Three-part writing process: a theory.

Tragedy.  I wrote this idea out in an email to a friend. Wrote it in gorgeous, bloggy detail. Then I cut it from the email, realizing that she (not a writer) wouldn't be interested in my theories. Intended to paste it into a blog entry.

But, as life would have it, I got randomized and forgot to paste it...anywhere. So when I finally got to this window, I discovered the computer actually has the link to a website stored in the paste function.

Rats.

But! It was my brain that thought it up to begin with, so I'll recreate. Less than spontaneously, but maybe more thought out.

Here's the concept. Writing has always been considered a two-step event. Writing and then Editing. You write your novel. Then you edit it. Sometimes you edit it over and over again. 

But let me pose this theory:

Great writers write in three steps.

Creating. Polishing. Editing.

Yes, those are in the correct order.

Writing is really a combination of creating and polishing. This is where the various "writing styles" come in - some people create an outline first, then fill it in with details. Others write copiously, then cut and rearrange. No matter how you come up with your fully functional narrative - that's your goal in the creative phase. A narrative draft that is "finished". That's what people mean when they say "I finished the first draft of my novel." It means, "I have written a narrative that holds together, and I won't be rearranging it in any significant way." 

(probably.)

Most of the work of new writers is to figure out how they best hammer out the skeleton: whether through the inspirational and copious bloodletting known as "getting it all on the page" followed by major manuscript surgery (as I do) or by thinking hard and writing from an outline that's been a few months or even years in the making and then filling in the prescribed scenes and details (my friend Nick Kaufmann writes his fantastic urban-sorcerous crime novels this way).  Professional writers are really good at knowing when a skeleton is unfinished. They are slaves to the feeling that "something isn't right here." And they will tweak and cut and rearrange until it feels "finished."

Before sending out that "finished" story, they polish that filled out skeleton. This is where you edit your own writing. You choose better verbs. You cut characters that steal scenes for no good reason. After you absolutely know the frame of your story (Victor LaValle has some great things to say in interviews about this) you go through and "fix" -- whittle down scenes that are too long, add descriptions so that scenes don't happen in empty rooms with blank walls unless they're supposed to. 

This sounds so obvious, right? So why do writing students so often send out stories in the middle of the Creative phase? Teachers of writing often have to select the scenes to cut and mark where the story actually "begins". 

A great editor I recently worked with agreed with Victor that you can write your outline AFTER the novel is written, but you still have to have an outline.  Every story has to have a skeleton that makes sense and that can be filled in (with scenes that function...like organs?) and can be overlaid with details (skin, eye color, hair?)... despite my extended Halloween-induced metaphor, I do think that the skeleton of the story is important, and the creation of this core of every narrative should be thought of as a separate action from the polishing (finding the perfect words, describing the perfect weather, adding the crazy character traits that will make Mr. Blusty an unforgettable professor of science) -- but I also hold that the polishing of the story is NOT the editing of the story, because polishing is still fun. It's making your story all shiny and glimmery and yours. 

The editing is the painful part. After you already think the story is perfect. "As good as you can make it" - you give it to your trusted readers. Then your agent. Finally, professional editors. Each of these rounds will give you feedback which you can opt to use or not - but which you MUST look at with a critical eye. Not your inspired, vulnerable, genius writer self. A critical, consumer, teacher, word-count, sort of eye. And that is editing. Editing hurts. It's letting go of the paragraph you kept in (though you kind of knew it should go, certainly you moved it six different places)... 

So what do you think of my three-part writing process? 

Take a chill pill

I sat down to my laptop intending to write about my stressful morning - perhaps you can relate - but when I tried to come up with a title that was properly blog-positive for what was basically going to be a rant about other parents, I found myself stuck. I discarded words like hate, frustration, grr, colossal idiots, and started rethinking from the positive: finding peace, enforced relaxation, mom time out... and wow. My actual mood changed. Then I recalled the phrase "take a chill pill" that I haven't used since I was probably ten. I suddenly understood what those words really meant - take a sedative, you are overwrought, and I thought, I used to say this when I was in second grade? Horrific thought, how slang filters down into the mouths of the young. Like "sucks" as in "life sucks" or "this meal sucks mom" - I remember my mother being aghast that I would say such a thing. But then, I wasn't saying what she thought I was saying. I was just using a word. I bet you say it too, and your kids likely as well. We don't think about the words we use in conversation. They're placeholders. But when we write, they have evocative power.

The power of words. 

See? and now all the parenting stress that was tightening my neck and shoulders is gone. Vanished. I'm in the land of words. It's amazing what power words have.

but I just re-read the beginning of this blog and want to talk about this concept of thinking from the positive.

I had an acting teacher back before having kids (I'm from the pleistocene era, originally) and she used to tell us to find positive motivation for our characters. When she used the word positive she didn't mean smiley-face, she meant active. Characters with negative motivation "I don't want to be stuck at home all day" or "I don't want to eat that for dinner" are characters we hate. They're basically whiners. Turn it around "I want to travel more" or "I want spicy food" and we have characters that are tolerable. Make the desire specific, "I want to go to Thailand and climb the face of a god," or "I want to try a ghost pepper omelette," and we are dying to see what will happen. 

Crazy isn't it? I didn't even know that until I just typed it.

Writing is awesome. I really was in this preposterously stuck mood when I sat down here. I had rushed to get my first-grader to school on time and we were going to make it -- barely -- but we ran into some twins she knows and the girls walked together and I felt the clock turn to mush. I couldn't get her away - the girls were sweetly hugging and giggling and all I could think was "oh god, they're going to make her late and they'll get into Harvard because their parents who are both here and both dressed in Gucci will simply buy their way in, meanwhile my daughter will have her attendance record checked and it will be obvious from her first grade records that she has a tendency to arrive to school tardy - and she will have to go to a tiny community college in Appalachia. If they let her in." The designer parents told my daughter to wait for their daughter (one twin shares a class with her) and so my daughter did. While the parents removed their D&G sunglasses and hugged first one twin, then the other, then "hey! what about my kiss!" then same for the other. And my inner clock was covered in oozing taffy, the second hand was moving like a superhero and the bomb was going to go off anyway. My daughter went upstairs three minutes late, with two giggly happy girls on either side of her, and I went home gnashing my teeth at...what? at family love? At joy?  

It reminded me of the reason I finally applied to grad school. I'll tell you about it next week. 

For now, keep your characters active. 

Make their motivations positive: Susan wants X. 

And specific. Susan wants capital X in courier font, 12 point type.

Get to work!