Larry M. Coleman

NaNoWriMo Day 4

Yesterday, I opened the post on planning with a quotation from Neil Gaiman. So let’s open this post on making it up as you go with a quotation from Neil Gaiman:

I don’t write with answers in mind. I write to find out what I think about something. I wrote American Gods because I had lived in America for almost a decade and felt it was time that I learned what I thought about it.

—Neil Gaiman, The View from the Cheap Seats

Now, lest you think the only person I’ve ever read is Neil Gaiman (although if that were the case, I’d still have lived a pretty good life), here’s someone else:

Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.

—E. L. Doctorow

You may have heard the term “pantser” in reference to writing. It evokes the image of someone writing by the seat of their pants, with little-to-no outlining or planning, making it up as they go along. It’s sometimes given a slightly derogatory slant, but it shouldn’t be: after all, making things up is what we do as writers of fiction.

Charles Dickens wrote at high speed and then extensively revised afterward, even without a word processor:

Although I am truly a pantser, I prefer a delightful term I only recently encountered: “discovery writer.” Because, as Gaiman points out, it is quite possible to write an entire book just to discover what it’s about. I’ve done it myself several times. I’ve written a book to find out why someone would do the worst possible thing out of good reasons, then I wrote another one that asks the same question in a setting almost completely opposite of the first: one about murder, the other about love. I’ve written a book to find out how someone with combat-induced PTSD would react when forced to face combat again. And my latest project is an attempt to answer my own question of why Britney Spears collapsed and Alizée is living a happy life, despite both singers being faced with such similar life circumstances. I didn’t have the answer to any of these questions when I started, and when I was done, I still didn’t have the answer, I just had an answer.

What’s fun about being a pantser/discovery writer is the spontaneity; not just your own, but the characters. I still remember the day (seriously, it was November 25, 2020) that Eileen walked onto the scene completely uninvited. She’s become my favorite among equals, and although Karl (who was supposed to have that place) often inspires me to write scenes, she’s the one who makes me want to write so I can live in her world for a little while.

And there wasn’t a single word about her in the month of prep I did before that book. She wasn’t planned, she was discovered.

More recently, in this latest project, I remember the first time, after almost 20,000 words in, that the two main characters went from distant and standoffish and broke the ice between them as Colette spontaneously pranked Edouard. I finally found her, and she’s been like that for several scenes since, none of which I would have discovered by planning them.

Unless you spend weeks and weeks coming up with a detailed outline before November 1st comes, the insane pace of a novel in a month forces you to write by the headlights. You don’t have time to plan and write at the same time. That’s one of the things that appeals to me as a writer, and if that’s not your style, that’s good: you get a chance to see what letting yourself go and writing with freedom is like. It’s a worthwhile experience just for building experience in doing it.

The disadvantage of driving at night is that you don’t get to see the landscape. A lot of things pass you by unnoticed. You might be driving past a beautiful mountain range, but you’ll see none of it. Maybe there was a gaggle of clowns on the corner doing colorful things that didn’t fall into the cones of your headlights. Or a gorgeous garden of flowers along the roadside.

It’s easier to see during the day, but there’s also a lot more traffic, so you can’t drive as fast. But who’s to say you can’t do both? Why couldn’t you drive the whole way at night, then go back and drive the same way in the daylight?

You can. It’s called revision. That’s what the other eleven months of the year are for. That’s when you take the time to get the words right, paint in the details, and give the book a strong sense of place and description. Your November book won’t be perfect. It will just be done.

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I don’t tend to go in with zero planning; I simply sketch some things out and give the book the freedom to go where it wants to. The two times when I went in with no goal and no planning at all were the two times I made it 10% or less.

However, this time, I’m giving myself the Absolute Zero challenge: all I know about the book is it will be about Richard. I don’t even know its title—I just call it “6” for now. The only thing I’m going in with is this, which I hope will be the seed from which 50,000 more words will grow.

Anna. Place of my birth, place of my near-death. Land of love, land of hate. Corn, thunderstorms, and nothing. A great place to be from.

Wish me luck!