Same goes with manuscripts and characters.

My current WIP is in draft status, but it has scented an end of a sort, and my creative engine wants that end to happen as fast as possible–which is fine for a discovery draft. But I’m past discovery draft time and into “let’s make this presentable” time. Once you’ve got a handle on what the theme of your story is, your scenes have to express and enforce that theme in some way. But characters don’t always want to stay on task. There are greener pastures just out their windows, and they can see. And boy, do they want to explore said green pastures.

One of the things they tell you as a young or beginning writer is to play games of “what if.” And those games are great for building worlds and making plots and creating stories. But when it comes time to make sense of those stories, you have to pick a scenario and stick with it. You pick a worldview and the scenes in your story have to support that worldview, so those tangents your characters are begging you to follow–sorry, kids. rest stop only. Back on the bus, because school’s not out yet.

If you don’t yet know what your story’s theme or worldview is, consider asking, as my second grader does constantly, “Why do I have to do this?” Your story, like my second grader, needs to fulfill some requirement. Granted, your story’s requirement will probably be less “basic math and reading comprehension and spelling skills” and closer to “love brings people together” or “luck favors the prepared” (although come to think of it, my second grader is learning that lesson). If your theme isn’t yet clear, feel free to wander off on some of those promising-looking tangents, but once you identify what it is that you’re trying to say with your story, get back on the bus, or you risk letting your story languish on side roads, and readers can’t find you if you’re too far from that interstate.

Today, I’m the bug. On the interstate. I can see a deadline approaching (with the word “Peterbilt” emblazoned across the grille) and I’m flapping my little ladybug wings as hard and fast as I can over the keyboard in hopes that, like a quantum butterfly, I can effect change. Mostly the change from “X words” to “(X+5000) words*2^The End” words.

This one is research-intensive. I’m constantly tabbed-over to wikipedia, and Google Books (and lemmetellya–whatever issues I as an author or the Author’s Guild or publishing companies have with Google Books, it is an INVALUABLE research tool for extant material and out of print primary source material. If I had to plumb the library for this, it’d be weeks and probably more than a couple bucks). Also, there are a hundred and ten other sites I’m constantly flitting to and from, including the library in meatspace.

The trick to researching is that you only research what you need to continue. It’s too easy to dig into something just for its own sake and end up two weeks into the project and not have written a damn word. But I got a handle on this one.  And now I’m gonna go read a little bit more.  For research purposes. No, really, I need this…

Part of the reason we are so on the ball this year is that We Have A Plan. Mr. Xandra and I sat down sometime back in October or November and decided we needed a Garden Vision, instead of a half-assed, “Wouldn’t it be nice to have fresh vegetables and cut down on the grocery bills a little?” idea that never quite pans out. Except in zucchini. Man, if money were measured to the zucchini standard, you could call me Croesus. We drew charts. On graph paper. And we planned out how many boxes we wanted, as well as what would go in ‘em. So after the Snowpocalypse finally melted away and the sun remembered that people live here and kinda need to see it every once in a while, we knew where we were going and we could hit the ground (literally) running (metaphorically).  I’ve recently begun to adopt some of this to my writing, because next to that feeling of  writing “The End,” there’s nothing quite like the feeling of, “yeah, I know where I’m going with this.” When you’ve got headlights in the dark, you can punch the accelerator.

Now, I come from a long history of pantsing. Back when my stories were written in crayon, I had fantastic starts that ended up in really random places, often dead-ends. I still go through multiple revisions, and I think I’ve probably as of now trashed twice as many words as I’ve kept. When I strike out into The Unknown, I usually do it without a map.

But lately, I’ve had to modify my adventuring into the mists. Writing time is always at a premium, and I have a backlog of ideas and a backlog of stories partially written or in varying stages of revision that aren’t doing anybody any good sitting on my home network.  So I said, this time, I’m doing it different.

Now usually, the career pantser will interject with the horror story of trying, and failing, to navigate by plot outline or something. And in the past, that’s been the case for me. Once a story’s plotted, it’s out of my head, and I have little desire to actually write it.  It goes in the file for “Save for the future when I need ideas.” Only problem is…I haven’t run out of ideas. Ideas are the one thing a writer rarely runs out of. But this time, I’m doing it different. I’m not taking a map.  I’m taking a compass.

Our garden plan is an awesome thing in theory. In practice, well, no plan survives contact with the enemy, as the saying goes, and this is the case with both the garden plan and the WIP outline. What the garden plan did was give us dimensions and boundaries in which to work. It gave us a compass and a sextant to find true north, and showed us the boundaries of our world.  That’s what I’ve taken with me in my WIP. I don’t have an outline plotted to the nth detail.  But I know where the shady spot is, where the swampy bits are, and which bits of green are the weeds.

It won’t tell me the exact path to take, but it will show me which ones are growing in the right direction. The steps I take are part of the discovery.

As a writer, it is mega-important for you to figure out your own personal flavor and brand of gut-rot.  I know, ewwwww, right?  But writer’s gut-rot can eat into your work and your writing and your career until you wake up one day and realize that this thing you once loved, you now hate and don’t know why.  So many writer-friends have told similar stories about something in their process, their career, their writer’s life, or elsewhere that unequivocally rotted out their passion from the inside. And if something is rotting in there, it needs to change.

That gut-rot might be a step in your process, like plotting (or not plotting, or the way you plot), or the efforts you put into promo (whether or not you’re published yet), a particularly draining critique group, a toxic business or personal relationship, or even unreasonable personal expectations (I’m not saying aim for the ground, but if your goals include “NYT bestseller list” or “XYZ publisher acquires me/puts me in lead title slot/spends millions on promo for my title” you are making your success dependent on factors not wholly in your power to control.

Which brings us back around to my broken streak.  It started last year, when I was whinging to Mr. Xandra about my six whole readers (honestly, I’m not sure if there are even six of you out there, LOL!  And I wasn’t whinging about you, I was whinging about the lack of more of you) and why didn’t I see more traffic to my blog. Pragmatist that he is, shut me up by telling me, “Duh, readers want something to read.”

Yep.  If it wasn’t for the hot air, my head would collapse in on itself sometimes.  I mean, I knew this stuff, I’m a smart chick, right? (Don’t answer that)

So I very quietly made a promise to myself that, come hell or high water, I’d make sure to post something in my blog once a week.  If I couldn’t post on the same day (which I often can’t as schedules for moms of little kids are fluid, at best, regimental at worst, and neither offer much in the way of free, quiet, quality, tranquil time in which to ruminate intelligently a la blog), then I’d use the handy-dandy magical “schedule post” button to make it cleverly look like I was showing up once a week, even if I was neck-deep in edits (which I was at one point) or otherwise occupied (several times).  I have (mostly) kept to this goal, and the goal remained something that would be in my control.  Last week, I should have scheduled my post earlier and been done with it before my troubles hit, but it’s a lesson I shall take with me into this week.  I can’t control how many blog readers I get–that’s up to anybody who stumbles across this out-of-the-way cul-de-sac of the internet.  But I can make it a place where readers have something to read.

Now, speaking of something to read…there’s a story that isn’t writing itself.

I’ve been submitting manuscripts since 1998.  Granted, I write slow, and many of my submissions have been to traditional publishing (and via snailmail, to boot), so it’s not as if glaciers move much slower than the process. Every time I do this, I get a little thrill of accomplishment and let myself breathe a sigh of relief at a job done.  But the more I do it, the less time that satisfaction at something being finished feeling lasts.  At first, it was weeks or even a month that I could ride the high of finishing a manuscript and putting together a submission.

Now? I take the rest of the day “off” and clean my bathrooms.

By the time I hear back on this one, it will have been old news.  I’ll be mid-way (optimistically) into my next project.  On a different track, and riding a completely different train of thought.  The process of publication is a long one.  An author’s existence is front-loading at its finest.  The bulk of our creative work is done before the process can even start.  Of course, once it does, it’s not a downhill-coast to mad profits by any stretch.  At the same time we’re “resting” on our laurels over a completed work, we’re percolating the artistic coffeepot for the next project, while simultaneously anxiously awaiting revisions, edits, copy, and covers.  And that doesn’t even mention the promo.

A writer’s life is constant running ahead of the curve.  Or trying to.  When there are years between creation and publication (and even more years between publication and payment), you’ve gotta have a few things in the hopper to keep you going.

As a result, I tend to write in fits and starts. Or rather, make progress on writing-related activities in a manner of activity better suited for making half a bundt cake disappear in one sitting.  When the glut is long enough to get me from start to finish, this can be a good thing–I sit down, fork in hand, cake plate in front of me, and devour a whole story’s worth of cake  in one protracted binge of writing.  I have the same taste for cake, the same “tone” at the end of the story as I did at the start, and I’m left exhausted, bloated, but with a complete story.  And also really glad it’s a story and not a cake for reals, otherwise I’d be in a sugar-coma and have guilty cake crumbs all over the place.  But, as after the cake-binge, there comes regret.  I look at the disaster that is my house and despair the same way I’d look at that empty cake plate and feel the guilt over the binge lodge right down there in the ol’ upper-GI tract.

So to break the cycle, I’ve adopted a schedule.  I never thought I’d do it (I’m no slave to the calendar, maaaan!).  I still have a hard time conceiving of the logic of actually stopping writing when I feel like I’m on a roll.  But I do it.  Lots of writers set goals for themselves and then stop at those goals no matter what.  And you know what?  I’ve found out it works, sorta.

Some writers set themselves page goals or time goals–and when they’ve reached their goal, they stop.  Flat-out, no ands ifs or buts.  I can’t be one of those people that stops in mid-sentence if I’ve hit ten minutes or 2 pages.  Since I usually use scenes to mark time and progress, I’m pretty much insured against the need to do so.  But it doesn’t prevent me from reaching that goal and realizing that yeah, I’d like to write more, or keep going on this one wound.  And wouldn’t you know it, that feeling seems to follow me from day to day.  I’m making real progress, instead of just vomiting up a brain mess.  And that’s hella better than cake.  Even half a bundt cake in one sitting.

Messages are like sermons–they best belong in pulpits and not in pulp fiction.  There’s nothing I hate worse than to be jolted out of a story with a thwap upside the head over an Issue.  Or the Moral Of The Story writ large in flaming letters.  Consequently, that’s the last thing I want to do to somebody else, either.  I’ll keep it in my pants if you’ll do the same.

Finding your message is one of the toughest parts of the writing process and your writing career.  Figuring out what it is that you’ve got to say to the world.  Some writers might never be able to articulate it, and some don’t care.  I’m one of the ones that do care, though, and for me, it’s very important that I be able to articulate just what message I’m trying to send the world when I put pixel to paper.  I’ve been involved in a six-month quest to figure out what I truly want to say with my writing, and I think I’m finally beginning–just now beginning–to scratch the surface.

The message hasn’t come from the obvious places–good messages never do.  God speaks most profoundly the furthest away from the cathedral, and Buddha is found in the pebbles on the muddy riverbank.  The message has also led me in directions I didn’t think I could or should go, which tells me that I’m on track.  A big part of having something to say is to know that it’s going to take a little intestinal fortitude to open yer trap and say it.    This is the true writer’s journey.  Oh, sure, that thing where you take your heroes on a quest to Mordor and walk ‘em through the fires of Mt. Doom is important enough…but it will be something less if the changes you force on them don’t also change you.

There’s nothing a writer likes better than accumulating words.  I just came down not too long ago from a period of 30 days where I had to produce 1667 words a day (or sweat catching up).  And lemme tellya, days where I pulled ahead, or got my words in early, those were good days. Thing is, though, when you’ve been doing this for longer than a week, you’ll start to notice something.  Everybody has writing goals and tasks that sound like the easiest thing in the world–”Write two pages” or “Write a thousand words.” And they inevitably finish with, “…and then I’ll have a novel!”  If I just let the snow fall–it doesn’t take work, it just takes gravity.

Haha.  I mock because I am jealous.  Because no, in ten weeks, I will not have a novel (and chances are, most of the rest of you won’t, either).   If I just let the snow fall…I still won’t have a snowman.  Oh, yes, at the end of ten weeks, I’ll have enough words to fill the pages between the front and back covers of a novel, but it will be a long ways away from being a novel.  And that blanket of snow on the ground is only a snowman in its unrealized, unrolled, unpacked, and un-balled form.

Accumulating pages and words is a great exercise for getting your brain into the practice of expressing what you want to say, but there’s a world’s more work in doing it. As anyone who’s participated in NaNo can tell you, it does give you a rush to realize you’ve created.

But I’m staring out my window at a white world and thinking that accumulation of words and pages is a lot like the accumulation of snow.  It’s beautiful when it’s happening, and there’s a myriad of good things that will come of it…but sooner or later, you have to go get the shovel and put it where it belongs.

Goals are helpful to a writer–they give us something to shoot for.  As November teaches/reminds us (for those of us who do NaNo), when you’re in the middle of 50,000 words, all you see is words all around you and none of them are “The End.”  Goals remind us why we’re writing, where we’re going, and maybe give us a bit of a hint as to how we’re going to get there, and why “there” was the “there” we picked in the first place.  So let’s take a walk through my own New Year’s Eve activities (besides making Buffalo Chicken Dip and watching Dick Clark not age while the ball dropped).

I started out like any writer. What do I want in the new year?  My answers–a sale, an agent, a contract, a 3-book deal, a big(ger) advance, to make a bestseller list.  Good start, right?  Ambitious, especially given the market, the recession, and the industry, but okay, shoot for the moon and miss and you still get to fly, right?  The savvy writer will tell you that those aren’t goals.  I want all those things, but they can’t be my goals–they can’t be the goals of a working writer–because I can’t make them happen.  I can facilitate, sure, and I can pay my buck and take my chances, but I can’t really control the outcome of any of that list.  And that means they can’t be goals.

Goals are what I have to do as a writer, and what I can do as a writer.  So let’s try it again.  I want to complete manuscripts.  To submit said manuscripts, and to promote any manuscripts that get turned into books.  I want to sell books.  These are better, because I do have control over finishing my manuscripts, albeit that control may be a large quantity of duct tape, my ass, and the office chair all wrapped up in each other.  Still, not refined enough.  Nobody scores a goal without knowing where the goalpost is.  Goals must have something measurable to them.  Something concrete.  Something that let’s the Forrest Gump in me know when to stop running.

“Complete manuscripts” is a fine goal to have, but how will I know when I’m done?  Back to the drawing board.  I want to complete six manuscripts, and submit at least four of them.  I can’t control whether or not they’ll come out in 2010, or even if they’ll be accepted wherever I submit them, but I can control their existence.  I can complete them.  I can research which publishers or agents are best suited to what manuscripts.  I even have a list of the ones I’ve got simmering that are both far enough along that I can finish them, and a scant handful of interesting agents that I’d like to read more about, so I can control where I submit.  I can also control promotion of my existing books (both of which are still available at Liquid Silver Books)–not sales, because I can’t force people to buy a book–but promotion.  I can create a promo plan and execute it, which is what I’m doing.

Now–NOW, I have a list of concrete and tangible goals.  I have goalposts.  I have…a plan.

New Year’s Resolutions hardly ever work out because they’re nice to declare in January, the declaration is the most important thing about the resolution.  Continuing Resolutions imply resolve.

During the latter part of my writing process, and especially if I’ve hit a rough patch, I’ll find things to do besides writing.  Like laundry, cleaning the bathrooms, suddenly cataloguing all my re-purposed gift bags, indexing the spare buttons I’ve saved off clothing for years and years…yeah.  I think, though, that in this part of the process, I’m using writing to avoid the holiday preparations I know I have to make.  Like wrapping presents.  I’ve already dilly-dallied on holiday cards so much that I don’t think I could get ‘em out now if I tried.  Yes, I know holiday cards are a great way to let your friends and family know you care, and are a great excuse to do one of those yearly newsletters and include pics of the kids…but there’s something about holiday cards that I just don’t like doing.  Oh, I like getting them–I like seeing pics of friends’ kids and finding out their news from the year.  And you’d think that being a writer, I’d be publishing epic volumes of What I Did On My Summer/Spring/Fall/Winter Vacation.  But maybe it’s because I’m a writer that I have that sense that I need to stay out of the limelight and let my characters do their thing.  However, I think most of my family would be happier never meeting some of my characters.  But me…I think they’re much more interesting than I am.