This is a motivational speech I gave to local authors at the Neill Public Library in Pullman Washington as an invited speaker for the National November Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) activities.
My name is Dain White, and I am an addict. I wake up in the
morning with itching fingers, a story bursting through my soul, screaming for
release.
I spend my day at work writing code, but in the back of my
mind, an endless litany of adventure, science, stories, experience, and
challenge churns along. Many of you may understand what it is that motivates
me, because you feel the same motivations. You also have itchy fingers, and
some of you are probably not even listening to this, or you’re trying to figure
out a way to work this experience into your novel later tonight.
I am exactly the same way. As I am up here presenting this,
stammering and blathering, I am already working out a way to have one of my
characters relive this experience on paper. My experiences, and the experience
of others in my life, play a big part in the stories I write.
Like many of you, I am challenged at times with an inability
to write. The flesh is willing, but the spirit is weak, so to speak. I grapple
with verb tenses, I use ‘of course’ too much, of course, and in general, I find
myself being hyper critical and completely introverted about the work I am
doing. I second, third, and fourth guess myself to death.
So how can we, as writers, push past the boundaries we set
for ourselves? How can we rise to the challenge our motivation has set for us?
How can we blast off, past all obstacles?
To paraphrase a person wiser than I am, the answer is ‘I
don’t know’. I do know how I do it, however – and that is to just write. For
good or bad, just put the words down. Try to be clever, interesting, and weave
words into a warp and woof that walks wildly and wickedly into worth. Why not?
It’s what all the real authors do.
When I write, I try to do one thing first: write the book I
want to read. The kind of book I want to read is fun, entertaining, exciting,
interesting and a little mysterious, and above all, visceral. I want it to leap
off the page and play in my head like a blockbuster movie. I want to laugh, I
want to cry, I want a roller coaster of emotion. I want depth and realism, and
ultimately, I want my books to be my favorite books on my shelf.
And, while I do consider myself to be my very favorite
author, it’s fair and encouraged to share with you, that I am considerably
biased. The truth is, self-confidence is part and parcel of what carries me
through to the end of each story, and drives me until the wee hours. I honestly and completely enjoy reading my books, and look forward to
what happens next.
See, as writers, I think our job isn’t to tell other people
stories, our job is to tell ourselves, but to share the story we really enjoy
with others. Our stories, our characters, our vision and determination are
fused together into a format that our readers will enjoy – because we enjoy
them as well!
I am going to paraphrase my own grandmother here a little
bit. She’s an entertainer, and a drummer, and has been playing with various
bands since the late 1950’s. Her wise words of wisdom (which I am going to attempt
to paraphrase in some cogent manner) were: “If you are having fun on stage, and
the audience can see you having fun, they will have fun as well.” When she
plays the drums, she’s smiling, she’s animated, she laughs, and she’s
absolutely awesome. It doesn't matter if my grandfather forgets the bridge, has
a trombone malfunction, or spills his beer on the piano midway through a song –
she’s vibrant, happy, and her laughter carries the band along as well as her
drums. She sets the tempo, and the mood, in other words.
When you write, try to embody the same sort of emotion. If
you enjoy your story, if you well and truly love the words you write, the
structure, the syntax, the prose – the reader will as well. Just like my
grandmother might smile or laugh when she plays, so should you! If you are
writing something dark, scary, sad or poignant – if you don’t have tears
welling up in your eyes while you write, your readers won’t either. Be true to
yourself, but let yourself be true to the story.
The books I've written are reasonably light-hearted science
fiction – classic ‘space opera’ if you will, a classy sort of story told in the
same style as the grand old masters of the golden age of science fiction. I
chose this genre, and this style, mainly because I have the most fun writing
it! It’s not all fluff, however – I delve pretty deeply into the depth of
emotions, into the stark raving terror that lurks beneath us all, behind every
shadow – but, I approach conflict and negativity in my stories in a manner that
is above all, classy.
This has allowed me to push pretty hard into terrifying,
tense, or action-packed situations without fear that I am about to lose my
reader because above all, I focus on the story first, second and third.
So, what exactly do I mean by story? What exactly do I do?
I guess it’s fair to say, that I don’t really know. In terms
of actual mechanics of writing, I don’t usually outline or block out the story
beyond a general sort of concept. I might write 3-4 pages of ideas, general
plot points, interesting scenarios, maybe a few little snippets of conversation
here and there to help me along when I get to that point in the story, then, I
sit back a bit, read it a few times, think about how I can take the reader
through the experience… and then…
I tend to throw it all away and let my fingers take me
wherever they will. As I write, new ideas bubble up, new concepts, new twists
and turns, and I just roll with it. I honestly can’t tell you how many times
I've ended up writing something that at the time I was convinced was going to
end up on the cutting room floor when I was done, but, in the end, turned out
to be some of the most compelling, interesting, and eye-opening parts of my
books. If you read my books, you can pretty much bank on the fact that any time
something completely unexpected happens, it was also completely unexpected by
me.
I do want to clarify something here – I don’t just blather a never-ending litany of stream of consciousness – rather, I
approach the greater story in terms of smaller scenes, segments, and sections.
I never let the entirety of the novel I am writing overshadow my efforts to
write a page, paragraph, or even a word.
And while I am on the subject of words - - let me say this -
- the words you use in your stories should leap off the page, they should
transmit a deeper meaning, a deeper emotion, and a deep understanding of the
greater story. It is perfectly fine to agonize over the correct word, the most
interesting word, the most epic and suitable word.
In terms of actual mechanics, I almost never delete things
that I write. I am a complete sucker for the words I write, I love them madly,
unconditionally… but if I write something that I like, but it’s not the best
place in the story for it, or it’s out of character, or it’s too over the top –
whatever the reason is, I just smash the enter key a few times, go back up and
start writing again. As I write, bits and pieces, sometimes individual words,
sometimes sentences, paragraphs, or even entire sections end up jumbled,
jostling each other at the end of my novel, waiting patiently for me to
reconnect them to the story in some elegant, exceptional way.
Sometimes they don’t make it. Sadly, some bits and pieces do
end up getting cut – but I've found as time goes on, as I continue to write,
even bits that I thought were useless and ready for imminent destruction found
a new life as a plot point in another novel. I guess what I am saying here, is
treasure everything you write, even if it doesn't fit the moment, it may (and
hopefully will) fit in somewhere else.
For me, one of the most challenging aspects of writing is
dialog. I used to marvel at the effortless way Robert Heinlein would carry a
story using nothing but witty conversation, his stories would leap to
life in your head, and the mechanics of trying to tell who is talking in a
conversation never impact the story. He was a master of conversational
storytelling.
My motivation (as is yours, hopefully) is to improve, to
constantly work on problem areas until they shine. For some it is tense, for
others it is a dearth of adjectives – whatever it is, identify it, hurl it to
the ground and kneel on its windpipe until it begs for mercy. You are the
writer. You are the master of the story.
To fight my challenge with dialog, I adopted what I think is
a pretty nifty trick: I don’t write any!
At least, not at first… I start by writing the descriptive
parts of a section. What is happening, what it looks like, what it sounds like,
tastes like, the emotions and fears about whatever is happening, the hopes and
happiness, and every other part of the story except for the dialog. And then, I
go back through the section and flesh it out with conversation. I might convert some of the exposition into
spoken dialog including some of the feelings and observations – while in other sections
I may build on what I've written with new dialog that reinforces the
exposition.
The end result, my ultimate goal, is to weave character
interactions into the story, to make the underlying momentum of the story
dovetail perfectly with the dialog. I am always looking for a perfect balance,
that Heinlein moment, the flow of conversation and story that melts away as you
read, leaving you only with a perfectly clarified image in your head of the characters,
the setting, the experience.
I have had reviewers state that my characters are so well
visualized, they would be able to recognize them if they walked by on the
street – and that is the ultimate praise, in my opinion.
Now I am going to step a little bit aside from the position
I've seen Nano take recently, and talk a little bit about editing. I know,
you've heard many times, don’t do it. Just put words on the page, and keep
pounding along. That’s not terrible advice for some – but for me it would be
disaster. I can’t just flood words into a mishmash and slog to the end of a
novel like some grim, determined explorer reaching for the summit in the
pre-dawn light – for me, the joy in writing is in the writing, not being done
with writing.
I write a few pages, dive back in, modify, tweak, copy,
paste, fix tenses, and of course, remove all the extra times I've said ‘of
course’. I ‘edit as I go’, essentially, passing over and over through the words
I've written and ‘lightly agonize’ over the choices I've made.
This helps me in other ways
as well. This process of layering, of constant revision, allows me to
work through a section, read back into previously ‘finished sections’, to make
sure they flow together well, and most importantly – this process provides me
with all of the tools I need to work through distractions and interruptions.
The process allows me to essentially dive right back in to the story and keep
pushing.
I am a realist, however, and have learned that the written
word is never perfect. It’s never done. The more I revisit the words I've
written, the more I see opportunities for change, better structure, dialog, and
all sorts of improvements – all of which will subsequently need to be edited,
on and on, forever and ever, amen.
This sort of process isn't for everyone, of course – it may
only be for me, and I’m okay with that. My process isn't the typical Nano
process, and I’m probably not going to win this year, or maybe any year – but I
am writing books, nonetheless. I’m having a ton of fun, and thoroughly enjoying
every moment of it – yes, even the editing. For you see, by the time I am ready
to begin editing, it’s greatly simplified. Far from the grueling slog through
knee-deep mud and agony, for me, it’s more like a brisk walk through a cloudy
day.
Well, until I hand my novel off to the ‘real’ editor, that
is. Then the real pain begins. “but… it
was perfect!”
Here’s the thing – you can do it. You can write, you have
what it takes to get to the end of the story, you just need to make it happen.
Put yourself into whatever mental place you need to be to make yourself happy,
and above all, make the entire experience as fun and rewarding as possible. Be
true to yourself, and if you only reach a few people with your work – by all
means, reach them well.
