I've tried a variety of approaches - and this year's was not my best. Unfortunately, I worked my outline in detail beforehand, enough so that two days before the event I realized I wanted to give that story more thorough treatment.
So I switched horses onto something more or less off the top of my head, and ended up with a sprawling mess called Festschrift about Nietzsche's Overman as filtered through Lord Byron, with cannibalism and Pythagoras and teen sex and dentistry and mutation and the Great Flood... very animated, but lacking in a certain narrative coherence. I blame the dexies. An experiment. Lesson learned.
Of the five other novels, I would say my best approach was the following:
I started from an established myth form, one that was already tried and true (it was a classic Biblical story). No concerns about the basic structure, just my elaboration and spin. Then I sketched out my version of it for the outline, hitting on the key scenes I wanted to elaborate, and the theme I wanted to stress. I did some light character sketching, focusing specifically on speech patterns and the emotional notes of various character interactions. I selected a small number of setting locations (five) and wrote a list of ten words characteristic of each. That was it for outline - maybe three pages all told.
For the actual writing: I napped in the evening of the Friday before, and woke at about eleven to start at dead midnight; then I hammered away for the first twenty hours with occasional breaks for bathroom, to grab a fistful of food, to make more coffee, to review the outline, to pace and chain smoke and mumble to myself, etc. Food was kept simple and eaten with one hand while scrolling with the other. I slept for four hours, rose, worked for another twenty, slept eight, worked for another twenty, half of which was editorial.
I cued up 200 mp3s on random-repeat (Frank Black) with headphones to shut out street noise distractions. I did not communicate my material with family or friends even when I was breathlessly excited with a passage, and took only a short break when someone dropped by to see if I was alive - I find people will do this even if you tell them not to. You however, will be too wrapped in your book to communicate about whatever normal thing they wish to communicate about, and will either slide into a trance silence of furious contemplation, or begin thrusting your finger into the air in Archimedal fashion and explaining the brilliance of the word you chose for such-and-such a paragraph while they squint at you with fright. In short, you will be non-functional for the 72 hours, socially speaking.
The specifics of the text emerged in play, so to speak, and that's to be expected. I ended with about 210 pages after editing (double spaced 12 point Times New Roman) and was, by and large, happy with it.
I've used other methods, but that was the best in my opinion. They say you can't do charactization and plot effectively in the short span. I say bullshit. Tried-and-true story form; short reference outline focused on essential structure, character interaction, signature language and theme; massive attacks on the writing punctuated for minimal lengths of time by necessities; heroic amounts of caffeine and nicotine; a comfy chair. |
