In January I’ll have more to say on my upcoming science fiction novel, but in the meantime, I highly recommend this post by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Where Art Meets Commerce. It says a lot about the emotional process of writing a book that demands to be written, the market be damned. Back in September I wrote a post — still unpublished — with similar sentiments. I’ll get that one out in January, but in the meantime, here are a couple of highlights from Kris:

In her creative office, every writer should feel like she’s on a high wire twenty stories off the ground over a major highway with no net to catch her if she falls. She should worry that this book is beyond her skill level, that she might not know enough to write this one, that she might not be good enough to pull this off.

At the same time, she should be having fun—but an adrenalin-junkie kind of fun, an I-can’t-believe-I’m-up-here-trying-this kinda of fun.

Statistics and underlines and social media be damned. The sales force should be having fits if they hear about what the writer is trying to do while the book’s in progress. Because it should go against that “what everyone expects” on some level or another.

Yep. That pretty much describes what went on in the process of writing this book — not because the story itself is particularly difficult, but because the near-future setting demanded a degree of realism that I had to carefully construct since I did not have the right background and experience to draw on — while many other people do. As Kris says in the preceding quote, I had to face the doubt that I “might not know enough to write this one.”

But you know what? I love this book. Naturally enough, I hope other people do too, but regardless, I’m glad I wrote it. At this point, the beta reader comments have been processed. At the turn of the year, the manuscript will go to an editor for one last pass, and then it will be “done.”

Kris says:

Commerce comes later, after the art is finished. Then you must sell what you’ve done. As it is. And take the risk that the audience might not like it.

The risk is real, believe me, and it’s scary, but that’s the way the system works. Finger crossed!

So the novel-in-progress — a near-future thriller — went out to beta readers in November, and by the end of the month I received four sets of comments. The overall reaction was pleasingly positive, and the two issues I’d been most concerned about turned out not to be issues at all. The comments I did receive are all helpful. Several have already been applied to the latest draft as I work through my list — but you know what? Except for one item, everyone focused their comments on different aspects of the story.

This isn’t a bad thing at all. What it means to me is that the overall story works pretty darn well, that there aren’t major issues, and that different people just want more detail on different things.

Of course it isn’t necessary to address every comment a beta reader makes. It’s the prerogative of the writer to leave things as they are, to change them a little or a lot, or to go in a completely different direction than the beta reader suggests.

But what to do if one reader has real problems with a critical part of the story that the other beta readers didn’t question at all? That’s the situation I found myself in. It was tempting to shrug off the criticism. After all, no novel gets glowing reviews from everyone who tries it. Some books just don’t work for certain people.

I let the critical comments sit for a few days, and then I made myself go over them again, while reconsidering the reader, the reader’s preferences, and his reaction to the rest of the novel.

In this case, my beta reader has been an enthusiastic supporter of my work for years, he’s critiqued me before, is a writer himself, was generous with praise for almost all of the manuscript, and gave solid reasons to back his opinions. He’s also a good stand-in for the most demanding corner of my target market.

So should I listen to him, even though my three other readers were okay with the scene? My answer to that was an emphatic “yes!”

Will I be able to address all of his concerns? That was more like a “maybe.”

The challenge with the problem scene is that the protagonist needs to hold onto some level of agency — that his actions and choices determine the outcome — but because of the situation, the element of agency is elusive. Stuff is happening, but the ability of the protagonist to affect it is minimal — kind of like being tumbled in the white water of a breaking wave, when all you can do is roll with the forces around you and hope you don’t get crushed. So in this scene the element of agency is primarily in the relationships between the protagonist and other characters: how he handles the stress, the choices he makes, and what he learns from them.

I wasn’t sure I could address these issues in a different way, but I decided it was worth experimenting with the scene, to see what I could come up with.

So yesterday I spent the entire day rewriting the target section. I was completely involved with it, even while I knew that the new material wasn’t really working out all that well. I’ve been at this game long enough to know that sometimes you have to toss a lot of words around before you find the right ones to use, especially in a situation like this, where the subtleties of dialogue, discovery, and realization are so important. At the end of the day, I’d addressed most of my friend’s concerns, but I was pretty sure that what I had was kind of a hash.

I re-read it after dinner, and yes, it was a mess. So I started in on it again, just as obsessed as I’d been during the day, but I’d had a new insight, a better understanding of the possible choices and the necessary sequence of events, and at that point I was able to drop some of the complications, which tends to be a good thing for me.

So is the scene better? Well, I haven’t actually re-read it since 2AM this morning, and I’m not sure I’ve had enough sleep to properly evaluate it. But I’m glad I ran the experiment. The simple fact that I was deeply involved in the revision effort tells me that it probably needed to be done.

The problem with the word-count-per-day goal — that is, swearing to oneself to write a thousand or two-thousand words everyday — is that to be successful you have to have a pretty good idea of what happens next in your story.

It’s no problem at all to write a thousand or two-thousand words of useless rambling thoughts. It’s also fairly easy to write a thousand or two-thousand words when you know exactly what comes next, and it’s a scene you’re feeling, and the voice of the characters and tone of the story is firmly established in your mind.

But what happens when you have no clear idea of the next scene? I’ve got eight published novels, with four more in various stages of development, but I still find myself in this situation all the time — even when I have a rough plan, even when I can see some of the scenes I want to hit down the road. Somehow I have to figure out an interesting way to get the protagonist from where s/he is, to, well, somewhere else, and stir in some conflict and/or mystery while I’m at it. But all too often I feel utterly clueless on how to do this.

So I sit down to just write — you know the formula: trust the subconscious, type away, something will come. Hrmmm…

Does this work for you?

Very rarely, I’ll discover useful plot lines this way. Mostly though, it doesn’t get me anywhere. So I wander about the house. Check email. Check ebook sales stats. Check twitter. Check facebook. Check G+. Shut off the wi-fi and try to write… I can spend hours like this, and then quite often, around three in the afternoon, a switch gets flipped on and suddenly I’m writing useful words!

Sometimes the switch doesn’t get flipped to “on” until nine or ten o’clock at night. In the past year I’ve had some extremely useful midnight writing sessions.

It’s pretty clear that, for me at least, ideas need to percolate. I wish it weren’t so. I wish I could sit down and know what comes next, and write it, and then move on to another project. I wish I didn’t squander so much time that could be put to productive use doing other things. But it is what it is, and I’ve been dealing with the process long enough that, despite the frustrations, I can remain fairly confident that the words will eventually come.

Does any of this sound familiar? How do you deal with the question of what comes next?

When I’m revising and polishing a manuscript, I read it aloud. Not just once, either. I’ll go through it paragraph by paragraph, and when something gets changed, I’ll go back and re-read the changed section along with the preceding and following sentences. If I’ve done a lot of changes, I’ll re-read the whole chapter again, aloud. (Obsessive? Moi?)

Hearing the words lets me hear the rhythm, and usually makes the clunky repetitions really stand out. It also reveals the sentences that are fine if they’re read with the correct expression, but which don’t work so well if one is just “reading through.” Those usually get changed.

Being curious how many other writers are read-alouders, I did what anyone in the modern world would do: I queried twitter.

Writers: when revising & polishing, do you read your work aloud?

Only one of those who replied confessed to not reading aloud at all. Most who answered read aloud to some degree or in some way. Here are some samples:

* Only reading dialogue aloud

* Only reading dialogue and difficult passages aloud

* Reading aloud to a significant other. (This one boggles me: to have an SO with such patience!)

* Having a computer read back the manuscript.

I’m intrigued by this last one. The way I work, I would need to read and re-read with my own voice, because I go over the same words so many times, but I can definitely see the advantage of hearing a computer reading back the manuscript on the last go-through. First, because its “eye” isn’t going to skip over the repeated words or incorrect verb tenses, so you will hear them. And second, because a good human reader can make bad writing sound decent, but I don’t think the flat voice of a machine is going to do that.

I’ll read expressively when I start revising, but at some point I try to go over things in a flat, non-expressive voice to see if the flow is still there.

Thanks to all those on twitter who responded! I’m heading off now, to read and revise.

The work-in-progress has reached the point where I’m holding quite a few plot threads in my metaphorical hands while trying to decide just how to weave them together as I approach the story’s climax. Each plot thread needs to make sense all the way up to the big event at the end. Each character needs to have something logical, meaningful, and interesting to do. It all can’t be too obvious and it can’t happen too easily. At the same time I must resist introducing anymore complexities or characters than those I’m already dealing with. The goal is to wind it up, not wind it out through more and more pages.

Over the last couple days I’ve been writing bits and pieces of narrative and dialog, trying to figure out what everyone’s doing, and how all their little events, conflicts, needs, and desires fit together. I’m getting closer, but this would be a really good time for my subconscious to present me with an “Ah ha!” moment that sends he on a long, exhausting writing binge.

Then again, I’m exhausted right now from just thinking about it.

1. Sit down at laptop, ready to work.

2. Realize mouse is still upstairs. Go get it.

3. While upstairs, check email on desktop; process some photos; look for a file; realize file is on laptop.

4. Go downstairs to get file from laptop.

5. Realize mouse is still upstairs. Go get it.