Getting Started On That Next Novel

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Many great writers will tell us, fellow writers, who want to hone our skills, that the only way to become a better writer is to write a lot. And read a lot. Steven King publishes a mammoth book often, maybe yearly, yet he still finds time to read voraciously.

Nicholas Sparks plays a few movies in the background while he writes. And he suggests plenty of reading and writing. Anne Lamott has a writing routine. She suggest carrying a notepad or cards and pencil everywhere you go so when a brilliant thought comes to you, scribble it down. She says we rarely make it back home with the thought still in tact. Steven King says to make a quiet space to write, an office. He suggests facing a wall so you don’t get distracted. Thoreau lived alone in a cabin by a pond. Natalie Goldberg sits outside in nature and has connected her writing to a spiritual practice.

Me, well, I face a window as a wall feels like stuck energy. Although, I do spend a large amount of time staring out that window and pondering my life instead of writing, so I think Steven King has something there with that advice of facing a wall. I love having old movies in the background. It works; I like the sound and the company. Or music. I can’t stand writing in silence. You hear writers lament all the time about the loneliness of writing. The silence. Why be lonely and silent? For me, music stimulates images and scenes. I see stories like movies passing through my mind. Dramatic music creates montages in my mind.

When I first started writing fiction some years ago, I would get stuck on a chapter. I wouldn’t know how to build the scene and carry it out. I would get on my treadmill and listen to my SandDisc. I would choose music that suits the scene, and it would unfold in cinema style.

Natalie Goldberg talks about places we live, and if we love these places, they become part of the books we write. She heard someone say the places we love become the third character in a novel. She used some authors and their places as examples; Steinbeck and his California, Tennessee Williams, and the South. This is true. I love where I live so much that I felt like I was on vacation during the first two years here.

We have forest trails everywhere, wild rocky rivers, and history; some are nostalgic, and some of the history is cruel and painful. Standing in the forest, I feel Spirit, the peace, and the pain. The forest has been destroyed and reborn, the rivers polluted from mining and cleansed over time. The Native American and Chinese history is too painful to process, and there are many tribute trails, museums, and mentions now to bring this forward and to make amends. It’s too late, though. The forest and rivers recovered, but the Chinese immigrants and the Indians will probably never forgive the cruelties.

This place is wild even in a town setting. It refuses to be tamed. Sometimes wildfires rage through, burning down houses, and the land needs to be tenderly and generously worked before it will give you anything back. I learned this with my yard. We added gifts of amendments for three years before it gave me tomatoes, but when it finally did, I had more tomatoes than I needed. With our planting of flowers and trees and our feeding the land, the yard came to life with bees, birds, squirrels, dragonflys, lady bugs, and even a skunk family and foxes live here at night. All are welcome, this is a sanctuary for us and them. The yard and it’s critters thanked us and we are blessed with more produce and nuts and berries each year.

This place stimulates my imagination. When I write, it’s always about people living in a forest town. All my characters live here in this town with me.

I’m struggling with my stories. I have a lot of partial ideas and incoherent outlines saved in folders on my laptop but I am not feeling that energy yet. I don’t think it ever arrives, like an order from Amazon. “Here’s your packaged story and all the enthusiasm you could want, ma’am.” No, my understanding is that you have to sit down and force it until it starts to flow. Like blob stuck in a pipe, you have to push it threw with force and then it pops out the other end and the water can flow freely. That is what I’m hoping for. I’m pushing that blob presently, forcing the clog through so the flow will begin, maybe as a drip and then a trickle and then a stream of consciousness.

I produced a fictional book recently. I wasn’t that good, someone mentioned my ‘crap book’, they were purposely being unkind, but I couldn’t disagree. I haven’t advertised the book much at all, because I know it was just an exercise. It was a warm up.

And now what? Is the blob clogging the pipeline to my infinite imagination almost out?

Not really. I’m still buying time with reading writers talk about writing because that helps me feel like I’m working towards it. I’m educating myself, that’s what I say to me. Then I smile because I’m being productive. I’m working toward a book, never mind I’ve not started a chapter of anything, I’m taking in information to help me.

But the truth is that one day we have to put down these books and open the laptop or pick up the pen and get to work.

I’m going to start my next book today…right after I clean the house.