Natasha Fondren

I seem to write much like I keep house. And keeping house isn’t one of my strengths. I make a mess. I move piles around. For days, weeks, years. Or I spend three hours scrubbing the inside of the freezer (See? I can focus sometimes!), while the rest of the kitchen remains a mess. I seem to be the same way in writing, too.

I sometimes find myself reading five things at the same time (I mean within the same minute) or writing seven things at once (I mean within the same day).

I hate clutter on my computer and in my house. All this “stuff” gets to me, and you guys know how much I hate stuff. I’m a freak at throwing out clutter. And I almost deleted all the files to do with my WIP so I could start with a clear mind, but I stopped myself. (I’ve already tried 50K+ of that. It didn’t help, clearly.)

So I set myself to organizing the YA WIP and deleting only what I don’t need. SuperNotecard is awesome, and I have my ten projects tabbed open, and each project sorted and stacked and indexed, etc.

But of course I can’t write with all that clutter, so I have WriteMonkey, FocusWriter, and Q10 all open so I can full-screen focus on what I’m working on. And since I’m focusing on three things today…

(I should clarify that I would write all three in WriteMonkey, but as far as I know, it doesn’t let you open multiple documents at once, like Word does. It’s kinda geared towards focused work, LOL!)

Then there’s Windows Live Writer to write this blog post.

And Microsoft Word to read through an old story and write a blurb for its ebook release. (Make that four things today… blogging doesn’t count, as it’s a fun thing, not a work thing.)

All this drives me so crazy, that I started writing in a notebook to get away from the clutter on my computer, but this only ended up making more unorganized stuff that I had to organize.

I was going to tell you guys that my ADD issues have improved with Fish Oil and No Doz, and I really think they have. Really. I mean it. I swear. A bit. A little bit. Any little bit helps!

But somedays? I seriously drive myself crazy.

How do you deal with the clutter and stuff in your own mind? In your house? In your writing? On your computer?

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?

Have I been whining lately? I feel like I should make a point of saying how much I love writing. Even when the words are coming out slow as molasses, when I’m spending all day tilting the bottle just so, when my arms are aching, waiting for the slow, slow, slow descent of the stubborn syrup, I love it.

I’m grateful that right now, knock on wood, I don’t have any looming deadlines. I can plug away, day by day, making progress, no pressure. It’s really nice. Such a relief.

This period should last for at least the next… two or three weeks.

Meanwhile, I’m (as always) struggling with the research. I’m always impatient to get the words on the page, and “just researching” makes me nervous. But onward I trudge.

If I’d just focus on the research and allow the book to come to full boil before trying to write it, I wouldn’t have to delete so much.

Same goes with reading. I want to read a book a day. I need to have a bigger understanding of the YA genre, so I need to read a ton more books. But again, “just reading” makes me nervous. Even though the work is fun, for sure! I think that’s why I feel guilty.

So thank you, universe. I like this time I have. Even if it does make me nervous. I constantly feel the pressure to write faster, to produce more, because I don’t want this opportunity to pass me by.

Do you struggle with patience? With nervousness when you have time to take your time? With guilt over reading, even though it’s part of the job? And how are deadlines treating you, at the moment?

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?

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?

You know what I’m talking about, right? We don’t say those words. We don’t want to give it power by believing in its existence. We wouldn’t want to… summon it by accident.

For WIP #2, all I have is my main character’s name. Yes, that’s the sum total of my NaNo novel, of which the rest I have completely scrapped. What I wrote didn’t work. I don’t know what. Maybe it was the world, the other characters, the tone, the genre… I have no idea.

All that junk was cluttering up this novel’s room, and it needed a blank slate. So today I deleted it for good. Trash can and everything.

Yes, sometimes we crave the blank page again.

She’s special, I can tell. I keep trying on different clothes, different settings, different plots. Nothing is fitting.

This morning, I got a sentence. It’s a sentence that says everything about who she is:

“I’m not going to fill your fuckin’ mold,” she said.

A sentence! Woo-hoo!

Phew. I’m so relieved I could celebrate a day’s hard work because I got a sentence.

But I need to get back on my 5K a day program. I know that was years ago, but I need it back.

So I’m sitting here. I sometimes force myself in a chair for three hours, internet off, WIP open, and tell myself I’m not allowed to move for three hours. And I’m trying jobs on her, trying cities, trying genres, trying ages, trying situations.

A little niggle suddenly makes me wonder if she was talking to me when she said she wasn’t filling any molds.

Er.

I can see the appeal of stepping back and pretending our characters are fully-realized humans before we met them, that we’re just conduits or whatnot. Maybe I should try it: Hi, nice to meet you.

Both my WIPs are in the “sputtering” stage, where I can’t even write complete sentences yet. No whole pages polished, no chapters finished, nothing. Just a bunch of stutters.

Glenn is sick. If they send him home, then I really must write faster. Amazing how desperation helps you write faster. Needing the money has always pulled me through, except when it paralyzes me, LOL. I was sorta looking forward to my three months of no pressure. It’s life, I guess!

Universe, remember what I requested for this year?

So what do you do about it which must not be named?

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?

You know writing’s not going well when you say to yourself, “Just write one good sentence today. That’s all you have to do. Write one good sentence.”

Yeah, well. All those posts the past week? I wrote before New Year’s. Glenn left New Year’s Day. I’ve been a regular old Eeyore since then. Worse: Eeyore with a sore throat and a cold.

I’m in a numbers group that sorta is in fizzle stage from the holidays (I’m sure we’ll get back to it), where we “just” have to write 100 words a day. That helps.

But on really bad days, I get down to, “Just open the document. That’s all you have to do. You don’t even have to read it. Just open it.”

I’ve started thinking about my New Year’s resolutions, but no doing. Well, I just looked up and realized my camper is clean and I have my candles set out. I always resolve to think about my New Year’s resolutions, but not stress about getting to the “doing” part for awhile.

And lo and behold, I just realized I’ve gone and started them. I’ve added visualization and meditation already to my daily routine. Huh. I’ve exercised a few more times than normal.

I didn’t even notice.

That’s the magic of “just.” If I “just” start, sometimes I surprise myself and do a whole lot more. Even if I’m slow and mopey.

How do you motivate yourself when Eeyore has taken possession of your enthusiasm?

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?

I’ve been dreaming characters. This book I’m writing is a modern retelling of Les Miserables, which I’ve tentatively titled Tears of the Wretched. Tentatively because it’s a little melodramatic. But then so is Les Miserables.

Every time I think about what I’m attempting to write, it scares the bejeezus out of me. I cringe just to tell you what I’m attempting. I’m, like, embarrassed that I presume to try this.

So moving on…

I’m dreaming characters. This is so exciting, because they are these vivid, fascinating (to me) characters. They are not main characters, but walk-ons. And they say so much about the world they live in, their society, their family, their life, and who they are, in a very poignant way. (At least, I imagine they do.)

That’s a tall order. They are a picture worth a thousand words.

And they’re so fleshed-out, in my mind, that I could write a whole novel on each one. Which is a problem, because I keep wanting to move them up to major character status. Or actually write a novel on them.

What’s also odd is that I’m not thinking them up. They are hitting me. Bam! I am dreaming them. Just boom! and they’re there.

Surreal. This has never happened to me before, not in nine years of writing.

But thank you, Universe. No way could I write this story without some major divine intervention.

It makes me ponder. I generally focus on my main and secondary characters, and other “bit” characters are added as needed. They’re static, single-function, serving the story and/or the other characters.

Should I be doing this in all my stories? Would I have a livelier, more vivid story if I made each bit and minor character novel-worthy? Even those who are only onstage for a sentence or paragraph?

Am I reading too much Dickens? (I’m currently reading Oliver Twist. Reading Dickens is like sipping a good cup of hot chocolate: comforting and yummy.)

What think you? Do your bit characters make you want to write a whole novel on them? How do characters occur to you? How fleshed out do you go for each character? Major? Minor? Bit?