Fear of Flying

No, I'm not talking about Erica Jong's novel. I mean I am afraid to fly in airplanes. I have been known to drive 1500 miles practically nonstop to avoid flying. Yet, tomorrow I'm boarding a plane and heading to New England. Yes, this aerophobe is planning to fly on 9/11. To Logan airport in Boston, no less. And worst of all, my flight leaves at 6:40 AM. Way too early to drink myself into an oblivious walking coma.

So, how is this related to writing (besides the fact that my trip will culminate in the Seascape Novel Retreat a week from tomorrow)? Well, here is where JK Rowling comes in.

Everyone's heard the story of how she wrote the first Harry Potter as an unemployed single mom toiling away with ink-stained fingers in a coffee shop, rocking her baby's stroller with a foot while conjuring her story about an orphan who discovers on his 11th birthday that he's a wizard.

A little less known is how she got the idea in the first place. Before the coffee shop, even before the baby, JK Rowling was riding the train when the first seeds of the story came to her. It was a four-hour train ride, and she didn't have so much as a pencil on her to write anything down. For me, that would have been the end of the story, but she says it was a godsend. She was forced to plan out all the major plot points of the entire story arc in her head.

Tomorrow I will be stuck on a plane or in an airport for 7 1/2 hours. One of the workshops at the retreat will be on how to write a synopsis, a skill for which I have absolutely no talent. In order to prepare for that much needed class, I plan on using all that time to finish plotting out my current WIP so I'll have the raw material from which to create a masterful and agent-enticing synopsis. And that's where any similarities between me and JK Rowling end.

Besides the obvious differences, I am planning on carrying ample writing periphrenalia with me--as much as I can fit into a carry-on bag. Other women may travel with makeup, lotions, and tissues. I'll have pens, pencils, and paper. And maybe some tissues. I will probably cry, possibly several times, during this process. After all, I was the girl who always outlined my high school essays AFTER I'd written them because I just couldn't seem to manage it the other way around.

So, my plan is that when I finally land in Boston at 1 PM eastern time, I will have a preliminary outline of my novel.

Wish me luck on both accounts!

Tracy

Procrastination

I was going to write this Monday, but I got sidetracked . . .

I have developed the art of procrastination into an art form. (Ask anyone who knows me).

I can look like I'm working on something, to the point that casual onlookers could testify in court that I was on task and not fear charges of perjury, and yet not actually get anything done.

I can spend hours with the appearance of someone deep, deep at work, right down to sweat-tinged brow and bloodshot eyes and be no closer to completion than when I started.

I can click between my current WNIP (work-not-in-progress) and Spider solitaire so fast that it can't be registered by the human eye, in case someone is checking up on me.

It's a gift and a curse. On the one hand, I can sometimes wheedle out of doing dishes or going grocery shopping because I am "writing."

On the other hand, I can pinch a deadline so tight it bites me back. Take this past weekend for example. I spent three days in writing hell. And I have no one to blame but (mostly) myself.

August 1st was D-day for me, as in several writing Deadlines were due.

I had three novel scenes to submit for a mystery writing retreat that I'm attending in September with CJ: the opening scene, a scene that introduces a main character, and another complete scene from my WIP. Since this is a new project, I had to start from scratch.

August 1st was also the deadline to submit to the anthology Christmas is a Season! 2009 (Linda Busby Parker's Excalibur Press). I had been working on a story but had set it aside to do the retreat pieces.


Let me interrupt myself here to say that the way I deal with stress when something has to be done is to do . . . nothing. And the corollary is also true: the more that needs to be done the less I do. Again, this is true—ask anyone who knows me. These deadlines had me in total paralysis.

That's not to say I didn't look like I was working. But let me illustrate my "Writing Process":

I sit facing a blank Word doc, and contemplating what to write for the scene sample for the Seascape retreat. After a couple of games of Spider, I type:

Aggie did not feel welcome.

Why not, I wonder? I play a game of Spider. I realize she doesn't feel welcome because of the doormat. It's not a welcoming doormat. So? What kind of doormat is unwelcoming. Play two games of Spider because I win the first one. Launch Internet Explore, do a Google search, and spend an hour looking at different types of doormats until I find one that will work. Game of Spider, followed by a 30 minute false start with a bronze doormat with filigree around the borders, which I ultimately discard because it's actually kind of pretty. Spider. Google. Finally settle on one of those bristly kinds. Type this:

Aggie did not feel welcome. The doormat at her feet looked like it was made from the backsides of

Of what? A bristly animal. Spider. Google "bristly animals". Spider. Type:

Aggie did not feel welcome. The doormat at her feet looked like it was made from the backsides of feral boars. And instead of "Welcome," "DOBBS" was printed in thick block letters.

Okay for a rough draft, but not quite enough oomph and that last sentence still needs work. Spider. Revise. Rewrite:

Aggie did not feel welcome. She looked from the welcome mat that looked like it was made from the backsides of feral boars to the brass gargoyle doorknocker

So, thinks I, what might a gargoyle doorknocker look like? Spider. Google doorknockers. Spider. Revise:

Aggie did not feel welcome. She looked from the welcome mat that looked like it was made from the backsides of feral boars to the brass gargoyle doorknocker the leered at her with chilling blank eyes. Not welcome at all.

So, after four hours of working, I have 40 words, which averages out to about 6 minutes per word. And that only includes the time I was "actively" working and not the time spent skimming my writing books for clues on how to write a scene, looking at opening scenes in 8 or 10 novels on my book shelf, and the other 40 games of Spider that I played while "in deep writerly thought."

And, now that I look at it, if I had had more time, I'd revise it again to:

Aggie did not feel welcome. She looked from the welcome mat made from the backside of a feral boar to the brass gargoyle doorknocker leering at her with chilling blank eyes. Not welcome at all.

See? Now it's down to 35 much crisper words.

And that's the real problem with being a procrastinator. As the deadline approached, I no longer had the luxury of 8 minutes per word. As it was, I wrote for 3 days solid without bathing, and barely breaking for bathroom pit stops and to refill my coffee mug.

I finally uploaded the Seascape Retreat files at 3:30 in the afternoon on Aug 1st. And "finished" and emailed my story for the Christmas anthology at 2:30 in the morning (I know, technically it was Aug 2, but I crossed my fingers that Linda would still accept the submission. And, because she's so gracious, she did!)

The downside, besides nearly killing myself and going blind, is that I didn't get to run any of these past my crit group. The pieces went out into the world raw and wild. While on the one hand, the attendees at Seascape may feel they got their money's worth after slicing and dicing my ms pages, it's embarrassing to know you've sent out work that isn't your best polished words. On the other hand, there's a good chance my story won't make it into the anthology because it needs too much editing. Why would an editor take something that isn't polished when she has stacks of manuscripts that are nearly publishable as they stand?

So, I'd tell you that I will never procrastinate again, but chances are you'll see another blog post just like this one some time in the future. Just ask anyone who knows me.

Tracy


(PS. I think this one is full, but for future reference, CJ and I are attending the Seascape Writing Retreat in Madison, CT. It's a mystery/crime writers' retreat hosted by authors Roberta Isleib, SW Hubbard, and Hallie Ephron held at a house that was originally owned by Phil Donahue and Marlo Thomas. Cool!. http://robertaisleib.com/seascape.html

The Hinges of Hades

Tracy here.

When the local weather people issue a heat advisory warning in Mobile, you know it's hot! Yesterday, my outdoor thermometer read 104.1°--in the shade. With the heat index (think hot AND humid!), we're running about 110-115° in these parts. And, yes, as a Yankee* who grew up in the Green Mountains of Vermont, I ALWAYS complain about the heat. But there is a writing connection to this latest bout of grumbling.

During this heat wave, with my flipflops melted onto the pavement, my hair frizzed like Little Orphan Annie's, and sweat pooled around my feet (and I'm talking inside with the AC blasting), I'm trying to imagine snowmen and mittens and ice skating on the pond while I come up with a Christmas story submission for Excalibur's anthology (see cj's post below for more info). Instead, I keep having visions of Santa, eyebrows singed and his red suit smudged with the ashes, in this case not from a chimney but from the flames of the Inferno of the Damned. Actually, the story's shaping up into a great horror tale, but the anthology is not called Halloween is a Season! 2009.

Even cranked down to Ice Age temperatures, my old decrepit AC system is barely managing to cool the house off to the mid 80s. (But I LOVE you AC—please don't break down on me now!)


So, for now, I'm going to work on my current WIP, a mystery I call FM. My old WIP, the still-unfinished-after-so-many-years Young Adult novel PI is still close by. I jot down a note or 2 every now and then. But I'm hoping that the structure of a genre novel will help me actually complete an entire novel. Then, with that confidence tucked in my pocket, I can go back and finish the YA book that keeps getting away from me. (I have written at least 10 different ways to get my protag from his home to the island where the actual story takes place, but then I can't seem to figure out exactly what to do with him. Or more likely, there are too many things I'm trying to incorporate and can't seem to manage writing any of them.)

Can you work on more than one project at a time?
I didn't think I could, but I'm going to try.

My writing goals for this week: write 15 new pages on the mystery WIP and figure out which of the 5 Christmas stories floating in my head to write.

Good writing!

Tracy

*We New Englanders don't like to refer to ourselves as Yankees, but not for the reason some may think. As Red Sox fans, we are loathe to associate ourselves in any way with that team in the Big Apple who stole the Babe (and Johnny Damon).