Stream of consciousness writing about writing.

Home writing yesterday.

The following was a stream of consciousness I kept going throughout the day, for which 90% of you won't be interested, and 10% won't be interested in 90% of it:


It's noon. Had to close the curtains because the blowing leaves were distracting me.  Opened a bag of white cheddar popcorn to eat a few kernels; two/thirds of the bag later, I close it with a great display of willpower.  I'm staring at the screen.  Shall I bring the book up, and fiddle with it for awhile?  Start with some fresh material?   Do I lean back on the pillows and just let it come to me? What if I fall asleep?   Change rooms?  My bedroom seems to be the most inspirational somehow,  but if I go upstairs Linda will want me to start cleaning.  Besides, her friends are showing up soon.  Check the internet again?  Hmmmm.   I still have some popcorn left.  NO!  I will resist until later!  The wind is shaking the windows.  How am I supposed to write with the wind shaking the windows?  O.K.  Bringing the novel up on screen to tweak.  Get myself in the mood.  Spend the required five minutes...Hey, I've got another bag of popcorn, it wouldn't hurt...NO!  Check watch.  Half hour has gone by and no new words.  Spend ten minutes tinkering.  Going upstairs to lay on the bed and imagine the new scene; but first I need to read a couple of chapters leading up to it. Leave the popcorn behind. Walk by Linda on way to room, busily sweeping and looking stressed.  I'm still ignoring what she isn't saying.  I start warming up my earplugs  because she's watching Judge Judy, Judge Tom, Dick and Harry...whatever, there are dozens of these shouty nasty judges and low lifes in front of them. Linda and I are incompatible.  Hey, I can't write with that shouting going on!  Put in earplugs.  Check watch, 45 minutes gone and all I've done is some tinkering.  O.K. Ready to start thinking about beginning to contemplate some real writing. But first, check the internet. That was a waste. Nothing new.  Stock market went up for once.  It's 1:00 and I haven't really started.

Wrote for an hour in the darkness of the bedroom, earplugs on.  Added a thousand words to a few of the proceeding chapters, to explain what about to happen with the new chapter.  Brought the laptop downstairs -- and the earplugs-- cause I know the ladies upstairs will be laughing loudly.  I'm on a bit of a roll, finally.  Checking the internet.  Nothing new.  Is there ever?  Going to close my eyes for a few moments and try to finally get started on the new chapter.  Hey, I just noticed -- I type so much faster than I used to.

Two hours later I've finished up an entire new chapter, rough.  Almost 2000 words.  As I suspected, I still have another new chapter to write, which I'm going to try to do this evening. Then -- I hope to god this is the last new material that is structural. The book is now almost 115,000 words, which is bigger than I wanted it.  I've finished off the bag of popcorn.  Going to take a small break.  Check the internet and lay down for a couple of minutes, and think about the next chapter and what I'm trying to accomplish.  I can't believe how easy this is all coming to me.  The ladies upstairs managed to get through my earplugs once or twice -- whatever are they doing?  Shudder.  The house is creaking from the wind.  Anyway, back to the book.  I know I've made it better -- I've added motivation for all the characters so they're all not just following Cobb around.  In order to do that, I basically had to construct a whole new part of the plot, establishing those characters and then later chapters to complete their stories.  That has added a quarter in size to the book.  So extra material to make the book better, good.  One quarter bigger? Not so good. Certainly means I can cut anything I want and still have enough words.

Finished up the second new chapter, and again I think it works.  The emotional part is hard, but it's better when you know the characters.  I think in the first couple of drafts, the emotions were more clunky because I didn't know who they were and how they fit into the plot.  It's 9:00 so I've been at this for 9 hours -- about 5000 words, or so. So once again, I think I have all the parts in place, but I've thought that a dozen times before.  Remembered one last thing, and added another half page.  NOW I think it's all there.  The question now is, what do I do from here?  I've got another day off tomorrow, so I think I'm going to look for Cobb's voice in the second half of the book.  The whole second half of the book could probably be polished more.  I keep saying I'm finished, but it really does feel like I need to polish this some more -- look for any chance to improve, but more or less go with the book.

I have written a few notes about how I want the next rewrite to go:

1.)  First and foremost.  Look for reactive moments.  Reactive moments are gold, never let one pass with reacting.  Too often I'll do a "this happened, and then this happened"  instead of "this happened and "Holy Cow!  Look what happened!"  Let the characters speak, react to what's going on around them.

2.) Descriptive moments.  Any chance I have to make things clearer -- to show, to have the senses engaged -- what they see, feel, touch, smell, hear...

3.) Natural dialogue.  This is hard for me, really hard.  So I just need to read it out loud and see how it sounds.  One thing I need to do more of is actually let myself have some throwaway sentences.   Just to fill out the conversation with character interaction instead of-- 'here's what I want you all to know.'
I call this being "sloppy" and it doesn't hurt to let the book breath a little  Not make every sentence tight (despite what all the reading manuals tell you.)  I was telling a writer in writer's group that all her sentences were perfect, too perfect.  Everyone looked at me like I was off base, but I stand by it.

4.) Some more mechanical things I want to achieve: ( a.) Make the beginnings and ends of each chapter strong, even if it's just the first and last paragraph.  Don't be afraid of the exclamatory. (b.) Try to find an 'artistic' way to say something every page of the book.  Then do it again. (c.) Go through the entire book and look for active phrasing versus passive.  Trigger words -- past tense, inactive.  "Had been"  All the places where I say someone "heard" "saw" 'looked" etc. instead just coming out straight with it.  Instead of "He heard a moaning sound coming from Sandra," say "Sandra moaned."  Seems obvious.  But it slips in all the time.  (that sounded dirty.) I'm done.