I do not have OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder)! <== Denial – not just a river in Egypt.

First draft: I had a girlfriend in college who, I’m sure, had OCD because[.] [S]she had all the symptoms this shrink dude listed on the board during a his lecture.

Second draft: I had a girlfriend who, I’m sure, had OCD. She had all the symptoms that a psychologist listed during a lecture.

Third draft: I once had a girlfriend who had OCD for sure. When we were dating I happened to hear a psychologist lecturing on [obsessive compulsive disorder.]the subject, and Hhe listed a half a dozen quirks that this girls carried around with her had. It was something of a revelation to me.

At this point I realize I’m focusing on words and not on story, so I get frustrated and something like this happens…

Fourth draft: I once had this girlfriend who drove me abso-blumin-lutely crazy with her antics. She couldn’t make decisions, she talked like as if she‘d could never [were incapable of] hurt[ing] a flea – always in this sing-songy voice that I was dumb enough to believe[d] – until the first time she [finally] exploded at me. After that, we fought every day over the smallest, stupidest little things. I‘d had never met anyone like her [in my life], but when this [a] psychiatrist came [happened to come] through and lectured our [my] class on OCD, I finally [immediately] understood [her] this girl. She had it all. E [e]very symptom on his the doc’s list[.] [It] sounded like as if he’d also dated her the girl.

See! Not a touch of OCD.

The big problem, even after I realize I’m getting bogged down with word editing and I’ve made a brand new (fourth) attempt to focus on the story rather than the words, I still wind up “word editing.”

Worshiping the words and neglecting the ideas, the content, the way the thing feels, the kind of person that seems to have written it (the voice)… this is my greatest sin as a fiction writer.

When my wife reads my stories, she says that she has to keep going back and re-reading awkward sentences.  OK, she doesn’t say “awkward,” but we know.

My daughter says, “You know how you always say that good lyrics shouldn’t be too concrete?  Well, it seems like you’re sort of writing that way in your stories… like you’re writing lyrics.”

So I write myself notes saying, “DO NOT EDIT TODAY!!!”

And I write posts like this one, saying that you might want to learn from my bad example.

I really try.

Recently I was listening to an interview of some elite professor talking about literary fiction. He said, ahem, “one can teach a person anything” about writing fiction except “the voice.”  He said that writers are born with or without “the voice.”

I’m rolling my eyes.

“The voice” is the holy grail of writers who give up on themselves and the hard work of writing a meaningful page-turner.

But after sounding like a typical university elitist for most of the interview, the professor said something interesting. Basically this…

“As great writers develop, their writing style becomes simpler, less flowery, less filled with fancy verbs and clever twists of phrase.”

To me, this implies less self-consciousness. These great writers became more comfortable with themselves as their writing progressed from great to greater.

So why not start your writing career with simple sentences that don’t draw attention to themselves? Why not use verbs that come naturally to you? Why not give clever twists of phrase the same meager attention they get in your normal conversation?

I can imagine that if my own fiction were to improve, it would become easier to read because the sentence structure would be more natural, less self-conscious, less wanna-be clever and even further from poetic.

My stories would not be “well written” in the judgement of elites. But I’d be fine with that if only my wife and daughter sat spellbound from start to finish.

…

M. Talmage Moorehead

Some minds kick out fresh ideas like machines. Some struggle for one thing new, but when it comes, it’s magic.

When I dream up something that excites me, I’m always away from my computer, usually in my car. And I usually forget what it was.

I tell myself to carry a pen and paper everywhere, or a recorder, or a cell phone to text myself.

But none of that works in a car.

So I collect my second best stuff in Google Docs and use it in new stories or any time I’m stuck.

I’m naturally disorganized, but I’ve spent my whole life fighting it, so now some things look pretty decent. On the outside.

So I’m trying to use an outline now.

I’ll organize a plot, but my characters don’t seem to like having their freedom taken away. They’ll follow my suggestions for a while, but always veer, usually way off track.

When I let them go too far, the story’s conflict dies because they don’t like fights. They want to chat about ideas.

Letting them go free improves their personalities. But I have to grab them by the ears and yank them back into the fray or it’s all too boring to read.

Having my second best ideas on hand opens many possibilities that wouldn’t occur to me if I didn’t have them.

Walking generates good things, too.

I read a book on writing years ago in which the famous fiction author said that her best ideas came when she was out walking slowly in the fresh air. She had walked too fast for years, thinking it was the exercise that she needed. But it wasn’t until she began walking slowly that new ideas flowed.

Slowing down is magic.

I know an amazing pianist with the fastest fingers I’ve seen. She teaches students to “play it in slow,” when they practice. This builds the neural connections faster and better than anything else. Playing slowly, pushing each key to the bottom with perfect technique, burns it in so you play with excellent technique up to speed. Not only do you play better, you play faster.

A lightening-fast jazz guitarist told me, “The slower you practice scales, the faster you’ll become.”

Irony.

I’m always forgetting to deliberately put irony into my story, but it adds a lot. And it’s a big factor in life…

For instance, “less is more” seems to be a fundamental principle of copy-editing: Fewer words carry more power per square inch.

And “slow is fast” when you’re searching for plots, settings and characters. You’ll save time and gain quality if you slowly consider all the options before you write a word.

“Boring is exciting” when you’re creating scenes: If I write quickly through a scene, thinking only about plot and dialogue, slapping a wall here and a door there, it’s not a boring process for me, but it doesn’t cast the spell that excites readers.

Some writers easily bring objects into clarity with few words. I work at this because the less you have to say to describe something, the more clearly the reader will see it. Another irony, I guess: “Briefer descriptions bring sharper imagery.”

This irony sometimes makes me select objects based largely on how efficiently I can describe them.

I walk the scene and list things that add to the mood. Then sort of rank them as to how efficiently I can describe them.

A brick fireplace, for instance, brings a clear image. Mundane, but pow, two words and there it is.

A golden statue of a duck-billed platypus drinking a martini may fit your story, but what’s the value to work ratio? (The emotional value of the image weighed against the work of reading its description.)

Value is complex and subjective. But a valuable image may be able to foreshadow or make back-story feel organic. If so, maybe the platypus is worth the extra words.

An unavoidable story culmination may be more satisfying than a novel, unexpected one. Too much surprise can ruin the surprise. No one writing a mystery novel would introduce the killer a paragraph before the crime is solved.

If the final scenes don’t flow from the buildup, the reader has to work to suspend disbelief. If there’s too much complexity at the end, the work of comprehension crowds out the emotion.

When I write, I latch on to things that ultimately can’t be explained. Their novelty seduces me. I tell myself I can explain this batch of critters later, I’m keeping them, they’re so bizarre!

When later rolls around, I wish I’d stuck to the sanity of plot. I struggle at scenarios to explain the inexplicable. A rank waste of time.

Perhaps the irony is that a single somewhat unlikely object is more interesting than a room-full of shocking impossibilities.

And a simple explanation is better than an ingenious contrivance.

***

M. Talmage Moorehead