A Novella

Wikipedia told me a novella is a work of fiction anywhere between 17,500-40,000 words.
Short stories: under 7500 words.
Novelette: 7500-17,500.
Novel: 40,000 words or more.

My latest project clocks in at just under 21,000.

Behold, I've written a novella.

Several months ago my editor at Covenant requested that I submit a short story for an anthology (around 17,000 words, so novelette-ish). I was happy to give it a shot. HANGING BY A MOMENT is set on a yacht rental in the British Caribbean. This was an easy choice. Last October my husband and I took a rare opportunity to escape to the British Virgin Islands with my sister, her husband, and some of their friends. I kept a journal, all the while considering that the experience might work into a story someday.

The only hiccup was, 10 days on a rented pontoon yacht does not a full novel make. Although I had a basis for a story-line in mind, I couldn't shake the feeling that I would have to add or force additional settings to make it longer. But really all I wanted to do was create a focused story centered on the trip.

And then I got the request from my editor, and lo, a light shone around my story idea and I said, "SO LET IT BE WRITTEN. SO LET IT BE DONE." A focused story the way I envisioned it. A novella.

I'd never written a novella before, but I had written a short story, and I'd also seen the benefits of outlining when writing any story. The main thing I learned in writing short stories is to start in the middle, or even near the end. Lose subplots. Keep the MC up front. These guidelines worked well for the novella, too.

I figured I'd write about 1500 words per "chapter" (I kind of used scenes instead of chapters when drafting this shorter story). I divided my end goal word count by 1500 and wrote a skeletal outline. Super skeletal. I chose a word or phrase per "chapter", numbered them, and went to work getting my characters from one scene to the next. Sometimes I flipped scenes around, or crossed some out, or added a new one, but for the most part I stuck to the outline, hit the chapter word count almost without trying (that seemed to be how my pacing just played out and my characters quickly began to lead me), and let the fun happen without pulling all my hair out. Only some of my hair got pulled out.

Mission accomplished.

*sigh* It's a bit of vacation all over again:

The driver answered their questions in his thick island accent and as she listened, Kendal watched a different world pass by the windows. So much color. Poverty, wealth, commerce, tourism, all packed together in a humid tropical paradise. Bicycles, motorbikes, limousines, rusty old trucks, taxis, and flowers everywhere flowers could grow.  They passed a school yard filled with cocoa-skinned children dressed in white shirts and black shorts running crazily after a soccer ball.

She found herself leaning forward, nose almost touching the window, taking it all in.

“First time here, Magic?”

Kendal pulled away from the window and faced Bret, who had turned in his seat, his arm draped over the back. She hadn’t been called that in a really long time, and she wasn’t sure she liked how it made her feel. She shook her head. “Have you?”

Monday Mess: Getting Lost Should Be a Choice

It's Spring Break here in Cody, Wyoming, and the family and I are tackling some projects around the house. But right now, I'm the only one awake. The pup woke me up to take him out and then, as always, my mind began to wander through my current writing project, preventing me from falling back asleep. So here I am in my living room in my robe, contemplating maps.

I just spent two weekends in Salt Lake City. Two weeks ago I went down with my son. We've been there before, and I didn't think to print out any maps. I don't have a smart phone and I don't have GPS. I'm old-fashioned that way. I got lost half-a-dozen times too many. We were laughing a lot. And made a lot of phone calls for help. I do have a cell phone. I'm not THAT archaic.

This last weekend, I printed out maps, highlighted the routes, wrote down addresses, and figured out the intimidating interstate exchange I needed to know. SO. MUCH. BETTER. I didn't get lost once. Of course, it helped that my friend who lives there drove some of the time. But when I was out on my own, I didn't get lost once. Maps. Duh.

I need two kinds of maps for the story I'm working on now. First, I need a story map. I have no idea if there's an official name for what I have in mind. Storyboard? Spiderweb outline? I don't know, but I need a big piece of paper, a pencil, colored markers, and some space. I'm thinking the coffee table in front of the couch. I'll have to move the tray of candles, magazines, and my daughter's carnations she received after her performance in The Wizard of Oz. I have some butcher paper from the first (and last) time my husband and his dad "dressed" an antelope in my kitchen. *shudder* There are a plethora of markers in the house, though it may take a few minutes to weed out the dried up ones.

Then I'm just going to have fun and write down characters, connections, place names, directions, histories, conflicts, key magic words . . . map it out and make a beautiful mess. I'm excited to have it in one place I can put up on a wall and go to for reference, add to if needed. I usually keep all this info in a spiral notebook, but with my current project, I want to see it all together. Sure, I'll still have notebook pages of info: language, calendar, character outlines, blurbs of scenes and conversation that come to me too early, to be used later. But I'm excited about this story map.

The other kind of map is an actual geographical map. I've reached a point in the story where I really need to keep track of places and direction. I'll try not to be too messy with this one.

With my maps, I have no intention of getting lost. But that doesn't mean I won't explore a little. If an idea draws my attention, I'll see how it may or may not fit into the story, and I'll be able to see how to get back on track.

I found this as part of Nokia's "Let's never get lost again." campaign. It's true.

Maps. Duh.

Monday Mess: Fake It 'Til You Make It?

I've had the flu the last few days and because we were on vacation, I've been running on cold meds, cough drops, and adrenaline. I simply wanted to enjoy my vacation, do everything we had planned, and didn't want to bring others down or hold them back. Through watery eyes and silenced sneezes, I faked my way through. And I had an awesome time.

Now, I'm home. I've been out of bed three times. Once to see the kids off to school. Once to feed myself and let the dog out. And once to . . . Okay, just two times. My husband came home during his workday to pick up something he forgot.
"Um, are you not feeling well?"
I stared at him. Then flung my arms out. He read this gesture correctly.
"Well, I know you weren't feeling well, but I thought you were getting better."
"How?" I asked, sounding in my head like I was speaking into a tin cup.
"Because yesterday you seemed pretty good."
"You mean yesterday when I slept from Mesquite to Provo, then sulked because I felt like breakfast and it was 1:30 and you guys picked Wendy's so I pretended my salad was french toast and said at least my sandwich had bacon in it?"
"Yeah."
"I was medicated and read the rest of the time. How is that feeling better?"
"I don't know. You looked better."
"That's because I washed my face."
He looked me over. "And combed your hair."

*blink*

Back to writing. I've recently posted about using real life and events to inspire characters, setting, and scenes. Well, this post is about hitting those points where you need to research. You can't always write what you know. Sometimes I come to a research point where I have to stop and look it up. A name, a map, a fact. And sometimes I do stop for the little things. But if it's bigger, like the layout of a famous amusement park, or what it takes to become a volunteer at a women's shelter, or the correct police procedure in child abandonment and missing persons, I mark the place with an asterisk, and fake it. I make my best guesses, stage what I see in my head, keep moving the story forward as far as I can, keeping in mind that I'll make the correct changes once I get the correct information. Then, when I can research, it's generally pretty easy to fit in the correct findings and, if needed, tweak the story a bit to fit.

BUT: If it's something that is weight-bearing for the plot, I stop where I am and research. No point trying to go forward, guess wrong, and have the ideas that follow end up worthless. You can bet that if I was burning up with fever, was unable to eat anything, and kept seeing Elvis in the room (although we were in Vegas, so more possibility there) I would have stayed in the hotel room, perhaps gone to the emergency room, and the vacation would have been put on hold a bit while I got the help I needed.

Are you following me? I guess what I'm trying to express is that knowing when you can fake it and just keep writing is important to the flow of your story. Just be sure to straighten things out later. Researching your facts, the things you don't know, is vital to your story's credibility. Even if it's fantasy, truth resonates. Magic or realms must be viable. And if a major part of your story is based on something unfamiliar, research as much as you can. I've read books where it's glaringly evident the author has never been to Australia, and other books where I would swear the author lived there for some time, only to learn they hadn't. They just researched everything they could find, talked to people, read.

When you're faking it? Keep in mind that readers know. So fake it good. Good enough that they're surprised you're still sick. Or whatever.

I need a nap. And a comb, apparently.

Monday Mess Yes I know It's Tuesday: Drawing Events from Real Life

Two weeks ago I posted about drawing characters from real life. This week I'd like to talk about using settings and events from real life.

One of the best pieces of advice I read when I first began writing seriously was this:
Think visually- Write cinematically. You know your scene. Can you direct it as if it were a movie? Bring in the atmosphere, tension, sound, scent, timing, dialogue. Move it.

I know numerous authors who have drawn on personal events (big or small) for their stories, whether they are contemporary, historical, sci-fi, fantasy, or romance writers. Why?
My answer is this: What better way to write something that sounds, feels, tastes, smells, and seems real, than writing something akin to what we have lived ourselves?

For example, in my novel, The Orchard, I had the basic story and characters first. I spent hours pondering the setting. I didn't know where to put them. I fell asleep one night mulling over some possibilities, and woke the next morning knowing exactly where they were, somewhere I hadn't considered, but knew they couldn't possibly be anywhere else. The movie in my head fell into place like watching a film of a puzzle exploding apart on rewind. It. Was. Awesome.

The location? A small lake town in Montana, where we had spent a week vacation the previous summer. We had camped there, experienced several different weather changes, explored the area every day, hiking, touring, shopping, eating, kayaking, swimming, stopping at fruit stands, cramming as much as we could into a week with my family. And it was perfect. In writing events in the novel, I remembered the sense of being there, and included some of the things we actually did and saw. From a simple extra like the Brahma bull sitting lazily in a pasture as a small herd of deer bounded silently behind it, kicking in what looked like mockery over the fence, to a major event, like the hike along Swan River and stopping at a crescent-shaped beach to rest. That small beach is referred to in the next two books! It also helped that I grew up next to an orchard, and my husband spent several summers working in them. Bonus.

In writing Grace & Chocolate, some of the protagonists memories of being a child of an alcoholic were drawn from my mother's. Maybe because of my relationship with my mom, I was able to put myself there and translate that emotion onto the page, but when she read it, though difficult, she was amazed by how I'd captured it. My happy childhood was a far cry from hers. Sympathy is huge. The setting? A town on the Oregon coast where I've spent many weeks in different seasons (for the record, my mom grew up in Buffalo, NY).

In The Lake, the protagonist is a ballet dancer. I am not. But my youngest daughter took dance in a small, intense dance studio for four years. In that time I observed the older girls, knew of their hard work and dedication, and worries, injuries, and frustrations. I asked questions and researched, and knew that every decision my protag made, whether about dance or not, would be affected by her dance world. It's that much of their life.

In my current WIP, the protag has escaped an abusive relationship and is trying to recover by hiding away on an island. It's a story I've wanted to write for years and wasn't sure how to go about it. Not because I don't know the situation, that I'm unfamiliar with that kind of abuse. Unfortunately, I am. It's why I'm compelled to write it. Because there's hope there. But, I hesitated because I didn't want people to think I was writing me, or an old boyfriend. Rather, I am writing the feelings, the confusion, the pain, the fight THAT I KNOW, and applying it to a new story. It's complicated, but it's an amazing feeling, translating something difficult, that makes me who I am, and giving it in story to a group of characters who will do what they can with it.

I guess what I'm trying to show here is that when a writer draws on what is real, forming it to the fantasy in his head, he has an opportunity to expand that created world, to invite the reader to relate through senses and memories. David Farland (Runelords, Ravenspell) refers to it as RESONANCE. When captured, it can do amazing things to a story. That's the hope, anyway.

Thoughts?

Tuesday Testimonial: An Author's Playground

Writing became such a process of discovery that I couldn't wait to get to work in the morning:  I wanted to know what I was going to say. 

 ~Sharon O'Brien

I began a new story last night. I was going to put it off because I was just given some feedback on Remnant. Robison Wells read all 184,059 words (more or less) and amid his positive raves, suggested (among other things and without too much surprise) that I make it shorter. Much shorter. But that is a post for Monday Mess, wouldn't you agree?

In order to tackle the revisions of Remnant, I will print out the manuscript, put it in a binder, and grab the red pen. In order to do that, I need a printer. Which I have ordered. From Amazon.com. It's on it's way (thank you again, Shanda at LDS Womens Book Review, for the gift card I won over Christmas), but until its delivery, a story was circling, and I couldn't sleep until I had at least written a scene, fleshed out names, and landed a setting.

I love this part of beginning a new story. The very basics of creation. There is a shadow of a plot, yes, and since I'm a moderate outliner, that will come. But this is how I start. The scene in my head is written down. I don't know if it will be the opening scene, and it really doesn't matter at this point. Characters gain physical traits and adopt a certain sound, and attract a name, first and last. The scene becomes very focused on characters and movement and I wonder. Where in the world are you?

Yes, I talk. In my head. Okay, maybe I might whisper, but only sometimes. I think.

BAM. I know where they are, the scene opens up. Of course that's where they are and I think I'll have to work in a trip because it's been awhile since my last visit.

I stayed up until 2:54 am.
I'd forgotten how time flies when you're playing in your head. I woke up with the words I had written running through my mind, ideas shooting around in my periphery.

I LOVE THIS.

*REMINDER: Enter my 100th Follower Contest here! Comments below will also gain you an entry after you become a follower.

Something's Burning

You write to communicate to the hearts and minds of others what's burning inside you.  And we edit to let the fire show through the smoke.  ~Arthur Polotnik

 I'm almost done reading through my REMNANT ms after being away from it for many months. As I edit, I am keeping my readers in mind, wondering what they might think of this next idea, curious as to what suggestions they will make, what they loved and hated. My stomach tightens at the thought, as always.

As soon as I'm done with that, I'll be going over The Orchard, due for release in Spring/2011, again for the first time in months. I'm anxious to look at it, see what I've learned since it was last submitted, go over it with a fine-toothed comb before my editor sinks her teeth into it. (Am I mixing my metaphors? Combs have teeth, right?) I have until the end of August. Then things may get moving, for reals. Maybe. I hope!

A lot of my friends ask about this publishing time line, expressing shock at how long it takes to put a book on a shelf (or, as I prefer, in my hot little hands), but at this point in the process, while I am anxious for all of it, I just want the fire to show through the smoke. My fire. The one fueling my hot little hands as they run over my keyboard. The one fueling these stories in my head.

I hope my readers feel the burn.

Is your fire showing?

Are You Writing Cinematically?

At writing group I was explaining how certain events unfold in my WIP. I kept on saying things like, "Well, at the beginning of the movie..." or "by this point in the movie..." and "I'm not sure about this part of the movie..." and my group-mates were laughing because I kept having to correct myself and I was getting flustered.
No, I do not have grand aspirations of someday seeing my novel on the big screen. I do not picture movie stars playing my main characters (not that there's anything wrong with that). I do not dream of signing movie deals. I just don't.
I simply see what I am writing so vividly in my head, the characters playing out their scenes and dialogue as I type, keeping up with the action or banter or emotion, there is a glitch in my stored vocabulary that has me calling my book a movie. It's a movie in my head and I'm writing it as I see it, hear it, smell it, feel it. But it's a novel. I know it's a novel. A book. Not a movie.

But, I watched Sherlock Holmes last night, and saw Robin Hood in the theater last week, and I am reading David J. West's Heroes of the Fallen. The actor, Mark Strong, who plays a villain in both those movies, keeps popping in my head as the image of Akish-Antum, the arch villain of Heroes.

So it got me thinking, is there an actor or actress that could be the ideal for one of my characters?
And then I started to laugh. Because I remembered a pair of actors I had in mind when I wrote two lesser characters of The Orchard. And admitting this is SO going to date me.

Do you remember these guys?
They are Officers Jim Reed (L) and Pete Malloy (R) from one of my favorite childhood TV shows, Adam 12. This is pre-CHiPs, people. Officer Reed was right up there with Donny Osmond, Shawn Cassidy, and my neighbor, Robby Johnson, as far as my kindergarten crushes went.
Meet Will Eliot and Uncle Jay Whitney, from my novel, The Orchard.

*blushing*

Well, it's televison... not film. Right?

Do you picture actors when you're forming your characters? Or when you read? Is there a movie in your head when you write?

Tuesday Edit Crunch: Run, Forrest, Run

Welcome to this week's Tuesday Edit Crunch.
Sounds like a breakfast cereal made of old typewriter keys.




Tuesday Edit Crunch is an informative, fresh, and important part of this nutritious... blog...

You can't give people what they need, if you don't know who they are. -Susan Law Corpany

Imagine getting your first manuscript accepted, with a request for certain revisions. 1) Lose two of your characters with their subplot, and 2) bring up two minor characters out of obscurity.

Yikes!

But I was asked to try. The challenge? Making these two "rising" characters real without making them replicas of those I had cut. I had to transfer some plot responsibility onto this couple, make their weight in the story believable, and I realized after I revised the male character that he could be interchangeable with another minor male character, so I had to alter his personality... like Harvey Dent... only not.

Somewhere along this writing road I came across a character development worksheet. I took it and formed it to my own preferences. It has been fundamental in allowing me to write my characters, and though I use it for my main characters, in this case, I used it on my minor characters as well. It made a HUGE difference in the re-write.

Describe the following about your character:
Fears:
Likes:
Dislikes:
Habits:
Appearance:
Education:
Family:
Drives:
Secrets:
Strengths:
Flaws:
Sentimental?:
What will he learn?:
What will her obstacles be?:
Why will the reader like him?:

Because these were minor characters, a lot of this information didn't come to light in the story, but it did come through in my characters' mannerisms, responses, humor, and dialogue, making them real.
Now, before I get too far into a new story, I stop and make a character development sheet for each character. Some things I know when I set out, and some things I learn from the characters as they form on the page. And if I know these people better than their mothers? That's when they climb out of the story and run with it. Like Forrest Gump.

That's when it's my favorite.

I hope you enjoyed this edition of Tuesday Edit Crunch. If you'd like to feel celebrated, enter to win my contest HERE. Right now, your odds of winning are REALLY GOOD. It's a thank you to my followers!
And remember, watch out for the K's. They're especially crunchy.

The Resolution

I felt guilty. I had cleaned the bathrooms, and the laundry was fairly caught up. My visiting teaching was all but done and the youngest had been deposited at ballet lessons with several minutes to spare.
But my husband came home earlier than expected, changed into his stripeys and called out, "I have to ref a game nobody knew was happening! I'll be home after 6!" Kiss on the cheek and gone.
I knew he was exhausted, and hungry, a million things on his mind, and he would never see the cash he made reffing this game because we overspent at Christmas. I'd had a couple phone calls for "Bishop", but the messages would wait. He always got to them when he could.
I scrambled to make dinner so he would have a hearty meal to come home to. The kitchen was a little messy, the kids' school dump was still all over the entry, our bedroom was still bare-boned, waiting to be painted, and the piles of things that needed a home after re-organizing my study/laundryroom were still waiting in the dining room.
I had been on the computer most of the day, searching for a vacation rental on the Oregon coast big enough for us and extended family, editing a WIP, and reading.
Later, after dinner, as kids were getting ready for bed, Brandon pulled me in for a hug. "I put in my application today." Our high school principal is retiring. We'd worked together a little on updating his resume.
I told him I was proud of him, and so grateful he works so hard for us, always trying to better himself and our lives. I looked around at the piles of clutter.
"What did you do today?" He had that little smile that told me he already knew the answer.
Heh. I listed as many things as I could, then gave up. "I was on the computer most of the day."
"Mm-hmm."
"I'm sorry."
He just looked at me with that smile.
"I can't seem to find balance. I feel like... I have to search and read and find everything I can-"
"About writing?"
"Mm-hm. It's like I'm getting an education."
He nodded.
"But I have to treat this like a job. With set hours, and I think as soon as I do that, I can get a handle on, you know, the stuff I used to be on top of."
"Sounds good to me. Anything I can do?"

Guilt guilt guilt. Since when did my tell-it-like-it-is, 'I'm-not-a-pessimist-I'm-a-realist', life-is-like-football, "What do flowers have to do with romance?", type 'A' personality husband become Mr. Sensitivity? Because, to be perfectly honest, when I was writing my first novel (2008) into the wee hours of the morning, afternoon, and every hour in-between, throwing cold cereal at the kids and telling him there were left-overs somewhere I was sure of it... the resentment of my laptop and the words filling it up was apparent.
And then he read it. After much begging and pleading and batting of eyelashes, on my part that is, he read my novel. And read and read.
And when he finished he took a deep breath and shook his head, and said, "Come here," and held me really tight.
He said, "You can do this."

So, I am going to give myself a schedule... not too tight, because I am SO not a type 'A' personality, I am going to re-visit the chore chart, and I am going to find some of that balance my family and I deserve. I need to feel good about this endeavor, and I need my family to feel good about it, too. With all that is going on in the world, we are so blessed, and our time is so short.

I can do this.

A New Challenge: The Short Story

Be obscure clearly.  ~E.B. White

 In studying the short story, I found this to be very true. This is the challenge. I am a novice, but I took notes.

• Have a clear theme
• Begin as close to the conclusion as possible
• Grab the reader from the first line
• conserve characters and scene... one problem, one drive

I found this site, of all the places I researched, to be the most helpful, and this idea stayed in my mind:

Your job, as a writer of short fiction--whatever your beliefs--is to put complex personalities on stage and let them strut and fret their brief hour. Perhaps the sound and fury they make will signify something that has more than passing value--that will, in Chekhov's words, "make [man] see what he is like." -Rick Demarnus

You may have less than 5000 words to make your character beloved, or hated, the conflict mean something to the reader, and a resolution that resonates. Yikes.
As one who tends to drag out my endings because I just... can't... let... my story... go...  (and so my editors ask me to chop them off) I found this advice very encouraging:

In short fiction, it is difficult to provide a complete resolution and you often need to just show that characters are beginning to change in some way or starting to see things differently.

I understood that. I could envision it with my idea.

Accepting a short story challenge was exciting to me. I still prefer the novel, the juicy details and telling dialogue. But I really liked the 'get to it' feeling of writing the short story. As with anything new you put out in front of others, I am nervous about feedback. But I enjoyed what I learned. I'll try to remember that after the critique.

Here We go!

A request for 5-10 alternate titles? What? But... but it's called The Orchard. Umm, okay.
Think.
Think.
Think.
Read.
Think.

I knew this happens. I've read about it. Still, when the request is made of me, I am stunned. Scratching my head, I come up with seven ideas. Still like the original best. At least they ask me.
This is all very interesting. I'll let you know what happens next.

Laptop... Check. Flu bug... Check. Let's Write.

It happened again.  I got the flu.  It wasn't so bad that I was out of it, completely uncomfortable, but it was enough where I had no energy, and nobody wanted me sneezing on them, so I was confined to my bedroom (except when I still had to drive all the kids everywhere after school and watch my son's first football game of the season because everyone else was busy, still, I felt quarantined to my little camp chair on the sidelines, holding my wad of kleenex and shouting, "Go-go-go! Aaa-chooo!")
But for the most part, I've had to be in bed, mind racing.  So it happened.  Wondering about the book, wondering about the editing.  Wondering about the ending of Remnant, and if there is enough plot twist in The Inn, and thinking about the new POV and title of Comes the Sunlight, which is the new title, and then, BAM... I'm in the opening of a new story and scrambling to write it down... dialogue, action, sequence, plot direction.  And then, what do you know?  The Federal Express guy knocks on the door and hands me... my new laptop.  Four days earlier than expected.  After the easy-peasy set-up and tucking in my novels from my zip-drive to the HP Pavillion dv4t, I knocked out the first 15 pages I had scratched into my notebook, of a brand new story.
Is it being sick?  Because last time I got sick like this, the same thing happened.  I had finished The Orchard, and thought there was nothing more in me. The Inn invaded my head as it throbbed with influenza.
So, I guess I am stuck.  There is no escaping this writing thing, if you can't escape it with the flu.  And the flu can get you pretty much out of everything.  I am feeling a little better today, still tired, and I'm going to bed early.  Not going to sleep, though.  I'm going to write.  Because the next few scenes are in my head, and I am loving where they are taking me.
Okay, so maybe there is a little escaping going on.

All Who Do Brain Work

"Far away there in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them, and try to follow where they lead." Louisa May Alcott

I just watched the Hallmark adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's The Inheritance and came across an article at The Writing Spirit blog.

To read about writing methods of classic authors in their time (this article was written only five years after Alcott's passing and just at the invention of the typewriter) is amazing, and to connect with those methods is pretty cool. Little Women was the first "big book" I ever read. I still remember sitting on my bedroom floor in front of my open closet, running my hands over the green linen cover, feeling its weight, then opening it up and plunging in, quickly carried away to a different time and place in the language. Love it when that happens. You know those kids whose mothers yell, "Get outside and enjoy the summer!" I was that kid, because I was inside, lying on my back on the floor, my knees up and bent over the bed, my ankles crossed on top of my quilt, reading about Jo and Laurie and another world I wanted to be a part of.

The Writing Method of Louisa May Alcott
(by Dr. H. Erichsen, “Methods of Writers,” The Writer Magazine, June 1893)

The method of Louisa May Alcott was a very simple one. She never had a study; and an old atlas on her knee was all the desk she cared for. Any pen, any paper, any ink, and any quiet place contented her.

Years ago, when necessity drove her hard, she used to sit for fourteen hours at her work, doing about thirty pages a day, and scarcely tasting food until her daily task was done. She never copied. When the idea was in her head, it flowed into words faster than she could write them down, and she seldom altered a line. She had the wonderful power of carrying a dozen plots for months in her mind, thinking them over whenever she was in the mood, to be developed at the proper time. Sometimes she carried a plan thus for years.

Often, in the dead of the night, she lay awake and planned whole chapters, word for word, and when daylight came she had only to write them down. She never composed in the evening. She maintained that work in the early hours gives morning freshness to both brain and pen, and that rest at night is a necessity for all who do brain work.

She never used stimulants of any kind. She ate sparingly when writing, and only the simplest food, holding that one cannot preach temperance if one does not practice it. Miss Alcott affirmed that the quality of an author’s work depends much on his habits, and that sane, wholesome, happy, and wise books must come from clean lives, well-balanced minds, spiritual insight, and a desire to do good.

Very few of the stories of the author of “Little Women” were written in Concord, her home. This peaceful, pleasant place, the fields of which are classic ground, utterly lacked inspiration for Miss Alcott. She called it “this dull town,” and when she had a story to write she went to Boston, where she shut herself up in a room, and emerged only when she could show a completed work.

What are your writing methods?

• Do you prefer writing in the sunshine, or by artificial light?
  
• Do you use a lead pencil or a fountain pen?
• Do you create a skeleton first?
• Do you use any stimulants to spur the creative process?
• Do you compose the sentences and stories to completion in your mind before committing them to paper, or let your ideas flow out as they may?