Author: Elizabeth Spann Craig

I was at my primary care doctor’s office on Wednesday for a check-up and blood-work. (Fun-fun!) Anticipating the long wait I usually have at the doctor, I came armed with not just a notebook and pencil, but a book I was using for research, my laptop, and some ideas I had for plot development. Yes, I was multi-tasking…again.

Since I’d kept myself busy, I’m not exactly sure how much time passed while I waited in the exam room. I’m guessing it was a lot of time because the doctor hurried in with breathless apologies for her tardiness.

Once she saw that I was completely buried in papers and a computer and not concerned at all with the length of the wait (and happy to put off the blood work for a few extra minutes), she relaxed. “I just had the most fascinating case,” she explained.

Without telling me about the case, she said, “I’d never seen anything like it. So I went into my office for just a couple of minutes to research it. And the research was so interesting that I kept on doing it and lost track of time!”

Her eyes glowed as she talked, and she seemed really excited. “We just live for that kind of stuff, as doctors. If our days were full of sore throats and ear infections, we’d waste away! Our days would be crammed with tedious paperwork and rote prescription writing.” Then, of course, she proceeded on with my very boring checkup. :)

I was reading another writer’s blog recently and one of the commenters seemed really dispirited.

The whole overwhelming reality of the publishing industry, the difficulties of getting an agent, then getting a publisher, then marketing a book…and after all that, the possibility of having the book do poorly and getting dropped by the publisher—it had gotten this writer dispirited enough to take a break from writing.

The doctor’s thoughts had made me think about intrinsic rewards. I’d really just assumed that in the medical profession, the financial compensation made any drudgery worthwhile…but my doctor was clearly taking an intellectual reward from the job. I’m sure, in that industry, there’s also the reward that comes from helping people.

With writing, I think, the rewards are harder to grasp. That’s why family members and friends sometimes don’t understand why we put up with all the stress—stress from querying, revisions, poor reviews, and marketing.

There really isn’t much of a financial reward for writing. Speaking as a mid-lister, the money is just a drop in the bucket.

So what makes it worthwhile?

I think, for most of us, it’s a creative gratification. For some of us, it’s a challenge to see if we can do it. Most of us feel really driven to write—driven enough to put up with all the stress that comes along with it.

I love it when I get the perfect idea for taking the story in a new direction. I love it when a character comes alive and walks and talks on its own. I love that thrill when I’ve finished a first draft. I even love that anxious excitement on release day when I’m half-sick with worrying over the release and half-full of pride.

What makes it all worth it to you? And how often do you have to remind yourself why you’re doing this?

The last few weeks have been really crazy for me. I’ve been working on a November deadline, working on revisions for a separate project, volunteering for Scouts, and trying to make sure the kids have everything they need for the start of school.

And, actually, I’ve gotten a lot done. If I run an errand, I can I hurry in the house from the grocery store, put everything away, and immediately plop down and start writing—that’s just out of necessity, since I don’t have any time to waste on a transition from the boring to the creative.

Unfortunately, my multi-tasking has increased a lot lately. And I know from experience that sometimes multi-tasking means that I get really strung out in the process.

Yes, I can catch up on emails on my phone while I sit in the carpool line in front of the elementary school. And I can make every minute count for the rest of my day, too—I’m very good at reviewing my daughter’s multiplication tables with her while cooking supper, while also making the kids’ lunches for the next day.

But what I miss, sometimes, is the daydreaming. I still fit in some story planning while doing things like getting ready for my day, but I miss the empty pockets of time where I could really let my mind wander.

When else can we really generate new ideas? If we’re distracted to death because there are emails and Twitter and Facebook notifications popping up, if the phone doesn’t stop ringing, etc.—then how do we have space in our head for fostering creativity?

That’s something I’m trying to work out now. But it’s been so nutty lately that if I have a meditative moment, I’m likely to fall asleep!

Do you make time for mental downtime? Do you find that’s when you get your best creative ideas—or is your brain too fried by the time you finally get a quiet moment that it just shuts down (which is where I am now)?

Monday afternoon seemed specially engineered to make me crazy.

It started early in the afternoon. And we’ll substitute “snap” for all the bad words that I thought during those six hours.

I was in the kitchen when I looked at the clock. What?? That couldn’t be the time! I was supposed to be volunteering for the Girl Scouts at the festival booth…now. Snap!

Daughter was still in pajamas. Snap! And she hadn’t eaten anything. I was wandering around in glasses and no makeup. I put my contacts in, grabbed water bottles, gave up on makeup, and made some food for my daughter—for the car.

We ran out the door and headed to the festival (which is huge for Matthews—over 200,000 people go.) There was no place to park. Snap! I parked illegally and said a quick prayer.

We ran the blocks to the festival. It was very humid.

We started supervising the go-fish/plinko booth, taking tickets, handing out small prizes, and explaining to small children how the games work. I saw the other Girl Scout mom that I was volunteering with. “Hi,” I say, holding out my hand, “I’m Elizabeth Craig.” “Oh,” she said, smiling, “we actually know each other, don’t we? Through our sons?” Snap! My rotten memory strikes again.

It was VERY hot and there’s no air circulation under the tent. “Mama,” said my daughter, “where are our waters?”

Snap! Left them at home after I pulled them out.

I felt, of course, horrible. And a couple of hours later, my daughter was very sweaty and thirsty. As a reward, as we finished our volunteer shift, I told her we could buy drinks, ice cream, whatever.

The merchants at the fair only took cash. I’d only brought a debit card. Snap! I found an ATM. $4 fee for withdrawal, then the bank would assess a $3 fee. I was really starting to mutter under my breath.

We got the (now very expensive) ice cream and found a tent to sit under and a couple of chairs together.) Unfortunately, we were sitting right next to a woman who was talking on her cell phone very loudly about gross medical stuff involving staples. While we were eating the very expensive, high-fee ice cream. I leveled a baleful look at her and she seemed to think I was sympathizing with her about the medical stuff, so she smiled at me.

I was starting to feel like a character in my own book. My stories have conflicts on different levels—the big conflicts (including murder, medium-sized conflicts (between characters or between my sleuth and characters)…and, also, some small conflicts. These mini-conflicts are designed to raise my protagonist’s blood pressure and possibly make her do things she wouldn’t ordinarily do, and move the plot in a different direction.

Do you push your characters’ buttons?

Over a week ago, I wrote a post about figuring out what your specialty is as a writer—realizing what you’re especially good at writing and then writing it.

But I think it’s also helpful to be able to look at our story with enough objectivity to determine the strengths within a manuscript, too. That requires us to narrow it down even a little farther than our general strengths.

I know that my characters are my strengths.

But which characters are strongest?

Early in a manuscript, I look really hard at my characters and seen which are stronger than others…just naturally stronger. They seem to always get the best and funniest lines. They steal the spotlight.

I’ve upgraded some characters to more important roles. Once I even took a less important character and turned her into my protagonist because she was stronger than my protagonist—and I “got” the character. I nailed the character automatically—the kind of person she was, her sense of humor, what she liked doing in her spare time….I knew it all intuitively.

My latest project, I even brought a character back from the dead.

She was supposed to be my second victim in the mystery. But she hung on with tenacity to every scene. My editor loved her and heaped praise on her (not knowing from the short sample I’d sent that she was going to die later in the book. ) She wouldn’t die. And, honestly, she was such a strong character that she didn’t need to die—she was going to be a selling point for readers to read the next book in the series. Why would I kill her—for shock value? And then I’m stuck—a charismatic character would be dead and she could have helped me out with future plots.

So she was only assaulted, not murdered. And I gave her more lines and built a subplot for her, too.

The same holds true for other manuscript strengths. Is the romantic element in your book making the project strong? Increase it. Is the page-turning suspense the strongest element in your manuscript? Increase the suspense. Is conflict driving your plot? Add more conflict.

What’s making your manuscript strong?

When I’m working on a book, I spend a lot of time in the story’s world.

I hang out with my imaginary friends. I think about what they’d do in different situations. I wonder what makes them tick.

I frequently think about my storyline and characters’ personalities as I drive the car around town, brush my teeth, or run the vacuum.

To come up with a good story, we do have to immerse ourselves in it. It takes a lot of time to think about all the different aspects that make up the book.

But then, even though we’ve put a lot of thought and emotion into the story, the time comes to back off a little bit and look at it objectively.

I’ve been working on revisions on one manuscript that have been fairly extensive, compared to the revisions I usually get. I’ve gotten requests for changes for both the manuscript’s editor and my agent…different ones, too—for different issues.

That’s where the distance comes in. My agent had a real problem with one of the minor characters in the story, but was trying to work with me to fix the issues. “I just don’t understand why he’s doing this. How about if we have him do this because ______. Then you can have his ex-wife to do _______ instead, then the woman he was seeing could do _______.”

I looked at her suggestions and the domino effect of changes that the motivation change would make. Then I thought about the character himself. Was he pulling his weight? Was he doing his job in making the story work? Clearly he wasn’t.

“How about if I just get rid of the character?” I asked Ellen. “If he’s making problems, then I’ll just ax him.” Not literally, though—I already had my victim. :)

That worked out just fine and I went through the book purging out all references to the character. But then both my editor and agent had a problem with a separate character in the story. And they wanted another suspect more deeply fleshed out.

So I looked at the story again. Counting my characters, I had a pretty good-sized cast. “How about if I fuse this character into the one who needs more development? I could tinker with the personality a little when merging the two characters into one. Then I’ll have a pared down cast, I’ll have gotten rid of the unlikeable characteristics of one of the characters, and I’ll have more deeply developed the one that needed work.”

It worked out pretty well as a solution.

It wasn’t always this easy to make really radical changes to a book for me. I think now, though, I subscribe to the idea that it really does take a village to write a book. It’s a collaborative effort and the more collaboration that I accept, the stronger the story gets.

I think, now, that once I hit “send” on that email with the story as an attachment, that I’ve lost some of my attachment to the book. It’s like the child that leaves the nest—you still love the child, but it’s time to back off and let the child grow up.

It helps that my editor and agent care just as much about the book as I do—they need for it to be successful, too.

How do you pull away from a project enough to get some objectivity?