Books I Wish I Wrote

August is all about wishing here on The Prosers. I have a theory that every writer has at least one book they wish they'd written, something that's taken hold of their soul so profoundly that it's almost like someone had crawled up inside their brain and found the pieces there.

Indexing by Seanan McGuire

A government agency filled with living fairy-tales solving crime? I am there for that. I grew up watching cop shows and murder mysteries. My mother was, and probably still is, addicted to them so I have a permanent soft spot. Granted, my favorites more along the lines of NCIS, Bones and Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries rather than Hercules Poirot, Inspector Morse and Der Alte but the affinity is still there.

One of the first things that I wrote that I actually remember what happened was a Finnish language assignment of my sister's (she wrote the one she actually turned in but I was so inspired by the assignment that I wrote one just for me); change a key aspect of some fairy-tale and write the story. I've been hooked on subversive fairy-tales ever since.

This book is something that combines both of those elements with dry, dark humor and an episodic story-telling style so reminiscent of all those cop shows I know and love. Every time I read this (I've lost count) I am both in awe of McGuire's work and kicking myself that she got there first.

Night Watch by Terry Pratchett

Cop just trying to arrest a mass murderer accidentally goes back to his own past and ends up leading a revolution because that's the job that's in front of him.

Sam Vimes in Night Watch is basically a noir hero who's trying to do good. He's Casablanca's Rick Blaine after Elsa gets on that plane (sorry for the spoilers but it's over 70 years old and spoiler warnings have an age limit). He is mainly interested in keeping the piece and protecting a few people.

What he gets is a whole mess of trouble. The Unmentionables, Ankh-Morpork's then patrician's private police, do not like the man who refuses to hand over curfew breakers to them for torturing. The book is filled with social commentary as well as ruminations on the nature of right and wrong.

Pratchett is one of the first authors I started reading who showed me just how subversive humor can be. Because it's "just humorous fantasy", Pratchett can do and say things that "serious" writers would have to work a lot harder for. Night Watch is very much "message fiction" but because it's also laugh-out-loud funny I've never heard it accused of being that. The book sticks with me and I keep coming back to it at least once every year.

Kuka lohduttaisi Nyytiä? By Tove Jansson

Translated to English as Who Will Comfort Toffle? this one is ostensibly a children's picture book. It's all about Toffle, a little troll who's afraid of the dark, of his neighbors, basically everything around him. He's more or less an introverted, depressive agoraphobic who leaves his home to find a safer space, scared to leave but even more scared to stay. Outside he sees many wondrous things that make him feel even more alone because he's too afraid to approach anyone. He finds a lonely seashore that's calm and makes him not afraid and he makes a home there. Then he gets a letter in a bottle from a girl troll who says she's also scared and needs help. The rest is about him overcoming his own fear because there's someone who needs him. They end up comforting each other and, of course, living happily ever after.

I loved this book as a teenager, heck I still love it, because it assured me that however I was feeling at the time, there were people out there who got me and would love me for me. I know it sounds trite but as a writer I would love to have that kind of impact on another person's life. It is, after all, a part of why I write.

Getting Unstuck

I’ve been kind of stuck lately. In a writerly rut. Not really writer’s block, per se. You see, writer’s block implies that you’re actually doing some kind of writing. I’ve been … dry. It’s in part due to major life/family events, but some also just due to inertia. I haven’t been writing, so it’s hard to write. Hard to start from a non-moving position.

So I thought I’d share with you some of the tricks and tips and workarounds I’m using to jump-start, restart, reignite my writing. Hope you enjoy them!

Book recommendation: Writing Magic by Gail Carson Levine.

While this book is geared toward a student writer, I really love the writing exercises she includes in most chapters. Plus she encourages the writer to save what they write. Everything. Even the cruddy first drafts and the times when the writer was just playing around. As it turns out, looking back through some of my notes about writing, story ideas jotted down on a thousand different sticky notes in every room of the house, and re-reading old stories is another method of getting back into the writing saddle.

The Snowflake Method – I have had many projects start well but fizzle later (usually at around the 2/3 point) and have concluded that lack of planning (being a total seat-of-the-pants writer) was hurting me. So I’ve vowed to do more planning. The snowflake method has always been a favorite of mine for doing the big-picture story planning, gradually getting deeper and deeper into the story as the snowflake evolves from a simple triangle into a fractaled wonder.

This list from the good folks at Galleycat was an excellent source of resources for me this week. I’ve tried trello (still tinkering), and of course the snowflake method appears again. And that excel gods-eye view? Absolutely earth-shattering for me. I need a fully formed idea before it will be useful, but I plan to use this method for outlining scenes for my November nanowrimo project this year. Highly recommend, particularly for any screenwriters out there.

The Blake Snyder Beat Sheet was recommended by a writer friend aware of my predicament. Blake Snyder wrote a writing book called Save the Cat that is well-regarded in writing circles. I haven’t spent much time with it yet, but I plan to use it as my next trick on the story idea I’m gestating at the moment. Yes, I finally have a reasonable story idea! These things have worked!

Another cheat-sheet style is the 7 point story structure,found here on Chandler Baker’s website. Can you tell I’ve been looking for the magic bullet? The reality is nothing short of putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard actually works to get me out of my slump, but playing with all these various organizational tools and story structure outlines has been invaluable to getting me reenergized and ready to write. Now it’s time to generate some fiction, who’s with me? Here’s a writing prompt if you want to play:

(using elements from Characters for an Epic Tale by TomGauld.)

The metal man faced the apparition, his faithful hound at his side, and said…