Jen's Writing Journey

After spending the entire weekend at the Willamette Writers Conference, I was reminded of Stephen King’s discussion of the spouse in On Writing. He said,

whenever I see a first novel dedicated to a wife (or a husband), I smile and think, There’s some one who knows. Writing is a lonely job. Having someone who believes in you makes a lot of difference. They don’t have to make speeches. Just believing is usually enough.

And so I offer this little bit of thanks to my husband. He has put up with me ignoring him and leaving him to play WOW or Madden night after night. He has let me sit at home weekend after weekend rather than going out a doing something fun because I have a deadline approaching. And he has leveled up WOW character after Wow character without me because I need to write rather than play video games with him. He has let DVDs languish until I have the time and energy to watch with him. And he has put up with me only half-heartedly watching our favorite TV shows with him because it’s really hard to see over my laptop. Sometimes I think he could sue my laptop for alienation of spousal affection.

Rather than getting mad, he lets me do my thing without bothering me. He sometimes even helps with the laundry and the dogs so I can focus.

What about you? Have you also neglected your partner because the muse was after you hot and heavy? Or because that deadline doesn’t care about the state of your relationship? Or have you found a great way to balance writing and your relationship?

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I am preparing to head off into the great wide world of conferences tomorrow.

I will be volunteering at the Willamette Writers Conference this weekend, and the volunteer orientation is tomorrow afternoon.

Volunteering is a pretty sweet deal. You receive tremendously discounted registration with breakfast and lunch (with the option of a vegetarian lunch–gotta love the Pacific northwest). I’ll learn a lot about what goes on at a writers conference. In addition, having a job in common with other attendees will give me a conversation piece that should help me get over my fear of talking to people I don’t know.

I will be taking the morning shift all three days, so I’ll be free to attend sessions after lunch each day.

Find out more about the conference here. And, if you’ll be there, too, let me know. Maybe we’ll run into each other!

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When I started working on my novel, I was following a very Stephen King approach to the story. I let it unfold in front of me as I wrote. I had flashes of future events, which I dutifully captured on whatever medium was handy. I enjoyed the discovery process, but I allowed myself to be led down more than a few dead ends and to be fooled into going back too much to “fix” what I had already written.

So I embarked on my most recent short story with an outline of the major plot points. It has helped me immeasurably to have a road map to follow. The details are still being revealed as I write, so I haven’t lost any of the excitement of writing by doing an outline. I’m not wasting my time going back to rewrite unnecessarily. And I’m able to quickly orient myself in the correct place in the story by looking at the outline, not by re-reading 20 or so pages of the story. The process of outlining was a lot of fun, too.

I went back and outlined the rest of my novel so that it would also benefit from some defined events/ideas as I work to complete the first draft.

I am now a convert to the world of outliners. How about you? Do you love a good story structure to follow, or do you find that your best writing comes from a blind discovery process?

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