Natasha Fondren

My mind is perplexing. I swear everything I’ve written this summer, I stop and think, “Where the heck did this come from?”

No, that’s not really what I think, but I usually only swear in my mind. And look, I’ve already used two swear words and in a title, no less. I thought about changing it to “Crazy Arse Shoot,” but that’s just silly.

What I really stop and think is: “WTF?”

Then I sit there and think, “That’s weird.”

Then I think, “That doesn’t fit the genre.”

Then I think, “That doesn’t fit any genre.”

Then I think, “Normal people don’t go around imagining this stuff. Where the hell are you getting this stuff? What is wrong with you?”

And then I say, “Fuck it.”**

Ever feel like this when you’re writing?

* Sorry for the swear words. It doesn’t happen often.

** Sometimes it takes considerably longer to reach this stage than this post might imply. Sometimes it takes weeks. Sometimes months.

PS: Since we’re swearing today, check out this totally awesome song:

I’m building a series, but I’m getting very impatient with the creative process. I have no problem thinking and imagining while I’m doing something else, but I have a tough time just sitting and being creative.

I know that I must build the world and decide on its structure and the like, but I feel so unproductive. Like right now, I was doodling a map of the world, trying to organize everything, and I just got so impatient with the whole process.

I like getting words done.

If it feels too much like playing, I start to get really antsy. Where did I get this idea that one should feel guilty for enjoying and having fun with one’s work? That’s silly.

And then, sheesh. World-building is like opening a can of worms. With everything you decide, there’s suddenly a bunch of other things to decide.

On top of that, this work is rendering the 8,000 words I’ve already written unusable. My writing process is changing a lot this year. I’m uncomfortable with that. I mean, every book calls for its own, unique process, but I’m so far off my normal grid.

Do you ever feel guilty about the more creative aspects of writing? Ever get impatient with the process and just want it done? Ever go through a big shift in writing process?

I’m in a world-building phase. I don’t know what’s up, but I’ve invented three new worlds in the last couple weeks. I’m loving it. I’m getting a lot of snatches written, but most of it is foundation rather than word-by-word prose.

Nathan Bransford wrote a great post on world-building, “What Makes a Great Setting.” (I suppose it was about setting rather than world-building, but they’re so closely related.) He mentioned three important elements to a good setting: change underway, personality and values, and unfamiliarity.

Sarah Jae-Jones adds to the discussion in her post, “Publishing Phenomenons.” She points out part of the magic that makes Harry Potter:

“I mean, everyone immediately recognized whether or not they were Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, or Slytherin–by the way, I’m RAVENCLAW ALL THE WAY. There’s something about this series that makes you want to crawl into the wizarding world and find your place in it.”

Then things get messy. The main character needs to be firmly and organically rooted in the foundation of the world. If we just stick a character into a world, it doesn’t feel right.

The Reluctant Hero

Nothing is quite so egotistical as a character who thinks he can save the world, but when you’ve got a world with change underway, the main character is likely going to be the cause for the end-of-series world peace.

So often you have the reluctant hero. He can be so humble and true-hearted, like Frodo, that you can’t help but love him (Lord of the Rings). Or she can be thrust into a thick of things to save a sister, and her strength and values and choices can inspire nations (The Hunger Games). Or he can be after a simple thing, like rescuing his lover, and gradually an army builds behind him that changes the power structure of the world (10,000 B.C.).

Motivation

Somewhere in the world-building, the main character needs motivation to fight for (or against) change. To save a world, you need extreme motivation, but this motivation often starts small, like avenging the death of a friend, a family member, or a village. Saving a loved one. And the steps they take from that small, personal motivation sets them on the path that will later save the world.

The character needs personal stakes in the change of the world, but people are rarely motivated to save themselves as much as they are to save someone else. Somehow, this BIG BAD EPIC THING that’s got change underway in the world must get small and personal, and must do some awful thing to the main character, in order to set the main character on the path of saving the world.

And what makes the main character special? Why do they have the power to change the world, anyways? What personal cost will their power have? What limits?

I’m just thinking out loud. My third world is still building. I love knitting together all these stray bits to make a tight weave of characters, motivation, plot and world.

What do you think about when creating a world for your characters? Where do you start? How do you make it all feel organic?

I’ve let blogging dissipate. Two weeks ago, I was convinced this was fine. I thought of blogging as only a social activity (still is, for me), and Facebook took over that area of my life.

But I didn’t realize how important blogging was to my writing productivity until the other day. First, I blogged, and then writing went well. Second, someone’s blog or status update made me realize that back when I blogged every day, I was nailing higher word counts more easily. Writing was going MUCH better.

That realization surprised me. I know Erica blogs to “warm up” the writing in the morning. And many, many writers wrote letters and essays to warm up or practice their writing skills, before blogs or computers were around.

 The largest benefit is having to organize my thoughts—very, very difficult for me, as we’ve already ascertained. (Fish Oil helps a lot, wow, a lot.) A blog post is small enough to make organizing my thoughts doable, and large enough to exercise my brain’s muscle in doing so.

Secondly, it helps to write in complete sentences. Sometimes this comes naturally to me, and sometimes it doesn’t. I can’t tell you how many writing days I have (about 50%), where just bits come out of my fingers. It’s awful. It seems that writing a sentence ought to be easy for a writer, but some days my brain is so disorganized, that it’s edging toward impossible. I even struggle with it in blog posts, but it’s easier: in a blog post, every sentence need not be as vivid and honed as in fiction. (Maybe it should be, but…)

Third, it forces me to say something, to come up with an idea, to develop it, and to deliver it.

And finally, I get to practice the “finishing” muscle. A novel takes forever and ever to write. Months. Every day, I’m left feeling I have more to do. The task is never completed. Even if I hit the word count, the incompleteness of the entire work nags at me.

Finishing a blog post is satisfying. It gives me that I-did-it feeling, plus the pride of completion—important feelings to practice often. And it’s a reminder that I can finish things, when in the midst of a novel, this confidence can fade, and then writing becomes a struggle.

I think these arguments can also be applied to writing poetry, flash fiction, and short stories—other things I need to start doing more of.

So my goal, from now on, is to compose a blog post, flash fiction, poem (*cringe* as I’m so bad at it), or half a short story every day.

And I should be back on the blogging circuit more. I need to organize my Reader. I have at least 200 feeds, and frankly, that’s too many. I need to at least get my closest friends in one folder so I can read you guys first off, instead of having you disappear amongst 1,000+ unread posts.

Have you let blogging slide? Do you notice any benefits to blogging? Do you write short stories or poems or anything else, to help you write novels? Or just to help you be a writer?

A bunch of writers riffed off of Elmore Leonard’s ten rules, including Margaret Atwood, Joyce Carol Oates, Ian Rankin, Philip Pullman, Zadie Smith, and many more. Great reading.

Well, I’ve only read a bit of it, but I’m keeping it open today and reading a little at a time.

Ten Rules for Writing Fiction Part 1
     Ten Rules for Writing Fiction Part 2

And finally, Seth Godin talks about the Lizard Brain, which tends to keep us creative folk from getting things done when and how we want them done. And other things about creative work.

Seth Godin: Quieting the Lizard Brain from 99% on Vimeo.

If you had to come up with ten (or one, or three, or whatever) rules for the writing life or craft, what would yours be?

Lately, writing has been like strip-mining myself. The other day, I talked about writing about those “issues” which may or may not be recognizable to anyone close to you.

Today, I used those secrets that no one knows but me. Little things. Tiny secrets, those hidden things and feelings you tell no one, maybe your best friend, but that’s it.

It’s so easy to plant them in. It feels so safe: it’s easy to shrug and call them fiction. And often they’re so small, they’re only of note to you.

I’ve always found these secrets have something universal about them, because they’re the sort of things people “recognize,” the sort of things that make people feel less alone.

Glenn goes for surgery on Wednesday! We’re very happy about this, because his wound will hopefully, after six weeks or so, finally start to get better! Yay! They’re going to put him under, which makes me a little nervous, but he’s happy about that. (No pain.)

So what about you? Do you slip in little secret bits of yourself? Does writing ever feel like strip-mining to you?

There comes a point where you’ve read and heard just about every technique. But somewhere in reading the archives of Neil Gaiman’s blog, I came across this tidbit that feels new, even though I kinda do it already. Now I can more consciously play with it, though.

“Give them a chance to forget.”

I think this technique is best shown, rather than told: American Gods Blog, Post 36.

No, really, please click through. Worth it, I promise. Cross my heart. I don’t hope to die, but I do hope you’ll read it.

And from Gary Corby (via Janet Reid, so you’ve probably already seen), is this Microsoft Word tip that made me laugh out loud.

The other use I put autocorrect to is to catch my noise words. Everyone has them. I tend to overuse the word just. To stop myself I put in this autocorrection:

just autocorrects to NO! NO! NO!

If I type:

"I’ll just wander over to the Agora," N said.

What appears is:

"I’ll NO! NO! NO! wander over to the Agora," Nicolaos said.

I found THE prettiest book today: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll and newly illustrated by Camille Rose Garcia. A wonderful goth feel to the new illustrations.

And you know what I thought? That I miss reading books with pictures in them. Then what do I read on the first page?

Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, ‘and what is the use of a book,’ thought Alice, ‘without pictures or conversation?’

I have a new dream: to someday write such a story that Harper Collins decides it worthy of illustration by Camille Rose Garcia.

(Too much fangirl? Sorry. Can’t help it.)

Also, have found new blog: Multi-Hyphenate: Perpetually Hyphenated. Highly Opinionated. Endlessly Creative. The link does not lead you to the blog front page, but to Paul Klein’s first contribution, of Dark Scribe fame (whom you might remember), who ceased blogging to go to law school. Hmph. He’s getting his life back on track, now. ;-P

I NO! NO! NO! love it when lost bloggers resurface in the blogosphere.

Any new techniques you’ve discovered, or at least put a new name to, made you remember it consciously instead of subconsciously? Any cool links to share?

and it’s here. I’ve had it. I’m tired of struggling to write a non-pseudonym’s genre story. I just reached a point, where… all my issues? Using them. I don’t care if some people I know draw parallels that may or may not be true.

It’s my life and my feelings, so why shouldn’t I use them?

It’s fiction, so of course I’ll fictionalize it. It’s arguable whether or not it will even be recognizable when I’m done with it, if it will be transparent.

Either way, I just. don’t. care. I need all the help I can get. Time to pull out all the stops.

Perhaps it’s the same as stuff I’ve accidentally used, over the years, and was surprised and a little freaked to see the parallels of my life in my stories. Even when you write 100% pure fiction, if you know yourself, you see little bits of yourself. And sometimes, I see threads in my writing, and I step back in horror, thinking: do I really think that?

Hey, some of my experiences sucked, so I may as well make money off those feelings. Make a silver lining. And if it connects with someone else who has those feelings, all the better.

Over the last nine or so years, my writing progress has mostly been a deeper and deeper exploration into who I am and how I feel. There’s mechanics and methods and techniques and skills, but in the end, it always comes down to me going deeper.

And I refuse to give up on writing a non-pseudonym story. It’s just going to happen. Period.

This seems to be my mental hurdle, as I’ve been struggling with it for years. And frankly, I am just sick of it. (I can’t imagine how you guys must feel, although to be honest, I’m having a moment of wow, you guys rock, I can’t believe you still read my blog!)

So what has your writing journey been like? What has your greatest mental hurdle been? How’d you get past it?

I’m weary of devices. They’re everywhere. It gets to the point where you read a novel, and you’re thinking, “Ah, yes, foreshadowing. Interesting choice of symbol. Oh, drop a bit of suspense there, huh? Red herring, that. Uh-oh, theme alert: INCOMING!”

There is sort of an image authors like to maintain, that these things—these themes and symbols and the like—are all mystical happenstance. Like Isabel Allende writes:

“But there is something magic in the storytelling. You tap into another world… I have a feeling that I don’t invent anything. That somehow I discover things that are in another dimension.”

Okay, I concede: sometimes things just show up in the book. Themes emerge. Symbols happen. John Irving likes to laugh and shrug and say the bears in all his novels are just coincidence.

Seriously, LIKE HE DIDN’T NOTICE. Once they were there, he made the conscious decision to keep or delete.

Sure, there are writers who end up with that stuff in their novel and don’t realize the technique they’d used. You think their editor didn’t notice? Didn’t consider the keep-or-delete question? Didn’t bring it to their attention?

Yeah, NO.

Which brings me to what I wrote today. I spent an hour writing it, and three hours desperately trying to cover my symbolism and delete all but the essence of my theme.

I spent more time unwriting than writing.

And it still seems to me that all the devices are there in blinking neon lights. Yes, I’m weary of it. Yet these are the elements of fiction; these are the tools of our craft.

I’ll admit that I’m pretty adamant that pseudonym speak nothing of craft. It spoils the magic. No one wants to see the cameras or the supports behind the props.

But there’s not a period in my work that’s not crafted.

So that’s where I am today: frowning at my work and trying to figure out how I can hide all the craft. That’s the challenge. Make it all too blatant, and I irritate readers. Heck, I irritate myself.

More unwriting tomorrow.

What think you?

I’m back to sentences. My first story (novella—2001) was a bit of a Harry Potter rip-off. Really sort of ridiculous, considering the genre pseudonym writes in, but I had a blast creating a magic-filled world. I made lots of mistakes, which I look back on with some fondness and a lot of embarrassment, considering it’s still out there. (*cue The Twilight Zone music*)

It would be hard to read it now and not laugh myself to absolute tears. We’re talking rolling-down-the-face tears. I don’t dare. Just remembering the names I gave the characters makes me giggle.

The second story I wrote was a short story. I don’t remember what it was, but I remember that period of my life. After teaching, I’d kick back in front of my desktop (A desktop! One of those archaic things! *snicker*), and I’d spend an hour toying with a paragraph.

I’d consider the nuances of each word choice. I’d look nearly every word up in the thesaurus, constantly checking that I was choosing just the right one. I’d read the dictionary for fun. I’d spend hours on a single paragraph. Gosh, it was a blast!

But then came money and pounding the keys and daily word counts and frets and worries and deadlines and… all that baggage.

Still, I grew to love plot. I have been plot-obsessed for two years. I love knitting together a plot. I can sort of understand why James Patterson enjoys (besides the financial gain) hiring co-writers: when I’m done playing with the puzzle of the plot, the grind of actually writing it seems… boring.

I’m a pantser, but my current hat tip of a novel to Les Miserables means I pretty much know the entire plot. And now I’m back to toying with sentences and playing with paragraphs.

I feel like a craftswoman again. I feel like my hands are wrist deep in clay.

It even feels Zen, taking my eyes off the top of the mountain and focusing on just the one step in front of me.

So what are you loving right now? What are you focusing on? What is making it fun for you?