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

The Flow of Water

A few weeks ago, as I finished a morning of revisions, I realized that something was different in the way that I felt about the most recent draft of a work-in-progress.

I had reached a new stage in the process.

Often, as I set off on drafts--first drafts, especially--I rarely have any idea where I'm going. I step into the water and let the current take me and pray that I'll find my way to the end of the story.

It takes many revisions before I have a clear idea of where the story is flowing, and even then it's rare that I can find my way further downstream without worrying about the ending.

But this time, with the ending firmly in sight, I found that I could pay attention to the details of scenes close at hand: a bend in the river, an unexpected pool, a steep decline toward a smooth stretch of river, a few hundred yards of rapids.

When I don't yet know the ending, the writing feels like a mad rush to get words on paper before the story dissolves in a crash of waves or disappears beneath the surface.

But once the first draft is done, or, rather, once the ending appears, I can use that draft as a helpful outline of sorts to work my way into the next draft... and the next... so that each draft helps deepen my understanding of the story.

At a certain stage in the process, instead of rushing past scenes to discover what happens next, I find myself spending more time with the characters--learning who they are, what they might do, where they might go.

The time that I spend slowing down and feeling my way into the skins of each character helps me better understand what happens next in a story. Plus, slowing down gives me a chance to focus on details to flesh out a character, as well as on how scenes can be connected and how the pieces of a plot can help build suspense.

When you slow down like this, you can submerge yourself in a scene, swim from moment to moment, and emerge at the end of the scene ... and continue downstream... without fearing that you'll lose the thread of the story.

Here's what Bernard Malamud once said about his revision process:

“I would write a book, or a short story, at least three times--once to understand it, the second time to improve the prose, and a third to compel it to say what it still must say. Somewhere I put it this way: first drafts are for learning what one's fiction wants him to say. Revision works with that knowledge to enlarge and enhance an idea, to re-form it. Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing.”

Lately, the more time that I spend on revisions, the more I'm beginning to understand Malamud's approach toward revision as "one of the exquisite pleasures of writing."

If you're wrestling with a story, not quite sure about the "exquisite pleasure" of revision, perhaps it might help to think of first drafts as access-roads into the mystery, a way to carve a path into unknown territory that's never been mapped before.

Once you've finished your first draft, you've got a map, a way of understanding where your story's going. And that knowledge can help you deepen the story as you accumulate more and more insights into why certain characters act the way they do.

As you learn more about your story and your characters in each draft, you may find that you can begin taking greater risks without fear of losing the story.

With a first draft in your drawer, you can swim forward knowing how the story unfolds and spend more time exploring the thread that links one scene to the next and how the character's main struggle drives the narrative forward like a current pulsing under the surface of the water.

You no longer have to worry about where the current will lead you. Instead, you can fill in empty spaces, answer questions, deepen characters, and fine-tune the plot.

Each draft is a different stage in the flow of your story, the process of your story becoming... a story.

If you're interested in more information about the revision process, you might visit:

http://www.hollylisle.com/fm/Workshops/one-pass-revision.html
http://writerunboxed.com/2006/09/28/its-done/
http://www.rachelsimon.com/wg_revision.htm

And for an interview with Bernard Malamud in The Paris Review, take a look at:

http://www.theparisreview.com/media/3869_MALAMUD.pdf