Heroes in the Mist...

          So I was sitting out in the garden channeling my next book, and—

          Well, OK. Not really. That is, I wasn’t precisely channeling anything. But I had a conversation with another author recently about How We Begin Writing Books, and I found myself admitting that mine always start with the hero (they do), and that once I start to really feel him, I know I can begin writing the book.

          Feel him?

          Apart from the fact that I wouldn’t mind actually feeling a hero right about now (::: twitches cigar like Groucho ::: ), I never thought I would be one of those authors who goes around saying things like that—things like, “My characters just talk to me. I’m just a helpless vehicle for the muse,” in a drifting yet earnest voice. And etc. You know what I mean. I would hear that stuff and think, “Oh, puhlease.”

          But the thing is…this is how it works. And I do need to “feel” my hero. (And how.) A  humbling little realization.

          I think I know why my books have so far started with the hero. Because when we read a romance, we read in part to fall in love with the hero of the story. And if I’m going to sacrifice sleep, television and grooming for weeks on end in order to finish writing a book, I want to do it for a man worthy of said sacrifice.  A man I look forward to spending time with each day, who amuses and challenges me, someone I can continue to discover as the pages fill with words. Because I love men in all their strength and vulnerabilities, the hero is the impetus for me. And once I find him, it’s easy enough (or easier, anyhow—any writers reading this will bark slightly hysterical laughs at the word "easy") to find a woman, a heroine, worthy of him.

          And how do I go about feeling him enough to start writing him? Sometimes it’s a bit like scrying (for those of you who haven’t read THE MISTS OF AVALON and the like a million times, scrying is like gazing into a crystal ball. You can scry, supposedly, with any number of things—a mirror, or a pan of water, for instance—to see the future, or tap into current events far away). Anyway, sometimes I use scenes to scry with. What I mean is…so far I don’t really write a story in a completely linear fashion (I’ll blog about that someday), but I’ll usually set out with a few scenes in mind— they just pop into my mind fully formed, and I can’t shake them, so I just know that they absolutely belong in the book. I often don’t know where they belong in the story until I start writing it, I just know that they do.

          For example, in BEAUTY AND THE SPY, I knew I had to use a scene where Kit finds an intruder in his room at night (I won’t say too much about this scene, in case you haven’t yet read the book). I heard the dialogue, I felt the heat of the room, the texture of his sheets, saw the shadows of his furniture in the dark…I just didn’t know why the intruder was in the room. But I knew the scene belonged. (This scene turned out to be integral to a pivotal plot twist.)

          So I sat with the scene, and sort of entered into it. There’s really no other way to describe it. Lay there on the bed with the hero, as the hero, in that dark room, waiting to feel what he was feeling. And then it happened. Little by little, like Mr. Darcy appearing from the morning mist backlit by the rising sun, shirt fetchingly open a few buttons, in that scene in the latest Pride and Prejudice  (Ha! I wish! ), my hero,  Kit, began to come into view as a person. I began to know him.

         And once I know a hero, I can begin to really feel him, and then I can begin to write the bloody book.

          I've been thinking about all of this because I feel another hero coming on. He'll be part of my next project. :) Nothing juicier than dreaming up new heroes.

          And I have no questions for you today, kittens, but talk to me if you feel like it. :)

Comments

[Michelle Rowen]

Great post, Julie. Ah, heroes. Sigh. I like the analogy of them coming through the mist. For me, it's more like a radio turned on really quiet. I have to wait until I can make out what they're saying before I'm ready to start writing.

[Julie Anne Long]

I like the radio analogy, too, Michelle. Isn't it funny the metaphors we all come up with for our writing processes? I have about a gazillion, and no doubt I'll lay a few of them on readers of this blog over the next few months. LOL. But many of them, if not most, involve somehow "tuning in" to the story. Going "Into the Mystic," ol' Van Morrison would say.

[Isabel]

Wow, very good blog, Julie, I love it when authors talk about their writing process. How long does it typically take you to write a book, from start to finish?

Isabel

[Julie Anne Long]

Hey Isabel!! Re how long it takes to write a story...you know, it really depends on the nature of the story, on how much research is involved, the circumstances of my life at any given time, how many other projects you have going on, on so many things. I kind of have to look at it on a case-by-case basis, and the total amount of time it takes to write a book seems to be evolving for me with each book I write. I can now say confidently that I can pretty painlessly write about 15 (Times New Roman) pages a day (once i have story momentum), and I've written up to 30 pages a day on a number of (bleary-eyed, crazed) occasions. I wrote one book in about six weeks. :) But I think three, maybe four months is a humane amount of time to write 100k words—it allows time for completion of a draft, builds "airholes" into the schedule for mulling if I get stuck, and allows for that crucial distance of a week or two away from the total book before I revisit it. And of course, you need to keep the rest of your life from coming to a screeching halt and crashing around your ears while you write a book, too. :)

But you know...a number of newer authors have asked me this question—how fast should I write?—worrying that they're doing something wrong, because we authors so often speak in terms of pages-per-day. I really don't think there *are* any shoulds here, apart from the fact that you *should* meet your contracted deadline, and you'll figure out best how to manage your schedule in order to do this. I think you really only discover your own writing rhythm, speed and process after you've completed about two books, and though the learning process can sometimes be graceless and crazy, it's immensely valuable, and the reward at the end of it is that you've earned your own trust—you trust yourself to get the work done well, whatever it takes.

And I would say to a new author: just honor your own process. Don't worry about what anyone else is doing or how fast anyone else is going, because the only thing that matters is the end result, your book. You'll write how you write, and you'll get there how you get there.

So there's my long-winded answer. LOL. Someday I'll blog more about this kind of thing, too. :) If you have any ideas for blog topics, in fact, send 'em my way.

[Isabel]

Julie, thank you. You're right it's different for everyone and that's what makes the journey of each writer so unique. I find it fascinating how authors write their books, some do it over a period of a couple months writing six to eight hours a day (hopefully taking a break every now and then) and for others it takes a year or longer to finish a book. Some are night owls and write into the late hours of the night, early morning. Some do it during their lunch hour at their day job. Some like me do it on the weekends.
For now I'm having fun, learning as I go, before the publisher deadlines become part of my work. Hopefully one of these years :)

[Ranurgis]

For a non-writer like me all this is fascinating and I love the evocative language you use to describe the process. I can just sit here in awe and stupidity because I have only a tiny number of creative genes. People in Germany even laughed at the clay beaver I attempted to create in one of the few crafts classes I ever attended. The easiest drawings for me were perspectives of buildings--showed my heritage as the daughter of a draftsman-architect. He had no great ideas how the building should look, but he gave the concert hall in the Centennial Center in Winnipeg his full attention for excellent acoustics and the like. A nuts and bolts person. And that's my forte in languages: how to build a sentence with the correct grammar, syntax and meaning. I've seen some real boners in my days as a reader and that brings my attention for the story to a screeching halt.

And oddly enough, though my father was an immigrant from Germany, the secretaries in the company he worked for would come to him if they had a problem with writing English. Yep, go figure. He read a lot and soaked it all up like a sponge, like I did. My mother had an advantage over him in that she had spent 6 months in Scotland and worked for American Express in Berlin before the War. I absorbed English mostly the same way he did. Then the English classes we took at school solidified my knowledge of grammar. Too bad most students didn't get that.

Unfortunately, lately, like everybody else, I've become afflicted by the "apostrophe disease" putting it in places it does not belong. That's why I think it's so important that readers see it only in its correct places. But that's another story...

Hope you all had a good night.