Writing like Raising the Dead

I write like a necromancer. But not a good necromancer— rather, one who bumbles through the ritual. I begin with the spark of life and an incomplete pile of bones rattling around in a heap on the ground. They’re ideas and connections, images and thoughts, and somehow, I know that if I put them together in the right orientation, I will write a badass novel.  I reach in, grab a bone at random, and lash it to others with bits of sinew and tendon in a frenzy of hyperfocused productivity. My first draft is an utter monstrosity, barely recognizable as a story at all, finishing at the 15-20k word mark.

On my second pass, I reorder the bones. This involves stuffing my abomination into Scrivener so that I can more easily move large sections as I tear it limb from limb. That’s when I discover the missing legs, toes, and sometimes even skull. My second draft is around 25k words and leaves me nearly as gutted as my creation. But I don’t have time to let imposter syndrome wrap its insidious tentacles around me. I have bones to hunt.

I find them vibrating in music or buried in the ground in the backyard as I cultivate a garden. Sometimes they’re lurking in my five-year-old’s closet in one of her board game boxes or rattling around in the car during a cross-country drive. They’re bouncing around at a blues dance, stuffed in the drawer of my easel, hiding in the shower, and tucked beneath the endless piles of laundry. Sometimes, they’re hidden in the creature itself, just wedged in the wrong place.  

When I’ve found the missing pieces, I move the story back into Word so I can read it through, popping in those missing bones before starting from the top once again to add organs and muscle. But the organs are rotted and the muscles twitch and flex, so it takes multiple passes to fire them up and get them in place and operational. Each revision adds another 10k words or so. Around 40k words, my naked muscle corpse is now anatomically correct and mobile, making it harder to pin down.

Adding the fat is the most challenging task. The corpse fights me, so I have to jump in and attach bits wherever I can reach in a tedious dance with the undead. We both sustain injuries. At 70k words, I bring in reinforcements. My CP army battles copies of my creature, charting out its strengths and weaknesses, and providing insight on how to tame it. Armed with this new intel, I knock the asshole out for surgery.  I fix the problems, pop in some eyeballs and teeth, give it some vocal chords, and let it wake up to the world.

It blinks at me, looks down, sees that it’s missing skin, and begins to shriek. So, I pull a Buffalo Bill and get to work stuffing this writhing, sentient thing into the skin I’ve made for it. But I’m a mom. I’m trained for this. It thrashes and bites, screaming all the while. Some parts are too tight, some too loose. I have to make a few alterations, but eventually, the muscles, fat, and organs are all contained, it’s wearing a suit, and its hair is in a damn pony-tail like John Travolta in Pulp Fiction. It has dirt on its face, so I lick my thumb and wipe it off. My creature is calm. When I look it in the eyes, I no longer see an undead abomination. I see life. I ask it about querying, and it laughs in my face.

So, I hear all this advice about writing processes, and I shake my head. For a group of creatives, there are certainly a lot of people espousing limiting language to the detriment of the writing community as a whole. You’re not a writer if you don’t write every day. Write only what you know. Kill your darlings. Go into debt to hire an editor. Outline extensively. Real writers give up their day jobs and subsist on coffee and tears. It’s all bullshit. Some things work for some people, some things work for others. Whether you’re writing 50k words a month or 500, you are a writer, and nobody can write your story like you. Finding your own path is the only way to get it done.

I wrote my first book, an epic fantasy, with a 9-5 day job. Now, I’m a stay-at-home mom of two young children (scary, right?) who has 30 minutes a day to write. Sometimes, I need that time for other things, and I don’t write at all. Sometimes, I go for months without writing a single word. By all accounts, I’m a study in the exact wrong way to write a book, yet somehow, I’m about to finish my third novel, and my debut releases in the fall. As long as you’re making progress, you’ll get there, and everyone’s process is different. Mine just happens to involve raising the dead.

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Sarah J. Sover writes fantasy crossover novels while raising two energetic little people with her husband just outside Atlanta, GA. Her short story A Faerie Tale will appear in the JordanCon 2019 Anthology YOU WANT STORIES, and her debut novel DOUBLE-CROSSING THE BRIDGE releases in September 2019.

In addition to writing, Sarah loves craft beer, blues dancing, binging superhero Netflix shows, hobby jumping, Disney, and groove metal. It’s only fitting that her debut novel is an eccentric fantasy caper with a touch of the absurd.

You can find Sarah on Facebook, Twitter, and on her website at SarahJSover.com.

DOUBLE-CROSSING THE BRIDGE

A Troll Caper

By Sarah J. Sover

Rent in New Metta is through the cavern ceiling. When Granu barely survives her first gig teaching students who attempt to fillet her for lunch, the baby-eating troll ends up unemployed and facing eviction. Granu’s only prospect for income is grueling work in the tar pits. That is, until her playboy best friend devises a perfect, if suicidal, scheme—a heist!

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