Plus ça change – April 4, 2026
I have fun with this blog, toward two ends. I love to share what I discover from history. I also like to write about the process of writing, and that’s what this one is.
I’m working on Chapter 10 (for now) in Laveaux: Mother. This is a pivotal chapter. Marie is all too familiar with the horrors of slavery. She is faced with a choice: allow a child to be sold to someone who will use her badly, or buy a slave herself. Eliza was eight, she’s historical.
I have three scenes in mind. Marie is at the auction and buys Eliza. She walks home with the frightened child. She arrives home and introduces Eliza to her family. Marie now owns a slave.
The first scene I’ve contemplated for months and months. The only problem is a plausible reason for Marie to be at a slave auction, it’s not the kind of place she hangs out. Research gives me that. It’s perfect, sweet. The walk home is new, I have a nice chat with my darling co-conspirator about part of that, and she provides a key idea. I go in a slightly different direction, but the recipe is hers. The scene at home, also new. And I’m on the fence about how to handle that, whether to stay in Marie’s POV or shift to Christophe. There’s goodness in both choices. I still don’t know. And that’s sorta what this post is about.
So yesterday I dump it all onto paper. And it is a dump. See Writer’s Block – Not. I don’t suffer writer’s block, but internally I must overcome the desire to be perfect. I have thoughts, I have ideas, I dump them onto paper. They will not all survive. At some point I call it “done” and walk away. And what’s on paper is crap. Really. It is disjointed, sometimes inconsistent internally, and sometimes inconsistent with how the characters are.
Later–next day, sometimes hours, sometimes two or three days–I come back to it. It has settled. I read. I cringe. And I rewrite. But it’s all there. I prune. Sometimes I’m killing my babies because they just don’t fit. Usually, not always, the end result is a lot shorter. Sometimes, I see gaping holes and fill them in. Then I walk away and let it sit. Again.
Lather rinse repeat. There is no set number to the repeats. This is where I’ll look at an adjective or a verb and say to myself, there’s a word with a better aroma. I am inside my characters, but I’m inside the readers’ heads as well. I flip thoughts, change order, read it aloud, make sure it flows. I’m good with dialog, but I often wind up with talking heads. I add “beats.” Someone sips a coffee, gestures, looks out a window, sticks a hand out from under the umbrella, little human moments that bring the reader into the scene. I often stop, drop myself into the time and place. I’m standing in the room, walking on the street, I am THERE, and I just describe what I see.
This is putting meat on the bones. And it keeps on going until I have an internal sense of, OK, this is good, I have a draft. The cleanup is the fun part. This is the CRAFT of writing.
Then I print it, my first reader gets it, and she edits. Paper is a powerful medium. Sometimes, she blesses it. Sometimes, she says “but what about” and back we go. But the chapter is no longer all over the frikkin’ planet. It’s focused, tight, bounded, and I’m polishing with the bounds.
