Light at the End of This Writing Tunnel

When A Bad Guy Forever won the mystery/suspense/thriller category of the 2011-2012 Phoenix Rattler contest last week, believe me, it was a badly needed shot of encouragement. Sort of like those B-12 shots my mother used to give my old granny. Those shots kept her kicking for a good number of years. I’m hoping and praying to stay kicking long enough to get this manuscript revised and circulating.

For the past three days, I’ve been working nonstop. The first thirty-six hours, I read with pen in hand making notes where things didn’t make sense or where I needed more dialogue or internal thought. I haven’t read my manuscript in its entirety since I “finished” it the first time. Won’t tell you how long that’s been! My score sheets from the contest are invaluable. Much of what the two finalist judges said helped identify problem areas. It's amazing how different "professional eyes" (should I say an editor's eyes?) are from our own.

I’ve lived in fear that the rewrites I’ve been involved in during the past year were creating an unfixable mess. I’m tickled silly to say that’s not the case at all. I feel more positive and encouraged than ever! The thing didn’t read half bad. Oh, there are glitches and holes and a few problems, but they're all fixable. FIXABLE! Hooraaaay!

Now I’m taking the notes I’ve written on the hard copy and I'm rewriting. The only thing that’s truly scaring me is how much I’m doing away with. Entire scenes are being discarded but they don’t work so they have to be dumped. I’m almost half-way through the book. Once I’m finished, I’ll pass it on to mystery writer Barbara Colley and let her mark it up. She’s excellent at spotting holes and asking questions that have to be answered. After fixing what she says is broken, hopefully, I’ll have a marketable manuscript. Do you think I should have more than one reader? Seriously now, cut me some slack. But do you?

I’m still having a few problems adding description and a sense of setting. Why is that giving me fits? I have to make a conscious effort to do it when it seems, at least to me, a lot of that should just appear naturally, then be tweaked. It dawned on me today that maybe in the future, I should plan my setting in detail before I ever start writing. What do you think?

Teach me something about setting and description and revision. My book is set in Louisiana. Am I just making sense of place difficult because I’m not really from Louisiana? Now that's a thought.

Projects for 2012

We’re 16 days into 2012. What have you accomplished?

I turned in my article on Louisiana author Christa Allan. It will be in the March issue of Southern Writers Magazine.

I’ve put my novel away--the one I completed and marketed to Christian publishers. I took it apart and tried to rewrite it for the secular market. It’s the one that was a finalist at Killer Nashville. Rewriting--a complete rewrite--is difficult. I lost my vision for the book. Well, actually, I didn’t lose my vision, I just lost myself. I thought I could pull out the faith elements and rewrite, but it didn't work that way. The minute I took their faith from my characters, their Christian reasoning, praying, their Christian World View, they became different people, and then I saw the pages being gobbled up and disappearing and well ... I need to step back from it for awhile. Get to know these new characters. I need to do a story board or something, gain better control of the timeline. Anyway, it’s constantly on my mind. I hear my characters conversing, I jot down things they say and do. Hopefully, I'll get back to it soon.

In the mean time, I’d love to pursue obsessive-compulsive organizational habits. I think being organized makes a huge difference in whether one is successful or not--no matter what they attempt. On the whole, I'm not an organized person, but if you give me one project at a time, I'm organized. Make sense? Baby steps, baby steps.

I’ve started two new projects. I’m super excited about both. I’ve been thinking about a nonfiction book for about a year and making notes. I've finally started outlining it. Since a lot of interviewing will have to take place, I'm devising some powerful (yes, they have to be powerful!) questions for my subjects. I’ve never written a NF book. I need to learn exactly how much I should write before I query. I understand one doesn't have to write the entire book before they can query or even sell. The research has been fun. So if any of you have experience pulling together a NF book, any thing you can share will be appreciated.

I’m also working on a novella. No market in site--just something I have to write. Oddly enough, this started out in my mind as a NF book, and then it hit me that I should write the same story but from a fictional character's POV; a fictional character who is a composite of many characters. I’m handwriting it. At some point, I'll start typing, I'm sure, so I'm waiting for that pull to the laptop. Right now, the intimacy of writing by hand is keeping me excited about the story. I've even been waking in the middle of the night because scenes invade my sleep. Don't you love it when you're that excited/obsessed about a subject? At this point, it’s from the male point of view. While I write, I'm very conscious of POV--trying to put myself in his/her/its place and look out at the world. I’m thinking about revising it to an androgynous point of view to make the subject matter more universal. I'll decide about that once I start revising. Could be that from the male POV would be the more perfect love story but I want to use the POV that makes it a more powerful story. Your thoughts?

So now that you know what I’m doing, what’s on your plate? New projects or finishing up old ones? Anything you're super excited about? Obsessed with? Worried about? Scared to attempt? Details!

Is Your Story Structurally Sound? So What!

There’s always something to watch outside my hotel window when I come to Houston. Once I watched a window washer and thought about putting a heroine in such a job.  Yesterday, I watched the demolition of the 70 year old Young Men’s Christian Association. I always feel sad when I see old buildings torn down. (There was no good reason for this building to be torn down but there was a reason.) Lots of history floating through the air in the form of dust. Looking at this one, I wondered about all the lives touched inside those walls. What are their stories, their memories?

The YMCA served the city of Houston for 125 years—evolving and changing into what new generations needed. Built in the Italian Renaissance architectural style (according to their website), the building they’re demolishing had beautiful interior rock walls and painted beam ceilings. It had a dorm for 270 men, an assembly hall and 19 classrooms. There were two gyms and six handball courts, an indoor pool, and much more. Now, it’s time for a change and the new YMCA is built.

(I’m too sentimental, I guess. You'd think as much as we've moved around, I wouldn't have ties to anything, be nostalgic at all.)

Watching the wrecking crew strategically bump, swat and grab to bring the structure down, I thought about my novel. In my mind’s eye, I’m the person maneuvering that wrecking crane. Crashing, pulverizing all that back story and narrative and fluff—until it’s a distant memory —a sentence here and a thought there that only hints of conflict past and conflict to come.

There might be some beautiful ‘history’ in that back story but it doesn’t work.

That’s what rewriting is—changing, evolving, making the story stronger. We have to be like chefs—the right seasoning, sprinkled throughout the novel judiciously like Tony Chachere’s Creole Seasoning. We have to be like wrecking crews, aiming at and demolishing just the right spot so that we can rebuild with the talent of the finest construction worker. We have to be like architects, designing a story that’s perfect for readers at just the right time in their lives, something that will last for years to come in someone’s memory or on someone’s bookshelf.

The following quote spoke to me today:

. . . writing is like cooking is like painting is like sculpture is like music is like gardening is like tying flies is like carving is like making bread is like making wine is like singing is like dancing is like cooking is like writing . . . ~Ev Bishop

I agree. And a whole lot more.