The idea: The Man Terror Club

The idea for The Man Terror Club came to me as I was waking up one morning ten years ago. Who knows what odd places thoughts steal in from when you’re only half awake, but I wondered how an elevator operator might fight back if she was being sexually harassed. As my somnolent imagination meandered, it strayed toward acts of physical resistance and retribution, and the title The Man Terror Club popped into my head. 

It may be the most evocative of all the titles I’ve written, but I worried about creating the story. That title deserved a brilliant book, and I wasn’t yet confident enough in my first two novels to believe they had prepared me to produce something of that caliber. I experimented with the idea in 2010-2012 as a short story, but I didn’t feel ready to write even that much. 

So I waited.

I got more serious about writing in 2017. I rewrote Under Shōko’s Bed and Neyuki and improved both novels. How much more experience would I need before I could do justice to my idea? I thought it best to write at least two more novels before I tried The Man Terror Club. The problem was I didn’t have two other stories that moved me as The Man Terror Club did, so I finally resolved to just do it. In the spring of that year, over two months, I produced the first draft. I did not have the entire plot firmly in mind from the beginning, although I knew things would take a dark turn and end in murder. I envisioned each of the pre-murder chapters as a short story focused on a different member of the club. As I wrote, though, the women’s stories blended together and lost their short story flavor. 

Still, each chapter for the first three-quarters of the novel is told first person from a different character’s point of view. (After that, narration stays first person, but already-introduced characters narrate sections of the chapters.) I didn’t realize at the time that I was flying in the face of writing pundits who warn neophytes and even more advanced writers never to write first person with a large cast of narrators. You should have few narrators and preferably only one. But what I attempted, eleven narrators, is not unheard of. William Faulkner used fifteen first-person narrators in As I Lay Dying. Of course, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature, while I remain unpublished. Nevertheless, I wanted to try.

Perhaps the most surprising experience of writing The Man Terror Club was how much I came to like the characters. While all the women have been betrayed, abused, or discarded, they remained kind, giving, and caring. Their love for each other heals them, and that healing is most of the story, not their terrorism as they lash out at the evil men do.

With my ongoing interest in the characters, I have even been bouncing the idea of a sequel around. I am taking notes and considering key characters, plot twists, and terrorist acts. I worry it may be premature to start a sequel before the first novel is even published. But The Man Terror Club, while not finalized, is just about ready for professional editing. I don’t think the fundamental story will change. And I want to spend a few months living with those women again. They are lovely people (who do extreme things), and more of their story ought to be told.

The Chicago Manual of Style

I prefer having rules. It’s how things ought to be. There should be a right way to punctuate faltering or interrupted dialogue, to choose between toward or towards, or to know whether to make that last comma italic or Roman. (The answer is Roman.) So I made a major commitment a few weeks ago. I stopped looking up grammar, punctuation, and usage questions at what I hoped were trustworthy online sources. Too often those websites either disagreed or offered no helpful guidelines and I was having to decide on my own what rule to use. In addition, the sites didn’t cover many of the fine points, forcing me to make up too much. I needed a comprehensive style guide. So I adopted The Chicago Manual of Style.

I wish I had a good reason for waiting so long (especially since I am a University of Chicago alumnus). The CMOS is one of American English’s most accepted writing style standards. I suppose I thought it was mostly for dissertations and other academic papers. I was wrong.

It’s a major undertaking to look up all over again the myriad things I’ve wondered about. Plus, I just need to sit and read some sections of the book (perhaps at bedtime?). It will take a long time, but once I learn the Chicago rules of style, I won’t have to look up those answers so much anymore. The most difficult thing for me is punctuation, especially in italics or dialogue. Under Shōko’s Bed has far more italicized text than any of my other novels, so it has been hard to edit. Once I have mastered Chicago style, though, novels I write from then on will not need so many style interventions.

I just wish every topic in the CMOS had a single answer, even if it was context dependent. But some seem to have multiple acceptable styles or even conflicting advice in different sections. (I’m still not sure which numbers to spell out in dialogue, for example.) So some choices remain. Writing is all about choices, after all. In the pursuit of art, any rule is breakable as long as the breaking is purposeful. I’m the one at the computer, so the ultimate decisions are all mine. For stylistic choices, though, I wanted some help. With the CMOS next to me, I have somewhere authoritative to turn.

A hermit's life

I don’t have COVID-19 yet. Neither does anyone in my immediate family. Some are saying the U.S. will see a vaccine by Thanksgiving. That seems almost hopelessly optimistic. I’m not sure how Japan is doing on vaccines. My classes are all online, and the university has decided that will go on for the rest of the year. I am a hermit. It’s time to connect with some other hermits. It’s time to finish something.

I finished my first novel, Under Shōko’s Bed, months ago. For a long time, I was vacillating over whether to look for an agent and a publisher (as my editor suggested), or self-publish, as I had originally decided. A couple of things have made me shy away from the traditional publishing route. The first was the reaction I got to my first round of agent queries: silence. The second was my editor’s feedback on my second novel, Neyuki. It includes violence and sexual exploitation, and my editor doubted that in today’s climate, any American publisher would pick it up. It is also a book set in Japan, written by a foreigner (even though I’ve lived here for over twenty years, and if you should write what you know, Japan is what I know). I suspect interest in such books is narrow. A publisher is unlikely to want to squeeze into such a niche market. It’s also possible that even if someone took the book on, they would expect me to create buzz for it. If I will be creating the buzz anyway, I might as well just self-publish.

I want the book to be professional, though. I have worked with an experienced editor, but I still feel the need to hire a final copy editor—who is probably shut in somewhere because of this virus, a hermit like me. That will be expensive. Then there is the cost of hiring a cover designer, another likely hermit. This being my first novel, I would also prefer to work with someone on the book design, possibly a third hermit. Then I’ll need a fourth, a proofreader. None of these hermits will have taken vows of poverty, so all of this will push the cost high enough that I will almost surely lose money on the book.

It will be a great book, though.

So this month I plan to find a copy editor. Once the text is set, I will find someone to do a cover for it and possibly have the same person either do the interior or give me an InDesign template so I can do it myself. I want to get the book out in the fall. It will be a major challenge, as my other six novels are calling to me. There’s a lot to do. But when someone asks me how I spent my COVID isolation time, I will have a personal accomplishment to crow about.

Editing: Neyuki II

My editor, Fran Lebowitz, got the manuscript of Neyuki back to me a few weeks ago. It was a long time coming, but she gave me great feedback, including her overarching reaction: “I really loved the book.” I can satisfy most of her comments with simple revisions, but there are a couple of things that are more challenging to fix.

Fran would like to see the characters before the catastrophe that makes their lives spiral out of control. I had originally started with the momentous event, thinking that would be an effective hook. Based on her comment, I’m trying to write a whole new opening chapter. I am woefully dissatisfied, though, with the new beginning. Bucolic life in rural Japan does not capture the imagination and refuse to let go. It doesn’t turn pages. So day after day I peck away at ideas that may show the protagonist’s pleasant life in a way that can also hint at the coming conflict and keep readers going.

The longer term challenge for the novel is that it deals with sexual deviance and violence. Those are not the story’s principal themes, and the book condemns the characters who do those things, but they are integral to the plot. I know I risk triggering terrible thoughts, emotions, and memories for some, particularly survivors of sexual abuse. Some will say we should avoid such topics, that whatever worth the writing may have, it’s not important enough to overcome its degrading nature. Some worry about copycats. Those fears are not lost on me. But I know such deviance exists, I feel it’s good to denounce it, and I think Neyuki is a story worth telling. Yet I suspect no North American publisher will touch it. I could try to find a publisher in another country (the UK, for example), or I could publish it myself. Over time, though, the topic may become even less tolerable and the novel might forever stain me in some readers’ eyes. Even so, I’d like to find readers who will be moved by the story.

Whatever I decide, I hope to have a revised version of the novel completed this summer. It would be wonderful to publish it before the winter snows hit Japan.

More distraction

As summer approaches, my winter/spring distraction continues. As evidence, I wrote the first draft of this post over two months ago. Of course, it is odd that the COVID-19 pandemic has dictated that I stay home and work, when that is what I do most of the time anyway. I feel sympathy for those who are going stir crazy stuck in their homes, but I admit I am feeling none of that. I have stories to write, and I sit at my little table with my little computer and fill my extra hours tapping away on its keyboard oblivious, for a few hours at least, to the world.

My stories do not fill all my time. And the time they don’t fill is so tumultuous and upsetting. It disquiets me to watch the numbers steadily grow: infections, hospitalizations, critical cases, deaths. The restrictions on populations around the world, the unemployment, the economic pain are reaping a horrible toll. It’s hard not to pay attention, in the same way as a gruesome accident tugs at your eyes. Part of this pandemic, of course, seems quite accidental. People bear the blame for other parts, though. Some don’t follow instructions to practice social distancing or self isolation. Some assume they’ll come through it all just fine and don’t consider how those they in turn infect are going to come through it. Perhaps the worst are the few who could have led effective government responses, but were too vacuous or motivated by immediate political gain. They don’t seem to have the sense that there is a longer term problem. They have always gaslighted their way out of problems and assume that will be sufficient here too. It’s not. In democratic countries, such “leaders” can be voted out of office in disgrace. And those who don’t follow through on this weighty, consequential step will be failing us all.

With all this commotion, I admit I have to push hard to get past the distraction and lose myself in a story. But I have been able to push regularly enough to finish another novel and work on edits of a few more. The novel I’ve written isn’t about a pandemic, although a number of its characters die. I joked with a writing buddy that I should get a t-shirt that says, “I kill people. Wanna be next?” At least I am not dispassionate about it. After all, if there is no passion involved in losing characters, what were they doing in the story to begin with? Still, killing off characters at the same time that a pandemic is decimating the real world is sobering. 

I wonder how many pandemic stories are being created at this very moment by writers in scores of countries around the world. Their stories will ring with an immediacy they would not have had last year. Even though my writing isn’t immediate like that, I hope I can touch readers.

Website: 2nd anniversary

This month is the second anniversary of the website! I have written a lot during that time. I now have a row of seven complete novels in binders on my bookcase. I finished the seventh this week while hiding from the pandemic.

Neyuki is currently with my editor, but the edit should be done this month. I am so looking forward to her feedback. 

The Man Terror Club, Kintsugi, Vision More Glorious, The Keeper, and The Time Well are waiting to be edited, although I plan to introduce them here on the website over the next few weeks. I may have to find more than one editor, as I am getting too far ahead. The Keeper and The Time Well are new in the last year, although they were both ideas I’d been sitting on for a while. I’m casting about for a new novel, and feel a little at sea. What if someone asks me what I’m working on? Having written two novels in the last year, and having spent considerable time editing six of them, I need some inspiration. I certainly hope I have flashes of insight and can produce more than one novel in the next year.

I also want to write some short stories this year. I have a couple on the back burner, one waiting to be finished and one waiting for the idea to fully form in my head.

Unfortunately, I am lagging far behind in my efforts to publish. I still have not given up on traditional publishing for Under Shōko’s Bed, but I’ve got to restart my agent search, which flagged while I wrote The Keeper and The Time Well. That part of being a writer is what I put off most easily. It’s hard.

Distraction

It has been a late winter of distraction. My primary care physician told me in the middle of February that the pain and bleeding from my kidney could be cancer. He followed that up with pathology supporting his assumption. (It was a middling stage of cancer, but I don’t know if the stages they use in Japan are the same as the stages in America.) He sent me to a urologist. The urologist did an ultrasound two weeks ago and said he didn’t think it was cancer. I just got the results of a CT scan two days ago. A kidney stone is causing the bleeding and pain (which is what I had suspected in the first place). My primary care physician is on my “Grrr” list, but I followed up on his concerns, which was the important thing.

So what do you do with your writing when mortality is close enough to feel its breath on your face (in my worst imagination this happened a lot)? What do you do when you are too distracted to write? 

Write anyway. 

I have two simple suggestions for that.

First, edit something old.

You can’t stop working, right? If you’re a writer, you write (or revise or at least edit). I sit down to write every day (and I succeed almost every time). I figured I was too distracted to lose myself in an invented world and populate it with characters, but I had novels that needed work, so I edited. It’s calming to sink your mind into a story you know like a comfortable old friend when you want to escape the prospect of death. Mortality also gave me a little kick to get things finished. 

It did not help much with the push to publish, though. That’s a lengthy process. Lengthy processes are not foremost priorities when you don’t know how much time you have left. (Yes, it’s sad to admit I was that concerned, but imagination is important for a writer, isn’t it?)

Second, write something new.

This week, I got to where I had nothing I needed to edit. It perplexed me, assuming I could never muster sufficient concentration to write anything new. But tried it anyway. It was an act of faith. (My wife’s constant upbeat attitude also took root.) 

And I wrote! I started only a handful of days before I got the “don’t worry about it” diagnosis, but I could write fresh scenes for Novel 7 each day. With a little extra push, I could force my way through the distraction, because the story is strong. I’ve been knocking the idea around for a couple of years, and I think I have worked out enough of the kinks that it’s realizable.

The one thing I did not attempt as I waited for test results was writing more blog posts. If you’re keeping up with the blog, though, don’t assume missing blog posts mean things are going badly. It also happens when I visit family at the holidays or get so wrapped up in writing I can’t tear myself away. The stories matter more to me than the commentary.

Writing software: One year with ProWritingAid

I want to update you on ProWritingAid, a writing tool I have been using. Last month I wrote about Scrivener from Literature and Latte and suggested that you get it if you are working on a long project like a novel. If you’re already using Scrivener, let me recommend that you follow it up with ProWritingAid. Although I have not done an exhaustive search, it is the best algorithmic editor I have found. Its ability to work with files in Scrivener format makes it much more useful than other tools such as Grammarly or AutoCrit.

Within days of first trying ProWritingAid a year ago, it impressed me enough that I bought a lifetime license.  Even starting out with that positive expectation, after using ProWritingAid and growing more familiar with its many functions, I rely on it more than I thought I would. I still use the Style, Grammar, and Overused Words reports more than the other tools. I also check Repeats and Echos looking for phrases I use more than once, which I often find, and Sentence Length, since I often write long ones.

Last year I said that many of the “errors” ProWritingAid flags will not be actual mistakes, and that hasn’t changed. Scrutinizing what it flags is wise, but it’s just an algorithm, not a program that understands what you’re saying. Sifting through the mistakes, your own versus ProWritingAid’s, can be a pain, but it’s also instructive. After using the program for these months, I trust it more than I did a year ago.

I don’t use it as I’m composing because it takes too much time to go through all its reports. I cannot imagine composing in ProWritingAid. It would be a constant distraction. I end up using it instead as I polish a manuscript before submitting it to an editor (human). Most of my writing has not gotten to that point, so I will use it even more heavily this year.

Please don’t assume that ProWritingAid or any other algorithmic editor will make your writing good. It will improve your work, but better than bad can still be far from good. There is no algorithm that can measure words’ ability to move you, and that’s what we are striving for. But ProWritingAid will help keep mistakes and clumsy wording from getting in the way. It will focus you on finding better ways to say things, and anyone can use such a push.

Writing software: Two years with Scrivener

Are you wondering what to get for that writer on your holiday gift list? Get Scrivener from Literature and Latte. Your writer will thank you. Of course, it’s possible that they will find the software so useful that their writing hours will multiply and they will leave you with just scraps of their time as writing overwhelms another life. Software can be fraught with peril.

I last wrote about Scrivener in my 13 April 2018 blog post. I had been using it for two and a half months and was still learning how things worked. Now, nearly two years in, I know the software much better than I did back then, and I like it all the more. In 2018, everything I had in Scrivener I originally wrote in Apple’s Pages word processor. Now I have three complete novels written from scratch in Scrivener. It’s a great writing environment and a major boon to my creativity.

For me, Scrivener’s most useful feature is the “Binder” on the left side of the window. I think of it as an outline of the novel. I write each scene in Scrivener as a separate text file and the Binder organizes these hundreds of files into a simple hierarchical format. A title on each scene identifies it for me. The Binder lets me move things around and I often do. It also gives me the freedom to write non-linearly if that is how my muse is moving me that day. I can jump ahead and write things that come later. I can fill in the outline if I want to plot the novel in advance, or I can just add the scenes as they come if I am “pantsing” it. That freedom, together with easy organization, is a potent combination. 

Another feature I love is the ability to assign Metadata to scenes. I add the date when each scene takes place and in some novels even the part of the day. It is wonderful for keeping track of the timeline and making sure everything works. I also add where the scene happens. I said in my blog post last April that I had even included the snow depth in each scene in my novel Neyuki, since it is important to the plot. I put in keywords that indicate the type of scene, symbolism, characters, etc. Then I can gather the scenes with a particular character or setting or scene type (e.g., dialogue scenes) so I can edit them for consistency. The flexibility is fantastic.

In my April 2018 post, after praising the software, I tempered my review with a significant drawback: “But—getting your work out of Scrivener can be a terrible pain.” I was referring to compiling the scenes into a manuscript, Epub, Mobi (Kindle), or other file format. There is a steep learning curve. It is not simple. But over time I solved my problems one by one and the formatting possibilities are powerful. So after working with the software for almost two years, I no longer feel that outputting from Scrivener is particularly painful.

But—I still do not trust Scrivener’s compiler to get the formatting perfect. For example, in a recent compile where I allowed hyphenation, Scrivener broke the word “wanting” after the “i,” so instead of “want-ing,” it gave me “wanti-ng.” I do not understand how such an error even makes it into a software program. Either someone at Literature and Latte messed up, or their lexicon includes a woeful error, or the user can customize hyphenation points (which would be a useful feature) and I accidentally did this. (I don’t think it was me, but if it was, there is no excuse for software being that easy to mess up.)

There are other little formatting problems. They are few and rarely pop up, but there are just enough that if I end up self-publishing, I will have to use layout software such as Adobe’s InDesign for the final formatting. I wish Scrivener had that capability and I could trust it and skip that final step, but that is a bridge too far.

So I recommend Scrivener as a gift to the writer in your life or yourself. Find a discount and buy it. Do it now. You will enjoy its organizing features, which I believe will unlock greater creativity in you. With a bit of learning, you’ll be able to output files in almost any format. And then, if you’re like me, when you’re done with all the writing and editing and you’re ready to publish, you’ll worry that the formatting isn’t perfect and you’ll take your output into something from Adobe.

Plotting or pantsing?

There is a long-running debate on whether “plotting” or “pantsing” is the better way to write. When “plotting” (or “planning”), you fully develop the outline of the story before you tell it. “Pantsing” (or “flying by the seat of your pants”) is starting the telling without preconceptions and letting the story take shape as it flows out. 

The advantage of plotting is that you know the end from the beginning. Your writing is more directed, less haphazard. You can add foreshadowing and build in clever details that work seamlessly. The danger, though, is that the story can feel contrived, wooden, or forced as always knowing exactly where you’re going can make you ignore interesting creative avenues.

Pantsing gives your imagination free rein to go wherever the story moves you. Creating can feel more powerful and rewarding. But a pantser can wander, lose direction, and even end up stuck in a corner with nowhere to go. Imagine being 50,000 words into a project and then realizing it doesn’t work. 

As an example, I was over halfway into my 2018 National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) novel when I realized it was turning into a simple love story, and I wanted something more complex. So I kept what I had, but added a thriller element. The problem was the new part of the story did not fit what I had written so far. I was pantsing the thriller element as well, and it started getting too fantastic. So I toned it down as I moved towards the novel’s conclusion, but again, the toned down section did not mesh with what came before. The novel ended up needing a significant rewrite, which I did months after NaNoWriMo ended. For this year’s NaNoWriMo novel, I did basic plotting but had some significant events only roughly in mind, and it came together as I pantsed almost all of it.

Is plotting more necessary for some topics than for others? Probably. If I wanted to write about time travel, with a story that loops back on itself, it would be easy to write myself into a dead end. But such a story might have all the more need for the creativity and spontaneity that comes from not having the story all worked out in advance. 

It’s impossible to know in advance which approach will lead to a better outcome. I think it’s more a matter of personal taste. There are as many versions of plotting and pantsing as there are writers, and most people end up somewhere in between the two poles. I suspect many of the greatest pantsers are mental plotters. They may not have written down where they expect to go, but set ideas end up influencing the direction the story takes as it develops on the page. I also suspect the greatest plotters can write with a spontaneity that belies the fact that the story’s basic structure was worked out beforehand.

I am a confirmed “in-betweener,” but my process is much more pantsing than plotting. I want to see where the story is headed, but I enjoy the twists that appear in my pure flow of imagination as the story streams out line by line. As exciting as a plot twist may be for the reader, I doubt it can match the excitement for the writer as something never imagined appears on the page. It’s exhilarating!

Is pantsing just lazy? No, I think it’s simply hard for me to get my mind far enough into a story that I can anticipate every emotion, thought, and action of my characters without writing it.

So how far can pantsing go? I have pantsed six novels. Could it also work for a trilogy of novels? I am considering writing a longer work. I think I should plot enough to define the major twists. I would also decide on the breakpoints in the story at the end of the first and second novels in the three-novel series and the final ending. I would want the three novels to work together as a whole, and I worry I can’t pants a trilogy, so long and complex. At the same time, I’m sure once I start writing, the story will evolve. I don’t want to plot intricately only to throw it away. 

The proof, though, will be in the writing. I guess this makes 2020 the year of biting off more than I might be able to chew.