Putting Pen to Paper
Is it possible to write an entire novel without having a clue what you’re doing?
It is and I did.
Not knowing what I should be doing, I invented my own process for writing. I created spreadsheets with timelines, did research and made notes on the places and events that the characters would experience or remember. Then I started telling their story from the beginning. I literally put pen to paper. Specifically, Black and Red hard spiral-bound notebooks with thick smooth white paper and one of two kinds of gel pens that glided easily over the pages. I found that the story just flowed out of me when I wrote longhand. After writing a chapter or maybe two, I would type up the section, sorting out all the scribbles, arrows and insertions I’d written in my notebook.
I finished my first draft of Out of Time in March 2021. I’d been feeling guardedly optimistic as the family and friends I’d recruited as beta readers had given me generally positive feedback (and lots of suggestions and corrections that I greatly appreciated). It wasn’t until I started researching how to write a query letter did I start to panic. I confirmed what I had suspected all along – that I knew nothing about the craft of writing.
Questions that seem rudimentary for literary types like “describe the theme and central conflict of your novel” were paralyzing. I haven’t studied English since high school, and even then, I only paid attention sufficiently to get a decent grade. I was more focused on learning about physics and chemistry than on plot and character. Even simple questions like, “What genre is your novel?” were perplexing.
Enter the REAL writer in our family, my sister Christine. She has writing creds; a graduate degree in creative writing and English literature, accomplished career as a writer, magazine editor and architecture critic. Heck, she’s got a wiki page full of writing and editing creds.
Fortunately, I had a chance to spend several weeks in Italy while Christine was living there with her family. We took long walks in the woods (ostensibly looking for mushrooms but mostly wandering aimlessly talking). She read several chapters of the book and assured me there was a theme in there… and conflict and character arc… but it could be better. So, she bought me a book.
Save the Cat Writes a Novel by Jessica Brody.
I read it. Cover to cover. It’s a very practical book. It outlines a neat structure of 15 “beats” that are essential for a good story. At first, I was completely discouraged. Reading it confirmed my greatest fear - that I was doing it all wrong.
If not for the encouragement from my biggest fan (Mike) and from Christine saying she believed it could be fixed, I might have given up. Instead, I started to do what the scientist in me knows how to do - research. For six months I listened to podcasts on writing every day during my walks, and I read blogs and books while reworking my manuscript with the things I learned. In addition to the initial quest to understand story structure, I learned about POV, character arcs and scene structure, how to improve my dialogue, and about fiction genre conventions and tropes. I know now that I’m “a plotter not a pantser” and that I actually did a lot of things right without really knowing what I was doing.
As I write Next Time, the second book in the Maddie and Nate series, I’m definitely more confident. I’m getting comfortable saying “I’m a writer and author.” And if any of you have a story that you want to tell but don’t think you’re an author – just do it. I think storytelling might be an innate human skill. We use stories as a way of conveying what we know and our thoughts, life experiences, fantasies and dreams. To be an author, we just need to start listening to our muse, or the voices in our head and start writing stuff down.