There
was standing room only this week at Interabang Books in Dallas, as writers and
would be writers packed into hear a panel sponsored by the Writers League of Texas. Four North Texas authors, moderated by the League’s executive
director, Becka Oliver, shared their methods for turning the mass of pages they
sometimes end up into actual publishable – and published books.
“When
you talk to four writers with four different kinds of backgrounds, you know
we’re really going to dig in,” Oliver said, as she introduced writers Jeramey Kraatz,
author of the Cloak Society and Space Runners novel series; Sanderia Faye (Mourner’s Bench); Mike Merschel (Revenge
of the Star Survivors); and memoirist Sarah Hepola (Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to
Forget).
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| Kraatz & fans |
In
case you don’t already know from reading these posts, where there are four
writers in a room, there are will be four different methods of writing and
revising that writing. I, and probably the rest of the audience, listened,
hoping to find a little of this and a little of that we could put together to
find our own recipe for success.
“I
want you to talk about your pre-writing process,” Oliver said, turning to
Kraatz. “Do you make an outline? What if you get stuck? How do you go about the
plan?”
“I
don’t believe in astrology,” Kraatz said, putting on his deadpan face, “but I’m
a total Virgo, in that I plan everything.”
When
he first started writing novels, he “wrote a huge outline, went off track and
couldn’t get back to the plan,” he said. Lucky for him, he already had
experience with comic book writing that came to his rescue.
Since
then, he’s had four books published, three in his Cloak Society series of middle grade novels and the first book in
his new Space Runners series. That
schedule, “where I’m turning out a new book every nine months,” doesn’t permit
extensive outlining.
“Now,”
he said, “I do very short, conflict-driven outlines,” without trying initially
to figure out his books chapter by chapter.
“I’m
an accountant,” Faye said, mentioning her work before she became an
award-winning author. “I’m not going on a trip unless I know where I’m going. I
outlined on Excel spread sheets. And I didn’t do it just one time, but over and
over. . . I need to know the beginning and the end."
Despite
that, she knows her method isn’t going to work for all writers. “Get to know
yourself, because all your process is going to be based on your personality.”
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| Hepola (front), Merschel & Faye |
“One
of the biggest things for me, was giving myself permission to write – and to
write poorly,” was Merkel’s take. As a longtime editor at The Dallas Morning News, “I had a lot of experience with editing, a
lot of experience in turning bad writing into something not so bad,” which he
found he could make use of in editing his own writing – after the words were on
the page.
“Now,
Sarah,” Oliver said, “no pressure, but you’re speaking as a spokesperson for
all nonfiction writers.”
“I’m
such a perfectionist,” Hepola said, who believed her once-heavy drinking had
been a crutch that helped smooth her frustration with an imperfect world. “As a
sober person, I’ve had to develop a tolerance for imperfection.”
Despite
her extensive experience in writing and editing nonfiction, “It took me three
years to write Blackout, and two years
of that were spent trying to figure out how to do it.”
“So
you didn’t outline?” Oliver asked.
“No,”
Hepola said. Well, not exactly, that is. “I keep a notebook and write lists of
things, (but) I never look at them. I’m trying to capture some ongoing thing in
my brain.”
Once
those, ahem, highly imperfect drafts are on paper, how, Oliver asked, do the
panelists go about shaping them into publishable books?
“I
write a lot of series books,” Kraatz said, “so I avoid a lot of revision in the
first book. (Later) I start the writing day by revising what I wrote the day
before,” avoid the horror of facing a blank page the first thing in the
morning.
“People
have an idea that when they’ve got a draft, (the book) is done,” Hepola said. "The revision process is what really makes art.”
Despite
– or maybe because of – her own professional experience as an editor, “I
actually love being edited when I can get myself out of it. It’s important to
realize that everybody’s trying to get you to the best version of yourself. You
want the caring feedback of caring readers.”
Merkel
agreed. “The most valuable thing I get from newspaper (work) is that writing is
a collaborative effort.”
Want
more about the writing process? Check out the Writers League of Texas site for more, including online classes and podcasts. “Turning a Mess of
Pages into a Book” makes its final appearance next Thursday (October 19) at
Book People in Austin, after appearances in Houston and San Antonio as well as
this week’s in Dallas.
