I was complaining to writer friends about a story I read that had a lot of colors in it. Like, the story used quite a bit of color in descriptions. Just plain old colors (red, blue, yellow, green, purple, orange) to describe plain old things (table, chair, door, hat, wall, floor). It bugged me because that's the kind of writing I see in picture book mss by people who think they're writing for kids when they're really writing down to kids. "Miss Tilly put on her yellow hat with the purple flower and went out of her brown house with its red chimney." I had it drummed into my head at an early age (writing-wise) that you never, ever put colors that don't mean anything into a PB ms because you're treading on the illustrator's turf. Maybe it made me a little paranoid about colors, but in general it helped my writing, because from the beginning of my career I zeroed in on colors as things that clog up the story without adding anything: what does the word mean, what does it add, why's it there? It helped me because basically that's what you need to do with every single word you put on the page.

To me colors are mostly wasted words, because the specific words don't do anything. I like to use "dark" rather than "black" or "brown" because "dark" conveys a mood. Color words don't make me feel anything, usually. If you make the color fancier, like "azure" or "magenta," it still doesn't convey anything to me. I wonder if it does to other people, maybe people who are more visual thinkers.

But anyway, the ironic thing is that as soon as I shot my mouth off to writer friends about the way this story used color, I turned back to my ms and the first thing I see is this:


Under Simon’s feet the winter wheat was alarmingly sorry-looking. Where there should have been a lush ocean of spring growth, there was only brown soil dusted with sparse bits of green.


I almost never use color, but there it is, right after I've derided somebody else for doing it. I thought, whoa. I mean, I'm not going to change it, but it's interesting that I'm falling back on color here because I'm trying to describe something specific. Not something in my head, but pictures of wheat winterkill I've seen on the Internet. I don't know what this means. Maybe it's not important. I notice that just a little farther on in the ms, maybe a page or two down, I'm describing something that is just in my head, and since I haven't actually got a picture of it, I'm all about getting across a feeling from the description, not a specific image. So, instead of colors, I'm playing around with words like...checking...

fluttering
billowy
overflow
ripe
shapely


Hmm. I did use a couple of colors. Red. White. But looky here! You can read the above list and get a very good damn idea of mood and feeling. Red and white don't tell you sh*t. Huh.

Well, I don't have any conclusions to draw. Just noticed it, and thought it was interesting.

Does it mean anything that I can't get interested in tying up a chapter properly? It just fades away and then there's a nice strong beginning to the next chapter. What does that mean? Am I supposed to stick around and fix it so I don't lose track of what I'm doing? Am I supposed to leave it and move on? Does it mean the strong beginning is in the wrong place and the chapter really needs to lengthen to include the strong beginning, which I ought to somehow turn into a strong end?

Did I used to know how to write?

Writing aside, I am possibly the worst Author I know. Just noticed that again today, for various reasons. I can't think of anybody who's passive-aggressively destroyed more Author opportunities and neglected more Authorly duties than I have. It's terrible, it's ungrateful. I guess maybe there is some excuse because of all the other cr*p I've generally got to deal with...but other people with as much cr@p manage to do the Author thing. Except I think maybe they either like it on some level, or are guilted/panicked into it by other authors or by agents and editors. No, wait--I know some people who are driven to it by need for food and a roof over their heads. But it seems that even the imminent danger of having to live in a van down by the river can't make me do some of this stuff. I have no idea why I draw lines where I do. Some people would give up writing entirely before "selling out" and writing w-f-h. Some people would rather make appearances than write to order.

I guess I need some kind of no-man's land between my own writing and the public book/Author thing. I think it's got to do with expectations, maybe--with reaching for an inner ideal as I work on my own stuff. I try to pare away my own baggage about what a book needs to be or what the market wants, and I try to pare away as much of "me" as I can, to get the book to be what it needs to be, on its own. Like when you look at a marble sculpture, you're not supposed to be thinking about a guy holding a chisel over it or whether he had a family or if he did school visits with Powerpoint. The piece before you is supposed to be the entire story. I need a no-man's land where there's the sculpture, and its creator is almost anonymous to the people who look at it. If I think very much about the viewers, it has the potential to distract me from the work at hand, mess up the chiseling, and do an irreparable disservice to the piece itself. I know the piece isn't going to be perfect, but whatever it is, I will bear complete responsibility for it.

With w-f-h, the no-man's land holds, because most times the editors aren't familiar with trade publishing, and it's all about the work at hand. I've worked with kids trying to learn to read, and I like being a person who writes the words that they are forced to try to make sense of. I like paying attention to what I'm doing, in hopes of maybe hitting a spark to where, for even a second, they forget what a chore it is and get caught up in the words. I'm not that interested in the kids for whom reading is easy and fun; I'm interested in the kids who hate it because it's boring and hard. So for me, I guess w-f-h is about the piece at hand because, ideally, it's divorced completely from me and is all about its relationship with the reader.

I guess other writers either don't need as wide of a no-man's land, or they're able to integrate the Author thing in with their writing. Or maybe it feeds them creatively, rather than draining them. Dunno. Probably it depends which kind of Author thing we're talking about, exactly.

Blah, blah, blah. Obviously, I did not write today.

Writer friend reminds me: in this ms, at least, a place is just a place. It means nothing unless it means something to the characters. I need to carve this into my desk. I can describe the daylights out of something, but without the emotional connection, it's boring and a waste of space.

Some other writers can describe, but it's just not my thing. It even bores me while I'm trying to do it. That should be a clue right there. I don't know why I can't let go of this. I suppose it's part of getting the world set in my head.

But it also speaks to chapter endings and hooks. For me, perhaps it's better not to end on "And so the door opened...", but on "The door opened and he cringed," or "He cringed as the door opened." Well, that's not a good example, but the main idea is: people not things, people not things, people not things. I must try to drum it in so I don't get sidetracked.

Sent first chapters to a writer friend to see if I can get some outside help in clarifying what I already have on paper. Chapter 2 fizzles out with no ending, then Chapter 3 picks up out of nowhere, and I'm not sure where to head with it--what the reader wants from it, exactly. I don't feel stuck, just confused and unwilling to screw up what I already have by aimlessly tinkering. I feel like the ms could be starting to go somewhere, and I want to continue to feel that way. It may be one of those situations where nobody else can help me straighten it out, but we'll see.

Decided to continue from where I was. I vaguely remembered telling myself that I needed to get a grip on each little piece as I progressed. I thought I'd made a note to myself about this in an earlier entry and tried to find it, but I must need to redo the blog format or something, because I couldn't find anything.

Anyhow, I did skip a very wee tiny bit, and dove into a scene just slightly beyond the chapter beginning (beginning of chapter 3). By the end of today's writing session I had the next big confusing mass of stuff strung out enough that I could look at it, and now it's tentatively divided into chunks that I can wrap my mind around. Looks like the mass o' stuff is perhaps four chapters? We'll see. I know that the very wee tiny bit will actually be a chapter of its own, after I figure out what I want to do with it.

I guess this must be one way I operate: if I don't understand something, I try to break it down into smaller and smaller chunks till I get something I can understand. I know this drives other writers nuts when I talk to them about their own work and I keep asking annoying questions. But I'm not trying to be annoying, I'm trying to understand the pieces so I can wrap my mind around the whole.

Was discussing with some writer friends the fact that whenever we are struggling with a problem and find a fix, we automatically assume that fix must be the golden key that will enable every other struggling writer to solve a current problem and move forward. We're so relieved and triumphant that we want to share the good news and ease everyone else's path. I am trying to be more mindful of this, because it's not helpful when people do it to me and their golden key doesn't work for where I'm at. But it's hard not to generalize your own process, especially when you have been toiling away and finally feel that you've learned something useful.

Okay, so it looks like I've got a working draft of a first chapter. And I not only got a decent working draft of chapter two, I actually am pleased with the first part of it. The second part, unfortunately, doesn't have a clear idea of what it's doing, but right now I don't feel that going over and over it again will help me figure it out. I think I should move on, and maybe later when I come back I'll have clearer vision.

The problem is that since chapter two ends without a clear, strong direction, I'm once again at a loss as how to proceed. At the moment, my theory is that this is because chapter three heads back into plot-driven territory. Stuff happens because that's what the plot is. See, chapter two was transitional, so I had to pick over alllll the things that could be brought out in it, character and backstory-wise, and figure out which ones to use. Chapter two was all about the reader learning info. But chapter three is about the characters learning info.

I don't know what to do now. All I know is, I don't want to spend a huge chunk of time rewriting blindly, hoping something will fall into place by sheer luck. Should I try skipping chapter three for now, and move on to something I have a stronger feel for? Or should I back off and think about chapter three until it becomes clearer to me? Which is best? I just wish I could move forward at a semi-constant pace, with more of an idea of what I'm trying to accomplish.