This week: Simmering ... Edited by: fyn  
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Soup is a lot like a family. Each ingredient enhances the others; each batch has its own characteristics; and it needs time to simmer to reach full flavor.~~ Marge Kennedy
I do think that I'm a big believer in having an idea or having ideas and just tucking them away in the back of your brain. Even if you aren't consciously thinking of them, I think they simmer. You're working on them, even if you don't know you're working on them, and I think having something in your head for a while is a valuable thing. ~~Rian Johnson
I worry that if whatever pops into your head at any instant immediately goes online, you lose the crucial time for your thoughts to simmer and evolve and build up nuance, depth and empathy.~~ Paul Harding
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I have a corn creamer that I love.
It extracts pulp and juice from kernels,
and I simmer that down into a creamed corn
that has an almost mashed potato-like consistency.
I add butter and hit it with chopped fresh chives
at the end for an accent of color. ~~Nick Offerman
You've had the ideas roiling around in your brain for a while now. At some point, the ingredients of character, plot, action, catharsis, and drama call come to a boil and you reach that tipping point where you cannot not sit down and let the story all pour forth. You write and write and write and write. You come up for a breath of air, perhaps some food or a nap, and then hunker down and once again lose yourself in your words. The characters take over. Your muse becomes the conductor waving his hands motioning some to rise, others to fall. A swift jerk of his chin and events occur. A sideways swipe of his baton and events become increasingly intense, a crescendo if you will. Conversations form, relationships develop, and the underlying synapse of layering, symbolism, and nuance becomes a counterpoint ever dancing in the background.
After those first bursts, your mind needs refreshing, your ideas must sleep and dream themselves into being once again. And then you write and write and write and ... write! Plots thicken, you become amazingly attached to your characters whom you can now see clearly and have conversations with. You sit back and just listen as your muse and lead characters fence with one another, arguing over whether or not such and such should/could/would/WILL happen. You become a mere conduit. Nothing more than fingers and keyboard ripping the evolving tale from your brain.
Then comes that point where you regain control, ripping thoughts from grey matter, tearing (either meaning) emotions, and wringing the blood from them to drip onto the page. Food is an occasional luxury. Coffee becomes the elixir of life. The world outside the book is blurred because everything that is anything is your words spilling forth. It all comes so much faster now it become hard to keep up. Fingers (no matter how fast or slow you type) cannot keep up with the onrush. The dam has broken and you become swept away.
Loose ends are tied, the characters put to bed, the sun sets on the world you've created. You are done! It's finished! Yay!
NOT SO FAST. You are in no way finished. No matter how much revising you think you've done along the way, this is still your first draft.
Now it is time to let it simmer. Like a soup or stew needs that time, subtly simmering for the flavors to mesh to that perfect goodness, so too does that story need to simmer. Your mind will continue to write even if you are nowhere near your computer. Take notes, but leave the story alone. Give it time to mellow. Give your work that time it deserves to become all you know it can be. Give it a vacation. Let it rest. For like six weeks. Give your brain the time so that the details begin to fade. It is perfectly okay to not remember exactly how such 'n such a plotline was melded in. Or was it? Write down questions you might have but stay away from the manuscript.
Then, when you go back and read it from beginning to end, you will be almost reading something new. The complete written out tale will actually BE new in its entirety. Just read it. Take notes, but touch nothing. Just read, enjoy, experience the book as you want your readers to do. Pat yourself on the back because even though there are typos sprinkled throughout and you KNOW there are a million little tweaks, you did it!
Take a week to play with your observations and conclusions. What works? What doesn't? Why did you use that one odd word a zillion times? Would so and so really have done that or should they perhaps do something else? Did that one section need more description? Was your voice consistent? Were the various characters each unique unto themselves?
Coalescence. The entire house smells like that chicken soup. Or stew. Or chile. You are starving. Now is the time to dive in and revise, edit, switch-up, change, delete, rearrange, play with, expand upon, and refine. Entire paragraphs are added. Others vanish into the ether. A character becomes clearer. Another develops additional layering. A scene becomes tighter and another becomes more focused. Aaannnnd ... it's done. Nope. One more time through the gauntlet. Why? Because you want your book to be the best it is capable of being! You want your reader to be able to savor every mouthful of words!
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Sand Castles Shopgirl 739  writes: Good advice! I did pick up the pen again...wrote a small piece and submitted it. I have been attending my free write group. I started limiting my attendance when political vitriol raised its ugly head. Maybe this is Just a self-protection move, but it worked. I deal with it 24/7 in my home. The blank page is my safe space...it's the only way for me to keep myself and my Muse sane. We can ven and analyze without fear of offending anyone about anything. Somewhere in these random scribblings is the seed of a story...we may just find it yet.
brom21 says: This new year will be the most significant one in history. Radical things are on the horizon. Writing is a good coping tool. Your muse is more than just a creative outlet. This year's goal is to publish my first novel and I am now looking for an editor. I hope it happens soon. lol. Thanks for this NL!
hbk16 comments: I have always put my writing inspiration forward as a motive to write. Daily writing exercise might be good for beginners. But the best writing emanates from our click inside us that is spontaneous. |
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For Authors: February 03, 2021 Issue [#10597]
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