Roger DeBlanck's Blog - Posts Tagged "writing-process"
The Creative Process
When you’re a writer, you’re always planning, developing, plotting, assessing. In other words, you’re always thinking about the current chapter, the next scene, an image, a description, a sequence of dialogue. Your investment never wavers, and that’s exactly how you want it. You want your heart to be racing, your mind whirring, as you seek out answers and truths to be depicted, conveyed, illuminated, perfected, and idealized in your story. Anything can be inspirational and motivational. For me, it is both the everyday world around me that might offer the spark I need, or it is often other art that serves as the stimulus. That’s why I’m always reading, listening to music, and watching movies that I believe will assist me with the cultivation of my ideas. And it works every time. Currently, I’m reading Anthony Doerr’s non-fiction Four Season in Rome. Few writers exhibit the type of command he has of language to express his vision with such beauty and grace. He is a writer to revere. I’ve read most of his fiction, and I now include his Pulitzer-winning novel, All the Light We Cannot See, among my all-time favorite books. He inspires and pushes me to keep working hard. Once I’m locked in, hard work becomes my muse.
Roger 8-)
Roger 8-)
The Reading/Writing Balance
Before I ever believed I could be a writer, the work of my masters made me dream of what I might create—something worthy of shadowing in the footsteps of their monumental achievements. In reading the works of those I revere, I was driven to follow their greatness, to emulate what they do. Early in my teens, this often led me to consume all the work of certain authors: Shakespeare, Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, Dostoevsky, Camus, Hesse, Borges, Steinbeck, Wright, Hemingway, and others. As I read, often I’d come across something about the way they wrote and I’d become nervous, alarmed, even discouraged that my writing habits didn’t mirror those of my masters and the way they did their art. I’d feel defeated that if I couldn’t mimic their “ways”, I couldn’t be a writer. For example, Dostoevsky wrote several versions of his novels to find what worked best. Unreal? Could I ever match such a standard? This often caused real doubt in my early days of writing. If I wanted to write like the best, I needed to adopt their “way.” Right? Then after I finished college, it dawned on me how every writer did their art differently. By this time I was enamored with many of my contemporary masters: Morrison, McCarthy, Ondaatje, Doctorow, O’Brien and the list goes on. As I consumed their work, I realized there is no one right “way” to write. In fact, Morrison didn’t start writing her novels until she was forty. But she’d been a writer her entire life. As a lifelong reader and a professional book editor, she lived and breathed reading, writing, language, and literature.
For me, I must work in streaks and forays, yet every day I live and breathe reading, writing, language, and literature. I may never be able to put down a specific number of words each day or assign a disciplined block of time each day, but I live and breathe reading, writing, language, and literature every day. As a self-proclaimed reader first, I’m unable to go a single day without finding at least a few hours to read. Reading sparks my thinking, envisioning, obsessing, planning, preparing, researching, editing, and revising—all of which are necessities for me to write, all of which I carry out a little each day. I may do 10,000 words in a few days or less than a 1,000 in a given week. It all depends where I’m at in the process. But one aspect remains constant every day: I live and breathe reading, writing, language, and literature. If I’m writing a lot, naturally time is taken away from reading. The reciprocation is true: if I’m reading a lot, it is essentially to gear me up for an intense period of writing. This is my cycle, and worries do not bother me anymore if I’m not “writing” every single day because I am actually in the process of writing with everything else I do. My habit of a reading/writing balance is the only way my art works for me.
Roger 8-)
For me, I must work in streaks and forays, yet every day I live and breathe reading, writing, language, and literature. I may never be able to put down a specific number of words each day or assign a disciplined block of time each day, but I live and breathe reading, writing, language, and literature every day. As a self-proclaimed reader first, I’m unable to go a single day without finding at least a few hours to read. Reading sparks my thinking, envisioning, obsessing, planning, preparing, researching, editing, and revising—all of which are necessities for me to write, all of which I carry out a little each day. I may do 10,000 words in a few days or less than a 1,000 in a given week. It all depends where I’m at in the process. But one aspect remains constant every day: I live and breathe reading, writing, language, and literature. If I’m writing a lot, naturally time is taken away from reading. The reciprocation is true: if I’m reading a lot, it is essentially to gear me up for an intense period of writing. This is my cycle, and worries do not bother me anymore if I’m not “writing” every single day because I am actually in the process of writing with everything else I do. My habit of a reading/writing balance is the only way my art works for me.
Roger 8-)
Reaching the Midpoint of Writing a Novel
Nineteen months ago I embarked on the journey of my next novel about an enslaved African Muslim. The first fourteen months I spent mostly researching and immersing myself in the subject matter and time period of Islam in Africa, African Muslims, the African slave trade, American slavery, the Civil War, and of course the Islamic faith and what it means to be a Muslim. In June of this year I began drafting the narrative told in the first person voice of the main character, and yesterday I surpassed the 50,000 work mark, which at this juncture in the narrator’s epic journey feels as though the story has reached its midpoint.
My writing and drafting process is not to throw words feverishly onto a page and go over them with enough effort to achieve a reasonable quality so I can quickly move forward. I am a deliberate and methodical writer who contemplates and obsesses as I envision the direction of the plot or more precisely the struggles the main character is guiding me through with his own voice. And so I write and rewrite, write and rewrite, and stop completely when something is not working. Not until the chapter or section or scene feels solid and polished enough do I feel as though I can move ahead with certainty that what I’ve had time to contemplate is the true destination the narrative is heading.
After 50,000 words, the pace of this novel is running about 10,000 per month, which is registering in at a slower pace to complete the “first draft” of this project compared to my other novels. What I have learned from my books is that each of them is like a different child. They behave differently, make different demands, and require me to care for and nurture them in their own unique way. In short, they are beautiful and fascinating and frustrating and exhausting, but I would not want it any other way because I do not have a choice. These works have demanded me to write them.
I’m discovering with this current novel that I need anywhere from 6-12 drafts of each chapter before moving on. This is not to say that I am trying to shortcut any part of the process by doing more rewrites and polishing ahead of the next draft. In fact, as with each project, I am detecting those instances where I know I will have to go back in forthcoming drafts to fix, change, tighten, and polish certain sections and details. I keep a list of the tinkering needed, but overall I am feeling this novel is the strongest work I’ve ever undertaken. This is partly because when you commit yourself to a strong work ethic and you keep focused on the vision of the story, you tend to improve with each effort and challenge yourself more with each project.
This current novel is by far both the hardest and the most enlightening one I’ve ever attempted. As this story develops, the beauty and humanity of Islam is emerging exactly as I knew it would because Islam is such a beautiful and humanistic faith. The language of this first person narration feels as magical and lyrical as anything I’ve ever done, and I owe my love of poetry in my teens and during my early writing days for helping me see history and the world of the past with its every wondrous detail. No matter how hard I work, however, I have doubts. In fact, every book I’ve written has started with doubt and not believing I can do it until I start researching and giving my soul over to hard work which brings about the muse.
What pushes me, keeps me going, and inspires me is reading. Whenever I’m feeling tired, I head to my bookshelf and seek out my heroes: Toni Morrison, Cormac McCarthy, Michael Ondaatje, Albert Camus, Jorge Luis Borges, and the list goes on. At this moment in the story, I’m back to Morrison’s Beloved and Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals. Another mainstay in my reading is going back to the Quran and to Reza Aslan’s No god but God.
After a day of feeling exhausted with the demands of this current novel, I’m now refreshed and reinvigorated to head back to the narrative. Reading Morrison should give me the inspiration to do some good work with the hours left in the day.
Roger 8-)
My writing and drafting process is not to throw words feverishly onto a page and go over them with enough effort to achieve a reasonable quality so I can quickly move forward. I am a deliberate and methodical writer who contemplates and obsesses as I envision the direction of the plot or more precisely the struggles the main character is guiding me through with his own voice. And so I write and rewrite, write and rewrite, and stop completely when something is not working. Not until the chapter or section or scene feels solid and polished enough do I feel as though I can move ahead with certainty that what I’ve had time to contemplate is the true destination the narrative is heading.
After 50,000 words, the pace of this novel is running about 10,000 per month, which is registering in at a slower pace to complete the “first draft” of this project compared to my other novels. What I have learned from my books is that each of them is like a different child. They behave differently, make different demands, and require me to care for and nurture them in their own unique way. In short, they are beautiful and fascinating and frustrating and exhausting, but I would not want it any other way because I do not have a choice. These works have demanded me to write them.
I’m discovering with this current novel that I need anywhere from 6-12 drafts of each chapter before moving on. This is not to say that I am trying to shortcut any part of the process by doing more rewrites and polishing ahead of the next draft. In fact, as with each project, I am detecting those instances where I know I will have to go back in forthcoming drafts to fix, change, tighten, and polish certain sections and details. I keep a list of the tinkering needed, but overall I am feeling this novel is the strongest work I’ve ever undertaken. This is partly because when you commit yourself to a strong work ethic and you keep focused on the vision of the story, you tend to improve with each effort and challenge yourself more with each project.
This current novel is by far both the hardest and the most enlightening one I’ve ever attempted. As this story develops, the beauty and humanity of Islam is emerging exactly as I knew it would because Islam is such a beautiful and humanistic faith. The language of this first person narration feels as magical and lyrical as anything I’ve ever done, and I owe my love of poetry in my teens and during my early writing days for helping me see history and the world of the past with its every wondrous detail. No matter how hard I work, however, I have doubts. In fact, every book I’ve written has started with doubt and not believing I can do it until I start researching and giving my soul over to hard work which brings about the muse.
What pushes me, keeps me going, and inspires me is reading. Whenever I’m feeling tired, I head to my bookshelf and seek out my heroes: Toni Morrison, Cormac McCarthy, Michael Ondaatje, Albert Camus, Jorge Luis Borges, and the list goes on. At this moment in the story, I’m back to Morrison’s Beloved and Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals. Another mainstay in my reading is going back to the Quran and to Reza Aslan’s No god but God.
After a day of feeling exhausted with the demands of this current novel, I’m now refreshed and reinvigorated to head back to the narrative. Reading Morrison should give me the inspiration to do some good work with the hours left in the day.
Roger 8-)
Completing the Manuscript
Over twenty years ago I read Toni Morrison’s Beloved for the first time. Since then I’ve reread the novel at least ten times, and the power of its story continues to haunt me with the aftermath of America’s greatest tragedy: the institution of slavery. I have always wanted to write something where I brought an untold story to life, but not until February of 2017 did the right voice begin speaking to me. What started twenty-seven months ago is now a completed manuscript titled Prayers from the Far Quarter about an enslaved African Muslim. Chronicling the main character’s journey has been a life-changing honor for me. The last four months have been obsessive editing and revision to polish up the work. Now it’s ready for the next stage of querying.
If anyone has been perusing my social media posts over the last two years, you may recall the novel characterizes a handful of historical figures throughout the main character’s journey. These include Charles Dickens, Queen Victoria, William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, and Harriet Tubman. I had foreseen at one point perhaps the main character may meet Lincoln or Grant, but it never happened. Regardless, the main character’s journey is a loose composite of many real-life enslaved Muslims and what emerged was his own distinctive voice, sharing the peace and humanity at the heart of Islam. His extraordinary story honors the sacrifices and diversity that make America great.
Roger 8-)
If anyone has been perusing my social media posts over the last two years, you may recall the novel characterizes a handful of historical figures throughout the main character’s journey. These include Charles Dickens, Queen Victoria, William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, and Harriet Tubman. I had foreseen at one point perhaps the main character may meet Lincoln or Grant, but it never happened. Regardless, the main character’s journey is a loose composite of many real-life enslaved Muslims and what emerged was his own distinctive voice, sharing the peace and humanity at the heart of Islam. His extraordinary story honors the sacrifices and diversity that make America great.
Roger 8-)
