Stage 3 - Pain

Remember all that stuff I knew in stage 2? How I said I knew exactly what happens at the most important scenes in my project before I even start writing it? At some point I usually need to admit that I didn’t know everything I thought I knew. Something in the book doesn’t work, or isn’t working, or won’t work no matter how hard I might want to make it work.

This is Pain.

Pain has taken many forms.

Pain has caused me to delete pages of text, text I lost sleep over. Pain has removed characters, added characters, sent me back to stage 1, demanded an extra 10,000 words and even killed off a dog.

I don’t like Pain.

This 3rd stage doesn’t even know that stages are supposed to be linear. It doesn’t wait until I’ve finished writing out the draft of stage 2. It just shows up uninvited at some point, like someone at my front door with a clipboard and really long sales pitch. He calmly explains to me what I’m doing wrong. I call him Pain because I don’t like to admit when I’m wrong.

But Pain has also made me laugh at things I thought were good ideas. Pain turned a book into a series. Stage 3 is the point in each project when I force myself to look for ways to make improvements. Even when those improvements make a lot more work for me.

Everything I write can always be better. I pray for guidance when Pain hits. I pray that the final book will reflect my best ideas, not necessarily my first ideas. But it’s nice when there’s a lot of overlap.

So where am I in this process with my current project? The 4th Coffee and Donuts book has already given me plenty of insomnia and pain. I hope to be solidly in acceptance by the time I write about that next month.

Stage 2 - Insomnia

I like to be able to picture what happens in a book before I actually write it down. I know I’m ready to start the first draft of a new book when I can picture how it ends. Not the last line exactly, but I know where and when that last scene takes place. I know how the characters are feeling and I’m running lines in my head to determine the best way for them to express it. I know what obstacles or misunderstandings have led to that point. I can imagine all of those, too. All the key scenes are showing in my head like my own private movie projection. Especially when it’s dark and quiet and I’m supposed to be sleeping.

I lie there while my imagination rewinds and replays a bit of the book, possibly only a few lines, over and over and over and over…

You’d think that would put anyone to sleep.

It’s a little different every time though. Those changes keep me awake because I’m always sure that the next version will make me happy. Then I have to face two competing impulses… the one that says I can’t get the words on paper fast enough because I might forget something and the one that says I could be even happier with that scene if only I let it play out a few more times.

The fact that I don’t want to get out of bed wins out over both impulses.

So I just keep thinking about the story – trying not to forget it and trying to fix details at the same time – until I do eventually fall asleep. If I’m lucky, I only go a few nights without sleep for each book. If my family is lucky, I don’t take it out on them.

How long does this stage last? The fastest I’ve ever written a first draft was only two weeks. It typically takes between one and two months. But it’s called a first draft for a reason. Words on paper is not a book yet.

Stage 1 - Floundering

I was planning to write about my writing process this month. Not the writing process, but my writing process. I was going to try to describe the steps it takes for me to get from idea to book.

The problem I ran into was that I found I had a lot to say about each step. Too much. I couldn’t decide how to describe the steps concisely. Then I realized that I didn’t have a problem at all. What I actually had was a brilliant idea. Each step was enough for a separate post. Why not write about each step individually? Why not give myself a several months long break from the struggle to come up with a blog topic? Oh, yeah. I like this idea.

So these are the topics… uh… the different stages I identified in my writing process.

1 – Floundering
2 – Insomnia
3 – Pain
4 – Acceptance
5 – Help
6 – Hope

Stage 1 is Floundering. This is the part where I think I’d like to write a book, but I haven’t figured out the story yet. I’m still asking myself a ton of questions. Some of these might include:

- Who is this story about?
- What do I like about the main character(s)?
- Is there any reason this shouldn’t be a love story?
- What does she look like?
- What makes him attractive?
- What family do they have?
- How many of these family members do I have to name?
- Am I going to have to read the phone book again to find last names?
- Do we even still have a phone book?
- Is Sparkly Alligator a better name for a band than Sparkly Crocodile?
- What sort of timeline do I need to tell this story?
- Am I writing in 1st person or 3rd?
- How can I fictionalize that tree beer incident?

Let’s explore a few of those questions. Yes, sometimes I use last names I find in a phone book, though that isn’t the only source. For first names, I frequently turn to baby name lists. I figure out what year a character would have been born, then look up the top baby names for that year.

I can usually imagine a character on my own. I have occasionally resorted to people watching for help. There are never people I know in a book, but a few times I observed people at the grocery story, the park or church. I asked myself how I would describe the people I saw until I found an interesting facial feature or distinctive mannerism that fit a potential character.

For a love story, the plot usually begins with one important question. Do the hero and heroine already know each other? If they don’t, figuring out how they meet and get together drives the story. If they do know each other, there is probably a reason they aren’t already dating. A good chunk of the plot will include resolving that issue.

Once I have a general feel for the story I plan to write I begin to scribble various notes, everything from details on specific events or subplots to random sentences that might make good lines somewhere in the book. It’s all eventually arranged into at least a basic outline before I start writing.

I believe this is where I went wrong in the past. Before I finished my first book, I spent several years starting and subsequently abandoning projects. I know now that I was so determined to write that I didn’t let myself spend enough time discerning what to write. This doesn’t mean I can’t change my mind later. I’m still stubborn about keeping the outline flexible. A lot of the planning stays in my head, which is why the next stage is called Insomnia. But I’ll get to that next month.