The Ten Percent Predicament

I was going to call this chapter ‘Writer’s Block’ or ‘Author’s Arrest’ (no, not that kind of arrest) or ‘Novelist’s Snag’ but that doesn’t accurately describe my problem.  Then I considered ‘The Seven-Percent Solution’ but the math didn’t work (big surprise) and Nicholas Meyer did a better job than I ever will.  My problem would be better illustrated as ‘Hopping Hack’.

            I get one of those inspired inspirations and start out all gangbusters (wonder what that phrase really means?) on a book.  Dialogues, plots, scenes and plot twists all pour off my fingers onto the keyboard to be projected on the computer screen.  But eventually, the high fades and my fingers start to hesitate and my brain slows down (or someone interrupts me).

            There comes a point in capturing the essence of a new project where you just can’t say ‘female lead’, ‘male lead’ and ‘humorous sidekick’ anymore.  You have to stop and figure out what these peoples’ names and back stories are.  Once you have that, you have to give them a place to do whatever it is they’re doing in and then you have to decide if it’s going to be a fictional place or a real place.  If it’s a real place, then you have to stop and do research on wherever you placed them.  If it’s a fictional place, you have to stop and make it up in your head and on paper (well, screen).  And what do they look like?  What age group?  (As I get older, I find it harder to write younger but that means pretty soon all my characters will be in wheelchairs (oh wait, some are) … all my characters will be old and fat and gray just like me.)  What do they do for a living?  I have to figure out all the assorted things that make up a human being for each person.

            Meanwhile, the characters are sitting around twiddling their thumbs (or each others) or they wander off, get into trouble and show up in other stories.  And I’m bogged down in a mire of baby name books and Internet research until … ah ha … the light goes off again as I read a story about a guy who found undeveloped film from 1960’s in his attic left by some previous owner and he took it to the photo shop to see if they could do anything with it and they found pictures of … oh wow, that would make a really great story so I open a new file and start again.

            That’s where the ten percent comes in.  I have folders inside of folders that have the first thirty to fifty pages (I’m on a roll here and am not stopping to do the math) of really great stories in them.  It’s not that the fire goes out; it’s that the fire jumps the river of my thought stream and rekindles somewhere else.  So I end up hopping back and forth between ideas and hacking down the brush with a machete so I don’t end up with a forest fire and burn out before my time.

            I know I have to stop, dig a trench and work on just one project at a time until I finish it or I’m never going to finish anything ever again.  My career will die.  I will die and they’ll find my body buried in an avalanche of paper but finishing a project seems like an overwhelming amount of words (80,000) to find.  And trust me, I know from experience there are long stretches of oh-my-god-this-is-really-boring-writing and why-why-did-I-ever-want-to-be-a-writer out there waiting on me. 

I think I’ll try capturing all the exciting scenes and sex scenes and action scenes first, thinking I’ll go back and fill in the boring stuff later and the more fun stuff I write the less fill in there will be.  But this method produces time warps that tangle and weave, vortexes that let other things enter the story and some really great chapters that fit absolutely nowhere in any book (unless I start a whole new book around them).  I print and cut and paste and edit and sort until the original germ of the idea has died along with my inspiration and energy.  I give up and go play computer games until suddenly my brain sparks and I can see how it all goes together (even the boring stuff) and I race to get it all down before the fire dies.

Looking back on this chapter, I’ve discovered the ten percent is the time I spend writing, the eighty percent is the time I spend worrying about or planning to write (I left ten percent free for non-important stuff like job, kids, chores).  If I could switch the writing percentage with the worrying and planning time, I could fill library shelves with the books (or flash drives with ebooks).  I’ll bet if I go look, I can find an article on the Internet on how to do just that.                      

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Note:  I looked up gangbusters.  Together as one word, it means law enforcement that breaks up organized criminal groups.  But separated as in Gang Busters© it was a radio show, television show and movie about criminal cases.

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Intrepid Interviewers

 New and inexperienced writers should not speak in public or give live interviews. No matter how much you practice or anticipate, reporters and interviewers will always catch you off guard and writers like to revise, edit and embellish too much to give a good answer on the first try. If it takes me two months of correcting to get one sentence to come out right, guess how much of an idiot I’m going to sound answering questions right off the top of my head with no time for revising.




Example


Interviewer: “Where did you grow up?”

Writer: “My family is from the Allegany Mountains but because there was no work other than farming and they couldn’t make a legal living scratching in the rocky soil and moon shining, ginsenging (sanging is not what hill people do in church on Sundays), growing pot in the corn and poaching are illegal, they moved to the Shenandoah Valley where industry gobbles up healthy humans to manufacture products no one needs so they move from plant to plant to follow the jobs until the factories spit them back out when they’re old and can no longer work to retire on a farm where they don’t have the energy to do the farm chores.”

Interviewer: “So you were raised in the valley.”

Writer: “Yep.”

Interviewer: “Did you always want to be a writer?”

Writer: “No. In high school, I wanted to be a marine biologist where I could live for months on end on a ship or in an underwater city by myself studying and writing. The training to be an astronaut took too long. I considered forest ranger which is basically the same but only on dry land …”

Interviewer: (Trying to get back control.) “Underwater cities?”

Writer: “… But working as a ranger seemed like too much walking and those ginsengers shoot back so I wanted to be the witch in the cabin where deer would come up on the front porch and eat muffin crumbs out of my hand while I had my morning coffee but I couldn’t figure out how to make money to pay for the muffins or the coffee as no one buys potions anymore or the potions they do buy come from the beauty or herb counters at the dollar discounters. I mean do you really feel comfortable buying your herbs at a dollar store?”

Interviewer: “Speaking of witchcraft, I understand you …”

Writer: “But by my senior year, all these stories and characters were clouding up my brain demanding my attention so I knew I needed a job where I could sit around and write and get paid for it. At first, I tried housewife but I couldn’t get along with the boss, the hours were horrible and the pay sucked. Then I found the perfect solution as a security guard. No one expects anything from the security guard. We’re basically invisible so I could work long hours, usually through the night and get my writing done.”

Interviewer: “Talking about your writing, in most of your books … well … in all of your books, there’s a strong sexual component.”

Writer: “Yes.”

(Silence except for the sound of crickets chirping and a rumble from the interviewer’s stomach.)

Interviewer: “Perhaps you could explain to our readers why you include explicit sexual descriptions in just about every chapter of your novels.”

Writer: (Wait … it’s not every chapter … I pretty sure it’s not.) “What would you like to eat?”

Interviewer: “I … er … what?”

Writer: “Your stomach says you’re hungry. Close your eyes and picture yourself dressed in beautiful clothes sitting in an elegant restaurant. Now order any meal from anywhere on the earth. What would you order?”

Interviewer: “Salad.”

Writer: “So even in your wildest dreams you’re on a diet? That’s just sad. Okay. Picture yourself naked laying in the most erotic location you can think of. Where would you be?”

Interviewer: (Not answering the question.) “What does this have to do with sex in your books?”

Writer: “Fantasizing. Fantasies. The sex in my books are fantasies. People read my books to escape. We all need air, water, food, shelter and emotional support to survive. Your salad is the basic but a deep dish pizza loaded with meat and cheese is more satisfying. My readers are sitting at work goofing off on the Internet or at home where the chores want to be done or in waiting rooms full of screaming kids. My books take them out of there and place them naked on a horse riding along a crystal blue sea with the lover of their choice. They don’t have to worry about the sand chafing and they don’t even have to come up with the sexual positions. I do that for them.”

Interviewer: “And why do they need you to do that for them?”

Writer: “Well, I guess they don’t really need me (starting to feel underappreciated) but I think most of the human race has forgotten how to dream, how to fantasize. I can understand it. We’re bombarded with images all day long. (Of course, someone had to write the premises behind those images before they can become images.) We don’t have to fantasize anymore because movies, television, games and the Internet do it for us or did before reality television started killing even those outlets. I can’t imagine anyone fantasizing about a reality show. We’re so overwhelmed by media; we have to take classes to learn to meditate just to clear our minds. You couldn’t even come up with a decent fake meal or an erotic location to get naked in.”

Interviewer: “And how does that …?”

Writer: “Except for childish games with toys and excluding artistic people and mental patients, everyone’s first experience with imagination are sexual fantasies. I just add mine to my stories.”

Interviewer: “So all the sex scenes in your books are things you have or want to …”

Writer: (Interrupting.) “And now I’m really hungry. Let’s go get a pizza. You’re too skinny anyway.”