Maybe it’s not that people are reading my mind, maybe it’s just simply the principle of observance that states: You’ll notice the things you’re already thinking about. Like when you learn a new word you’ve never seen before, and then it suddenly seems as though every book you read contains that word.

I’ve recently been starting to think of my writing time as an apprenticeship. Yes, I hope I sell each short story I write, and yes, it’s crushing to let go of a novel I’ve spent three years on, but that’s just the way of apprenticeship. Your first attempts simply aren’t that good, but slogging through them is the best way to learn.

Since I’ve started looking at things that way, I’ve heard this advice echoed by other writers. Just this week I’ve begun working on novel number four, though I’ve been debating over whether that’s a better choice than continuing to rewrite novel number three into a bloody pulp. If I think of myself as an apprentice, however, the choice is simple: Write hard, write often, and practice by producing new work.

Jay Lake made a comment this week on the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writer’s Chat that really hit home for me. (You can find the transcript here):

And write new stuff. Don’t spend years laboring over your Great Work. Trust me, it’s not that great. Go write another one. #sffwrtcht

Right? OK, then.

And this morning I came across this post at Writer Unboxed about not giving up if you hate your writing.

The first couple years that you’re making stuff, what you’re making isn’t so good. It’s not that great. It’s trying to be good, it has ambitions, but it’s not that good. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, your taste is still killer. Your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you’re making is kind of a disappointment to you. You can tell that it’s still sort of crappy. A lot of people never get past that phase.

This is what it means to be an apprentice. To look at the master’s work and think, It’s so marvelous, so effortless. How will I ever be able to compare to that!

And then you sit back down at the computer and do it again. And again. And again.

(Update: I realize now that a lot of the advice on pushing through your “bad work” years is echoed in (sources from?) a series of videos that Ira Glass did on storytelling a while back. I first saw them here. Good stuff, check it out.)

I’ve decided that today will be the day I start working on my new novel. The idea’s been there for quite a while, and I’ve been letting the characters percolate in my head for the past few weeks. They’re nearly ready to come out, I suppose, but I’ve been working so long on The Scent of Rain that I don’t quite remember how to begin to extricate them.

I think it normally involves a pot of coffee and a pen. Onward.

As I edit my way through my novel I’ve been thinking a lot about What The Novelist is Trying to Say. It’s a little like high school English class, but instead of just guessing, I actually know what was going through The Novelist’s head when she wrote all this drivel.

Truth be told, I actually did like writing essays in university, and I really enjoy analyzing my own work to find the metaphors, allusions, and leitmotifs, then really consciously working them in to the rest of the story.

Today I’ve been thinking a lot about heroes. My main character is not much of a hero, in the sense that she doesn’t always make the greatest decisions, she acts selfishly even when she’s trying to be altruistic, and overall her actions make things worse even when she’s trying to do good. Is she a good role model? I wouldn’t call her that, but I think she’s someone that is we can all identify with–not because she makes the best choices, but because she does what we all try to do: take the easy way out.

Ever since I was little I’ve liked my heroes to be flesh and bone. I remember the first time I read a novel in which the main female character had her period and thinking, “hey, finally it’s a character that has to deal with human stuff, too!” The heroine was a normal woman doing extraordinary things, but that didn’t mean that she got to miss this month’s period. Because wouldn’t that just be awesomely convenient. Hey, so, I’m saving the world this month. I think I’ll just skip this one if no one minds, even though they haven’t invented the Pill yet.

My main character has gone her whole life trying to live up to her father’s standards, and now she’s trying to live up to her own. But no matter who she lets define her level of achievement, she’s just a woman trying to live up to some super-human expectations. Her super-high goals are nigh on unreachable, but yet her inability to get there leaves her confidence wrecked. How many women can relate with that one? “I’m not able to finish that presentation/spend time with my family/take time for my own personal project/volunteer for that charity/and I also don’t weigh 115 pounds. I’m a failure!”

She’s built up some high expectations for herself, and when she fails she turns to various coping mechanisms to help get herself back under control. Heroic? Far from it. Human? Yes.

Enough break. Back to editing.

I enjoy writing longhand. If I get stuck in my prose and everything seems stale, I can often revitalize myself by taking out my 40-cent spiral notebook and letting the words flow randomly through my cheap ballpoint until they start to make sense. Often, they make a much more beautiful, poetic sense than when I’m tap-tapping at the keyboard.

Writing and the more material arts have a lot in common to me. When I’m designing a dress, I first imagine the drape of it over my body, the cut of the neck, how it will flare just so at the hips. I sketch it out. Then (often after an enormous time searching) I find the perfect fabric. The fabric often changes and reforms the design based on its own unique qualities (which I never could have imagined when I was just thinking up a dress pattern).

Really, the whole process is more physical than intellectual–I hold the fabric up to my body, cut it, pin it, and hold it again. (Incidentally, I really need a dress form. All this holding dress pieces up to myself and trying to pin them on while I’m standing in front of a mirror is frankly ridiculous. Any sponsors?)

What does this have to do with writing? Well, at this point, my novel exists only in my mind, and in the innards of this old Macbook (and of course in several backed-up electronic forms). I’ve created the material, and tomorrow morning I’m going to use a small forest of paper to print it out so that I can begin to shape and form it into the novel it will eventually be.

In my excitement to begin the editing process I’ve already gotten all my colored pens, sticky notes, highlighters, scissors and tape ready. Tomorrow morning, in Rob’s grandma’s old orange recliner, I will create.