Writing non-fiction: It’s totally different. But is it?

I’m alternating a chapter of a non-fiction book we jokingly call “the care and feeding of roleplayers” — it’s a book to help people preparing disaster exercises how to handle the various aspects of roleplayer involvement, including moulage. (Just as a reminder, moulage — or casualty simulation — is the art of making roleplayers look injured, often severely so. It’s one of my hobbies.)

What I’m finding is that writing non-fiction takes a different approach and skill set. It’s not that I haven’t written non-fiction before — I have several research articles under my name, not to mention a 67-page dissertation. It’s just that I’ve never concentrated on both in the same day, and I didn’t write anything longer than short stories at the time. Now — I have a goal to write on both the novel and the article daily, and I’m quickly switching up between the two items.

When I write non-fiction, such as the chapter I’m writing, I have to outline the article so that my writing flows from idea to idea. I have to do research in order to support the points I’m making in the paper, so that I am grounded in realism. My observations have to be grounded in facts, because my observations might be biased and not substantive. As I tick through the outline, I note that I make progress toward the whole, and that motivates me further.

Writing the novel, as I’ve found out from previous novels, takes not only imagination but discipline, because imagination doesn’t necessarily believe in deadlines. If I set a goal of, say, 1000 pages, my imagination is more likely to deliver. Likewise, if I have an outline of where the action’s going to go, my imagination has something to embellish it. I can’t escape research when writing fiction because the laws of physics, the names of places, and the technology doesn’t change with a slightly alternative Earth.

Strangely, it looks like writing non-fiction and writing fiction have a lot in common when it comes to the importance of structure, of research, and of goals. Where they’re different is imagination — and even then, non-fiction requires a certain amount of describing examples to illustrate concepts — and that’s imagination.

Oh, well, so much for today’s essay.

Short note — I’ll be on a short road trip to visit interns tonight and tomorrow. May not get much written today. If we get to our destination early (the Hotel Greenfield in Greenfield IA) I’ll get an extended writing time. Otherwise, probably not.

I wrote a thousand words on Prodigies yesterday! That’s more than I have in a while! I think the accountability partner has to do with it. It’s hard to blow off writing when you have to report to someone the next day.

Have fun and thanks for listening!

A little of what I’ve been writing today from Prodigies.

After what seemed to be a dozen iterations of the plan and all our roles — Ayana and Weissrogue as the elderly couple, Ichirou and I as the starstruck lovers, Greg infiltrating the sound system — it was time to sleep and reconvene early in the morning. I talked everyone into letting me use the hide-a-way couch in the living room, given that I didn’t think I would sleep much. This left Ayana with Greg (another of my motives) and Ichirou with Weissrogue.

As I had predicted, I didn’t sleep. Every significant event of my journey to this moment unfolded in my mind: The invitation to Poland. Finding Ichirou, looking helplessly young in the darkened room as he spun the most comforting moment I’d had in my life. The uneasy dinner with Second World Renewal; our escape down the fire escape and into the old city of Krakow. The waiter, who ended up being Greg, and our journey with Ayana from Poland to Denmark, chased by Second World’s men. After a hiatus, Ayana returning with a much more mature Ichirou, and our confrontation with someone’s — someone’s men. My death —

That was what bothered me, what kept me from sleeping. I was not afraid to die because I had died already.

I had died already, and I knew what to expect. My death was a comforting place, deep indigo and silver, and a place I yearned to go back to. I didn’t want to die again, really; I just wanted to go back there. Especially tonight, with all the times we fled going through my mind like a video montage.
I thought about the place, the silver-laced grass and the rabbit, my parents walking past me. My death.

No, I wasn’t scared.

I fell asleep and dreamed of that place, deep purple with silvery leaves that ruffled in the breeze. I lay down in the grass, and the rabbit nestled next to me. My parents did not cross the hill, nor did Ichirou come, and a touch of loneliness marred my meditative state.

Then the rabbit hopped up to my face and chided me. “Do you think you can live here forever?”
“I could, rabbit,” I breathed. “Here I would never have to deal with being rejected. Death won’t reject me.”

“Death won’t nurture you, either. If you stay for long enough here, you will never grow any more than you have now. You will never develop your talent, and you will never be loved or nurtured again.”

“I’ve never been nurtured, and I’m not sure I’ve been loved. My parents farmed me out to music schools, and I don’t know if they were in league with the Renaissance movement. And I never will know.” I sat up, not questioning that a bunny spoke to me, because this was my dream.

“What about Przymeslaw? What about your traveling companions? What about Ichirou? And Dr. DeWinter?” The rabbit washed his face with his paws.

“I don’t know who’s side DeWinter is on. For all I know, she’s part of Renaissance. I don’t trust anyone from Interlochen now.”

“Trust somebody. You need something to pull you out from this place or else you’ll be always in danger, like Ichirou. I’d point out, though, that he’s less in danger than you are, because he’s reached a hand out from his place. Have you reached a hand out from yours?” And with that, the rabbit wandered off, sniffing the silvery grass as he bounced away.

I woke up to find Ichirou standing over me grinning ruefully. “May I come in? I can’t get to sleep.”
I held my hand out to him and we cuddled until we created space for each other.

Accountability partners

Yesterday, I blocked out the big scene of my book Prodigies. Actually, Richard helped me — he took me to a coffee shop, watched me as I typed out the outline, asked me a couple of questions, and pronounced it “good”. It’s most of the way done now; another session today should have the action outlined completely. And then it’s time to write.

Sometimes I have trouble writing alone. Sometimes I have trouble motivating alone — I am always most motivated about one thing, whatever is needed or desired at the moment, and sometimes I forget about the other things on my plate. This is a sign of ADHD, which I’ve never been diagnosed with, but there’s enough of it in my family that it wouldn’t be a surprise. So I’m considering an accountability partner.

An accountability partner would help me prioritize all the things I want to accomplish and track with me what is getting in the way. The thing for me is being able to switch focus, usually demonstrated by how I finish the #1 activity of the day and then feel braindead.

Richard is likely to be my identity partner because he’s good at that. I’ll need to be his accountability partner, and I’m not so good at it. Ah, well, I needed a good challenge.

What we will need to be accountability partners:

An idea of each other’s values and goals (daily/weekly)
A time we can meet (over coffee)
A clear set of questions to ask each other about progress
************
I just came up with goals for summer:
Finish my online class with an A;
Write chapter of moulage book by August 1;
Finish/edit Prodigies by August 1;
Walk 20 minutes six days a week.

Notice that this blog is not on the list; but I’m still going to write it — if not daily, at least three days a week.

Thanks for reading!

The Centipede’s Dilemma

A centipede was happy – quite!
Until a toad in fun
Said, “Pray, which leg moves after which?”
This raised her doubts to such a pitch,
She fell exhausted in the ditch
Not knowing how to run.
— Katherine Craster , “The Centipede’s Dilemma”
******************
I’ve been thinking too much while writing the first draft. I know many of the rules of writing, and I’m keeping them all in my head at the same time, and trying to edit at the same time I write. It’s not working. I’m only writing 400 words a day, and have 10,000 words to go.

Writing coaches say, “Just write. Don’t edit. Just write.” This is the reason, because too much self-examination can tie one in knots, like the caterpillar. I’m worrying about the book, about what I’ve already written, and distracting myself from the moment.

I need to cut that out.

Truth be told…

A couple years ago, I put together a map using Sketchup, a three-d sketching program which architects and other designers use to lay out inside and outside scapes. At the time, I was convinced it was a great two-dimensional map-making program, until I accidentally discovered that my two-dimensional map with borrowed buildings from the Sketchup Warehouse had become a three-dimensional map. And my expectations went up, and once I had a computer upgrade, I made sure all the buildings and plants were above ground and properly organized, and it was a pretty nice map.

My current mapping experience (for Hearts are Mountains) makes me think I’ve bitten off more than I can chew. (International readers, do you have that idiom?) First of all, I have to create the basement dwellings from a tracing of a picture, and then make them three-dimensional (which I am nowhere near ready for, having barely created in two dimensions. I tried to trace the picture once, and the geodesic dome “roof” (aboveground part) looked like a spider on LSD traced it. Nobody in the 3-D warehouse crew has made a rendering of this underground building, so I’m on my own.

It’s not top priority — first of all because I’m intimidated as heck by the challenge. Second of all, because I have other priorities of things I have to get done like two novels (although I’m struggling with those as well). Third — see #2.

Face it — I need some inspiration, because it seems to be somewhat drained from the class I’m taking. I don’t have a good flow of ideas right now. I’m angling for a change in scenery today and a day devoted to creativity, a day where I can make magic.

Tell you my story

My story:

My name is Lauren Leach-Steffens. I am a 54-year-old college professor, married, with five cats. That is not my story, just a convenient tag to hang it on.

What is my story? I am a wizard of information — I stand in spinning clouds of words and pull them together, making meaning of them. The noun “mirror” is an object that reflects the person who looks in it; the verb “to mirror” is to show the reflection of the image. “Mirror” is a synonym of “reflect”, yet is not quite the same, as it hints at the exact duplication of the original which may not be as obvious with “reflect:” In my mirror, I see a woman with sparse dark hair sticking up in curls, a narrow oval face, and an overly mobile mouth. I look over my glasses coquettishly, an invitation to indulge in play. In the mirror, I see seven-year-old me — it’s not a big leap from 54-year-old me.

Another story, just as true: I have always been an outsider — the “weird” kid on the playground, teachers’ pet, crybaby. These labels were all applicable, yet if they looked at the rest of my disordered childhood — with problems anywhere from neglect and bipolar disorder and threats to sexual abuse — they might have understood why I was a crybaby. Or perhaps not; small towns turn against those who are not like them. To this day I assume that people don’t really want to get to know me.

Yet a third: I am the mirror. In being starkly honest about myself, you reflect upon your feelings about what I’ve said. You see your own humanity. You say “There but for the grace of God go I…” or you say “I’ve been there” and you say “I can’t even identify with that” and sometimes “Doesn’t she embarrass herself?” You move about the impressions like fragments of the mirror, and in it, you see yourself in contrast to me.

Who am I? This, and likely more.

Tell me your story.

I know you’re reading out there, and I know that you don’t like to respond, and so I’m asking this rhetorically: Tell me your story.

Now, think about yourself as a protagonist in a novel.

Do you appear as the same race, the same gender as you do in real life?
What are your strengths (real or imaginary)?
What are your character flaws?
If you have superpowers, what are they?
How do you present to others, and is that the real you?
What are your weaknesses?
What would people remember you for?

Tell me your story now.

Both of these, the real and the imaginary self, are your stories.

My schedule and writers’ block

I am frustrated because my routine is out of whack.

I never thought I was one of these people who needed a routine. It’s out of step with my vision of myself as an artistic free spirit — you know, wait for inspiration, do as you feel moved to do, be spontaneous…

That doesn’t work when you have a day job. My day job (being a professor) has a definite schedule arranged around when the classes I teach are scheduled. Those have first priority, then meeting times and dates and office hours fill in the rest of my time. I try not to schedule large gaps in my day because those will become de facto office hours and I will struggle to get work done in-between students.

So during the school year, I tend to find some time to work in my office hours, although that’s rare; work on classroom type stuff tends to happen on weekends and afternoons; morning is when I write creatively. A perfect schedule.

Then summer throws it off — at least as much because the nature of the work changes as much as the arrangement of the time. It would seem I have a lot more time with school “out” for the semester. But my workload is very, very different. I supervise 23 interns, and scheduling meetings with them is somewhat random. Other than that, my job work includes writing a chapter for a book I’m editing on moulage and volunteer management for disaster training, and revising two classes, one of them pretty drastically. I tackle these first, because they keep me fed. Then, my online class (I’m the student, not the teacher) requires attention because I don’t want to fail my first class in years.

Finally, I can schedule working on this blog and working on Prodigies and then Whose Hearts are Mountains. The blog gets worked on first, because it’s an excellent warmup to writing, although I’ve been writing really short entries lately. My readership has fallen the last couple days, too.

At the end, I’ve had writers’ block when it comes to the written projects. I schedule them for late afternoon/evening because I don’t often get out (I’m in a small town and schedule my coffee times during the day), but by then, I don’t feel very motivated.

I think I have to have a good talk with my characters tonight. We’re just about at the climax of Prodigies, and they’re strangely reticent. Right about now, they’re having their last supper before the operation in which they’re going to save a packed General Assembly room at the UN from being set on fire. Time for me to listen to them — if I have time.

Fantasies and Consequences

It is not crazy to have fantasies. It is crazy to expect them to come true without repercussions in the real world. I have always known this, even though people with bipolar disorder are notorious for pursuing fantasies with a naive manic glow.

I said it in a poem once, and the line is still true: I do not want what I want. We do not want what we want. Every fantasy has a dark side: Winning large amounts of money results in either a mad splurge where all the money is spent, or distrustful conservatism. An affair with a media star results in disillusionment and the dissolution of other romantic relationships.

But oh, the fantasies (if you recognize them as such) are glorious!

My real life self is pragmatic, dealing with what is; my fantasy self is much more daring. My real self is more compassionate toward others; my fantasy self is somewhat narcissistic, doing what she wants without minding consequences. I like my real life self better, but my fantasy self makes for better stories.

My fantasies help me write about other people and other situations that become a short story or novel. To do this, it’s necessary to step out of the story, to not be the protagonist. To let the fantasy take wing in a character’s life, a person whose circumstances mitigate some of the consequences, or who rise above the consequences and become someone new.