside

This is Caumsett, once the estate of millionaire-philanthropist-playboy, Tony Stark – err, Marshall Field, III (for the record, I do not know if 'playboy' applied to Field, but I just saw The Avengers this week, so it seemed appropriate). Situated on some 1600 acres of land, the grounds included a working dairy, massive stables, pens for raising pheasants for hunting, guest 'cottages' of 20+ rooms, tennis courts and swimming pools. It sat on top of a hill overlooking Long Island Sound. The Connecticut coast was visible; the city of Stamford was a mere six miles due north.

We had a guy who worked for us as a sort of every man. In exchange for room and board -- and welfare-scale wages, Paul cooked, cleaned, painted, fixed things, and did probably half a dozen other jobs as needed. He grew up in the same town I did, though he sounded like an extra from Goodfellas or The Sopranos (I was already deep under the influence of Canadian ex-hockey players-turned-game-analysts, so my speech had already lost some of its 'Lawn GUYland' in favor of 'no doat aboat it' and 'eh', so we didn't sound much alike). He was also a very live-in-the-moment kind of guy. One fine afternoon, one of his friends drive him down to the beach. He took a kayak with him, set the kayak in the water, and started paddling. For Stamford. Armed with nothing but his paddle and his pack of cigarettes.

I don't know how long the idea of a cross-Sound trip rattled around in Paul's brain before he took it.  Knowing him the way I do, I suspect it had been there for while, probably from the first time he saw the kayak sitting in the garage bay. For whatever reason, he woke up that afternoon and just said, "I'm doing it." I don't remember the time he left, but he did not arrive back home until 2 AM the following morning. He told us the next night how it went:

 "It was going great. I'm paddling and paddling and Connecticut is getting closer and closer, and Long Island is getting further and further away.

"And then I'm in the middle, and I'm paddling and paddling and it feels like everything stayed exactly the same. Nothing moved. It felt like I wasn't getting anywhere."

There he was, somewhere in the middle of Long Island Sound, paddling like a madman. Likely hungry, likely thirsty, and he's not getting anywhere.

Haven't we all been there?

As a writer, I'm very much like Paul. I get an idea in my head and I think about it for a while. I thought about Parallel Lives for about a month before I was ready to start writing (though to be fair, I was in the middle of a NaNoWriMo, so I couldn't really start something else at the same time). With my new book, the current WiP, I started thinking about it in September, and didn't begin actually writing it until January. And yet, I approached the beginning of both books much like Paulie. I woke up and knew it was the day to start, even though, in the case of one book I had nothing more than a character in mind, and in the other, I had the very beginning of a situation. Paul put his kayak in the water and started paddling. I put my fingers on the keyboard and started typing.

In fact, Paul probably had a bigger advantage: he knew where he wanted to go and, as it was a clear day, he could actually see his destination. Me? I am one of those Discovery Writers. I don't really know where I'm going. I can't see the end. I can't see beyond what I've already thought while doing the dishes or taking a shower. Once I get to the end of the scene that's in my head, the next one (if I'm lucky) just sort of unrolls as I reach it. It's sort of like walking through the fog, where you can always see ten feet in front of you. You move into the space you can see and, as you go, oyu see more ahead of you. So while I'm typing words for a scene I've already 'seen' in my head, there's more being revealed.

But now I'm like Paul in the middle of the Sound. I'm close to 75,000 words into the new, still-untitled WiP. I should be in its wind-down phase now. I should be able to see far enough ahead of me to know where the end is, to get a sense of the shape of it, but I'm paddling like mad and Connecticut isn't getting any closer, and when I look behind, Long Island is not getting any further away. It's the dreaded middle, and it's probably the most horrid part of writing for a Discovery Writer.

I do have options, though. Paul was stuck out there. Even if he decided he'd never make it all the way across, turning around would likely still leave him with that sense of non-movement. All he could do was rest his arms and smoke another cigarette and hope for a good tailwind to push him to his desired destination. Me? I can step back. I can take my story and outline it in the hope that really looking at where I've been will lead me logically to where I need to go. It's funny, Peggy Eddleman wrote a piece earlier this week talking about how she plots the beginning and end, but 'pants' the middle, and Cynthia Chapman Willis wrote about the middle taking off and running away Me? I think I have to plot the middle. Or, to be more accurate, I have to plot something like the last third of the middle.

There is no one way to do this writing thing. I love that feeling when something happens that I wasn't expecting; it's almost like I'm a reader of my own book. But I do have to impose discipline. I need to see that final destination to get there. Right now I'm like Paul. Because he didn't plan his trip, he left for Connecticut in the afternoon. When he finally got to Stamford, he pulled up at a dock, found a deli, bought himself a sandwich, a beer, and another pack of cigarettes, and was back in the water. Most of his return journey was made in the dark, and he didn't get 'home' until around 2 AM. I don't know how he even saw us to aim his kayak at the Park. Right now, I need to see the dock. If I do that, I'll be able to go back to happily discovering how I'm going to get there. It's going to take a lot of paddling, but I'll get there eventually.
 
On Another Note: Last month I shared with you my short story, "The Prophet" with you. This month, the Smithy's April newsletter features a nice piece by writer's circle buddy, Kristin Walker. I know she's got a couple of pieces going out on submission to some journals. I hope we'll see her in print somewhere soon. Enjoy.  

And finally, since I'm 'Stuck in the Middle', here's a blast from the past. Anyone who's seen Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs will undoubtedly have an automatic image of Mr. White dancing around with a straight razor in hand. Personally, I find the original video just about as disturbing. What do you think?