words of encouragement

As of this moment, I am 20,000 words into the Otherwhen Chronicles. What had existed previously as a series of loosely-connected short stories and vignettes is slowly being fleshed out into a full-fledged novel. This is proving both harder than I expected and easier in some ways, too. Easier, because having what amounts to a blueprint to draw from frees me from the contraints of plot development. I know how the story ends. Now all I have to do is fill in the blanks and smooth the transitions. Harder, because, as I’ve said previously, my predominant “style” is to let the characters tell their stories and go along for the ride as a transcriptionist of sorts

The latter is a very Bradbury-esque approach and one that has served me well through the years. Going back in to build upon already existing prose, however, is a new step for me. Oh, of course I’ve done something similar when I edit my work and find that I need to elaborate here, or clarify there, but I’ve never done anything as intensive as this. There have been entire scenes which have either been completely rewritten or disposed of entirely. In some ways, I feel like a vivisectionist, deconstructing the story at an almost molecular level, then reconstituting it in the hopes of giving it new life, like a latter-day Victor von Frankenstein. The method has both its rewards and its challenges.

Sometimes, I feel the need for a little advice, just to ensure that I’m on the right track. Writing, after all, can be a very insular pursuit. A while back, I remember reading a wonderful treatise on writing by the great Robert Louis Stevenson. Luckily, I bookmarked the website presenting those words of wisdom, so that when I felt my creative energies flagging, I might get a bit of a morale boost from somebody who actually knows a little something on the subject of writing. I mean, you can’t do much better than a recognized master in the art of literature, right?

A quick check in my bookmark file and I found what I was looking for: The Art Of Writing, by Robert Louis Stevenson. The following quote, lifted directly from Chapter IV: A Note On Realism gave me just the boost I needed, not because it told me what to do, so much as reminding me that I’m on the right track:

“A work of art is first cloudily conceived in the mind; during the period of gestation it stands more clearly forward from these swaddling mists, puts on expressive lineaments, and becomes at length that most faultless, but also, alas! that incommunicable product of the human mind, a perfected design. On the approach to execution all is changed. The artist must now step down, don his working clothes, and become the artisan. He now resolutely commits his airy conception, his delicate Ariel, to the touch of matter; he must decide, almost in a breath, the scale, the style, the spirit, and the particularity of execution of his whole design.”

These words and more can be found at the Literature Project, where Stevenson’s “The Art of Writing” are preserved in their entirety. As for me, it is time, once again, for me to don my working clothes and “become the artisan.” I just like the sound of that…

the activity of creation

The process has begun. As the old year dwindled down and the new year sprang into being, I was given the gift of time away from work, away from phones ringing and impromptu meetings. I had an entire week off and I used it to my best advantage. Besides starting this new blog, I spent a great deal of time pouring through old files and revisiting the world of Otherwhen in earnest. What I found was not just another anthology waiting to be compiled, but an opus waiting to be realized. Those files are, in essence, the elements of a puzzle waiting to be constructed.

They had existed as a series of vignettes, character sketches, short stories and novella-length offerings up until recently. Though I had entertained the notion of one day compiling them all into book form, I’d never really given any thought to the logistics of the idea. In a sense, all I’d been doing over the past decade was compiling information and putting my characters through a few paces to see how they would react in certain situations. Sometimes those situations culminated in a conclusion, sometimes they didn’t. I wasn’t writing for anybody else. It was, admittedly, an exercise in self-indulgence.

All that has changed, now. Sitting down and going through the old files--putting them in a freeform attempt at chronological order, spreading them out and taking stock of the ragged edges--I have discovered that what I have created is a framework of sorts: A skeleton, with enough sections of flesh, muscle and tendon to identify it as a comprehensible whole. It must be similar to the feeling Dr. Victor von Frankenstein first felt when he took in the shattered pieces of fresh flesh lying on his laboratory table and recognized the possibilities his future actions could assert.

To take otherwise inert materials and sew them together, build them up and fill in the gaps, layer upon layer, until soon it is recognizable not for its individual parts, but for the wholeness of its being. What a rush! Suddenly ideas I had either never considered, or had dismissed due to lack of time or inability to follow the concept through to its logical end, are making themselves known. I can see the over-reaching arc of the story and recognize areas in need of obvious fleshing out or, even better, infusions of subtle subtext.

It appears that I have not one book here, but several. At least two. A little massage and manipulation, some necessary rewriting here and there, the creation of new scenes to tie others together; who knows, I might have more than two. I’m not going to concern myself with that, right now. Instead, I’m just going to do what my instincts tell me to do: Tackle the first book. Strip these written pieces of all artifice and find the kernal of storytelling truth in each one. Write the story that has always wanted to be written.

Just short of two thousand words written this morning and I find myself six thousand words into a new novel. The rest are like pages fluttering in a breeze, waiting to be addressed. Some will change, others will merge with new words and ideas, but ultimately a whole will be produced. I’m not giving myself a deadline. No expectations. Just the thrill of writing and the discoveries that are inevitable in the process. It’s a whole new year and I’m off to a rollicking start. Somewhere, a certain gorgon demon slayer is smiling.