Welcome to the Void

January 18

I called this blog “Visions in the Void” because that is what it is like trying to write a novel, especially the first draft. No matter how well you wrote yesterday, today the screen is blank, waiting like a hungry beast for you to feed it. That is the Void. Often I will sit at the computer and stare off for long stretches into the Void, waiting for ideas to come. I have no clue where they come from. I often think I am merely a channel for something out there in that Void. I take from it and give it structure. I dread and love the Void at the same time.

When I am intensely involved in the writing of a book, it is there with me all day and night, inhabiting me. I get messages from the Void in the shower and often when I first open my eyes in bed. The bed visions are the weirdest, because I am not even thinking about the novel when I wake up. Adjustments to scenes, errors of logic, ideas for new scenes all come in a flash. That stuns me and makes me humble.

Many times when I edit my books I say to myself, “How did you think of that?” Unlike memories in your personal life, ideas/visions cannot be placed in time, as say a high school prom can. They have no past, no future, they just exist in the moment they come. Very strange, and yet very beautiful, larger than me, more inspired and important than Me.

My method of writing has evolved over the years. In the beginning I did very long outlines, often scene by scene structuring. The weakness in that system is you become locked into a plot/structure too early, and your characters have no room to expand and act on their own.

Then one day I read an interview with one of my favorite genre writers, Michael Connelly. I was stunned to learn he did not do elaborate prep work for a novel. He knew who the characters where, what the bare bones story was and then just sat down and wrote.

So I tried it. Structure came organically. The characters would tell me after each scene I wrote what had to come next. It was their book. I listened to them because they were living it, not me. The most planning I do is to write out full biographies of my characters, from birth to the present. Good actors always do that. A character did not begin in the present. He came from a history of experiences and memories. Until you know what they’ve been through, you cannot write about them with any authority in the present. Actors call these histories sense memories. For example, if my character bio says he had an authoritarian father, then I can predictably say he will dislike someone like that when he encounters them in a scene.

Most writers say the fun in writing is the writing, then the grind begins: the editing. I LOVE editing and rewrites. The pressure you felt in the first draft when you are constantly faced with the Void is gone. You have something down on page. Now the fun is in making it better. I love watching my book grow and evolve over the course of multiple drafts, sort of like having a child and watching them over the years turn into adults.

The key to editing is focus, focus and more focus. The worst thing you can do is fall in love with your words and get caught up in the rhythmic flow of sentences. What I do is read in a form of slow motion, like in cinema. In slow motion every sentence, every word is there for you, and in this state of mind you see all kinds of changes that can be made. The trick in achieving this sense of reading in slow motion is repetitive drafts. The more drafts I do, the more detached I get, to the point where I don’t know who wrote the book, my job is just to edit this person’s work.

Must go back to my book now. Welcome to the Void. Feel right at home. More in the future...