The Fine Art of Procrastination

by Janis Susan May/Janis Patterson

No one ever said writing was easy. Forming a cogent and interesting story, creating a believable and fascinating cast of characters who are real people instead of cardboard cutouts, choosing the exact right language, the precise words that give just the nuance you want... None of it is especially difficult, but believe me, none of these are the toughest work of writing.

Let's face it, sometimes the writing goes well. Words flow from your fingertips, paragraphs form almost of their own volition, chapters grow like beautiful, perfect weeds. Wonderful when it does, but sadly it doesn't happen often enough. Most of the time writing is work - sometimes easy work, sometimes not, but we have to make the words conform to our vision.

And then there are the days when our work simply shuts down. Getting the right word is comparable to pulling it from glue. Then you must pull out the next one, and the next, but even that is preferable to the 'I don't cares.'

The 'I don't cares' are not writers' block, nothing so simple as that. You know where the story is going, perhaps sentences and paragraphs are taking vague shape in your mind, but you just don't want to write. You sit at the computer, determined that today you will really work and break this strange stasis, but you sit at the computer and suddenly remember that you need to clean out that kitchen cabinet which has sat unmolested for the last decade. Or go visit your next-door neighbor from three houses ago. Or finish the baby blanket you started to make for your nephew, that same nephew who starts high school next week.

Unfortunately, this is more than simple procrastination. The internet has taken a lot of blame for distracting writers away from their self-appointed task as a wordsmith, but I cannot help but wonder how much is cause and how much is symptom. Same with the kitchen cabinet, the long-ago neighbor, the baby blanket, or any other of a hundred million things.

Nora Roberts, one of the most (if not the) most prolific novelists in the world says wisely "Just write the book, even if it's garbage. You can fix garbage. You can't fix a blank page." Very true, and oftentimes such a determined attitude works. During these (hopefully rare) times when it doesn't, though, no matter how much you write down, it's not only garbage, but definitely garbage that can't be fixed.

So what do we do when these black clouds of utter immobility engulf us? That is not a rhetorical question; I would really like to know, but at the moment I must run. It's been way too long since I got a Q-Tip and cleaned under the gasket on my dishwasher...

How Nice Should They Be?

by Janis Susan May/Janis Patterson

Last Sunday I decided to take a vacation. I stopped in the never-ending task of cleaning the house, let the yard bask unmolested in the July sun and didn't even open my computer. Fortified by left-overs and junk food, I settled on the couch, turned on an oldies re-run channel and binge-watched old 1990s-2000s tv series, mostly crime series, most of which were not as good as I remembered. Still better than the majority of what is on now, but not as good as I remembered.

One thing that struck me was the female-centricity of the shows. The main character is always slim and gorgeous, overabundantly capable of everything and usually has more than a little attitude. The men on the show all have pretty much just one line of dialogue - "Are you all right?" - sometimes mutated into "You okay?" More often than not she is the one who rescues the male lead or shoots the bad guy. Occasionally she is kidnapped by a varying number of bad guys but always manages to overpower them all and rescue herself. Of course, the male lead always says, "You okay?"

What amazes me about these shows is that all too often these women do things without thought that would get them reprimanded if not outright arrested - and all without consequence. The queen of this is Brenda Lee Johnson on The Closer. Besides having a hideous mouth and the worst fake Southern accent I've ever heard, that character gets up to antics that would have her fired before the first episode was over. Or arrested.

What sparked this sour little screed of mine, though, was an episode of Crossing Jordan, a series about a doctor in the Medical Examiners' office of Boston, Mass. Jordan is a lovely young woman with the personality of a dyspeptic porcupine. She is moody, harsh, argumentative and cajoling. She disregards departmental policy and the law with equal glee. In this particular episode there was a huge plane crash in which another ME from the office was killed. This ME (whose name I can't remember) was also a lovely young woman, but there all resemblance ended. This character was happy, cheerful, funny and friendly; she was also just as courageous and feisty as Jordan, but on the whole operated within departmental and legal rules.

This started me thinking and I wondered why the main character of the show was the moody, rule-breaking one. The show could have been just as exciting, just as informative, just as suspenseful with the cheerful woman as the lead as with the edgy, abrasive Jordan. It might have been a much better show, too. After all, whoever said that being a strong woman meant ignoring the simple rules of good manners and good citizenship?

Now to drag this back to writing, perhaps we should examine our own leading characters. We're always exhorted to make them real, give them genuine personalities, create them as individual human beings. I don't see why for so many shows and books and movies the 'realness' has to come from argumentativeness or disregard for societal rules. Strong does not have to mean rude. Interesting does not have to mean ill-mannered. Honest, law-abiding, well-behaved people can be just as if not more interesting and strong as their disrespectful and moody counterpoints. Perhaps even more so.

This does not mean our characters should be saccharinely-sweet, cloying or brainless pushovers; that would be going too far the other way. Just as a real person can be law-abiding until pushed to the very brink where only a piece of illegality can save the day, so can our characters. And probably be the more real for it.

The View from the Corner

by Janis Susan May/Janis Patterson

There are some days that the words just flow from your fingers to the paper in a wonderful flood, pristine and clear and perfect - paragraphs that are marvels of clarity and inspired writing, the kind of writing that wins awards and tops best seller lists. Okay, it doesn't happen often, but when it does it is wonderful and you know that writing is the absolute best career you could have.

Magical times like this tend to make you forget the hours you have spent dragging out prose word by painful word, and the only thing that stops you from going mad with the delete button (or in particularly bad cases, highlight-and-delete) is the certain knowledge that nothing you could do (at the moment, at least) would be any better. Those are the times you secretly wonder if you would have been better off becoming a plumber.

Even as wonderful as those moments of inspiration are, they can cause a problem. Suddenly you realize you failed to put in an absolutely essential piece of information - but your writing is so tight there's no way you can put it in without having to re-write great chunks of what followed, and that will ruin your beautiful prose - or at the very least necessitate some heavy rewriting. In other words, you have written yourself into a corner.

Decisions, decisions!

Of course you do what is best for your story, whether it is to put the absolutely essential piece of information in and then try to make the rest of scene work, or try to find a place and a logical way later on to put that piece of information.

Neither is going to be easy.

There are other ways to write yourself into a corner. Someone absolutely has to be there in this scene, but you remember he also has to be someplace far away and hard to reach at the exact same time. You have constructed your book based on certain things happening on certain dates, then realize that can't happen because of something historical - and you don't want to be one of those lazy writers who ignores historical fact, do you? (If you are, leave now because I don't want to talk to you.)

See? There are any number of ways to write yourself into a corner... just as there are any number of ways that, with skill and perseverance and hard work, you can't write yourself out of. Of course, it would be much easier to not write yourself into a corner, but sometimes it's so hard not to when the words are flowing and there is that whole air of magic hanging over your work.

And it's not that bad being in the corner. I know, because I spend a lot of time in that corner, so be sure to say hello when you get here.