Writing Mostly Badly

I dream and plot and research a lot, but not so much the actual writing. Everyone knows it's because I have a crazy-busy life, even without Burning Man, with a semi-crumbling house and its old pool, helping a woman building up her arts career, helping her manage her several children, dealing with old cars, working a job, going to social whatses (plural of whatsis, right?), general dicking around on my phone, etc. No, I don't know where the time goes, but go it does.

More and more though I've been recognizing that a lot of what I do -- blogging and journaling fall into this category, along with social media -- doesn't really have a lot of value, it's just a bunch of habits. Comforting habits, surely. Routines that keep me sane, I might wish to claim. But useful? No. (I could argue they all are, but let's keep this simple.)

Sunya and I met three and a half years ago and over three years ago she described her understanding of the sorts of ruts that we can wear into our brains and how we can break old habits and start new ones just by doing the new thing until it becomes ingrained and the old thing sort of fades away. I believed her then and I believe her now. Hard to change, though. Boy howdy.

So, writing. I read a lot of non-fiction because it sparks my imagination and fills me in on a lot of detail and if pressed I can call it research. When I read good fiction, I get inspired to write some too. I don't, because I'm busy reading. But I get all excited about making time to write. Get MY inner world out onto the page. Then, when I read bad fiction?

Er.

The other day I concocted this story idea. Situation, more like. Actual plot hasn't formed yet. There are a couple of very famous characters in history who happened to live in San Francisco in the 1850s. One a businessman, the other a banker. I thought, wow, no one's written a novel about their possible friendship (or mutual hatred, whatever works). They're both fascinating men, well known by the modern crowd, famous for radically different reasons. This idea can't lose! I ramped up my research. Found a snippet in an obscure internet corner that actually mentioned them interacting directly. Exciting! Found a couple little-known novels written about the businessman. Intriguing! So I bought one (Kindle, couple bucks).

Well.

First off, it turned out that not only these two but a few other well-known historical characters of that time and place are brought together in this novel. So much for originality of idea. But it's all in the execution, right? Famous people are fictionalized all the time! Mine will be totally different! And what's one more? Or, in my case, one more when there only exists two others anyway. So I decided not to let that dissuade me.

Secondly, though. I'm reading away on my Kindle app and realizing: I'm bored. The writing is just, well, I dunno. It's competent. It's obviously been well edited. The pacing is even. The people are people. The historical information is accurate, such as it is. I'm just not grabbed. I'm curious to know what happens next, but I don't really care. It's no G.R.R. Martin. He could have made a total hack of his books, but he didn't. Why not? Because he's an excellent writer. Every paragraph, every sentence drips with his passion for telling a story well. This other one, this one-off novel I'm reading?

Meh. It reads like a book written by a guy who had an idea and the discipline to write it but no really discernible chops as a writer. Which you might think would be encouraging, because it reduces the competition for historical fiction about semi-well known people of my chosen time and place. But it's also oddly discouraging. I'm not excited about his story and suddenly, my own story, which runs roughly in parallel, isn't so exciting either.

This may be a well-known phenomenon with well-known solutions. It also may be a clue that I'm not a born novelist, that I just like imagining connections between things I read about in history books, and daydream of a post-corporate life making unexpected money as a creative type. Maybe I should aspire to write a history book instead. Maybe so, maybe so. But I have a solution anyway. There IS a plan. The plan is this.

One. Study up on these two guys. They've both been the subject of significant public interest, albeit in entirely different realms. No one ever thinks of one when they think of the other. Still, there is material enough, more than enough.

Two. Write my own biography of each up to the time in question. Stress what I find interesting. Make shit up that explains something otherwise not understood, or that adds texture without contradicting known facts.

Three, a natural outgrowth of Two. Get to know these gentleman and fictionalize bits and pieces of their lives so that they each become narrative forces in my world. Concentrate on their ups and downs in San Francisco in the time period of interest (roughly 1853 - 1857). Include other known people at will -- there are shitloads of them, believe me. Create an arc for each life during those years, their successes, failures, desires, annoyances, habits, adventures, associations, friendships, romances (that one not likely, actually), political opinions, etc.

Four. These arcs will not be able to avoid intersecting. By now I will have two somewhat fleshed-out characters who can be thrown together somehow or other, other elements thrown in as needed, and bam. Off we go.

This is probably a big huge du-uh to anyone who's actually bent an oar writing their first book, but cut me some slack. I'm trying to talk myself up. Break it down. Give myself a series of tasks, with the added brilliance that parts two, three, and four are writing exercises. Should I get so far, I will be in the habit of writing rather than of bantering with curmudgeonly Scottish expats and journaling every other change of mood. Genius! And here I go blogging about it rather than doing it. Well, what would you? Look at the time! If I wasn't blogging, I'd be doing my job!