Larry Benjamin's Blog: Larry Benjamin's blog - This Writer's Life - Posts Tagged "wip"

Because of the way Christmas and New Year’s fell this year, I found myself the beneficiary of a nearly two week holiday from my day job. And I needed it, too. Between my commute, the job itself and the people I work with, I was seriously burned out. But because I am not good at being idle. I decided to make my time off a “writer’s holiday.” I’m seriously behind on writing my new book, so a holiday during which I could just write made sense. Of course, I can never just write—we had friends coming for Christmas, so cooking needed to be done, and the house needed to be cleaned. And of course, the dogs needed to be walked—and spending time with them was a priority since we both work all week, leaving them on their own a good bit.

I realized for this writer’s holiday to work I would have to be disciplined—something I am not naturally. I set two goals for myself: 1) write at least one hour each day, and 2) write 1,000 words each day. Modest goals I know, but no sense it setting goals I couldn’t reach. That would just make me feel like a failure and talk about demotivating…

Realistically, an hour or two was an achievable goal for me. My other goal, the word count was separate to it. So, that hour or two could be used for anything related to the book: research, editing what I’d already written, developing characters, naming them—which can be an ordeal. I read a blog post in which a writer mentioned using a random name generator. I’d never heard of such a thing but that wouldn’t work for me anyway. Each character’s names tells the reader something about him or her. So they often start out named A, B, or C; as I learn about them, they get names.

The word count was again something to shoot for—a ballpark if you will. I know there are writing coaches who recommend sitting down and just writing, then looking back over what you’ve written; goal is to reach your word count for the day/week, etc. That for me is a waste of time. I don’t want to write words just for the sake of counting them. My writing is more organic; it springs from itself—if that makes any sense. And as I’m writing, I’m listening for the rhythms of the words. Thus, each word is carefully chosen to fit. Free form writing robs me of that.

So how did I do? See the chart above. Most days I missed my thousand-word goal but I did write each day. And I loved what I wrote and the story started writing itself. I discovered new characters, one an unexpected ally; I wrote of a first kiss that made my heart sing; one character made me cry. One morning I sat down to edit a single sentence and when I stopped it was 40 minutes later and I had written a key scene that had been eluding me for weeks. And I figured out how to structure the book in a way that made sense for the story.

At the end of my holiday my WIP is just over 31,000 words. I had hoped to reach 30,000. Tomorrow, I go back to my day job and the act of juggling work and life and writing. Though for me, writing is life.

This morning at 2 am EST, after eight months, 61,000 words and eighty-three drafts, I sent my newest book to my publisher. I’m romantically inclined to say writing this book was a labor of love, but the practical me says it was just labor. Eight months is pretty good for me. Usually it takes me a year to write a book, though Unbroken only took nine months.

I am amazed I wrote 30,000 words in the last three months so essentially half the book was written in three months. Reading it though a last time this week before submitting it, I realized once again that the story I tell isn’t the story I sat down to write back in August. And months into the writing of it, I realized I had to restructure it because the way I envisioned telling the story—in flashback, starting at the end and working forward—just didn’t work for the story.

At first the idea of writing a different book and structuring it differently to my first idea, scared me, but this is my fifth book; I have learned to trust my instincts, to believe in my talent. With this one, I wanted to challenge myself, to write something a little different, in a different way. This story is tighter, more pared down than my previous books. It’s more like my blog series, The Corporatorium , than my other books.

Will readers like it? I don’t know. But I do and I’m rather proud of it. But I’m still checking my email every ten minutes to see if my editor, has sent any feedback yet.

In the meantime, I need to pick my life back up: respond to ignored emails and calls; bathe the dogs; tackle the inch of dust on every surface in the library; sort and file my notes from the book that litter the desk in my office, spilling onto the radiator and the floor.
Yes, leaving the writing cave is even scarier than entering it and setting out to tell the story in your head and heart.