NaNoWriSpr & NaNoWriSum Remembered: The Composition Process

I loved working on the whole process of writing this novel manuscript that I'm about ready to shop out, even though it felt at times like I was never going to get there. I'm so glad, in retrospect, of everything that happened with the composition process.

A few examples:

• I'm glad I was teaching while I drafted the first third of the manuscript and did the bulk of my research. The first part is always the hardest, and the hardest to do without other things to balance it out, so teaching 2 classes was just about right during this time.
• I'm glad I took my creative writing class during this same period. Since I'd done so much academic writing for so long before this project, the class helped me transition and gave me vital instruction and feedback as to how to provide the right amount of tension and information in those vital early chapters that help to sell books and hook readers. And most importantly, they helped encourage me that I was on the right track when my confidence was lowest.
• I'm glad to have so many delightful volunteer readers and others to encourage me and listen to my crazed ramblings about the research and characters of my novel. Having patient sounding boards helped me during my deepest immersions in the novel, and having readers who needed to read the novel by specific times gave me much-needed deadlines in addition to crucial feedback to help me revise.
• I'm glad I was able to immerse myself in writing the last two-thirds of the novel this summer with few distractions. Yes, I know, I know--as late as May I was warning people that I might become completely incapable of socialization during this period, and was scared of it. But the truth is that as the book grew longer, frequent complete re-reads and revision sessions became necessary, requiring long chunks of time. In fact, in the last two weeks before the full draft was finished, every time I sat down to write I re-read almost the whole thing first every single time (this was why I was up till 5 a.m. every other night during that time). I'm convinced that without this immersive experience of writing a lot of story in a short (but not too short) period of time, the end of the story wouldn't read nearly as fluidly.
• I'm glad I did all that obsessive re-reading and re-drafting of the whole story toward the end of the first draft. Because without my obsessive re-reading, on the last day of initial drafting I would never have been able to make that gigantic push (35 pages in less than 24 hours! by far a personal best!). Certainly not without feeling confident that my big climax and resolution scenes actually wrapped up most of the story threads. Sure, I had to go back and revise some of the early parts to foreshadow the exact details a bit after the fact, but that's been a joy and delight as well.

All in all, I'm pleased and grateful that the process has come out as it has. It's been a bit painful at times, sure. But really, in retrospect, has gone pretty quickly overall. Especially considering how happy I am with the results. And here I am toward the end of the process--transitioning into the seeking publication part of things. And it feels good to be here.

Done! (or, the Novel Is in Others' Hands)

I just looked back at this blog and was a little appalled my last entry was on May 20. At the same time, I have an incredibly good "excuse," in that my absence here has translated into excellent progress on the novel project.

Back then, if you'll remember, I had 130 pages, or almost 31,000 words, of my first-ish draft.

Now I have (and this deserves some bolding) nearly 95,000 words, or around 350 manuscript pages, in a third draft that's out to readers for further feedback. This is a beautiful thing. I've already gotten (largely highly encouraging) feedback from half a dozen readers, and I'm waiting to hear back from more while I'm preparing all the appropriate materials and feeling my way into the path toward seeking publication.

This deserves a huge huzzah. So huzzah huzzah huzzah! Thanks to all those who have provided me support and feedback already on this project that's felt incredibly quixotic at times. One thing is sure: it's been a lot of work, but also a ton of fun. I'm profoundly thankful to have had an opportunity to undertake it!

Until later, Cheers!

NaNoWriSum: Week One Report

I'm encouraged. at this time last week I had 103 pages. I was pleased just to break triple digits before my grade submission deadline ended the semester.

Today I have 128.

If you count the work I did last weekend, that means I finally hit the 30 pages in one week mark this past week. Huzzah!

While I love teaching and I'm immeasurably glad it was there to give me some variation during those early chapters, I'm pleased the cage match is over for a few months. It's really nice to have some time to focus almost solely on creative writing. I of course still have other things to do than the novel project--I'll be spending at least a day or two per week on writing academic articles, for instance, beyond the fact that I plan to see non-fictional people every so often, get lots of exercise, and do other more usual life stuff like cooking and cleaning and attending farmer's markets.

But I'm beyond thankful that I have a summer to primarily focus on this project. To finish telling my story. To layer in everything that needs to be layered in. To simplify what needs to be simplified. To complicate what needs to be complicated. To get it ready to go out into the world.

Storytelling is such a privilege. The time to do it, and do it well, doesn't happen every day. You are witnesses: I pledge not to take it for granted. Hold me to that, eh? Thanks for your continued support!

On Transitioning from NaNoWriSpr to NaNoWriSum

So it's been a long time since I updated my blog followers about my progress on my novel-in-a-few-months experiment. From back-to-back academic conferences at the end of March and beginning of April to submitting my grades this past Monday, life has been the usual end of semester blur since my last post.

The good news is that my novel has moved forward tremendously during the blur time, if not quite as much as I'd hoped. Grading always takes more time than one thinks it will, traveling is exhausting, and I've spent this past week sick with a cold/sinus thing.

But at one of the conferences I got to go to a museum related to my topic, picking up some great background info to get deeper into my characters' experiences not only in the museum itself, but also in the attached library. I even picked up a few useful books at the gift shop.

And since the conferences I've done a lot of revising and expanding of the first three chapters in response to feedback from all my wonderful readers this semester. Plus I wrote most of a fourth chapter, and read that to a friend and incorporated that feedback.

By the time the grade submission deadline (this past Monday at 3) signalled the end of the semester, I had officially broken the double-digit barrier by three pages.

It felt so good to be in the triple digits--more than a third of the way through!--that I wrote 6 more today, which brings my current total to 109.

So NaNoWriSpr is officially done, and its successor--NaNoWriSum--has begun. The NaNoWriSpr experiment began as a crazy hope to write a novel in a semester while teaching 2 classes and taking an advanced fiction-writing class as support and encouragement for the NaNoWriSpr experiment. I ended up writing more than a third of one that I feel pretty good about. I know that it's not just an assemblage of pages pushed out as quickly as possible, but a manuscript on its way to being a viable manuscript of a novel. The plot's set up, and I know where it's going, for the most part. We've met most of the characters, and I now know the main ones well enough to generate realistic examples and scenes and dialogue for them on demand. The others are coming into focus, as is the setting and era and surroundings.

My goals for NaNoWriSum are as follows--I want to write this novel to its natural conclusion, revising as I go, by the end of July so I can get full manuscript drafts out to my other reader volunteers by that time.

It might seem like a lot--200 good pages in 2.5 months, when I just barely drafted 103 pages in 4. And yet without the teaching, it should be totally manageable. If I can write 3-4 pages per day (and today I sat down and read through the whole thing again before pounding out 6 new pages), I'll be there.

Congrats to team NaNoWriSpr for a solid start to the relay race! NaNoWriSum should be able to take it from here. Go team finish the novel!

How Teaching Has Helped My Writing, Part Deux

So I'll admit it--when I went on Spring Break a little more than a week ago, I was very ready to bid Teaching goodbye, to thumb my nose and bid adieu (or at least au revoir for 10 days). Other than a few necessary academic tasks, I wanted to absorb myself fully in my novel process, which was tugging me toward it with the force of a very insistent small child.

I assuaged my guilt about this treatment of Teaching by writing my most recent post. But while I meant it, I was thrilled that the DNiP* had won the Writing vs. Teaching cage match for a short while.

And I'll tell you, I thoroughly enjoyed my week with the DNiP. I dove in full force. I vised. I revised. I read source materials and writings from my era. While I never seem to be able to achieve the 20 pages per week I long for, I won through to 74 pages of draft and felt confident about the first 50 of them. It was great. I realized that if I stay on this pace I'll be at a very respectable 150 pages by the end of the semester, which would leave me on track to finish the manuscript this summer.

And then it was Sunday, and I emerged from my cave. Someone asked me a simple question. I'm pretty sure I gave an answer that might have made sense. I wasn't sure. But at that point the pit in my stomach clenched up a bit, knowing that the upcoming summer of time alone with my DNiP might become a problem. See, it's possible that too much time alone with one's fictional creations and absorbed in that world could potentially be a bad thing for my social skills.

After the summer, will I be able to pull out of this daze I develop in these hermit-like spates of writing? Will I remember how to interpret and create appropriate non-verbal stimuli? Will I be able to converse on normal subject matter?

These questions are real (if slightly hyperbolic). At any rate, they drove me to very much enjoy the sociability of my teaching interactions yesterday. It's good to practice stringing sentences together orally so that an immediate audience can understand them. To focus on subjects that aren't associated with this all-consuming project that has such strong pull. To have a break from some of the heavy subjects and emotions that come with the research and writing.

Yup, this might have been the biggest reason for Marilynne Robinson's aversion to the writing life sans teaching I mentioned in the last post. I'm going to have to schedule some good regular social time this summer to balance out the solitude and absorption inherent in my writing time. Yes indeed.

*Dear Novel-in-Progress.

How Teaching Has Helped My Writing

I'll never forget what Pulitzer-prize-winning author Marilynne Robinson said once during an interview at Calvin College's Festival of Faith & Writing. It boiled down to the fact that she doesn't do well when she can't teach along with her writing.

At the time, not having had much experience with teaching, I thought it was sort of a funny thing to say. But now, having had several more years of teaching experience under my belt, I'm beginning to get it. I'm not sure that teaching is quite as indispensable to me as it is to Marilynne. But then, right now I'm deep into a particular project, and quite enjoy the times when I can be fully absorbed in its world.

But I can also see that my experience with teaching--and I do love teaching--has definitely helped improve my writing, both that for academic audiences and creative projects. This semester I'm really seeing the fruits of teaching in these seemingly non-teaching-related tasks.

Take my academic writing task for this morning. Since I'm going to present at the Popular Culture Association conference in a few weeks, I had to take an aspect of my nearly-300 page dissertation and turn it into an 8 page paper to present in 15-20 minutes. The fact that the last few years of teaching has given me experience in just how much complex information I can translate for students in a short amount of time helped me to complete this task in a short amount of time. (And of course the fact that I regularly teach public speaking didn't hurt either: I've planned several spots where I hope to draw the audience into the presentation through asking them questions, for instance.)

But academic writing isn't the only way that my teaching experience has been useful. In my NaNoWriSpr novel manuscripting project, I've noticed that my practice in persuading students to be interested in learning subjects they see to be boring or difficult has helped me in writing my novel as well.

After all, one can't assume one's readership comes into a novel automatically liking it, and so you have to make a strong case for their attention both at the beginning but also throughout the story while dispensing the right kind of background information at the right times. Watching where my students' attention flags--and knowing the same material strikes different classes in different ways--has helped me to be aware that my reader is likely doing the same with my writing at times.

Unlike with my teaching, I don't have immediate non-verbal feedback with my writing. My teaching experience has taught me, therefore, to get feedback during my development process from as many readers as possible to see how different types of people respond to my story. This, like my students' faces, helps me to see how well I'm doing to engage a range of people without relying too much on a single reader experience. And when a theme pops up over time in my reader feedback--as it tends to both in students' faces and in student evaluations--I know I need to consider how to adjust to better engage my audience.

Yup, I'm beginning to get a sense of why Marilynne Robinson said what she said about the teaching. Without the feedback, the practice in translating things for others, the face-to-face interaction with others in a setting like teaching, the process in writing can become a little disconnected from these crucial concepts. Like Marilynne, I'm thankful for the teaching experience I've been granted so far.

NaNoWriSpr: On Getting to Know One's Characters; Or, Authorial Guilt

I realized this weekend that I was still avoiding something I rather had to do if I wanted to move forward in pumping out solid pages of interesting story.

I needed to sit down and get more acquainted with my characters. Especially my secondary characters, who are about to be introduced, but my main characters as well.

Please excuse the bad reality TV reference, but this makes me feel like the girls in The Bachelor who are always saying that they realized they need to take down a wall of self-defense and disclose more about themselves.

Interestingly, in this case, it's not me that needs to let my characters into the secret of my personality and past. It's the other way around. (Or one would think.)

What I realized is that I'm scared to dive deeper into some of my characters' lives and psyches. This is something I predicted earlier, but so far it's been pretty painless with the main ones--even gleeful. But since I'm writing from a first-person narrator, I've really only had to dive into my narrator's thoughts.

The thing is that the other characters are about to get more involved soon, so I need to understand them not only from my narrator's perspective, but from theirs as well, though ultimately I'll write it from his perspective.

I don't like doing this part. Some of these characters have deep dark secrets I'll have to disclose, or I wouldn't have an interesting plot. I feel like if I proceed I'll become the author character in Stranger than Fiction who is writing a story when her primary fictional character discovers she's creating and narrating his life. In the movie, the character blames the author tremendously for a raw deal. And I think I imagine that these characters might pop out of these pages and do the same to me.

Still, as with those I love in life, I can't protect my characters from bad things happening to them. Nor can I entirely protect them from themselves. (Nor, for that matter, can I protect myself from any emotional wells that may pop open in myself through writing about my characters' lives and emotions.) And so I must put my fears aside and get to know them better.

Especially since, let's face it, getting to know these characters better is much more statistically likely to produce a long-lasting and satisfying relationship than The Bachelor.

Okay, I've just received a date card for a group date with my characters. Hopefully if I persist, they'll give me a rose and allow me to finish these next couple of chapters.

A Week in the Life of NaNoWriSpr (Week 2)

Tuesday hits, which is the formal ending and beginning of your weeks (since that's when your writing class meets): it turns out you only have 15 pages when you wanted 20 per week. Since you are as neurotic as the next writer, you go between praising yourself for getting 15 done and berating yourself for not doing as much as you wanted to. Then you work to adjust your expectations while not giving yourself excuses. Delicate work, that. In the evening, you work on some teaching prep, trying to get ahead for the next week, since that's your first priority.

Wednesday/Thursday: Between teaching tasks, you finish up the first chapter and revise it, adding 4 pages in the process. You share it with a delightfully helpful friend who tells you she is engaged by it. You are simultaneously encouraged and in despair because you have very little idea what's going to happen in the next chapter, which now feels like your sophomore music album. Will it ever measure up? And what's going to happen in it?

Friday: You bury yourself in research into place and era, not exactly knowing what you're looking for but hoping it will help you see ahead into what the heck happens in the next chapter and how it fits with your overall plot arcs. You also brainstorm some of the secondary characters with a friend via chat. Things are still murky--oh so murky. On Friday night you start to seriously panic, since your week is half done and you've only written 4 pages. This novel will never go anywhere, clearly. Nevertheless, you try to hold firm. Ultimately, you go to bed, as you've learned that always helps.

Saturday: You awake to find that things have begun to come together. As you learned during your last novel-writing project (for your Novel in a Drawer), chaos periods always resolve in epiphany, and the panic fades into a funny story to tell about the writing process. You proceed to write 12 pages in a few hours, pleased as punch you've brought up your week's total to 16 pages as well as that you didn't resort to using cliches like "pleased like punch" often within those pages. Even though you now have a ton of teaching prep to do on Monday, you'll be okay with your weekly totals even if you don't have time to write more on Monday or Tuesday afternoon. Plus you know at least a bit of what's happening in the next few scenes, which makes you feel all luxurious, as though you can pick it up and put it down as you wish without being dependent on the fickle muse.

Sunday: You get to have a day of rest, and you take it gleefully, enjoying the opportunity to read fiction. Time to get to read just for fun for a bit and truly relax, though at the end of the day you sneak in a quick read of the stories you have to discuss in Tuesday's writing class so your brain can give them a mull. You also have to submit chapter 1 for workshopping by Tuesday, so you stay up a bit later than usual to revise your chapter a bit more, just because it's fun.

Monday: You throw yourself into finishing your teaching prep for the week, knowing that the more you get done today the more writing time you'll have the rest of the week. You have enough time to finish your teaching tasks, and you feel like you've begun to get the balance of the shifts between your teaching stuff and this creative task. You feel like you might make it through both these semester-long tasks without ruining the semester's transmission. And since you've already glanced at your writing class assignments that you need to finish up before your 4 p.m. Tuesday class, you have a shot at writing more chapter 2 on Tuesday after teaching, which means you could reach your 20 pages.

On the eve of week 3: You know there will be more peaks and valleys, but having plowed out 31 pages in 2 weeks feels good (10% there!). Beginning to (re)gain faith in the process, even while knowing there will be more low points in the weeks ahead. Getting started is hard, but worthwhile. Having conquered the first few challenges is lovely, especially since you managed to complete all your other responsibilities this week as well, even exercising 3 times. And good groundwork has been laid for future chapters.  Woohoo!

Okay, back to finishing the week's lesson plans. Almost there!

NaNoWriSpr Goals and Challenges

Yesterday for my fiction-writing class, I was asked to write "a paragraph" about my fiction-writing goals for the semester. The following is an adjusted version of what I wrote:

My primary goal for my fiction-writing this semester is to either have a rough draft or most of a rough draft of a novel manuscript by the end of the semester, reaching roughly between 250 and 300 pages. In order to reach this goal, I realize I must write between 70-80 pages per month, or 15-20 pages per week (totaling between 3500 and 5000 words per week). This first week I reached my goal, but just barely, by writing 15 pages, for just over 3500 words. As per the syllabus, I want to revise 30-40 pages of this draft by the end of the semester and have it be more polished. I want to choose segments for workshopping and polishing more based on how important they are to get feedback for rather than merely what I have done. And so I want to work hard so I have choices about what to share and not share. That said, I know I’ll want my instructor and my classmates to give me feedback on the first 10-15 pages, and blessedly that’s already drafted after this past week. 

I don’t want to accept meaningless procrastinatory excuses from myself for not doing the work. I know I’ll have to change stuff after the semester—the primary goal is to get something down on paper so I can work with it further this summer. But while this draft is largely a “s***ty first draft” (cf. Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird) I also don’t want to push myself so hard to produce pages that the work has holes the size of Texas, especially at the expense of a logical and complex plot or characterization that goes along with that. Nor, since I’m writing a piece set in a different time and place, do I want to sacrifice key research that I must do and then have to rewrite large sections because of a major anachronism or something that wouldn’t happen in that place. 

So while I fully expect to make changes (and likely large changes) after the semester ends, I also want to think deeply enough about what’s going on in my opening acts that pulling it all together in the end will be relatively easy. That means I will have to be okay with going a little slower in the beginning when I’m laying the groundwork (probably in the 15 pages per week phase, with a lot of thinking and outlining time to go with it), but will hopefully have a little easier time once my characters have been established. At that point, I hope to legitimately expect more pages from myself to “make up time.” 

I’ll also have slower going in the beginning is because I’m still doing some of my background research. For instance, I just got a few more books through interlibrary loan that will provide me with useful background info for my era and setting. I know this specific set of research tasks will bear a lot of fruit in furnishing me with vivid and apt material for characterization and setting details, but I’ll have to work extra-hard both to get through this material fast and to not get too distracted by all the other research I could be doing. Thankfully I have a lot of experience in researching quickly. (God bless grad school.) Hopefully, if I can do this and still get 15 pages per week written in the next few weeks, I can get up to 20 or even 25 later on. 

Current word total, after one week: 3531 words. 15 pages. 

15 down, 235-285 to go. This may seem daunting, but through baby steps is totally possible. Go team NaNoWriSpr!

On Contentment; Or, When Things Go Well

It's amazing how easy it is to be content when things are going well. I taught my first classes yesterday, and am once again delighted to rediscover that I do indeed enjoy life more in second semesters, especially ones in which I get to teach in 75-minute class period. (Oh, how I love a longer class period in which to teach.)

And then I went to my first creative writing class.

I like creative people. I enjoy talking about creative writing things. It was fun.

It was a long day, but I went to bed with thoughts of the beginning of my novel--and woke up with them still there after a nice long sleep. This morning, to keep to my discipline of teaching first, I finished my slides for tomorrow's teaching (and they're good lessons, I think--I'm going to enjoy carrying them out).

But this afternoon I'm going to sit down and get some of the first scene down on the page. My goal that feels manageable: 20 novel pages per week average, spending at least 3 days per week pounding out 6-7 page chunks, which would lead, if all goes well, to a completed first draft by the end of the semester. I have the arc of at least the first few scenes in my head and at least some sense of how they tie into the overall story, so the first (and probably second week) should be fairly low on the "I don't know what the heck's happening next" scale. And hopefully by that time I'll have the next chunk roughed out in my head.

It feels like a gift, how the seeds of planning have taken root--how seamlessly my prep tasks for teaching and writing have flowed into the semester. My life, at the moment, is both balanced and fulfilling, and I know that doesn't happen every day.

I'm keenly aware of how privileged my life is right now, to be able to spend time doing things I love.

I know I'm blessed during the tough times, too, but today I'm feeling my blessedness more keenly than ever. And I wanted to get that down so I could look back later when things might not be going as perfectly and remember that this is a privilege, to be doing these things.

On the Beginning of NaNoWriSpr

I've wanted to do NaNoWriMo (that's National Novel-Writing Month, in which people try to write a 50,000 word novel during the course of November) for a long time, but at the same time I always thought it was a little crazy. A novel in one month? How could one imagine enough depth of character, enough plot twists, enough atmosphere and symbolism for a whole book in such a short period of time? After all, my dear Novel In A Drawer took 18 months of painstaking midnight labor sessions to be birthed, and that only after 6 visits to the location and lots and lots of research. A month always seemed a little ridiculous.

Here's the exciting news: I'm writing a new novel manuscript this spring--likely not in one month, but hopefully in 3-4. I meant to announce this earlier, but I got sidelined by my gratitude as I summed up the gradual rebirth of my writing life and associated writing stamina. I feel profoundly privileged to have the opportunity to do this, and I'm ridiculously excited about it at any point that I'm not overwhelmed by it. It's a manuscript I've been researching towards for almost as long as I did for my earlier project, and I feel this one might have actual market potential, which is an exciting thought.

Since it's not the right time for the social support that comes with the official NaNoWriMo, I'm thankful to be able to take part in an upper-level fiction-writing seminar class at my university this spring that will serve the same purposes. Keeping me on track. Holding me to the deadlines I would be creating for myself anyway. And in addition, helping me with craft and giving me feedback on whether at least parts of the thing are, well, any good.

I probably won't tell you much about the specifics of the genre or plot of Dear Novel in Progress--which I think from now on may occasionally be acronymed DNiP (or on days I don't like it as much, as SNiP=Stupid Novel in Progress)--but I hope to share process and progress notes in this blog along the way as another form of public accountability. I'd love it if any who read this blog would also provide cheers from the sidelines, as it were. Thanks in advance for your support.

It's a big project, this NaNoWriSpr of mine. But one I'm thrilled to have the time, energy, and resources to undertake. So incredibly thankful.

The Next Step on the Journey

It's official: I'm an author!

That's right--my name now appears on Amazon with that little all-important underline. Previously, sure, I had things that appeared in books, but never before have I enjoyed Amazon-underline-authordom.

But seriously, I loved working on this project writing the script for an iPhone tour for Purdue's Discovery Park. It allowed me to apply my academic dissertation-related knowledge to a creative project, and to use my creative writing skills in an academic project. Can't get much better than that.

Plus, it was great working with Sorin Matei, Robert Yale, and the rest of the team on the project.

Okay, I've enjoyed my moment of joy. Now back to my dissertation-writing.

Back to Blogging

So yeah, I've been away for quite a few months now. There have been very good reasons. Among them:

1. I gave a talk at Calvin's Festival of Faith & Writing in the spring. It was lovely. I talked about connections between the mystery genre and faith. People seemed interested, which was encouraging.
   
2. I took a creative writing class in the spring (for fun). One might think this would contribute toward blogging, but it didn't. Instead it poured the energies I would have put into this blog into new stories and critiques of others' stories. This, too, was an encouraging process.
   
3. I was narrowing in on my main dissertation theory. That was a lot of work.
   
4. I've been reading reading reading for the dissertation. I've done the bulk of that, thankfully--or so I hope. I'm in the midst of plowing out pages now while learning to balance that work with teaching that just started up again this week.
5. I've been teaching a lot, and loving it. I've realized more and more that I really love this profession. I'm particularly fond of coming up with activities based on Food Network and other reality show competitions. The formula is eminently useful for pedagogy.
   

At any rate, I'm back. Oh, and publication update: I have a new academic publication in the delightfully titled tome Interpersonal Relations and Social Patterns in Communication Technologies: Discourse Norms, Language Structures and Cultural Variables. Since I know all of you are going to run out and buy it, just look for chapter 3 by Deborah Leiter and John Dowd: "Textual Expectations, (Dis)Embodiment, and Social Presence in CMC."

In other publication news of the less academic brand, I have an essay appearing in a new book on spirituality and food coming out next month. It doesn't look like the book's listed on the publisher's website yet, but I'll provide a link when I have one.

Oh yeah, and the latter will be the first print-based publication under Deborah Leiter Nyabuti. It's a good name, and I'm excited about the prospect of using it more and more.

A Plot, a Plot!

I'm ridiculously excited. I love the creative process when it goes this well.

Over the last couple of weeks, I've been doing extensive research for this creative writing project for my assistantship. I've been thinking through all the pieces of information I know, and seeing if they fit with the very rough story framework I came up with last week.

Talking with various people to confirm. Floating my ideas past people as the story evolved.

Last night, after I lit my candles in the living room, I was trawling through the web doing some more research and came up with a potential ending for my story.

I slept on it. I woke up. I called around to a few people to confirm that my story was feasible and sounded like it would work for the client. It is, and it does.

I've got a plot! Now just to write the story! Currently I'm waiting a bit on some final key research from some of my contacts, but that should arrive later today. And before then, I can at least start jotting down some parts of the story that don't relate so closely to it.

I love it when a plan comes together (visualize evil tenty fingers).

My New Writing Practice

I used to have this wonderful routine down, back before I went back to grad school. I was working more than full-time, so I'd work my 10 or 12 hours in a day. Then I'd come home, maybe play some piano, maybe take a walk (with or without my friend across the street) to clear my head from the stresses of the day.

And then, around 9 or 10 p.m., I'd sit down in the living room with the TV off, I'd journal out whatever thoughts were running around in my head, and I'd think and write at least 100 words of my creative project (often several pages). The writing would sometimes take me up till 2 or 3 a.m. And then I'd get up at 7 and start over again.

Retrospectively, I'm not sure how I had the stamina. But it worked well.

The problem with grad school is in part that I often work at home. It then becomes harder to find practices that clear my head and help me to move from one thing--and one kind of thing--to another. Especially when so much of my work of all kinds is done on the computer.

But I've begun exercising again (sans iPod because it died) and that is helping. And last night I discovered that lighting a few candles in my living room and staring at them for a few minutes also helps.

Which is good because I have to switch back and forth between heavily academic tasks, errands, and this creative project for my assistantship for the rest of the week. And the creative project has passed most of the research phase and moved into the writing stage. And there's a pretty strong deadline, so I need to get into the creative writing mode pretty frequently. And quickly. And well.

You go, candles. You go.

Dreams into Fiction

I've had a series of unpleasant dreams this week. No need to get into what they were--I'd just like to state for the record that they were all pretty unpleasant. (Not nightmares, just unpleasant.)

The point is this: I've spent the last half-hour trying to figure out whether it would be useful for one of my characters could have a different series of unpleasant dreams, in one of the stories that's been on the backburner.

It's a beautiful thing when the creaky wheels of that part of my brain start to move. Love it.

And She's Ba-ack!

So yesterday mid-afternoon I was the grumpest of the grumps. Woe was I and all that.

I decided I was facing post-semester stress disorder, the result of trying to downshift from 80 hours per week into 40 without losing steam entirely. The summer's prospective projects were overwhelming me, and I felt incredibly guilty about allowing myself to do something other than academic work.

By the evening, I was pretty whiny.

But then, over the course of the evening, things worked. Having decided I would do no academic work for the evening--definitively--worked like magic. There was nothing on TV, so I turned it off and didn't try to replace it with movies for several hours.

I pulled out the Swahili books I had put away (read: taken back to the library) last fall and looked over the first lesson again, rehearsing the now-unfamiliar, yet familiar, sounds. I looked up how to say "post-semester stress disorder" in Swahili in an online dictionary and felt ridiculously happy about it, even though I had no idea how to put the individual words together in the way that made sense. I exercised a bit to my newly discovered and fabulous Exercise TV on-demand channel, getting my muscles moving again bit by bit.

And, as a result of these writing practices, my brain too started to loosen itself up and use muscles that had lain dormant during the school year. And about 1:30 a.m., inspiration hit. I started a creative project I'd been thinking about for awhile. It flowed, and it was beautiful.

Considering last year this barely happened at the end of summer, this is a beautiful, beautiful day in the neighborhood. Woohoo! I'm back in the land of creative writing!

Sure, I still have many academic tasks for the summer, but I'm beginning to envision how a certain amount of, dare I say "balance"? might be possible in the next few months. Ah, frabjous day...

The Difficulty with Having Been a Slave...

I've been listening to The Chronicles of Narnia in the car on CD lately, and recently, in The Horse and His Boy, I heard a quote that struck with me. The gist of it was something along the lines of "The problem is, of course, that once you've been a slave, and then you're free, it's difficult to make yourself do quite as much as you can do. Because of course, what you can do and what you think you can do aren't the same thing."

This stuck in my head because I've been thinking lately about self-management a lot lately, what with the switch a few years ago from being a full-time employee when my tasks were in part demanded by others, shifting down to a graduate program where somewhat less was required of me, then back up into a more demanding program.

The annoying part is that, immediately after I started my first program where less was demanded externally, I was able to self-manage quite well to produce a lot outside of what was externally demanded of me. Then, frustratingly, came a period of lesser production as I shifted disciplinary perspectives within a program where more was required of me.

The thing is, now that I'm used to both the more demanding program and the new disciplinary perspective (I'm an accumulative learner), I finally feel as though I'm back up to--and in fact, have surpassed, thanks to the extra external expectations--my initial grad student productivity, a fact that bodes well for the less-structured time ahead.

I just hope that, now that I've made it into the zone (in a more balanced way, no less), I'm able to port this motivation and productivity into keeping up the creative output as well as into playing hard in the breaks I can get from keeping up the self-management. I think it might be possible, but I'm certainly not expecting it to go perfectly...

Ah, the efforts we make to temper hope with realism and vice-versa, hoping that the realism won't keep you from doing your best and that the hope won't raise your expectations to the point where you can't adjust if and when it becomes necessary.

Moment of Realization

I realized a little while ago that, with this academic fellowship the last two years, I've been getting paid to do research that's likely to form the background to one or more books, both academic/non-fiction and creative. Not only to learn the methods I need to do the research well, but also to sit and generate ideas and let them simmer until they're ready to come out.

Granted, I haven't just been sitting, by any means. I've been, most of the time, working on an academic research project and such on top of the studying.

But all the same, I've had many moments of simmering, including that oh-so-crucial first semester. And, in the meantime, I'm learning how to write quickly when need be (I've always been an incredibly slow writer), so that when they're ready to shape themselves and I have the time to devote to writing said manuscripts, I'll be ready for them.

Even with my awareness of how insanely busy I've been during this time, that's pretty darned cool. After all, very few people get paid to stay alive and collect research material and to think things through during the early stages of a book-writing process. I'm incredibly grateful for the opportunity.

"We Regret" Blah Blah Blah

Well, I'm glad I didn't stay up until 1:30 to get my email. Furthermore, I'm glad I wasn't holding my breath about advancing--that would have hurt.

I won't say that I wouldn't have liked to move on, but that would just have been a gift. This way, nothing is "stolen" from me, I just get to go on working on the manuscript when I get a chance (I've had some delightful ideas about it lately, about adding another point of view) and send it elsewhere when I get the chance.

I'm getting better at this whole submission thing, I think. I think my PhD work has toughened me up to this a bit. When one gets used to giving papers and presentations and such for other people's evaluations on a regular basis, one doesn't take the fact that one of those submissions didn't advance in a competition as seriously. Especially when it was submitted on a whim at the last minute and one didn't have a chance to edit it, just flung it into the wind to see if it would come back.

Welcome back, little manuscriptlet. We'll try again when you seem ready to fly again.

10:32 a.m. update

Hm, I looked at my letter again, and compared it with the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award procedures. It looks like my little entry, while it didn't make it to the quarterfinals, survived the second round winnowing from 10,000 entries down to 2,000, as the email says there will be two reviews of my first three chapters waiting for me, which wouldn't have happened had it not made it through the first cut.

So, while it didn't make it into the top 500, it was judged to be in the top 20% of entries for the contest. Good job, little manuscriptlet!