Writing – Page 2 – KEVIN CRAIG

The Secret Passage that Led Me Back to My Middle Grade Novel!

I have been dragging a certain Middle Grade novel around with me for a few years now. Seriously, it’s ridiculous how many times I have taken it out and edited it, read it, or simply slapped it upside the head.

I don’t know what it is about this novel. When I’m IN it, it captures me completely. But when I get some distance from it, I feel super unsure of it. I have not yet moved to prepare it for the trip to the agent’s desk. I keep planning on doing so, but I keep stopping myself from clicking send.

Well, as one is wont to do on a Saturday…I spent last Saturday in a castle. As I toured the ramparts and the basement and the secret rooms and the conservatory and the library and the bedrooms and the garrets, I thought nothing of my little novel in hiding.

Casa Loma - High Tea - February 1, 2014 — Casa Loma – High Tea – February 1, 2014

It wasn’t until I came across a passage that brought me from the basement wine cellar to the upstairs study that it hit me. My god! I’m inside the walls! When that realization hit me, the whole story of DUBIOUS PICKLES AND THE SPACE BETWEEN THE WALLS came back to me. I have so many feels for Dubious, the strange middle-aged character of my middle grade book. I love him to pieces.

While standing in the narrow stairwell that would take me to the study, I allowed my friends to get ahead of me so I could capture the moment between the castle walls on film. I wanted to have this reminder to fall back on for the next time I opened up the dusty manuscript.

Little did I know, that moment on the secret stairs between the castle walls would reignite my passion for Dubious and his quirky little story.

I need to get back to this story!

Here’s a first draft synopsis for Dubious:

Everyone in Dobber Corner is afraid of Dubious Pickles. Everyone that is, except ten-year-old Arbour Lévesque. After an encounter with Dubious at the local thrift shop, Arbour knows there is nothing to fear. But when he follows Dubious home and peeks inside his windows, he discovers the world of impossibilities in which Dubious lives. Arbour witnesses a walking talking plastic man, a flying cat and a staircase that does everything twice.

Arbour decides to befriend the shy Dubious, but he knows it won’t be an easy task. He badgers his friends to help him infiltrate Dubious’ magical house. Inside, they discover that Dubious lives in a maze of secret passageways that honeycomb his mansion’s ancient walls. Afraid of their attention, Dubious attempts to scare the boys away. When drowning them in a room of pearls doesn’t do the trick, he tosses them into a cavernous abyss that takes them all to Nowhere Fast. Arbour’s brother Newton, a card-carrying genius-inventor-extraordinaire, lends a hand and the boys are able to overcome every obstacle Dubious throws their way.

The boys eventually convince Dubious they mean him no harm, but coaxing him out from behind his walls is but a short-lived victory. Bad things begin to happen in their town and the adults are quickly vanishing. Arbour knows that only the childlike Dubious can help him save the town from a threat more menacing than Dubious Pickles ever was.

So, as I battle to finish another project I’m nearing the end on…I now feel the need to keep this Dubious passion alive once more. I’m going to be looking at this picture of the stairwell often to help remind me of the story. I have officially marked it as my next project to bring to completion.

God! Why is it that writers have such a hard time finishing an idea before they move on to the next one. Life would be so much easier for me if I just wrote linearly. I won’t even go into how many WIPs I have on the go right now. I’ll just say I can’t count them on one hand. This makes me all jittery and panicky…so I don’t like to think about it.

In case you’re wondering what the heck I would be doing in a castle, I visited Casa Loma in Toronto. They were having HIGH TEA as part of the city’s WINTERLICIOUS festivities. The tea was fantastic! And so was the tour of the castle. It was about 35-40 years since I last stepped foot in Casa Loma.

Thank God I was lucky enough to take a stroll between the walls of this amazing castle this past weekend. That stroll has helped to reignite the flame. (-:

Now, on to Dubious, Arbour and the rest of these crazy characters! They deserve to see their story completed.

How to Write a Novel in ONE Sitting

Stop balking. It can be done! I’ve done it. In fact, it’s the best way for me to write a novel. Trust me. You do not want to be inside this head. I have the attention span of a–well of something with the most minute of attention spans in the history of attention spans. I prefer not to say a gnat, because, well does anybody actually KNOW what the attention span of a gnat is? For all we know, they could have a superior attention span. That’s attention span bigotry, in my humble opinion.

What was I saying?

Oh yes. How to write a novel in one sitting.

Having done this on several occasions, I could probably give a few tips on how to do it. The most important thing for me is to not take myself too seriously when I do this. Don’t get me wrong…I take my writing output very seriously. The finished product must be as close to infallible as possible. But writing…the actual act of sitting in a chair–or on a chair–or on a table–or on the floor–and writing? I can’t take that too seriously. F to the U to the N. That’s what I require when I decide to give my writing self 72 hours to come up with a complete novel. Stepping into a novel marathon situation with a sneer and a steel resolve to GET THINGS DONE would equate to ABSOLUTE FAILURE for me. If you think you can attack a marathon writing situation by approaching it without humour and with a resolve to GET SHIT DONE, by all means…give it a go. That’s not me.

Here are some points to consider prior to hunkering down for a one-sitting first-draft novel:

1. Remove all commitments from your schedule. This should go without saying, but you would be surprised. Don’t schedule a one-sitting novel writing jag with a doctor’s appointment in the middle of it. That’s a real life break. You can’t have real life breaks. They interrupt the flow of the marathon mind. That shit will fuck you up. Make sure your schedule is COMPLETELY open. No “I have to watch Matlock Saturday at 7pm…but that’s the only break I’m taking!” You can’t have things to distract you from the trenches. You can take breaks…I’m not saying you can’t. I’m just saying you can’t have REAL LIFE breaks. You can’t come out of the cave.

2. If you don’t have somebody looking after your dietary needs for the marathon sitting, make sure you have enough previously prepared food to take you to the end of the marathon. Refer to #1. Preparing yourself a 3-course meal on day two of your marathon would be a lovely reward for sticking it out, but it would also take you completely off course. Might as well pack it in, because your mind left the cave as you sliced the onions and mashed the potatoes. Nothing kills a creativity binge more than straining broccoli through a colander. Have everything you need for your meals readily available. The most you’ll want to do in the kitchen is nuke things in the microwave or send some bread to the toaster gallows. More than that, and you’re disturbing the force, Luke.

3. Stand up and move away from your screen whenever you desire. Writers know that not all of the writing is done in front of the screen. You can leave your shelter all you want, you just can’t leave your cave. Take a walk down the street. Do jumping-jacks or gestalt or scream therapy. Walk down to the water and jump in. Now you’re thinking ‘why can’t I peel potatoes when I can jump in the river?’ Don’t question me, grasshopper. I have done this several times. Just think yes to FRIVOLOUS ACTIVITY and no to CHORES. You can do one while remaining in your writing cave, but it’s hard to remain in the cave while doing the other.

4. Listen to music OR don’t listen to music. This is, of course, a personal choice. A lot of writers have PLAYLISTS for their novels. If you know what you’re going to write about during your marathon jag, create a playlist prior to entering your cave. Listen while you write, if that’s your thing. Or, if music during writing makes you want to pluck your eyeballs out, then don’t do it. The key is if you’re going to listen to music, have everything you need for it at your fingertips. Creating a playlist while you’re in the cave could be catastrophic to the force, Luke. You’ll think about searching for a certain song, and you’ll go to download it or what have you. Next thing you know, two hours have passed and you’re in some dingy basement backroom of Youtube, watching/listening to a 1970s bootleg concert of Patty Smith and you won’t know how to escape. You will have to surrender the fantasy.

5. Take a boatload of writers with you into your cave. There are now several novel marathon events around. Find one…participate in one. You will thrive on the camaraderie of being in the company of other writers while doing this seemingly impossible thing. You will feed off of each other in the most positive of ways. And you will walk away from your weekend (or mid-week jag, if you will) with not only a finished first-draft but a load of new siblings in writing. Relationships will be formed that you will carry with you for a long time.

6. BE FOOLISH. Allow yourself to laugh. You are doing a phenomenal thing. To write a novel from cover to cover in one sitting is extraordinary. You will be tired (EXHAUSTED), you will be emotional (A WRECK), you will be excited and wired and down and up and sideways. Don’t try to hold everything in. Don’t try to make this a pseudo-military mission. There are no rules. There is only you and the unfolding story. You have to have fun. It’s the only way to get through it. Trust me on this. You’ll have some great moments. Breakthroughs will be everywhere. But at 2:30 in the morning on your second day you might want to pull out all your hair and set your legs on fire. You will be giddy to the point of crying…but remaining in your cave is the way through it. Let seriousness fall away and be your child-self. It’s how you will make it through the dark tunnels of the marathon. WRITE YOUR WAY THROUGH.

7. Whatever you do, don’t look back. Writing a novel in one sitting is not like seeing a runaway freight train bombing down the tracks at an impossible unstoppable speed. Writing a novel in one sitting makes YOU the freight train. Don’t, for the love of god, stop that train. You have to let go of the ego self that screams at you to edit that last sentence, that last paragraph, that last chapter. The editing can come later. Much later, if you want. During the marathon, there is only ONE DIRECTION. Forward.

That’s enough for now. The biggest thing about attempting to write a novel this way is that there are no rules. YOU FIND YOUR OWN WAY. These are just a few loose suggestions. (-: You have got to try to write this way. It’s so liberating. Magical. Imagine not needing to do anything else between the start and end of your story. It’s unfathomable, but not impossible.

While the Mundane Takes Place – Write, Write, Write!

Unless you’re some all-powerful deity, you have a little mundane in your life. It’s true. Even the movers and shakers of Hollywood and the Tower of Song get to partake from the Table of Mundanity. Nobody is exempt. It’s kind of like dying–nobody gets out alive. You don’t have to be a poet to know that simple truth. Life is dying. And dying is living.

It’s the middle road between birth and death that matters. And not just the glitzy stuff. There’s more to life than podiums and celebrations. So much of our living time is filled with simple moments of non-fabulousness. As a writer, I try to pay particularly close attention to these moments. I always found that it is in the simple less spectacular events where story hides. Like a crouching lion, the details lurk under the surface of our mundane downtime. It is when I’m bored or idle or daydreaming that I ask myself, “What can be found in this time?” “What universal truth, wisdom, parallel, insight, emotion can be found within this moment?”

When a writer connects with that part of us that is universal–that humanness that we all share–that is when the fireworks go off. You don’t necessarily reread a passage in a story where the most exciting seat-of-your-pants action happens. But if you find that one special sentence that crawls down inside you…that sentence you recognize and know could have come from your very heart…that’s the sentence you’re going to read and reread. You’re gonna fully relate. You’re gonna say an emphatic, “YEAH!” or “YES!” It could be a mundane part in the story where the main character slices into an apple with a paring knife. It could be the way light comes into a room and rallies dust motes to dance. These mundane moments captured for one great big universal AHHHH! That’s what I love about writing. About reading. We share the simple moments that go into a life…the moments that connect EVENT to EVENT. Just those mundane moments that are filled with the hidden knowledge and wonder of universal commonality.

Don’t overlook a thing when you’re putting a story together. To capture the heart of the reader, you will need to capture the essence of humanity. It’s not found in the glamorous and intriguing fabulousness of the EVENTS. It’s found in the things we do every day. The minutiae. That will capture your reader and allow them to step inside your story bus…just to see where it is you’re going to take them!