Finding Your Story's Pathways--The Art of Rethinking What Your Book Is About

Today I had plenty of creative energy, so I decided to tackle a big project: storyboarding my new novel. It's the sequel to Qualities of Light, which was published this fall. I've been working on this sequel for five years and I love the story, but it's gotten complicated. Three characters, three separate plot lines. In desperate need of a storyboard.

I've taken this new book through NaNoWriMo twice, so I have a decent first draft. I just haven't tested the draft for logical flow. Which is the purpose of a storyboard.

So I set about it. Got tea, a piece of homemade pie, and closed the door to my little office. Began to note the main points for each chapter and the islands (separate dramatic scenes) within each chapter. Arc them on a flow chart as a series of cartoon boxes. Test their track.

They didn't. Track, that is. Boring, boring, boring.

The critic got real happy. "You're a one-novel author," it shouted. "Yes, your current book is getting lots of great reviews and people are loving it. But that's it, baby. Nothing more to come."

After a pretty discouraging two hours fighting my storyboard and this ruthless inner voice, I went back to bed. Screaming under the covers does help, especially when someone who cares a lot about you is listening and can give good advice.

Such as, "What story are you really wanting to tell? The one you have sketched out so far?"

No. Not really.

"Then how do you rethink it?"

I talked it through. I went through each character's main plot points, or story arc, and let the words out into the air. As I spoke them, I could hear the strengths--there were some!--and the flaws. "What does she really want?" I answered that question. "What about this idea?" It was a good one. Suddenly I had to run back downstairs and write it all down.

The result wasn't a revamped storyboard--that will come later. It was a character plot chart. One for each of the three people I'm tracking. As I wrote down their initial longing (that opens the story), their main challenges (that provide meat for the story), their crises (that peak toward the end), and the results, I saw the overlaps. I realized I needed to do three separate storyboards, one for each of these characters. Then weave them together.

Whew. Saved from my own self. The critic stood back, nodded, said, "Maybe you do have another book in you, after all."

This Week's Exercise--for Novelists and Memoirists Make a plot chart for each of your main characters. Keep their passageways separate until you get each uniquely on paper. Then place them side by side and see where there's overlap.

If you feel extremely brave after this, try storyboarding what you learn.

Ever Seen Your Name in Lights? I Just Did!

When I did my book signing last week at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis, a friend said, "Check out the marquee. Your name is in lights." Luckily, someone had a camera. My mother will never believe this otherwise. It was a first, there for all the rush-hour traffic on Washington Avenue to see.

Book tours are strange experiences. I've been very lucky on this one. Minneapolis's book signing drew 90 people, and they listened to my 20 minute reading then asked such good questions about writing, I wanted to stay and talk with them all night. I've been on book tour events where only a few people showed up, and I've spoken to other authors who've experienced the same thing. So thank you, if you came to listen and support a fellow writer. It's a solitary profession and we need all the support we can get.

Three Aspects that Make Writing Healing--And Create Good Books

This past weekend I taught my trio of one-day workshops at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. One of them, the most difficult to teach and the most rewarding for me, is called "Writing through Healing, Healing through Writing."

Twenty-eight writers of all skill levels, genres, and ages gathered in one of the Loft's beautiful classrooms for a day. We explored what made our writing go deep enough to be healing--for us as well as for a reader.

I've taught the class for about ten years, using ever-growing research about the healing effects of certain types of writing. James Pennebaker, from the U of Texas, Austin, launched my interest in this topic. He clued me into the amazing medical documentation on creative writing's benefit in reducing physical illness and emotional stress.

One of my favorite books on this subject is Louise De Salvo's Writing as a Way of Healing. De Salvo talks about Pennebaker's research and how important it is that writers use all three of the elements that make writing actually heal. I've journaled for years and was very interested in hearing that venting into my journal, for instance, doesn't have healing effects on me. It's good for processing, not healing.

To heal us and touch the reader, writing must have:

1. specific details (senses-rich images, rather than concepts)
2. how the writer or narrator felt about the event when it happened
3. how the writer or narrator feels about the event now

De Salvo cites the research of Pennebaker and others, noting that it is the combination of these three elements that makes writing a healing process. Not one alone, not even two.

In my workshop this weekend, writers asked themselves which of these three aspects they naturally favored. A person who writes about thoughts and feelings will use doorways #2 or #3 to enter her story--reflective, conceptual writing. The third aspect, specific image-rich detail, is the missing element. When it's added to the piece of writing, the magic happens. The writing becomes healing. Same with a writer who lists events and specific details with no trouble. But the missing element is the feeling, the "what does this mean to me?" analysis of the experience. Some writers believe that the events should speak for themselves. But there needs to be some reflective writing to make it mean something to both writer and reader.

Why don't writers naturally incorporate all three aspects, giving themselves a healing boost from their own art?

Because it causes them to re-experience strong events, re-feel the strong feelings.

I wrote many times about my experience with cancer. I could reflect for pages on my feelings and thoughts about what happened. But it wasn't until I began to add the specific details--describe the room and the chair where I had chemotherapy, tell about the movie I went to each week as a treat to keep myself from throwing up too much, talk on the page about what it looked like when I lost my eyebrows--did I begin to heal.

This Week's Exercise
List 10 turning points in your life, events or moments when you experienced a big change. Pick one. Set a kitchen timer for 20 minutes. Write about it as it comes, then read it over. Ask yourself which of these three doorways did you go through? See if you can fill in the missing aspects. Does it make the writing more healing for you?

Beginning and Ending Chapters--Bookends You Can Work on First

My weekly book-writing classes at the Hudson Valley Writers' Center are wrapping up their six-week fall session this month. We're reviewing what we've learned about first and last chapters. In my teaching, I've learned these are essential signposts, bookends to keep a writer going forward with a book project.

Many writers start with outlines. An outline seems the best way to manage a huge project like a book. Outlines stall me. I use an outline, like I use notes cards and a writing notebook, but outlines can't form the basic structure of my book. It becomes too linear, too predictable. If it doesn't surprise me, it won't surprise the reader.

I use islands to start a book. Kenneth Atchity (author of A Writer's Time) introduced me to the concept of "islands," although Natalie Goldberg and others use them too. Islands are nonsequential units of writing, dramatic moments in fiction or memoir, teaching moments in nonfiction.

I begin my book in islands, not worrying how they're going to link up. I just let myself write freely.

Freedom's great. But have you ever noticed what happens when there's too much freedom? Islands become hard to organize. The writer starts to lose perspective on her project. I use another tool, storyboarding, to help this. But even more effective is the exercise of first and last chapters.

Your First Chapter Must Have . . .
In our summer session, my writing classes worked on their first chapters. I asked them to consider these "must haves" in a first chapter:

1. Introduction of main players (narrator, others) via anecdote
2. Introduction of main dilemma or conflict (fiction and memoir) or main questions or need (nonfiction) that the book will answer
3. Placing the reader in a relevant container (physical and emotional and cultural setting) that will echo throughout the book

The goal of the first chapter is just to create a tension cord, tight enough to pull the reader into the second, third, fourth chapters, and so on to the end. You don't give everything away yet. But you create a triggering event that triggers the reason for the rest of the book. You create an engaging place and time for the story you're going to tell--even nonfiction books must do this via their opening anecdotes.

We workshopped (shared with discussion) our chapter drafts and crafted them during the summer session. I saw huge improvement in everyone's writing--it was as if the focus on a small part of the book, one essential chapter, helped the writers see strengths and weaknesses in their overall writing.

By fall we were ready for the last chapter. Even though nothing in the middle had been written yet.

Your Last Chapter Must Have . . .
Ending chapters are not where everything gets wrapped up neatly. In fact, you must leave the reader with some hunger, some unresolved emotion, some longing to go back and read your book again. That way they will think about the story for days, talk about it with their friends. Lining up all the ducks is satisfying for you, boring for the reader.

This isn't to say that you can leave large sections or questions unanswered. If you're writing a mystery, you need to solve it. But perhaps your memoir isn't going to reveal a happily-ever-after. That's just fine. Leave with a call to action or a relevance to the reader's life. Make them think and feel a lot, and you have a good last chapter.

What else makes a good last chapter? Not introducing new dilemmas, or main conflicts. It's too late. The reader will go, "Where'd that come from?" You can hint at one, if you're writing a sequel. But main dilemma is rarely wrapped in the ending chapter. More often you need to finish tying dilemma threads in the next-to-last (penultimate) chapter.

What really needs attention in the last chapter are the main relationships. How did the narrator change? How did the method you're teaching shift your way of approaching life? How did the character realize something? Show us how the primary players changed, how something new was realized or achieved or lost. Demonstrate a new state of being and you'll have the reader hooked, hungry, and happy.

This Week's Exercise
Spend time with your first chapter, your last chapter, in whatever shape they might be. Craft them if you haven't already--brainstorm possible beginnings, possible endings. Then, using the notes above as a checklist, analyze the chapter drafts for what's missing and what's too much.

Any time you spend on your bookend chapters will teach you a lot about your writing in general.

And if you live near the Twin Cities, consider joining me for a writing workshop on this subject. It'll be on Thursday, November 5, 4-5:30 p.m. at the Loft Literary Center. The workshop is called "Container, Dilemma, and Players: Three Essential Elements for Making Your Writing Come Alive," and we go into more depth and try writing exercises for these important chapter elements.

Registration is limited. For more information or to sign up, go to www.loft.org and search for the workshop title.

Book Signing--Sunday, November 1, 2:00 p.m. at Hickory Stick Bookshop, Washington Depot, CT, www.hickorystickbookshop.com for directions

Please join me!

Pushing vs Resting--Why We Need Both Will and Vision to Complete a Book

Today I am sitting still. I'm visioning, listening, waiting. It's the opposite pace of these last few months, when my novel Qualities of Light was released into the world. When a book gets born, there's nonstop activity.

Publicity, the book tour, interviews, good reviews if you're lucky. I've been deep in all of this. Today is different.

Outside my window are sunlit fields and the fiercely gold last-ditch efforts of three fading maple trees. Inside, a vase of flowers is catching the light. I haven't noticed this beauty lately, because of the pushing, the pace, the will needed to move my project out into the world. Like birthing, it takes that push. It's essential.

Today I am resting from the pushing, to let bigger visions filter in and bring their welcome creativity and renewal.

Balance of Visioning and Will
Visioning and will balance each other in book writing like two ends of a seesaw. If you don't have an initial vision for a book, you really don't create something that goes deep enough to touch readers, make them tell their friends and family and writing group about your writing, even change lives if you're lucky. Visions change as the book evolves. For Qualities of Light, I started with a vision of unexpected romance. As it evolved, as more characters got developed, the vision changed into healing of a family. Both stories made it into the final book. I like to think the pauses, the visioning I did, helped them weave together into a whole.

It's hard to book time for visioning. The sequel to Qualities of Light is cooking. It needs the visioning help to take it to the next step--I have a solid draft, some edited sections, but not a sense of the whole picture. While I'm working on my publicity, I can't seem to slow down enough to vision. I have to book a visioning day.

Today, the end of October in peak leaf-changing New England, it feels like a cycle shifting, a perfect time to vision. New possibilities, the season changing. Ideas are starting to come, faint pictures that will make a wholeness for this next book. I am committed to taking notes today.
I enjoy the golden trees, the flowers indoors. The pushing mind empties, the attention is freed up.

When You Know You Need Visioning Time
I usually don't accept the need for visioning time until I'm maxed. Yesterday it hit me as a wave of sheer exhaustion: I needed visioning time like oxygen. I'm very happy about all that's happened but the pushing it's required has stressed me way beyond my comfort zone. I'm grateful for the cheers and congratulations, but I'm an introvert (like many writers) and it wears me out after a while. I'm really excited about my booksigning this weekend, November 1, in Washington Depot, Connecticut, and my booksigning Thursday, November 5, at the Loft in Minneapolis. I'm really thrilled with the reviews coming out, the buzz happening. Releasing a book is the realization of a dream: wonderful, joyous, overwhelming. But it needs the balance of visioning. Otherwise we lose sight of why we're doing it. Don't we.

I was driving back from teaching a writing class when things reached critical mass. The cell phone rang, I couldn't locate my headset in time, and for some reason this felt like the last straw. I was on the very rainy Saw Mill Parkway, a twisty highway in western New York, and Chris Pureka was on the radio. Her melancholy voice perfectly reflected the rainy fall day. I felt myself let go inside. Let the call go to voice mail. Let myself just listen and drive, sink into the slow motion.

Then it happened. I suddenly got a picture, a new idea, a wholeness. As my pushing self let go of all the efforts, creative ideas came fast. Ideas to solve some dilemmas in my next novel, things I'd been struggling with.

Planning for Visioning
Take advantage of the change of seasons to set up a visioning time for your writing project this week. Maybe you've noticed the difficulty in talking yourself into this need--and the effect of dried up writing that comes when you don't have an overview of your project? And maybe you've noticed the serendipity that comes through, the originality, when you let yourself stop pushing and start visioning?

This week's exercise: Take your solo self and your writing notebook someplace for an hour, an afternoon, a morning or a day. Let yourself look at changing leaves or mountains or the ocean. Sketch, doodle, or write what comes. Take notes. Maybe you'll get the overview of vision, worth gold to the book writer.

Also: Write down what you'd really like from the project you're working on. What vision do you have for it? Why are you doing it, really?

Five Things You'd Never, Ever Do for Yourself

One of my favorite writing exercises is to list five things I'd never do, or I'd never make a character do, then write a scene imagining that very thing happening. It's an edgy exercise. But it always gets me out of a slump.

This past week, I did something on my list--stand in front of about 70 people and read from my new novel. The novel is edgy, and I'm always aware that the subject matter might be seen as, to quote my wonderful mother, "not my cup of tea." But it was what I felt compelled to write. I'm proud I pushed past my fears, that I did something that scared me. Because the results were so very worth it.

The picture above was taken by photographer Bruce Fuller ( see his amazing work at http://www.brucefuller.com/). If you look closely, you'll notice I'm not fainting or stumbling over my words, but really having a pretty good time. You'll see people listening and not walking out in boredom or disgust (a common fear of authors at readings). It's a SRO crowd (the empty seat was even taken).

Most important to me, this photograph captures a moment where I was facing my fear and doing what was in my heart.

This week's exercise is about pushing past your limits and fears. Want to try it?

This Week's Exercise

Make a list of five of the most frightening or impossible things you can think of doing to further your creativity, your book, your writing in general. Buy an expensive pen or laptop you want? Take a workshop you can't imagine being brave enough to try? Spend a weekend at a writing retreat to get peace at last?

You can also try this with your character, especially a stubborn character who refuses to evolve. What five things would this person never, ever do? Have them do one.

Warning label: Results of this exercise might feel astonishing, freeing, and joyous. The process might make you tremble before it helps you fly.

But look at me, in the photo. I'm actually having a blast. No problem that I couldn't sleep the night before, worrying about every little thing. It was worth it. And afterward, I slept like a baby. Very satisfied that I'd tried something that a few years ago I would never, ever do.

Creative People Have Two Jobs

In a roundabout way, I learned of a new book on creativity: Ignore Everybody by Hugh MacLeod. Then I learned of some fascinating notes on the book at Derek Sivers's website.

Sivers is no slouch when it comes to creativity--he knows whereof he speaks, having created the awesome www.cdbaby.com that helped so many independent musicians stay independent.

One of Ignore Everybody's main points is that most creative people have two jobs. Ouch, my friends say. Can't I make a living at what I love?

Well, yes, if you really really want to. That means (1) amazing luck, (2) incredible hard work, and (3) sometimes years of not earning enough to rent a teepee. I've watched so many writers quit their day jobs when The Book Idea comes along. I've watched them suffer with the pressure of trying to write to make that six figure advance, when they never wrote a word before. Better to take that pressure off your creativity, not flatiron your book into being. Books don't like that.

You may not like this post this week. You may be a worthy dreamer who hates your cubicle life and wants to break out into the wealthy world of published authors. Most of us aren't. We're midlist, which means our books sell OK but not enough to pay all the bills. The most I ever earned from royalties in a year was about $30,000. I loved my book which earned that, but it was written without the pressure to earn big bucks.

I was able to, because of my day job, stay creative. That's the point, isn't it? How to stay creative in a world that doesn't really like it.

That's why MacLeod's book is so timely.

This Week's Writing Exercise
This week's exercise is pretty simple. Read the book review for Ignore Everybody on Derek Siver's site http://sivers.org/book/IgnoreEverybody then write your own list of what it takes for YOU to stay creative.

Is it about ignoring everybody?
Is it about paying attention to a few trusted people?
Is it about a room of your own, a la Virginia Woolf, or a kitchen table a la J.K. Rowling, or a great Internet cafe that keeps you bubbling with stolen dialogue lines?

Enjoy making your list. Let it simmer all week.

Responding to What's Out There--Writing Letters to the Editor

In my novel, Qualities of Light, there's a triangle of love interests. Boy likes girl, girl kind of likes boy, girl falls in love with another girl. Not so unusual these days. To make matters even more tangled (a key element of novels), the love affair begins during a family tragedy, an accident that causes the girl's young brother to fall into a coma. The accident, of course, is caused by the girl. Or so she believes. And her belief causes the main dilemma of the story.

Considering the questions exercise from last week, I was intrigued by this one, and it became the pivot for my book: Is love something you can expect, something you can delight in, when you are in deep trouble? When you have almost caused someone you love to die?

My novel has several layers of these kinds of questions. I enjoyed not knowing the answers, exploring the topics.

One topic that fascinates me is how gay or coming-out teenagers cope with their lives. So when a colleague pointed me toward an amazing article in last Sunday's New York Times magazine, I had to respond.

I decided to write a letter to the editor. My experience sparked an idea for the writing exercise this week.

Writing Your Passion
The article was called "Coming Out in Middle School" and author Benoit Denizet-Lewis interviewed some very interesting teens who did this and had various experiences. Molly, my heroine, struggles with the same issues real-life gay and straight teens face--acceptance and rejection, self-identity, the beauty of falling overwhelming in love at last. In writing the book, the struggles of my heroine and other kids like her became my passion. So I wanted to send a passionate response to this wonderful writer, Benoit Denizet-Lewis.

Letters to the editor are a chance for low-risk passion statements. They may never get published, of course, but they're a chance for you, the book writer, to get your ideas, thoughts, and words to readers who might not otherwise touch them.

My letter isn't a model of great Letters to the Editor, but here it is:

Dear Editor,
"Coming Out in Middle School" by Benoit Denizet-Lewis spoke eloquently of the challenges teens and pre-teens face when they discover they are gay. Finally our society offers support for GLBTQ youth, the necessary emotional shelter they need as they come to terms with who they are. I especially enjoyed reading the discussion of how old youth are when this awareness happens--much younger now, and thankfully much more supported.

However, the author did not cover a huge and essential aspect of teens coming out: What happens when a teen finds out they are gay because of a sudden love interest? I explore this topic in my new young-adult novel, Qualities of Light (October 2009, Spinsters Ink). Perhaps the teen has always dated boys and suddenly falls in love with a girl. What happens when the teen's friends, who are heterosexual, make fun of the new pairing? Is it safe to tell parents, who may not support the sudden change?

Unlike Denizet-Lewis's subjects, these teens may not know how to make the transition. When researching for my novel, I found few books treated this subject, few served as literary mentors for teens falling in love with their best friends, as my heroine Molly does. A vastly different experience than the gradual coming out of the profiled teens in Denizet-Lewis's excellent article.

It's timely that this article comes out at such a ground-breaking moment in our history, when states are legalizing gay marriage and accepting that love is love. What we need is more literary models for teens who experience the sudden awakening of the heart and wonder how to reorient their lives to its truth.

Sincerely,
Mary Carroll Moore

Stand Up in Print--A Way to Practice Your Book-Writing Passion
Do you feel it's important to stand up for something in print, be heard--before your book sees its readers? Find an article to praise and comment on. Editors of publications like both. They work hard to find good material and they love it when readers notice that.

Scan your local newspaper or a monthly magazine this week and find something that connects with your book topic. Craft a response. Mention your book (in progress, if that's true). Send it off. See what happens.

PS Most Letters to the Editor can be sent by email nowadays. Just follow the guidelines--they usually need your name, address, and phone, although the last two items are usually not printed.

The Power of Unanswered Questions

As someone who loves it when the ducks are lined up, I used to hate unanswered questions. Problems I couldn't solve, dilemmas unresolved, drove me nuts. I worked hard at applying solutions to every problem.

I felt great when the issue got fixed. I tallied up answers like gold.

Then I began writing books. Books are large, unweildy events, worse than organizing a family wedding. Hard to predict what will happen. Hard to plan entirely. Full of unresolved problems and big questions that may not get solved until the final draft. My first books were nightmares, partly because of my need to solve every problem right away. Luckily, back in the olden days when I began publishing, I worked with patient editors who taught me the power of the unanswered question.

This may not be your issue--at all! But if it is, read on.

Love the Questions Themselves
Rainier Maria Rilke, the German writer responsible for the beautiful volume Letters To A Young Poet, said, "Have patience with everything that remains unresolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them."

Rilke's point was that hanging around with questions leads to the best answers. You need time to live your way to the answers. There's real gold in the questions themselves because they open up the creative self.

I've often asked my book-writing classes to begin a list of questions about their books-in-progress. Add to the list, one question daily, and let yourself muse and wonder about what the answer could possibly be. Once I became patient enough to try this myself, I saw great improvement in my writing. It was as if a creative faucet got turned on.

I wasn't just working my problems to find solutions; I was creating something new. My random, creative, wondering and wandering writer inside was excited.

Does Unanswered Equal More Creative?

Why are unanswered questions so helpful for book writers? Why do we need NOT to know everything before we begin our writing process?

Theme, subtext, and inner story all emerge from the random, creative side, not the linear left brain of the writer. You can't get good theme by going after it directly. It bubbles up. It surprises you. A writing mentor once told me: "If it doesn't surprise you, it won't surprise the reader." You'll have a too-predictable plan, leading to an unoriginal and uninspired book.

This week, make a list of unanswered questions. Things that are worrying you about your outline or theory, plot or characters, theme or beginning or ending. Let the list simmer. Let the questions become part of your breathing and living each day. When you get the bubbling up of a possible creative idea that addresses your question, listen and take notes.

Your muse is talking.

PS This exercise isn't just limited to writing. I've used it to create answers to tangles with family and friends, health issues, everything under the sun. It's fun, creative, and it works.