One Writer's Process: Deborah Underwood

Writing is Hard

I wrote a picture book last year. Revised, revised, had some interest, revised, revised, got to a point where it felt better, but now am at a point where to go forward I would need to revise again, and maybe remove some of what I thought the story was about (although exactly what it is about has remained elusive, even to me).

Have you ever had a fallen soufflé story? One where you've messed with it so much you're completely lost and don't even know which way is up anymore? I've set this aside for a bit, but came back to it yesterday and am just as confused and unconvinced. The revision suggestions make good sense, but I'm not sure I feel they're right for me. But I know the story could be stronger, and I want it to be as strong as it can be. Unless I want to just leave it behind and move on, which is another possibility.

I may just do a quick draft to see if the changes feel off once they're incorporated, but I'm dragging my heels even at that. I don't mind editing; I actually like it. But I really don't like looking around and saying, "What even IS this mess? And should I find an escape hatch and go write something totally new?" It's like I've entered some weird magnetic anomaly where the compass is spinning around wildly and can't be trusted.

In contrast, I had to write a synopsis of a recent work yesterday. I love this story. Self-doubt is my constant companion (for most all writers, maybe?), but this story makes me laugh every time I read it. It's funny, I love the voice, and the plot works exactly the way it should. It reads as if it poured from the assured pen of a skilled writer who doesn't question her ability or experience at all.

Being a writer is dancing between these two opposites, and boy, it can mess with your head.

Coffee will help though, right?

Deborah Underwood’s most recent release, Bearplane, illustrated by Sam Wedelich, came out last month, and Walter Had A Best Friend, illustrated by Sergio Ruzzier, is coming out this fall. She’s written for young readers as well as for older readers, including Every Little Letter, The Panda Problem, Interstellar Cinderella, and The New York Times bestsellers The Quiet Book, The Loud Book, and Here Comes the Easter Cat. (And that doesn’t include the 28 nonfiction books that she’s written for kids.) If you’d like to learn more about her and her work, visit her website: https://www.deborahunderwoodbooks.com/index.html

Editors note: Deborah shared these observations on writing with her Facebook followers and kindly granted Wordswimmer permission to reprint her words here. If you’d like to follow her on Facebook, check out her FB page: https://www.facebook.com/deborahunderwood. Thanks, Deborah!

The Essence of the Process

If you read only one book about the writing process this year, I hope you'll consider John McPhee's Draft No. 4: On the Writing Process.

It contains eight essays on the writing process that were previously published in The New Yorker, the magazine where McPhee's work has appeared since 1965, and where you may have read some, or all, of these pieces.

If you have read any of these essays before, I recommend reading them again, since I find McPhee's work so rich that it can easily sustain multiple readings, each time offering up some new jewel that the reader may have missed or overlooked. And if you haven't yet read any of them, you are in for a treat.

You'll discover a man's love of the craft of writing, and a devotion to the process of putting words on paper reminiscent of a religious scribe, a man passionate about language and its usage and the delight that it provides for reveling in life's joys and mysteries.

McPhee believes wholeheartedly in revision as the core of the process. "The difference between a common writer and an improviser on a stage (or any performing artist) is that writing can be revised. Actually, the essence of the process is revision. The adulating portrait of the perfect writer who never blots a line comes Express Mail from fairyland."

If you take away just one nugget of truth from this book, let it be this one: The essence of the process is revision.

One of the things that I love about McPhee's approach to writing, and his willingness to teach writing to others (he's taught students at Princeton University, his alma mater, for years), is his understanding that each writer is cut from different cloth and approaches the problem of getting words on paper differently.

He gives us as examples the different ways his two daughters deal with the process.

"Jenny grew up to write novels, and at this point has published three. She keeps everything close-hauled, says nothing and reveals nothing as she goes along."

But keeping things close-hauled isn't the way his younger daughter Martha goes about the process.

"Her sister Martha, two years younger, has written four novels. Martha calls me up nine times a day to tell me that writing is impossible, that she's not cut out to do it, that she'll never finish what she is working on, et cetera, et cetera, and so forth and so on."

Two writers, two different ways of approaching the process.

Actually, three writers. There's McPhee himself who shares his own approach.

"It is toward the end of the second draft, if I'm lucky," writes McPhee, "when the feeling comes over me that I have something I want to show other people, something that seems to be working and is not going to go away. The feeling is more than welcome, but it is hardly euphoria. It's just a new lease on life, a sense that I'm going to survive until the middle of next month."

There's a wealth of information in Draft No. 4 that will provide sustenance for you as a writer for weeks, if not months and years, whether you write fiction or, like McPhee, nonfiction.

And if you love reading The New Yorker, you'll love learning a bit of what goes on behind its cover and pages since McPhee generously shares stories about his working relationships with editors at the magazine who have nurtured and guided him along the way.

If you're curious about the kind of advice McPhee offers, here's a link to his essay, "Draft No. 4," as it appeared in 2013 in The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/04/29/draft-no-4 

And here's a link to the book, if you want to take a look: 
https://www.amazon.com/Draft-No-4-Writing-Process/dp/0374142742

And if you're interested in The New York Times' review of the book, click this link:  https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/13/books/review-draft-no-4-john-mcphee.html

Early Drafts

Lately, I’ve noticed something different about how I approach early drafts.

No longer do I look for perfection.

Instead, I try to see the page in front of me at the moment.

Not how I might want it to look in its finished form.

How it looks now.

I no longer embark from shore expecting an early draft to appear fully formed on the page.

Rather, I treat the page like an artist’s canvas, and use the early draft as a chance to play with words the way an artist plays with colors.

Early drafts are about staying in the moment, breathing and noticing one’s breath, and finding a rhythm that brings the story to life.

In an early draft, it’s more important to hear a voice, I think, than to search for the shape of a story or worry about pacing or plot.

It’s a time for words to flow unrestrained, and for that to happen I have to let go.

A first draft is where I struggle with releasing the fears and anxieties that often control and constrain the flow of words.

It’s where I learn to breathe and notice how the words flow out of the breath...without judgment or criticism...without expectation or disappointment...without praise or approval.

Just words... flowing... and the feeling of them flowing through my pen onto the page.

And in the process of letting go, the draft somehow opens up... and I begin making discoveries about the characters and the plot and the pacing of the story which I can use as the foundation stones in subsequent drafts.

How do you approach early drafts?

Do they bring misery or joy?

When you get a moment, let us know.