Your First Novel Read online

  Research can be dangerous. Some people have so much fun checking out library books, surfing the Web, and taking notes that they never get to the actual writing of the novel itself. If you are prone to this kind of compulsion, either give your research a time line (I will research for two weeks and then start my outline) or give your writing a time line (I will write for one hour every morning before I open my research book). You can always go back and fix things later.

  The one kind of research that must be done before page 1 is the kind that colors the whole novel, the kind that determines the makeup of your protagonist. To find out what your hero believes and cares about, to know what his wounds and fears are, you might have to research the background of your setting in history and culture. A teacher in Victorian London will have a different psychological outlook than a teacher in Renaissance Florence, even if they both teach math. You can't just insert a different year and city later on—you need to know what makes your protagonist tick before you write her first thought.

  Another danger of research is fixating on accuracy. Of course you want your story to be believable, but remember, this is fiction. You're a storyteller. If you can't find a single book or encyclopedia entry or Internet citation or magazine article that tells you exactly what the ladies' room of a Harlem Renaissance movie theater looks like, move on. You're not writing a nonfiction book on 1920s rest rooms. Make a logical leap from the closest thing you can find.

  If you are new to research, here is a general list of resources and examples of what you might find in each area.

  Resources

  For an example of treasures you might find using various resources, let's use the fictional topic of American carnival performer Jack Cross, magician and psychic, 1851-1944, and see what kinds of sources we might expect to find were he an actual person.

  LIBRARY BOOKS, MAGAZINES, FILMS

  • book on history of American carnival life

  • magazine article on sideshow psychics

  • video on turn-of-the-century magicians

  INTERNET SEARCHES

  • Web site article on the 1901 Robbinsen Circus (Cross was member 1903-1923)

  REFERENCE LIBRARIANS

  • help in finding interlibrary loan of rare book of carnival photography, 1850-1950 (Cross in three photos)

  NEW AND USED BOOKSELLERS

  • Borders—new book on Depression-era circus life

  • Powell's—used book on hoaxes and deceptions (Cross mentioned in Dubb Family circus scandal of 1901)

  • Abebooks.com—used copy of out-of-print book on 1920s show business art includes Jack Cross's tent drop from 1877

  EYEWITNESS INTERVIEWS

  • phone interview with historian Jon Thuess, who saw Cross perform in 1941

  NEWSPAPER ARCHIVES

  • microfilm newspaper from 1939 Fort Worth, Texas, with article on Moslowski Carnival (Cross a member, 1937-1944) causing church protest

  MUSEUMS

  • exhibit on Civil War photographer William A. Watts, county art museum, photos of 1869 carnival life

  HISTORICAL SITES

  • Leer Hills, Idaho, site of last West Coast performance of Moslowski carnival with Cross performing

  COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES (LIBRARIES, STAFF, FACULTY)

  • rare magazine article from 1941 on psychics found at Trudey College in Meadow, Oregon

  • interesting book on 1930s fear of Satan in Washington State University library

  • short interview with history professor Epetha Kiley on Depression-era slang

  If you need assistance with any of these types of resources, ask the reference staff at your local library for advice. They can not only help you find things but teach you how to refine searches when you're working on your own. Sometimes it's just a matter of knowing what keywords to use or putting your keywords in a different order.

  You might be tempted to read as many novels as you can that share your own story's location and period of history or subject. There's nothing wrong with that. It's good to know what's already out there, but don't go overboard. You don't have to read every novel ever written that has an army chaplain in it before you write your own. And remember—if you are reading every novel you can find on New York in the 1920s hoping that in one of them someone will walk into a ladies' room in a movie house in Harlem and describe it for you, you're wasting precious writing time. It's probably better, for instance, to read three carefully chosen nonfiction books on career circus clowns than to read twenty books in which the characters visit the circus. (If you are afraid of getting too many other novelists' ideas in your head, by all means stick to nonfiction research.)

  PREPARING THE RIGHT BRAIN_

  Your right brain is your creator, your free spirit, your passionate artist. The right brain is the heart of your writing self. If your right brain is given too much power, it starts calling your left brain an evil dictator. You want to keep your right brain in check, but you don't want to shut it down. If it wasn't for your right brain, your left brain would write a book with three hundred pages of perfect spelling and grammar and zero emotion. The goal is for the left and right brains to live in harmony.

  FINDING INSPIRATION: RIGHT-BRAIN EXERCISES

  One way we prepare the right brain for writing is to feed it, and your creator/free spirit/artist hungers for inspiration. I picture inspiration in three categories—writing, career, and life. The following exercises stir your imagination by focusing on these three areas, and remind you why you want to be a novelist.

  • The List. Make a list of one hundred things you love. Woody Allen has his protagonist in the film Manhattan lie on a couch with a handheld tape recorder and list Things That Make Life Worth Living. A hundred sounds like a lot. Just start writing—it's contagious. Especially if you play the game with somebody else and you read back parts of your lists to each other. Hearing what someone else loves reminds you of your own delights. For example:

  • hot baths

  • Monday Night Football

  • blue lights on airport runways

  • Marx Brothers movies

  • fresh lobster

  • the smell of libraries

  • when the weather turns cold

  Anything, even strange things that you would not normally confess to liking, can go on your list. If you don't want to show it to anyone, don't. It's for your right brain only.

  • using old college term papers as kindling

  • watching reruns of Seinfeld

  • reading the Sunday paper in bed

  • watching the neighbor's cat stalk a squirrel

  • wearing sweats all day on New Year's

  Include things you love that you want to see in your novel.

  • rainy nights

  • mysteries unfolding through dreams

  • World War II songs

  • 1960s cars

  • nun with Tourette's syndrome

  • dinosaur bones

  • lost letters found

  • Hand Copying. Choose one of your favorite pieces of writing (no more than 300 words) and copy it by hand. You can copy poetry, a paragraph from a novel, a passage from a play, the lyrics to a song—but choose writing to which you aspire. The process of writing out great words, feeling them travel from your eye to your brain, down your arm, into your hand, and onto the paper will train you to recognize fine writing. You'll know what it feels like. This exercise might sound strange, but it's effective. Try it at least once. Some favorite passages that I have copied in the past include: the speech in which Salieri describes hearing Mozart's music for the first time from the play Amadeus, the first page of Mary Stewart's novel The Crystal Cave, and the poem "Choose Something Like a Star," by Robert Frost.

  • More Vocalization. A variation on the exercise on page 15 is simply to read aloud a short passage of writing you consider superb right before you start your own writing for the day. The difference between this and the reading exercise we looked at earlier for the l
eft brain (in which you chose a book off the shelf randomly) is that here you are choosing your favorite moments. It carries a ritual power because you are making a statement—this is great writing and I am choosing to read it out loud because I want to write like this.

  • Career Inspiration. Career inspiration feeds the worker in you. There's nothing wrong with encouraging your business sense. There are times when seemingly noncreative tasks like retyping your revisions, going to the post office, or making copies can inspire you to focus on your career as a writer.

  • Positive Feedback. If there is any truth to quantum physics, it couldn't hurt to give the universe and yourself some positive feedback in advance. Take the file folder or manila envelope or cardboard box you keep your manuscript in and, with a bold marking pen, label it with success. Call it names you hope it lives up to someday. "Excellent," "Brilliant," "Superb,"

  "Breathtaking," even "Award Winning" or "Critically Acclaimed."

  • Cover Art. Take a few minutes and sketch a design for the cover of your novel. When you walk through bookstores or flip through book club catalogs, take a look at what's out there and fantasize your perfect cover. Will it be a watercolor landscape or a comic book cartoon? Will it have bold print and bright colors like an Elmore Leonard book? Will it have a faded photograph or a Da Vinci-like sketch? Your real cover will probably look nothing like the one you create here, but that's fine—this is a visualization exercise to draw your success to you.

  •Rave Reviews. Pretend you are a book critic and write yourself a gushing review. No one has to see it. It's an inspirational exercise. Be in love with your story and your writing. Go into detail. What are the best parts of this wonderful novel you're about to write?

  •Jacket Copy. Along the same lines, write your own bookjacket copy. Read a few covers from other novels, then compose your own. What is it about your novel that will entice a potential reader to choose your story? This exercise can be useful when it comes to writing a query letter later on. If it is clear to you whom the story is about, what the main problem is, and where the story takes place, you're in good shape to start writing. In addition, if you understand what kind of book you're writing to the extent that you can write your own jacket copy, you'll have an easier time writing your outline.

  As part of this exercise, create quotes from rave reviews and famous authors. Feel free to quote your own rave review from the preceding exercise.

  • Bio. Compose your own author biography. Look at other books to see how much or how little is said. Write two versions—a short version (a sentence or two to be printed under your photograph) and a long version (one paragraph) to be used in your marketing materials once your book has sold.

  • Shelf Space. Go to your local bookstore and find the area where your book will be shelved someday. Smell, feel, and browse the books there. Get a tactile sense of your novel's future home.

  •Visualization. Before you start writing, close your eyes and picture your book's success. Use any image that feels inspiring. Maybe you picture the box arriving

  with your book inside. Or a display in a bookstore window. Maybe you picture your checkbook with five figures. Getting a call from your agent. Reading a positive review to your grandmother over the phone. Ordering lobster in a four-star restaurant instead of waiting on the table. Sending a signed copy of the book to your tenth-grade English teacher. Whatever form success comes in, hold it for a moment in your mind before you start to write.

  INSPIRATION FOR LIFE

  Inspiration for life means things you do for the person who is writing this novel (you need to take good care of yourself). You shouldn't only feel excited about what you are writing and the career you hope it brings you. You should also feel inspired about yourself and life. Writing a novel is a long process and can be stressful. To survive it in good health and happiness, you need to be kind to yourself.

  • Play basketball, do yoga, go dancing (some kind of physical activity).

  • Participate in favorite hobbies (follow your bliss).

  • Drink plenty of water (helps both sides of your brain!).

  • Spend time with people who make you feel good (who give you energy and don't drain you).

  • Laugh a lot.

  • Write and recite positive affirmations.

  One good affirmation comes from a book by Florence Scovel Shinn called The Game of Life and How to Play It. "What God has done for others, God does now for me and more." Before I sold my first novel I would say this affirmation twenty times each day, looking at the cover of one of my favorite novels each time I repeated the words. By looking at these novels I was honoring their success, and by saying the affirmation I was reminding myself that I, too, would be granted this same success. So I would tip my proverbial hat to the cover of Gone With the Wind, to the cover of Ragtime, to the cover of Jane Eyre, and remind myself that, just as these successful writers were gifted with publication, I would be, too.

  YOUR WRITING ENVIRONMENT

  Setting up a working environment might sound like food for the left brain, but it's actually something you do for the right brain. Anything to make the technical end more manageable helps free your creative mind to create. You want to make your work space work so your momentum won't be interrupted.

  Make sure the surface you write on (desk, table, TV tray) is stable and the right height for your chair. Make sure your chair is supportive; you don't want to quit writing for the day because you have a backache. Make sure the things you need (paper and pen, computer, glasses, tissues, reference books, coffee cup) are all easy to reach.

  If you don't have everything you need at hand, you'll be tempted to get up whenever you hesitate about the next word to write. For example, if every time you stop to think about the next sentence you pick up your coffee mug, take a sip, get up from your writing area, and put the cup in the microwave for thirty seconds, get an electric mug warmer and keep it right next to your computer.

  Make sure you not only make your writing area convenient, but effective. Just because you put everything in reach doesn't mean the space will work for you. Try it out. Maybe you'll discover the window glare is too much for your laptop screen. Move the desk or lower the blinds. Don't let anything be a hindrance—take care of the details in advance.

  Make sure your writing space is yours. Can you use it whenever you need to? Does it feel good? (And here I don't mean is it warm and fuzzy—I mean, when you sit in it, does it feel like home to you?) This will be the place you go to climb into your story. When you step into it you need to feel welcome.

  Now that the space is prepared, prepare the time. Some simple little rituals can get you in the writing mode faster and differentiate writing time from the rest of your day. You want your writing space to be sacred space and your writing time to be sacred time. You might light a candle while you work on your novel, putting out the flame when you finish for the day. At various stages in my life I have defined my writing time by putting on a lucky sweater or wearing a certain ring. Whatever you like to do to set this time apart from the rest of your day, do it without shame. It's no sillier than weeding a garden. It helps.

  One very useful tip is to put a timer on while you write. I know this sounds like a left-brain thing, but it's all for the right brain. You want your creative brain to write at a full run for as long as it can. If you know you have to leave for work at 8:40 a.m. and you start writing at 7:45 a.m., your writing will slow down at about 8:30 a.m. and you'll start checking the clock. You'll keep checking it every two minutes and your writing will suffer. Put on a timer that you can't see or hear until it rings. (The stove or microwave timer will work if you're close enough to the kitchen, or use your wristwatch timer, even a bedside alarm clock.) If you know you have to stop writing at a certain time (for work, a date, to cook dinner), give yourself every one of those minutes you have on the timer, then forget about it until you hear the alarm go off. Once you get immersed in your story, forty-five minutes can seem like hours of free
dom. Sacred time is funny that way.

  Another effective tool is the novel soundtrack. Listen to music that brings up key emotions and moods from your story. Movie scores are good sources, but you can use anything—opera, jazz, bagpipes, electronic music, Gregorian chants, Polynesian drums, symphonies, ballets, folk songs, harp music, Irish tin whistles, even whale songs. You might want to stay away from too many songs with lyrics—outside words might interfere with your own words. Record these pieces of music together on one cassette or CD, or directly onto your computer. Name it after the novel (write the name on the cassette label, CD, or computer file) and play this soundtrack while you write. (But don't give it to anyone, sell it, or charge money to play it for anyone—that would be illegal.)

  Another thing you can do to make your writing time sacred is to turn off your phone or let the machine pick up. Not everyone has this luxury. If you have small children or your job requires you to be on call, this won't work for you. But if you can detach from your phone for an hour or two, do it.

  Some of you will not need to do any of the things listed above. Some of you can write anywhere (in a coffee shop, on a bus, during a lecture) and anytime (for ten minutes while waiting under the dryer at the hair salon, for five minutes in line at the post office, for thirty seconds while stuck in traffic)—the most important thing is that you write as well as you can.

  PROTECTING THE CREATIVE PROCESS

  You might be one of those writers who can tell everyone you know about the novel you are starting to write and then go and write it. Or you might be one of those writers who never tells anyone (not your spouse, mother, best friend, priest) about your idea. For some people, giving away the story verbally relieves some of the built-up passion required to write it down. If you feel comfortable telling people about your novel in advance, more power to you, but be aware that you might be affected by their responses. If they give you too much praise, will you feel the weight of trying to live up to their expectations? Will this energize your writing or give you writer's block? If the response is reserved or negative, will you doubt the value of your story? Will a cool response diminish your own love for the idea? If you think the work might be damaged by poor reactions and if you can live without the instant gratification of advertising your novel before it is written, protect the process of writing your book by keeping it to yourself. You can tell everyone you are writing a novel, even tell them how many pages you wrote last week, but keep the magic of the story to yourself and don't spring it on them until the writing is finished. You only have one chance to make a first impression.