Babel Clash

KEN:

What about you?  How do you tackle novels?  You’ve published 19 novels over the last 21 years.  How was it when you started?  How did it
evolve over time?  Do you find now that you have a consistent process that works or do you still change it up from time to time?

KATE:

For me, over time, the single most important principle (beyond persistence, persistence, persistence) has been to be adaptable.  I don’t write strictly to a previously scripted outline (I’m not saying others shouldn’t, if that’s a strategy that works for them, just that I don’t).  I write up notes, often reams of notes, some filed neatly in chronological order and others scrawled on scraps of paper which I excavate accidentally months or years later from some forgotten file folder.  For Crown of Stars early on I wrote up pages for each character listing things that I knew were going to happen to her or him, these lists running to multiple pages.  Or I set up a table and make a timeline, or a calendar, and fill in what I know, and then add as I go along.  I’ve done flow charts.  I’ve kept things in my head.

So, having said never ever, what have I just done?  I’ve just written a 45 page preliminary synopsis for a book.  It’s very detailed, with some scenes sketched in and dialogue written out.  But it’s the entire book’s plot.  I’ve never done that before.  Even The Sword of Heaven, a novel I made notes on for 10 years, resided mostly in my head before I wrote the actual first draft.  Now, of course, for all I know as I start writing the actual draft I’ll throw out everything.  Or half.  Or none.  I may find that having the synopsis works for this book.  Or not.  I’ll find out as I go.

That’s key for me:  Not to feel I’m locked into any form of the process.

Yes, I’ve learned ways to work that feel comfortable for me;  I’ve learned to watch for certain signals that impede or advance my progress.  If a scene gets sludgy, that can mean that I’m taking it in the wrong direction and need to rethink or re-vision it.  If a character pops up and says something I did not expect, I need to stop and look and decide whether this is a path I don’t need to go down, or whether my subconscious is telling me that this is a better way to go.  If I hit the slough of despond and decide this book out of all my books really sucks and I ought to consider abandoning it, I need to check where I am in the draft, and if I’m somewhere in the middle, it’s probably my cyclic despair prodding me:  I  always hit a “this sucks” phase in the middle of writing a book.  Always.  Except that one time I didn’t, and then I got worried that the book really was bad because I hadn’t gone through that phase.

When I look back at how I wrote my early novels, mostly I don’t remember much about the drafting process.  The main thing I do know is that I am much better at revising now than I was then.  As a newer writer, I preferred writing the first draft and found revising an onerous and difficult chore because I often didn’t really know how to fix things.  Now, I find writing first draft much more exhausting than I did then, but I love to revise because I get such pleasure from seeing the pieces smooth out and fit together to make the story I want to tell come alive.

Ken and I have talked about writing novels and writing series.  If you have any further comments or questions, post them here and we’ll answer.

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