I spend hours and days and weeks figuring a story out. Plan and plot and scheme. Fill out my charts. Figure out Goals and Motivation and Conflict. Delve into backstory. Bring my hero and heroine together and find out what brings them there and what keeps them apart. What will they learn from the events of the story and from each other. I’m an outliner so I figure out the story beats and how they will flow into each other. Which events belong in which part of the story. Is this a Trailer Moment? Tests and Allies? Turning point? Moment of Grace? Dark Moment?
These last few sentences represent a lot of work and thinking and planning. So I put together my story. Make it the very best I can be. Wring out the emotions and etc. Spend hours and days and weeks writing that story out. Choose the right words, the correct order of the sentences. Spend another bunch of hours and days and weeks editing. There. Done my best and off to my editor it goes…..
And back it comes with a thud.
Boring. Repetitive. Story drags. I like this but I don’t like that. The conflict needs to be upped. Back story needs to be downed. This is great, this needs work and this is a problem.
What? I did my very best. I struggled and angsted and chose and deliberated. And now I need to fix it? Oh the agony. The defeat! The stress!
I look at the editing points and think, I. Can’t. Do. This. I thought this story was complete. I spent hours and days and weeks working every angle. Wringing out every possibility from the story. Even worse I think, I am a failure as a writer. I’ve written 50 books and I still can’t get it right.
It’s disheartening no matter how many times I deal with edits. I can’t imagine what else I need to do to a story that I’ve already done so much work on. I can’t wring one more thing out of my brain. I can’t fix this story.
Then I call up my crit partner. I sigh and moan and she commiserates because she’s been there too. I go over the letter, over the story and we talk and brainstorm and think and talk and plan and take apart. We see what works, what doesn’t. We throw out crazy ideas and negate them but then latch onto a glimmer and tease it and pull it out and work it through.
And slowly, so slowly, ideas come and things don’t seem so dire and then, all of a sudden, the light comes through. And the thing I didn’t think I could do, the story I can’t see any different has taken on another form. Has moved into another direction and has come together better.
I don’t like these moments. I don’t like feeling like I’ve let my editor down. Because I haven’t. She has taken my work, then done her job. Looked it at from her differing 
perspective, found what’s missing and passed it onto me. She’s my partner and our project, together, is this book. And each time I think I can’t do it, I can. I get help and things get figured out and every time I go through these moments that I think I can’t….I do and I always learn something.
So when you see those books sitting on a bookshelf or in a store, I just want to remind you that they didn’t come there completely formed. They didn’t magically flow out of a writer’s head and onto the paper and then into a book. There were many processes involved, many thoughts used and discarded, edits and changes and nurturing along the way. If you’re working on a story now and were told it doesn’t work and you think it can’t be changed….it can. It always can. And when you do the work, it will be better.
If you want to find out more about my books, none of which came completely formed into the world, all of whom were agonized over and done and re-done, go to my website, www.carolyneaarsen.com.
For now, I want to put a plug in for my latest book, Courting the Cowboy out already, a book that went through it’s own processes and changes.
Meeting the Cowboy’s Family
Looking for inspiration, artist Ella Langton rents a cabin in the isolated Porcupine Hills of Alberta. She didn’t count on having neighbors, but rancher Cord Walsh and his three children are just a stone’s throw away. Still healing from a tragic accident, Ella has no plans of reaching out, but she’s having a hard time keeping them out of her yard…and her thoughts. And when little Suzy ropes Ella into helping her with an art project, she can’t help her growing feelings for the girl’s rugged daddy. With three persistent children, Cord and Ella may find their fenced-off hearts opening up sooner than they thought!
Click on the book cover to purchase.
Carolyne Aarsen, originally a city girl, was transplanted to the country when she married her dear husband Richard. While raising four children, foster children, and various animals Carolyne’s résumé gained some unique entries. Growing a garden, sewing blue jeans, baking, pickling and preserving. She learned how to handle cows, drive tractors, snow machines, ride a horse, and train a colt. Somewhere in all this she learned to write. Her first novel sold in 1997 and since then has sold almost fifty novels to three different publishers. Her stories show a love of open spaces, the fellowship of her Christian community and the gift God has given us in Christ.
Thanks, it is always interesting learning more about the writing process- I read quickly and wait impatiently for the next book to be released, so this was a good reminder that authors’ need time, encouragement and prayers to get their books out.
I love the part about having a partner, working on it together and making something better- reminds me of life with God as our partner, allowing him to work on our lives, and make it better:)
Blessings:)
Thanks for sharing your writing journey. Life is a journey that doesn’t always go according to our plan. We need to remember to let go and let God make us better.
You nailed it, Carolyne! I could have written this myself…thank you.
For some reason, every story I expect this one will be different! This will be the one that doesn’t need such big fixes. Oops! Hasn’t happened yet, and I doubt it will ever happen.
I do feel a little better knowing the same happens to on the fiftieth book as the tenth. :)
I’m going through the same thing. I don’t have anyone with the time to really look at my manuscript and tell me the things that are weak, either. I love writing characters’ backstories, but I have to find a way to sprinkle them in without it being a long chunk of narrative that slows down the story.
For example, I have one scene where a mother of an adult son (on trial for murder) is giving her testimony in church. She’s giving out her and her two sons’ backstory in her speech but I’m just not sure about the scene because it’s about 3 pages of her giving her testimony! It’s very frustrating, and part of me wants to cut it, but it gives such a clear backstory on the characters of the mom and her two adult sons.
What a terrific post!! The highs and the lows!
Having a writing partner or two is vital for me, too! Thanks for sharing your heart and process, Carolyne!
When people tell me they read my book in a few hours I often groan, thinking of how many week me, my editor and copy editor spent on it. Never mind cover artist and people who ship it out!
Hey Renate, yes, we have many journey’s in our life and I do believe we need to let God guide is in all of them.
You’re welcome Jill. I figured any fellow writer would be able to commiserate!
Thanks Autumn. When people ask me why I keep writing for LI when I’ve done so many books for them I say it’s because I haven’t written the perfect LI yet. The one that I can truly be satisfied with. So I’ll keep working. I know it won’t happen on this earth, but at the same time I like to keep trying and striving.
Hey Julie, that’s the hard part about writing. We are, mostly, on our own in front of our computer wanting, yearning to give these characters their due. Let them tell their story. We know these characters better than anyone else does. Which is what makes it hard to be objective. As for your speech, my recommendation is to cut it down. See if you can’t work some of the backstory into after the speech. Maybe have people ask her questions about what she said and in her answers to them she could give out a bit more?? Just a suggestion.
Thanks Tina. Highs and lows is what it’s all about! And the highs make the lows easier to bear.
Other eyes are always good. We are way to close to our characters to see the story objectively.
I don’t plan or plot, but I’ve had to turn a story inside out, and I know that feeling of thinking you can’t do it.
I think no matter your method, there comes a time when you have to revisit it from another viewpoint. And no matter your method, if you’re a professional, you figure you’ve done your best work right off the bat.
Thank you for the comment, Carolyne!
I think my ‘testimony’ scene is too long. I like your suggestion of the woman talking with others after church, maybe over coffee, where she can share more of the backstory about her son in a dialogue with others– like her other son who is my main male character!
Also, I can paraphrase her speech ‘she talked of her frustration in raising her problem child and the judgment it brought’ etc.
Man, do I identify with this right now! I’m in the writing stage, and it is so hard going! I’m constantly second-guessing myself and thinking that maybe this book isn’t going to work or isn’t going to be that good and maybe I’m done. Thanks for the reminder and the encouragement to keep pressing on.
Thanks for sharing. Your comment about people reading your books so fast when it took you so long to write made me think of the times when I’ve made a complicated dessert and it disappears faster than the time I took to make it! :-)
Hey Sally, boy do I know about second guessing! I do it so often. But sometimes you just know a story works.
Hey Margaret, that is a great analogy. Or like Christmas dinner. All the thinking and planning and food prep and then boom, half an hour later it’s just a memory! At least my readers can re-read my books!