Laurie R. King’s guest post: It’s a Crime II: Plots; or, The Part in the Middle

A couple of months ago, I was having plot problems. This is what happens when you can’t outline for the life of you, and also when a book is being written when your husband is ill and things are crazy and, well, when life happens. But even if life had been normal and calm, I probably would have had plot problems because the book had five separate and fully realized points of view, which meant five separate and fully realized story lines that not only had to run in balanced and interesting parallel tracks, but to intersect at given intervals, and finally come together in a great crescendo at the end.

And it wasn’t—or, they weren’t. I had finished the first draft in good time, back in April, after which I’d talked it over in New York with my editor, who told me some things I knew, and some things I hadn’t seen, and gave me her invaluable viewpoint (which, being based on the question, Will it sell? acts as a necessary counterpoint to my own attitude, which is based on the question, Is it fun?) The editor is a writer’s First Reader. If she doesn’t see something, if she doesn’t like something, it’s a good bet that nine out of ten readers won’t get or like it either. And since, much as I enjoy the writing process, I don’t spend a year on a story just to entertain myself and my patient family, I figure it’s nice to keep the readers in mind at some point before the book is finished.

And the hard fact is, readers appreciate a plot that makes sense, even when the writer herself would much rather play with the characters and then send them off into the rosy mist of sunset with a cheery, “Have a happily ever-after, guys.”

So: plot difficulties.

At precisely this time the good folk running the Book Passage crime writing conference wrote to say that they had scheduled me for a 90 minute discussion with Tim Maleeney about, yes, plot. Doesn’t Fate just love to rub it in?

Whenever I’m desperate for something to say, I look around to see who I can steal from. I picked out one of my favorite books on writing, John Gardner’s The Art of Fiction—I know it’s subtitled “Notes on Craft for Young Writers” and I’m neither young nor even very new, but it’s never too late to learn, right?—and sure enough, he has a chapter all about plotting. I make my way through that, and I read:

Since plotting is ordinarily no hasty process but something the writer broods and labors over, trying out one approach, then another, carrying the ideas around with him, musing on it casually as he drifts off to sleep…

But, but—that doesn’t help any, that’s what I’m doing now! You mean to tell me even John Gardner had to wrestle his plots to the ground, one point at a time?

Sigh.

My books are three parts first draft and five parts rewrite—not necessarily in the page count, but in the effort. The first draft is a 300 page sketch of what the book ought to look like; the rewrite is when I try to make it actually get there. During that time I use stacks of PostIts, make time lines for the wall, write out the sequence for the overall story and for each of the characters, back-story and present. All this sound and fury (lots of fury) is like a diesel train engine getting its line of cars into motion: much slippage of wheels and billowing of smoke, but the burden jerks, and inches forward, and rattles and moves and fights the urge of inertia.

That’s my mind getting the 390 pages of closely linked action and personality into motion, huge effort that only slowly shows results, until the train is in motion, then picks up speed, and moves from a walk to a jog to a run until last week I sat down to rewrite the final scene…

And The End will come on Friday.

Meg Waite Clayton: 2,000 Words or 2:00, and Writing Friends

The history of my own writing starts with a little brown lunch bag. Like the character of Linda in my novel, The Wednesday Sisters, my first writing teacher—at a college extension class—dumped a bag of "interesting things" out over the table and told us to write for five minutes about anything that spilled. She swore we wouldn’t have to read (just as Linda does in The Wednesday Sisters when she’s pushing the sisters to write at the picnic table in the park). Then she called on me to read first.

Which is the good news. If she hadn’t, I’d have ducked out before she could. It had taken all the nerve I had just to get to that class, to admit that, yes, I dreamed of writing novels.

To make a long story short from that point, I’m just going to say it: Ten Years. That’s how long it took me from dumped bag to first novel on bookstore shelves. The thing that kept me going: writing friends.

Much like the Wednesday Sisters in the book, my writing group of four, when we first started meeting, could count among us only a single travel piece in a small distribution magazine. We can now claim seven books published or being written under contract with a major publisher (seven! it still delights me to say that!), and numerous article, essays, stories and poems in print. We all have published now, and we all have agents. Was there something in the coffee where we used to meet in Nashville?

The one thing we've all brought to the writing table is persistence, or what I like to call the absurd ability to believe in ourselves long beyond the time any rational being could do so.

I'll say it again: Ten Years. TEN YEARS. And sadly, I was the quick one. But the good news is that when your paperback comes out with "National Bestseller" splashed across the top of it, you REALLY appreciate it.

My writing routine is pretty simple: I sit down and write, every morning. 2,000 words or 2:00. If I have 2,000 words by 10:30, I can party the rest of the morning and all afternoon. (Although if I have 2,000 words by 10:30, I am staying glued to that chair for as long as that blessing lasts.)

Every morning!

Really. EVERY MORNING.

Bobbie retold on this blog a story I tell at readings about how I sat down to write one morning and got up a few hours later with the guts of The Wednesday Sisters - really it was a blessed writing day. But I tell that story not because it was this great moment of inspiration, but because it came on a day when I would rather have been scrubbing toilets, when, if I didn't make myself sit down and write every day, I would not have sat down.

Also, it makes a much better story than the many mornings I sit down and not much comes.

I work mostly on a keyboard, but I start most things in my journal. The beauty of a journal, for me, is that it's not anything, I'm just doodling. It's less intimidating than a blank Word document. For me, getting something started is the hardest part, so I start anywhere I can. I often just write whatever I'm thinking. The journal entry that turns out to be the kick off entry for The Wednesday Sisters starts, literally, with the words, "Feeling incredibly well-run-dry today." A pity party, yes, but also ink on the page. A start.

I have lots more about how I write, the little things I keep around me for comfort and inspiration, and how I research, outline (not just yes, but in several different ways), and revise on the writing page on my website. Click on the desk drawers on the page for tips on how to get started and other resources.

And come back Friday, for a post about publishing. - Meg