An Uncharted Break

In the middle of all this pre-release date stuff for Uncharted: Story for a Shipwright, I thought it would be nice to take a little break and talk about the story I’m working on—the one I mentioned a while back. The coming of age story set primarily in 1969. It started out as SPILLED COFFEE, changed to WHISPERING NARROWS, but now I think I’m back at  SPILLED COFFEE.  WHISPERING NARROWS  seems too romancey and sounds too much like a mystery (yes there is some romance and a bit of mystery, but it’s more literary fiction with a commercial bent, like Uncharted).

The first draft is complete at 80k words and now it’s revision time. My trusted beta readers have provided helpful feedback and now I need to address the problems with the story. It’s always a challenge to know what to alter and what suggestions to veto, but when certain issues gain a consensus, there’s probably something to it. So, for the past few months, it has been sitting in the corner like a problem child—a source of vexation. I think the biggest fault with this novel is that I simply didn’t know the main character, Benjamin Hughes, well enough. I knew him quite well as an adolescent—his early teen summer of 1969 is the primary part of the story. But I hadn’t developed enough of his adult life to flesh him out as a thirty-five-ish year old character my reader can relate to in the early 1990s, when the story opens and to where it returns at the beginning of each chapter. (The switching back and forth is a trick in itself!)

So, I’ve been taking long walks lately, bringing Benjamin along. I asked him, “So what exactly did happen to you and your sister between 1970 and 1992?”

And guess what! He’s been very cooperative! In fact, he introduced me to a new character, Christopher, and cleared up some details on other players in the story. The challenge will be writing Christopher in a realistic and sympathetic way. He’s a complicated character whose idiosyncrasies will require a ton of research. I will need to handle him delicately.

Since this story is written in a male, first person POV (as is Uncharted) and deals a lot with family dysfunction (like Uncharted) it seems that it would be a good follow-up novel to publish after Uncharted, as opposed to my GIRL RUNNING novels, which have a very different feel.

A while back, I even came up with a cover idea—it may be a bit busy and I might have to scratch it, but it at least provides a pretty picture for this post! I'm also hoping that the title brings to mind the old saying,  “No use crying over .... ”  

Comparisons: "Get off me!"

I know this post is supposed to be on writing insecurities but this week I could just as easily write about painting insecurities—the principles are the same. These past few days, I've spent a lot of time studying the portrait of Marlena I just completed, and I really love her. I captured the innocence and beauty of her character, and so by that standard, the project was a success. I feel good about it—really good...until...I look at Pascal Gentil's painting*...now my painting lacks luster and well, I begin to realize what an amateur I am...Please don't misunderstand; I'm not slamming my own work, and I'm not begging for reassurance. I'm simply being realistic. (Yes, I promise to get that short-term Empowerment Therapy!)

...This is where the writing analogy comes in...

I feel really good about my novels, until I start comparing them. It might be my story line or characters or the actual writing—doesn't matter. As soon as I put someone else's writing beside mine, the first thing I notice are the flaws in my own work. If I can, I go back to the drawing table/keyboard and make improvements. That's fine! But more than likely, I'll only be indulging my propensity for overworking a project—it's the paper, scrubbed and so saturated with paint and water that it begins to peel. It's the never-ending edits and revisions, tweaking characters to the point that they scream, "Get off me!"

At some point I have to say, this is mine, it's complete and I own it and I love it for what it is, in spite of the flaws. This is such a basic concept—the earlier in life we learn it, the better. Comparing ourselves—our life, our work, our progress or lack of it, our dreams and expectations—to anyone else is counterproductive. It's easy to justify comparison as that which spurs us to greater achievements, and sometimes it does, but such a shaky foundation leaves us too vulnerable. We will constantly need external reassurance and will always be standing on the edge of that slippery slope of mental/emotional malaise.

Just say NO to comparisons! "Get off me!"

This post is part of the Insecure Writer's Support Group, sponsored by Alex J. Cavanaugh.


* Edited to say that I just found Pascal Gentil's Website only to discover his "painting" is in fact a digitally enhanced photograph, which takes a great deal of talent and in no way diminishes my esteem of his work. Oh my, how I'd love to paint many of his subjects! And in a way, it makes me feel all the better about my work.

Foliage and Friends

I’m stopping in quickly to say I’m having a lovely time in New Hampshire. The foliage peaked a few days ago and this is the view from where I sit and write. Inspiring indeed! I've been getting lots of writing—revisions, that is—done...

…also, I want to direct attention to Anne Gallagher’s new Regency Writer blog (and not just because the header features one of my paintings—she produces some really high-quality stories! Go check it out!

So, What Exactly Have I Been Doing?

Over the past weeks, I have been spending much less time blogging (a great diversion during ‘writer’s block’), and a whole lot of time writing—finally. Some of that time has consisted of re-writing—not simply revising—earlier work. As a result, I have come to realize something very empowering. I have progressed as a writer!

When I completed my first novel over 20 years ago, somewhere deep down inside—as proud as I was of it—I knew it was crap. I couldn’t define exactly why, but I knew it was. I stuck it in a drawer and there it remains.

Exactly 4 years ago, I gave voice to another story that wouldn’t leave me alone. I hadn’t a clue about good writing, but that wasn’t my focus. I simply had a story I wanted to tell. My husband was out of town for five weeks and I decided to share that story with him. When he called every evening, I read what I had written. I had never felt the serotonin levels spike the way they did the summer I wrote Girl Running. I LOVED WRITING. As an added perk, after 17 years of marriage, I surprised and impressed my Todd.

Then I wrote the sequel, Portrait of a Protégé. Still, I didn’t know the ‘rules’ of good writing and so my words and the story had free reign. When I finished, I loved the story, but I knew my writing had problems—and I had no idea what they were, let alone how to fix them. It was frustrating, but didn’t stop me from writing some more.

So, I moved on. I finished the first draft of Story for a Shipwright two years ago, simultaneous with my blogging debut, and I started to learn and to revise.

Now, I’ve gone back to Girl Running and Protégé. Oh my goodness, what a revelation. Now I can see the problems: I was in love with:
• Long, convoluted sentences: the more semi-colons and em-dashes; and; as; but;—not to mention however and nevertheless—the better! (you see what I mean)
• Big, obscure, eye-rolling words (words that even I can’t remember what they mean)
• Switching POV willy-nilly. Oh my! Talk about head-hopping
• Long, descriptive passages filled with adverbs and other modifiers
• Passive voice and weak verbs
• Pointless scenes
• Back-story info dumps
• Redundant dialogue tags
And the list goes on and on…including my whopping 150+K and 120+K word counts

However, I did find some good.
• Some strong characters with good potential
• Moderately tight plots
• Good, well thought out dialogue, much of it salvageable (even if it was buried in long descriptive tags.)
• Some nicely turned phrases that I could easily recycle
So, that’s what I’ve been up to—writing for the fun of it, finally knowing how to bring out the best in these stories. I am so excited to find joy in my writing again!

…and thanks to Michelle David Argyle at The Innocent Flower who continues to post honestly about the emotional ups and downs of writing versus publishing, helping me sort out my own expectations.

Back to Where I Started?

Well, I’ve been busy putting together something for Notes From Underground, way ahead of time, which is a little unlike me. Actually, I’m not certain that it’s like or unlike me, seeing as I’ve never had to work under a writing deadline. I suppose that if I had to come up with something from scratch, it might feel entirely different.

At any rate, I’ve written a short story based upon a scene from an earlier unpublished novel of mine—that is, from a sequel to my second novel.* When I wrote Girl Running, and then, Portrait of a Protégé, I had absolutely no idea about writing rules and publishing. I only had a high school-level grasp of English—and the benefit of parents who had a fair handle on English grammar. That’s it. I couldn’t even claim to be an avid reader** Oh, and I had a huge imagination!

After several years of mulling over a particular scenario, and coming up with character backstory, I decided to wing it and simply get the story out of my head and into MS Word. I wrote it for my husband and I had a blast doing it! Impressing Todd was my only desire. I even printed and bound it for him—all 150,703 words!*** He’s the one who planted the idea of publishing, so I will blame all my angst, henceforth, on him.

It wasn’t until I began writing Story for a Shipwright that I investigated what the industry considers ‘good writing.’ I jumped through all the hoops. I read the agents' blogs, got beta readers and revised and revised and revised. I like the story—no, I love the story—I think it is sound and I will publish one way or the other. But I wonder if, in all the advice and critiques and revisions, I have somehow homogenized it...like chrome polished down to pot-metal.

So, here I am, between stories, and it’s my first love that still nags me. Rewriting just one scene, utilizing what I've learned, and then writing it with the liberty of doing it how I want has made me seriously reconsider Leila, a girl raised by a couple of mixed up guys—one black, one white—who just wanted to be Blues musicians and had no business raising a child on the road. I think her story as an adolescent on her own, breaking into womanhood, may be worth a complete rewrite—at least it’s a notion I’m toying with…

* I hesitate to claim my very first completed novel of 23 years ago—Relative Survival—but it qualifies in length.

** Yes, I know that’s blasphemy, but if I started reading anything, I did not have the self-discipline to put it down until it was done, and that can really mess up one's life--especially when one has a family. Borderline OCD?
*** the sequel came in at only 123,753 words

Query Progress

Alright, so this isn’t agent news, however, it does pertain to my query. According to advice out there in the writing blogsphere, if one sends out a handful of queries and receives absolutely no interest, she ought to give her query another look before flooding the agent pool with uninspiring slush.

I could have sent my query back over to The Public Query Slushpile, where last spring, I swamped Rick with 5 revisions (and came up with something pretty good), but I couldn’t bring myself to break the record for the most compulsive poster over there. So, I decided to have a look at Elana Johnson’s, From the Query to the Call (which included a critique), and received yet more helpful advice.

At the same time, Weronika Janczuk launched a query contest of sorts, and I submitted my newly revised pitch. And Yay, she liked it, offered a couple suggestions, which I implemented, and she posted it on her blog as one of the Queries that Worked!

So, this is all progress—nothing monumental, (except to me!) but it is incremental success, for which I will be happy, if not bordering on optimistic—at least for the weekend…

...and can I mention that she'd like to read the entire manuscript?

Just when...

Just when you think you’re pretty much done, you can’t seem to rid yourself of the niggling doubt about that last chapter. ‘Now, now, it’s just that I don’t want to give up the story,’ you tell yourself. ‘It’s hard letting go, sending my baby off to make her own way in the big wide world of publishing. Stop obsessing and move on.’

But still…you just can’t sleep without replaying those last few scenes. Then you read something like this, and it cements the doubt. ‘Ugh,’ you’re thinking, ‘I’m so sick of this story—who cares about these imaginary people anyway. I wish they'd just get a life and leave me alone.’

Then, not only one reader, but two, hit on the very insecurity that keeps you from saying ‘it’s the best I can do.’

Deep breath. Step back. Talk it over with support team. And it’s back to the drawing board.

Suddenly, those synapses that you thought had exhausted themselves begin firing instantaneously. You no longer care that winter is here for another four months. Amazingly, the bed that felt like your permanent home this morning doesn’t look nearly as inviting as the office chair…

'Lars and the Real Girl'—A Study in Character Development.

Last week my sister recommended Lars and the Real Girl, knowing I have a predilection for movies that intertwine unconventional relationships with strands of mental illness. (I’m sure that says far more about me than you need to know, but I love movies like Harold & Maude, Shine, Benny & Joon—stuff like that.) I think this may be one of my new, all-time favorites (it didn’t hurt that it featured music by Talking Heads).

Here’s the gist: Socially awkward Lars lives in a garage apartment beside the house where his brother and his sister-in-law live. It becomes evident that he has gone fully delusional when he accepts their dinner invitation, and arrives with his ‘date’, Bianca—she is a life-like version of an ‘inflate-a-date’ doll. The entire town becomes involved in an effort to help Lars work through his delusions.

What really struck me was Bianca’s effective character development, facilitated by Ryan Gosling, Emily Mortimer and Paul Schneider’s great acting.

Amazingly, with the help of Lars, his family and the townsfolk, Bianca takes on a whole personality and life by means of their ‘interactions’ with her. In the end, I just couldn’t believe that I was crying over a stupid manikin! Honestly, if you want your perceptions of character development challenged, watch this movie!

Director Craig Gillespie defines Bianca, solely by the use of supporting characters. That got me thinking about my own characters; about how much more efficiently I can reveal them by their interactions with each other as opposed to narration and rumination.

Now, as I rewrite Girl Running, I’m looking for all those places where I can breathe more life into my ‘imaginary friends’.

A Pithier Introduction

So, I gave it a few days, thought about all my pretty words—I really liked the description of the beach sights and sounds, but it seemed to delay the real action. This is a revision of the first few paragraphs of Girl Running—Hopefully it’s more effective, without diluting what I needed to convey.

Two paragraphs instead of five. Have I been too extreme?

During those winding down hours, long after paraphernalia-laden and sunburned city-dwellers headed home, Leila too started for the beach parking lot. Disregard for July’s midday sun now showed up as sunburn, evoking the feeling of seven years ago—being ten again, eating gritty peanut butter and jelly, digging sand out from around the elastic of her swimsuit. Racing her daddy in the sand was fun compared to her ten-mile jog, but the fatigue of it was one of the best sensations she knew.

In the emptying parking lot, sprays of sand stung her legs and whipped strands of hair from her unraveling braid. That’s when she caught sight of her little blue car sitting without neighbor, jarring her from bittersweet memories. As she approached the passenger door, seagulls overhead called out and dashed toward the ground to fight over someone’s leftovers, discarded beside what was obviously a flat tire.

Girl Running: To Revise or To Rewrite—That is the Question

Okay, I’m going ahead and putting it out there. This is just the first chapter of Girl Running.

I had some POV issues in the original draft, but given that the first chapter is a recollection, it was easy to correct, sticking with one character. The rest of the story vacillates between close 3rd and omniscient 3rd, something I’m really struggling with. I also have a genre conflict. It probably fits into Young Adult, but some rather adult issues arise. And of course there’s the word count…

Bear in mind that although I have revised the beginning in order for something to happen in the first pages, this is still a rough draft. (To be honest, I’m only calling it rough, in case any of you readers are thinking, “Wow, this is really rough…”) As my first serious attempt at a novel, I had much to learn. I have cut out a lot of the exposition, and deleted much of the explaining before and after the fact. I’m not saying I cut it all, but I sure would appreciate knowing how I’m coming across.

Also, if anyone enjoys playing sleuth: What do you gather about each character from what is supplied in this first chapter.

Honestly—does it hook you?

Here goes...

Chapter 1 (deleted)

Waiting & Working on Another Story

Well, I’m gearing up to send out some queries on Story for a Shipwright, hopefully by the end of the month. Feedback from beta-readers have been trickling in, with one manuscript still out there—the one I’m most looking forward to. (No pressure there, Laura).

In the meantime, I’m preoccupying myself with my first viable novel, Girl Running. I ‘completed’ it a year ago, and have learned a great deal since then. So, why not apply all that learning to what I still consider a good story with great potential. The biggest challenge will be trimming nearly 50,000 words off 150,000 to better fit the Young Adult genre. Maybe I’ll just call it Commercial Fiction, instead.

I couldn’t wait to see it in print, and bound a few copies. Perhaps I’ll even post a few pages…