On works-in-progress

Is there any wonder why a Work in Progress is also known as a WIP?

Because it stings, my pretties. It stings. It flays, it smarts. You think-- this WIP is tearing me to shreds! I can't go on... Help me, help me. This draft is killing me! Yes, you have a regular ol' pity party. That's before you can even think about how you're going to have to whip it good, into shape, shape it up...

A rough, rough chunk of something I've been working on...my stinging WIP:

How were we going to raise these children without a man? Without much at all? We were house poor, I knew that’s what they called us, but I thought of us as home rich. I always will.

We had a big vegetable garden and Azie and I canned and put up food all summer. Some nights when I couldn’t sleep, I stood by your bedrooms listening to your steady breaths, and I tiptoed downstairs to the kitchen. In the pantry, I ran my hands across the shelves of fig preserves and apple butter and stewed tomatoes. Those murky jars were like gold to me, an abundance that would get us through. I’d even go down to the basement some nights, tiptoe over to the deep freezer in the shadowy corner, a box like a coffin, but I would open it, and there was light and life—heaps of frozen corn and string beans, bags of okra and carrots, peas and butter beans. In that way, I kept an inventory of our blessings and I knew we would be all right.

Overflowing with Rain & Ideas

My rain barrel runneth over. Last summer's brutal heat prompted many of us to find ways to save water. I got this cool rain barrel to catch water from my gutter. April showers now, and it's overflowing. I'll catch what I can to keep the shade garden in the back lush when the dry heat of July sets in.

Ideas work like that, too. For first drafts, especially. Gushing sometimes, overflowing so you write as fast as you can to catch it all, to keep your garden of words lush, too. You'll need that pure fount of inspiration, of metaphor, of vivid dreaminess to sustain you later when the first draft is finished, and ready for sifting through, deleting, editing, revision. Kill your darlings, Faulkner said.

I've been talking a lot about first drafts lately. Writing first drafts of novels is such a different experience from subsequent drafts and the revision and editing that comes later. [And because my extended metaphor today runs watery and fluid, here's a dry and dirty take: Stephen King likens writing a novel to dusting off fossils-- as if the ideas and characters, the stories, are already there, waiting to be discovered.]

As tempting as it is to tread water and start editing or tinkering with sentences midway in a first draft, I've found--and heard other novelists say--one should try to keep the momentum, and don't get snagged. This seems especially true with first chapters: one tends to re-read and polish those opening pages again and again, investing so much time and energy in them that you'll naturally resist any revisions or major edits [or deletions] to them later, when you have a whole organic manuscript to consider. Keep on going.

A worthy goal for a first draft: 1,000 words a day. Let it pour.

On bluebirds, bats, and short-short stories

A charmed day. Fickle March was running hot. A record 85 degrees today in these parts. Good things happening:

1. Sapphire Wink. Another pair of eastern bluebirds have apparently taken up residence in the second birdhouse, this one in our front yard. Unusual, since bluebirds are pretty shy about coming to feeders, and prefer meadows. The two of them sat on the power line, swooping down to gulp insects. Beautiful plumage. A sapphire wink, every time the male fluttered by.

2. On winning garden gloves and other cool stuff. I am honored that two of my short-short stories--the ones in the previous entry, in fact-- were chosen among the winners of Gardenrant's first short-short fiction contest. Check out all 100-plus entries.

3. Batty Love. Okay, and on this balmy night, sitting on the front porch under the moon with a glass of wine, I watched two bats zig and zag in that loopy, erratic, confident way. So happy they're back out this spring...hope they've checked in our bat house out back.

4. First Drafts. And now for something completely different. Well, tangential. Sort of. Speaking of rousing from hibernation...Spring is so full of awakening, potential and birth and energy and blinking in the sun, it seems to me a perfect time for first drafts. To quote John Dufresne (again), "In the first draft, rely on spontaneity, rely on inspiration, follow your tangents, pursue your blunders...all first drafts are experimental, chaotic, messy, and all take time, energy, patience, persistence, and devotion...The purpose of the first draft is not to get it right, but to get it written."

Ragged hollow first drafts

I like what Walter Mosley has to say about revision here on his website:

"First drafts are ragged hollow things that need to be revised, rephrased, and rethought again and again until something transcendent occurs on the page; until the story becomes life."

He notes that, for him, rewriting has become second nature, even for emails and memos, and that constant rewriting "borders on obsession, but there's nothing wrong with that."

I agree. And I think the more you write, the more skilled you become at rewriting...spotting the glimmers of gold among the sludge. I've found revision is the real work and real pleasure of writing fiction; and when you hit "the zone," where all time stops and your focus is in another dimension...that's da bomb.

btw, I regularly recommend Walter Mosley's no-nonsense yet inspirational book This Year You Write Your Novel to folks in my workshops. It's so very wise: "Your first draft is like a rich uncultivated field for the farmer: it is waiting for you to bring it into full bloom."
Here's the opening:

The first thing you have to know about writing is that it is something you must do every day—every morning or every night, whatever time it is that you have. Ideally, the time you decide on is also the time when you do your best work.

There are two reasons for this rule: getting the work done and connecting with your unconscious mind.

If you want to finish this novel of yours within a year, you have to get to work! There’s not a moment to lose. There’s no time to wait for inspiration. Getting your words down on the page takes time. How much? I write three hours every morning. It’s the first thing I do, Monday through Sunday, fifty-two weeks a year. Some days I miss but rarely does this happen more than once a month. Writing is a serious enterprise that takes a certain amount of constancy and rigor.

But will and regularity are only the beginnings of the discipline and rewards that daily writing will mean for you.

The most important thing I’ve found about writing is that it is primarily an unconscious activity. What do I mean by this? I mean that a novel is larger than your head (or conscious mind). The connections, moods, metaphors, and experiences that you call up while writing will come from a place deep inside you. Sometimes you will wonder who wrote those words. Sometimes you will be swept up by a fevered passion relating a convoluted journey through your protagonist’s ragged heart. These moments are when you have connected to some deep place within you, a place that harbors the zeal that made you want to write to begin with.