How I Work
A few weeks ago Fortune Magazine ran this really cool series of articles under the heading “How I Work.” They interviewed major business moguls (like Bill Gates) and asked how they handled a variety of common business needs/activities. I found the series rather interesting and as the type of writer who always enjoys comparing notes with others, I thought it might be worthwhile to bring the idea over here and see how other writers approach some of the basic tasks and requirements of our beloved profession.
To make the essay really work, however, it requires some interaction from you, the readers. If you are a writer, please join me in posting how you work in the comments section. Who knows, maybe each of us will find even one new approach that can change the way we approach some aspect of our writing career.
I’m going to cover six major areas relating to how I work – book structure, research, submissions tracking, writing, editing, and communications.
Book Structure
When it comes time to create a new project, I usually start by coming up with a one or two sentence description that summarizes as succinctly as possible what the book is about. In much the same fashion as a
In my view, a synopsis is nothing more than a one to two page summary of the events of the story, told in present tense. If I can’t sit down and easily draw up a synopsis, then I know that I haven’t done nearly enough work in thinking about the structure of my story. And forget trying to write a novel without a synopsis – doing that would be harder for me than to try and navigate from Peking to
Many writers I’ve met seem to have a hard time condensing their 350 page novel down to one or two pages. That’s because they are working backward instead of forward. If they had developed a solid synopsis before writing the novel, it wouldn’t seem so daunting a task. After all, developing two pages into 350 certainly sounds easier than trying to crunch 350 pages down to two, doesn’t it?
The final act in constructing my novel is to write an outline. You get as many opinions about outlines at a writers’ conference as you do languages spoken at the United Nations. Folks either seem to love them or hate them. For a writer like me, who writes entire novels completely out of sequence, they are a godsend and I wouldn’t go into a project without one. They help me know that I’ve thought through the plot well enough to avoid the giant gaping holes in the road. They allow me to write whatever chapter I am feeling enthused about writing that day, without worrying about continuity issues. They give me the freedom to work on several major projects at once, because I can always refer back to the outline and refresh myself with the project at hand.
So logline, synopsis, and outline, in that order. That’s my method. (For those who have a hard time with any of these, let me recommend Randy Ingermanson’s excellent snowflake method. Follow his process and this will become second nature for you. And you’ll have a better structure underlying your work. You can find Randy at www.randyingermanson.com.)
Research
This is an area that I’m still struggling a bit with. For my Templar Chronicles series, I did a tremendous amount of reading about the Order, but most of that was offline and so I simply took handwritten notes. These were organized into a three ring binder which eventually became the world bible for my series. Character notes, location notes, scene ideas, plot points – like Ragu, they’re all in there.
For doing research online, I’ve tried two different products to keep me organized. The first is OneNote by Microsoft. This is a wonderful product for taking notes at meetings, generating To-Do lists, organizing follow-up and the like. It also allows you to cut and paste text and images right out of the web, organizing them into the pages of a virtual notebook. I’ve been pretty happy with this, though I’m not as savvy at using it yet as I would like to be. (Information on OneNote can be found at www.microsoft.com. The downside of this product is that the full version is expensive unless you intend to make regular use of it - $99.00.)
The other product I’ve recently been testing is called EverNote. This functions similarly to OneNote, but it is freely available and I’m actually finding it easier to use. The organization system is more to my liking and I can clip information directly into it from the web. For anyone looking for an effective way to store and quickly access collected information or notes, I would highly recommend this. (Evernote can be found at www.evernote.com)
Submissions Tracking
Knowing what you sent to who when is probably one of the most important organizational tools in a writer’s arsenal. My agent handles all of my novel related submissions. I handle everything else, including short fiction, comic work, rpg work, and other assorted projects. (And I still keep track of when and where my agent sends things, as it allows me to be better informed and evaluate how much time he is devoting to my career.)
For the last couple of years I’ve been using a piece of software called Write Again!. It was developed by another writer (who I actually had the pleasure of sharing a table of contents with in the rare Hastur Pussycat Kill Kill volume), Tom Dullemond. The database keeps track of my projects and all of the various elements that make them up. It allows me to create my own market database and allows me to track submissions, including their financial elements, for every project. I can run a wide variety of reports that show me what’s out, what’s been accepted, how often a particular piece has been rejected, and more. Even better it’s easy to use.
The only drawback is that the system hasn’t been updated now in a couple of years, so we’re stuck at the current version. It has a few issues I’d like to see corrected, but I haven’t found anything better and so I’m content. Write Again! comes in both a professional and a lite version – the lite version is free. You can find it at www.write-again.com.
Writing
As I mentioned above, I work on several project at once (keep me from getting burned out or discouraged when I’m struggling with one in particular) and I write complete novels entirely out of sequence. I tend to see things cinematically in my head, like watching movie scenes flashing by, and so I tend to create a bunch of loosely connected scenes that get tied together at a later date with the help of the outline.
I’d be interested to hear how many others write the way I do (or if I’m just the resident writing freak!
Editing
When I first started writing, I had the habit of correcting each and every sentence as I went along, until I was entirely satisfied with it. As you can image, this slowed my output considerably and kept me rather frustrated with the process at every stage of the game.
A year or so ago, I decided that I would simply get the main storyline out on paper first and worry about fixing everything once the first draft was done. This has been extremely liberating for me, allowing my output on a daily basis to triple, and it has kept my enthusiasm for various projects high throughout the writing process.
After the first draft is done, I print out the entire work and edit it by hand with a red pen. I’ve learned the hard way that I don’t edit as thoroughly or as well when doing it on the screen, so I resort to the old fashioned method, which works just fine for me. When I have the time, I’ll let the project sit for a few weeks, then give it another look. This usually means a second round of editing, but I’ve found the time allows me some perspective and lets me spot the finer issues easier.
Communications/Email
I’ve recently switched most of my business-related email over to Google Mail. This free service allows me tremendous storage capabilities and offers features most other programs do not, such as the ability to tag conversations to make them easier to find and search. Gmail also organizes mail into conversations, grouping all of the replies to an email into a thread. This way I can view the back and forth without hunting for individual emails.
Gmail is also available from wherever I can access the Internet, so I don’t have to worry about not being able to get my mail if I’m traveling or using a group computer. (The down side is that every now and then I do hit a time when Gmail is unavailable, but I’ve never found it to be down for more than an hour or so and its only happened to me twice in the last several months. Considering my cable Internet access seems to come and go at higher frequencies, I’m not too upset.)
Gmail is in Beta, so it’s not yet available to everyone. You need to get an invite to sign up. And as luck would have it, I have fifty invitations to hand out, so if you are a writer and want to give the system a try, drop me an email at jnassise at gmail.com and I’ll see what I can do. First come, first serve.
So, that’s how I work. At least in those six areas. How about you? How do you work?
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Related posts:
- Essential Organization
- From Novel to Comic - Part Two
- The Harder I Work The Luckier I Get
- Don’t Forget Your Bible
- Novel Proposals
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Comments
Shall I use the historically correct revolver, with just six shots, or the brand-fangled new one from that mystery I’m reading that allows the protagonist to fire seven? (grin)
-J
I’m working on the response to this, just so you don’t think I ignored you (lol). It’s not a short one.
DNW
Holy crap, I wrote “your” instead of “you’re.” Shoot me. Shoot me now.
–M
And you made me need to go back and re-read to find it. A very Tricky way to get people to pay attention to what you’re saying 
Book Structure:
I have written with, and without an outline. Deep Blue, arguably the best of my published novels, was written without an outline. I knew where I was headed, but until I wrote the second to last chapter, I didn’t know exactly how it would end. The same was true of the novel that will be released this summer, “Ancient Eyes,” I had a good idea where it was going, but no outline at all. I didn’t know what would happen to close it and give me the right ending until it hit me between the eyes. I like to write like that, but it can be terrifying. I mean, what if nothing ever hits you between the eyes at all? What if you write and write and can’t find your way back to the ending you thought you would find?
Other books – most of my newer books – have started as a chapter outline. I have found – as Mark mentioned, that having the outline is very liberating. I almost never make it start to finish and keep to the outline, but I write more quickly, and with more confidence – and a lot less of the aforementioned terror.
I never write a logline, and I hate the synopsis. My agent, Robert, invariably helps me with these. I’m getting better at it, but I have a self-imposed block against distilling the book down to its essence. The synopsis is of no use to me in writing, which is another point against it. If I have a deadline, I won’t even consider writing without an outline.
Research
I am up and down with research. When I wrote “This is My Blood” I had years of personal research behind me. Many of my novels are born of things I’ve studied, not with the idea of doing research, but with the idea of learning – and then the knowledge I’ve gained has led to fiction. That’s the way life is, when you write as constantly as I do…it all intertwines.
For “The Mote in Andrea’s Eye” I researched enough to give the novel a feel of “reality” and I added in some experience from the US Navy to give it a little more still, but for the most part I envisioned it from what already existed in my mind. I generally don’t write things that require research, so every time I do, it’s a new experience. I downloaded the light version of Joe’s Internet note-taking program, and it looks helpful (thanks Joe).
Submissions tracking
In the past I was awful at this. I used haphazard, scattershot note-taking as a method, and didn’t pay much attention to it. This never killed me (by selling the same thing twice to two markets) but it did cause stories to languish without being submitted for long periods of time because I just couldn’t’ remember what went where.
Now I track submissions in a spreadsheet, and the number has dropped (while the number of acceptances has risen) so it’s easier. As Joe stated, my agent handles the tracking of all novel manuscripts and proposals…which is a good thing, because I ask him about once a week to remind me what is where…
Writing
I’m a pretty straightforward writer. I write books in sequence. I can write more than one project at a time, but prefer not to. I write very quickly – usually 3-5K words a day, particularly when I’m in the middle of something I need to get done. I have never written a scene or a chapter out of sequence, except in some rare cases where chapters or whole sections got moved from one part of the book to another. In this respect, though quick and slightly hypergraphic, I am boring. No odd quirks.
Editing
I usually write a chapter before I look back. I read the chapter over, do any obvious revisions, then move on. When I have the manuscript complete, I pass it to second readers, Trish reads and edits very well – Robert, my agent, also has a great eye for detail, and some of my friends, Janet, and Brett Savory weigh in on occasion. When Robert edits, he uses the tracking function in Word, which is good, because it requires me to go over every line and character to not only make revisions, but to make sure all the notes and highlights out of the document. It’s a good process, and normally I right relatively clean…though peppered with passive voice and a few repetitive errors I’ve been trying to overcome. I’m fortunate to have other eyes watching over me.
Communications
I use Netscape for browsing and e-mail at home, Outlook at work. I hate web mail – too unreliable and the more features you add into it, the slower it reacts. Netscape has almost no viruses written to attack it, so it is preferable to Outlook, or Outlook Express – the MOST targeted e-mail programs. Microsoft products require too much constant vigilance because of that targeting, and Netscape allows me the bonus of having the browser and e-mail interactive, as well as the ability to monitor multiple e-mail accounts in the same window. I like it a lot and wouldn’t be likely to change.
And that…friends and readers…is that. It’s interesting seeing how these vary…
DNW
I use Firefox to do my browsing. You can get an extension called “Scrapbook” (iirc) that works similarly to OneNote - and it’s free.
And I, too, have several gmail invites available to anyone who’d like one.
Some excellent info here, Joe. My method of working in many respects parallels yours, although it hasn’t always been that way.
I had never worked from a detailed outline until I wrote DARK SHADOWS: DREAMS OF THE DARK with Beth Massie, where we were required to submit a thorough, chapter-by-chapter outline to HarperCollins prior to even beginning work on the novel itself. By “thorough,” I mean about 40 pages — a couple of pages for each chapter, including some sample dialogue. It was almost a mini novel.
Most of my outlines now are only about half that size, and I must admit, I don’t enjoy writing them. It’s hard for me to build much enthusiasm during the process, and I tend to get impatient to get into the “real” writing. However, once I’m done with one, it feels downright liberating. When I start writing the novel proper, I’m free to build the prose as I see fit, to take a few sidetrips, to let the piece build its own momentum, knowing that I’ve constructed a solid track for it, and it’s not going to run off the rails. As you said, I can then work on various portions of the book as I feel like it, pretty well assured I’m not going to run into continuity problems. I wrote THE NIGHTMARE FRONTIER very much out of sequence, and when I put it all together, I think it ended up a much stronger book than it might have otherwise.
I do a lot of research, particularly when I’m writing historical stuff, which I do frequently. To me it’s a balancing act to include just what is necessary without hitting my reader with a needless onslaught of info. When you’ve learned tons and tons of Stuff, you want the reader to know that you know tons and tons of Stuff. Well, the reader doesn’t really need to know that. He needs to know only as much as the story requires to be real to him. A lot of times, that’s a small fraction of what you’ve researched, and it can be hairy having to get rid of details that are really superfluous but that, while your in the thick of it, seem like absolute necessities. You gotta be careful.
Hope those are relevant to what you’re asking. Nice job on the essay.
–M