The Writing Process

Earlier this month I saw writer Aaron Sorkin on The View, talking about his new movie The Social Network. I really appreciated his descriptions of his writing process.

When asked offstage how he created the opening scene of his movie, he said “sometimes you’re thinking about it for months and months and months, you’re pacing around, you’re climbing the walls, but once you know what you’re going to write…you write it in the amount of time it takes you to type it and you hope that energy and speed makes its way onto the page.” Later he said onstage that he takes six to eight showers a day to hit his mental reset button when his writing isn’t going well and that driving around, arguing with himself, and watching a lot of ESPN also get his creative juices flowing.

I can relate to that.

For the past two months I tried to take the more disciplined approach to writing that others have described. I set a goal of writing five days a week, at least two thousand words a day. I started the Monday after my children returned to school, when the house was silent and needed to be filled with words.

Some days the words flowed, some days…not so much. I combined my new process with my old process: walking the dog, doing the laundry, cleaning out the refrigerator, and, oh yes, watching The View. That’s how I stumbled on Aaron.

He said although his writing process looks an awful lot like him watching ESPN, his brain is working all the time. I’m sure that’s true. Sometimes I think my brain is working on a story, percolating it, and I don’t even know it, sort of like ‘let’s sleep on it.’ A lot of my best ideas seem to come to me in the shower—but sometimes they leave even before I have time to dry off. And sometimes I write so long and so fast that I don’t snap out of it until my son gets off the bus and knocks on the office window, scaring the bejesus out of me.

I did find with the more disciplined approach, I could read a book at night after writing during the day. That’s never been possible for me in the past, so it’s promising to have it all compartmentalized now. It may be a natural step in my ever evolving writing process.

It’s been thirty days to date, and I’ve written 79,565 words, including ‘THE END.’ The crooks of my elbows feel sore from being bent so much while I type. I’m taking NaNoWriMo off to work for a weekly paycheck—gotta love those in this economy.

Of course, I’d like to write a novel that generates as much buzz and is as popular as Aaron’s television show The West Wing or his movie The Social Network.

Who knows, maybe I’ll evolve to that.

It’s A First!

My debut novel, For Better, For Murder, will be published in September 2009 by Midnight Ink. As a result, the Inkspot members graciously invited me to blog with them. I accepted then realized I would have to write my first blog entry—ever.

I’m taking the easy road this time and telling you a little about my new book and how it came to be. I’ll try to work my way up to something a little more edgy in the future.

Over two years ago now, I wrote For Better, For Murder because, as a stay-at-home mom, I found only so many hours could be filled with laundry, cleaning, grocery shopping, dog walking, okay maybe a little mall shopping and lunching, volunteer work, children’s activities, and, oh yes, the ladies of The View. I craved purpose, earning potential, and some brain exercise. Then, when these characters started talking to me, I couldn’t stop writing until I’d completed three books in the Broken Vow Mystery series. Currently I’m taking a rest from writing, but, as my friend likes to say, ideas keep “percolating” in my head. Book four will pour out of me one day soon, I’m sure.

I intended to write a cozy, but my agent called this book a “cozy with an edge”. The acquiring editor at Midnight Ink called it “whatever this thing is that you wrote”. I took that as a compliment. I wanted this book to be different. Fresh. Entertaining. If you laugh out loud a couple times, come close to tears once, and remember something unique to the story months after you’ve finished reading it then I’ll have accomplished my goal.

The protagonist of For Better, For Murder owns a sportscar boutique in New York’s Finger Lakes region. I wanted to write about a protagonist with an interesting hobby or profession. When I took inventory of my own, I realized another author had already written about them. So I stole my husband’s hobby—cars. He’s been talking to me about them for seventeen years. Three quarters of the time—okay, half the time, but let’s keep that a secret between us—I was actually listening. Then I picked the Finger Lakes region as the setting for my fictional town, because I spent a lot of time there in childhood and now as an adult with my own children. I’m just hoping I didn’t make it sound so inviting that everyone flocks there and I can’t get a table at my favorite restaurants anymore.

Now for the plot: in For Better, For Murder sportscar boutique owner Jolene Asdale craves business success and a quiet life in her upscale Finger Lakes tourist town. But a corpse in her showroom Ferrari and the arrival of her almost-ex-husband, the deputy sheriff assigned to the investigation, creates a tense situation that only heightens as the evidence keeps pointing to Jolene as the murderer.

I’ll tell you a story about Jolene in my next post.