Keeping Snippets and True Things

I am writing my novel chronologically, but I've got it all up in my head, so I get antsy sometimes. I am in love with every step of the process, from writing the first draft (which I know I will miss when I'm through it) to rewriting and revising, and then finally editing. My usual complaint to K Bookman is that I wish I could do everything at once, but I have to do it in order, and I have to deal with real life obstacles -- at least when real life becomes too hairy to ignore!

Keep track of your snippets.

So when I get the itch to write a scene that is five chapters ahead of where I am in my first draft, or something that doesn't even fit in the book, I write exactly what it is that comes to me in a snippets file for that chapter (or a misc file in the latter case). When I finally do get to these chapters, having these snippets is a great way to re-immerse myself in the voice that has been percolating in my subconscious.

Example: I was driving home one day over the summer and I realized something irksome. I wrote it down.


In those days, "For Sale" signs only made you sad for the people inside, and they were more and more.


Write true things.


That brings me to the idea of true things, which I guess can be traced back to Hemingway, but I don't know much about that, really, and I'm sure someone else said it before him one way or another, so let's ditch that train of thought.  That sentence, I'd consider a "true thing."  It's a simple observation, but, especially in context, it can have a coherent "moreness" to it.  Sometimes the moreness of a true thing gets put into pedantic English Class terminology, chewed up and spit out into the right way to interpret a piece of artwork.  None of the "meanings" people come up with to explain the moreness of true things in literature are entirely satisfactory, or else the author would have just said that.  So it should be noted that those interpretations of a work are just someone else's description of the experience of having read it.

Future topics inspired by this post: Writing to the end; Time management; Metaphor and Lit-Crit Stuff.