OK, I am officially in the dazed and confused part now. The beginning seems sound but the novel is now veering off in all directions and not listening to me at all! I know this is al process, and I also know that I forget this every book. Luck for me I kept notes on my last book about process and a friend told me something telling, which is that I am like a crow hunting crazily around for that shiny thing and sometimes it takes me a while to find it.
Since I am fascinated by how others work and write (and I once knew a writer who insisted that writing was easy and if it wasn't why do it? This writer also said there was nothing to do but "follow your pen" and that why would you want to hurt characters you loved? Wasn't it better to give them happiness all the time? Despite the lunacy --I think--of these remarks, said writer has written some fine novels and is acclaimed, which means all different processes and thoughts can produce art.) So, how do you write? What daunts you?
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- Stay tuned, WITH OR WITHOUT YOU, my 12th novel is coming August 4, 2020 from Algonquin. My 11th novel CRUEL BEAUTIFUL WORLD is an Indie Next Pick. IS THIS TOMORROW was an May Indie Pick. I'm also the New York Times bestselling author of PICTURES OF YOU, a San Francisco Chronicle Lit Pick, a Costco "Pennie's Pick." a NAIBA bestseller and on the Best Books of 2011 List from San Francisco Chronicle, Providence Journal, Kirkus Reviews and Bookmarks Magazine. I'm the recipient of a New York Foundation of the Arts Grant in Fiction. I was a 2013 finalist in the Sundance Screenwriting Lab and a finalist in the Nickelodeon Screenwriting Fellowship, four of my novels were optioned for screen, and I talked my way into writing the script for two of them. My essay, HIgh Infidelity, has been optioned for film. I'm a book critic for The San Francisco Chronicle and People Magazine. I teach novel writing for UCLA Extension Writers' Program, and Stanford online, do private fiction editing, and I am a professional namer! I live with my husband, writer/editor Jeff Tamarkin and we beam with pride about our son, an actor/filmmaker in college. Visit me at http://www.carolineleavitt.com.
4 comments:
Last month,I curled both hands over a sticky coated safety bar and slid my capris into the seat of the Tilt-A-Whirl. While my daughter fingered the neon All-Day bracelet, I pouted over my manuscript.
This self-inflicted pain has continued since the bud of my divorce. It seems my committment to trudge through such a harsh decision left me blind. Ideas flit through my mind without searching for pencil and pad. I wonder, will I ever find my way forward. My voice mumbles. My heart aches cliche. Yet, as I pack an office of incomplete manuscripts peppered with my own words, my eyebrows bend, my lips slightly curl. It's me I see. The Tilt-A-Whirl jolts. Eyes widen. Chloe giggles. I breath.
It is hard to bear down, Danielle, to trust yourself and do the work (strangely enough, I was just blogging about this). But you've got to - it pays you back. So, uh, that's where I am - trying to make myself focus. Trying to remember how to think. Trying to put words on paper to sort out later...
Danielle, I absolutely understand, but you know as one who has been through quite a lot of horrific minefields in my own life, I can tell you that what is probably happening is your subconscious is still processing everything that is going on in your life. You may not be ready to write what you need to write. Do it anyway, knowing that it will unfold when it is able to. Just help it along by putting words, however crummy, on paper. Soon it will unlock.
I write with resistance, frustration, dread, anxiety...all this just getting to the computer...and then I start and am immediately exhausted as if I need to sleep...my brain's way of saying...go lie down, don't write it's too hard...rest. I fight this little demon on my shoulder and start with e-mailing, or blogging, or re-reading what I have done the day before and following the little notes that I have left myself at the end of where I left off, that say things like..."describe her apartment," "show her relationship with her mother in a flashback" etc. These notes are all about giving me a mini road map that gets me started. Eventually I give over and the writing happens and the snacking begins and I munch and type and listen to music and feel surprised all over again, that anything can come out of my brain.
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