Let’s be clear from the outset. My mom is the last person I fear judgment from in my work.
But I think every writer second guesses their decisions about how far to go in sex scenes. In Monster in My Closet, I wrestled a great deal with writing the incubus plotline. Not because it was filled with sex, but because it was, essentially, rape—even if, in some cases, all he did was brush his hand against his victim’s arm.
I expected some backlash over it. I worried I’d chosen a sensitive subject. And I did choose something difficult. But in my head, I had imagined the ickiest, scariest scenario I could, and that’s what came out. It felt right. I wrote it. And I waited for people to yell at me.
It hasn’t come. A few reviews have said they didn’t feel the nastiness of the incubus fit with the quirky, lighter feel of the rest of the book. But many more said they liked the mix of light and dark.
As writers, our imaginations often run wild. We can imagine everything from a chaste kiss to passionate lovemaking. We can envision acts of terrorism as easily as we dream up acts of heroism. The only thing that limits an imagination is one’s own restraint.
Writers often walk the edge of what’s socially acceptable. Sometimes we delve into the shadows and make readers uncomfortable. And when we dance with the darker side, we run the risk of letting those we love see a part of ourselves we don’t like to admit we have — like graphic sex scenes or descriptions of unspeakable horror.
This week, we’re asking the writers in the Cafe for their advice. How do writers separate what they write from what people think about the writer?
Some write whatever they want without fear of reprisals. Others adopt pseudonyms and hide behind anonymity. And still others resort to self-censorship to keep their friends and family from freaking out.
How about you? When you’re writing, do you censor yourself to keep your parents from dropping your name from the family will? Or do you write anything you want and let the chips fall where they may?
The timing for this week’s topic is perfect. I just finished edits on last November’s novel and considered writing this same post for my own blog. So, we’ll do it here, instead.
I failed to note that I also bought an awesome box so my index card collection has a permanent home.
First of all, I should warn you that I’m a little spastic in the planning department. My brain needs something tactile to work with to get things moving, and let’s be honest here, I have a serious addiction to office supplies. In order to really understand my self-editing process, you might want to first see how absolutely ridiculous I am with the writing process. You can check it out on my blog here: How to Write a Novel: For Non-Pantsters.
Got it? Terrifying, isn’t it? I fully accept that there’s something more than a little off in my head.
Like the planning I do before I write, there are several steps I take for editing. They’re probably just as time-wasteful and self-indulgent.
Do absolutely nothing with the novel for at least a couple of weeks to a month. This is important. Let it breathe. During this time, I let a few critiquers have at it, with the understanding that it was a raw first draft.
Read through the critiques and set them aside to marinate. (You’ll KNOW when the advice is right. If you’re not sure about something someone says, let it go for now.)
Once out of the post-novel-writing coma, open the document back up. Puke if necessary, but come right back. This needs to get done.
Time to get out my beloved index cards! Yay! While I have a stack of events and chapters from when I was writing, they aren’t accurate anymore. Things changed, scenes happened I hadn’t expected. It’s okay. Start a new pile, one card for every chapter as it’s currently written.
To celebrate the sale of my first novel, I bought a bigger whiteboard, as well as a big container of magnets. I put all the cards up on this big whiteboard, pinned them with magnets, then leaned the whole thing against the wall to examine it. With it all laid out in rows, I clearly saw a few plot holes, as well as a lack of tension in the middle.
Rearrange the cards, write new cards to fill holes and put them where they need to go in the lineup. Leave it for awhile while you pace back and forth mumbling.
Take the cards down and put them in a stack. Starting from the beginning of the manuscript, work through all the cards, in order, making the changes according to the new plan. Don’t skip any passages, even if you think no structural changes need to be made. Every change you make causes air bubbles in the future which must be smoothed as you go.
Send it to your most brutal critiquer.
While you wait, go back over all the critiques you had in the beginning to make sure you didn’t miss anything. I was shocked at how many typos and inconsistencies they caught that I STILL hadn’t fixed. Fix All the Things. Keep going over everything until your eyes bleed.
Here's the inside, complete with all the cards from two books. Notice how book two has nearly twice as many cards. My addiction is growing.
By this time, I’ve actually gone through the entire manuscript four or five times, at least.
So, I go through it again.
And you know what? It’s still not perfect. There are still typos I missed.
The point to the entire thing, no matter how you go about doing it, is not to make it perfect. The point is to make it the best novel you possibly can. Sloppiness isn’t cool. But the need to be perfect will freeze you up.
I know this post doesn’t give you any handy tips about what words to weed out, how to build better tension, or even what mistakes to look for in an early draft. There are plenty of books and websites teaching craft. My weird methods aren’t necessarily the most efficient, but they do one thing all the how-to books in the world might not help with: they give you a place to start.
And sometimes, that’s all you need to go off and find your own way to do it.
Have you ever encountered someone who said that writing a novel is easy?
Settle down, we know it’s not. We’ve been through the process as recently as November, which is – as you know – National Novel Writing Month. We call it NaNoWriMo and those of us that have taken on the challenge are known as WriMos.
Ask any of us here in the Cafe on any given day what’s harder than writing the novel or even coming up with an idea that should be fleshed out and researched and you’ll get one answer: editing.
Hands down the most difficult, though for some enjoyable, process is going through your creation and hacking away at it. Cringing at the bits that seemed to make sense when you were writing really late that night and buzzing on coffee and energy drinks is the least of what happens. Hair is torn out, teeth are gnashed and foreheads slapped. Despair settles easily around a writer’s shoulders when it looks like the story isn’t salvageable.
All is not lost, however. This week is where the Confabulators share how we edit; what our goals are, what our particular process is and just how do we decide to make the cuts. It’s a little peek into the restless minds of writers trying to make their stories better.
So come back all week long to see if we do things the same ways or what the variations might be. At the very least it ought to be entertaining as we detail how to ‘murder our darlings’.
