A New Schedule Calls for Precise Writing

By

Scott D. Parker

We’re a week in for the new school year and I’ve already had to adjust my writing schedule.

One of the best things about the end of school this past May was that I had the mornings to myself again. I’ve always woken before the family on weekends and holidays, and that’s where I get a lot of my writing done. But the weekdays are different. Starting the Tuesday after Memorial Day, I’m on my own, the boy having his summer break. I still wake at 5am, but I not longer have to stop at 6:15am to help him. Now, I can write and write and write all the way to 6:30 before I have to stop and get myself ready for the day job. Thankfully, my commute is literally around the corner, so I can leave at 6:55am and still be at work by 7:00am.

As one might expect, when I had my summer months to myself, I occasionally slept in. Didn’t feel like rising out of bed precisely at 5:00? No worries. I can sleep in an extra ten, fifteen, or even thirty minutes and still have an hour’s time to write. It was a great system.

That system is no more.

The boy now carpools with another dad. That dad is a teacher at a nearby school. He has to be in his classroom by 7:05am. That means he has to leave his house—around a different corner from my house—by 6:30am. I think you see where this is going. Backing up, I now have to wake the boy up at 5:45am. Yikes both for the time, but also for the writing schedule.

I quickly realized a week ago Thursday that I’m down to a good 40 minutes of writing time. I subtract five minutes for waking, getting coffee and my warm lemon water, and feeding the animals. Do I have time to sleep in now? Nope. By the end of this week, I was actually setting my own alarm for 4:55am. What?! Yeah, really. I want to sit at the keyboard and start writing as close to the top of the hour as possible. Then, after I walk him to the neighbor’s house, I tend to have about 20 more minutes to myself. I’ll typically finish the scene and then head to work.

It’s worked pretty well. On the mornings in which I’ve known exactly what happens in the next scene to write, I can almost finish it in that time frame. But when I don’t, when I’ve sketched the scene so broadly, leaving it to my future self to ‘fill in the blanks,’ I’ve gotten into trouble.

So I’m falling back to precise writing. This is my own term I just created that basically means outlining. With so little time left for writing—the evening is still and has always been family time; I don’t like the idea of sequestering myself away during those time unless absolutely necessary—I need to know exactly what I have to do in the time I have. It’s almost like a mini Pomodoro time keeper.

I’ve reached 10,000 words on the new book. That’s not precisely where I want to be by this date, but it is where I am on this new schedule. I’m hopeful to catch up this weekend and get back on pace. But I’m also going to revisit my notecards and put in more details before I get to those scenes so that I can use the time I have and produce the most optimal results. Or I have to write faster. Perhaps I'll do some more dictation. Who knows, but it'll be fun to experiment.

On Bonnie & Clyde and Tropes.

It's no secret that I love working with tropes. Tropes get a bad name because it often feels like an excuse not to do the work of creating something new, but I don't think that's the full truth. A lazy writer will write lazily regardless of tropes and archetypes, and even a mythical "original idea" can be ruined by a writer unwilling to do the work.

The reason tropes exist in the first place is because people relate to these stories and archetypes strongly enough to repeat them over and over again. And as Joe Clifford is fond of saying, "there are really only two stories - a person goes on a journey, and a stranger comes to town (which are really the same story from two different perspectives)." I gave up the desire to create something "wholly original" not because I'd rather riff off other people's work, but because I'm a realist. People have been writing fiction for thousands of years, and it's all "a person goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town." What makes fiction compelling, interesting, and original, is what we do with those two premises.

So when I set out to write my modern Bonnie & Clyde story, I wasn't worried about inventing a new story. I was worried about creating two characters that are interesting and compelling, and putting them in situations the reader doesn't fully expect. I focused a lot on what made the real Bonnie & Clyde so popular in their time - which isn't all that different from today, really. Historically, Bonnie & Clyde got a lot of adoration for sticking it to the banks during a time that poor people were really fed up with the financial status quo, watching people lose everything while the rich still managed to get richer (sound familiar?).

I worked with this idea a lot through the first ten thousand words (and that first ten thousand actually got started and ditched a few times, so maybe the more accurate number is thirty thousand words). It's a story for our time, as much as it was a story for theirs. The thing that jumped out at me, reading up on their lives and the conflicting details that have managed to work their way into the popular consciousness is that the reason they were popular then, and the reason they resonate now - is not the reason their story has lasted over the decades. It's been over eighty years since they died in a hail of bullets. In those eighty years, the economic climate has rippled and spiked enough that their long lasting appeal can't be attributed totally to sticking it to the banks.

When it hit me, goddamit it was so obvious. 

Bonnie & Clyde is a story about two people who opted out of the American Dream, sure. It's a story about sticking it to the banks. The power of celebrity. The way we view violence and crime.

It's all those things.

But it's also the stuff of romance novels. It wasn't Bonnie & Clyde against the banks, or Bonnie & Clyde against the police. It was Bonnie & Clyde against the world. It's a powerful romantic trope that has infiltrated almost every genre. I talked about the film From Dusk Till Dawn here before, and the things Rodriguez and Tarantino did to make you root for characters that were inarguably really fucking terrible dudes - but the other thing that makes those characters relatable? It was the Gecko Brothers against the world. It's not romance in this instance, but it is about love.

Depending on which version of the story you believe, Bonnie was a garden variety hybristophiliac, turned on by Clyde's criminal past and eager to join in the fun. Others seem to believe that Clyde would have been okay if Bonnie hadn't pushed him further in her thirst for fame. There are a dozen different variations on their specific story, and a million ways to tell a story like theirs.

My characters aren't a whole lot like the public image of Bonnie & Clyde, but they are criminals who've seen the lie inherent in the American Dream and they are two people bound to each other for a variety of reasons that have to face off against a world full of people who'd sooner see them dead or behind bars. The more I work out what makes their story special and meaningful, the happier I am that I'm taking old stories, tropes, and archetypes, and fucking with them until I get what I want.

Your book is not my book

By Steve Weddle

For whatever reason, I live on the same planet as lunatics. Sometimes they attack writers online because, heck, I don't even know anymore. Not even writers. Ellen DeGeneres got called a racist.

I see folks online going after a movie star or an author or someone who works at Taco Bell for something or other. Your characters are homophobic. You need more Lithuanians working at your store. No one in your book looks like me. I think your main character is a stereotype.

OK. You think someone doesn't have enough women in their novel? Or enough people of color or enough rural Americans. Yeah, I get that. Cool. Let's discuss it, if you want. These are important discussions for us, especially on a planet with lunatics. Let's understand each other, listen to each other. Yelling and threatening aren't nice.

It's great that you're passionate about the novel you saw reviewed or about photos posted on Twitter or comic books that are changing. The Hulk is Asian-American. Ms. Marvel is Pakastani-American. Captain America is African-American, unless you're talking about the other Captain America who is a Nazi.  We have all kinds of new stuff happening and if you're attached to characters, I get that you're passionate about them. Coolio.

But attacking authors -- or Ellen -- online for a posted photo or a novel doesn't seem helpful.

When everyone is a racist, no one is. (I think that was in The Incredibles movie.) If you call Ellen a racist, then what happens tomorrow when someone does something that's really, for real, truly racist? Or when you see some subtle form of racism that's more pervasive and can't fit into 140 characters? Or when you've hit five racists today and five tomorrow and so on, what's left this weekend when you really have something to say? Believe me, there's racism out there, and Ellen ain't it.

And when social media is used as an attack zone, many creatives will retreat and avoid social contact with folks, and that's a shame. Twitter is a great leveller in that I can tweet to some of my favorite authors, jugglers, musicians and maybe they'll hear me and tweet back. How cool would it be to get into a conversation with your hero on Twitter? But if we're attacking artists, maybe they'll just sign off altogether. We make the fellowship hall so toxic, no one will hang out. Lauren Zuke left, as have many others. Soon, Twitter is just a billion angry people and my 47 fake accounts. Where's the fun in that? Social media is supposed to be kinda social, you know? We should be nice.

And, I guess the point that really stands out for me is this: If the people in a book don't look the way you want, then write your own book. If you don't like a movie in which all five people on the rescue party are white, I get that. I totally get that. And maybe something could be done about it. Maybe after all the outcry with the new Star Wars movie being almost all white, maybe that caused them to do better. That's cool. A discussion. A working together without the assumption that the artist is evil. But what really helps, at least in my thinking, is for more folks to write more stories with different folks in them.

Jonathan Franzen got blown up on social media when he said he wasn't the person to write a race relations novel because he didn't have many "black friends." So Twitter went after him. Well, would you want to read a Franzen novel about race relations? Would the people yelling at him read that? Or were they just seeing another dumb thing someone said and going after him because it's kinda fun to kick people around? I don't know that Franzen is the dude for the job. I would imagine the world is full of folks with honest experiences who would do a better job. So instead of bashing Franzen, write your own damn book.

If you don't like Franzen's books, don't buy them. Use that money to buy some pens and paper and write your own damn book. Please. Tell the stories you want to share. Your book is not my book. My book is not your book. You don't have to kick Franzen in his testicles, you know. Please, tell your story.

That being said, we could all probably do a better job of sharing positive stories about people doing good things, you know? Look what yelling and being mean have gotten us. Sad!

Being nice is cool, but sometimes that's asking too much. Maybe we could share nice when we see it?

Oh, and Alyssa Rosenberg at WaPo says the some I would have said if I were smarter:

Anyway, be nice and write your own book, I guess. And when you see a book or comic or movie doing a good thing in terms of uplifting us, let us all know. Some of us are still on Twitter and would like to hear about the good stuff. Thanks.