Know Yourself, Know Your Process (Writing Advice)

Process is a daunting term for a writer, but to be asked about it by an industry professional is often a sign that you've "made it". Requiring self-awareness, knowing your process is knowing not just what inspires you, but know what triggers inspiration. All too often writers come into the craft believing they can only write after being visited by the muse, that on some idle Tuesday a random event will occur and suddenly the scales will fall from their eyes and a perfect story will emerge.

That is the difference between writers who see writing as a hobby, and those who see it as a career. To know your process is to know how the words come to you, and what you want to do with them, and how you want to lay them on the page.

"But Vaughn, could you provide an example? Like, what's your process?" Glad I imagined you asked.

“I am influenced by every second of my waking hour.”

– Lenny Bruce, How to Talk Dirty and Influence People (p. 188)

To understand my process, I feel I need to understand that which influences and has influenced me. I’m a writer, working in the genre of urban fantasy, so it might seem odd that I would lead with a controversial comedian from the Sixties that I’d only heard of because I’d watched the Christian Slater film Pump Up the Volume. While I could easily carry his final line from his autobiography out on my shield and simply go with the point that a writer must keep himself open to receive inspiration and influence from all sources, the rest of his book influenced me as well.

I could use his various arrests for obscenity as a platform, about how in my own writing I’m hoping to rail against the “phonies” and “pretentiousness”. Sure, Lenny went out on stage to challenge the status quo, but he still went out there to get paid, do his job, and have a good time. When I first started taking writing classes in undergrad, I was put under the impression that what I was doing was a sacred and noble pursuit, that I was pulling the abstract from the ether and translating it into words that lesser mortals could understand. I was given works by towering masters of the craft who could, or had changed the world with their words. This continued even into graduate school, where my head was crammed with works by authors I’d never heard of that I read dutifully, perhaps out of some vain hope that I’d emerge from the chrysalis of those hallowed pages ready to deliver my own Great American Novel.

Instead, in secret, like the kid hiding comic books in his biology text, I studied other sources in popular media and realized what I wanted to do with my writing: I wanted to tell a good story about characters that I liked, maybe sell it to a publisher and start to pay off my student loans. It’s hardly lofty, but I found myself, I love what I do, and I find influence in my waking hour. Every second.

 

“Write the shit you care about”

– Elmore Leonard

Though Elmore Leonard had been recommended to me on a few occasions, I didn’t even start noticing his works until I saw Out of Sight and found out it was based on one of his books. I went out and rented Jackie Brown and Get Shorty and quickly went to the college library to read every Elmore book I could find.

I loved his research, all the little tidbits that were wedged in without feeling like they were wedged in, the constant reusing of characters from previous books and alluding to plotlines that were never quite resolved. I loved how Leonard had created a living breathing world that went on even when he wasn’t writing it.

But most of all I loved his dialogue. It was crisp and witty and sharp but most importantly it was real. I could hear the characters in my head saying the lines, and I knew that I could read the lines aloud and not roll my eyes at them thinking how corny it sounded. When I read Leonard’s dialogue, I knew that that was how I wanted my characters to sound: like regular people. I didn’t want a reader to suspend disbelief because my protagonist sounded wooden or was using a level of diction that wasn’t accessible.

His settings were believable as well, and not just because they were actual places. It’s all too easy to set your story in a real world city and still have the skyline seem little more than set dressing. With Leonard’s stories, you never question why the story is set in Detroit or Los Angeles or wherever because you can’t imagine the story occurring anywhere else. The settings were real because you could tell that no matter how dirty and dingy and crime-ridden these places, they were described with the utmost love and care. It was from recognizing this that I expanded the writer’s maxim of “write what you know” to “write what you care about”.

 

“This internal requirement toward excellence which we learn from the erotic must not be misconstrued as demanding the impossible from ourselves nor from others. Such a demand incapacitates everyone in the process. For the erotic is not only a question of what we do; it is a question of how acutely and fully we feel in the doing. Once we know the extent to which we are capable of feeling that sense of satisfaction and completion, we can then observe which of our various life endeavors bring us closest to that fullness.”

– Audre Lorde, “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic As Power” (p. 54-5)

I haven’t been the same writer since I first read Lorde’s essay several years ago. Considering that Lorde’s essay deals primarily with reclaiming the erotic not only in writing, but in life, you would think that my enlightenment would be an exaltation, that I would swear from that point forward that all of my writing would only come from my passion, that every word I wrote would be a word I would mean.

Instead, when I said that my eyes were opened, I meant it. I became aware of the line drawn between the erotic and the pornographic. The pornographic, whether written, drawn, photographed, filmed, or imagined, is only intended for one purpose: getting off as well as possible. Instead of wanting to forsake the pornographic for the erotic, I became aware of how both are written.

When I’m not working on longer works of urban fantasy, I write erotic fiction to help pay the bills. This is divided into two camps: e-publishing, and private commissions. With the latter, I’m contacted usually through e-mail or messages on online forums by a patron who gives me a general idea of what he or she wants, the general wordcount, and the rate to be agreed on. It’s all very businesslike.

The commissioned works are often written over the course of three sessions, with fifteen hundred words on average written per session, with a carefully worded contract outlining the specifics of plot, which fetishes will be explored, and the specific points for “slow-downs”, where detail will be overloaded. Sound boring and sterile yet?

To be honest, I dread online writing sessions for commissions because let’s face it: it’s work. I’m not being creative at all, I’m just writing on average forty-five hundred words of descriptive filler with an over-focus on the explicitly fetishistic scenes. There’s no real plot, no real characters, just a pair or more of bodies that I’m flinging together for a penny a word. And yes, the client wouldn’t want it any other way. This is the pornographic as Lorde puts it: an empty and soulless construct that seeks to elicit only one sensation while denying all others.

But hey, it helps me make my rent, and I’m still happy and proud when I finish a project. If I’ve learned one thing about being a writer over the last couple of years, it would be that you have to be at first realistic. You have to accept that there is no type of writing that you are “above”. Writing is writing is writing, and you love the job (that’s right, I called it a job) or you don’t.

The writing I did for e-publishing is similar to the work I’ve done on the novel. I write short stories, novelettes, novellas, all with erotic elements within them, but they aren’t all about the sex. The Last Paladin’s first section is about ten thousand words, and about half of it is sex, but writing it wasn’t an empty and soulless experience. I wasn’t just writing sex, I was writing the story of a character who was rediscovering his faith, who allowed a sense of wonder back into his world, and began to reconcile with the loss of his mother. Instead of dreading writing sessions, I would wake up every morning eager to discover what I would write that day, what more would be revealed about the characters, how the mythology of my created world would expand, and when I went to bed that night, I would lie awake for at least an hour, my mind still swimming in the possibilities I hoped to explore the next day.

It was the difference between the pornographic and the erotic, the mechanical and the creative. One I was putting in my time, and the other, I was giving my time and wishing I could give more. And the difference comes across in the writing, I believe.

I believe that Lorde’s definition of “the erotic” is channeling the creative force that leaves you fulfilled instead of empty, a force you harness and celebrate without shame no matter where it might take you, whether it spirals in or out.

 

“So my advice to you is: don't strangle yourself.
Okay, that's good advice, generally speaking, I guess. But specifically, don't feel like you need to have absolutely everything lined up for your character before you type word one. Get a solid skeleton built, toss on enough detail to get you started and run with it. Inspiration often visits while you're right in the middle of work. Sometimes inspiration throws you a stupid idea (even if it feels brilliant at the moment) but it hits a lot more often than it misses.
A second recommendation: Make sure that you, personally, are having a good time writing it. If it's an enormous chore, that will show through to the reader. Have fun. That shows through to the reader as well, and they tend to like that a lot better.”

– Jim Butcher, author of The Dresden Files (LJ Quote)

If someone had told me three years ago that one of the most important things to do while writing was to “have fun” I probably would’ve thought they were crazy. I was still mired in the ideas that writing had to be “good”, and by “good” I don’t mean well-written, since that was a given, it had to be literary, a word I still have no idea how to properly define as to how one book can be literary and one can’t be other than using the rather gauche duality of popular vs. critically acclaimed. The only impression I got was that if you were actually going to school to study the fine art of creative writing beyond the general education requirements, then you obviously were trying to be a literary writer. If you wanted to write “genre fiction” (which would be said with a dubious and somewhat disappointed tone) then you had to be a genre-revolutionary. Sci-fi? You had better be writing like early Gibson or better yet, like Delaney. Fantasy? If you weren’t writing like Tolkien from the get-go, or better yet, Marquez (because magical realism is apparently fantasy), then it would be best to give up write then and there.

Gods help you if all you wanted to write was a standard sword and sorcery epic or an urban piece with some light cyberpunk elements. With all of the plotting and pacing and wedging in as much meaning as possible, writing had become a generally dead weight around my neck that I dragged inch by inch toward a degree. Simply put, it wasn’t any fun.

Granted, this is what I thought everyone believed. Attending Goddard, a low residency grad school, was only a public experience for a few days out of the semester, after all, and then I was sent home for one-on-one time with my advisor over the lumbering beast of the US Postal Service. Your mind tends to get away from you when you consider the other people in your group, who start out as writers maybe sharing space with other writers, and by the time I was reaching the end of the semester, I was half-convinced that my fellow Goddardites all lived in a commune producing epic works of experimental fiction that would immensely dwarf my own work, and that said epics would probably be produced through some Hermetic ritual involving the Greater Keys of Solomon. I’m joking of course, but looking back I don’t think it would’ve taken me much effort to get that far.

When I wrote up James, the protagonist for my novel Lightning Rod, I used character creation exercises that I’d used in roleplaying games (I even used a character sheet). I established a bare bones skeleton, fleshed him out slightly, and charged off into the plot figuring I could find out the rest about him along the way. As a result, I ended up with some plot turns that were just as surprising to me as I hope they were to the reader.

This approach made getting to know James a little more difficult, but in my opinion, it was a more enjoyable experience. It gave the character some autonomy to determine his own characteristics, become an independent force in shaping his own story. In the end, that’s what I want for all of my characters as a writer: to give them the story they deserve to have. I want to capture his voice, take him through his triumphs and failings, and outline the flaws that make him human even as I show him aspiring to virtue which makes him human as well.

And it’s rather fun. Before I started writing novels and novellas a few years ago, the idea of writing a story that was ten whole pages was a daunting three week task that would require much agonizing. Now ten pages is easily a night’s work, if that, because I barely notice the time or the wordcount. I just have fun writing the scene and seeing how my characters work through the story. It was taking writing back to a place where I used to write and write for hours. I was having fun, and it showed through to the reader.

 

“I’ll be fine if you give me a minute, A man’s got a limit

I can’t get a life if my heart’s not in it”

– Oasis, “The Importance of Being Idle”

I can’t discuss my process without discussing the music that is so much a part of it. I wholly believe that every writer has triggers for their creativity, and I’m no exception. Like many writers, my primary trigger is music, not only for getting me into the correct mood to get writing, but a lot of my plot ideas have come from the music I listen to.

When I conceptualize a character, I often ask myself what kind of music they listen to, and contrary to some belief, they are not always into the same music as me. Not only does knowing the type of music my characters enjoy deepen them, but it makes it easier to get into their mindset and write them. When writing James, I discovered that he was a fan of classic rock primarily due to his mother’s influence, particularly The Rolling Stones, even though it’s never mentioned in the story itself. I also discovered he couldn’t stand the sound of Nine Inch Nails, an industrial band. Investigation of that band, as well as their sound, led to a (eventually discarded) final plot twist of Lightning Rod that James was created by the antagonist Heath, and that the music of Nine Inch Nails figured into the ritual that created him.

What I have to wonder is whether knowledge of this cheapens the plot twist? Does the twist in the book become less original or impressive because it was inspired by music, or, more to the point, popular music? I’d dealt with this in poetry classes in undergraduate studies where I’d written a long prose piece I’d entitled “Meteora” which my group found wonderfully expressive and descriptive and evoking brilliant images and what-not. When I revealed that I’d written it while listened to the album of the same name by the nu-metal band Linkin Park (a band generally reviled as sell-outs by “serious” music fans) the praise for the piece instantly evaporated and the prose was turned into a betrayal of my craft for committing the crime of not being inspired by Mozart or John Coltrane (It was actually said in workshop that the piece would have been acceptable had it been inspired by these artists).

Music is a cornerstone of my process because it remains as one of the few avenues of inspiration I refused to allow myself to be shamed for. I suppose one of the reasons I choose to work in popular fiction is because the genres within it will allow a writer to be inspired by whatever he wants without smirking ridicule, where taking the road more travelled can have as much weight as the road less, because it’s never taken into account that when choosing one road or the other, you’re still being rewarded with a new experience, so why not choose the one you’ll be passionate about?

To conclude, my writing is a process of immersing myself in popular culture, media, television, films, books, graphic novels, music, and asking myself what it is about those experiences that make them enjoyable, and trying to do the same with my own writing. My process toward becoming a writer is a long string of acceptance both practical and emotional. I accept that my writing will probably not win awards or the respect of my peers, and it probably won’t end up on any bestseller lists or get optioned out to be the next summer blockbuster or fall series. But I’m okay with that, because that isn’t the reason I write anyway. I write because it’s fun, because I enjoy writing again.

Writing is a job to me, and it’s a real job, and I love it.

 

Bibliography

Bruce, Lenny. How to Talk Dirty and Influence People. Fireside Press. New York. 1992.

Butcher, Jim. “Oct. 15, 2008”. http://vaughn-r-demont.livejournal.com/2570.html?thread=11786#t11786. Oct. 16, 2008.

Lorde, Audre. Sister Outsider. The Crossing Press. Freedom, CA. 2001.

Gallagher, Noel. The Importance of Being Idle. Don’t Believe The Truth. Sony. 2005.

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