Pleased to Meet You, Work in Progress
In December I started work on a novel. Its harbinger was a character on her own, arriving at my brain dressed in patchwork rags that might once have been finery. She had an aura of desperate intensity as if she had something to prove. She had no I.D., nothing to suggest a setting or genre, but dragged a manky old suitcase that shifted with shadows and might have been filled with psychological horror, supernatural mystery, and some shreds of literary madness.
My character's suitcase may or may not contain a piano.
In other words, it was the kind of visitor you’d usually send away, apologetic but firm. Instead I invited her in and together we began to tell a story: my novel. Our novel, I should say.
I don’t outline. All those How-To articles insisting on an outline are gibberish to me. Like anything, it’s individual. I don’t outline. I also don’t plan, and the more I try to pin down a story the more it wrenches itself out of my hands and out of control. I’d like to introduce my project to you, here, now, but it’s difficult to do that when my project consists of just that one character and her manky old suitcase with all its shadows.
Basically, because it’s one of my novels, someone will likely die. Someone else will likely investigate said death, but don’t expect a police procedural because I don’t like to write things I know nothing about. Instead, this troublesome character will likely investigate this death, though I’m not sure why or when. Maybe she’ll buck the trend and choose to forget about it like it’s a pot of water until it boils up and over and showers down to put out the gas and cause a terrific explosion. But we’ll see.
My goal length for my novels is 80,000 words. I’m not one of those people who write a hugely long novel and then pare it back 50% or whatever because most of it is trash. I’m one of those people who can barely write all the words that are actually supposed to be there, and so when I edit I really mean it. My finished products tend to be 72,000-80,000 words (after editing and adding scenes and editing again.) Don’t quote How-To articles at me stating that a novel should be one hundred grand. Don’t make me link to so many great novels that come in at under seventy grand, let alone one hundred.
And my time length for my novels is “However long it takes.” The idea behind this year’s arc–to start, finish, and publish a piece of work within 2012–is terrific and I’m excited about it, and I’ll likely break the rules at every turn. It’s just what I tend to do. So if I can have this novel finished, in first draft, by the end of this year, I’ll be very happy. My goal is October, so I can get a NaNoWriMo in before I edit. But we’ll see. I tend to break my own rules, too.
So there it is, or there she is: my character, my novel, my project. As I write this I have written 4561 words into the story. The last sentence I wrote was, “And then it made them disappear.” A few things have happened in the story (clearly,) mostly character-defining things, and I have a better idea about the plot than I did before, but it’s still hazy. The shadows are still winning. We’ll see how another month’s light can shine, and I’ll check in with you again in March.
Do your stories arrive like this, or are they better behaved? Go on, tell me. It’s all individual. Have I said that already?
I love it when a character pops into my head! However, they don’t always want to tell me their story straight away, and so I can end up carrying them around for a long time… But I can’t complain too much – I love the process of discovering more about them.
I don’t plan anything either, though I reckon this might actually be my downfall as I run out of steam pretty quickly and move on to something else!
Good luck with the novel – your character sounds very interesting.
Allie x
Thanks Allie! And good luck sticking to a project. I know you can do it. How about taking this year’s Write Anything arc and writing your own journal entries about a project as you go?
Maybe your computer problem is fate … telling you to take time out from writing to plot your story on post-it notes to get that death in the right place.
No plot! Never!
The character in the novel I’m writing (see my coming post) didn’t pop into my head, he quite literally popped into my life. On a train. He left it again a couple of hours later. But he made a mark.
Ooh. That’s intriguing.
I would have been one to preach outlines to you, Jen, until I started writing my “grown up” book. I have no idea what’s going to happen and is it ever fun! And to make it even better, there’s the tension that comes from wondering if my protag will do something too rude, or inappropriate, or heaven forbid, ossibly commit the worse sin of all and not do much of anything. Either way, I love writing this way.
*laughs* I love that the “grown up” book is arriving differently. I wonder what else will be different as you write it? And how that will affect the whole project? Hooray for loving it anyway!