No Visible Means of Support: Guest blog from author Susanne Dunlap

One of the things that always strikes me is how most writers have to do other things besides write to pay the bills. It's a juggling act none of us are expert at. Recently, my friend and colleague, Susanne Dunlap (Anastasia's Secret) quit her job and I'm thrilled she's writing about the experience here.

I did it. About three weeks ago, I left my day job to enter the uncertain world of freelance writing and editing. Do I have a cushion of savings, you ask? No. A spouse who is wealthy and can help me make the transition? No. Limited financial responsibilities so I can pare down and live the simple life while I pursue my dream? If only!

So what possessed me to take such a rash, ill-advised step? Let me try to explain.

First, the day job was becoming increasingly untenable. Since the Internet is a public forum I’m not going to give you the details here, but trust me: it was time for me to leave. Then, I got my first-ever two-book contract. Not just a contract with an option book, but a real, two-book contract (thank you, Bloomsbury!). It wasn’t a huge, life-changing deal, but it meant I had the guarantee of some money coming in. About enough to keep me alive for two months in the short term, with more later.

Two months, and I’m almost halfway through the first of them. That’s two months to figure out how to replace my former income—or most of it, anyway—with projects that will give me the time I need to push my writing career to the next level.

Now you might well ask me how it’s going. It’s amazing. Incredible. Outstanding. Terrifying. And I’m learning a lot about myself and work.

I’ve learned, for instance, that I still need to set my alarm in the morning. I’m a sleeper. That’s my escape. Plus, the alarm going off at 7:30 (that’s enough of a luxury) puts a definite start to the day and reminds me that even though I’m not going to an office, I’m still working.

And I make certain I’m at my computer taking care of the mundane tasks—checking email, Facebook etc.—by 8:30. My goal is to be writing by 9.

I’ve also learned that being at home a lot of the time doesn’t mean my apartment is any cleaner or more organized than it was when I had my full-time job. Dishes pile up in the sink just as quickly—actually more so because I’m eating three meals at home.

As to spending a lot of time in my own company—that’s oddly the easiest part for me. Although I’m a social being, love getting together with friends and colleagues, I don’t get lonely. Perhaps that’s partly because of Betty, my wonderful Coton de Tulear (fancy name for fluffy white lapdog), who demands a certain amount of attention at regular intervals throughout the day.

But here’s the strangest thing: I’ve noticed a curious, turnabout effect in being a full-time writer. On some level, I miss being able to amaze people with my productivity, miss hearing those exclamations of “I don’t know how you do it!” What’s that about? I’m curious whether male writers ever have the same thoughts. Is this one of those “superwoman” myths that my generation grew up with, the idea that you are not only free to but you must juggle work, family, love, recreation, and vocation as easily as if you were serving hors d’oeuvres at a cocktail party? I guess it’s me feeling guilty. I don’t deserve this kind of life. Just because I’ve had four books published and two more on the way doesn’t mean I’ve earned the right to spend the bulk of my productive hours writing. How pathetic is that!

Perhaps the most remarkable thing I’ve learned in my new life of writerly freedom is that there are never, ever enough hours in a day. Now, instead of a day job, I have editing and coaching clients. I love doing that, but it takes up a lot of time and energy. As does the work to get more editing and coaching clients (if you’re interested, by the way, email me at susannedunlap@mac.com). Oh, and I’m supposed to be constructing an online course in writing historical fiction, and I haven’t even started that one. Plus, I’m building two Web sites for local businesses, and finding that takes up a lot of time too. In addition, I’m getting involved in a friend’s business, a very exciting opportunity that attracts my commercial instincts and keeps me in touch with that world.

I know, poor me! Seriously. If I can make this work financially, I will feel as if I have died and gone to heaven. Make no mistake: despite everything I’ve said here, it really is an amazing feeling to know that I am in charge of structuring my day. It’s hard work too. There’s no excuse for doing nothing at any moment. Sometimes I don’t effectively prioritize what I have to accomplish in a day. And I can’t blame anyone but myself.

So wish me luck. Envy me if you must. And please take one thing away from this post: life is short. The time to live it is today.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get to work!

Stephen McCauley talks about his new novel Insignificant Others

I first met Stephen McCauley at a bookclub meeting at someone's house. I already loved his books and I soon came to adore him because no one is really more hilarious. I even wrote up a piece on him and the how-tos of cooking an urban-styled macaroni and cheese for The Boston Globe food section, complete with a photograph of Stephen and the dish!

Insignificant Others is already racking up the raves. A social satire about the lies we tell each other--and ourselves--it's quintessential McCauley.

And Stephen will be reading from Insignificant Others at NYC's Upper West Side Barnes and Noble, 82 and Broadway, Thursday, June 10 at 7. Be there or be square.

Insignificant Others is set between the real estate boom and the economic mess we’re in now. How much (and why) do you think the economy guides our heartstrings?

I'm not sure the economy does guide our heartstrings. What I find interesting, though, is that it guides our rationale for questionable behavior, often related to heartstrings. To me, that's where the comedy and the social satire start to catch fire--in the self-deception and the lies we tell ourselves.

Do you think we need insignificant others from time to time? And if we need them, how insignificant are they?

The title refers to the people and pursuits we cast as bit players or subplots in our lives. Secondary, minor, insignificant. What the narrator discovers over the course of the book is that some of these people and things are more central than he realized. To answer the question, I think we all rely more heavily on the minor characters in our lives than we realize. Without them, the center collapses, and certain primary relationships become untenable.

Do you think that infidelity, like too much exercise, can be a way of keeping us from truer selves? And how can we ever really know what our true selves are?

Interesting you link the two things--exercise and infidelity. Of course they often go together, If one's spouse suddenly starts an exercise regimen, there's reason to worry. According to my observations, people have affairs to get outside of the confines of their lives and what they'd talked themselves into believing is their true self. Sometimes people find what they really want. I don't know if that means losing your true self, but it usually amounts to losing a lot of money.

You’ve got a somewhat hilarious background (ice cream stands, house cleaning service, travel agent) then headed for an MFA. I loved what you said about how you were first told to approach plot (“Not so complicated. Look at A Farewell to Arms. Boy meets girl, girl gets pregnant, boy walks home in the rain. The end.") As one who finds plot so complex that her head sometimes feels as if it is about to explode, I’m wondering if you can talk about your process in plotting and writing this novel.

Unfortunately, I don't ever start with a plot. I have some characters and a situation in mind. I try to begin at the point at which something or someone intrudes to upset the balance in a character's life. The plot (if you could call it that) is about how that gets resolved and some sort of balance is restored. I tend to shy away from big events--deaths, accidents, cancer, murder. I'm more drawn to the small--seemingly insignificant--things that throw our expectations and assumptions into disarray.

You’ve also said your next novel, tentatively titled My Pornographer is not comic, and I’m wondering what that feels like for you, but I’m also really curious why someone with such terrific name recognition would also be planning to write a series of novels under a pen name?
Well, I don't know if I'll ever finish the book I'm working on now and already, early on, something happened that tips it more toward comedy. But I've written six novels in which observations and proclamation (hopefully amusing ones) about life and behavior are every bit as important as plot. More so, perhaps. It gets exhausting noticing things all the time and trying to mine it for comedy, and my idea was to take a bit of a break from that.

The pen name project came to me as an opportunity. The books are commercial in nature and the publisher wanted a whole package they could introduce in a fresh way. I had to audition for the job. When I got it, I figured I'd never be able to do it, but I finished the first book in six weeks, and I have a lot of faith in it. It's coming out next winter. I think the reason I was able to write so quickly and have so much fun with it was because I wasn't writing as "me." It was incredibly freeing.

So, what’s with the Liza Minnelli and bad movie fascination? (asks the interview who has her own Minnelli fascination and who will admit to a love for C quality movies herself.)

I hope this doesn't turn you against me, Caroline, but my interest in Liza is starting to wane. But I think it was borne of her unbelievable theatricality, in which every sentence and gesture becomes a big pronouncement. Nonstop Acting on a grand scale. And of course, the amazing talent combined with the train wreck component. As for bad movies---I guess I just love a movie (The Lonely Lady with Pia Zadora, Showgirls, Glitz with Mariah Carey) in which nothing reads on screen as was intended. There's a huge gap between what was meant and what is, in fact, said, and therein lies a huge pool of comic possibility,

What question should I be mortified I didn’t ask you?
My age. Not that I would have answered.

Previews of Coming Attractions

Stay tuned! While I am in a writing fever, I've still got great interviews from wonderful writers in the works. Coming up soon:

Stephen McCauley (he'll be reading tomorrow night, June 10 at The Upper West Sides Barnes and Noble at 7)

Susan Henderson

Manette Ansay

Lisa Unger

And more! (there I sound like a commercial. Sort of.)

Guest Blog from Jennifer Rosner, author of If A Tree Falls

Jennifer Rosner wrote an extraordinary memoir about being the mother of two deaf children, but it's really more than that. It's truly a novel about what it means to be heard, how deafness is passed on through history and the controversy around sign language and cochlear implants. I was so knocked out by Rosner's book that I asked her if she'd write a guest blog, and she agreed. Many thanks, Jennifer.

Nearly every day, for the five years it took me to write If A Tree Falls, I marveled at the idea that I was writing a memoir. Not only were my childhood memories few and far between (none prior to the age of ten), but I was a trained philosopher, meaning my only exposure to writing was of the most torturous, academic variety. I certainly wasn’t a “creative writer.” Yet, from the moment this project began until its completion, with my book now appearing on bookstore shelves, the words expressing the emotional heart of my memories flowed with relative ease. Perhaps it was their time. Or perhaps, becoming a mother just changes everything.

I started writing If A Tree Falls shortly after my daughter, Sophia, was born and diagnosed as deaf. My first attempt to grapple in words with her deafness, and with the many decisions we faced in raising her, was a watershed event for me. The expression of my tangle of worries, fears, and (did I dare?) hopes, left me exhausted yet energized and relieved. Nothing like when I finished a philosophy paper! In the course of the next few years, my husband and I had another deaf daughter, and I discovered deafness in my family tree (previously unknown to me) traveling back to the 1800s in Eastern Europe.

In time, I came to recognize that I’d lived with deafness all my life - in the metaphorical sense, the sense in which I’d felt unheard as a child. And I started to see that my daughters’ literal deafness was a signpost to me, to check whether I myself was equipped to hear. My initial thought that I needed to work through my daughters’ deafness was turned on its head. The crucial project was to work through any deafness in myself, so that I could be in a position to listen to and hear my daughters.

This is what I think writing is all about – finding one’s barest truths, whether by circling back, spiraling up and down, or (for the lucky ones) following a linear path. My quest took me, circuitously, on an imaginative journey into my ancestry, where I learned of lines of connection that could sustain me through an honest reckoning with my childhood and my capacity for mothering.

Of course, I had to contend with my daughters’ deafness too, but that was by comparison the easy part, as they thrived with hearing technology and took to singing rounds (in tune, no less) as I drove to the copy shop to pick up the latest draft of my memoir project. Oh, and as I called to resign from my philosophy job!

I had found my avocation: creative writing. Aside from listening (really listening) to my girls, it’s what I longed to do.

Let's Hear it for BEA

BEA was amazing this year. Maybe it's because I have a new publisher, Algonquin, whom I adore (okay, that's absolutely the reason why) but I had such a great time. There seemed, to me, to be such a sense of community, and because I was so anxious about doing well in my speech (to 190 librarians at a sold out lunch from the Association of American Publishers), I hadn't slept at all the night before. I had written out my speech and memorized it, practicing it in front of the mirror, the Mac camera, the wall, to my husband Jeff, on a tape recorder, etc. I kept worrying I wouldn't be funny, that I'd have to pee, that I'd cough at bad times!

The signing was fantastic, and so much fun. Libraries saved my life when I was a little girl and chronically ill with asthma (I'm just about cured now), and they were all so warm and friendly and I was so thrilled and honored to be speaking in front of them. Everyone at Algonquin was incredible--and I mean that with capital letters. I insisted on drawing a coffee cup on everyone's page as I signed, except for the non-coffee cup loving folk who just wanted my scribbled name (but I snuck in a few stars for them.) And part of the fun was seeing brilliant fellow writers Jessica Brilliant Keener, Jennifer Gilmore, Susan Henderson, Susanne Dunlop, Joe Wallace, Leora Skolkin-Smith, and many more!

Even better, Rainy Day Books, my guardian angel bookstore was there, so I could give a hug in person. Thanks, too, to RiverRun Bookstore, to PW, Booklist, Library Journal, United Federation of Teachers, Jewish Book Council.

While my hands were a tad shaky (my beloved editor told me she was a touch worried before I got up, but maybe that was because I told her I wasn't eating the lunch for fear I'd throw up--but I meant that as a joke! Sort of. Later, she told me I seemed to switch on like electricity the second I spoke), I did indeed ham it up and have a great time speaking--and I got laughs (you have no idea how getting a laugh can feel like chocolate every day!) Every author (Susan Isaacs, Jonathan Adler, Joshilyn Jackson, Deborah Coonts, Adriana Trigiani) got a gracious and heartfelt introduction, and I was thrilled to have this blog mentioned in mine!

Even better was the Algonquin party that evening, which was packed, and where I stayed until five minutes until the end, and ran into people I hadn't seen in years and met so many incredible people, including the astonishing Heidi Durrow, who is also published by Algonquin. (The moment I entered the party, I kept asking, "Where's Heidi?")

I do want to say one word about generous writers. Adriana Trigiani knocked me out. The moment I stepped inside and saw her, I mentioned to my publisher that I wanted to meet her and she took me right over. Adriana stood up, hugged me and said, "Darling, email me, whatever you need me to do for you, I will." She was clearly the most famous and feted of everyone in the room and they had her speak last because no one could have followed her speech, which was outrageously funny, but when she came up to the podium, she did this incredible thing. She held up each one of the other writers' books and said something complimentary, heartfelt and generous (there's that word again.)

While speaking, Adriana called up a librarian from the back, ("You. I like the way you look in that coral top. Come up here. I want to give you a ring." ) And she did give her a ring! (There is a story that once, when she won an important award, right on stage she pulled out her cell phone to call her mother and tell her.) She asked who knew someone named Laura and gave away a signed book made out to Laura, and her speech was so hilarious, so warm and real, that I ended up wanting her to move next door to me so I could bake her brownies every day.

Anyway, I am feeling extraordinarily grateful for the camaraderie, the support, and the pure joy and fun of BEA this year. Deep thanks to everyone who came by my table for books (please let me know how you like my novel Pictures of You), for everyone who introduced themselves to me or took the time to introduce me to others, to everyone at BEA and everyone at the Association of American Publishers, and to every single person who even met my full-of-joy gaze.

Guest blog from Deborah Schupack, author of Sylvan Street

I first became aware of Deborah Schupack when I read and loved her novel, The Boy on The Bus.(James Patterson called it, "My favorite book of the year, an incredible page-turning idea, written with grace, style, and deep, true emotion." I was supposed to meet her one rainy New York evening, but we both had readings on the same night, blocks from each other, and the rain was pounding, I remember. In any case, her new novel, Sylvan Street, is even more splendid. I'm honored that she's posting a guest blog here--thank you so, so much, Deborah.

QUESTIONS AUTHOR-ITY

There are some questions you think about when you write a novel—questions of craft, of character, dialogue and action. You think about how to get your characters through their daily lives, what they’ll do and say—or won’t do and say. You think about how to negotiate the passage of time on the page, how to render an interior monologue, how to end the novel. You think about whether or not to use semi-colons and how to describe a chuckle or a beady-eyed stare without, heaven forbid, using the words “chuckle” or “beady-eyed stare.” You think about scene changes, and you think about how to get a character from one side of the room to the other.

Then there are questions that you assiduously do not think about when you write, questions that threaten to crush the whole enterprise with a heavy hand. You do not think about what the novel means, its themes, what a particular image symbolizes, what your inspirations are and what you have to say on a certain subject. Your novel must simply be what you have to say.

But, if you’re lucky, once you finish writing, the novel gets published. If you’re even luckier, people actually read it, and if you’re luckiest of all, they think about it and ask you questions.

With SYLVAN STREET, I’ve been asked many times about the themes of the book, what the book was saying about money, or about human nature, about marriage, the suburbs, capitalism, immigration. These are all fair questions—and I’m honored that people think I have something to say about them. It’s just that, quite honestly, I feel less prepared than just about anyone to answer these questions, like the one in the room who hasn’t read the material before the big test.

As Flannery O’Connor says, If I could tell you the meaning, I wouldn’t need to write the story. (Or Isadora Duncan: “If I could tell you what it meant, there’d be no point in dancing it.”)

Reluctantly, Discoveries

Perhaps because I’m a fiction writer and am used to feeling like a fraud much of the time, I soldier on and try to answer questions as honestly and insightfully as I can. In the process, I’ve made discoveries large and small about what I meant, what I know, and what I was trying to say.

I’ve discovered, for instance, that I think money distorts our relationship to desire. It pushes and pulls us to imagine our desires, with no guarantee of satisfaction. Inherent in money is promise—but inherent in promise is evidence of its other side, its loss. Promise, like money, is a bittersweet thing. [I discuss this, and other, discoveries in no uncertain terms on video, although I’ve just confessed to you my uncertain terms.]

I’ve discovered that I think neighbors represent a singular and fascinating balance of proximity and distance. The closer you get, the more there is at stake. The more distant you drift, the more there is at stake, as well. I’ve discovered that money—with its singular ability to torque our relationship to desire—is a great way to push neighbors at once together and apart.

I’ve discovered the role 9/11 plays in the novel, and that I wanted to convey not the bright, horrible glare of the attack itself, nor the dark chaos of its immediate aftermath, but the oblique and lingering shadow it casts on us today. It’s a shadow full of loss and fear, of course, but for my characters who were closest to the attacks—Keith and Daniel—9/11 left them feeling not so much loss as longing. In that severe clear, things were for once starkly defined, right and wrong, friend and enemy. And, for Daniel and Keith, their mission was, for a moment, clear.

And finally, I discovered what I would do if I found a million dollars. After suspending myself in the world of SYLVAN STREET, knowing its arc and knowing my characters’ fates and states at the end, I think that honestly (though I don’t know if I’d sign committal documents on this), I’d turn it in to the police, get it out of my custody. Ah, but if no one retrieved it within a year, then it would be legally mine. (Spoiler alert: as the author, I know how it ends.)

To read an excerpt of SYLVAN STREET, go behind the scenes, or buy the book, please visit deborahschupack.com.

Writers Who Imbibe

20 Distinguished Writers and Their Drink of Choice is a fascinating little article about famous writers and the spirits they like to lift, from a quirky, interesting new blog.

Christopher Meeks talks about The Writers' Struggle

Christopher Meeks, the author of Months and Seasons, The Middle Aged Man and the Sea and The Brightest Moon of the Century, is a friend, a colleague at UCLA, and a knock-out writer (Hey, it's not just me who said so, so did Entertainment Weekly.)

I'm honored that he

wrote a guest blog. Thanks so much, Chris!

STRUGGLES FOR WRITERS—NEWS AT ELEVEN by Christopher Meeks

Up-and-coming writers want to hear how down the line things will get easier. Heck, I want to hear that. Thus, when I sent my current novel-in-progress, Ten Days to a Bad Habit, to my agent Jim McCarthy in New York, I wanted to hear how my first mystery was an amazing delight, staying true to the genre while leaping to new heights. I hoped the tension would squeeze him, tempered by occasional comic relief. I hoped to hear it’d be an easy sale.

Before I go any farther, you have to realize most writers think this way. They’re imagining the European vacations they’ll take, the Ski-Doo lessons in Monte Carlo Bay they’ll enjoy, or even the college tuition for a son they can afford before Chapter One is finished.

Jim instead told me, after tactfully mentioning his favorite parts including some tension and comic relief, that he was mystified about my protagonist’s initial leap into his sleuthing. There was something about the opening few chapters that he couldn’t pin down but it didn’t work. In fact, unlike with his other authors, he couldn’t offer a fix or a solution. I knew where to look: the structure. If the basic plot doesn’t work, whether in genre fiction or in literary, you’re in trouble.

Thus, I did what any former journalist writing a novel might do: contact a blogging author and suggest she write a blog about structure. Maybe I’d learn something. I emailed Caroline Leavitt, author of nine novels, and she said, “That’s a great idea for a blog. I’m so busy—would you mind writing it as a guest blog?” Thus I am here with this.

It also meant I had to hunt down any answers on the subject. I contacted three published authors that I respect, including Caroline Leavitt, whose Girls In Trouble introduced me to her wonderful work. I nabbed Janet Fitch, whose novel White Oleander I was teaching in my Santa Monica College English classes before I met her as a colleague at USC where I taught for two years. I also asked mystery writer and Shamus-Award-winning author Lynn Hightower, whose book Fortunes of the Dead was first devoured by my wife Ann before I got to it.

Lynn and Caroline are also “virtual” colleagues of mine at UCLA Extension—teaching novel writing in online classes. Caroline lives in New York, and Lynn, in Tennessee. I teach on the Westwood campus, usually a class called “The Writer’s Workout,” which has students reading a lot and writing, writing, writing.

I asked the authors first not about structure but, “What is the biggest wrong turn struggling novelists make?” I started with Caroline, who this summer will be working with up to three students in the writing program’s mentorship class. She says the biggest mistake is that students give up too easily. “Next would be starting too early, taking too much time to set up the conflict. You don't really need yards of pages about the weather or the land before you get to the murder.”

Janet said the biggest problem with her graduate students in USC’s Master of Professional Writing Program is that, “They don't write in scenes. I see so much work in which people drive around, go from party to party. There's a lot of ‘action,’ but they never stop and have a real scene. So what's a scene? A scene starts and ends in one place at one time, and something happens in it after which the character can't go back to the way it was before.

“They also like to write with a group protagonist. They don't get that stories need a real protagonist. I think it's that they're still ‘me and my buddies’ in their own minds. They don't identify with themselves as separate from the group, with their own needs, wants and desires. I think that falls away as we get older.”

Lynn, who this summer will be teaching “Crafting the Scene in the Novel,” clearly agrees with Janet and said, “What I see, over and over, is students spending enormous chunks of time and effort on a story that does not work for squat--so much effort for a plot that does not work.”

In classes with advanced students, those who have a draft of a full novel already finished, Lynn has them write out in a few sentences each scene of their novel. They present the resulting outline to her and the other students for feedback. Most of her writers usually see how their basic plot is flawed—boring in parts or simply having some scenes that don’t add to the whole. It’s a tough time to be one of those people.

Lynn explained, “So many writers, and we've all been guilty, spend their time and effort defending what they've written rather than look at it logically and wisely enough to let it go when it does not work. So many students perfect and agonize over the craft of their pretty words, which is of course crucial, and completely pointless if the story does not work.

“Structure is how you make the story and pace work, and without a strong story and structure, your novel has no chance of publication. Bad story structure is the one thing you won't be forgiven. You can make any mistake so long as the story structure and pace are holding tight. It is the reason novels don't get published.”

I wanted to know more about these structure problems, so I asked them how do they teach structure? Caroline said, “You can't teach talent but you can teach structure. I make my students outline, do scene maps, character arcs, and I teach screenplay technique, which can help.”

Janet said that, “I teach them to write in scenes. Then I teach them what a story is and to watch for what the character learns. How to put pressure on character, the character's makeup, his intrinsic conflicts, in order to force him to make the changes he's going to need to make to resolve his problem in the world. Structure is character under pressure and watching for the moment of illumination. That's story, and a novel is a very complex story with lots of realizations and moments of illumination.”

Lynn said, “The story must begin where things get interesting and build from there.

I try to get students (and myself) to hold the story accountable on every level the moment their feet touch down in my class. I talk to them about the overall structure in a lot of my feedback and often find they sort of hear me, but tune it out.”

Lynn says that bad structure leads to three forms of novel death: backstory rapture, a love affair with setup and character, and the convoluted plot line.

Backstory rapture is that the main story is put on the back burner so that all sorts of exposition about the past is brought up. A love affair with setup and character means, “The story begins to get interesting around page one hundred twenty-nine–long after your reader is gone. It means long stretches where nothing much happens because the writer has gone off on a tangent, because they did not have their story mapped out in the first place and have no idea they've taken an odd turn.”

The convoluted plot line is one that is “complex and murky and there are hints of this and that, but the logic and structure are hard as hell to follow, and the writer can't tell what the story is about in less than, say, ten pages. They simply can't give you an elevator pitch because there is no central story.”

I happened to start as a playwright and short story writer, and I never approached a new short story knowing where it would to. I had some basic ideas, but I liked the write-a-quick-first-draft approach and then see what I had. The first draft for me was the basic raw material where I’d move things around, throw things away, and add new dialogue and scenes. I’d struggle to sort out why I wrote it—what was in my subconscious mind? I looked for meaning, and when I found it, I’d rewrite. I wrote in scenes, which I learned from playwriting.

When it came to novels, I saw early on that I couldn’t write 350 pages and then decide I made a wrong turn on page ten and I’d have to throw out 340 pages. Rather, I learned the joy in writing an outline and playing “What if?” I could imagine a whole scene in nanoseconds, and if I saw as it played out in my mind that it didn’t work, well, I’d try another “What if.”

Despite this approach, though, I’m guessing that what’s happened in my mystery novel is a lot of rationalizing. I’m typing out scene summaries based on how they are presently on the page, and I can see that the story can start sooner and that at another point there’s a leap in logic.

I’ve tried not to think about all the writing I'll be throwing out or what I'd have to write from scratch. I’m also discovering as I type out summaries of what I have that there's an art to the outline. I've been paying attention to three things:

1) What's the conflict in the scene?

2) Does each scene build on what comes before it? That is, is there a sense of plot and is the action rising?

3) Do the subplots fit in clearly and juxtaposed well to the main plot?

I asked my three authors, “Are you more of an intuitive go-with-your-guts kind of writer, or are you closer to John Irving who spends a year plotting out his books before he starts writing?” As you may have guessed from Lynn’s earlier responses, she’s someone who meticulously plans.

Caroline said, “I'm more of a John Irving type. I know there are ‘follow your pen’ type of writers out there who happily spill their stories out on the pages, but I find that those kinds of books still are structured and often follow a more rigid formula than if the author had mapped and diagrammed.”

Janet falls into the follow-your-pen type. She’d been a journalist earlier in her life, working on deadlines where instinct helped. She still works on instinct and said, “I feel my way along, don't really shape it as an even semi-coherent story until I have a complete draft. Can't shape what you don't know. I'm easily bored. If I had it all plotted out, I would rebel when it came to writing it. Where's the surprise, from my point of view, the discovery? It would just be grunt work.”

This shows, too, there is not just one way to write. You have to discover what’s best for you, understanding that you’ll have readers, and you want to keep those readers on board.

For my novel, I’ll sort it out. I wish writing was often easier, but we all struggle. Now that I wrote the article I wanted to read, it’s back to the novel. Monte Carlo Bay is calling.

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Christopher Meeks has published two collections of award-winning short stories, The Middle-Aged Man and the Sea and Months and Seasons. His first novel, The Brightest Moon of the Century has received over three dozen wonderful reviews.

Writers anxiety, anyone?

I talk about writers' anxiety on Eros-Alegra Clarke's great blog, Editors Unleashed.