Update on the Book

I spent about a year and a half writing the 80,000-word first draft of my novel, and another year revising.  The fact that I've had a full time job the past year helps me feel better about how long this is taking.  I know it's stronger for the changes I'm making, and I'm glad I didn't rush to send it out, eager for "professional" feedback (that feedback would have come as a series of form rejections!)

I've revised and edited about 54,000 of the 80,000 words.  So I'm more than halfway there.  Unfortunately, the second half of the book was the weaker half.  It's going to take more than minor tweaking to get it into the shape I want it.  But it should be easier to fix than it was to write it in the first place...

A few weeks ago I mentioned that I had read Ayana Mathis' "The Twelve Tribes of Hattie" -- it's a great book, each chapter telling the story of one of Hattie's twelve children, and it stands out to me primarily because of the writing.  Good plots and good characterization, but GREAT writing.  After I read that, I decided to do something completely different. I'm finally reading "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" books.  I read the first one in just a few days, and I'm a third of the way through the second one after just starting it yesterday.  My fiancé can't believe I'm reading it so quickly, but I tried to explain that when plot is the best thing in a book, it's easy to skim over large portions of paragraphs.  It isn't that I'm not reading everything, it's that I'm not reading everything very closely.   But these popular books remind me that, at least when I'm just trying to move the story forward, I can use plain language.  I can be straightforward.  Sometimes it's nice for the reader to just be able to relax and read quickly and not feel like she has to examine each sentence.

Chapter One

My manuscript is currently in the hands of a select few trusted readers.  I'm waiting for feedback and criticism that will, hopefully, help me shape the book into something publishers will want.  Saturday I met with one of my "beta" readers--my awesome critique partner who's been there every step of the way--and received some invaluable feedback.

Not only did she meticulously read it, line by line, noting what she liked with exclamation points, and noting what didn't work and why, but she also articulated what I hadn't been able to put into words: the first chapter seems told in a different voice.

I spent the longest on chapter one.  I had to make sure it did everything I needed the first chapter to do:  Introduce important details and set the stage for the mystery and plot to follow.  Time and care were spent getting my paragraphs just right.

But as I wrote and got to know the character better, I'd like to think I became more comfortable.  The sentences flowed more smoothly.

Knowing some of the problems with the first chapter, I can return to it and improve it.  When I tried to do this a couple months ago, I had trouble even adding a sentence to it.  I think I was still too close to the words.  Now, fortunately, they're less "darling" to me.

Last night, as I handed off my manuscript to one of my beta readers, I nervously prattled on:

• "Thanks for doing this."
• "I hope this isn't tedious."
• "I hope it's at least somewhat enjoyable."
• "I hope you don't hate it."
• "Thanks again."

I might have said some other things.  You'd have thought I was embarrassed by my writing; that I didn't expect others to enjoy it.  But the truth is, this is the scary part.  Sending my baby out into the world and hoping she does okay.  Can she stand up for herself?

While I was writing, I didn't have these insecurities.  It isn't that I was totally confident in everything I typed, just that I wasn't worried about it:  I concentrated on the story and the characters.  I tried to make the language as sharp as possible.  

Here's my baby!

During the next few weeks, as my beta readers critique the 287 pages I've been working on for the last year and a half (geez, that's less than a page a day!) I should start my next project.  Do what calms me most: concentrate on characters and story.

Title!

For those not using google reader, I've changed my site layout.  My old one wasn't very customizable, and I couldn't adjust the length of the column to add a button for Amazon.  We'll see if this one sticks, though.  It's kind of girly.


After discarding some horrible title ideas for my book (the funniest, most horrible one was "The Agnostic Godmother"--ha!), I've settled on one that doesn't sound awful.

Actually, when trying to come up with a title I took the advice of a blog post by the literary agent Rachelle Gardner.  First, determine the genre and tone of your book.  Then, go to Amazon and find twenty or so books in the same genre that have titles you like.  Write them down and think about what you like about them.  Then, setting that list aside, brainstorm words and phrases associated with your own book; nothing is off limits.

I wrote down a lot of words and ideas, but it wasn't until I started thumbing through my draft that I'd transferred to my Nook that I came across an apt phrase that I think might work.  When I hand out my first draft to my beta readers, I'll offer them money or cookies if they can think of a better title.  But it feels good to have one in my head.  I'll mention it here once I've tested it and received assurances that it is, indeed, better than "Another Mother," "Temporary Mom," and "The Agnostic Godmother."

From what I understand, a lot of book titles end up being chosen by the agent of publisher, so it could easily change (ha, I'm pretending that I'll find an agent or publisher... it's nice to dream!)

Aren't You Finished by Now?

Today's my first and only day off work this week. I'm still revising (my boyfriend says, "Aren't you finished by now?!" and I ask myself the same thing).

I'm stuck on my ending. I've gone back and forth many times, and as written it's kind of in the middle. It's not the horrible choice that may make you hate a character, and it's not the warm and fuzzy, nor is it the clear moral answer. I'm realizing today, as I reread my final chapters, that I need to be stronger. Trust my original plan. Even if it makes you hate a character (which is debatable... I think it may split on gender lines, ha), I think that's okay--it just means you care about these made-up characters and world.

Sorry for the vagueness. I'm excited about making the fix and wanted to get my thoughts out. I'm at 78556 words, and expect it to get longer.

I had a great meeting with my writing partner this morning. I've been busy editing and rewriting the past few weeks, and I was eager to share the changes I had made. Also, I wanted some direction on the ending that I hurriedly wrote, so excited to be "finished." She gave me some great feedback and suggestions that will guide me as I continue revising, especially on those last few pages.

But the meeting was also great because I got to read some chapters of her current work-in-progress with new characters and plot lines. I loved it, and I so admire her ability to keep producing new and wonderful stories. It makes me excited for the time when I can begin a new project.

Ready, Set, Action!

I printed out all 278 pages of my draft, 12pt Font, Times New Roman. Double-spaced. I'm enjoying going through it with a purple pen and post-it notes, marking up things that are awkward or unnecessary. Much of chapter six, I realized, was awkward and unnecessary, so today I rewrote it.

There wasn't much action. Except for a paragraph that concludes the chapter, I could delete the whole thing and the story wouldn't miss a beat. In the previous version of the chapter, I had my protagonist feel threatened and scared by someone--a stranger. I was trying to develop her character, showing how vulnerable she felt even when it wasn't warranted. All the excitement was in her head.

But how much more exciting would the chapter be if instead of merely feeling threatened, she is actually threatened? Her fear is legitimate. She is vulnerable. I still get to develop her character by how she reacts to the fear and threat but, I think, it becomes a much stronger chapter.

Even though I started with a rough outline, I wasn't sure where I was going each page. I think I was afraid to write anything that might distract me from the larger story. But now that the larger story is finished, I'm psyched to return to individual pages and chapters and improve them.

Apt Phrases

I'm not a particularly metaphorical writer. I don't use much figurative language. But I do have some phrases that I fall back on without even thinking--"It's funny," "it seemed," and "it was as if"--that provide me a natural opening for a narrator or speaker to make some kind of connection or analogy.

But have I overused these phrases? Worried, I used the awesome "ctrl+f" function in Microsoft Word. I discovered that I used "It's funny" three times and "it seemed" twelve times. I also used "It was as if" twice. Ironically, with all of these phrases, I break a rule I taught: avoid using indefinite pronouns to begin a sentence, especially when there's no clear antecedent. That is, don't use "it" unless you and the reader know what "it" is replacing.

This search function is great in that it allows me to notice when I'm being repetitive. We all have phrases that we overuse, both in speech and in writing. When we're aware of those phrases, we can hopefully replace them with something more creative. ("Hopefully" is another one I overuse!)

Revision Fun

Yesterday, my boyfriend introduced me to a beautiful, dark, and moody video game called "Limbo." I'm generally antagonistic toward video games, refusing to play one for more than 10 or 15 minutes. I quit "Portal" after a half-hour because it was giving me a headache. In "Limbo," you control a boy as he navigates a dark and dangerous environment. You can go forward and backward, jump, and pull and push things. Because there are so few options and because the action moves slowly, I played this game for almost an hour.

There's no music or dialogue, no moments of levity. But there are numerous opportunities to die: spikes, long falls, and giant piercing spiders (at least, I think they're spiders). I felt bad for killing the boy over and over again; luckily, each time he dies, the action rewinds to just before the unfortunate death. The death scenes can be gruesome, though there is an option in the menu: "no gore."

I was thinking how nice it would be to be able to go through life taking extreme risks, knowing that we could rewind if something goes wrong. How would that affect our behavior?

I'm in the process of revising my first draft. I'm going back to the beginning and trying to read it with fresh eyes. Today, I completely changed the beginning of the second chapter. I wasn't happy with it before--the writing was fine, maybe, but the content was off. I didn't realize how much until I reached the end. It's exciting, being able to edit with the knowledge that I can always go back to how it was; that the rest of the story and these characters' lives will still be in tact. This is one of the fun things about being puppet master to made-up people :)

(Picture from Limbo video game review, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/video-games/7902760/Limbo-video-game-review.html)

And *Then* I'll Do My Happy Dance

I finished my book last week, somewhere in the 78,000 word range. It's bittersweet right now because I'm not pleased with the end. But it's there, it's typed, and now it can be moved around, embellished, and adjusted. This should be easier than getting it down in the first place.

While I was slogging through the middle, I could just confidently report, "Oh yeah, I'm writing a book! Har! Har!" But now I have this 260-page manuscript. It's it. It's the big thing I've been working on for over a year. And that confidence is on a shelf somewhere until I get the 78,000 words into the shape of something I'm proud of...

And then I'll do my happy dance.

Stories

I figured out the end of my story Thursday. After I finished revising the many pages my writing partner had so carefully critiqued (thanks!!!), I jumped to page 260 and realized what I needed to happen. The fact that the realization made me emotional suggests that it's the right way to go.

That isn't to say I'm certain it'll be good or that I don't suffer from near-crippling self-doubt. It's just enough to give me the motivation to keep at it.

Speaking of stories, Andrew Sullivan directed me to this online essay, Story Theory: Confessions of a Literary Darwinist by R. Salvador Reyes. After being moved by a Jackson Pollack painting, Reyes began to wonder why he was moved by art. He explores how humans had "come to love literature and art" and "how evolution has shaped audiences' responses to art." In a nut shell, he realizes that humans seek patterns; we need stories and narratives to make sense of the world around us. Stories help us remember and, thus, survive. The whole essay is worth reading.

Bittersweet Milestone

I recently reached my goal of writing 75,000 words.

Unfortunately my celebration was short-lived; my story isn't finished. All this time, I've been using word count as a goal. When I was starting out, I looked at websites, at the novels I loved, and considered how long they were. Then I settled on a number--75,000--that made sense to me. Then I structured my story and its events with that number in mind.

I had wanted the chapter I'm working on--the chapter that got me over 75,000--to be my last. And part of me wants to tie everything in a neat little bow in a few telling paragraphs. I want to be finished! I want to go back to the beginning and start the revision process! I want to make it better from page one, not be stuck on the end!

But if I end it now, or in the next few pages, the book becomes very melancholy. Don't get me wrong, I love melancholy. I'm often melancholy myself. But I don't want the book, on whole, to be melancholy.

In the mean time, I'm going to keep writing. Even if the ending is different than I'd planned, even if I have to write another three chapters. Focus on telling a good story and, hopefully, everything else will fall into place.

By the way, I meet with my writing partner this evening, after a break of almost a month--I couldn't be happier. I've missed getting feedback and hearing a trusted voice saying, "This is good! Keep going!" or even "This needs work" or "This is unclear."

Baby baby!

Three or four years back, a ton of my friends were getting married. In the past couple years, some of these friends have started having children. And just this year, two of my oldest (duration, not age) friends have become pregnant. One, an awesome and lovely woman with whom I went to grade school, high school, and college, is due to give birth December 5th. In a strange coincidence, that date happens to be the anniversary of the day I was hit as Carleen and I tried to cross a busy road. I'm excited for that date to take on a new significance. Carleen and her husband have kept a blog journaling their first year of marriage and, now, their journey into parenthood. I recommend it.

My other friend, Nancy, was my roommate through all four years of college. It's only in hindsight that I see how much of a saint she was to put up with me! After college she moved back to California, and I couldn't have been more excited when she fell for a guy from Southwest Ohio and returned to the Midwest a few years ago. Nancy's four months pregnant and, like Carleen, I know she'll be a terrific mother.

Speaking of babies, mine isn't quite ready for the world. As you can see, I've colored in a few rectangles. Progress is being made. But I'm still a couple thousand words behind. Still, I'm hopeful to finish this month, allowing December to be revision month, and then January I can give my baby to beta readers.

Progress

I made a low-tech progress chart today for my made up National Novel Finishing Month (NaNoFiMo). From now through the end of November, I will fill in a block for every five-hundred words. Today involved some minor editing and revision based on the great feedback I received at last night's writing class. It's great hearing reactions from readers who aren't as close to the text as I am--and once they point something out, it seems obvious. But I know I wouldn't have found it on my own.

I also moved some pieces around. Between changing points of view and jumping around in the timeline, I was having trouble keeping track of when events took place. And if I, Puppet Master, was having trouble, then surely my readers would too.

The progress chart gives me the simple reward of coloring in at least one rectangle every day.

Nanofimo

Each November, participants in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) attempt to start and finish a 50,000-word novel. According to the official website, 21 participated the first year, 1999. Last year, over 200,000 participated!

I first heard of NaNoWriMo a couple years ago. The library was involved with a number of programs supporting participating writers. Maybe someday I'll participate--writing so many words would force me to turn off my inner critic, right? But this year I've decided to designate November "National Novel Finishing Month." I have fewer than 15,000 words left--if a quarter-million can write 50,000 words in a month, surely I can write 5 chapters...

Good luck to all who are participating. I'm impressed by your ambition!

My heart still bleeds...

Eeee! Crossed 60,000 words today!!! They're not all good--maybe none of them are, we shall see. I'm just proud of the accumulation of sentences. Word by word, sentence by sentence, I'm telling a story, one that's 80% finished!!! (Not counting revision and rewrites).

On an unrelated note, I just finished "Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World," a book by Michael Lewis ("The Big Short," "The Blindside.") In this short non-fiction book, Lewis travels from Iceland to Greece to Ireland to Germany and finally to California (where he rides bikes with Arnold Schwarzenegger), examining the causes and effects of the worldwide financial crisis. He talks to bankers, politicians, and finance ministers to try to understand how they got into such a mess (in the cases of Iceland, Greece, Ireland, and California) and how they avoided it (in the case of Germany, with some exceptions).

Lewis is a great storyteller, taking something that might be boring and dry and turning it into a compelling narrative. He approached each country as a journalist should--trying to understand it not through a preconceived framework but based on the facts he discovers. And because I discovered the facts along with him, as he told the story, I feel like I have a much better understanding of what happened. He looked at the culture of each country, too, to see how it related to its financial circumstances. From the New York Times review:

[Lewis]weaves... stories into a sharp-edged narrative that leaves readers with a visceral understanding of the fiscal recklessness that lies behind today’s headlines about Europe’s growing debt problems and the risk of contagion they now pose to the world.

It's a fascinating book that left me viewing the world through a more conservative lens. Two common threads across the countries? First, greed. It's omnipresent. Second, people taking more than they've earned simply because they can. Adults mortgaging their children's future in order to maintain a higher standard of living. It's not that I don't blame the elite bankers, who gambled with pensions and 401k's and manipulated the public; it's not that I don't blame government regulators who turned a blind eye so long as their coffers were filled; it's that at the end of the day, each of us is responsible for our own actions, for becoming as financially educated as possible. And I felt for Slovakia as it was being asked to bail out Greece.

Don't worry, my heart still bleeds (universal health care for the win!) but I feel like I have a better handle on where some of the tea party rhetoric comes from. My hope is that tea party-ers realize they're part of the 99%, too. (See Connor Friedersdorf's "Why the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street Should Cooperate")

Rules of Civility

My first thought after I finished Amor Towles' novel, "Rules of Civility": This is what a novel *should* be. It was that good. Set in 1938's NYC, the book chronicles a year in one young woman's life when she makes choices that will set the paths of her career and social circle. The narrative voice, dialogue, and descriptions perfectly capture that era. I'm shocked that a) Towles is male, because the narrator, Katherine Kontent, is so finely drawn and that b) this is Towles' first novel. I highly recommend it.

I have the next two days off from the library and hope to knock out a good chunk of writing. This is the first time I've gotten to sit at my desk for more than fifteen minutes since last Thursday, and I feel so happy to be here!

Building a House from the Inside Out

One of my favorite books from the past few years has been "The History of Love," by Nicole Krauss. I reviewed it for the library back in 2007, writing that the book

was one of those rare novels that captured me on page one then held me hostage from other activities—namely eating and sleeping—until I reached the final page. And once I was released, all I wanted to do was find someone else who'd read it and shared my experience.

The writing is exquisite, and the characters are fully-drawn. Consider the voice of one of the main characters, Leo Gursky: When they write my obituary. Tomorrow. Or the next day. It will say, “Leo Gursky is survived by an apartment full of shit.”

Both "The History of Love" and her next novel, "Great House," have multiple story lines; as a reader, I was never quite sure how they were (or weren't) going to converge. I had assumed that the plots were as intricately-drawn as her sentences.

So it was wonderful to hear her speak this past Friday night at my favorite local bookstore. Krauss, speaking so softly that everyone in the audience strained their necks forward (she also had to compete with a loud child downstairs), read an excerpt from "Great House." An older man addresses his son whom he had never completely understood. Even in a very short passage, with little context, the writing has an emotional punch. After the reading, she took some questions from the audience, and most were about her writing process.

For her, writing a novel is like building a house from the inside out. She starts by describing the doorknob. Then she needs a door. Then a room, then the rooms to which it is attached, and little by little she builds a house. She never knows exactly what the house is going to look like when it's finished.

In "Great House," she crafted four stories--set in New York, London, Israel, and Chile--without consciously knowing how the stories were related. She explained that because they all came from her mind, they must be connected, if only thematically.

Having my work-in-progress carefully plotted and outlined has freed me from some worry: I know where I'm going, and I know where my characters are going. But as a reader, I tend to prefer books driven more by character than by plot. I'll have to keep that in mind as I revise.

The Part Where Everything Comes Together

Some days I'm just tickled to be a writer. By "be a writer" I mean, having the opportunity to sit at my computer and make up stories for hours on end. How lucky can a person get?

In class Tuesday, we were asked to do a fast-write about what still needs to be written in our respective projects. I wrote,

The final act, Act III, the part where everything comes together. Mysteries are solved, situations resolved, and loose ends are tied. In other words, everything.

I know what happens in my story. I know what my characters will do. I'm just incredibly psyched to be writing it now. Who knows how good or mediocre my final product will be--I know I have good pieces, good chunks of pages, but I won't know how well everything works together until the end.

* * *

Tuesday I finished reading Paula McLain's "The Paris Wife," about Hemingway's first marriage told from the wife's point of view. I haven't read anything by Hemingway except some of his short stories; McLain's novel made me want to read more of him, including "A Moveable Feast." Wednesday I started Jay Asher's "13 Reasons Why," a novel about what led a teenager to kill herself. Two weeks after her suicide, one of her classmates receives a shoe box full of audiotapes in which the girl describes her reasons for killing herself. It's a haunting young-adult novel, and I'm already two-thirds finished. I highly recommend both books.

In the Company of Women

The world of my work-in-progress is populated by females. Each has her own story, her own relationships, her own fears. In a lot of ways, it is the interaction and friendship between the female characters that propels the novel's action forward.

When I conceived of the book's idea, I imagined two females, one forty-ish, one a teenager, thrown into a difficult situation. Men are there--husbands and boyfriends, fathers and brothers--but they are most often on the periphery. And they are often selfish and negligent. This wasn't a conscious choice. In fact, I'd written over 30,000 words when I realized that readers of the book will think I hate men!

Of course, readers of this blog know that's not true: I think the world of the men in my life. But as a writer, I wanted to explore the bonds, spoken and not, between women. I wonder sometimes if men really understand how powerful those bonds are.

In my next book (!), I'll try to make my gender treatment more balanced. If I had trouble getting into the head of a fifteen-year-old girl, imagine the fun I'll have trying to see things from a thirty-year-old man's point of view...