Making it up?

Continuing my theme of “things that drive writers quietly insane”, it seems I have grown bored of the usual pitfalls and foibles and begun making up a whole new pantheon of insanities to keep myself distracted:

While writing away the other day, happily banging out a few more pages of the next book, I noticed an upcoming problem with what I was working on.  A decision I had made in the planning stages, months before, had now, now that I had actually come to write the story and let it unfold as it needed, turned out to be inappropriate.  What I had planned for this particular moment simply didn’t make any sense when I finally arrived at it.  I needed to rethink my plan.

Sensible idea no?  Your plan needs altering, so you alter it?  But no.  My brain go completely stuck, like a gearbox with a chainsaw through it.  I could not find anything that worked.  Every idea I had was rejected before it had even fully formed, thrown aside with sneer of contempt for daring to infringe upon my consciousness.  I worked and worked, making notes, performing all the usual menial chores that jog my creative centres, but after a week I was no further along.  I could not find an amendment to my plot that I could accept.

And then I saw it.  I caught it out of the corner of my eye and slowly tracked it around to the front of my vision.  I stared at it open mouthed, unwilling to believe it existed. But it did.  My problem was not that I could not come up with any good ideas but rather that I could not accept the thought of any changes!  I was mentally blocking myself from, and I actually caught my mouth about to frame these exact words while talking to my partner, “making stuff up”.

I was so committed to the plot I have, so entrenched in it, I forgot that I had, at the beginning of it all, made it up.  In one form or another, The Keepers Trilogy has been with me for nearly 20 years.  Its characters are constant companions, its world comfortable and familiar – so comfortable in fact, that I had almost forgotten they were imaginary.

Within ten minutes of realising this, of working out what was  really preventing me from moving on, I had solved my plot problem (with very minor changes as it turned out) and was merrily writing again.

Writers have enough things working against us.  Could our minds at least  pretend they are on our side?

I wrote that, right?

There are many psychoses that afflict writers but the weirdest I have yet encountered is the Unfounded Sensation of Unintentional Plagiarism.  Its very bizzare, very annoying and tends to screw with my writing schedule no end.

What do I mean by USUP (pronounced “you-sup”)?  The overwhelming  feeling you sometimes get upon finishing a section of work that the idea you were so proud of a few hours ago is not your own.

You plow through the writing, all pleased that it is going so well and that you finally got passed that bit you were stuck on, but then, as you stop, a feeling creeps over you…

“Wait…this is my idea, right?  It seems bloody familiar…”

I’ve had this a couple of times now and each time I have been frantic with worry, desperately trying to remember where on earth I read the idea in question before.  I Google myself silly, cut out sections of it and mail them to everyone I can think of, asking if they recognise it.  Every single time though, I have come up empty.

“Never read this before in my life” they say, staring at me blankly “How much coffee have you had today, exactly?”

Hmm…

So is this just generic paranoia leaking into a startling specific mold?  Who knows!  We writers have paranoia to spare I should imagine, but here I sit, netbook in hand, reading the chapter I’ve just written and for the life of me I cannot shake the feeling that I have ripped it off some other author….

Maybe I could start a charity drive? “USUP is a serious problem.  Parents: speak to your children.  We need to let sufferers know that they are not alone…”

Till then, I am sure another espresso will help…right?

The thing I miss most is my mind

I started this post about 20 minutes ago with a specific, cathartic aim in mind.  15 minutes in, however, the process of writing managed to jog some tired old memory and solve the dilemma about which I had begun my post.  Brains huh? 

I’ve left the start of this as it was originally drafted so you can see where I was going…

I have been stuck for a while now.  Not a writers block kind of stuck: far from it.  I have more plot than I know what to bloody do with!  All the characters from The Keepers of the Key are returning to The Keepers of the Fire, but this time, those that got short shrift or just dwelt in the background are being flung into the spotlight and given their very own stage on which to strut their stuff.

The actual, central plot for Fire has been with me since I started Key as it is, in many ways, an origin story for some of the characters and a larger slice of the pie that, along with Key, will become The Keepers of the Truth.  I had always planned to delve into all that I am currently writing but the issue I am facing was one of cohesion – trying to marry all my separate threads together while not getting lost in back-story (all very well coming up with a convincing and believable history for your characters but resisting the urge to blather on about it for chapters is another thing entirely).

To put it simply, I had forgotten what some of my characters were supposed to be doing.  Now this may sound stupid…and that is because it is.  But forgotten I had.  I knew what they were all doing in the larger sense – what was happening to them that would move them inexorability toward the conclusion of the book – but now what they were doing now, as the book started, and as the plot was being unfurled.

I’d looked through my “notes” (20 or so, badly typed text files with unhelpful names and filled with idiotic sentences) but gotten nowhere.  Apparently, at some point, the flash drive I keep all my writing on had been altered or corrupted and I’d lost the main notes document and the first draft of a few chapters so they were no help.

I was seriously starting to get bogged down.

Then I remembered.  Before I had all my files on this flash drive, they were on my netbook, and before I blanked my netbook to stick a different version of Linux on, I backed up the entire thing to my server….. =/

20 minutes later I have the lost chapter and the missing notes sat before me and the cloud that has followed me around for the past week is slowly lifting.  In two, glorious lines of text, I had summed up the plot line I had forgotten and all the other threads had snapped into place.

So remember children: backups are only useful if you actually remember that you have the damned things! (also, get an online storage system and put EVERYTHING on there ‘cos you know at some point you’ll do something stupid with the copies you have)

Kill your darlings

A well known phrase, this, thanks to William Faulkner and one that is much debated.  I have seen countless blogs from innumerable writers, all talking about how important his statement was and how you must be ruthless with your writing.  Personally, however, I think its crap.

Now let me explain what the phrase means, first of all as, most people get it wrong.  “Kill your darlings” is not generally thought to mean that one should kill off ones favourite characters.  No, it is interpreted as meaning that one should trim out the parts of ones writing that one is in love with as, if you are in love with something, you cannot be objective about it and if you cannot be objective about it, it is probably nowhere near as good as you think it is.

Balderdash says I!

I write what I want to read – simple as.  I know full well that the parts of my writing I find most enjoyable wont be the parts that everyone will find most enjoyable.  The same applies to characters too.  I ask every person who I know has read and finished my book to tell me who their favourite character was and so far none of them have agreed with my opinion (or each others, come to that).  To look at that feedback and think that there is something wrong with the parts I enjoy most is just madness though.  Sure, if I was fawning over certain sections, thrilled to the point of orgasmic pleasure at the unparalleled genius that was my creative process, then yeah, its time to cut some fat, but simply being able to appreciate your own work should not be seen as a bad thing.  After all, if I don’t like what I write, why the hell would anyone else?

I believe that this kind of thinking as a layover from an old, stereotypical view of writers as neurotic, pompous, dilettante, creative types who simply cannot go on! unless someone is there to hold their hand and tell them that of course the public just adores them and I will have no part of it.  A healthy ego about one’s skill as a writer has to be seen as a good thing (as long as one is realistic, of course) in the same way that you should be aware of your skills in whatever field you set your career.  No one is going to hire a coder, painter, carpenter or mechanic who, when asked if they are up to the job, looks sheepishly down, shoves their hands into the pocket and mutters quietly that “they are alri-i-i-ight….”, are they?

I do, however, firmly believe in the other interpretation of “kill your darlings”.  Oh yes, I believe in that a great deal….