Smith's Monthly #27 Page 6

  And I was a horrid typist. I hated typing, especially retyping.

  So my two-finger hunt-and-peck method was slow. Very slow.

  But now the fixes are easy.

  And that causes the problem of too much rewriting.

  But it also allows professional writers a wonderful tool that many, many of us have adopted. The tool is called cycling.

  Now to understand this tool and use it correctly, you have to be completely unstuck in the timeline of your manuscript. Timeline of the manuscript is page one, followed by page two, and so on until the end of the book.

  Those page numbers should mean nothing to you until the end of the book, and even the order of the chapters should mean little to you.

  In creative mode, nothing is set in stone.

  You are not locked into the moment you are typing. You can go anywhere in the story and type at any point in the manuscript.

  CYCLING

  I thought for the longest time that I was the only one who had picked this up. That’s my ego for you. The more I talked with other professional writers, the more I realized that in one form or another, all of us did this.

  Let me explain what I do, so you get a clear picture of what I am calling cycling and find a form of it that will work for you.

  I start into what I think is the opening of a story or novel. I climb inside a character’s head and get the emotions of the character about the setting around the character, and I type for two or three pages.

  500 to 700 words or so.

  And I come to a halt.

  Every time, without fail. This is now a dug-in habit.

  I instantly jump out of the timeline of the story and cycle back to the first word and start through the story again.

  Sometimes I add in stuff, sometimes I take out, sometimes I just reread, scanning forward, fixing any mistakes I see.

  (Remember, this will be the only draft I will do.)

  So when I get back to the white space, I have some speed up and I power onward, usually another 500 or so words until I stop.

  Then I cycle back again to the beginning and do the same thing, run through it all until I get back to the white space with momentum and power forward again for another 500 or 700 words.

  Then I cycle back about 700 to 1,000 words and do it again.

  So if you were tracking how I write a story or novel, you would see me go 500 words forward, back, power to the white spot again, more forward, then back.

  I am completely unstuck from the timeline of the novel.

  Sometimes, when I get a nifty thought, I type it and then write forward until I get there.

  But almost always I cycle back, all in creative voice, never once judging the work, just working to make it clearer, make the character better, the setting richer, and so on and so on.

  I could never do this with a typewriter.

  Only the last 25 years or so since I got my first computer have I been able to do this.

  HOW CYCLING HELPS WRITING INTO THE DARK

  When you have no idea where you are going with a story, momentum is often the key to it all.

  I have great momentum for about 500 words, about two manuscript pages. Then I run into that “What happens next?” question.

  So by cycling back, I am putting the character and the events solidly in my mind by going over them again. And when I hit the white space where I stopped, I have momentum to drive the story forward.

  By going back and coming forward again, my creative voice knows what’s going to happen next.

  When I am really, really stuck, I often will cycle back a full chapter or so and take a run at the stuck spot, spending 15 minutes or so going over what I have done, touching it, getting my creative voice back into where it was going.

  More often than not, that solves being very stuck.

  Think of this as the white spaces being small hills and I need to get a run at each hill. And think of being very stuck as a larger hill, and I need to back up farther to get more speed at the larger hill.

  FIXING MISTAKES

  Cycling, knowing you will be done when you hit the end, makes you fix any problem or mistake instantly, the moment you see or discover the problem.

  So say a character says something to another character and your creative voice goes, “Damn it, that wasn’t set up.”

  You instantly pop out of the timeline and go back and set it up and then work toward the white space again.

  You need to have a character wearing something different for a plot reason that came up in chapter four, you instantly go back and fix what the character is wearing, moving forward again through the manuscript until you get to the white space to make sure all the details match.

  You need to look up a detail, you stop, look it up, put it in, cycle back and run at the white space again to make sure the detail is correct.

  DOESN’T CYCLING TAKE MORE TIME?

  Seriously, I get this question a lot and I imagine some of you reading this are thinking it.

  But no, this takes far, far less time to get a story right the first time through than to try to fix it later. And that goes for putting silly brackets around something you have to research later.

  Get it right and be done and move on to a new story.

  By having that attitude, you power up your creative voice to get it right the first time.

  You don’t write sloppy.

  You don’t write for a second draft.

  Now are some of my first runs through 500 words sloppy? I don’t honestly know. I suppose so because I am not paying any attention, and I know I will cover those 500 words to clean them up at least twice more, if not more than twice, in very short order.

  But to be honest, I don’t notice or care. My subconscious knows this will be the only time through and I’m known for moderately clean manuscripts. Not perfect. No manuscript is perfect.

  But I’m fairly clean.

  So how much time does this take me?

  I tend to think I write (that’s finished, after cycling) about 1,000 or so words per hour, typing with three fingers and taking five and ten minute breaks every hour or so.

  Sometimes I am faster. Not slower that often.

  If I had to worry about going back for a second draft, I doubt I would be writing. I know the story, so it would be boring because I know the story.

  I didn’t rewrite when I wrote on a typewriter either.

  I never reread my stories after I get to the end.

  Why?

  Because I have seen every word in the story two or three or four times in the cycling.

  And I know I don’t have to.

  CHAPTER NINE

  HELPFUL HINT #2

  The first major hint on writing into the dark was being unstuck in time in your manuscript, learning to cycle.

  So now, this second hint is to save you more time than you can imagine. It will help you be more productive and keep stress down.

  And help you write better books.

  Sounds magical, doesn’t it?

  Well, it sort of is.

  OUTLINE AS YOU GO

  I do not mean outline ahead in critical voice. Not in the slightest.

  Remember, you are writing in the dark.

  I mean that when you finish a chapter, write down quickly what you just wrote in a very clear form.

  Let me explain what I do so you can find a way that works for you.

  When I finish a chapter, I have a yellow legal pad sitting beside the computer.

  (I would suggest you use something like a legal pad instead of doing this on a screen. Save the screen for creative writing.)

  On that yellow legal pad I mark the chapter number, the viewpoint character, what happened in the chapter (one-line summary) and how the chapter ended.

  That usually takes one or maybe two lines on the legal pad per chapter.

  On that page, or another piece of paper, I also have what the character is wearing, and if they change clothes, I make a note on the chapter line that
they changed clothes.

  So by chapter six, I have six or so lines on a notepad beside my computer telling me exactly where I have gone and what I have written so far.

  This takes me about one minute to do, if not less, at the end of every chapter.

  But, wow, does it save me hours of time.

  MULTIPLE VIEWPOINT NOVELS

  Most of the books I write are multiple viewpoint novels. And I write one character per chapter. I tend to make each scene a chapter. So if you are writing scenes inside chapters, do a line on your reverse outline for each scene.

  If I am writing a thriller, which is often five to eight viewpoints, this outline as I go becomes even more important for me to remember the last time I was in a viewpoint.

  Instead of looking back through the book to see what the character was wearing and where did I leave them in their last scene, I just glance at my notebook and go, “Oh, yeah.”

  In essence, that yellow piece of paper is an external memory drive for me.

  The more complex the book or the plot as it develops, the more detail I put into this outline as I go.

  I had one very complex book where each chapter was actually three lines on the yellow legal pad. So my outline took three pages or so of paper when it was all done.

  WHY TAKE THE TIME?

  Because not a one of us can hold an entire novel in our minds. We just can’t. Not how the human brain works.

  And because of that, many people say that’s another reason to let the critical voice outline ahead.

  But instead of doing that, just outline as you go.

  Write into the dark and outline what you have done.

  That way, at a glance you can see the novel on a single piece of paper beside your computer.

  You can see what characters were wearing. And where they ended up in their last scene.

  One reason for this is to save you hunting back through the novel after being away from it for some life event.

  Say you are gone for a week and come back and sit down with no memory of the book or even where you are at. Hunting back through a couple hundred pages of manuscript to figure out what a character was wearing or what they were doing takes a vast amount of time and is very annoying.

  And does not help in a restart after a life event.

  With an outline as you go, you never have to look back in the manuscript, or if you do, you know which chapters to look in.

  This saves vast amounts of time.

  And keeps you far, far more productive and moving into the dark because you can see the novel building.

  Seeing the novel building right there on the paper is great feedback to the creative voice.

  SENSE OF NOVEL STRUCTURE

  Again, we can’t hold a novel in our minds, so later in the book you are writing, when you start worrying about the novel structure, whether are things moving too fast or too slow—you know, standard worry questions—you can glance at the outline page and just see the structure.

  It is amazing how clear a structure becomes when just spread out in notes beside the computer, in a quick summary of what you have written.

  (Another reason to not let this summary get too complex. Keep it simple and easy to see.)

  And if there is a problem in the structure of the book, you can see that quickly as well.

  I was doing this once with a big thriller: I got to chapter thirty and noticed on my outline I had a viewpoint chapter from a character in chapter four that I had never returned to.

  Uh-oh. I jumped back, reread that character’s chapter, realized I didn’t need it, and cut it. My creative voice had put it in back at the start, but then decided I didn’t need it by the middle of the book. I never would have noticed without that outline of what I had written.

  Some of you have watched me write books here on this blog and then say the book got shorter because I cut out stuff.

  So, since I never reread what I write after I get to the end, how do I know to cut out something?

  Simple. It shouts at me from the structure of the outline that I wrote as I was writing.

  I can see that everything is on track up until, say, chapter nine, then the characters go off and do something in a loop and return to the regular through-line of the book in chapter thirteen.

  And the end of chapter nine fits perfectly against the start of chapter thirteen. Nothing really important happened in those loop chapters, so I just cut them out.

  Not much work at all because I can see the structure clearly from the notes I made after I wrote each chapter.

  So again, the quick outline of what I have written saves me a vast amount of time and makes the novels stronger.

  So a helpful hint to make writing into the dark so much easier: Outline in a very concise, simple, and fast method, on a piece of paper beside your computer, what you have just finished.

  Chapter or scene.

  Just write it down and then get back to writing.

  About halfway through the book, when you need to find something to fix or to figure out a character, you will thank me.

  ONE FINAL NOTE

  The moment I see the ending of the book—which for me is usually about four or five chapters away—I stop doing this outline as I go.

  I no longer need it, and I never think to do it in the typing rush to reach the end of the novel.

  And I never save the outlines unless the book is part of a series. Then I toss the outline and character details I have sketched down in a file for the next book in the series.

  That hasn’t helped much yet, but I keep doing it anyway.

  The outline is for only when you are writing into the dark. After you are done with the story, most of the time that outline is worthless. It did its job.

  It saved you time and energy, and helped you write a better book.

  CHAPTER TEN

  HELPFUL HINT #3

  One of the things I hear the most from writers working into the dark is trouble finding the ending of the book or story.

  Or maybe better said, seeing the end of the book or story.

  The ending is there. Recognizing it sometimes takes a special trick.

  So let me try to ease some of the worry with this helpful hint.

  JUST KEEP WRITING

  I know that sounds silly, but it actually is the hint.

  When you start feeling like your ending should be coming at any moment, but you can’t see it, just keep writing until you bog down.

  Then, when you bog down, cycle back about a thousand words and chances are you’ll spot your ending about a page or two back. Then just cut off the stuff you wrote extra after the perfect ending line.

  If you don’t spot it, write another three or four pages and do it again.

  Now, if you know your ending, of course don’t do this.

  But if you are having trouble finding that perfect ending line, just write and then cycle back and you’ll see it.

  I know, sounds magical, but it tends to work most times. It’s part of the process of writing into the dark and trusting your subconscious.

  Also, back to what I talked about in the beginning of the book: For this to work, you need to have no fear of writing extra.

  Writing extra is part of the process and it applies right at the ending. Just cut off the not-needed words and don’t worry about it.

  WRITING TO LENGTH

  This is a modern world with a thousand ways to publish any book of any length, yet I often hear writers saying they want their next novel to be 60,000 words or some such silliness.

  I shake my head and walk away.

  When writing into the dark, just let the story be what the story wants to be.

  Trying to write to some made-up word length is all critical voice, and that simple idea of wanting a book to be a certain length will pile in the critical voice and shut down the creative voice.

  Let the story be what the story wants to be at the length it wants to be.

  Trust your creative voice.

  W
rite what you are passionate about or what you enjoy.

  And to the length the story needs to be.

  THE LAST KEY

  To really be successful at writing into the dark, or with any creative fiction writing, you are always better entertaining yourself.

  So let me give you a few hints to finish this book up. A few checkpoints to remember.

  —Entertain Yourself

  You are a reader, so write into the dark to entertain yourself. You are writing the story for yourself.

  —Enjoy the Uncertainty

  As a reader, you pick up the book and don’t know the story or the ending. You are reading the book for the journey. There is uncertainty in that journey. When writing into the dark, there is uncertainty in the journey as well. Enjoy it. Welcome it.

  —Write the Book You Want to Read

  If you love a certain type of book or wonder why you haven’t seen a certain type of book you used to love, write it. Back to the first point. Entertain yourself.

  —Never Write for Anyone But Yourself

  Basically, stop writing to market. If you entertain yourself, enjoy the uncertainty, and write the books you want to read, writing into the dark is a joy.

  THANKS FOR READING

  I sure hope this book helped some, and on your next book you’ll write into the dark. You might be surprised at just how much fun it is.

  And how much more productive you are.

  Mathew died at the age of fourteen, but that didn’t stop him from wanting to grow up.