The Garret

When I was a very little girl, like many little girls, I read Little Women. Like many little girls who want to be writers, I related to Jo. After Little Women, I went on to read the lesser-known Jo's Boys. I aspired to three things:

(1) Be a writer
(2) Have a garret in which to write
(3) Have my own orphanage.

The latter was, of course, what Jo did in Jo's Boys.

I have accomplished only one of these three. (In case you haven't guessed, it's #1.)

However, I still aspire to #3, and #2. But until such time as some of my children grow up and move away, any garret has to be metaphorical. And orphanage will have to wait until I hit the lottery.

Long-time readers know it hasn't been a picnic around here lately. However, something has become achingly apparent in the last day or so. After seeing people be unkind, after serious illness, after crazy stresses here and there, there comes a time when you retreat to your mental garret and literally shut out what doesn't belong there. That includes people, unfortunately (some of them), unnecessary drama (all of that), and hopefully worry. And you take into the garret what makes you smile and brings you peace of mind.

Last night, I wrote out in longhand the final scene of Magickeepers III. Over the next ten days, I will be transferring all the notes and longhand to the computer and turning it in. I had to adjust my writing style to this method after my shoulder surgery, because I found I couldn't keyboard 10-12 hours a day as I usually do. But regardless of the process . . . in the end, I ascend into the garret and do it. The process is always the same, those last frantic days until completion, where my mind is always just full of the book. Last night, I saw at last how EVERY thread was pulled and voila, it ALL tied up. But the process of making that occur? It's a brain that's on overdrive. The good kind. But it occurs in some mental space where it's just me and the book.

So today I'm in my garret. My blog goes there with me. How about you? When do you ascend to a garret or retreat into a bunker (for you guys)? What do you shed? What do you take with you? Thoughts?

So Will I Change My Process?

Well, gang . . . .

I figured I better post because there's no telling after Thursday just what my blog posting will be.

I'm headed for surgery Thursday. It's a terribly long story involving wear and tear on my joints from years of Crohn's and various medications, and so . . . Thursday I am having my right shoulder scraped, the bone reshaped, and a rotator cuff repair. This should stop the nerve impingement in my right arm. My FIRST question for the doctor was, "So how soon will I be able to type after this?" I am sure he thought I was a tad nuts, but according to him, as long as I don't LIFT my art when I type (type overhead?) . . . "soon." However, I will be in a "shoulder immobilizer" (huh?), with a tube near my collarbone, and loaded up on pain meds, so either I will not post Friday and over the weekend . . . Or I will post hilarious drug-induced ramblings, and possibly? This could tip the game in Parrish's favor.

Now my wonderful adult daughter is taking me to surgery, while her very nice boyfriend, the Cellist, babysits the other three kids and makes sure they are fed and don't become feral. She has offered to be my secretary and take dictation and so on, so that I can continue with my work and my life.

So the big question for me will be, CAN I even WRITE via dictation? Will this be a whole new process for me?

I don't know. I must admit, though, the thought kind of makes me queasy. I like sitting her typing and thinking IN MY HEAD, occasionally whispering a few words (or curses) out loud.

So tell me . . . anyone ever change up their process via necessity, invention . . . or drug-induced delirium?

Orloff at Orloff's

This is Alan Orloff. He's not my brother. He's not my cousin (that I know of). But how cool that we share the same--and not too common--last name. I actually told him, as we were planning this blog that when I first started my website eight years ago or so, I used to routinely hear from Orloffs researching their family tree. Since I am from a very scarce family of Orloffs (my father being the last male) . . . I have yet to find a relative, but you never know. Actually, once I got on FB, I started hearing from some Orloffs in Russia and Europe. So far, no match there either. But Alan in my cyber-cousin. AND HE HAS A BOOK OUT. So buy it and support my family. ;-)

What Say You?

Thanks, Erica, for inviting me to guest blog today. It’s a real pleasure!

First, a note: If you’re an astute blog reader (and I know you are), then you’ve probably noticed that Erica and I have very similar last names (technically, they are identical). So, to answer the inevitable question: Not to my knowledge. Of course, we could be related. I’m from a very small family but there may be an offshoot or two I’m not familiar with. Even if we’re not exactly related, I’m honored to have such a talented “sibling.” Hopefully, somewhere along the line, our books will sit side-by-side on a bookshelf, giving people who don’t read this blog something to ponder (Hmm. I wonder if those two Orloffs are related? Not a very common name…).

If you asked 50 writers to describe their “writing processes,” you’d probably get 75 different responses. Some writers stick to a set of inviolable rules, others “meander across the meadow,” while others invoke voodoo dolls and incense, heavy on the incense (substitute “alcohol” for “incense” as required).

Hey, whatever works!

Here are a few questions to help you “define” your writing process, along with my responses.

Are you an outliner or a “seat-of-the-pantser”?

I’m an outliner. Maybe it’s my quantitative background and schooling (yes, I’m a reformed engineer), but I feel more comfortable when I know where I’m headed. I think if I tried to wing it, I’d write myself into a dark alley in Newark with no visible path home. (No offense to anyone living in Newark! Or in dark alleys!)

Do you write daily or whenever you can grab a chance?

Sometimes I write daily, sometimes I write whenever I can grab a moment. (I know, I know—this is a waffle-y answer. Everything’s not always black and white. Or even gray.) When I’m working on a draft, I’m pretty diligent about writing daily. But between projects, I have to admit I don’t write every day. Of course, if you counted emails and bios and those frustrating attempts to distill 80,000 words of a novel into four pithy sentences for back cover copy, then I suppose I do write every day. But that’s not the type of writing I call writing.

Do you revise as you go or do you plow through?

I’m a big proponent of the Plow-Thru Method (patent pending). When I’m in first draft mode, my only goal is to hit my word quota (see below), quality be damned. That’s what the second draft is for—making my first draft readable. And the third draft is for making the second draft not suck, and the fourth draft is for…well, you get the idea.

Do you have a daily quota or do you write for as long as the spirit moves you?

Per the Plow-Thru Method, I sit at my computer and type until I hit my daily quota. Then I move on to other things, even if I’m in the middle of a sentence when I hit my mark. Seriously, I am not joking about

Do you write what you want or what you think has a shot of selling?

Yes.

Do you listen to music when you write?

I love music. But I can’t write when it’s on. Same goes for kids. I love mine, but when they’re chattering in the background, I can’t seem to concentrate.

How about you? What is your writing process like?

Alan Orloff's debut mystery, DIAMONDS FOR THE DEAD, was published this month by Midnight Ink. The first in his new series, KILLER ROUTINE - A Last Laff Mystery, featuring Channing Hayes, a stand-up comic with a tragic past, will be out Spring 2011 (also from Midnight Ink). Yes, his last name is really Orloff. Small world, right? For more info, visit www.alanorloff.com

Tip of the Tongue, Heart to the Head

The longest journey you will ever take is the 18 inches from your

head to your heart.

~Andrew Bennett

I liken writing, sometimes, to having a word on the tip of your tongue. You know it. It's there in the resources of your mind. But grabbing it is difficult. Then, out of nowhere, often when you're not trying quite so hard, it pops into your head and out of your mouth.

That's the experience--mine anyway--of writing. In my head, I have a movie, and I have words. And the words describe the movie. And dialogue flies around, and characters talk to me, and they talk to each other. It's in my head, yeah, but it's also in my heart--some strange place of personality and passion and intellect.

Then I try to write it.

The SECOND I start typing words, they are NEVER, not precisely, what I see and feel, just some appoximation. It feels stilted, not as "good." It's not my experience but a paler version of it.

So then I start editing. And little by little, often word by word, I add and delete until it resembles the book of my heart, as translated by my head.

At least, that's my process. What about yours?

Process as a Reflection

If you live an authentic life, almost everything about your life will seamlessly reflect who you are. So, for example, if you live--authentically--by the Do Unto Others golden rule, hopefully, you will go through life doing just that. I knew a priest once, a really great guy, and we once had a conversation about how some people just don't get it. He said he called these people the "I Love Jesus" crowd, because they would come to Mass and shout the loudest that they loved Jesus, and would flip the bird at the first car that didn't let them cut into the lane to leave the parking lot. The point, said my priest-friend, was to live the love authentically in everything you do. Not just that hour Mass (and an aside to anyone Catholic--he HAPPENED to be a priest, but this inauthenticity is true for every religion on the face of the planet . . . there are people within who get it. And people within who don't).

So it is with me and process. There's a joke in my family, because my Significant Other is Mexican, that we operate on Mexican Time. Which means time is . . . negotiable. If you want my family to arrive somewhere on time, you must tell us the time is at least an hour before what the time really is. I know this is not restricted to my family, because I have an Irish friend married to a Jewish man in New York, and he says they operate on Kathy Time, and that, apparently, means the same thing as Mexican Time.

I can spend hours reading a physics book, but don't have the concentration to pay attention to anything I loathe for more than five minutes. I don't like to be told to be certain places at specific times, don't like organized events (like conferences . . . lecture, lunch, lecture, lecture, cocktail hour, etc.). I usually am good for one scheduled item and then go hide in my hotel room with room service and a book.

Or take directions. I am the person who gets some gadget--a camera, a computer, whatever. And pretty much throws away the directions while I try to just LOOK at the thing and intuit how it operates. And then if I can't figure it out, I hand it to Oldest Son, say, "Figure out how to make it do this," and wait for him to show me. Because I learn better that way.

So it makes SENSE that I don't outline. I don't like feeling restricted. I don't like having a plan. I do like having a general sense of direction, sort of like, when we left for the beach in New Jersey, I knew I was traveling NORTH, but beyond that . . . it was a bit, shall we say, fluid. But eventually I get there.

Or I don't. I have a friend (hi G.L.!) who lives a mile from me, give or take. I could spit and have it land on her house. The first time I drove there, I was twenty minutes late. I had Mapquested it, but went in the total wrong direction anyway, because I'm not good at following directions or reading maps, and ended up miles and miles away before I looked at Oldest Son and said, "This doesn't seem right." Which is how I am when I write. I may get scenes and scenes into a book before I realize something's not quiet right, and then I intuit how to fix it.

No, my process could never work for most people. But it's definitely a reflection of me and my whole crazy life. And I am okay with it. It feels real and authentic to me.

So when you hold up a mirror, do you live an authentic life as a writer?

Vapor Trails

Last night I had a bad dream. I'm not sure what it was about exactly. I just slept awfully. I was overtired--Demon Baby and I drove to the airport to get my mom and dad at 9:00 p.m. Oldest Son has had a raging case of strep and lost over a tenth of his body weight since the weekend. I had to clean the house from top to bottom to get ready for the Invasion of the Parental Units. By the time Demon got to bed, it was midnight. I gave up my bedroom for my parents, so I'm bunking with Demon Baby, and he was up--easily--ten times between midnight and dawn. So after a while? I start hallucinating. And somewhere near four a.m., I know I had a nightmare.

I vaguely recall an urban apocalyptic feel to it. I think the Blue Wiggle was in it. (Regular readers know when I start lacking sleep, I develop strange crushes on children's TV stars . . . I went through a Steve/Blues Clues phase . . . and trust me, Steve is not the sharpest knife in the drawer). And I "think" there was an Invasion of the Body Snatchers vibe going on--the Donald Sutherland version.

Anyway, when I woke up, I started trying to remember the dream. I'm not sure why except that there was something about it. So I felt like I was grasping at vapors . . . these leftover remnants of a dream . . . snippets of pictures in my head . . . a feeling . . . a wondering. And it dawned on me . . .

THAT'S what it's like to write a book. At least for me.

Yesterday, as we talked about process . . . I realized I left something out. Or maybe it's best left for today's blog post anyway. And that is what it's like to have a vision in your head and to try to make it finite . . . on a computer screen, on paper. It's sometimes so elusive. You have it there in your head--sort of. But you're chasing these vapor trails.

THAT'S what it's like. For me.

Thoughts?