#how we write

Hello writerly friends!

I loved reading your answers to the question in the last post, and if you haven’t done it yet, use this post as a reminder to do it. List three things you love about your WIP.

For today, I’m thinking about where I write and how I write. That’s actually a thing I’ve been at for a few weeks now. I write on my laptop when I’m at home on my couch, usually using google docs. But when I’m on the go, I have a bluetooth keyboard for my phone and write with that. It works great! But I want to get away from google docs, so I’ve been trying out browser based writing apps (because I really don’t want to install yet another app on my phone, if your stuff works in browser, just let it work that way, for fuck’s sake).

I’ve been trying out https://novelpad.co/, https://noveleasy.com/, https://writer.bighugelabs.com/, side-eyed the https://fictionary.co/ editor and I haven’t quite made up my mind yet. Lately I even went back to LibreOffice and to carrying my laptop around (it’s not exactly slim and light, though). 

In all that testing and bug-hunting, I was wondering what the ideal writing setup is. Not just software-wise, but also living-wise. 

If space and money did not limit you, what would be your ideal writing environment and setup?

Mine would be a cabin in a garden with a porch for sunny days and a wood-stove inside for colder days. Sounds of nature all around me, a light laptop to write on, maybe a sound system to play instrumental music. 

After you made your own list, think what you could change about your current writing setup, to get a bit closer to your dream setup. 

Like, I can’t have a cabin in a garden, but I can buy nose-cancelling headphones on sale and play rain sounds on those. And, maybe, schlepping around the laptop isn’t too bad, at least then I have all I ever need with me.

Let me hear your ideas!

--

One of several old black and white photos illustrating Dorothy Wickenden's profile of Wendell Berry:

Hey, starship--phoenix! That’s a great question, and probably too big to answer without writing a whole handbook on how to write collaboratively, but I’ll try to give you some useful pointers.

Decide whether your story is character-driven or plot-driven.

If it’s plot-driven, start there, decide what the major beats are, what the overall progression will be, how you plan to get to the climax, what the major conflicts will be, and go from there.

If it’s character-driven, as ANBU Legacy is, start with your characters. Do detailed profiles for each major character, and at least rudimentary ones for your minor recurring characters. Decide what the major character arcs are for each character — i.e. learning to work with a team, finding self-worth, coming into their own power, overcoming a shitty childhood, etc.

Decide what your overall tone is: humor, crack, sincere, horror, realistic, fantastic etc. And what your secondary and tertiary tones are.

Decide what themes you want to explore or focus on.

I’d say, for example, that ANBU Legacy is character-driven, sincere with a side of wry humor, and realistic within its given fantasy world (i.e. we make rules about how the world works and try not to break them). We focus on character growth through the lens of an action-adventure story with a great deal of moral ambiguity. One of our major themes is figuring out how to be a good person in an amoral system.

For the actual writing process:

We each take responsibility for certain characters, including minor characters, which makes sure those character voices stay consistent. When one person is writing a section, the writers of the other characters are supplying the actions and dialogue of their respective characters. We facilitate this by writing in Google Docs and having an open chat window while we write.

We almost never write dialogue or actions for each other’s characters, and if we do, we always check it immediately. [“Is it okay if I have Kakashi put down his rucksack here?”] that sort of thing.

Don’t be afraid to use character names repeatedly, and watch out for pronoun confusion. Almost always, one and only one character in a paragraph gets to be referred to by pronouns, the rest should be referred to by given name.

“Genma turned towards Raidou’s voice, and saw his captain being half strangled by the octopus. “Hang on!” he cried, and raced to free Raidou from the monster’s grasp.”  — Here only Genma is “he”. Raidou is always Raidou.

We work together with a lot of constructive feedback and praise. Praise is very important. When your fellow writers write something awesome, or make you feel a feel, say so!

Be open to critique and to rewrites. We have scrubbed multiple pages and even whole threads because they just weren’t working.

Pick your battles. Sometimes the word you chose is really important and even if your other writers flagged it as not working, you really want to keep it. But a lot of times if another writer says, “I don’t understand this” or “this could be clearer” or “this word doesn’t make sense” — Just Change It. It doesn’t hurt you to make the change, and if they were confused, it’s likely your readers will be, too.

In addition to editing each other, have an editor. If at all possible, have someone who has the job of flagging typos, grammatical issues, and bigger picture problems. Praise this person with great praise and try not to argue with them.

Let your work sit and marinate a week or so after you finish writing it, and do a final editing pass immediately before you publish it. Reading your work out loud is a good way to find problems. You’ll find a lot of things on re-read that you’d miss if you published immediately.

Always. ALWAYS. Assume good will on the part of your fellow writers. If you’re getting frustrated and tense, take a break. Writing is emotional work, and we all have bad days.

Corollary — if someone says they are having a rough day or need a timeout, don’t take it personally. This will get easier with practice.

Never forget you are doing this for the joy of it. Writing is work, but there is nothing quite as exciting as the unexpected things that blossom from a collaboration.

Keri Hulme, as “Preface to the First Edition” of The Bone People, 1984 (Emphasis through bold is mine.):

The Bone People began life as a short story called "Simon Peter's Shell". I typed it out on my first typewriter, nights after working in the Motueka tobacco fields. The typewriter was a present for my 18th birthday from my mother, but that's another story.

"Simon Peter's Shell" began to warp into a novel. The characters wouldn't go away. They took 12 years to reach this shape. To me, it's a finished shape, so finished that I don't want to have anything to do with any alteration of it. Which is why I was going to embalm the whole thing in a block of perspex when the first three publishers turned it down on the grounds, among others, that it was too large, too unwieldy, too different when compared with the normal shape of novel.

Enter, to sound of trumpets and cowrieshell rattles, the Spiral Collective.

The exigencies of collective publishing demand that individuals work in an individual way. Communication with me was difficult—I live five hundred miles away, don't have a telephone, and receive only intermittent mail delivery—so consensus on small points of punctuation never was reached. I like the diversity.

The editor should have ensured a uniformity? Well, I was lucky with my editors, who respected how I feel about . . . oddities. For instance, I think the shape of words brings a response from the reader—a tiny, subconscious, unacknowledged but definite response. "OK" studs a sentence. "Okay" is a more mellow flowing word when read silently. "Bluegreen" is a meld, conveying a colour neither blue nor green but both: "blue-green" is a two-colour mix. Maybe the editors were too gentle with my experiments and eccentricities. Great! The voice of the writer won through.

To those used to one standard, this book may offer a taste passing strange, like the original mouthful of kina roe. Persist. Kina can become a favourite food.

An explanatory dream: I am in an open windowed railway carriage, going slowly round some mountains. I say to an unknown friend, "Hey! These must be the Rimatakas," and sure enough, across the pasty mountains rolls the inscription RIMUTAKAS 10,000 FEET HIGH, liquorice black on almond icing, and the carriage turns into a Club Room. The lady in charge has a smile hedged with teeth. "O yes, you can become a member. It'll cost $10." I offer a plastic card very bloody conscious I don't have a dollar, let alone ten. I say, guiltily, whakama, "This jersey I'm wearing, the moth holes only came up now. It was really white before." She smiles, and goes away into the dark. It really surprises me when she returns with a jug of beer and another smile for me and my friend. We all sit there, dozens of us, train rocking sadly, mountains cold, moth-holes, but not a squash court in sight.

Make of it what you will.