Slinky Brain
Allow me to start with some general writerly updates.
As of two weeks ago, I completed the first draft of the third book in my debut series. Which is a pretty big Wow. Book 3 is the longest by far, but it might be my favorite.
Last week, I received the copy edits back from my editor, Michelle. A very big landmark! And aside from some weird exporting error turning all my quotation marks into double primes, there weren’t that many changes. Book 1 has gone through so much redrafting and rereading and revision that I’m always expecting the worst when things return to me, but going through the manuscript again, I’m actually starting to feel pretty confident? Hooray?
In a few weeks, the manuscript will be sent to the formatters to do the fun part, make it look pretty. I’m very excited to be working with Enchanted Ink Publishing and am definitely looking forward to the end product.
So while all those machinations are afoot in the background, what am I actually writing?
Books 2 and 3 of the series will need work, of course, and I do look forward to jumping into those again, but as of right now, I don’t think I’m quite ready. I’m at a point where I’m turning to writing instead of consuming other media as a way to occupy my time, and I want to ride that wave as long as I can, because I know that impulse isn’t going to last forever.
One of my favorite things to muse about is what characters are up to when they’re off screen. I can always tell which of my characters I’m favoring by who has the longest and most complex backstory. It’s a great way to flesh out a character in order to figure out how they became the person they are once the story begins. It also feels really indulgent.
While writing the series, I settled on 4 extra stories, detailing some off screen events that happened before and during the events of the main books. Two of them I already have “scripted,” meaning I’ve written all the dialogue, the same process I used for the main books. But the one I’m picking at now, is one I’m starting fresh, detailing the life of one of my favorite new characters who is introduced in Book 3.
This story is the first time I’m attempting to draft the entire thing all at once, not just the dialogue, and I’m finding it a little challenging. Focusing only on dialogue forces me to use the things characters say as the primary tool of defining who they are, as well as keeping much of the story progression to exchanges of dialogue. I love that. For this story, it hasn’t been as possible/easy to do that. The character in question is on her own for a good portion of the events, and even when she does speak, she’s pretty succinct. But I’m embracing the challenge, and having fun as I go.
Even though I have a general outline for this story and know the main events, I’m still working with Slinky Brain. I’m highly envious of writers who can jump to different scenes at different places of a story and work that way to keep themselves unstuck. I am not like that. I have to start at the beginning, and end at the end. Linear all the way through. I’ve tried to jump forward or draft test scenes before, but the anxiety takes over. “What if this scene no longer works when I get there in the plot? I don’t really know these characters yet, how do I know what they want at this moment?”
AND EVEN WHEN I do know exactly what is happening in the scene, I still can’t consider the following scene until the current one is written. I call it Slinky Brain. It stretches out to a point, before the tension is too much, and it has to gather itself back at the start. For me, each scene is a stretch of the slinky, and I can’t begin to formulate what next until all my rainbow coils are gathered up again.
It has its pros and cons. The Fear of the Unknown can be pretty intimidating, and as a writer, that kind of dread can often cast shadows over the entire work. “If I can’t see how this comes together now, maybe it never will,” etc.
Anecdote: When I was re-learning how to drive after a good decade of living in a city where I didn’t need a car, I would essentially be on anxiety-fueled autopilot whenever I was behind the wheel, white knuckles, no blinking, the works. When I get to where I’d been going, sometimes it felt like I had blacked out for the past 20 minutes in the car.
Writing can sometimes be like that. You walk away from a sprint feeling like you have no idea what you just put down and certain you’re going to have to get rid of it all and you just wasted an hour.
But that feeling fades. I promise. After moments like that, when I go back and read my work, I’m almost always able to find something I like.
That cycle has calmed down somewhat the more and more I do this, but Slinky Brain remains. And I’m coming to terms with the idea that that may just be the type of writer I am. It’s much easier to embrace it than fight it, I can tell you that.
Now, I fear I must be going. I’ve got characters to name!
