Having written two wildly different forms of text -- professional, academic philosophy, and genre (fantasy) fiction -- I find (for myself, anyway) the methods and approach are as absolutely different as they could possibly be.
Writing philosophy, I have to exercise absolute control of everything from start to finish before I can even begin typing. There's a philosophy book I may someday get around to writing, and the almost finished outline is 14 pages long. It basically drills down to the individual paragraphs of the primary text. A couple of times during the writing of "The Quantum of Explanation" with Randy Auxier, I was in absolute agony because I did not yet know the title of the chapter I was writing.
(Actually, this was true of the book for some time, neither of us had a sense of what to call it. But then I was working on what became chapter 4, and I could not find the title for it. It was like trying to navigate in a fog without a compass. So I took a break and watched a mildly entertaining 007 movie called -- you guessed it -- "The Quantum of Solace." Boom! I had my chapter. I excitedly told Randy about it at our next meeting and looked at me in glassy-eyed amazement and said, "You just named the book."
"No I didn't," I replied, in a bit of shock. So we went back and forth on this a few times, because I quite frankly did not want the responsibility. But Randy was clearly right, that was the heart of the book -- the compass -- and so both the book AND chapter 4 have the same title.)
With fiction, it is almost the complete opposite. I have to "see" and "feel" things, without necessarily knowing them. So I spend a lot of time in my imagination, a lot of time listening to music, and (barring external catastrophes) start righting like a Fury. Except it is the story that is the author; I'm just the typist.
So with philosophy, I'm the dominant; with fiction the submissive. (And yes, I'm very aware of the sexual connotations of those words. I'm also aware that it is the sub who is really in control, because it is the sub who holds the 'Stop' word.)
On the other hand, it takes me a long time to get started writing philosophy, because I have to have thought through every last nook and cranny of the piece of arcana I happen to be gnawing on. But once I start, I'm a fucking machine. With my dissertation, for example, I even marked out my days AND days off for each chapter. (6 weeks, five days a week, for each chapter. Then two weeks off. Seriously. But Randy, my director -- same Randy as above -- likes to brag mine was the only dissertation he sat on as chair in which he had no contributions to make of any kind.)
Fiction I can dive straight in, but it takes me forever to finish. This is because I have to go through so many drafts.
1st) Writing the narrative from word one to word last. If I try to stop and fix everything right away, I'll never get anything done.
2nd) Stitching the narrative together into something intelligible. This usually requires 2 or 3 passes.
3rd) I'm narrative driven by nature, but this can leave other essentials out. So draft 3 requires at least another 3 passes, each focusing in turn on faces, places, moods.
4th) Copy editors responses.
5th) Let it sit for a month, at least, and then go through the whole text from the ground up.
6th) Polish and properly integrate all the changes from draft 5.
Breaking this out this explicitly helps me understand my own progress, so I don't just feel like I'm randomly spewing.
First of all, that's a great story. Remember that one for your book tour. Second, I would just like to say how unnerving it is "feeling" your way along. There's no floor beneath your feet. I find it quite unnerving. But that's the process. Even with an outline, that's the process.
I'll have some notion of where the story is going, but then as I'm writing shit just starts happening, and I'm trying to keep up with it. (Maybe one of the reasons my typing needs so much copy editing?)
I marvel at how often our brains drain down the same gutter…and yet how thoroughly different our processes are.
My give-a-fuck is broken. While I’d love to be universally appreciated and worshiped for my unvarnished brilliance, right now my audience is basically three dozen cat ladies and a few recovering alcoholics with too much time on their hands. And yet, I continue. If I didn’t write, I’d probably be in a psych ward hopped up on Thorazine speed balls.
Bukowski may have been a miserable motherf——r, but he nailed it. :-)
Yes.
Yes, indeed.
"The Writer As God (Damned)" (fixed it for you.)
Having written two wildly different forms of text -- professional, academic philosophy, and genre (fantasy) fiction -- I find (for myself, anyway) the methods and approach are as absolutely different as they could possibly be.
Writing philosophy, I have to exercise absolute control of everything from start to finish before I can even begin typing. There's a philosophy book I may someday get around to writing, and the almost finished outline is 14 pages long. It basically drills down to the individual paragraphs of the primary text. A couple of times during the writing of "The Quantum of Explanation" with Randy Auxier, I was in absolute agony because I did not yet know the title of the chapter I was writing.
(Actually, this was true of the book for some time, neither of us had a sense of what to call it. But then I was working on what became chapter 4, and I could not find the title for it. It was like trying to navigate in a fog without a compass. So I took a break and watched a mildly entertaining 007 movie called -- you guessed it -- "The Quantum of Solace." Boom! I had my chapter. I excitedly told Randy about it at our next meeting and looked at me in glassy-eyed amazement and said, "You just named the book."
"No I didn't," I replied, in a bit of shock. So we went back and forth on this a few times, because I quite frankly did not want the responsibility. But Randy was clearly right, that was the heart of the book -- the compass -- and so both the book AND chapter 4 have the same title.)
With fiction, it is almost the complete opposite. I have to "see" and "feel" things, without necessarily knowing them. So I spend a lot of time in my imagination, a lot of time listening to music, and (barring external catastrophes) start righting like a Fury. Except it is the story that is the author; I'm just the typist.
So with philosophy, I'm the dominant; with fiction the submissive. (And yes, I'm very aware of the sexual connotations of those words. I'm also aware that it is the sub who is really in control, because it is the sub who holds the 'Stop' word.)
On the other hand, it takes me a long time to get started writing philosophy, because I have to have thought through every last nook and cranny of the piece of arcana I happen to be gnawing on. But once I start, I'm a fucking machine. With my dissertation, for example, I even marked out my days AND days off for each chapter. (6 weeks, five days a week, for each chapter. Then two weeks off. Seriously. But Randy, my director -- same Randy as above -- likes to brag mine was the only dissertation he sat on as chair in which he had no contributions to make of any kind.)
Fiction I can dive straight in, but it takes me forever to finish. This is because I have to go through so many drafts.
1st) Writing the narrative from word one to word last. If I try to stop and fix everything right away, I'll never get anything done.
2nd) Stitching the narrative together into something intelligible. This usually requires 2 or 3 passes.
3rd) I'm narrative driven by nature, but this can leave other essentials out. So draft 3 requires at least another 3 passes, each focusing in turn on faces, places, moods.
4th) Copy editors responses.
5th) Let it sit for a month, at least, and then go through the whole text from the ground up.
6th) Polish and properly integrate all the changes from draft 5.
Breaking this out this explicitly helps me understand my own progress, so I don't just feel like I'm randomly spewing.
First of all, that's a great story. Remember that one for your book tour. Second, I would just like to say how unnerving it is "feeling" your way along. There's no floor beneath your feet. I find it quite unnerving. But that's the process. Even with an outline, that's the process.
I'll have some notion of where the story is going, but then as I'm writing shit just starts happening, and I'm trying to keep up with it. (Maybe one of the reasons my typing needs so much copy editing?)
I marvel at how often our brains drain down the same gutter…and yet how thoroughly different our processes are.
My give-a-fuck is broken. While I’d love to be universally appreciated and worshiped for my unvarnished brilliance, right now my audience is basically three dozen cat ladies and a few recovering alcoholics with too much time on their hands. And yet, I continue. If I didn’t write, I’d probably be in a psych ward hopped up on Thorazine speed balls.
Bukowski may have been a miserable motherf——r, but he nailed it. :-)
"Brains drain down the same gutter." I LOVE THAT! Also, mad props for "my give-a-fuck is broken."
WORDSMITH.
Do they make speedball Thorazine? What do you wanna bet they exist?