Book Two: 59,549 words. Some of those words are plot notes I’ve incorporated into the text—but basically: 59,500 words. And they all terrify me.
It’s true: I’ve never known how my books are going to end until I’ve been mere pages away from their respective endings. But this book is different. I’ve written it entirely via laptop, as opposed to scribbling it on the ruled pages of notebooks. This electronic willy-nilliness has led to some unprecedented, wondrous and terrifying writing behaviours. To wit: I’m writing ANYTHING THAT COMES TO ME. It doesn’t matter if Plot Thing #Sort of Near the End comes waaaay past Plot Thing #Mired in the Ghastly Middle, or #Even Less Sort of Near the End as That Other Thing: I’m writing whatever’s easiest to write.
It was not ever thus.
I used to make my painfully sedate way through stories, giving each moment and scene whatever time it required to be born. I used to spend weeks sketching out what had to happen next, because there’d be no ending without it—no culmination without a methodically constructed arc. Remember: I never, ever knew how these stories would end. And yet I had to follow some sort of linear path; had to linger and wait, making space for what was next, and next after that, because to jump ahead would somehow (as in a bad time travel movie) jeopardize the integrity of all that had not yet gone before.
To wit, take 2: When I was starting to think about the book that would become The Pattern Scars, I envisioned a scene: a pivotal one, in which a case of deliberately mistaken identity would be exposed. I had no idea what the context would be: I knew only that there would be a scene like this. I didn’t write the scene. I spent days and weeks and months grappling with all the events that would lead to this scene—and when I finally got there, it was orgasmically good and right and justified—delayed gratification rewarded.
Not this time. There’s not a single linear thing going on, in this second Minotaur book. I’m seizing images and bits of scenes, no matter where they might come in the story, and I’m writing them. On my laptop. In a file that’s now called “Consolidated MS”, because for many many months it was divvied into four separate bits.
What am I DOING?
The downside: this is undiscovered territory, and I might make a mess of navigating it.
The upside: this is undiscovered territory, and I might realize that mapping it can be both random and GREAT.
The moral of the story’s story: do not assume you’ve definitively figured out your own creative process. Do not. You could move from a spiral-bound notebook to a MacBook Air. You, who’ve always needed to see the Big Picture, might see an ending before you understand how to get there, or a beginning with no apparent ending. You might use a pencil instead of a pen. You might start writing on the streetcar instead of at the desk you’ve been trying to write at for years (all the things in alignment: the view, the paper clip receptacle, the photos of that bleak and beautiful hillside at Mycenae).
Here Be Dragons. ROAWR. Also: YIKES.
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