I like baking. Better than cooking–the results are so much yummier. My kids like baking–so much so that they’ve branched out into “experiment baking”. They take ingredients used for, say, chocolate chip cookies and, without following a recipe, without measuring, they throw the dough together. You can imagine that the results vary: sometimes the cookies turn out deliciously well; sometimes they… well, don’t.

With my writing, it turns out that I’ve been experiment baking. I’ve taken a broad concept (i.e.: the hope of ending up with chocolate chip cookies) and I’ve thrown a bunch of ingredients onto the page, with little thought, less measurement and, fingers crossed, hoped for the best. It seems, though, that understanding  what goes into your scene, with the right proportions, is a better recipe for a successful story.

My concept:

What would happen to a girl who grew up without religion, is introduced to it in the most violent way and then has to reconcile what she sees of it with her own experiences? (Ok, ok, that’s the whole book, but work with me… let’s focus on a scene…)

Ingredients:

• a girls’ school in the Second World, abandoned by force
• Lyra learning the slimmest bit about Islam (having learned the slimmest bit about Christianity earlier in the novel).
• Lyra and David are in the clutches of small-time insurgents who are different from our villain, Simon Moto’s terrorists, but they are still dangerous.
• a 12-year-0ld boy named Pir who interacts with Lyra in naive and honest way

The first experiment “batch”:

Lyra questions Pir, about Mohammed, the unseen leader of their group:

“Is Mohammed your brother? Or your father?”

Pir is quick to shake his head. “No, no, no! Mohammed is like our imam.”

“Imam?”

“Well, not really, he is not a real one, but he should be,” Pir is vehement.

“What’s an imam?”

Pir looks at her, uncomprehending. He searches her face, as if to see that she’s joking. “You do not know imam?”

Lyra shakes her head.

“It is our leader. You know at mosque.”

“Mosque?” Lyra feels off kilter, like she’s failing an exam for which she should have studied.

“You do not know mosque?”

There’s a taste of the final product, but you can’t call it a successful experiment…

I tried again, this time focusing on the ingredients and right proportions. For example, if I want to (barely) introduce Lyra to Islam, is the concept of an imam the best way forward? If I want to set up that the girls’ school has been abandoned, I should get to it right away.

Here’s my second “batch”:

 “Was this a schoolhouse?” Lyra asks. She steps over broken desks, and splinters of wooden chairs that face the back wall and a curiously intact chalkboard. An English grammar lesson survives in dusty chalk. “It’s”= a contraction of “it is”. Example: It’s a beautiful day. “Its”= a possession. Example: “The dog’s bone… its bone”.

“Oh yes,” Pir answers cheerfully. “It was a girls’ school. But girls are not allowed to be learned, so they bomb it.”

Lyra, startled, stops mid-step. “What do you mean, girls aren’t allowed to be educated?” That’s a ridiculous notion, a sexist, misogynistic attitude that disappeared decades and decades ago. Of course girls deserve the same education as boys. They get the same education, and job opportunities and pay…

…In the First World, Lyra realizes.

“Girls don’t go to school here?” she asks.

“Not anymore,” he says proudly. But it is a pride that seems learned, as if he is repeating, by rote memory, what he has been told.

“Why?” Lyra asks, still dumbfounded.

Pir casts her a strange sideways glance, as if she should already know something so obvious.

“Because Allah says so.”

 “Who is Allah? Mohammed’s friend?” Lyra wants to get as much information as she can out of this boy.

Now Pir goggles at Lyra as if she has two heads, as if she breathes fire

“You do not know Allah?”

Lyra, now worried about the dangers of her own ignorance, shakes her head. She reaches into her memory, afraid she’s forgotten something useful that Annie or David may have told her. She’s learned about Prince Sol and Simon Moto, of course, and the King, but is Allah another insurgent? Is he a threat like Moto?

 “You do not know Allah, God?” Pir stands, still dumbfounded.

There’s work to be done on this, maybe another batch or three. Maybe I don’t yet have the right proportions (since there is no recipe to follow, no matter how many “how-to” books I’ve read), but at least I feel I’m no longer squeezing my eyes shut (metaphorically–gotta see to type) and hoping it will all turn out all right.

It will turn out all right in the end, despite (or because of ) my detours and experiments. I’m convinced of this because, well, my chocolate chip cookies are to die for. 🙂

Here I offer you The Beginner’s Guide to Effective, Unproductive Writing Procrastination, or, How to Waste Your Writing Time.

Conditions necessary to be successful:

• You luck out with a significant chunk of time to write. You’re pleased because it rarely happens and now you can hack away at a good portion of your story.
• You are convinced you’ll now have this novel completed in no time.
• You are alone and/or with people so considerate they will not interrupt you.

Step #1: Start later than you intended. At least 30 minutes, if not a whole hour behind your original schedule.

Step #2: At your computer, before you start writing, check out the latest news online. This is justifiable because you are a better person when you are well-versed in world events. Also, it looks like you’re working if any of those considerate people in your house happen to pass by you.

Step #3: Read over your work from your previous writing session. Some might argue this is working–it’s important to get into the flow–however, there’s only so far back you can read to justify that argument. Reading doesn’t put words on the page, so consider it an effective stall technique.

Step #4: Write a sentence or two. It does seem counter-productive to effectively procrastinating, but I assure you, you’ll feel much more accomplished in wasting your time if you actually start. Otherwise, you might justify it in your head that you’re really using your time for something else and not writing, in which case, you’re not effectively procrastinating–you’re quitting.

Step #5: Make yourself some coffee.

Step #6: Write another sentence. Three, if you feel inspired.

Step #7: You remember a question that’s lingered in your head for days but you always forget to search up the answer, so now’s your chance to Google it. (example: Is is bad to crack your knuckles?)

Step #8: Make yourself some tea. You can’t have another cup of coffee–that’s too obvious of a procrastination technique. Remember, effective procrastination means looking for subtly you can justify.

Step #9: Write a whole page. Here, you’re into it! Of course, you told yourself by this point in your writing block you’d have six pages done, but well, you’re only half way through, so you can catch up. You’re convinced you’ll be inspired and soon your fingers will fly across the keyboard.

Step #10: Repeat Steps #2-9 for the second half of your writing block.

BONUS Step: Start a blog.

Congratulations! You’ve effectively wasted precious and unrecoverable time you should have been writing. Let the guilt begin…

Trees. Damn trees.

I’m still on the action sequence (see post “Action Sequences: the Movie Version”). I should have long ago cracked that nut and moved on. But I’m not because of the damn trees.

David and Lyra are being chased; David drives their jeep off the road, hoping to slow their pursuers who are in an old car. Somehow, I got it in my head that they come to a copse of trees.

He streaks ahead, plummeting into the scrub brush, bumping over gray rocks that, like skeleton bones, poke out of the ground.. Directly in front is a copse of tall, thin pine trees.

David isn’t slowing down.

 Lyra sucks in her breath, her body rigid.

 The trees loom larger.

  “David…”

  He doesn’t respond. He drives on.

  Lyra, her eyes glued to the trees, draws her arms to cover her head.

But my vision of the landscape doesn’t include trees. It is scrub brush, as I said, and rocky ground. Where did the trees come from?

I had an earlier version where they abandon the jeep and run into the cover of the trees. That didn’t work either.

Because the trees shouldn’t be there.

I was trying to shoehorn them in. No idea why. The trees don’t appear in my first draft, so why have I been so hell bent on including them now? For added suspense? In theory, maybe but suspense only works if your readers don’t roll their eyes.

My writing job today: lumberjack.

Those trees have got to go.

In dangerous insurgent territory, David and Lyra discover they are being followed and soon a car chase ensues. They don’t yet know why they’re being pursued, but David is experienced enough to know the pursuers are up to no good and he tries to get away.

How do I write that scene?

By imagining it is already a completed scene in a big-budget movie. I picture how the action would look on screen, with no expense spared. I picture the long-shots and quick edits and even the heart-in-your-throat soundtrack.

Then I do my best to translate what’s in my head into words.

I know I didn’t succeed in draft #1:

Suddenly, David stamps on the gas, cranks the wheel and spins the car around. The tires squeal against the pavement and Lyra is thrown back against the seat. She braces herself. David floors the roaring jeep, and speeds off the way they came.

“What’s wrong?” Lyra asks. She stretches her arms to the dash.

“We will find gas another way.”

David guns the jeep; it fishtails onto the shoulder but David regains control. Lyra hears the rumble of another engine; she looks back. The gray-flaking car chases them, its growl growing loud as it approaches. The second and third cars, too, spurt to life and zoom up behind.

Lyra’s heart race; her breaths are shallow. “What’s going on, David?”
David, ramrod in his seat, hands clenched to the steering wheel, jumps the jeep over a large pothole. He pushes the jeep to its limit; its engine whines in protest, but David doesn’t let up. The souped-up clunkers are gaining. David squeals around a thin bend and Lyra screams when he misses the road. The jeep hurtles forward into the scraggy bush, but David doesn’t slow down. He hasn’t lost control.

Like most of my scenes from this first draft, the concept is there, but it’s not quite right. The version you’d picture reading that scene is nowhere near what I see in my head.

Take 2: I’ve altered the attack. Like I explained in the post “Lying Down on the Job”, I have David and Lyra stop at a gas station earlier, where the thugs first meet them. David and Lyra believe they’ve escaped conflict until a car (not three like from the first draft) from the gas station starts to follow them. I want to show David is aware and proactive, but also, in the end, outmatched.

David’s two hands again grip the steering wheel, his knuckles whitening, his body ramrod straight. Lyra copies David; she sits up and turns around. Out the back window, she sees a rusted blue car with a busted headlight barreling up the road behind them. Lyra gasps. It’s from the gas station, one of the junk heaps in the yard.

“They are coming after us,” David mutters.

He slams his foot onto the accelerator and with a screech of the engine, the jeep rockets forward, faster, faster, faster. Lyra grabs onto the roll bar, bracing herself.

“Why are they coming after us?” Lyra asks, her teeth gritted. Her stomach rolls over with fear.

“For no good purpose,” David mutters, his eyes roving between the road in front and the rear-view mirror. Lyra stares into the side mirror, her emerald eyes wide as the blue car sprints after them.

It’s catching up.

David pushes the jeep to its limit; its engine whines in protest and its frame rattles, jarring Lyra to her bones. David’s face is set in grim concentration even as his body trembles from their speed.

Then, without warning, David yells, “Hold tight!” He jams on the brakes, and yanks the steering wheel at the same time. The tires squeal on the hot pavement as the jeep whirls in a tight, 180-degree spin. David battles with the jeep’s momentum, desperate to keep all four wheels on the road. Lyra, ghost-white with fear, feels the car tip precariously in her direction; she’s mute with horror, frightened they will flip. David bangs his body against the driver’s side door to rebalance the weight and in another second, the wheels, all of them, thud firmly to the ground. In the terror of the turn, Lyra forgets about their chasers until she sees, on the other side of the road, heading the opposite direction, the busted blue car.

Better, but it doesn’t yet match what’s in my head, especially the climax of this scene. I also need to think about the length of the scene, and how much suspense to add in. I’ve learned that every word must serve the overall purpose of the story; if it doesn’t, no matter how shiny, how brilliant, how creative, it has to go. Like a director telling her actors to deliver their lines a different way, I may have to get David and Lyra to experiment a bit more.

Take 3 it is.

Self-doubt afflicts everyone at some point; it’s not the sole domain of writers. Yet I think that for those of us who are not yet published, self-doubt can be acute.

Writing can be an isolating activity–you don’t often work with colleagues who provide feedback, encouragement or advice. It’s true you may have a supportive network of friends and family, but if they’re not interested in writing or feel they have nothing to offer you, you’re on your own. You rarely have a yardstick to measure your progress or your talent. Am I actually as good as I think? Or (depending on the day) am I better than I think? There are so many people trying to get books published; how do I measure up? Until you have a product ready–a finished manuscript–it’s difficult to tell. And since it’s such a long project (especially if you have limited time), it’s hard to keep the faith over a long period of time.

Even harder is that no one expects anything of you. By that I mean there is no publisher clamouring for your completed work, no literary agent on your case to get it done. No one would care whether I finish this book or whether I abandon it. And how easy to simply abandon it. Take all that extra time and read more or hang out with friends more or do more with my family? How inviting.

When it seems to never end and there’s no purpose anyway and I’m supposed to be doing this because I like writing, why do I bother?

Because (I give myself a pep talk) I’m good at it. Because I think there is a purpose to my book. Because I have something to offer.

When I doubt again, I try to remind myself that I’m not the only one who believes I have talent. I think about feedback I’ve received in the past.

My favourite compliment? When my university professor accused me of plagiarism.

I was giving a seminar presentation based on a novel. I set the scene of the dystopian themes I’d be discussing by writing my own description of a dystopian world. My prof interrupted me, demanding I cite my source. Confused (and now very worried) I asked her what she meant.

“The description,” she said.”Where did you get it?”

“I wrote it myself,” I stuttered.

“Oh,” she said, surprised.  A moment of awkward (and unnerving) silence. “Well, continue, then.”

That an English professor mistook my own work for that of a published author buoyed me then and it buoys me now. It doesn’t matter that it happened years ago. It still helps me believe in my abilities.

LESSON LEARNED: It’s not arrogance to believe you can write well. It’s faith that you have something to offer. If you don’t believe in yourself, no one else will, so you might as well be the first. 🙂

I have a job for you. Go to your couch. If you’re not near your couch, try this when you’re home. Alternately, you can go to your bed. Or the floor, if you like. There’s one of those everywhere so you can try this anytime.

Lie down. Stretch yourself out if you want, or curl up. Lie on your side or flat on your back. Cover yourself with a blanket (especially if it’s a soft, cozy, cuddle-up blanket) or not.

Close your eyes. Or not. It’s up to you.

Think.

Don’t sleep. Don’t rest.

Think.

About what, you ask impatiently? For me, obviously, it’s about my book. If you’re a writer, it can be about your story. If you’re not, try the technique anyway on a problem you’re trying to solve.

When I get stuck (see Writer’s Block post), I try to think through my problem. Some writers advise free-writing–typing anything that comes into your head about a particular topic and then drawing inspiration from there. Go ahead, if you like. It’s not a bad strategy. Just not one that works for me.

What works is just thinking about my book. Imagining I’m reading it as if it were complete. What would I expect to see?

When my husband walks into the room and sees me stretched out, I remind him I’m working. (I think he believes me. :))

Caveats: It’s a very fluid strategy; there’s no telling exactly when your brain will reveal the solution. It requires patience. It requires concentration (very, very difficult not to let your mind wander). It requires commitment–keep at it even when all seems lost.

Oh, and try not to fall asleep.

I discovered this method works for me when I was attempting my first novel. I’d wake up early before my family, creep to my computer and sit, cursing at the blinking cursor. I dragged myself out of bed for this? I was getting nowhere. The first few times I gave up and went back to bed. But I couldn’t fall back to sleep; I’d go over my plot points in my head, or hash out how I wanted to my character to react and then I realized I had my answers. (Another warning: you have to get out of bed first, even if you return to it. So many times I’ve tried not getting up–it’s brilliant, right? Just wake up and think. That’s when I fall back to sleep.)

So I’m not writing (as in physically typing words) right now because I’m musing. Lyra and David have gotten past the military blockade. They are about to run into another obstacle, a more ominous one. I have the concept mapped out, since I’ve written the (seventh? eighth?) first draft. But it’s not yet coming together.

So I’ve been thinking. Lying on my couch thinking. What’s wrong with what I have? They’ll meet some more bad guys, unrelated to Moto’s gang. I have David recognizing the threat of these guys just by their car. That’s a problem–how would he know he should avoid them? Instead, I think I’ll ratchet up the suspense; have them meet these guys when they are forced stop for gas; both David and Lyra will sense they are dangerous, they’ll try to get away as quickly and quietly as possible, but the bad guys will follow them. This also clears up another problem: why would the bad guys suddenly go after an unknown jeep? There may be reasons (since they control the area, they knows who comes and goes, maybe) but now I have to get into too many explanations. Better that the bad guys are given the chance to size up David and Lyra–especially Lyra, a foreign white girl, whom they assume to be rich.

Another problem (you’d think I’d learn) is that I’d stuck too closely to my original idea of my fiction African country called Taifa (see post Introducing the Second World). I was setting the scene as if David and Lyra were still in Africa, not my imagined Second World, which more closely resembles Turkey.

That’s where I am now: dreaming up a new setting for the next obstacle David and Lyra will face.

I’d better get back to work.

On my couch.

Or maybe my bed…

I tell my students–and it’s advice echoed by professional writers, fiction and non-fiction alike–to always keep a small notebook on hand. I tell them to look around, to observe the  details around them, to jot down the strange, the funny, the unusual, the mundane. These  fragments of reality, gleaned from real life can sharpen the verisimilitude of their writing.

I buy into the philosophy. I believe it.

I don’t do it.

I think about doing it. I should do it. Pieces of my own life and experience seep into my writing, why not broaden what I can work with?

I can’t answer for my hypocrisy. Laziness? Inconvenience? Distracted focus?

Regardless, I’d still recommend the practice, if only for this:

What I would have written down had I had a notebook:

I was in the parking lot of a grocery store. Loading my bags into my trunk, I heard the tell-tale clunk and squeak of a fast-moving grocery cart. I looked up to see an older gentleman, wrinkled face, white hair, grab onto the handles, hop both feet on the bottom and, like a kid, zoom across the pavement.

His smile made me smile.

There are no grocery carts in my novel; I can’t imagine using the scene, but I’ll tuck it away, and maybe one day you’ll see this man pop up in another one of my stories.

How many other moments like that am I missing when I live inside my own head and forget to lift my eyes and open my ears to what’s around me?

LESSON LEARNED: Writing is more than words on a page.

Warning: No “Lessons Learned” in this post.

On face value, it seems obvious to define a minor character–one who isn’t a major character, who isn’t central to the development of the story.

But there’s a spectrum of minor characters-some who are more important than others. George Hendricks, the doctor who diagnoses Lyra, is minor; he appears only in the beginning of the book, but he’s essential in helping Lyra choose her path. For him I have added details to inform part of his backstory. My food seller Esme in the market in Stone Town is almost inconsequential except to flesh out David’s experience there. I have no idea where she comes from and (sorry Esme) I don’t care.

It’s the ones in between that I struggle with. As David and Lyra are driving across dangerous “wilds” where neither the government nor insurgents yield total control, they encounter an army sergeant and his men barricading the road at a makeshift checkpoint. David and Lyra are stopped and questioned, but neither knows whose side the sergeant is on.

As David explains to Lyra just before the checkpoint:

“You assume there are only two sides to the battle. Sadly, it is far more complicated than that. There are smaller militias, armies run by warlords, who both support and oppose the king. Some fight The Kingdom [THE NAME OF THE TERROR GROUP RUN BY SIMON MOTO], some fight with the Kingdom. But others oppose both King Selenos [KING OF THE SECOND WORLD] and The Kingdom, so they will fight both sides at the same time. And while The Kingdom is the largest of the religious extremists, the group is by far not alone. The threat from smaller terrorist organizations is as real as the threat from The Kingdom.”

I see the sergeant, then, as a representative of the dangers–and uncertainty–Lyra will face. My question, though, is how much do I stereotype him?

Here’s what I have so far:

One of the soldiers spits on the ground and saunters cockily toward them. His gun points into the air, but Lyra notices his finger is on the trigger. She holds her breath.

David raises his hands off the steering wheel as the guard leans through David’s window and peers at them, his eyes hard and cold.

“Where are you going, my friend?” the soldier asks David in a thick, clipped accent. He leers at Lyra, raking his eyes up and down her body. Lyra bites the inside of her lip, but otherwise does not move.

David hunches his shoulders and drops his eyes, bowing to the soldier’s authority. When he speaks, he is soft and hesitant. “To Mara, Sergeant.” He nods slightly in Lyra’s direction, then lowers his chin, meek and deferential. Lyra understands David is playing a part; she is impressed.

The sergeant looks past David as if he is a ghost and stretches his mouth into a slithery smile. His teeth are yellow, stained with tobacco.

Too much? The leering, the slithery smile, yellow-stained teeth… I think you get a picture of him, but we never find out his name and only later do we learn what he’s up to (not telling!) He also doesn’t appear again in the story, so how individual to I make him? Or do I leave him as a caricature, a short-hand for the reader to understand he and the characters he represents are not to be trusted?

It’s true than an experienced novelist may know the answer, but for now, I’m learning as I go so I’ll have to keep working on it. I guess that’s why the call the writing process, well… a process. 🙂

Remember what you wore on your first day of high school? (black acid wash jean skirt.) A memorable travel experience? (navigating the Paris metro system all on my own as a 16-year-old.) Your crush in Grade 8? (Andrew Bible.)

Those moments don’t necessarily define you; you are more than the sum of your experiences, but they do add to who you are as a person. They create texture and depth and while you won’t go around telling everyone you meet about your worst mark in high school (8% on a Grade 12 physics test), it’s part of your backstory.

You know what my problem with backstory is? Creating it for my characters. In my first novel (see “Earlier Work” tab for an excerpt) my main character Mackenna is a senior in high school who has lost her boyfriend to her best friend. I wrote a lot about how she hates Kathryn–in the present. After I had some friends read a draft, they pointed out how little they knew of Kathryn and Mackenna’s relationship before. Why were they best friends? I had to create the backstory, only parts of which made it into the novel, but it was nonetheless important.

I started down the same (first-draft) path with Lyra. She’s a girl who learns she has super cells after her boyfriend blows her up school and kills her whole family, but I wrote very little about who she was before the explosion.

This scene is right before Lyra reluctantly accompanies David to church.

Draft 1:

“I need to understand religion’s appeal,” Lyra says.

Annie looks at her for a long time before her expression softens.

“You need to understand religion’s appeal to Jonah,” Annie surmises.

Lyra nods. She needs to know how Moto and his thugs swayed Jonah into such violence. She needs to know what they offered him.

What they offered him that she could not. That she did not.

Because Lyra understands that Jonah’s descent into religious madness is as much a rebuke of her, of their relationship as it is of Moto’s ideology. If she had been enough, Jonah would never have sought out religion.

Annie is cautious when she answers, like she knows she’s dabbing at Lyra’s wound, but she’s resolute. “The church has no answers for you,” she says quietly. “To understand the appeal of religion on Jonah, you need to understand Jonah.”

 Lyra feels her eyes burn. “I thought I did.”

I start to get across Lyra’s guilt yet I gave the reader very little to go on–how could she have been with someone like that? Who was Jonah and why were they together? And how could she have been so blind to not see what was happening to Jonah? Do we hate her because of it? Or is her lack of awareness of those around her part of her weaknesses, part of what makes her human?

I took another stab at it, trying to add in Lyra and Jonah’s backstory.

“No?” Annie asks, her tone light on the surface, but barbed beneath. When Lyra does not respond, Annie presses her. “You don’t want to know how Jonah could have succumbed to religion? You’re not curious what it was about religion that brainwashed him?”

Lyra stiffens. She feels pricked as if Annie throws darts at her. She has asked herself those very questions, but not for the reason Annie thinks. She is not interested in religion to discover what it offered Jonah; she wants to understand religion only enough to learn what it offered him that she, his girlfriend, could not. Why she, his girlfriend, had failed. Because if she had offered him what he was missing, if she, his girlfriend, had been enough, Jonah would still be alive.

Her family would still be alive.

She’d known Jonah for years; they’d been in several classes together and he often acted in the school’s musical for which Lyra painted sets, but they only started dating last fall after Lyra overheard Jonah talking to his friend about rock climbing. They were on stage after rehearsal. Lyra had put away her paints and was rolling up her drop cloth, but she waited until his friend was gone before approaching Jonah.

“You climb?” she asked.

Jonah looked at her, surprised, but pleased. “Yeah.” He pushed a mop of curls out of his eyes.

To Lyra, Jonah’s interest in rock climbing seemed a curious contradiction. He seemed to her a theatre geek, an actor and musician, more inclined creative pursuits than a gruff outdoorsman.

“It’s a real sport,” he explained. “You’re outside, in nature, man against the environment, not punting around a silly cowhide ball on a scissor-cut lawn to a bunch of other padded jocks too afraid of their shadows to test their real strength.”

Lyra laughed. “Not a football fan, are you?”

Jonah approved of Lyra’s passion for sailing; the vast power of the ocean, he said, was like his rock walls; a constant reminder of our fallibility as humans, a constant desire to overcome it. Despite his support, Jonah never liked sailing, just as Lyra never liked rock climbing. She’d tried it once; physically it was hard, but also literally; the stone cliffs became for her an impenetrable barrier as opposed to the way she could slip and glide through the sea.

But what if she had tried harder to share Jonah’s interest? What if she’d taken more time to appreciate rock climbing the way he did? What if she hadn’t dismissed his talk of ropes and harnesses and carabiners? What if she hadn’t guilted him for missing so many weekends with her when he disappeared into the mountains?

What if she had paid more attention to what had been more important to Jonah?

“You can’t know,” Annie cuts into Lyra’s thoughts. “You’ll never find out why Jonah snapped.”

The idea is that all these little pieces of a character’s puzzle will, by the end, create a whole picture of him or her. By the end, I want the reader to better understand why Jonah did what he did and why Lyra chooses to do what she does.

Better get back to creating more puzzle pieces.

I woke up to a dark, dreary Sunday, the rain drumming against the window. It was a cozy, curl-up-in-bed kind of day. Even better, we had no plans. My kids were watching a movie; my husband otherwise occupied. I had two hours to myself.

My dilemma (dilemma? you ask. How could that be a dilemma?): Do I read or do I write?

Every author I’ve ever talked to, every author who has written a “how-to-write” book that I’ve read has said the same thing and I believe it: to be a good writer, you need to read. A lot. It sounds obvious and it sounds fun. I love to read–otherwise I never would have ventured into writing. If that’s my “homework,” bring it on!

Except if you recall from my earlier post about time, I have to steal it for writing. Here, suddenly is an unexpected chunk–a good two hours. I could get a lot done on my own book. Or I could enjoy reading a book but get nowhere on my own. Those of you who have taken on long projects can appreciate the frustration when the task seems to drag on with no end in sight. Therefore, any extra minute I can devote to my writing would help me in the long run.

But I need to read–to appreciate other writers’ styles, learn how they develop character, study the language they use–so how do I balance it?

Simple, you say. One hour each.

No… not so simple. I am the type of person, disciplined in the rest of my life, but impossibly undisciplined in my reading. If I enjoy a book (the goal of reading) I cannot, no matter my good intentions, put the damn thing down. (Example: last summer I referenced the first Harry Potter book to create an 11th-birthday surprise for my oldest daughter–one page, one page is all I needed to read; I didn’t stop until I finished the 7th novel. Last week I stayed up late into the night finishing an Agatha Christie mystery in one sitting. I got five hours of sleep.)

On Sunday, then, did I read or did I write?

I read.

Which means you may have to wait an extra day at the end of this writing process to read my un-put-downable novel. Hope that’s ok 🙂