Muse Clues

 

“You write? It must be really hard to write a novel.”

That’s been said to me many times over the years. I think most people picture someone locked in a small room, ink-stained hands, and pieces of paper wadded up, lying about the room, the writer red-eyed, with hair tangled and standing on end from all the times they’ve run their hands through it in an anxious attempt to find the perfect word.

So, when I say, “Not really; it’s kind of like breathing,” I destroy their image. They don’t know what to do with that.

If I’m sitting and not reading, I’m frequently writing something.

“Where do you get your ideas?”

This is another question I’m asked, especially by those who aren’t so awed by hearing someone admit they write novels.

Often ideas hit at 2 a.m. on those nights when my brain won’t shut down, and old scenes from my life – especially upsetting ones – invade my head, magnify, and keep sleep from being a possibility. Mental rants and things I wish I’d said, morph into a scene, as yet unwritten, for whatever story I’m working on.

Or not.

Sometimes those rants morph into blogs or just something to keep me from falling asleep.

Unfortunately, 2 a.m. to sunrise is usually not a good time for me to write. If I’ve gone to bed, I’m tired. My usually meandering ADD mind is even more unruly than usual, making it difficult to put pen to paper – although I have done it once or twice. Instead, I toss and turn, trying to embed a particularly desirable turn of phrase into my mind to commit to paper the next day, when I can actually hold a pen.

And pen to paper is how I write. I’ve never been able to compose at a computer, I suppose because computers didn’t come into my everyday life until I was in my 40s. Yes, I’d used them before that, but I never had one of my own until then. I can write an email or a paragraph or two, but nothing longer.

Sitting in front of a keyboard doesn’t inspire me. In the dark ages, I couldn’t compose at a typewriter, either.

But whereas a typewriter only had keys and that cute bell at the end of the line, a computer is a dangerous thing, with many enticements: I wonder if I have any emails. Did I do my Wordle today? Is it time to make a click to feed shelter animals? I can’t think of the word I need; maybe if I play a game of solitaire, I’ll think of it – just one game (HAH!)

No, it’s safer to stay with what makes writing come easily: a pen and paper, and the satisfaction that my cursive looks relatively nice sometimes (yes, cursive).

I admit I’m as undisciplined as they come. Add a layer of attention deficit, and it’s amazing I’ve ever finished anything. It certainly explains why, although I started writing at about age 10, I didn’t finish a novel until I was 38. I actually had to put away one I’d been trying to write since I was 18, and decide it was never going to be finished. I started something new. It’s actually more surprising that I’ve written 25 novels and a cookbook.

As I said, I’m undisciplined. I can’t say I’m going to write from 10-12 every day. I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect a writer to work at it from 9 to 5. I write whenever and wherever. I use loose leaf, notebooks, legal pads, paper towels, whatever is available. I actually love writing on C-fold paper towels. I write at a desk, a table, floating in the pool, in railway stations, in the doctor’s office. All are fair game as places to write. (That sounds so Dr. Seuss: I will write on the train, I will write on a plane. I will even write by the Seine. But I will not write on a phone!)

I am your high school English teacher’s nightmare. He or she likely told you writers plan out novels and make outlines. They consult a thesaurus, and have the very best dictionaries. They consider every word carefully, and plot the story climax, leaving heaps of foreshadowing along the way.

My response to that is a carefully-planned eight-letter word beginning with B and ending with T.

I once had to do a research paper at my university for an OT class. Our teacher had us do an outline first, before we even did a review of the literature. I thought that was stupid, since I didn’t know whether or not I’d find the things I thought I would. But it was a good way to organize ideas, and have a sense of the order of the topics.

But even when you do a review of the literature, some books on your list may have only a mention of your topic as an aside, with no useable information.

I assumed we would do a revised outline once we found out what topics were out there. I thought that was a reasonable assumption, but when it wasn’t listed as part of the project, I asked the teacher if I could revise mine, because some topics I wanted information on had not been researched. She said no, that the outline was just a preliminary guide.

So I wrote my paper, and handed it in, along with the footnotes, bibliography, review of the literature list, and the outline (which she’d already graded.) I did get a B for the paper, which was on brain lateralization and handedness (yes, we lefties are always on about that stuff), and she said it was well-written. She also wrote in the comments that it didn’t receive an A because I hadn’t covered all of the topics in my original outline! Apparently, I was supposed to make something up about the things that were not to be found in other people’s books! It makes me understand why some people falsify their data.

It also makes me resist the idea of using an outline unless I write it after the fact.

Perhaps writers of historical fiction, or non-fiction writers use outlines and find them useful. But I’m not them. I find a character – or build one – and chat with them for a while. Then I give them a name, a particular height, hair and eye color, nationality, and other particulars that are only of interest to me as background information. I often make a family tree for them so I know their relationship to the other characters. If I like them a lot, I’ll make them left-handed (because I am). Then I give them a nudge to see what they’ll do.

They take me on their adventures, and I discover their story along the way. I don’t plan anything in advance. The characters tell me when it’s finished.

Yes, I have some idea of what the story is about when I start, but it doesn’t always stay quite where I expect it to. That’s why writing is an art, not a science.

Sometimes I want a character to say some phrase I particularly like. Having a great title or an interesting remark is better than icing. It’s more like cocaine (from what I’ve read).

But some characters aren’t enablers. They will put their hands on their hips and tell me, “I’m not saying that, and if you make me, I’ll make it sound stupid.”

Often, it takes several pages to even reach the point where the character will say the line. And usually, it sounds stupid. Then I have to delete all of those extra pages.

It’s usually best to simply trust the characters.

“I don’t want to be some character in one of your novels!”

That line has been flung at me more than once when someone was angry with me for something I’ve done or said (and never having anything whatever to do with my writing). My response is usually, “You wish!” or, “Not bloody likely!”

I write fiction. I do not use real people as characters. I don’t even base my characters on real people. I find that characters I’ve made up are much more amenable.

Something I actually do when I’m not writing or reading is to observe. I watch people. I pay attention (yes, really!) to situations I’m in or that others are in. I store them in my head for later use. Then I will use the situation, only peopled with my characters, who behave as themselves, not like the people who were in the actual situation.

An example is when my father died. It was obvious to me that he was already dead when the EMTs took him out of our house. He had CHF, and his heart simply slowed to a stop. He went peacefully.

However, the doctors at the hospital worked on him for well over an hour before anyone came to the waiting room to tell my mother and me that there was nothing more they could do.

I suppose because I knew it was coming – or perhaps I was in shock – I felt like an observer in the situation. When the nurse came to tell us, and asked if we wanted to see the body, my immediate thought was, “No, that’s all right. I believe you.” I had seen the arms and legs sprawled as he lay on the ambulance gurney, before they got him appropriately positioned at the house. I didn’t actually say anything to the nurse. My mother immediately said, “Yes, of course.”

So, when they were ready, we were led into the room where his body lay peacefully, dressed in a hospital gown and his trousers. I felt like a video recorder, observing as my mother smoothed his hair, kissed his forehead, remarking on how his head was still warm – which I thought was a bizarre thing to say.

I have never and will never kiss a corpse. I know, other people have no problem with this. The person is no longer there. Frankly I find many of the rituals associated with death somewhat on the grotesque side.

But I watched and the memory of everything about that room and my mother’s actions are etched in my mind. And then I accidentally brushed up against the icy hand and was shocked. She’d talked about his head being warm. His hand was not. I knew from experience that the body hoards its warmth in the core to protect the brain and other vital organs, so hands and feet are the first to lose heat. I simply hadn’t expected to come into contact with that hand.

I used the loss of heat in a hand of someone who had just died in a story, although the other circumstances were completely different.

And I used the hospital scene in another, as yet unpublished, novel.  The person in the same position as my mother in the story had nothing in common with my mother beyond being a woman who had just lost her husband. The experience fit the story. I just didn’t use real people.

While I can’t write the original on a computer, I can edit there. Once I put the written story onto the computer – which in itself involves several edits, I can read and edit, then let the story rest before having another go at editing.

My blogs are edited several times from being put on the blog site and scheduled months ahead of when they go live, until – sometimes – 10 minutes before the blog is available for anyone to read.

So, while I don’t prepare for writing the way my English teachers taught me – and English teachers and lit. majors are often some of the worst writers I’ve encountered – I do have my own methods, even if they’re somewhat scattered.

I mainly write the stories I want to read, but can't find in the library.

I’m sure many, if not most writers have their own method of creating a story that is not necessarily in keeping with what their teachers taught them. You do what works for you, and if it happens to be what the English teacher taught you, all well and good. If it isn’t, that’s okay, too.