Working In a Coffee Shop

Yesterday I critiqued a bunch of stuff in a coffee shop.  I drove to the local Starbucks, purchased my usual overpriced but delicious and addictive Chai Tea Latte, walked over to the brand new "long table," asked the kid sitting at one end doing her homework if she would mind if I sat at the other end (she said, "No, I don't mind,") plopped myself down in a chair, got out my clipboard, my pen and a piece of cardboard for underlining things, and got to work.

I loved it.

I go to Starbucks all the time, but I never sit there unless I'm meeting a friend.  I always see folks working in there, but it never occurred to me to that I could sit there and work.  Pretty funny, considering the banner I sport on this blog.

Over the course of the two-and-a-half hours I spent at "The Buckie" (as my friend Catherine likes to call it ... she refers to Dunkin' Donuts as "The Dunkie,") they played Blues, some New-Age-y mood stuff, and some pop over the sound system at just the right decibel level.

The customers played around the edge of my attention, too.  Bikers with a band came in for a Bikers With a Band meeting. (One of the bikers had a wicked southern accent ... he actually said "ghee-tar." And by "bikers," I mean the Harley-Davidson kind.)  Then a bunch of moms whose kids all go to the same dance studio came in; they were chatting about conventions and competitions and fundraisers.  Some more high school kids commandeered a table and chatted, texted and guffawed. Lots of people came in to order drinks.  It was like listening to a hybrid language invented solely for the purpose of providing a vocabulary for us entitled swillers of fancy hot beverages: "I'll have a triple, venti, half sweet, non-fat, Caramel Macchiato" or "Gimme a non-fat, extra hot, extra water Chai Tea Latte" (that one is me, only I never have to order it at my Starbucks.  The delightful staff always says, "Are you having your Chai?" and all I have to do is smile and nod ...) or "Hmm, how about a decaf Soy Latte with an extra shot and cream?"

The sun shifted.  It's late September here in New England and if you go somewhere at 3:30 p.m. and it gets around to being 6:00 p.m., the quality of the light will most definitely change as the sun starts to hang low in the sky.

One of the employees started sweeping.  I moved for him and he was so grateful.  Then he started mopping and I moved again. "Thank you so much.  That's so thoughtful!" he said.

I finished the last bit of critiquing for my every-other-Monday Writer's Workshop and gathered up my things.

There was something luxurious about leaving Starbucks and going directly to the workshop with my work done and enough time to get there easily.  No last minute "put-the-wash-in-the-dryer", "chop-veggies-for-family-stirfry", "answer-phone-as-I-dash-out-the-door-because-it-might-be-my-husband" or the dreaded "neighbor's-dog's-in-the-paddock-chasing-the-horses-around-oh-no-they're-gonna-kick-him-in-the-head." Nope. Just a cheery wave to the baristas as I shouldered my trendy messenger bag and, keys in hand, headed out to the car.

Tomorrow, I'm taking the plunge.  I'm gonna work on my WIP there.

I'm bringing the laptop.

Yup.  Make it a Venti. (Buckiespeak for BIG GULP.)

The Things We Do For Love

Writing a book is like love-at-first-sight, especially when the idea for a book hits like a ton of bricks. "Best idea, ever!" "This is gonna write like butter!" "I can't believe I thought of this!"  Or, it may be more subtle.  Either way, there's a secret inner loveliness of knowing that you're going to write a book.

It's when the writing begins that the process appears to be more like an arranged marriage than a love match.

Inspired, the writer writes the first two thousand words of the first draft.  He's still on a pink cloud.  He goes to bed, gets up the next morning, fires up the laptop and ... wait, WHAT?

An experienced writer will see things like this: Clunkiness. Unwieldyness. Too many shiny-faced, clever little darlings seeking to hijack the process. Too much exposition.  Too little natural dialogue.  Head hopping. Bad grammar. Execrable punctuation. Misspelled words—lots of them.  On its face, this is most definitely NOT what the writer fell in love with, but he knows the story is still there.  He will take it to his writers' group willingly, craving those other sets of eyes.

An inexperienced writer will suspect his writing maybe isn't as good as it appeared first blush. He will take it to his writers' group and get feedback from the more experienced writers, and hopefully they will dispense the truth with kindness.  He will take what he needs and leave the rest.  He may feel a flash of resentment, but he will also see that many of the suggestions are spot-on and he'll intuitively know a good deal of what's been shown to him will help.

A non-writer will not see any of this. If he belongs to a writers' group and submits his work for critique and the writers attempt to remove the scales from his eyes, he will either take offense and storm away in high dudgeon, maybe never to return. Or he will sit and seethe, leaving at the same time as everyone else, maybe never to return. And he'll stop writing.

Or he'll write "at" everyone, finish his work and maybe become a writer just from the process of writing.  Many excellent writers have actually started out this way.

Whether a writer submits to a critique group or not, he must get to know his story at deeper and deeper levels. He must let her lead the way as she reveals her characters, point-of-view, plot, pacing, backstory —everything. Then she must let him write.  He's drawing her out.  Writer and story will find places they cannot stay, but the experiences in those places only serve to enrich the narrative. And the way he cares for her, builds the relationship and learns about her is by writing and writing and writing.

And she will be unlovely a good deal of the time, especially the first draft.  There will be lapses in chronology, abrupt changes in characters that don't seem authentic, too much of something, too little of something else, but if her truth is allowed to assert itself, he will fix what needs to be fixed, she will show him more, and they will journey on.

It's actually her "unloveliness" that causes the writer to assert himself, for he knows that if she is to be revealed, it's up to him.  But he can't do it without her, for if he forces whatever version of "loveliness" he craves on her, she will be ruined.

In case anyone is interested, here is a  book which describes a process for revealing a story that suits the way this writer writes— The 90-Day Novel by Al Watt of the LA Writers' Lab.  It's all about embracing the unloveliness, because unloveliness, if tended, is a progress in love.

This Week's Writer's Exercise

I belong to a Writer's Workshop at the local public library.  It meets on Thursday mornings at 11 a.m. and has been the high point of my week for months now.  Over the last couple of months, those of us with WIPs have been doing exercises pertaining to them.

Last week, we wrote endings to our our books.  There's no guarantee that the endings we wrote are the ones we will use, but it was a compelling thing to do.  Completely different from writing a beginning in so many ways AND, if one is writing a series, sown with the seeds of the next book. 

Endings seem to have valves, where tension is let off in a controlled (but not controlling!) way.  Endings are peaceful and perhaps even resigned.  They are, after all, endings.  AND, since I am both an info-dumper and a banjo-player, endings are balm to an overly-expository writer.  They are chock-full of possibilities that the reader already knows about, so the temptation to "word-herd" the reader is gone.

Now we're working on characters ... index cards with physical descriptions and connecting lines to describe the relationships between the characters.  Sort of like those wonderful family trees one finds at the beginning of a Sharon Kay Penman work of historical fiction.

It turns out the entire room our group meets in has walls of fabric and pushpins can be used EVERYWHERE, all over ALL the walls. Kelly, the leader of our group and head of Library Services, said, "Yes.  Every bit of the wall.  Go for it."  I can't wait.

The problem for me is: I have so many characters, so here's what I've decided I'm going to do:  I will have three sizes of index card to choose from.  That's right ... I'm going to cut some cards in half and some in quarters. Now this isn't to say the characters will remain a particular "size" over the series, but for the current WIP, I have an excellent idea of the "weight" each character brings to the story.

Of course, this could just be the lamest idea ever, but I really want to give it a whirl.  I love a good visual, and the mental picture of a glorious union of the Excel file of my characters, index cards, sharpies and tumbtacks is already dancing in my head.

ENDLESS POSSIBILITIES!