DIALOGUE SNIPPETS, SCHTICKS, & GLUE STICKS: THE MAKING OF A NOVEL - How to Write a Book
I used 24-point type to write my second novel ALARM (Stovepiper Books Media, June 2007) because I had trouble seeing the characters during bleary eyed late-night sessions in 2004.
Twenty-four-point type is pretty big.
Big enough.
Big enough to cut down on eye strain.
And my eyes were straining.
ALARM is a short book (30,000 words) but it took five weeks of intense work to complete the initial draft.
I worked on ALARM for eight hours every day or night.
That was fifty-six hours per week--minimum--for five weeks.
If I wasn't writing, I was concentrating on the work (constantly). I printed shit out (published it) and read it out loud (performed it) as if I was being filmed before a live studio audience in my apartment.
It was a non-stop process of reading, re-reading, revising, writing, re-writing.
Obsessing.
What did Henry Miller say about writing? "Write every day."
If you can't write, he said, work.
"Cement a little every day."
The computer I was working on was not connected to the Internet.
O, those were the days.
I miss being productive. Creatively productive.
I wanted to project my computer screen onto the entire wall of my living room.
I wanted to write in 240-point type with words as big as my couch.
I believed this would happen in the future.
It was inevitable.
Writers would (or will) use computer-screen projectors. It was inevitable, I felt. I bought rolls of masking tape and taped each "completed" manuscript page to the wall.
Seeing it gradually take shape on the wall gave different perspectives on the work.
ALARM.
I began each new chapter or "episode" (or vignette) with a blown-up first letter.
I started spelling out a "secret message" with the big first letters for each new section.
This "secret message" schtick helped keep me going.
It was like a puzzle within a puzzle that made the bigger puzzle easier to put together.
It gave me a set form within which to work. [AND PLAY]
I allowed an "alter-narrator" to make bracketed comments about the primary narration. [YO]
I tried to keep it fun. [IF YOU SAY SO]
Trying to be too "writerly" can wreck one's approach to one's work. Totally.
That's why I think I did most of my writing in notebooks. Cutting and pasting, or "scrapbooking", is basically a form of publishing. It's a valuable tool (medium) to hone material.
I've filled some two dozen notebooks since 2000. I often wrote on scraps of paper, which I would collect and paste into the notebooks: dialogue snippets, descriptions of people, signs, ideas for first lines, you name it.
Ingredients.
It was the writer Kenneth Gangemi, I believe, who said he considered a scissors as extremely important.
I consider glue sticks as extremely important as well.
And coffee. [COFFEE?]
A wonderful book titled Walking on Alligators: A Book of Meditations for Writers helped me stay focused while I was writing both my first book, Valley (Bend Press, 1998), and ALARM.
Bottom line: Any book that helps keep you hyped on your craft is a sound investment.
I must have loaned my copy of Walking on Alligators to a friend because I can't find it right now, but I recall that it was heavily notated, which I found to be cathartic in and of itself: allowing yourself to actually write in a printed book.
Marginalia rocks.
If you can't write, riff. Diagram. Draw. Scribble. Be an archivalist. That's what it's called. That's what I call it: Archivalism. In other words, document everything you are seeing, hearing, and thinking because you never know what you will use in the future.
Make up your own rules.
Mike Daily's next article for www.wapyb.com will delve into the travail he says he experienced trying to get his second novel ALARM published. He eventually assumed full responsibility for producing the project himself. It was hell.
Listen to Mike Daily and his band O'GRADY perform "Alarm" at the publication party for Northwest Edge III: The End of Reality (fiction/film anthology from Chiasmus Press). The event was held at Disjecta Gallery on July 20, 2006.
Mike Daily is a novelist, recording artist, and blogmaster who frequently performs his work in Portland, Oregon. He is currently vocalist for the experimental fiction rock band, O'GRADY. Click http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfISNDfnOUw to watch Daily perform "War" from his forthcoming novel/double CD, ALARM (available June 2007). See www.myspace.com/alarmdailynovel and www.overheardpublicity.com .
A big block that i have had is wanting to write. i like my story everything is good i just dont want to sit there and write. i think little "snippet" games will help. thanks
I fully understood what you were writing. I too have fought the fight and come to the point of no return. Only to find that the battle is well worth the war. The long hours and the often change in pace and sometime style have helped me in my goal to finish my novel. The everyday ins and outs of writing is in fact a job that I love. And look forward to each and everyday. The desire still burns with the passion to fullfill my dream to finish my book with as a top notch writer. Not just another want-a-be.
Thanks for the reminder!
how do i write a book!!!!!
a. Read voraciously (the genre in which you want to write.
b. Write, even if you have no idea what you're writing. It's like learning to run a marathon - you start by walking.
c. Study writing - writing styles, grammar, books on how to write...
d. Write some more.
e. Write, write, write, write, write....
d. Edit like crazy
e. Keep writing
thanks