From Pantser to Plotter

For most of my writing life I’ve been a pantser, at least I’ve regarded myself as one. When I begin a mystery novel or short story, I have an idea about a character in mind, and from that I populate her or his world and the kinds of problems that person would face. This can be a slow process, at least it is for me, so I’ve learned to make note of possibly useful ideas as they appear whether I’m ready for them or not. This means I usually have a list of author lines, scene details, questions a character would raise, and the like. But in my latest work-in-progress I’ve been doing things differently.

 

Peter Dickinson once said that by the time he started writing, his outline was so detailed and fleshed-out that there were no surprises awaiting him as he wrote from chapter to chapter. I can’t say I’ve approached that this time, but I understand what he was talking about.

 

A couple of months ago I had an idea about a pre-teen girl being witness to a man dying from a hunting accident. Called as a witness in a criminal trial, she was aware of undercurrents in the questioning and managed to steer clear of them thanks to solid preparation by her father. I thought this sounded promising and made a note. Two days later the threads from this initial idea began to run outward, and I made more notes. By the end of a couple of weeks I had a tight synopsis that covered several stages in the development of the plot, half a dozen characters playing significant roles, and a climax that was a little hazy but, I was confident, would become sharper as I went along. I set the synopsis aside and let the idea germinate some more. 

 

The publicity around NaNoWriMo came at just the right time, when I was wondering if I should begin writing or set the idea aside as already stale. One of the pleasures of being a pantser has always been the moments of discovery, when a character surprises me or a turn in the plot gets more interesting than I expected. But with NaNoWriMo nipping at my heels, I decided to open a new file and follow my synopsis. I finished NaNoWriMo with 40,000 words (I took most weekends off—that’s the competitive writer in me, covering for failing to reach the 50K goal) and I now have 54,000. 

 

The twists and turns of the story, the discoveries of character and alliances forming and tearing, the questions of truth and justice were an added layer I hadn’t covered in my synopsis. Right now I’m on the home stretch—I can see the end becoming richer and more interesting, no longer hazy and predictable. But I can’t rush it without damaging the larger story.

 

Writing this new mystery is the closest I’ve come to being an plotter. So far I’m pleased with how the story idea developed and the writing stayed close to the original idea but I can’t say I’m confident that this will be my path forward from now on, in both short stories and mystery novels. Nevertheless, it’s a change, and I’m all for change if it means growth and discovery. 

NaNoWriMo Final Report

Image by Engin Akyurt from Pixabay

This is the first year I’ve tried NaNoWriMo. In   October I came up with an idea for a new suspense  novel, a stand-alone featuring a character with some problems I wanted to explore. Over the coming days various scenes and aspects of the story came to mind, so I jotted these down and soon had a list of moments in a scene, or a number of scenes. Enthusiastic now, I wrote a short synopsis. With this in hand, I figured I could stay focused on just moving forward with the story rather than going back and rewriting and adding, etc. NaNoWriMo seemed to arrive at just the right time.

 

I ended the month with 40,508 words. After taking most Sundays off and an occasional Saturday, I averaged 1,558 words a session. The low daily count was 825 words on November 1, and the high was 2,296 on November 16. If it weren’t for NaNoWriMo, I probably would have set my daily word count at 1,500 words, which has been average for me for years. 

 

This month of working on my new novel, tentatively titled “Renee’s Trial,” included time spent on short stories. I worked on the novel in the morning, and on short stories in the afternoon. I don’t get much in the way of a word count after writing the first draft of short fiction. My short stories usually go through a dozen drafts and sometimes end up totally different from what I originally had in mind but the word count changes little. Four stories were published this year, so I don’t mind the slow process.

 

I signed on for the Sisters in Crime FB NaNoWriMo group but never participated in their “write-ins” and other events. It was enough to know they were out there. I checked in to see how my fellow writers were doing, sharing my totals when I could. The program created a definite buzz and energy and I’m sure that helped keep some of us going.

 

Would I do this again? Yes.

 

NaNoWriMo worked for me because I used October to prime myself to focus on something specific rather than a general idea of, Gee, I think I’ll write a novel in November. I knew where I was going and much of the path I wanted to take. Because I wasn’t doing any editing along the way, or at least very little, I was adding words instead of deleting them (an all-too-common practice for me). So, yes, in similar circumstances in the future, I would definitely sign on for NaNoWriMo again.

 

Right now, as I look at my draft and my list of total words per day, I’m estimating that I can finish the first draft before Christmas, and bring it in at 75K words or more. That will be a very good ending to an otherwise miserable year. 

NaNoWriMo: First Report

NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, has been around since 1999. I probably became conscious of it about ten years ago, never giving it much thought except some curiosity about how it worked. This year I decided to give it a try.

 

In the middle of October I got an idea for a new novel, my agent was reading one I’d just revised, and the promos for NaNoWriMo were everywhere, a reminder that some people needed to get writing and others did not. I began dutifully on November 1, and now have 16,831 words. That’s not the number writers are expected to have if they’ve been keeping up with the daily quota of 1,667 for fourteen days. That would be a total of 23,338 words. 

 

I confess to slacking. Sunday is usually a day off for me, and November 7, a Saturday, and the next day had me riveted to the news on both TV and cell. Monday was a return to normality, and I’ve had three very good days this week, with totals all over the official daily quota.

 

My daily quota is usually around fourteen hundred words, and sometimes a great deal lower. After I have a draft I do a lot of revising, mostly cutting and trimming and clarifying. Words disappear, clarity emerges, and I let the whole thing sit for a while.

 

I probably would not have made as much progress as I’ve to date if I hadn’t found a new idea for an entire story instead of a glimmer of a character in a scene. This story was so clearly shaped in my mind, with the rising and falling action, the total story arc, that I jotted down significant moments, turning points, and revelations until I had a page of eight fully realized paragraphs, which I turned into a nearly complete synopsis. Little details that usually emerge later popped up, and were jotted down. Once again, I mused on how different the beginning of this novel was from earlier ones. 

 

NaNoWriMo offers an online community, which I brush up against occasionally, and will now use to post my moderate progress. If nothing else, it’s fun writing at a time when you know thousands of others are doing the same thing under the same umbrella. But I’m still taking Sundays off with little hope of making up the missing words later. That doesn’t matter. I’m almost one quarter the way into a new novel, and for once I have a pretty good idea where I’m going. 

Reading around the World: The Middle East (1)

Several months ago I undertook a project to read a novel by a woman from every nation. I listed 197 nations plus Palestine. The idea was not mine but came from a friend, now deceased, who talked about it occasionally and how much she enjoyed hearing the voices of women from other parts of the world. After a while I was intrigued enough to draw up a spreadsheet and even posted it on my blog, but it came out almost unreadable. Instead of trying that again, I’ll talk occasionally about my recent reading here.

Over the years I’ve read a number of novels by women from other countries, mostly from South Asia, and have a strong library of their work. Even so, I wanted to begin with a blank spreadsheet and choose stories and novels that are mostly current among the readers of each country. That means writers who live and work in their native land. I’m less interested in ex-pats living in the United States because their audience in this country cannot be discounted as an influence on the creation of the story. Nevertheless, I’ve read several books by displaced writers working in English and found them satisfying and enlightening. 

 

Once I made the decision to focus on women writing and living in their country, when at all possible, the kind of literature I encountered deepened in terms of presenting a culture that required more thought on my part to enter and appreciate but the experience has been worth the effort. Certain western tropes didn’t appear, or at least not in the same way, and overall the fiction was much more enjoyable and interesting. Of course, anyone, myself included, must acknowledge that writing in English must influence the writer, and so, whenever possible, I looked for books originally written in the writer’s native tongue, assuming that wasn’t English or, in some cases, French or another European language. These requirements with exceptions have evolved so I’m not bogged down in a search for the “perfect representative” book. So, what have I read?

 

I’m working my way through the Middle East and North Africa, and I’ve posted reviews of several of the titles on Goodreads.

 

Chaos of the Senses by Ahlem Mosteghanemi (Algeria)

Chronicle of a Last Summer by Yasmine El Rashidi (Egypt)

To Keep the Sun Alive by Rabbeah Ghaffari (Iran)

All That I Want to Forget by Bothayna Al-Essa (Kuwait)

Wild Thorns by Sahar Khalifeh (Palestine)

Girls of Riyadh by Rajaa Alsanea (Saudi Arabia)

 

Two books that are probably better known in this country (USA) are not included. Both The Bastard of Istanbul by Elif Shafak (Turkey) and The Last Days of Café Leila by Donia Bijan (Iran) are interesting novels by women born in their respective countries but now living in the United States. Each novel tackles the circumstances for women but the stories are as much about life in the States as life in the old country. Immigrant women return to their family’s country of origin, linking two cultures and exploring unanswered questions. As interesting and rewarding as these novels are, they have the feel of being written by someone who is now an outsider with extensive knowledge of the country in question, with a shifting focus on the US and a now foreign land. For these and other reasons, I have chosen to focus on books written by authors residing for most of their lives in their native land. 

 

Next up is So Vast the Prison by Assia Djebar.

 

As I mentioned in a FB post, I’m always open to suggestions so if you have a book you think would suit this list, do let me know. This project is a long one and I’m not in any hurry to finish. I like the world tour and the women I’m keeping company with. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another entry in my project, "Reading around the World in the Company of Women"

Chronicle of a Last Summer: 

A Novel of Egypt, by Yasmine El Rashidi 

The unnamed narrator is about eight years old in the opening chapter, set in Cairo in 1984. The daughter of a well-respected family living in a sprawling family home surrounded by relatives, she listens to the adults around her talk about the revolution, Nasser, and changes in the city. Her time is spent idyllically, and though she takes in all that she hears, she understands little. This is when her beloved father, Baba, disappears, with no one able to tell her when he’s coming back. She gets the idea he might be in Geneva. 

She’s a young university student in 1998, when life in Cairo is rapidly changing as it is in her own personal life. She still wonders where Baba is but she also wonders how to participate in the political change she and her cousin and uncle discuss. Devoted to a career in film making, she sees the world through maturing eyes, watching her mother drift, her family shrink, her questions remain unanswered. 

In the last summer, 2014, her Baba returns, but not to her and her mother. She and her mother now live alone in the big house, the other family members dead or gone. Bridging the gap of years and pain, she comes to understand her Baba and herself. Her mother emerges from years of solitude to be as much of a protestor as her daughter, fearless and forthright on the streets. 

In the years of the novel, Egypt is a kaleidoscope of political upheaval, oppression, uncertainty, corruption, and hope. Through Nasser, Sadat, Mubarak, Morsi, and Sisi, the narrator reaches adulthood and an understanding of where she stands in the family line, among those calling for revolution and those trying to patch together an honest life. The writing is crisp, clean, but not brisk, and even though the story moves well I found myself wishing for a faster pace, and then I considered this might be intentional, a pacing meant to reflect the character’s careful interaction with a dangerous world.

Around the World in the Company of Women

A few weeks ago, before the pandemic arrived and life had its predictable and even comfortable rhythms, I began a project I’d been thinking about for more than two years—reading a work of fiction written by a woman from every country. That’s 197 books (plus Palestine). I’m not sure I can name even half of the nations now existing, but I recently learned that Massachusetts has welcomed new citizens from almost everyone. As isolated as we may feel right now, during the pandemic, this statistic reminds me of how linked we are to the rest of the world.

My list is limited to fiction, which means novels, short stories, and drama. I doubt I’ll be reading much in the last category but I’m leaving it open just in case something extraordinary comes along.

Once I began to think about the number of books I was going to read, I realized I had to set some parameters. The work has to be written by a woman of the country. This means the author should be someone living primarily in her native or adopted country; I’m not interested in a book about life in Algeria written by someone who has lived most of her life in the United States or Europe. The novel is fertile territory for cross-pollination, but living in a country brings a different perspective that can be gained in no other way. Discovering life lived on the inside through fiction was one of my goals.

                              

Again, the book could be written in any language including English, but since I can only read my native tongue with any fluency, the fiction would have to be available in English. This meant I could be reading a lot of works in translation, and appreciating the quality of a translation was probably going to be one of the side benefits of this.

The books could date from any era, though I suspected most would have been written and published in the last fifty years or so. In the last few decades, even before eBooks, POD books, and self-publishing came to play a near-dominant role, traditional publishing broadened the titles on the shelf to include more work by women, and definitely more work by non-white women. I looked forward to lots of choices, discovering new writers, but I also knew some of the best titles might be difficult to obtain.

Filling in the blanks for some countries seems easy until I realize I have to choose. I have a favorite writer from New Zealand, Ngaio Marsh, who wrote mysteries, and I face a long list of choices for Ireland and England. Some of these slots I’ve left blank while I work my way through other parts of the globe. Right now I’m working on the Middle East.

So far I’ve avoided the big question. Why? Maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe any reason to read beyond my familiar landscape is a good idea, but you must wonder if there is a good reason to do this beyond curiosity. Curiosity, interest in another culture, is always rewarded in my view, and by itself is a good enough reason.

Take a look at the list below, and if you have any suggestions please let me know. When I sit down with a new book by a woman living in a country I’ve never visited and living in a culture I can only imagine, I feel an excitement, an anticipation that is often lacking when I pick up other books. Perhaps you will too.

x Unread	Country		Author		Title
	Afghanistan
	Albania
	Algeria		Ahlem Mosteghanemi		Chaos of the Senses
	Andorra
	Angola
	Antiguq and Barbuda
	Argentina
	Armenia
	Australia
	Austria
	Azerbaijan
	The Bahamas
	Bahrain
	Bangladesh
	Barbados
	Belarus
	Belgium
	Belize
	Benin
	Bhutan
	Bolivia
	Bosnia & Herzegovina		Asja Bakic		Mars
	Botswana
	Brazil
	Brunei
	Bulgaria
	Burkina Faso
	Burundi
	Cabo Verde
	Cambodia
	Cameroon
	Canada
	The Cayman Islands
	Central African Republic
	Chad
	Chile
	China
	Colombia
	Comoros
	Congo, Dem. Rep. of
	Congo, Rep. of
	Costa Rica
	Cote d'Ivoire
	Croatia
	Cuba
	Cyprus
	Czech Republic
	Denmark
	Djibouti
	Dominica
	Dominican Republic		Julia Alvarez		In the Time of the Butterflies
	Ecuador
x	Egypt		Yasmine El Rashidi		Chronicle of a Last Summer: A Novel of Egypt
	El Salvador
	England
	Equitorial Guinea
	Eritrea
	Estonia
	Eswatini
	Ethiopia
	Germany
	Fiji
	Finland
	France
	Gabon
	Gambia
	Georgia
	Germany
	Ghana
	Greece
	Grenada
	Guatemala
	Guinea
	Guinea-Bissau
	Guyana
	Haiti
	Holy See
	Honduras
	Hungary
	Iceland
	India		Nayantara Sahgal		Mistaken Identity
	Indonesia
	Iran		Rabeah Ghaffari		To Keep the Sun Alive
	Iraq
	Ireland		Elizabeth Bowen		The Last September
	Israel
	Italy
	Jamaica
	Japan		Riku Onda		The Aosawa Murders
	Jordan
	Kazakhstan
	Kenya
	Serbia
	Kiribati
	Korea (north)
	Korea (south)
	Kosovo
	Kuwait		Bothayna Al-Essa		All That I Want to Forget
	Krygyzstan
	Laos
	Latvia
	Lebanon
	Lesotho
	Liberia
	Libya
	Liechtenstein
	Lithuania
	Luxembourg
	Mdagascar
	Malawi
	Malaysia
	Maldives
	Mali
	Malta
	Marshall Islands
	Mauritania
	Mauritius
	Mexico
	Micronesia
	Moldova
	Monaco
	Mongolia
	Montenegro
	Morocco
	Mozambique
	Namibia
	Nauru
	Nepal
	Netherlands
	New Zealand		Ngaio Marsh		Death and the Dancing Footman
	Nicaragua
	Niger
	Nigeria
	Norway
	Oman
	Pakistan
	Palau
x	Palestine		Sahar Khalifeh		Wild Thorns
	Panama
	Papua New Guinea
	Paraguay
	Peru
	Philippines
	Poland
	Portugal
	Qatar
	Republic of Korea
	Romania
	Russia
	Rwanda
	Saint Kitts and Nevis
	Saint Lucia
	Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
	Samoa
	SanMarino
	SaoTome and Principe
	Saudi Arabia		Rajaa Alsanea		Girls of Riyadh
	Scotland
	Senegal
	Serbia
	Seychelles
	Sierra Leone
	Singapore
	Slovakia
	Solomon Islands
	Somalia
	South Africa
	South Sudan
	Spain
	Sri Lanka
	Sudan
	Suriname
	Sweden
	Switzerland
	Syria
	Tajikistan
	Tanzania
	Thailand
	Timor-Leste
	Togo
	Tonga
	Trinidad and Tobago
	Tunisia
x	Turkey		Elif Shafak		The Bastard of Istanbul
	Turkmenistan
	Tuvalu
	Uganda
	Ukraine
	United States
	Uruguay
	Uzbekistan
	Vanuatu
	Venezuela
	Vietnam
	Wales
	Yemen
	Zambia
	Zimbabwe