I started a new novel. Now let me tell you, it’s been about three years since I stared at a blank page. It’s not that I haven’t been writing these past few years. I’ve been editing a bunch of manuscripts that I wrote during the pandemic. And editing, as most writers know, is a far different skill than writing a first draft. I love the editing process, although don’t ask me that while I’m editing.
But creating something from nothing is different. It’s really, really hard.
As far as first drafts go, Marlon Brando, playing Colonel Kurtz, said it the best in the movie Apocalypse Now: THE HORROR! I’d forgotten how hard it is to write a first draft, even knowing the story of what I was going to write. The sheer terror of venturing into the unknown with unknown characters is a daunting task, and one that I was not entirely ready for. Character after character keeps showing up that I’d never anticipated. More third person close narrators and that scares me. How long will this book be?
Now, I’ve written twelve novels. So why did the terreur, as the French call it, strike me so hard this time? Was it because of the time lapse between books? Was I not as confident in my plot as I thought I would be? I’m not entirely sure why. It just happened. And now I have to deal with. Keep on plugging.
I keep asking myself how I ever wrote twelve novels. And how do authors do this. And yet I keep typing away to the plot’s inevitable, if unknowable, conclusion.
Of course, and there’s always an of course, it gets better with time. And the more you write, the more likely you’ll forget about the terrors and get involved with your plot and your characters lives. How to save these people and make them better. Or worse. You dip your hands in the mud of creation and muck around like a demi-god. Then the terrors start all over again the next day, although they diminish a wee bit with every chapter written.
A secret most writers share is that we forgive ourselves for that first crappy draft. “Father forgive me for I have sinned. My first draft was a complete disaster.” But that’s okay. With experience we accept this outcome and understand it for what it is. Yes, we accept crap because we know, or at least we believe, that even a shitty story filled with holes and inconsistencies can still be salvaged (even if we know that sometimes it can’t be salvaged). Fix it and they will come. And in writing, editing is key. We pray that the editing process will pull this manuscript through.
Whether you’re a panster or plotter, “write on” as Matt Cost likes to say. It’s good advice. The terrors can’t be helped, but an acceptance of the entire writing process helps alleviate them as one writes. The key is to put one’s butt in the chair and write. Write until you can’t write anymore, wiser in the knowledge that vigorous edits will make the novel as good as it can be.
With that said, I’ll quote Matt Cost again and encourage all you authors to WRITE ON if you want to keep those terrors in check.
Next week at Maine Crime Writers there will be posts by Jule Selbo (Monday), Joe Souza (Tuesday), Vaughn Hardacker (Thursday), and Rob Kelley (Friday).
is 1569. In the north of England, two Catholic earls and their countesses are plotting rebellion. In an attempt to stop what became known as the Rising of the Northern Earls, spymaster Walter Pendennis asks for help from sixteenth-century gentlewoman, herbalist, and sleuth, Susanna, Lady Appleton. Embedded in the countess of Northumberland’s household under an assumed identity, she has a front row seat as history unfolds. The Bangor Daily News called Face Down Before Rebel Hooves “The most satisfying book in the series.” The trade paperbacks sell for $15.99 each and can be ordered by any bookstore or library. For e-book editions, the text is identical in the three Face Down Collections, which contain all the novels and short stories. Please note that the individual e-books available online contain older versions of the novels. The plots and characters are the same but I personally prefer the updated editions, which have been revised to get rid of wordiness, the occasional historical or continuity error, and a few other minor issues.
refrigerator both to improve their vocabularies, and to encourage creativity and kindness in their name-calling. Lists that began: Don’t call your brother an idiot, instead try…followed by all sorts of possibilities. It’s not my fault. My family has always had a fascination with word play. My brother John is the world’s best (or worst) punster, and I own a zillion books about word origins and the development of language. Growing up there was always a dictionary within reach of the dinner table and my boys grew up the same way. I even have (of course) the giant two volume Oxford English Dictionary—the one with the little drawer and a magnifying glass—and I use it. It’s more fun to know both the definition and the origin of a word.
One wonderful recent gift from my son was a book to help with describing the landscape called Home Ground. Another that gets pulled off the shelf is Word Painting: A Guide to Writing More Descriptively. And a third is an old college textbook, much underlined, called Fine Frenzy: Enduring Themes in Poetry.
Undaunted, I grabbed my Bartlett’s, source of a hundred epigrams, and sighed with relief. Words, crunchy, powerful, evocative words. There are those who see autumn as sadness and an end, and those for whom it is a time of ripening and crescendo. I often turn to poetry when I’m searching for a description or a word or a phrase to underscore a mood.
As does Shelley:
For those reading this or other posts this week, one of you who leaves a comment will win a copy of my first Thea Kozak mystery, Chosen for Death.
Of course, meeting folks who read your books is very different from writing books. Many of us come up with features like characters, setting, and issues alone in our office in front of a computer. Given that isolation how do we write something people will actually want to read?
Your own “issues that matter” may seem insignificant compared to global wars. What’s important is that they really matter to you. I am a marine ecologist so it’s no surprise that my stories take place in marine settings where ecological issues are at stake – such as rough-and-tumble nature of Maine’s signature fishery (Secrets Haunt The Lobsters’ Sea) and climate change deniers (Cold Blood Hot Sea).
My diving stories come from real life experiences. Death By Blue Water had it’s inspiration in a scuba dive on a deep wreck named the Thunderbolt. A plastic bag floated on the current in the the windows of the wheelhouse. In that moment, it looked like a hand waving. At 80 feet. I plotted a rough outline on the ascent line. Death Dive also grew from my diving life. I was asked to review a video of a dive in which a diver disappeared in Belize’s Blue Hole. The body was never recovered. It’s hard to accept you’ve witnessed someone’s last moments. That turned into a story of attempted insurance fraud.
And some of the notes in that idea file are just odd phrases that strike me as kernels for a story, like the comment by Frank Figliuzzi in an interview in a recent Crime Reads about his new book on serial killers hiding as long haul truck drivers, 
ideas, too. Frustration at an injustice, watching something play out that could’ve happened a different way — these have been foundations for all of my books in the Bernadette “Bernie” O’Dea mystery series.
Sandra Neily here: I got the idea for my first novel, 
I get all my story ideas from rambling around the forest and asking, What If.
