| Writing
Books Series Surprises and Delights Click here to return to the Church Innovations web site. Last time, I wrote a short piece about my coming to Princeton to begin my writing leave, and how, after writing almost nothing for my children’s novel for three weeks, I was led through the first book, riding (not so much writing) the story, along with the characters. And, as I said last time, armed with this brilliant and quick process of completing the first book, I couldn’t wait to begin the second one. But I was in for a few surprises… I did not take for granted the delightful speed with which the first book finished itself. It was a good thing I didn’t, too, because the second book had no such great momentum. There were moments in it where wonderful things happened that surprised and delighted me, but it was more work and took more pushing and pulling to build it. The basic problem with this book was that I had wanted a quest or treasure hunt, but I wasn’t clever enough to invent one, not one that actually worked. I kept writing anyway, every day and every day, sometimes well and sometimes badly. Every morning I took one of three options: walk to the nearest bus stop (about _ mile) and catch a bus to CTI, walk directly to CTI (not quite three miles), or catch a ride with one of my lovely neighbors in Ross Stevenson Circle. I actually wrote best when I’d walked to work. It must have been something about the oxygen and the time to think. I would write until 3 or 4 or 5 PM, and then get home the same way I came. What happened in between the clunky episodes I was writing was the real story: the children were being followed, even chased, because of something that had happened in Book 1. I knew there was something amongst all of the clunkiness that would actually work, so I kept on. In the 18 days between two brief trips home in May (one trip to celebrate my husband’s birthday and the other to celebrate our daughter’s college commencement), the second book was completely drafted. I had 35 days left in my stay when I began the third book. I sketched out characters and settings on the chalkboard and went to work, intending to move the story to various locations where I could imagine the children having fun, sneaking off, getting stuck, and so on. I even started writing it that way and got quite a good way along. But, as in the second book, the third book’s plot was becoming way too complex. So, afraid of my heavy plan, I tore Book 3 back down to the first chapter or so and started over, just getting the children together into the new setting. In a very short time Lydia did something I would never have expected of her: she took something from one of the shady adult characters and got things moving right away. In the third book the children do the chasing instead of being chased. I was also beginning to see that, in the overarching, interconnected story across the four books, I would have to get to the very end of Book 4 before I would know precisely how to shape things in Books 2 and 3. That freed me quite a lot to write Book 3 right through to the end, knowing I would come back to it and lay into it various things the children would need later in Book 4. So 16 days after I’d started it, the third book was drafted. I had 19 days left in my time at Princeton, and two of them were bound to be consumed by cleaning, packing and traveling homeward. That left 17 for writing in my now accustomed way, getting to the office in the morning, writing until lunch, taking a break, coming back, and writing until I had a ride home or felt like walking three miles. I began Book 4 by getting the children into the new place and letting them go. But this time I knew several things had to come together, and some things had to happen before others, and some characters had to come in and go out of the story; I needed a pretty complete map. I wrote the first six or seven chapters following the map closely, all along intending that the most dangerous moment for the children would be forced upon them by the villain in the story. But the closer I got to that part of the book, the more I knew I could not get the villain to the place where he could cause the children’s difficulty. I am not speaking metaphorically here. Given the particular setting and given the characters in play at the moment, it was physically impossible for the villain to carry out the action that would cause the children to be in danger. In fact, the children had to choose the situation themselves, and for noble reasons, since they are the heroes of the books. And the thing is, they did. And what they did and how it worked remains for me the most astonishing part of writing these books. Pat Taylor Ellison, Ph.D., is the managing director of research for Church Innovations. |
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