Heuristic

The damned things are breeding like bunnies: I have seven short stories in progress, plus a double-handful of fragments and ideas, and just added another to the list. Plus, um, three novels-in-progress. One entirely drafted and being revised (yes, really), one about 2/3 way through, but in need of gobs of work, and one in near-complete outline. Plus a fourth, that has setting and character, and nothing else.

Yes, even at that developmental stage I can tell the difference between a novel idea and a story idea. The latter is a geode, something small and shiny that I can cup in my hands, while a novel idea is the entire landscape.

I don’t think I ever posted a picture of the faeriestone I found along the shore of Lake Michigan. It’s dark gray and black, and has holes pierced all the way through. I can hold it to my eye and see out the other side, always useful for seeing things that aren’t there. And it’s sparkly inside.

That’s a short story.

I have three that need to be tweaked and resubmitted. They should not spend as much time lazing around the house as they do. The dog and the cat are entitled; the stories need someone else to love them. I’m tempted to shove them farther down the food chain, just to get them out, but I will try a few more of the top places first.

And then there are the three stories that I need to finish. This morning’s plan was to arise early and work on them. One has a lovely (well, not really at all pleasant, but eye-catching) beginning and an ending that makes me happy, but neither title nor middle. The second was started for a project-with-deadline, and it has a setting and character and feel and ending, plus some thoughts, but I’ve found an even more appropriate place to send it, one which would avoid a constraint that’s been niggling at me. And the third? That’s the replacement for the deadline-intended story that’s been sidetracked. It has a title, and a disturbing and intriguing main character, and a potential ending. I can work with that, I think.

I have the most fun writing short stories if, like the geode, I have the entire tale in my grasp before I write it. Sometimes I have to write it to learn what the tale is, and I have a harder time with that.

So as I said, I was going to write early this morning, when it was quiet and cool. Instead, I have been stalking authors I like on the internets (reading old blogs, nothing actually creepy). This is interesting, and perhaps somewhat useful even, but not directly relevant to any of the things I should be doing. The same is true for blogging, and yet.

I also picked a bowl of black raspberries and made them into whole-wheat sourdough scones, a practice I highly recommend.

I should be finishing these stories, and I should be working, because I am desperately behind at the office. And there is this fascinating side project that should have been done a year ago. I am ever full of things to do, in a way that vastly exceeds my ability to do them. And this is after weeding out the less-suitable ones, truly.

So. I will go look for a story-middle or two in the shower, and I will make a caffeinated beverage that it isn’t too hot to drink, and I will turn off the internet (much though I love you all), and I will write.

Chuck Wendig, on writing myths.

Short version: writers are not Speshul Snowflakes.

My brain is full of science, but I’ve also been writing fiction, trying to write a couple hundred words a night. That’s not much — I can write 10,000 on a really good day if I’m remarkably motivated and already know what happens — but it’s something. Science takes a lot of brain power, and there’s only so much to go around.

Even that tiny bit is work. I’m writing a science fiction story, and I have a backdrop and opening that make me happy, and an ending that both fits and provokes, and I can’t for the life of me connect them. I’ve already tried and discarded a range of middles, and none of them work. There has to be a way for A to meet B.

Right?

I mean, with an opening line like, “A can-can line of blue elephants gyrated through the wormhole void,” how can I go wrong? Lots of ways, apparently.

Then there’s novel revisions, a whole different class of struggle. Confession time: I finished the first draft in January. I haven’t even read the whole thing yet.

Yeah.

I could make excuses, but really. I can’t even read a single short novel in five months? The draft is under 80k, after all.

Apparently not.

I know what I need to do to it. In the process of writing the first draft, I figured out the major themes and motivations and character points, and now I need to go back and work them in in such a way that it looks like they’ve already been there. I know all the major plot points, all the twists and turns, the underlying political and social structure, what distinguishes my story from Standard Fantasy Plot B (I hope).

More mechanically, I need to take out two POV characters: my neat parallel POV structure relating age and gender doesn’t work, and needs to go. That’s not a big deal. I also need to make sure the sentence-scale writing matches my current ability level, greatly improved since I started the project. I can handle that; mechanics don’t scare me.

It’s all that other stuff. It all fits together so beautifully in my head, and there’s no way I can make it do the same on paper. I read enough author blogs to know that not only am I not alone in this, it’s pretty much universal.

That inability to bring the elegant concept to life on paper isn’t unique to novels. Short stories are easier, though, because the concept is by necessity simpler. Not that short story writing is easier, but managing 3000 words of theme and concept is a less-daunting task than managing 80k, or 100k. There’s room for a lot more, and a novel needs its full quota of stuff if it’s going to be any good. The time and skullsweat investment for a short story is a lot less too. I can manage several week-long rewrites, but even contemplating several multimonth rewrites is nearly impossible.

Nonfiction has the same requirement, if expressed and executed differently, but I’ve been writing professional-level nonfiction for a long time and I know how to do it. And I’m starting to grasp the techniques for short stories. I suppose that means that I can learn them for novels.

But I have to read the damned thing first, don’t I?