About 1,100 words today. That’s not bad. I shut down the computer thinking there hadn’t been any fireworks again, but I was premature.

Shortly after saving and exiting, I suddenly realized why one of my characters had done something he’d done. I wasn’t entirely sure at the time, and thought maybe it was inappropriate to the scene. But afterward I figured out his motivation, and said, “Yes! Of course! That’s exactly what he’d do!”

These are the “that’s my boy!” moments for a writer, when characters you aren’t sure have any life to them, suddenly show signs of getting a job and leaving home. It’s a sort of pale imitation of parenthood, in a remote, attenuated form.

I’ve never written a book in quite this way before. My standard novel-writing system, as I’ve said many times, is to scribble notes on slips of paper as characters and scenes and themes occur to me, and then arrange them in an MS Word document, in more or less the order I expect them to occur. When I’ve got enough stuff there to qualify as an outline, I then begin writing my story at the beginning of the document, and removing each plot point from the end as I use it. Eventually I have a completed book with a little rubble of discarded mental detritus at the end, which I then erase (although it was pointed out to me recently that I ought to keep my character lists, at least, in a separate document, for use in sequels, if any. Good idea).

But this book is being written blind. I’ve got characters, setting, and a basic idea for the book which I can best describe as a sort of rhythm. There’s an “impossible” event which happens, and then happens again, and then happens again, at intervals in the story. Everything else reacts to that.

So this time, the writing itself is an adventure. I keep discovering my own story. I’ve always considered writing without an outline kind of a lazy technique, but it might be the best way for me. I suspect that, sometimes in the past, I’ve twisted my characters’ arms to do things they didn’t really want to do, in the service of a predetermined plot.

About 1,000 words today. Odd that I got up earlier than yesterday, and managed to get less accomplished.

No great fireworks, but a workmanlike job, which is the whole point.

Yesterday was my first day of a week of stay-cation, devoted to getting more sleep, and doing more writing, than customary for me.

The sleep hasn’t been bad, but I’m pleased to say that the writing’s already been beyond my expectations.

Here’s the situation.

I’ve been worrying a particular story concept for quite a few years now. I had a basic idea—transfer the traditional hard-boiled detective story from a modern city (such as New York) to the Viking Age and an early medieval town (specifically, old York in England, which was a Viking town for some time). The mystery would have fantasy elements, because that’s the sort of thing I write.

But whatever I did with it, I couldn’t seem to make it come alive. I don’t know how many starts I’ve made on the thing, but they all lost momentum and rolled to a slow stop. Continue reading Notes from a writer’s journal →

One of my co-workers came to see me in my office today. He said he was interested in writing. He was particularly curious, he said, as to how a writer develops a style.

Here’s the answer I gave him. It’s probably not the last word on the matter, but this is how I understand it, based on my own experience.

First, you find an author you’d like to be like. And you try to write like him (or her). This isn’t actually part of the process as such. It’s just where most of us start. You’ve got to start somewhere, so most of us start as imitators. When I was a kid, I tried to write like Poe, I recall.

This derivative writing is the raw material from which you begin to build your identity as a writer. It’s Square One, nothing more, really.

Continue reading Stylin’ →

Where are you in the grammar debate/squabble over singular third person pronouns? When anybody is opening a door, should we write that anybody is opening his door, his or her door, or their door? I’ll state upfront that using his or her is just a waste of words and speedbump in your sentence. The issue is really whether we should use the singular his or the plural their, becoming comfortable with their being used for one person.

Until today, I thought his was the singular, gender neutral pronoun, and unless you’re talking about girls (like I am when I talk about the little people in my home), then you should say things like everyone should use his napkin, not his shirt. This afternoon, I read in an NYT article that they has been used for individuals for centuries, and a grammarian named Anne Fisher changed it.

Fisher’s popular guide, “A New Grammar” (1745), ran to more than 30 editions, making it one of the most successful grammars of its time. More important, it’s believed to be the first to say that the pronoun he should apply to both sexes. . . . Meanwhile, many great writers — Byron, Austen, Thackeray, Eliot, Dickens, Trollope and more — continued to use they and company as singulars, never mind the grammarians.

Well, if Austen, Thackeray, Eliot, et al used it, I’m not going to complain ever again.

I had a couple guys come out today to do some work on my basement windows. I’d found dry rot in some of them a while back, and they replaced some wood and covered over the healthy stuff with aluminum. For a reasonable price.

Afterwards, when the main guy came in and I was writing him a check, he looked at a picture of Jesus on my wall and asked, “Are you a believer?” I said, “Yes, I am.”

This pleases me immensely. I liked him right off when he came out to do his estimate (though I must admit I made my decision based on the sizes of the bids), and I like to imagine I recognized a brother in Christ through my remarkable powers of spiritual discernment.

In other news, I’ve been noodling with a new book recently, but wasn’t sure where I was going with the thing. As is so often the case, I had a character and a setting, but no plot to speak of.

Today, in the course of my regular work, I stumbled on an idea I think may be intriguing, and fairly fresh. It has to do with quantum physics and time and theology, subjects on which I am (needless to say) an acknowledged expert.

Or at least the low bidder.