Author: Twana Reeves Wilson

For me, 5AM is my creative refuge from the chaos of mental input that can be the rest of my day.

In March of 2014, I suffered a brain bleed while at work. Two months later in May of 2014, I suffered a second stroke following an angiogram, but this time it was a blockage. I was subsequently diagnosed with a cognitive processing delay. As a result, I forget things. Sometimes immediately. I get distracted easily. I get up to go downstairs, see that there are dishes in the sink, clean the ENTIRE kitchen plus takeout the trash, water the plants, choose new wallpaper, and then go back upstairs without ever retrieving the load of dried laundry I set out to get in the first place. My mind is always racing. There are always a couple handfuls of thoughts grappling for distinction. On more than one occasion, I’ve found myself at traffic lights and couldn’t remember where I was going once they turned green because I was off on some mental tangent.

Sometimes, when there are too many things going on, I have trouble sorting them out. Like too many people trying to talk to me at one time. My brain can no longer sort the voices and focus on just one. It hears them all at the same time, and it’s too much.

So at 5AM, when everything that would serve as a distraction is still on pause from the overnight, I can think and let my mind wander with clarity. My characters, my stories, my ideas – they all come to life. I can follow long trains of detailed thought into story lines and logic. Sometimes, I even come up with some majorly fantastic stuff! However, holding on to that fantastic stuff can be like chasing bouncing marbles around in a funnel.

That being said, until some other member of my brain trust volunteers to take minutes, the struggle to get the ideas from here to there will continue to be real.

I’m learning to spit it out. I think…

Actually, I may have already been doing it. My writer friends say, “Just get it down,” when really, I think I already have it down and what I’m really doing is refining and/or editing.

When I have an idea, sometimes it’s pretty involved and writing it down can get pretty lengthy. As I’m referring back to my “notes,” in some places I see where I’ve written a page and a half of what might be synopsis. Wouldn’t that be considered spitting it out? I’m writing the story down. It just doesn’t have all the details. So then, when I go back to fill in the particulars, isn’t that refining?

Hmm…

Maybe “spitting it out” is open to interpretation. In that case, I’ll keep on keeping on.

Sometimes I wish I was a pantser. I have peers who can sit down and make it up. They can spit it out as it flows. They can Stephen King it all the way to the end.

Unfortunately, I’m a plotter. It could have something to do with my control issues. I like to think ahead. I like to know what’s coming. Forewarned is forearmed. I don’t want to be surprised at something that arises in my character’s arc unless I decide to make a hard left on my way from point A to point B. That being said, I do tend make some of it up as I go, but even that is improvising on my way to the predesignated landing place. Inspiration make strike, but it’s still filling in the gaps toward the next plot point.

I need to first have a destination, and then figure out how I’m going to arrive. I need to know where the party is, and then figure out how I’m getting there. I can’t sit at the keyboard with “no particular place to go.” That’s a setup for mindless web surfing or a Candy/Soda/Jelly Crush binge.

Maybe the plotting really isn’t unfortunate, though. It makes my logic more concrete. It keeps me accountable for the development and actions of my characters. It helps me maintain a solid cause/effect relationship. It satisfies my control issues. And it keeps me from rambling on for several literary millennia. Not mentioning anybody who does, though…

Richard B. Riddick. My favorite hero archetype. The dictionary entry for what defines credible and incredible in a badass character. Until…I just finished watching Riddick, the third installment in the trilogy of movies about Richard B. Riddick.

It. Was. GAR-BAGE! I mean, I can’t even…

As much as I had anticipated seeing it, and as long as it took me to get around to it, my disappointment trumps my anticipation. It was so bad, I couldn’t sit through it a second time to decide what exactly I wanted to say about it in my blog post. it. I’ve seen The Chronicles of Riddick countless times, and this follow-up undermines into the realm of stupidity everything I enjoyed about installment two of the live action series.

That whooshing sound you hear is my sigh of relief that it’s over.

So, I finally find a few minutes to write. I’m sitting there with my tidy and completely outlined story. I put my fingers in position on the keys to type, and I wait. Where are the words? I know exactly what I want to convey, but for whatever current reason, the words escape me. Actually, I think they’re avoiding me. It’s an eloquency conspiracy to keep me in my mundane, stomach filling, bill paying day job.

Wait, I know… I’ll go back to my notes. I’ll re-read some of the other things that I’ve written. I’ll look over the scribbles in the margins and my colored notes to self. Hey! There’s something I didn’t remember writing to myself!

Ohhh, it’s coming now! I feel the creative juices bubbling! Wait…

The bedroom door bursts open. It’s my 3 year old daughter all sleepy-eyed and not-quite-right yet. “MOM! I want juice. And fishsticks. Juice and fishsticks.”

Duty calls…

Again, I’m relatively new to the business end of writing. The website, blogging, twittering, etc. I have recently found Jane Friedman (who appeared to be quoting Kathleen Ortiz – but I might be wrong in my fledging interpretation) on Twitter, who caught my eye with a piece of advice in a tweet that rung especially true for me.

“Never say: ‘Let me start w/backstory.’ Your story doesn’t start in the right place if that’s necessary.” (@JaneFriedman/Twitter/July 29) My original story is somewhere in the middle now, or maybe even closer to the end, because I ran into the problem of having to explain.

While reading a profoundly successful author’s 12 book fantasy series, I found myself PAINFULLY trudging through PAGES of monologue, through which the main character would explain the whys and whatfors. This particular author’s first book was 848 pages in length. About half an inch through it in paperback, I put it down for an entire year before I picked it up again to finish. His writing style was wordy and long and drawn out and took waaaaay too long to get to a point. While very detailed in his world and characters, he was much too preachy, AND, after 12 ginournous volumes/episodes, the ending was lame. For me, it was the kind of letdown you expect from the silver screen ala True Lies when it started getting silly and unrealistic on the big screen adventure scale after a perfectly entertaining spy movie. (Sorry, I digressed there…) Personally, I think he could have subscribed to the “less is more” philosophy in his attempts to paint a visual picture. Maybe one or the other – monologue or wordy descriptions, but not both.

Have you ever actually read The Lord of the Rings? I haven’t. But I have attempted to listen to it on audiobook. IT…WAS…PAINFUL! I never even made it to the Prancing Pony! On the other hand, I own and have watched all three movies in the series multiple times. While I have the utmost respect for Tolkien as a master and for his artistry, I am eternally grateful that someone had the foresight to give us an abridged movie version that still turned out to be a series of three LONG chapters!

At any rate, I struggled with exactly how to give my readers the needed filler detail so that my story made sense without being longwinded. Flashbacks? Nah, could be confusing. Long first chapter and then flash forward? Nah…still possibly confusing and cumbersone to pull off. An opening to every chapter with some “other story?” Nope…

SO, after much blog crawling and internet scouring, my answer was NOT to prologue, and instead create a front end story which blossomed into a novella, quite possibly on its way to a novel. Hence, First Witch. My storyline had gotten so broad with the need for the reader to understand, that I was able to create a whole new episode, giving life to my backstory while providing my readers the whys and whatfors relevant to later storylines.

The need to explain, I believe, is the perfect fodder for more written material. Anytime you find yourself in a position where you need to explain, consider more substantial story instead of more monologue…