I listen to a lot of audio books. Most are read by professional readers. Every now and then a reader stumbles and emphasizes the wrong word. It’s tempting to attribute such errors to the reader, but I’ve notice that when a professional reader stumbles, there’s likely a stumbling block in the writing.

Read out loud this passage from Scott Smith’s The Ruins:

Amy kept whispering the same thing. “It’s time.”

Stacy struggled first to grasp the words, then their meaning.

Did you emphasize any of the words, even slightly?

In the audio version of the book, Patrick Wilson, the reader, emphasized the word grasp. “Stacy struggled first to grasp the words, then their meaning.” Clearly this is the wrong emphasis. Better emphasis would be, “Stacy struggled first to grasp the words, then their meaning.”

What makes Wilson stumble? My guess is this: The sentence promises a parallel structure, and then fails to deliver.

The word first announces a sequence: First X, then Y. Readers expect the two parts of the sequence—the X and the Y—to have a parallel grammatical structure. For the structure to be parallel, the two items, whether words or phrases, must fulfill the same grammatical function. If one is a verb phrase, the other will be a verb phrase. If one is a noun phrase, the other will be a noun phrase.

Here’s a quick-and-dirty test for whether a structure is parallel:  Extract the X and Y from the sentence and put them in a list. Then ask yourself whether the items have the same grammatical function.

The X and Y from Smith’s sentence are:

• to grasp the words
• their meaning

Do these phrases have the same grammatical function? No. To grasp the words is a verb phrase. Their meaning is a noun phrase. The structure is not parallel.

If you aren’t sure of the grammatical functions of the items, try this. Create a new sentence by swapping the X and the Y and read again. The new sentence may not make sense semantically (after all, we’ve swapped the order of the sequence), but if it works grammatically, the structure is parallel. If the new sentence doesn’t flow grammatically, the structure is not parallel.

Let’s swap Smith’s X and Y: Stacy struggled first their meaning, then to grasp the words. That doesn’t flow grammatically, so the original structure was not parallel.

How could we fix this? One way is to add parts to the smaller phrase until it matches the structure of the longer phrase: Stacy struggled first to grasp the words, then to grasp their meaning. Now the phrases are both verb phrases, and the structure is parallel.

But there’s another piece to the puzzle of how Wilson stumbled. First is one of those words that invites us to emphasize the next meaningful word. The next meaningful word in Smith’s sentence is grasp, so we emphasize that. Even in our revised sentence, grasp is the wrong word to emphasize.

Another way to repair the sentence is to move parts out of the larger phrase, until it matches the structure of the shorter phrase: Stacy struggled to grasp first the words, then their meaning. This seems overly formal to me, but the structure is parallel, and first invites us to place the emphasis in the right place: first words, then meaning.

Listen as award-winning science fiction writer Robert J. Sawyer pitches his upcoming book Rollback to distributors.

Terry Brooks advises novelists to write an outline before writing a novel. He does acknowledge that many successful writers write without outlines. Then he says:

But if you check what most writers who don’t outline have to say about their work habits, you will discover that they end up doing several drafts of a book and any number of rewrites afterwards.I don’t. I do one draft, one rewrite, and I’m done.

…

By outlining, you are doing the hard work in the beginning–the thinking, the organizing, the weighing and considering, and the making of choices. By doing it early, you can save yourself a lot of time and effort at the end. [Sometimes the Magic Works, p 95]

I don’t think Brooks’s advice fits for me.

I wrote my first novel in November as a NaNoWriMo project. In the month before, in October, I prepared by writing a partial outline. I sketched out 20 or so scenes. Most of these were action scenes, in which a viewpoint character tries to accomplish some goal, bumps into a conflict or obstacle, and (usually) ends up worse off at the end of the scene. For those scenes, I noted the goal, the conflict, and the outcome.

A handful of scenes were reaction scenes, in which the viewpoint character reacts to a setback, ponders the available options (usually all bad), and makes a decision about what to do next. For each reaction scene I noted the reactions, the options, and the decision.

Those 20 scenes seemed like a great beginning for the novel–they left the main character on the edge of his sanity. But I didn’t know what would happen next. I put in a lot of thought, but couldn’t think of anything that satisfied me. I had a vague idea or two about the ending, but I didn’t know what would happen in the middle of the story. I ended October with a detailed outline for the beginning, an idea or two about the ending, and no clue about the middle.

On November 1st I began writing the scenes I had sketched in the outline. On most days the words flowed well. Other days the words came slowly. But they always came.

Somewhere around the 14th, I ran out of outline. But I kept writing, and the ideas kept coming. On most days the words flowed well. Other days the words came slowly. But they always came.

By the end of November, I had written about 18,000 words according to the outline, and another 34,000 words without an outline. Mostly my process stayed the same, outline or not. And the quality of my writing stayed the same. And my hopes and worries about my writing stayed the same.

So it isn’t clear to me that the outline helped, or that it saved me any time.

My first draft, at 52,000 words, is just barely a novel. It’s certainly not a good novel. It is sketchy. It’s full of holes. The characters do a few things with little motivation. In a few places, I made characters do downright stupid things in service to the ending I had cooked up ahead of time. I have a lot of work to do to flesh out the story and make it satisfying. In a sense, my first draft is not much more than a detailed outline.

It’s possible that this first draft gave me no better understanding of the plot–the main events of the story–than I would have gotten from completing the outline. Even if that’s true, I’d still prefer the writing, for two reasons. First, as much as I enjoyed outlining, I enjoyed the writing far more. That counts for a lot.

Even more important is this: As I was outlining–thinking about the story–I had a general sense of who the main characters were. But I didn’t have an experience of the characters no matter how much I thought about them. It was only by writing them into trouble, and writing their reactions to the trouble, that I could decide who I wanted them to be.

As I outlined, I thought about the plot and the characters. As I wrote, I experienced the the characters. Experiencing was better than thinking, in the same way that eating a strawberry is better than thinking about eating a strawberry.

A year after running away from home, twelve-year-old Jeremy Crowther returns to resume the life he left behind. But when nobody recognizes him—not his mother, not his brother and sister, not his best friend—when even the physical evidence denies that he ever existed, what life is left for Jeremy to return to?

That’s the premise behind Jeremy Comes Home, my first National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) project. The goal is to write a 50,000 word novel in November.

I start writing tonight at midnight, along with a mixed metaphor of other enthusiastic NaNoers at a cafe in Dixon, CA.

I got the germ for this novel while sitting in a theater in Berkeley on October 2. Some writer friends and I were listening to Neil Gaiman read some of his short stories from Fragile Things. One of the stories, “October in the Chair,” was partly about a boy who had run away from home. As I listened, I had the thought, what if he went home and his mother didn’t know who he was? And a plot was born.

[Update November 1] You can track my progress on the NaNoWriMo progress sheet. Yes, my user ID on the NaNoWriMo web site is Bleen Booley.

50,074!!!

My progress on DaNoFiWriMo through October 28, 2006:

This week I wrote more words than I expected for each topic. I also wrote less coherently. During the first two weeks I usually had some idea of what I wanted to say about a topic. This week my writing was more of a brain dump. It will be interesting to see what it’s like to edit this week’s writing.

I drew mind maps for two big topics: how relationships affect resistance, and how context or environmental factors affect resistance. The mind maps give me plenty to write about—probably several days worth of writing for each topic.

I didn’t expect to write last night. I expected to rest for a class I’m teaching with Elisabeth Hendrickson. But at 10pm I got the itch to write. I ended up writing 2200 words in an hour and a half, and got too little sleep. I’m taking tonight off to get some well-earned rest.

Here are some thoughts from my second week of DaNoFiWriMo, my project to draft a 50,000 word non-fiction book in a month.

New word processor. I’ve switched to a new word processor called Rough Draft, which my writer friend Jennifer recommended. The thing I like most about Rough Draft is its simplicity. For what I’m doing, I don’t need styles, tables, diagrams, or change tracking. I may want those features later as I edit my rough draft into a smoother draft. For now, I need to type words, emphasize words, highlight words (to mark them as notes to myself), and count words. Rough Draft does all of that simply and cleanly, with few bells and whistles.

Rough Draft does have one distinguishing feature (either a whistle or a bell, I’m not sure which) that I’ve quickly come to rely on. For each file that you open, Rough Draft attaches a notepad, a simple text file in which you can type notes. Rough Draft displays the notepad as a narrow panel to the right of the main editing window. I’m finding this very handy, because it supports the spiral method that is central to the way I write. As I write about a topic, I think of other ideas that I want to write about, or questions that I want to answer, before I close the topic. I simply click on the notepad, jot a note, and go back to what I was writing. As I finish writing a thought, I check the notepad, grab an idea to write next, write it, and delete the note from the notepad. When the notepad is empty, I’m done writing that section. The notepad works as a high-priority list of micro-ideas. Very, very nice.

Version control and backups. Something I forgot to mention last week, probably because I was focusing on what was new in my writing process, is that I use a version control system to protect my files. I’m partial to the Tortoise SVN system, because it integrates nicely with the Windows file system. When I finish a writing session, I right click in my writing folder and commit my new material to a repository for safekeeping. Though Tortoise SVN takes a little bit of technical savvy, I highly recommend it for writers.

For greater protection I use EMC’s Retrospect, which automatically backs up my files to a separate hard drive every day at 5am.

Depleting the high energy queue. Several times this week I depleted high energy queue. It’s pretty slim right now. Scary. But so far I’ve been able to find something to write about every day.

Bigger topics. I never know how many words I’m going to write about each topic. Most end up in the 300–800 word range, similar to my blog posts. This week I found a few topics about which I had more to say. A few topics went to several thousand words each. I love when that happens.

One of those topics was definitions of resistance. Another was, more or less, why we don’t do the things we “know” we ought to do. Lots of people have asked me about that over the years, and when I finally started writing about it, I got four or five thousand words from the topic. And I’m not done yet. The scare quotes around “know” are a clue to my ideas on the topic.

Obsessed with word count. I long ago developed the habit of typing CTRL-S into whatever editor or word processor I’m using. I want to make sure my words are saved onto my hard drive. Every time I pause in my writing, I type CTRL-S without thinking about it. (Like just then.) I’ve now developed another habit for this book: Typing CTRL-W to display my word count. I’m obsessed with my word count.

When my word count for the day reaches about 1100, my energy really picks up. It feels as if I’m in the home stretch, and I can see the finish line just ahead. Very motivating. And most of the time my energy carries me a few hundred words past my daily goal. Which brings me to another topic…

Building a buffer. As I exceed my word goal each day, I start to build a buffer of “excess” words, so that if I miss a daily goal I’m still on target for the month. My buffer at the moment is about 2600 words, about a day and two thirds worth of writing. I’m hoping to increase the buffer to 3 days, because I’ll be teaching a class with Elisabeth Hendrickson next week and may not write much during those three days. (On the other hand, the class will probably give me a lot of fodder for the book, so I may write more instead of less.)

The Fieldstone Method. As I was writing about energy last week it didn’t occur to me (duh!) that I am using Jerry Weinberg‘s Fieldstone Method to write this book. The central element of the Fieldstone Method is energy. As Jerry says in Weinberg on Writing, “That’s the secret of the Fieldstone Method: Always be guided by emotional responses or, as Fieldstone writers say, by the energy.” I’ve attended three of Jerry’s writing workshops, and each time come away with new ideas and new enthusiasm for my writing. The Fieldstone Method is all about energy, and that’s how I’ve been focusing my work each day.

Johanna Rothman blogged about her current writing project. She’s writing a chapter at a time, and as she finishes drafting each chapter she sends it to her editor for review. It occurred to me that I’m not writing chapters yet. I don’t know the structure of my book. Instead, I’m writing “fieldstones.” Each fieldstone is single idea for which I have some energy. Later I’ll use some of organizing ideas from Jerry’s Fieldstone Method to create (or find) a structure for the book, and revise the fieldstones to work within that structure. But for now my focus is: One fieldstone at a time.

Waiting for the muse. Nearly every day I use an old, familiar pattern of mine: I wait for the muse to inspire me before I sit down to write. And nearly every day I find that my muse doesn’t work that way. Instead, as Madeline L’Engle says, “Inspiration usually comes during the work, rather than before it.”

Multiple projects. I’m planning to write a novel next month as part of National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo. This week I’ve started to flesh out the characters and plot for the novel. That gives me something to do when I want to write but don’t have the energy for the resistance book. I find that after a half-hour or so of work on the novel I am fully into a writing mood and can use some of that energy for the resistance book.

Also, I’m finishing up the design for a workshop on power, which I’ll be presenting at the AYE Conference in a few weeks. It’s just dawned on me that if I’m stuck on the resistance book I can write a few fieldstones about power (maybe for another book for later). As with plotting the novel, writing about power will put me into a writing mood, which I can then redirect toward the resistance book. And of course power and resistance are closely related, so writing about power will trigger new ideas about resistance.

I’m learning about my writing process, and improving it, as I progress on DaNoFiWriMo, my project to draft a 50,000 word non-fiction book in a month.

The most surprising thing I’m learning is that my only real writing challenge is managing my energy. As I decide what to write next, if I pick an idea that I have a lot of energy for, I can quickly write 500 or 1000 words. If I pick a low energy idea, I slowly write 80 words, then discover that the towels in the linen closet desperately need to be rearranged. Unfortunately, rearranging the towels doesn’t add to my word count, so I’ve been working on ways to keep my energy up.

Two factors seem to drive my energy: Keeping a short list of high energy topics, and receiving support from my friends.

Since 1993 I’ve been keeping notes about any topics that interest me. I’ve jotted notes on index cards, note pads, scraps of paper, and paper tablecloths from restaurants. Nowadays I use a small Moleskine notebook that I carry everywhere I go. I highlight the books I read. In the car I take notes and even “highlight” audiobooks using an Olympus DM-10 digital recorder. And I have two dozen hour-long microcassettes full of notes that I recorded before I bought the DM-10. I’ve transcribed most of those recorded notes into text files on my computer.

Naturally, these notes have been invaluable as I draft my book. When I’m stuck on a topic, I open X1, type a few keywords, and scan the notes I’ve made about the topic. It’s likely that I’ve already thought about it (repeatedly), and made notes of my thoughts.

To track my ideas for the book, I’m using EverNote, a wonderful, simple program for writing, storing, categorizing, and searching notes. As I think of ideas, and as I gather notes from my files, I copy each into EverNote and categorize it according to the topics that the note is about.

I also tag each note with a status, such as To Do or Drafted. For the first few days of DaNoFiWriMo, whenever I finished writing about a topic I would scan my To Do notes for another. As my EverNote file grew—it now has 194 distinct ideas to write about—I had a harder time choosing the next topic. I found myself reading and re-reading topics that I didn’t have the energy for right now.

That gave me an idea. I added a new tag called High Energy. Whenever I make a note that I have High Energy for, I tag it. Then when I’m looking for the next topic to write, I look first at the High Energy topics. One of them usually grabs my attention, and I dive in and write about it.

Sometimes as I’m adding a note to a particular topic, the new note combines with existing ones so that the topic reaches critical mass and I suddenly have more energy for it. When that happens, I tag some of that topic’s old notes as High Energy.

One of the keys to energy seems to be keeping my High Energy list short. The list now has 18 items, which is a little larger than I can scan quickly. I may have to drop some items and keep the list to a dozen items or so.

My energy for each topic comes and goes. Just because I marked a topic as High Energy yesterday, or this morning, or twenty minutes ago, that doesn’t mean I’ll have energy for it now. Sometimes I scan through my High Energy topics and don’t feel like writing about any of them. Now what do I write about?

I created a “Jiggler File” to help with that The Jiggler File is a file of ideas for remembering or creating ideas. Whenever my I can’t find anything I want to write about in my EverNote file, I open up my Jiggler File and give myself a jiggle.

Here’s my current Jiggler File:

• 60000 words about resistance. (This is a file I started in 1997 with a goal to write 60,000 words about resistance. I wrote about 15,000 words before fizzling out.)
• Quick takes on resistance. (A list of about 70 principles I’ve learned or invented for responding to resistance.)
• Recorded notes. (Notes I’ve taken on every topic under the sun, and on every writing medium under the sun, since 1993.)
• Highlighted passages. (Passages that I highlighted as I read books.)
• Flip book. (My “flip book” is a spiral-bound book of index cards, and on each card I’ve described a model of some aspect of being human and relating to other people. If I’m stuck for ideas on a given topic—resistance, for example—I can open my flip book to any page, and ask “How does this relate to resistance?” This always gives me fresh ideas.)
• Mind map. (Fire up MindManager and spew a mind map of whatever connections pop into my head.)
• Reasons to; reasons not to; examples of resistance. (A list of examples of resistance, and lists of reasons people have given for doing or not doing something that someone else has requested. I’ve collected hundreds of each during my resistance presentations and workshops over the past 10 years.)
• Presentations. (PowerPoint slides from my presentations about resistance.)
• Make up a story. (If I have a principle but can’t remember the story the led to it, make up a story. This will get me writing, and I can find a real story later.)

So far I haven’t used the last three jigglers. And I haven’t exhausted the ideas from the other jigglers. I’m in no danger of running out of things to write about.

One condition I’ve placed on DaNoFiWriMo is not to use ideas I’ve already written about. In addition to writing directly about “Resistance as a Resource“, I’ve also written popular articles about the closely related topics of communication and change. And I’ve written dozens of blog articles about resistance, communicating, relating, power, and related topics. My choice not to use any of what I’ve written in those articles has been marvelously motivating. It means that when I’m done writing 50,000 words this month, I also have tens of thousands of words of additional material that I can add to the book.

In addition to tagging my notes with topics and status, I also tag it with an indication of… I don’t know what to call this… some sort of rhetorical category. What kind of idea is this? Some ideas are stories. Others are principles. Some are models. Others are definitions, quotations, or procedures.

Somewhere around day 4 I noticed something horrifying. Though the large majority of my notes are principles (110 of my 194 notes), I have very little energy for writing about a principle unless I have a story to go with it. When I remember a story about some aspect of resistance, the words flow easily. And once I’ve written the story, I can describe the principle easily and clearly. But when I start with a principle and try to write about it, I suddenly feel constricted.

The notes I’ve taken over the years are largely notes about principles. When something interesting happens, I tend to summarize it into a principle, and then forget the details of the story. I’ve noticed this when I do classes. People ask me to give examples of the ideas I’m talking about, and often I can’t remember an example. I can see that I’m going to have to change the way I take notes. In addition to writing down the lessons I’m learning from some experience, in the future I will want to write the story of the experience.

Another big lesson (though not a new one for me) is that the support of my friends means a great deal to me. My first sign of support was from a very bright friend who, 12 minutes after I announced DaNoFiWriMo, wrote to tell me that he too would write a book in October, a book he’d been thinking of writing for a long time. He sends me (and other writer friends) daily progress reports, and seeing his progress always gives me a boost of energy. Thank you, as-yet-unnamed author friend!

Second, several people responded to my request for questions about resistance, and several others have talked to me in private about some of their puzzles about resistance. I always have more energy to write when I know that real people care about what Im writing about. Thank you, Richard, Doris, and Elisabeth!

Third, when I complained to a fiction-writing friend that I don’t remember the stories that led to some of the ideas I’m writing about, she said, “Why not make up a story?” Aha! That would get me writing, and I could find a “true” story later. Thank you, Melinda!

Fourth, a number of colleagues I admire, and who have recently published books of their own, wrote to cheer me on. Thank you, Johanna and Dwayne!

And last but not least: That fracking public commitment I made keeps me going when I want to bail out after writing 900 words each day. Thank you, younger Dale!

Perhaps the biggest lesson of DaNoFiWriMo is that I’m learning how to manage my energy, and that in itself is energizing me.

Several years ago, Chris Baty and some of his insane friends created the National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo. The idea is to write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November. Many people use the month to create what Anne Lamott calls “a shitty first draft,” and then use the following year to rewrite the draft into a passable novel.

This year I want to do something similar, but with non-fiction. I’m tempted to call it NaNoFiWriMo, or National Non-Fiction Writing Month, but I’m refraining for two reasons. First, at least two other people already thought of that. Second, I don’t care whether this goes national; I’m doing it for myself.

So I’m calling it Dale’s Non-Fiction Writing Month, or DaNoFiWriMo. I’ve chosen October for my first DaNoFiWriMo, because for the first time in years I have a whole month with no scheduled training or consulting.

Part of the NaNoWriMo process is making a public commitment. I hate that. But I hate it less now than I will three days from now, so here goes: I will write a 50,000 word draft of a non-fiction book in October, 2006. I’ll let you guess the topic.

Do we still switch to standard time in October? I could use the extra hour.

[Update October 27, 2006]
Daily DaNoFiWriMo Progress Report

Lessons Learned from Week One

Lessons Learned from Week Two

Lessons Learned from Week Three

If you want to see what my Spiral Method sessions look like, below is the raw, unedited zeroth draft for my article “Strategies for Stability.” The numbers match the answers to the corresponding questions (e.g. A1 is the answer to Q1). The starred items (*) are ideas that popped into my head, not directly related to any question.

Nugget: People change in order to remain the same. That is, we will change something less important in order to maintain something that is more important.

Q1. How does changing help stay the same?

Q2. Can you give a few examples?

Q3. How can I keep something stable?

Q4. Is this the only reason to change?

Q5. Is this the only way to stay the same?

A1. To keep something the same, we change less important things that either isolate the important thing from change or absorb the change.

A horse’s gait changes when the pressure on its bones reaches one third of the pressure it can handle. The gait change reduces the pressure.

Q6. What about as the horse slows down? Why change gait then?

Q7. Are isolating and absorbing the only reasons for change?

Q8. Are they the only strategies for stability?

* Stability is a problem only when some force acts to cause a change. We can maintain things indefinitely if no force is acting on them.

Q9. How can I use this principle to reduce resistance?

A2. Examples: Drop three low-priority projects in order to sustain progress on high-priority projects.

Rewrite software to take advantage of new technology in order to maintain responsiveness and growth.

Temporarily stop looking for a job, and instead upgrade skills, in order to maintain marketability.

Lower prices in order to maintain market share.

A8: Another way to maintain stability: Adapt to changes in the environment, so that the environment supports the new configuration — or at least doesn’t threaten it.

Three ways to keep something stable:

• Isolate
• Absorb
• Adapt

* Gain or maintain something we value even more.

A4. I believe that the only reason we change is to maintain something more important.

Q10. What about when I change jobs in order to get a raise? That isn’t about maintaining anything.

A5. The only way to maintain something in the face of a threatening force is to change something less important — something that will isolate the more important thing from teh change, absorb the force and dissipate it, or adapt to the change in the environment.

A8. As far as I can tell, these are the only three ways:

Absorb: Convert the force into less harmful forms or more useful forms.

Apply some energy to revert the environment. This takes energy that you could have used for something else. I see that as a form of adaptation.

Absorb (from the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary): Include or take (a thing) in so that it no longer has separate existence; incorporate. Gain energy from and reduce the intensity of.

Adapt (from SOED): Fit, adjust. Alter or modify to fit a new use, new conditions.

Isolate (from SOED): Place or set apart or alone; separate from or unconnected with other things.