What the Sam Heck is Going On???

*****

Last night, I sat down to read the latest novel in a mystery series I admire. I was excited. The release had been several months overdue. So I curled up in bed with my copy filled with lofty expectations, ready to be swept away and entertained once again.

I was promptly disappointed.

The first several pages limped through a longish stretch of brackish backstory about a secondary character, told (and I repeat TOLD) from the point of view of the detective. It wasn’t even compelling backstory. A few pages in, the story finally began to move forward.

Which, in my opinion, is where the narrative should have started in the first place.

It wasn’t the first time I’d been disappointed in a book lately. I asked myself: what’s with all the mediocre writing coming from well-established talents lately?

WB Stephen sent me an email on this just yesterday. He’d ordered a recent book written by a former-lawyer-turned-blockbuster-author. Stephen was appalled—and rightly so—because the first paragraph of said book used the verb WAS exclusively, something like a half-dozen times in almost as many sentences. And boy, do I agree. We’re talking about a principle from Writing 101 here. Good writing relies on vigorous verbs, not wimpy, uninspired forms of “to be.”

Which reminded me of a conversation I recently had with another friend. She’s an avid reader and library staffer annoyed with the wave of lousy books coming from her favorite A-listers. Most of her comments were proofreading related—misspelled words, missed punctuation, etc…. But even small mistakes stand out as glaring errors in published books.

Clearly, something’s going on here, something that makes good writers look inept. But I’m not sure the problem lies solely with the writers. Rather, I think this harkens back to recent slashes in editorial staff at the publishing houses. Our favorite writers don’t suddenly suck. They still write great stories. It’s just that I don’t think there are enough editors left to properly edit them.

Personally, I’m going to take this as an opportunity. This is my chance to see such writers’ work somewhat au naturel, rather like seeing celebrities without makeup. This new age of stories comes to us in a different pristine state—a state with many of the flaws still intact. In the past, when I read those beautiful books, I felt intimidated by writing that jumped off the page, effortless. Now I see I can adopt a different mindset. In some ways, these adolescent books are just as pimply and gauche as mine are. Which means there’s hope that success isn’t as far off as I feared.

A Matter of Voice

*****

I’m back into Jamieson’s Folly again, after a rocky start.

I started reworking the beginning last Friday and, from the start, it was an uphill climb. First, beginnings are just damn hard for me. But it was more than that. I felt pressured to produce something respectable for my Tuesday night workshop. So I spent a whopping one day analyzing themes and picking one to focus the opening on. By Saturday, I was running with it.

Running at the mouth is more like it.

See, the problem is that I need downtime. I’m a slow thinker. Not that I’m dumb. I’m just a person who needs time to reflect. And a four day deadline to rewrite the beginning of a novel doesn’t cut it for a slow thinker. So I did what the most desperate writers do—I overwrote. I threw in descriptions, adjectives, adverbs and similes. Writer padding that makes us look like we know what we’re doing.

I didn’t.

I rushed the piece, printed it off (even the printing gods tried to thwart me by running out of ink) and took it to class on Tuesday. I apologized, handed out copies and read it. And the class shocked the hell out of me by raving over how fantastic it was. Vivid, beautiful, poetic, amazing. One of my fellow writers even called it brilliant.

You think I’d be satisfied with that kind of praise, but it left me empty. Something still stuck in my craw. The piece wasn’t right. I knew it was off. I sifted through the copies everyone had marked, looking for some kind of clue. I got miscellaneous nits that all seemed to point in different directions—someone thought the pacing felt a little slow, another didn’t feel clued in to the narrator. One person didn’t realize my narrator was a man until halfway through the first page, someone else commented on the beautiful but overly-abundant descriptions. I tried to make sense of the remarks, but no one seemed to echo the same sentiments. It was a hodge podge that I could have dismissed.

I asked my husband. He read the piece.

“I don’t know. It just feels off,” he told me.

I thought about it overnight and the next day. I let it sit, let my thoughts germinate. At four this morning (I wake up and think about my writing a lot, as you may have noticed.), it came to me in a predawn flash:

Voice.

I’d overwritten the crap out of the thing and it felt like that for a reason. Twenty-two year old guys don’t spend a paragraph contriving gorgeous verbal pictures of dusk in a canyon. They don’t. My husband’s thirty-something, “I don’t know. It just feels off” says it all. Guys are brief. They say stuff. They shut up.

I wrote the same thing with Nick’s new voice. His real voice. And it really works.

I’ve given the problem thought since and come up with some type of explanation. Usually I write from character as a starting point. Voice is natural then, inherent to the inspiration. But because I wrote Folly during NaNoWriMo and move far forward every day, I chose instead to write from a loosely outlined plot. Nick as a character had never fully developed in my mind and it showed in every word.

I’m taking the new piece to class next Tuesday. I’m anxious to hear the reactions to the massive change. I expect some won’t like, at least the devotees of poetry, but I’m thrilled with it and that’s what really matters.

Over-tweakers Anonymous

*****

I had something discouraging happen twice in the last week. Just when I thought I’d finished something, I reread and discovered I was far from done. One was the beginning to the Nick short story, “The Great Divide.” The other was a somewhat unimportant scene in Somewhere on The Road to Me. Both had been cooling for a week or so while I stepped away for a dose of perspective.

I can’t tell you how disheartened I was when I came back and saw my own drivel. In the case of “The Great Divide,” I’d been sure I was ready to submit. But really, I’d created a mess. I’d crafted paragraphs of weighty, poetic description, had fully developed themes before my story even started. I’d written one entire page of a guy looking at telephone lines while sitting in a hot spring. What the hell was I thinking? I’d clearly overwritten.

I don’t know about you, but I could tinker a sentence into complete oblivion. Tweak a little here, reword a bit there, maybe shorten, or re-punctuate, break it into two, jam two together with a conjunction or a comma splice, throw in another snazzy image. Maybe do all of the above until the revision bears no resemblance to the original. Unless you’re Hemingway and you write nothing but unalloyed gold, there’s always the option of mixing things up a bit. But with that possibility comes the chance of overwriting. Damn. I clung when I should have let go.

I think this is what’s killing me with Beth’s story. (okay, I know) I’m so doggedly determined to get every phrasing just right that I belabor even the shortest scenes. Why do I do that? I’m driving myself nuts. Not to mention I’m getting so damn sick of Beth, I’m starting to understand why her mother gets so pissed at her.

But the real shame is that I’m losing Beth’s freshness. Too many similes, too many artful phrasings. Too much writing when I should just shut up. My overly stylized sentences are taking attention away from the story and placing it smack dab on me. And this story isn’t about me. Or it shouldn’t be. I could kick myself for being a pompous ass.

So, once more back to the drawing board with another fine line I need to identify. And as usual, I have more questions than answers. How do I stop annoying my manuscripts with petty revisions? How do I take myself out of a process that’s so entirely personal? I want to just say no to annoying revision, but I’m addicted without a support group in sight.

NaNoEdMo: Serendipity...Please?

*****

I love first drafts. There’s magic in those first words to hit the page, an energy that crackles as my fingers fly across the keyboard. First drafts are where I unearth those precious secrets held close in the hearts of my characters, where I see their strengths and their beauty and their frailties. This is where they first reveal themselves to me, their hearts fluttering with nervous trust.

By comparison, editing slogs along. This is where I assure my characters that I know what they’re capable of, that it’s time for them to open up that little bit more, to risk that bit of extra danger. I nag them, I push them, I make them push back. I fill in the gaps and sweep up the mess I left my first time through. Editing is wringing potential from the first bare bones of my story. It’s the last leg of the journey before I let my baby go. Editing is hard, uphill work.

It’s no wonder so many novels never get past the first draft stage. For every minute I spend productively editing, I spend 10 minutes checking my email, sighing and staring at the monitor. I can’t tell I how many times I’ve looked at a rough draft of a scene and thought, “This is it. This is the scene that’s going to bust this book’s balls for good.” I find myself literally panic stricken. I rub my forehead, scrub both hands over my eyes, let out a heartfelt sigh. Sometimes, when I’m really flummoxed, I even grrr at the monitor.

But then I hit that moment of kismet, that serendipitous split-second where everything clicks into place. Suddenly, I see what I need to do—cut this, add to that, scrap those three lousy pages. As the story shapes up, a tremendous high carries me aloft. I know I’ve given my characters the best vehicle I could. I did them justice. Somehow, I made them live and breathe.

I’m trapped in a scene that’s killing me right now. The last precious EdMo hours are ticking away. Beth is lost to me, somewhere beyond the fog that’s clouding my consciousness. I rub my forehead, sigh, but I can’t hear her voice. Without her, my work is empty. I wish she’d come home.

So I stare at the monitor. Somehow, I have to hang on to what I have: faith in kismet, faith in the process. I’ve been through this before, trod this uphill road, felt my feet too heavy in my boots. I have to believe. She’s out there. I trust serendipity will bring her back.

NaNoEdMo: Mmmmm, Crow

*****

After last week’s indolent foray into shopping and theatre outings, this week I fell victim to a new writing enemy: THE FLU.

Out of nowhere, it hit me, like Michael Strahan mowing over slow-moving seniors at the Old Country Buffet. As I lay in bed, too sick to read, my household fell into shambles. Like a trooper, my husband confronted his fear of the kitchen and prepared three meals a day. My daughter appeared several times an hour, eyes wide and lower lip trembling as she told me, “But I don’t want to play with Daddy, Mommy. I need you.”

On Sunday, I finally emerged wobbly-legged from bed. As I surveyed the wreckage that can only happen when Mommy’s out of commission, I realized two discouraging things. One, I hadn’t done a lick of editing in days, sending my EdMo goals spiraling into the abyss. And two, with 20 people coming for Easter dinner and the house in a shambles, I wouldn’t have time until after the Lord had risen.

I don’t want to lapse into whininess, but I feel as though my EdMo was doomed from the start. I wanted to quit before I began, then, miraculously, things seemed too easy that first glowing week. Did I make the fatal mistake of wallowing in cockiness? Even after the indolent slacker week, I honestly thought I could recover. EdMo was a piece of cake, compared to the intensity or NaNoWriMo. All I had to do was fix the mess I’d already written.

And therein lies the rub.

The editing is the tough stuff. I knew that going in. Still, somehow, this thing slipped away from me, in spite of my good intentions.

So what now?

The way I see it, I have three choices:

1) give up and spend the rest of March feeling guilty and sorry for myself.

2) push forward, torpedoes be damned and let my in-laws eat egg salad sandwiches in our dustbunny-laden germ-hovel. Or,

3) do the thing I find hardest when it comes to my writing--compromise. Not on quality. Never on quality. But perhaps ease up a bit on quantity. Learn to live with it if I only edit 6 scenes instead of 8, fix 40 pages, instead of 50.

The thought of it galls me. I hate giving up and compromising feels like just that. But this is the part where I remind myself this isn’t about me. It’s about the writing, so I guess I have no choice. It’s time to step outside of myself, shut up and accept the fact I may have to eat a little crow. Anything's better than egg salad.

NaNoEdMo: The First Few Days

*****

The fates must be smiling on me. NaNoEdMo’s going better than I hoped.

You see, I never thought I’d find myself in this happy circumstance. Last week, plagued by headaches, the stress of living with a two-year-old, and a generally bad attitude, I almost gave up on NaNoEdMo before I even started. And when a friend sent me an email to say she’d be in town on March 1, I thought, “Yep, that’s it, the sign from heaven that I just need to let this thing go.”

Well, I didn’t. I dug in Saturday, albeit much later than I really like to write, and got a big chunk done on a scene that had been busting my chops since last fall. Now, two days later, I wrestled that scene into fighting shape and I've begun tackling the next one. I never would have imagined it, but I’m right on track for meeting my aggressive 2 scenes per week goal.

Here’s a piece of the scene I just worked on, from my WIP, Somewhere On the Road To Me. In this excerpt, the 12 year old protagonist Beth hangs out at the tavern owned by her best friend, Shel’s dad (Ken). Debbie is Ken’s second wife and she hates Shel.

*****

We’re sitting at one end of the bar, near the wood door with its giant glass middle. I soak in the pale green walls, the rows of booths and tables behind us, the half curtains hanging dustily in the clouded windows. The sunlight shines through them like we’re floating in someone’s dream. Above the curtains, the beer signs ooze dim gray-edge red and blue against the afternoon sun, Pabst Blue Ribbon, Schlitz, Old Milwaukee.

I cross my legs and bounce my foot, elbow planted on the bar as I lay my chin on my nonchalantly curved hand. I breathe in cigarettes, grease and beer, feeling sophisticated down to my toes.

We’re well into a hand of crazy eights when a tall, foxy guy struts in, all chest and heel and hips swinging, chin out like he owns the place. He’s wearing a rust leisure suit with one of those silky beige Qiana shirts, the neck unbuttoned three down to show a copper crab resting in his blond chest hair.

“Who’s that?” I whisper.

Shel glances up and back to her cards, her head never moving an inch.

“Dave.”

I lean forward, whisper. “He is so foxy.”

Shel rearranges a couple cards, says low, “He’s Ken’s liquor distributor.”

Dave struts by with a blast of cologne. He click-clicks a tongue and points his finger at Shel like it’s a gun.

“Hey, Doll.”

Shel rolls her eyes.

Dave laughs and rumples Shel’s hair, then walks over to where Debbie’s perched on the beer cooler. From the way Debbie smiles, you can tell she’s way happier to see him than she ever would be to see us.

“Your turn,” Shel says.

I start drawing cards, but my eyes are glued to Dave. He leans over the bar and gives Debbie a smile that would melt the North Pole. “Let’s go in the storeroom and see what you need this week.”

Debbie smushes out her cigarette and hops down from the cooler, lickety-split.

“Take care of the bar,” she says to Shel, then smiles all teeth at Dave. “And don’t bother us.”

She and Dave disappear into the storeroom, leaving me and Shel with the fogeys...