Writing a Book in a Month - 5 Research Tips
+ writing encouragement from Jillian Hess, John Keene, Julie Otsuka, Marlon James, Anton DiSclafani, and Toni Morrison
Morning!
Today, we will write. Thirty minutes, 500 words, an hour, two thousand words, whatever you choose. Any amount that will get you to the page. Set an intention, give yourself a soothing beverage, and let’s begin.
Today’s letter is about writing a book in a month and the research you can do to help you when, and if, you want to try to write a book in November, for National Novel Writing Month.
Writing Encouragement
Today’s writing encouragement comes from
who is an English professor at CUNY, author of a book on the Victorians, and creator of Noted, a newsletter I love that is focused on the note-taking and journaling practices of authors, artists, and all kinds of thinkers, like Frida Kahlo. I asked Jillian what has stuck with her over the years of her research about writers and their writing and note-taking practices. Her response is so comforting!Jillian:
Great literature often feels like it came out of the author's head fully formed-- like Athena from Zeus. Or, at least, it often feels that way to me. But writers' notes reveal that that is almost never the case. Toni Morrison drew extensive maps. Octavia Butler compiled lists of everything she needed to research. Agatha Christie reworked outlines for her novels. And Robert Caro won't start writing until he's outlined his book and figured out where all the evidence goes.
Something else that has stuck with me: successful authors also have those unpleasant feelings of incompetence. George Eliot was convinced Middlemarch would be a flop! And, they also feel envy.Â
Here's an excerpt from Sylvia Plath's journal:
If I could cut from my brain the phantom of competition, the ego center of self consciousness, and become a vehicle, a pure vehicle of others, the outer world. My interest in other people is too often one of comparison, not of pure intrigue with the unique otherness of identity.
(September 29th, 1958, Journals, p. 511.)
I find these reflections so soothing: we all do the work of research, experience self-doubt and must confront comparison.
Thank you, Jillian, for sharing your observations with us!
A Book in a Month?
With four months to go before NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, I wanted to talk about what you could do now to get ready if you’d like to participate.
NaNoWriMo is special to me because it was how I wrote the first draft of my first novel, The Wives of Los Alamos. I did write the draft of the novel in a month and if this causes you to roll your eyes I do not blame you, but you should also know that I did the research for that book for a year before I started writing it (because I was just really curious about atomic history and nuclear waste) and I revised that draft for two years afterward, and I needed all of that time.
Here is how the novel idea began: I was in my first semester as a Ph.D. student in Creative Writing at the University of Denver when I had an idea for a novel, inspired by a conversation I had with a friend’s aunt. I’d been writing about nuclear waste and this historical radioactive animal farm in Eastern Washington when the aunt said she wondered about the wives of the atomic scientists. I had been asking myself for a while, How did we get here [the current nuclear waste issue]? All roads led back to 1943 in Los Alamos.
The novel began with adjacent questions: Who were the women who lived in Los Alamos during WWII? What was it like to live there, as a woman, building a community that was, unbeknownst to you, building the atomic bomb? And then, How did the women respond when they realized what they’d helped build? I started writing with the goal of 1K to 1.5K words a day that month. I did not work much on weekends; I tried to be loose about it so I did not get frantic. By the end of the month, I had about 35K words, enough to start to mold into a shape.
My first tip for a book project: devise a list of questions.
What are you curious about related to your book idea? Do you have a question or set of questions that prompt your stories? Toni Morrison told The Paris Review in 1993, I always start out with an idea, even a boring idea, that becomes a question I don’t have any answers to, and it seems to me that powering a novel with questions can be a strong engine for us as we write, as we work to understand the possible answers. (Quote from the interview culled from this essay by Jasmine Liu.)
I did not tell a soul I was writing a book at first. I just thought, November, NaNoWriMo, why not try it? What was the worst that could happen? You can do anything for a finite amount of time. One month, totally doable. And if I failed, if the book was no good, I’d only spent a month on it. In truth, that month of drafting turned into two years of editing, but I did not need to know that in advance! Right now, just look at the oncoming curve in the road, making a first draft.
How did I write a book in a month? There are several different things I can say to this question, which I’ll explore in the weeks ahead, but for today’s letter: a lot of why I could write the book quickly was that I had been researching the topic for a year before I ever started writing the novel. So my tip for you: start your list of research questions now, and then peruse that research in a really casual way, so that you aren’t bogged down and distracted by research in November. What can you research now and have metabolized by November?
Your research does not need to be for a historical project. All writers do some kind of research, usually, at some point, from figuring out what the life of their character would be as a plant scientist, or whatever career you choose for them, or doing Google Maps street views for the location your story takes place in.
Tip #2: Research early enough in the writing process that what you learn becomes research sediment.
Slowly, start to research and take notes on your research questions. Perhaps write alongside your research, finding the spectacularly specific details you can use in your book. Bits of what people have said, geographic maps of the layout of the place of your story, things the newspapers were talking about at that time, what it is like to be the profession of your characters, etc. I could go on and on here. I’m also talking about using Google Scholar to find articles about the effects of things your characters experience. Oral histories about life at that time, if working in the past, like what Studs Terkel made a career of, can also be helpful. One of my favorites of his is Working.
A benefit of writing a novel in a month is that you have a better chance of maintaining a consistent voice throughout the novel since you haven’t started and stopped a bunch. You’ll also have shown yourself that you can do that marathon—you might pass a certain milestone of belief. Warning: there are drawbacks to doing this, though, like how long you’ll need to gussy the novel up after November ends. See my two years of editing remarks above.
If you are in a novel draft now, but think it feels choppy or clunky b/c of the start/stop voice problem of working on it over a period of years, in November, you could try rewriting the book without looking back at what you’ve written before, just working from memory and see what happens in your imagination when you start writing in November. See what you’ve metabolized of your own project. Daunting, I know, but it is only a month-long commitment.
How Writers Use Research
John Keene, essayist, poet, and novelist, whose work is STEEPED in research, had this to say in the newest issue of The Paris Review, when asked, What is your research process?
John Keene: When I sit down to write, I usually set the research aside. What I’m more interested in always, is, How can I reenter and create that life from the inside out? You want to have research sediment as much as possible so that you don’t have to refer to it later.
Research sediment! YES yes yes. This summer could be your research sediment period, the time when you sift through the mud and water to pan for the gold nuggets of details that alight your imagination.
Many writers do this work of researching before they write. Julie Otsuka on her process:
Julie Otsuka: I do a lot of research first, a ton. I read history books, oral histories, look at old newspapers, photographs, artwork, diaries, letters, whatever I can find. I take voluminous notes in my notebooks, but probably end up using 2% of what I’ve learned. But I need to know that I fully understand the world that I want to write about before I actually begin to write.
Another one from Marlon James:
I am an extremely exhaustive researcher. The book I’m writing now, I’ve been researching since spring 2014. That is two years of research before I have even sat down to write. Even the stuff I know, I like to know more about it.
When I start writing, I commit and go full speed ahead. I don’t stop. I need to know as much as I can to do that.
I do some more research after I finish a draft or a chapter, so I can look back and ask if this could really happen..
Tip #3: Don’t feel like you need to follow this advice if you are in a book project already or if it doesn’t work for you!
My friend Anton DiSclafani researches just enough to get the necessary details of her historical period and fills in period details later. All to say: do you!
Anton: I’m not a meticulous researcher. There are some writers of historical fiction who spend a lot of time in the archives; I do not. I find what I need to know and write. I’m surrounded by books, but I dip in and out of them. For me, fact always serves at the pleasure of fiction.
Tip #4: You don’t need to know everything about your character to write your story. You are writing into the mystery! Not knowing can be very powerful.
When Toni Morrison came upon the real story of Margaret Garner, who inspired her book, Beloved, she purposely did not look up details about Garner. She said she researched the place (Cincinnati, yeah!) and lots of world-building things, but she wanted to give her imagination free rein about who Garner was and why Garner did what she did:
I was amazed by this story I came across about a woman called Margaret Garner who had escaped from Kentucky, I think, into Cincinnati with four children… she tried to kill the children when she was caught. I found an article in a magazine of the period, and there was this young woman in her 20's, being interviewed - oh, a lot of people interviewed her, mostly preachers and journalists, and she was very calm, she was very serene. They kept remarking on the fact that she was not frothing at the mouth, she was not a madwoman, and she kept saying, 'No, they're not going to live like that. They will not live the way I have lived.’
Now I didn't do any more research at all about that story. I did a lot of research about everything else in the book -Cincinnati, and abolitionists, and the underground railroad - but I refused to find out anything else about Margaret Garner. I really wanted to invent her life.
Tip #5: Make A Creative Date With Yourself
Maybe not today, but put on your calendar a day to take yourself on a date to the special collections of a library or archive. Maybe the town’s archive, maybe the local library, maybe a university you can drive to, or a museum: the possibilities of finding surprising things are endless! Perhaps have no agenda at all and just see what you find. Or make a plan of things to ask to see. Either way, I bet you’ll find something worth thinking and writing about.
If you teach, consider taking students to the university’s archives, especially if there are journals there from former students. At Miami, where I teach, the students find inspiration for their writing during these visits and they seem to make new connections with history when they read about Miami students 80 or 90 years ago also having breakups with girlfriends and disagreements with their parents in the same dorms, restaurants, and quad as they experience these things, too.
A Writing Invitation
Today’s writing invitation is a prompt for using research and questions to inspire your writing. As always, take what energizes you, and feel free to set aside the rest. If you are in a project now and are not feeling the research, go do your own writing thing!
What questions reside in your story? What are you curious about? (i.e. Toni saying, I always start with an idea, even a boring idea, that becomes a question I don’t have any answers to…)
What are you excited to research?
What do you not want to research? What do you want to intentionally give yourself the freedom to imagine?
What could you research that might deepen the story? (You might not be excited about them but you know it would be good for the story. For me, this is often the lay of the land kind of research, weather, place names, plant names, etc.)
What do you want to learn about while writing this story?
What could you read to get you to better understand the conditions of your characters’ lives?
What archives could you go to to learn more?
Where could you travel?
What books could you read?
Are there other questions that motivate your research?
A few other questions I ask myself when getting into research: Where do they live? What news is reported? What news is gossiped about but not officially reported? What are the major byways—water, roads—and where do they lead? What makes up the town’s economy? What do people do for fun here?
Can you think of other things you can do to get ready this summer for November?
A Creative Writing Fellowship for Research
If you like research, you might like the American Antiquarian Society fellowship for creative writers and artists who could benefit from doing research at their (beautiful and expansive) library. Deadline: 10/10; funding: 2K. I rate the experience 10/10. I did research there about five years ago, looking for execution sermons for Beheld, which I found, but my favorite part was talking to other artists and researchers about their projects, and finding the unexpected four-hundred-year-old (and more!) doodles in books, like this one, and realizing in a visceral and visual way how humans are the same no matter how long ago they were alive:
When Research Overrides the Writing
When writing with research, there can be the hazard of getting bogged down by accuracy and letting ourselves escape into research to avoid writing, as
humorously tweeted about once:
But that’s a worry for another day. Today, just let yourself imagine what could be possible with research.
TODAY YOU WILL WRITE is powered by you—your likes and comments encourage me so feel free to drop a line in the comments if you like. I’d love to hear what your ideas are about research and NaNoWriMo, or anything else you’d like to share.
May you find garnets and opals in your research and your writing that you can chisel from the rock and polish until they shine, today and throughout the week!
Love,
TS
Thanks for including me!!