A Writer's Tale Read online

  Exactly.

  A trip without a map makes for an exciting trip.

  And you do end up getting where you’re going.

  It might not be where you’d intended to go. But it might be a better place.

  When you do take the mapless trip, you’ll discover something very odd and amazing.

  Magic happens.

  Somehow, the bits and pieces of story and character and theme and setting end up fitting together in unexpected, often wonderful ways. Ways you never could’ve planned.

  Almost as if an actual story is out there someplace already created by someone else and you’ve somehow tapped into it.

  So don’t worry about “getting lost” without an outline or “painting yourself into a corner.”

  Just start writing, head things in the right general direction and see what happens.

  Let the destination take care of itself.

  And if you do get lost first make sure you’re not off on a detour that might take you somewhere interesting. If it’s leading you to a dead end or some other place you definitely don’t want to visit, just backtrack to where you took the wrong turn. Go in a new direction. Your trip isn’t “chipped in tablets,” it’s on an electronic screen or on paper.

  Making changes is usually a simple matter.

  Take chances.

  Take the roads not taken.

  You can always revise.

  The best time to write an outline of your novel is afterward.

  Your agent may want one. Editors may want one.

  So throw it together after you’ve finished writing the novel. That way, it can’t hurt you.

  If you write the outline before you’re done with the book, you’re asking not only for the damages I’ve described above, but you’re inviting various external disasters.

  Some agents like to sell novels on the basis of proposals.

  That is, they’ll shop around your outline, along with a few sample chapters. (This can’t usually be done until after a couple of your novels has been sold.) In theory, your new novel might consist of thirty pages twenty pages of sample chapters and a ten page outline of the rest. You don’t actually have to write an entire book unless a publisher buys it in advance.

  Sounds great.

  In the time it might take you to write a whole novel, you could probably write twenty proposals. One of them is sure to hit.

  But there’re always buts…

  1. For obvious reasons, it’s much better to have one completed novel than any number of proposals.

  2. If your agent does sell one of your proposals, you will most likely receive a smaller advance than if he’d sold them the same novel after it was complete.

  3. If the proposal sells, you suddenly become obligated to write the actual novel. And you might find out, much to your surprise and alarm, that you’re not able to write it. Maybe the topic is over your head. Maybe certain elements of the story, when fleshed out, don’t work the way they’re supposed to.

  Until you’ve written all or most of a novel, you can never be absolutely sure it’ll fly. You don’t want to sell it in advance, only to find out too late that your story has no wings.

  4. If your unfinished novel is sold on the basis of a proposal, the door is wide open for… EDITORIAL INTERFERENCE.

  There is little excuse for editorial interference when the publisher has bought your completed book. If they want you to make significant changes, Why the hell did they buy the book in the first place?

  If they’ve bought it on the basis of a proposal, however, anything goes.

  Most likely, you’ll hear from your editor. He will have a few “suggestions” about “fine tuning” your concept. He’ll have reservations about how you propose to handle certain characters, scenes, plot-lines. He’ll have ideas for how to give it more “mainstream appeal.”

  The suggestions will be ripe with common sense.

  “He’s an old man, but he’s not stupid. Don’t you think, when he realizes the fish is towing him out to sea, that he’d cut the line?”

  “Supernatural stuff doesn’t sell nearly as well as suspense. So why don’t you dump the ghost stuff. How about having three different serial killers drop into Scrooge’s bedroom?”

  “He just turns into a cockroach? No, no, no. You need to explain why. Maybe he was involved in a science experiment that went awry. DNA is big, these days. Maybe you can explain it with DNA.”

  “Now, this is just an idea. Let me run it up the flagpole, okay? If you don’t want to salute, fine, but…why not play up the gay aspect? The real reason Huck and Jim take the raft together… ”

  And so it might go if you sell your novel on the basis of an outline and sample chapters.

  Most editors wish they were writers. They will try to satisfy their frustrated creative urges on the back of your novel.

  If they get their hands on a proposal instead of a finished novel, they drool. You’re handing them a chance to pretend they are writers. They now get to participate in the creation of your novel.

  If you don’t go along with their “suggestions,” they are in a position to wreck you. Aside from pouting and complaining, they might refuse to accept your finished manuscript.

  They can easily ruin any future you might’ve had with their employer.

  They can even sabotage you with other publishers. In other words, you’d better go along with the editor’s suggestions or else.

  Most editorial interference, however, can be avoided simply by selling your novel on the basis of itself, not on the basis of sample chapters and an outline.

  Why outline your novel at all?

  If you ask me, don’t do it unless your story is so complex that you need an outline just to coordinate the logistics of it.

  On Writers Block

  IF YOU’RE FAMILIAR WITH THE QUANTITY OF MY OUTPUT, YOU MAY BE asking yourself whether I know anything at all about a topic like writer’s block.

  My output might appear to be evidence that I’ve never suffered from it.

  On the other hand, maybe it shows that I’ve found ways to beat it.

  Every writer has probably suffered from some degree of writer’s block at one time or another. What is writer’s block? Nothing more, really, than a state of mind that stops a writer’s creative flow.

  Symptoms usually include staring at a blank page or computer screen for hours, wanting desperately to write, wracking your mind for ideas or a starting place, but writing nothing.

  More severe symptoms might include not even trying avoiding the desk, the computer, the typewriter, the pen, the paper.

  The block might continue for hours, for days, for weeks or months or years. No doubt it must last a lifetime for some people.

  What is behind this inability to write?

  Here are some of the usual suspects.

  You might have too many distractions. Distractions can take a Region of forms, from a barking dog to the noise of a television coming from a different room. An interrupting child or pet. An interesting activity going on outside your window.

  A talk-radio topic that catches your ear on your office radio.

  It is virtually impossible for most people to write if another person is in the room. And many of us need silence.

  If distractions are the source of your troubles, try to eliminate them. Find a quiet place to work. A place where nobody will intrude on your privacy. If your home or apartment or dorm is too crowded or busy, go somewhere else. Write in a coffee shop, at the library, on a park bench in the back seat of your parked car.

  Go anywhere necessary to get privacy and silence.

  If you simply cannot avoid an environment full of distractions, learn to block them out.

  But exterior distractions are not always the problem. Often, writer’s block is the result of interior troubles.

  You might just be tired. Fiction writing takes a tremendous amount of mental and emotional energy. If you haven’t gotten enough sleep, you may sometimes find yourself gazi
ng blankly at a blank page. The solution? Simple and very effective. Take a nap and try again later.

  You might be preoccupied. Troubles with finances, health, relationships, etc. can throw major disturbances into your head.

  If your life is full of problems, do what you can to remedy them. If they are beyond remedy, ignore them. At least for the hours each day when you need to write, shut them out. Stick them into the back of your head, then go ahead and concentrate all your attention on writing.

  One of the most common mental blocks comes from the What-The-Hell’s-The-Use-Anyway Syndrome. You feel that, no matter what you might do, you’ll never get published. As you see it, there are too many other writers out there, you’re no better than they are, you can’t imagine why anyone would ever bother to notice your work, and you don’t stand a chance of succeeding. So why waste your life trying?

  If you’re an unpublished writer, you feel sure that you’ll probably stay that way forever. If you’re published, you might suffer from the syndrome because you feel that no matter what you may write it doesn’t stand a chance of reaching the audience it deserves. You’ll remain a mid-list writer until you fade into oblivion. So why even try?

  To deal with this problem I advise saying, “Screw it!”

  Then go ahead and write.

  Write for yourself. “Write the book you want to write.

  Forget about competing with other writers, impressing editors, worrying whether anyone will ever publish your book or promote it, or whether it will ever get into any store or into the home of any reader.

  Put it all behind you.

  Sit down and write.

  I know, easier said than done.

  Here’s a suggestion. If you can’t get past the “What-The-Hell’s-The-Use-Anyway”

  feelings, try reading.

  Go to a book store and buy a few paperbacks that have recently been published in the area of your interest. Take them home. Read them…

  And grin.

  Because if you’re a good writer yourself, you’ll notice that the stuff you’ve just bought is not so good.

  And you’ll think, I can write better than this!

  It’s very encouraging to discover that much of what is being bought and published day in and day out is complete, utter, stinking crap.

  The realization is liberating.

  Knowing that so much crap is being published, you have absolutely no reason to be despondent about your chances of eventual success. (Many of our greatest books were written by people who picked up their pens for the first time after reading a piece of published junk and thinking, I can do better than that.) All you need to do is vigorously, persistently write non-crap.

  Of course, a great many editors aren’t capable of distinguishing crap from non-crap, so the journey to success may be long and frustrating. But sooner or later, good material will be discovered and published. I’m certain of that.

  Fairly certain.

  At any rate, you’d be an idiot to let the What-The-Hell’s-The-Use-Anyway Syndrome hold you back. You have a fine chance of being a successful writer if you persist.

  Writer’s block can also be caused by confusion and despair about how to proceed with a novel or story. You’re not sure what to do, so you can’t do anything.

  This may happen when you’re trying to start a new project or when you’re in the midst of one.

  When just trying to begin a new project, the difficulty often come from a fear that your basic story idea isn’t good enough.

  When you’re first starting out as a writer, you may have an exaggerated idea about what “good enough” means. How can you possibly come up with an idea that hasn’t already been used and is something that people may want to read it? After you’ve had some books published, you will probably be faced with competing against yourself. When I finished writing The Stake, I ran into a block because I was worried about living up to my own creation.

  The Stake was in many ways a much better novel than anything I’d written before. I didn’t want my next novel to be not as good as The Stake. Therefore, I found myself unable to write anything at all.

  Here’s my solution.

  I thought, Screw it. I’ll write the book I want to write.

  I’ll write the best book I can. If it isn’t as good as The Stake, too bad.

  Face it. You can only write as good as you can write. Give them the best you can. If they want more than that, the hell with them.

  There is, however, life after the “screw you” phase.

  Once you’ve determined which story you want to tell, “good enough” or otherwise, you might still encounter troubles getting started.

  The trick is, don’t let them stop you.

  Take a while to analyze possible sources of the trouble.

  In my experience, difficulties in getting started often have very specific causes.

  Maybe this isn’t the story you really should be writing at this time. You sense that it won’t work, that something about it is beyond your reach. Maybe it’s too complex.

  Maybe it’s missing a key ingredient that you can’t quite identify. Maybe you should put it aside and take another look at it down the road. (Many of the books that I’ve written recently would’ve been impossible for me to have written in my earlier years. I needed more experience, more confidence, more knowledge.) Your block may be the result of strong feelings, possibly on a subconscious level, that writing this particular book at this particular time is a bad idea.

  If that’s the case, the cure is to move on to a new project.

  However, your difficulty in getting started may have cures that are far less drastic.

  A common problem is that you might be trying to start your story at the wrong point in time. Maybe you’re trying to begin the tale too early too many days or weeks before the real conflict gets under way. No matter what genre you’re writing in, the best place to begin is when the trouble starts. Begin telling your tale too early, and you might just be floundering around, trying to write scenes that serve little or no purpose. Begin with the trouble, and things should run smoothly.

  If your plot doesn’t have trouble, drop it. Because if you don’t have trouble in your story, you don’t have a story.

  You may be surprised and delighted to discover how easily the words flow if you skip the preliminaries and start your tale at the moment the trouble first rears its head.

  Another possible cure for difficulties in getting started on a new project is to change the point of view. Time and time again, I’ve had problems with a new novel until I realized that I was trying to tell it from the wrong viewpoint. Some stories might require third-person viewpoints of multiple characters, while other stories might call for a first-person viewpoint. Sometimes, just realizing that you have to tell it in a very subjective first-person voice instead of in third person can make all the difference and clear away your writer’s block.

  You may be starting to tell your story at the right point in time, and using the best possible viewpoint, but then run into difficulties because you’re planning to focus your plot on the wrong character. You run into the block because you know something isn’t right but you don’t know what.

  When making my preliminary notes for After Midnight, I thought my story would be about a teenaged boy looking out his bedroom window at night and seeing a mysterious young woman lingering in his back yard. Though I made quite a few pages of notes about where to go from there, I felt wrong about it. But suddenly I thought, What if we reverse roles? A woman looking out her window sees a mysterious guy! It changed everything, and I knew it would work.

  When trying to develop The Stake, I figured to have a man find a stake-in-the-heart body while digging a hole in his back yard. From there, however, the plot was pretty much up for grabs. I didn’t know where to take it until the notion popped into my head that the man should be a horror writer. After that, everything fell into place as if pre-ordained.

  Trying to develop Out Are The Lights, I
had nothing more than a book about a movie theater showing snuff films until I realized the potential of making my main character deaf.

  Moby Dick was probably a pretty ho-hum idea for a book until Melville decided to take away one of Ahab’s legs.

  My suggestion to get past the block: ask yourself how the story might go if you made it happen to someone else. Play with the ages of your characters, their genders, their careers, special interests, etc. You may stumble onto a notion that will suddenly bring your story to life and blast away your writer’s block.

  After you’ve decided that your story is starting at the best point in time, that you’ve found the right point of view and that you’ve selected a terrific cast of characters something else may be still prevent you from getting started.

  But you don’t know what.

  My advice is to sit down at your pad of paper, typewriter or keyboard and simply play around with your story. Don’t try to write it. just toy with it. Ask yourself what sort of events you envision taking place. Who does what to whom? What leads to what? Just fool around for a while and see what happens.

  More than likely, you’ll very quickly astound yourself by discovering what you want to do, where you want to go.

  So then you immediately go to a new page, write “Chapter One,” and have at it.

  If all else fails, do what Hemingway said.

  Begin your story by writing one true sentence. Then follow it with another. And keep adding sentences. Don’t worry about where they are taking you just follow them. Soon, you’ll find yourself telling a story.

  If you run into a block in the midst of a project, you should stop and think. Somewhere nearby, you probably took a wrong turn. You made something happen that shouldn’t have happened. You had the wrong character do something. You forgot to put in a necessary scene. You’re letting the plot bog down.

  Or you’re about to head off in a bad direction and the block is trying to warn you off.

  All you need to do is identify the problem, find the better way to go, and go there. You’ll leave the block behind.

  In many cases, writer’s block is actually your friend. It warns you of something wrong about the story you’re writing or about to write.