Wordsprings

We all have them — the burning inspiration, the gripping introduction, the outline and those first few chapters.  And then something came up — sometimes a series of things — and the poor book in progress was placed in a suspended animation folder.  For whatever reason, mayabe the approach of spring, I have taken out one of these and spread it’s poor undeveloped pages all over the dining room table.

It’s not bad, really, and I think I’ll finish it.  Science fiction, one (but maybe I’ll make it two) pov(s).  Lots of action and already after the intro and two chapters, a respectable body count.  There’s part of an outline, but I’ll probably rewrite that.  And so it goes, a book in progress.  I’m not yet gripped, still playing around, but — maybe this time the baby will come to term.

A lot of writing happens that way.  I read about all sorts of complicated methods for writing a book — everything from making a contract to crank out so many chapters a week to writing ideas on little cards and then putting them in order.  Or maybe shuffling them?  That might make an interesting book.  Off on a tangent here — but suppose you wrote up a series of incidents and then changed their order.  Could you take the challenge?  That’s how some of the best mystery books get written.  It’s like solving a maze by starting at the other end.

But, back from the tangent (blush) to my own book — I can truthfully say that I won’t give it all my time and attention until and UNLESS it seizes me by the throat and makes a few demands.  How does a piece of writing do this?  That depends on what sort of writer you are.  I’m the character driven sort, so at least one of the characters is going to have to rebel against my outline.  They often do it and, pushover that I am, I just go ahead and accomodate their wishes.  In fact, sometimes, I usually don’t make a detailed outline — just enough of a series of events to make sure that the book will come to an end within a reasonable number of pages.  But even so, those characters will take over.

Another way a piece of writing grabs my attention is to enter my dreams.  A dreamed incident or just quick visual bit can leave quite an impression.  Dreams being the subjective (and muddled) things they are, this is seldom enough to make up a scene or new direction for a story, but it certainly lets me know that the creative juices are flowing.  A similar effect comes when I look through art books or photographs.  Sometimes a certain landscape or face hooks itself into the story, making the writing flow so much more easily.

And I think (as my interest grows here) a bit of research might be in order.  Sure, we’re on another planet here, but still — part of the city is underground and there are rivers and tunnels and unknown bits off where most of the people don’t go.  So what do you find in tunnels and underground rivers?  Whatever you like?  Not quite — even on another planet.  Nature is nature after all, and life is life.

So I’m having fun here, messing around.  That is how this book was conceived in the first place, and this is the way it’s probably going to be finished.  You’d be surprised how quickly writing goes when it isn’t forced.

My scintillating introduction:  The purpose of this site is to discuss writing and books. Hmm. Writing and books as tools, I think. Tools to educate, to build things. People, countries, civilisations. Why not? Words are powerful. Narratives are powerful. They have a way of gathering you up and taking you somewhere, of changing you. You never know where you’ll end up when you write or hear those fateful words, “Once upon a time”.

I know this, because I’ve done it. I didn’t exactly mean to write (four) children’s books, but I seem to have done it. And a few science fiction novels for us grown up children.

So here is a place where I hope readers and writers will join me to talk about this reading and writing habit of ours.  Until we get a little better at telepathy, language is where it’s at.