My Kingdom for a Well-Placed Comma!!

(I stole this picture from the Grammarly facebook page. They have hilarious literary posts! They also have a cool website where you can paste in your document and it will check it for spelling, grammar, punctuation, better word choice, repetition, plagiarism, and a ton more. I used Grammarly to grammar check this post, because I didn't want it to end up as the punchline of one of their facebook pictures!)

Since I graduated, I've been doing a bit of freelance work on the side, mostly editing other writers' manuscripts, but also tutoring college students with school essays. It's been enormously fun. I think I'm actually a much better editor and tutor than I am a writer, and the vast array of material is fascinating. The college students, especially, don't come with literary pieces. They come mostly with essays from other classes, so I've helped students with papers on streaming digital ciphers, Heidegger's theory, nuclear weapons, genetically engineered foods, and struggles with differences in race and religion. These people are smart people.

But most don't know how to use a comma.

In fact, they often start off the session asking me to help with that. "Can you check my work for punctuation and spelling?" They understand their content. They are medical students and engineering students and theology students, and for the most part they know how to write an intelligent paper. What trips them up are the little things. Things like commas.

It doesn't surprise me. I wrestled with commas in my own writing for a long time, and even now I will pause over one, wondering whether I should put it in or keep it out. When I taught junior high English classes, I struggled with helping kids learn the rules for commas. It seems like comma use is a bit hazier and random than other punctuation.

I think in my own youth I was taught to "put a comma where you'd take a breath." I think that is still taught. Could there be a hazier, useless guideline? Where I take a breath might not be where you'd take a breath, and what about all those people who talk non-stop without taking a breath at all?

Looking to things already published doesn't work either, because no one follows the rules there, either.

When my book was being copy-edited, the editor pointed out that I almost never used a comma between the two independent clauses of a compound sentence. "That's a rule," she wrote. I so doubted her that I spent an hour trying to find one website that said otherwise. I couldn't. Every list of comma rules out there says, in no uncertain terms, that compound sentences require a comma. 

I challenge you to find a published book where that rule is uniformly followed. (Except mine. In mine, it is uniformly followed. Because my editor was sticky that way.) 

There is a rule that you should put a comma after an introductory phrase, but if that introductory phrase isn't too long, you can omit it. There's no rule that states how long is too long.

Appositives are almost always set off by commas, unless the writer determines the appositive is necessary to the understanding. Then the writer can choose to omit it. At least until an editor comes along and says it's necessary.

You should use a comma to set off a sentence that shows contrast (The wind was warm, not cold.), but it's okay to decide to leave out the comma if you use the word but (The wind was warm but chilling.). However, if you want to put a comma before the word but, that's okay, too.

No wonder writers of all ages are anxious about how to use commas. 

In one paper I was editing, I was marking out half the commas and putting in a bunch of others, and my student said, "Boy. I either put in too many, or put in too few, but I never do it right." I told her I'd give her a few websites that had the rules for comma use on them and give her some tips, and she nearly cried with thanks. "That would be so helpful!"

I wish it was as cut and dried and helpful as she wanted it to be. 

One of the top websites on comma rules - an educational one at that - said in several of the rules, "If there is ever any doubt, use the comma, as it is always correct." Then, the very last rule was, "Use Commas with Caution. ...The biggest problem that most students have with commas is their overuse."

I'm banging my head on the keyboard now.

Maybe the best advice is this: know the basic rules. You can find an easy list here and here. When in doubt, though, use a comma when you need it to avoid confusion. Like the example above, no one wants to cut up a bunch of kids. At least we hope not.

(I should disclose that Grammarly contacted me with an offer to "sponsor" this blog post, which I was already writing. Usually I don't take offers like that, but I've been a fan of Grammarly for a long time. They offer a quick check of your text for free, but that only gives you a list of problems found. If you want the full service, it costs (after a free trial membership). Of course, this won't be for everyone, but I think it's very useful for students or people who are self-publishing, or writers that are getting ready to submit something to an agent or publisher and just want to make sure it's clean without paying an editor.)

"Forget the Reuben; Focus on the Ninjas."

Ben Percy is one of my favorite teachers at Pacific. He gives some of the best craft talks - always focused and organized and intensely practical.

Something he said this January has been meandering around in my brain as I'm starting back at the beginning of my novel. "Forget the Reuben; Focus on the Ninjas."

I guess out of context it doesn't make much sense. :)

He was talking about indelible images - those images and scenes we see so clearly in our heads that we want to transpose into words. The trap with seeing things so clearly in our heads, though, is that not everything we see is that important.

The idea of being specific in writing doesn't mean we need to choke the reader with details. A story should rumble along at a nice clip until you get to the place (or places, in a longer piece) where you need amplification to slow things down, go deeper and grow the tension.

In movie terms, when the camera lingers on a detail, the director is saying, "This is important."

But how often in writing we misdirect out readers! We slow down, we linger at the places and on details that aren't important.

For instance, he said, in a detective story, you don't want to stop and spend two pages on describing the detective sitting in a deli eating his reuben sandwich. Do we need to know how high the meat is piled? Do we need to know the way he wipes the sauce from his cheek? Is it important we know the delicious combination of tangy and savory flavors erupting in his mouth when, two pages later, a Ninja is going to bust through the door?

The Ninja is what's important. And if we give equal weight to the sandwich and the Ninja, we are doing a disservice to what is important. We are leading our readers astray, asking them to focus on the things that don't matter and then leaving them wondering why they just slogged through so much information.

Forget the Reuben; Focus on the Ninja.

I think we all have our ticks - things we like to linger on and indulge our writerly selves with. For some people it's character descriptions. For others it's setting.

Every time I write now, I think, "Is this important to the story?" Is it important to describe a character to a T - that a character has a bulbous nose and dark hair and feet the size of a clown's? Is it important that the curtains in the kitchen are yellow with tiny daisies embroidered on them that flutter like a ghost when the window is open? Does my reader need to know the contents of the dinner plate?

Not to say specific details aren't important. When you can name something specifically rather than generally, that's always a good idea. ("Cars crammed the lot of the Shop N' Save" rather than "Cars crammed the lot of the grocery store"), but when they aren't crucial to a scene, but we shouldn't linger on them, add so much detail that a reader wonders if this needs to be remembered. It dilutes the power of the images and scenes that are important.

I think this isn't just writing, either. Don't we do this in life? Focus on the things that don't really matter, give them equal weight with the things that do? I worry equally about the cleanliness of my house and the surgery I have scheduled this week. I spend more time on facebook than talking to my friends face to face. I spent more time on this blog post than on my novel today.

Maybe Ben could just have said, "Focus on what's important." But I've heard that all my life, and isn't the Reuben/Ninja example just a bit catchier?

Even Going Backwards Is Sometimes Going Forwards

Patti Nielson posted a great blog post this week about writing - and how her brain feels like it's going to burst trying to incorporate everything she's learning, and learning so much at one time she wonders how she can implement it all. I know the feeling.

Honestly, sometimes I think writing was easier when I didn't know anything. It feels like the more I learn, the harder it is to sit and write because my head is full of all this stuff I need to remember to do, and I can never remember to do it all. At least not at the same time. Or in the same story.

I focus on getting rid of backstory, and my tension goes downhill.

I get tension higher, and my characters fall flat.

I grab hold of my characters, and suddenly there's no real plot.

My advisor last semester is a great swimmer and has coached swim teams before. When I wrote him that I was frustrated that I kept forgetting stuff - that as I mastered one skill I seemed to be dropping all the other skills I'd learned - he wrote this, and I thought it was brilliant enough to pass along to you:

It’s a lot like when I coached swimming.  You’d have these pretty decent swimmers, who’ve been practicing for years, and you’d have to tweak their stroke.  So, suddenly they’re concentrating on the pull of their right arm.  And they’d just fall apart.  Forget to kick, forget they have a arm, hell, forget to breathe.  Then they’d get the right arm thing and the rest would start to come back. 

Totally.

That is where I am so often... concentrating on getting one aspect down, and forgetting the other things I either am still learning or even those I've previously mastered. So suddenly I look like I have no idea at all how to write a story. 

But the more I learn and practice, the more I can incorporate this new learning into something that comes more naturally, and eventually the old skills kick back in.

I've come to have more peace about this process. Maybe because I'm now practicing on short stories, which allows me room to goof up more without completely wrecking an entire book.

But when I feel like I'm losing it - losing any thing that made me a decent writer to begin with - I go back and look at the stories I wrote before - a year ago, three years ago - heck, even six months ago. And am I better? Heck yeah. I almost cringe at my old writing.

So even though I'm stumbling sometimes through this learning process, I have to remind myself that I am still going forward, and when one aspect of my writing starts to slip, it's probably because I'm learning something else. And when I get that one new thing, the other things will come back, and I'll be that much better.

At least, I'm holding out hope it will all come together again.

On the other hand, I also hope I don't stop learning. :)

Making A Mess of It

Being the mom of three kids, I'm no stranger to messiness. Not just the clothes-on-the-floor or food-on-the-face variety, but in everything. My kids love art projects, and I struggle not to roll my eyes when they dive into the art cabinet and begin pulling out markers and play-dough and construction paper and glue. For me, the mess is the price I pay to let them explore their creativity. For them, the mess is part of their creativity.

A few weeks ago, I was reading an article in The Writer's Chronicle (a publication of AWP - The Association of Writers and Writing Programs) entitled "Where do you get your ideas?" by Alice Mattison. The article was not so much about coming up with ideas as it was how we as fiction writers invent stories - from the first idea all the way through the end of the story. How we create.

I'd love to print the entire article here for you, but here is part that spoke to me, especially where I am right now in this writing journey (which is a journey for everyone who writes, no matter how little or how much you are published):

How do we invent? The answer I want won't be simple; it's not a set of instructions.... There is some process we have in common – not a dignified one that could be given the pretentious name "craft," which suggests a number of things that rarely lead to good writing... but a sloppy, embarrassing process involving fooling around, moving haphazardly from whatever we began with, in the general direction of something else.

Craft is something you can do in public and explain in public, while good writing is more like taking your clothes off when that's not appropriate – something that may even do harm or make our friends and family ashamed of us. And "craft" suggests control, while a good book requires surrendering control, at least at times.

There is so much more to this article, things I may come back to on this blog, but right now I'm sitting on this. I am in the sloppy, embarrassing process of creating.

I'm discovering there is craft – which I am learning in school – that is helping my writing get cleaner and more focused, and there is the process of creating, which is messy and embarrassing and often confusing. I disagree with Mattison's idea that craft rarely leads to good writing. I think it's critical to good writing; it just isn't enough on its own.

I think, maybe more accurately, we should say there are two aspects to writing well: one is craft  and the other is the creative process. If craft is defined as the tools and skills that can be learned, the creative process is the artsy, personal side. It's what we as writers have to muddle through on our own, in our own way, which may actually even differ from story to story. The process is something we have to discover and rediscover.

I don't like messiness. I like things to be clean and neat and orderly. I like there to be answers to problems, a clear path from bad to good with a set of instructions to go along with it. But most of good writing isn't like that. It's a big fat muddy mess sometimes.

Maybe this is no revelation for you, but this has been a big revelation for me in some sense, in that I couldn't understand how I was getting so much better at the craft part, and still feeling like my writing as a whole was floundering. I am currently mired in my own creative process muck.

I'm still trying to find ways to make that process less messy. Jolene Perry recommended the book Save the Cat by Blake Snyder to me, and even though it's about screenwriting, I am finding in it terrific tools. But on the whole, I think I'm just going to have to accept that not all of writing is clean-cut. Not everything can be learned from a book or a class or even a brilliant mentor. And that even though some parts of my process are messy right now, doesn't mean other parts aren't making great strides.

Where do you thrive? In the disorderly, creative part of writing, or in the things more systematically and concretely learned?

Submerged

 Letting myself off the hook for this blog and diving into my writing and reading with every ounce of my energy has been good for me this past two weeks.

I've read four books, finished several drafts of my essay for the semester (analyzing the way backstory can be used successfully to propel a plot rather than stall it out), and heavily revised a short story I wrote last May.

It's been emotionally and mentally exhausting though, which is something I didn't expect. By completely throwing myself in to my short story this past week - six to eight hours a day of it - I felt like I'd dived headfirst into a dark lake and lost sight and breath. I don't know if writing is like that for most writers, and when I write sporadically, juggling life along with it, I seem to bob at the surface more. But when I write, really, obsessively write, I get lost. My heart and head are somewhere else, and that place is usually not a pretty place.

When I left school two weeks ago, I'd lost a good part of my confidence in writing. I lost confidence in my ability to tell what I'd done well and what I hadn't. I'm not saying it's not okay to write stinky stuff. You should. We should all write stuff that's terrible once in a while - stretch out wings, try out new things, attempt something greater than our talents. The thing is... you have to know, when you've finished, that it stinks. And I couldn't.

One thing that's critical as a writer, at least if you want to get better, is to be able to see what you're doing wrong... and know how to fix it.

I can't say that over the last two weeks I've conquered that part. But one thing I've learned about me is that I write for a reason. I usually have something to say... a point to make, a lesson to learn. A theme. Something I want people to think about and mull over.  And that.... is no way to write a story.

A story has to be about the characters. It has to be their story, and not yours. Not even the story you want them to tell. It has to develop without a point to make, or some agenda. Not that, in the end, it can't have a point. But the writing towards that point is the death of a story. It feels heavy handed. It feels preachy. It feels like the characters are being corralled like cattle into a place they may not want to be, and along with them, the reader.

So I rewrote a story I'd written last spring, one which started as an idea rather than as a character with a problem. This time I focused on the character and not the idea.

I like the story I wrote, but I don't trust it. I don't know if it works, and  I don't trust myself to know if it's any good. Not yet.

But I figured out one thing I was doing wrong, and that's a start.

Is There a Draft in Here?

It seems like it's been forever since I've been here on the blog - and worse yet, on yours. Although I certainly loved school and all the busyness of being secluded for ten days doing nothing but learning about writing, and while I love have mini-vacations with my family where we dance off to the pool in the early morning hours and come home a teensy bit sunburned and full of watermelon, I do miss this.

I am still in revision mode on my second novel, and though I convinced my saintly advisor this semester to not only review my revisions but also to look at some new short stories (this is just extra work for her, so I am sooooo thankful she's behind me in my need to write some fresh material too), the novel still takes precedence.

And so revisions continue.

I know many people who call this revision hell. I can understand that terminology, especially if one is more are writer than reviser, but I happen to love revisions. I adore them. There is nothing I like more than writing on a page that isn't blank.

But it does seem to never end. It's more like revision purgatory. I'm stuck here until some day far in the future when I decide I've done as much as I can do, and some editor agrees.

I was relieved when my last advisor told me he'd done 18 revisions on his latest novel. That makes my 8 look pretty piddly. The thing that I love about this MFA program is that no one is in a rush to get published. They all want to get published, don't get me wrong, but I haven't met a person yet who is champing at the bit to send off a piece before it's absolutely ready. And every one of them is willing to keep working until it is.

I read a great book on writing this past week called Modern Library Writer's Workshop. It's chock full of very interesting tips, ideas, encouragement, examples, and quotes that I frantically highlighted.

In it, the author talks about drafts and the process of revision that I found obvious but enlightening.

According to the author, there are three draft phases (each phase of which may contain several drafts).

Draft 1: Get the story down. This is what Stephen King calls a "closed door draft," because no one should see it. The point is to get the words on the page and figure out what the story is. The point is to finish it. To have characters and a semblance of plot. When it's done, the author says, feel good. Have a glass of champagne. Celebrate. And then give it a rest. At least a week, but no more than two months.

Then read the entire thing, all the way through.

Don't judge the book; it isn't ready to be judged. It's ready to be revised. But don't revise yet. Just read, and makes notes of places where you get lost in the story (those are the good passages!) and places where you start skimming (maybe this part needs cutting or trimming or rewriting). 

Draft 2: This is not a polishing phase. This is not where you sit down and make line-by-line changes as you go along. This is where you take charge of the story. Find the characters that need fleshing out. Find the plot holes.

First off, revise for structure. Solve the problem of sequence.

Secondly, develop the underdeveloped. Nearly everything you write will need to be more vivid, more coherent, and more powerful.

Thirdly, revise for plot. Get the details and mechanics of the plot under control.

Fourthly, revise for clarity. Even if you know what you meant, does the reader?

Lastly, cut. Cut everything by 10%. If the story is 10 pages, make it 9. If the novel is 300 pages, make it 270. I don't remember who it was, but some famous author said, "When I write, I try not to write the stuff readers skip over." I love that line!

The author says, "Cut. But don't cut out your heart... Your job in revision is to capture that first excitement and know it again, no longer as a promise but as a promise redeemed."

Draft 3: Finishing and polishing it. This is where you can further tighten language and look at sentence structure and check spelling, punctuation, and grammar. This drafting should be relatively quick.

I'm somewhere in the midst of drafting phase 2. Hopefully near the end of it, but I won't know until I finish the writing and read through it all in one sitting.

So my question for you: do you do all of it, or do you tend to skip phase 2? And where are you right now?

MFA Monday: Economy of Language

"Sometimes the story is not about what is told, but what is not told."

One of the biggest things I've been learning to do in my writing is cutting out the fluff. Sitting in workshops looking at others' writing, it was clear who had this talent down, and who still loved all too many of their words (that would be me). The great writers have the knack of knowing exactly what to say, and when to stop saying it.

We looked at so many paragraphs where writers brilliantly show something, and then ruin it by ending the paragraph telling us what they just showed us. It's as if we don't trust the readers to get it, or trust ourselves as writers to show well enough.

Here's an example from the section of my novel I've been working on this past week. The first is the original:

She lingered in the car for a minute, rubbing her hands in front of the heater, staying a little longer, more for warming up than for not wanting to go in.  Although that was there too. 

The thing is, I'd spent the previous two pages describing her drive back into her hometown, and how she didn't want to be there. It should already have been very clear that she was hesitant about seeing her family again. So I cut it down to this:

She lingered in the car for a minute, rubbing her hands in front of the heater.

It says everything I need it to say, and nothing more. As a paragraph of its own, it now stands as a punctuation point to the drive through town rather than a muddled musing. 

Here's another example:

Home was not the word Kat would use anymore. Home was Chicago, now. With her own apartment and her real friends and her career. And if she thought too much about it, she’d argue that this house, here in Hicktown USA, had never felt like home. 

This is just too wordy. It's like I'm trying too hard to create a history for the reader that they don't need to know yet.

Home was not the word Kat would use. Home was Chicago. And if she thought too much about it, she’d argue that this house, here in Hicktown USA, had never felt like home.

I'm not sure this is perfect. I still may delete that entire last sentence, but I haven't decided on that yet. Still, just a few words here and there make this paragraph more succinct.

Especially in first chapters I have the tendency to want to get the whole story in. Why this girl has come back, and why she left, when this is more interesting for the reader to get in small bits over time. What is not told is more interesting than what is, because it creates tension for the reader, forcing them to wonder why.

Here's a paragraph in the first few pages that I initially used to get the reader to understand why Kat left town and why she harbored such bitterness. She's run into her old best friend, and just found out she's married now to her old boyfriend. This is the original scene:

There was an awkward pause as they both remembered the last time they’d talked, the day Jeb told Kat he’d fallen in love with Lisa and asked for his ring back.  She'd taken it off, the cobalt yarn still wound around the inside so it would fit her finger, and thrown it into the tall grass by the train tracks. “You want your ring, you can go crawl on your hands and knees to find it,” she’d spat at him before she stomped off. She wondered if he’d ever found it.

I decided to cut the entire paragraph and replace it with this:

She noticed that the diamond Lisa wore now was miniscule. Still, it was a diamond ring, and it should have been hers.

In that replacement, I've taken out the backstory (or flashback) and replaced it with something in the present, something that hints at a past but doesn't give it all away.

Learning what to cut isn't an easy thing for me. I've been looking at this novel for a year now, and only now can I see how overwritten places are. Only after some distance can I recognize that words I love need to be deleted.

The trick is to go slowly, see each paragraph on its own, and ask yourself, does this move the story forward? Is it crucial? Does it repeat something I've already made clear? And am I leaving enough room for the reader to breathe or am I dictating exactly the path they must go down?

As writers we need to love words, but love the story more.

Revision Purgatory

I'm in revision purgatory. This is why I've not been blogging recently.

I looked up the word purgatory; it means a temporary state of suffering and punishment. I'm not calling it revision hell, because I'm pretty sure hell is a permanent state of suffering and punishment, and I'm full of HOPE these days. Hope that this revision thing will not keep going on forever, which is, I admit, what it feels like.

Oh the joyous day when I typed "The End" on this manuscript back in June (mentally, figuratively, because no former English teacher would ever actually write those words on a manuscript. That's the rule. Do not write The End. Trust the reader to know that when you've stopped writing, it's the end. This is one of the every present purgatories of the middle school English teachers).

Where was I?

Oh yes, figuratively typing THE END and thinking I would only have a month or two of really good, solid revisions whereupon my manuscript would be polished and pretty and ready to send out. That was before revision purgatory, where I am in a constant (but hopefully temporary) state of suffering. This manuscript will not be tamed. I think it whispers that to me in my sleep. I will not be tamed. I will not be tamed. Every time I start a new draft, I think, this is the last one. This will be just a quick polish.

But it never is.

I am almost to the end. I am within 40 pages of finishing the revising and I realize, a whole scene needs to be moved to the end. It's the end of the story. Why didn't I write the end after it? Maybe if I had actually written the words, "THE END" I wouldn't have kept writing and ended up with 40 pages of necessary material that are not where they belong.

I know someone is thinking, "Why not just cut and paste? Click and hold and drag?"  Because, dear readers, if I do that, I have to change the entire timeline of the book. A book that takes place over fifteen days would have to take place over ten. An entire holiday and its events would have to be thrown out, necessitating moving those necessary events into other places. Conversations spattered throughout the book would have to be changed. Whole scenes would have to be rewritten to fit the new timeline. Plots will have to be twisted. My head is spinning just thinking about how much needs to be changed.

The thing is, I could keep it as it is. Everything in me - almost everything - is screaming to leave it be. You're almost done! You can see the end! 40 pages and you're there! It's a breathe! A hopscotch! A small leap! If you keep going, you could be done by tomorrow!!

But a tiny part of me - a very loud tiny part - is screaming I need to rewrite and revise again, because if I don't, I'll always know it could have been better, could have been stronger. I'll know it's not the book it should have been.

I'm past the point to just be done with a book to say I could write one. The first book I wrote was to prove I could write and finish a novel. The second one was to prove I could write one worth publishing. This one... needs to raise the stakes even more.

And if it takes time to do that right, I guess I'll pay my dues.

Oh How I Love to Write; Let Me Count the Hours...

Patti Nielson has challenged writers to keep track of how many hours a day we write for one week. She put the challenge forth this way:

My intention was not to get people to write more, but to see how much time we actually spend and see if everyday we can increase it. Not to the point where it takes over our lives, but to the point where we feel is manageable in our lives.

You can still sign up if you want. Go here and add your name to the list, or just join in.

I'm curious how much I write. Especially days like yesterday, where the beginning of the day seemed to hold so much promise and by the end, it all seemed to have evaporated. Where does the time go? Getting three kids up, fed, packed and off to school, the gym, a shower, writing two blog posts, catching up on blogs I missed, lunch, replying to emails, a half hour left and the kids start straggling back in, piano lessons are on us and homework and dinner and off to bed. The day is done.

Where does it go?

Maybe the better challenge for me is to count the minutes I'm NOT writing and figure out what I'm doing with them!!

It felt yesterday like I hardly wrote at all. 30 minutes before the kids came home, 20 minutes while dinner was simmering and the kids were having down time, and then 20 minutes after dinner and bedtimes. It seemed like not much. One hour and ten minutes. But in that time I added nearly 1,000 words to the novel I'm now revising, and I've done less on days where I had lots of time to write.

Today I'm hoping will be even better. I've got coffee. I'm finishing a Bible study this morning and then cracking open the WIP for more serious revisions. This challenge is a challenge for me to turn off the internet, stop checking emails, and just write.

That's my hope anyway. How's your writing going?

To Kill A Manuscript

When I finished the Novel Under the Bed, and then realized it needed more revisions than a sweeping proofreading, the task seemed overwhelming. I knew I had a good idea: the first three agents I queried requested it. But the execution was lacking. I tried rewriting the first chapter.. six times. It wasn't better... it was just different. I put the book under the bed.

When I finished Some Kind of Normal I had a trick up my sleeve: a critique group. This fabulous group of writers read my work, pointed out a few places I need to beef up my descriptions and correct some typos, but overall, they gave it a thumbs up. Fantastic! That book was published with no major overhaul on my part. I liked that. I got spoiled by that.

This June, I finished my third novel, and when I sent it out to my critique group I felt less excited about it than the other two. Was I going to need to just scrap the whole thing?

Thankfully, I have a crit group that is more about the fixing than the scrapping. And they pointed out why it wasn't working for me and offered some ways to fix it. Big things. Overhaul things. Like the narrator's voice needs to change. A major character needed to be dumped. The main character's history needed to be altered and her new life needed something positive in it. Big things.

I sat on the ideas for a while. I won't say I wasn't discouraged. I wanted it to be easy. I wanted critiques that looked like, "Wow! This is perfect! I wouldn't change a thing!" or "Besides a comma or two, I think this is ready to go!"  I wanted this, even though I know it wasn't true. Still, it hurts when someone you look up to says, "You are really a great writer... the way you use words is amazing... but the story is somewhat a mess."

Because when people whose opinions you value tell you something needs to be changed, you know it needs to be changed. Even if it's a lot of work.

When I threw the first chapters at them months ago, when I was still in the process of writing, they said I needed to get rid of the male character. I wasn't ready. I tweaked him a bit, but truthfully, in my head he was such a huge part of the main character's history that I couldn't take him out. When they told me this time he still needed to go, I slept on it, and decided I was ready to do that. At least, I took him out of the story. In my head he's still part of Kat's past. He's part of who made her what she is, and I as the creator of her know that. But the reader doesn't need to know that, and so out the window he went.

And over the last two weeks I've worked on revising the hard to revise things. It's the first time for me that revising has actually felt like a struggle, and hard work. But as I was working through the issues, the book suddenly started to come together. The changes were good. Really good. They took the book from a story I didn't care so much about to a story I'm loving. The main character is someone I can finally see readers investing in and feeling for and rooting for. I find myself rooting for her.

Along the way, the changes have set up tensions in the book that weren't there before. They've created layers and complexities and depth. In short, my crit group was right.

All it took was a little humility to acknowledge it.

It was in the middle of these revisions that I stumbled on this article about Harper Lee and To Kill A Mockingbird, one of my favorite books of all time. If you are a writer, you need to read this. If you are close to revising, it's a must.

Because it turns out one of the classic books of the last century went through a lot of major revisions. A lot. And a temper tantrum by the author that had her manuscript flying out her editor's New York window.

The conclusion of the article is the same on I came to this week. Revisions can make a huge difference, but to get there it takes some great critical eyes, and a lot of humility.

I've got the first in spades. I'm working on the second.

Stages of Revisions (How to get from "Utter Poo" to "I Love You!")

Good morning, dear readers. It's Tuesday as I write this, and I am finally mostly caught up on emails, one cup of coffee down and a full pot still warm, and ready to start a long stretch today of being productive and writing: something I haven't been so good at the past three days.

I started the page a day challenge with the idea that I could write a page a day with little problem. What's a single page, right?  But while I'm page-wise ahead of the goal (24 days in, nearly 50 pages written), I haven't written every day. Sometimes, especially the weekends, the days slip away with family activities that do not revolve around access to a computer, and by ten at night when I sit down, I'm fried and tired, my brain can hardly put two thoughts together, and I know even if I struggle to get that page written, it's going to stink and I'm going to end up deleting it later anyway. So I'm still working on that grace thing.

Patti asked me a great question the other day that I thought I'd share here:

Question: When you finish this one will you let it sit and go write another or keep editing it?  

Typically I'd respond with the agent-approved method: let it sit for a while.

But I've discovered there are different kinds of revisions; a hierarchy if you will. This is how the process goes down for me:

Stage One: (Other wise known as: "It's all utter poo") The first draft is done, and it ain't pretty. There are holes all over the place. Overwriting. Lack of description. Inconsistencies from where I changed the plot or a character or the time-line but put a note in the margin and kept going. Entire scenes that are out of place, or missing! I don't need to step away and give time here. I need to get back in while it's all still fresh and fix it. There's as much writing in this phase as rewriting. Then I spit-shine a little and hit the spell-check.


Stage Two: (Otherwise known as: "Rose-colored glasses anyone?") the major overhaul is done, and now it's starting to look pretty good. In fact, I think I'm attached to it. There are some darn good pieces of writing in here. Most of it looks great in fact. In fact, I think I'm brilliant! This is going to be a best seller!!  Let's send it off to the crit group and await their glowing responses. (This is when it's a good time to take a few weeks away from the book while others read and comment. It's also a good time to start a new book and stock up on chocolate for when the crits start pouring in)

Stage Three:  (Otherwise known as: "My writing partners are not evil; My writing partners are not evil...")The critiques come in and, after maybe three or four weeks away from the book, it's sheen has started to wash off a little. I want to deny deny deny, but as I read the crits, I realize with a sob: they are right. It's still not perfect. Closer, but not quite. I go through their comments line by line, plot by plot, advice by carefully worded advice, and fix it. I probably grumble a little. I probably defend my original choices to myself at first too, and then finally admit that they're right. Or not. The point is: I carefully consider each thing they've said.

Stage Three and a half: (Otherwise known as "Please Love Me") If there has been any major changes, I might send snips of them back to the crit group to see if they think it's better. At this point, I'm not looking for new crits. I just ask them to read to see if I fixed whatever it was that they thought was missing or deficient. This section might be a paragraph, or a small section of dialogue.

Stage Four: (Otherwise known as "Fine tuning isn't just for pianos")I've now completed the bigger things. I go back through for the smaller things. Typos. Punctuation. Grammar. Spelling. Essentially, I copy-edit. Sometimes I make changes here too. Things that I thought were clear because I heard them in my head but now, after time away, I see were not that clear. But mostly, I clean up. And I make sure I think it's ready to go.

So the question is: will I wait when I finish before I dive into revisions, and the answer this time is no. I'm still at the utter poo stage. There are ideas written all over my margins; there are scenes I know I'm missing but can't figure how to fit in; there are scenes that are out of place. I need to fix these before I lose them to my cluttered and foggy brain. When I know stuff is wrong, I need to get at 'em before the rose colored glasses cloud my vision.

Hopefully by the end of the summer I'll be ready to send it out to my group. Even better, by end of summer maybe I'll be getting it back from my group and begin the last stages.

The truth is, too, that no matter how much time goes by, it's never enough. I'd finished and revised my first novel to death more than a year before I received the galley proofs to go over copy-edits, and even then, I wished I'd written things differently. I hope that's because in the meantime, I became a better writer.

How do you approach revisions?

Why Word Counts Don't Work For Me (motivationally speaking)

I think I have NaNoWriMo hangover, and I didn't even participate in it. What's with the word count obsession? And why have I gotten sucked into the belief that I have to write a certain amount of words each day, no matter how cruddy they are, or I'm not going to ever finish this stinkin' book??

I'll admit my dark, dirty secret. I don't write fast, and I want it to be perfect the first time around. I know it isn't going to be. I know I will need to revise many times. But I want it to be as right as humanly possible. I can't continue to spew out utter poo and feel good enough about my book to keep at it. And better writing the first time around is less to revise later.

So what that means is that sometimes I have to stop and reevaluate. And make the hard decisions. Decisions that put that precious word count in a reverse mode.

Several months ago, one of my dear, dear writing partners decided to change her entire book from third person point of view, to first person. Don't get me wrong, her book was good. Her writing is fantastic because she is one of those truly gifted writers who probably is incapeable of utter poo. But still, she felt like she was lacking something – some uumph – and she decided to try the book in first person.

Word counts went spinning and spiralling rapidly backwards so fast we were almost sucked into a time warp. To have all that work done, and then essentially start over... BRAVE!!!

But this month she sent out her first chapters and they are AWESOME!!  The beautifully written, gripping first draft pales like a ghost in comparison with how this story and it's main character now jump off the page. It may have been depressing and frustrating to start at square one again, but she gritted her teeth and did it, and it was so worth it!

She's my inspiration. Because this week I've gotten bored with my story. Not the writing it. I like writing it. I love my main characters. They're so cool and fun and I can't wait to spend time with them. But then I look back at what I wrote and one character comes off so boring. The narration is pretty, and lyrical, but there is no sense of voice in it, and as a result it's weak. And definitely not befitting my character.

So this week I turned back the word counts (oh so painfully) and tried it in first person. WaLA!! There was my feisty character!! There was her voice! There was her personality!

I'm keeping the male half in third person because his narrator is very good, and I think when the two story lines merge it will work better. So essentially I only have half to rewrite. But I'm going to keep at it for a while to see where it goes.

And I'm ignoring the word counts. Because all that really matters is that I'm writing a good story. And it will get done when I am done.

The Comments in the Margins

Have I mentioned that one of the things I love most about my editor is that she writes all kinds of good things in the margins as well as the things she wants me to change? It's amazing, really. It's like this constant reminder that even though it needs a little work here and there, on the whole, it's still good.

So today I received a new section of my book from my editor to revise, and this is the first comment in the margins:

Heidi, I have the darndest time editing your work. I get so caught up in the story (and why’s that? I’ve read it already!), and this marvelous character you’ve created, and I just slip into your world and right outta my editing one. Takes me 3 passes over your stuff before I’m sure I’ve stayed aware enough to do a proper job.

I don't think it gets any better than that for me.

Breaking the Code

This was my week for making a serious dent in my writing. For the first time in over a month, the kids are busy all morning, and I figured I would disappear into my local coffee shop and write, write, write.

Of course, the best plans of mice and men....

The problem has been part just getting back into things, and part the struggle so many of my friends seem to be in: do I revise as I go or move on?

I've advised all of them to move on. My code: Keep moving forward. You can get stuck forever trying to get what you've already written right, and never write anything else. Move on. Get it done. Then revise.

I think that's the best plan of attack. Except when it's not.

Sometimes, revision is about making the writing tighter, better, more vivid, more detailed, deeper. Sometimes revision is making it better. And that can wait until it's done.

But sometimes, revision is about a major overhaul. Sometimes, part way through writing, the story or character take over, and then suddenly you have a different story altogether. Or the structure of the story changes.

In that case, I think it's wise to stop and go back. If you know big things need to change, rather than changing it all midstream, it makes sense to go back and fix what's wrong so that there isn't a complete switch in the middle of the manuscript. If for no other reason, I think mentally it makes a difference when you are writing.

One of my writing partners recently had to do this, and now I find myself in the same position.

When I went back after my hiatus and looked at my book, something wasn't working. To be truthful, it was never working, which is why it was so easy for me to suddenly find less time to work on it. When I sat to write in those few stolen moments here and there, something was wrong. I knew what it was that didn't work, but I didn't know how to fix it. And I couldn't keep writing knowing that everything I wrote was eventually going to have to change in the face of major revisions whenever I figured out what to do with it.

Then, one of my brilliant writing partners said something which suddenly cleared it all up.

Hugely.

Now I have a new structure for the book: a more unique and creative one which will totally support the plot and serve to fix every problem I had as I was writing.

It means I need to go back and start rewriting now; I won't have to dump everything I've written, but I will have to completely revamp it. If I weren't so excited about it I'd be frustrated. But I think it's a great change, exactly what this needs. So I am back at square one; or square two maybe.

Lessons learned?

Sometimes it's okay to break your own code.

And also: writing groups totally ROCK!

And also: writing sometimes is really hard. Even when all the pieces are there, and when you're excited, and when you know the whole story in your head. The writing itself is hard.

Which makes me admire every single one of you who have put enough words to paper to be able to type the final words: the end.

Tomorrow's Another Day

Sometimes, I push myself too hard.

For the last three weeks I have lived, eaten, breathed running and writing. Every free hour. And a few that weren't free. And today, my body said enough is enough!

My foot, recently healed from its ten month stint in braces and on drugs, is back to its usual tricks, and I only made it two miles today, hobbling the rest of the day and sorely tempted by the last of the pills I stopped taking two months ago.

And my brain, spurred on for weeks by caffeine and endorphins, seized up today and I came to the realization that I can't cram this baby in by the weekend and throw a few queries out the door. Not that all of Nathan's posts on being patient weren't sign enough that I needed to slow down and take my time, but today, with one teeny tiny hurdle to overcome enough to be ready, I just couldn't do it. I tried. I wrote, and deleted. Wrote more, deleted that. My teeny tiny scene is becoming big, huge trouble.

What I have is okay, but it can be better. It can always be better. Everytime I read through it, or someone else reads it, there is more to do. My husband keeps saying, "At some point, you gotta just trust what you've done is good and let it go, or you'll keep tweaking it forever." He's right. I have a novel with six different first chapters to prove that. But this one... I know exactly what needs to be done, and I don't want to peddle it without it looking it's best. That way, if I get the rejections, I don't have to question if it would have been better if I waited.

Patience.

Quiet.

A little sleep.

Maybe one or two more days here might help.


Tomorrow will be better.

I Have Manic Depressive Revising Disorder

Yesterday it was all good.

Today it's not.

Ironically, it's the same story.

I'm getting Impatient!

Both Jennifer Blom and Nathan Bransford wrote posts about being impatient with the writing/publishing process today. It was as if they've crawled inside my tiny and too crowded head and were screaming warnings at me.

Patience is something I vowed to have with this book. I rushed the last one. Not the writing end. Heavens, that took two years of on-again-off-again writing. But the revision part, where I didn't let the book sit before I rewrote and then rewrote again and then, instead of listening to the small voice in my head that said, this needs a little distance and a better vision, I listened to the big voice that said, Let's get this thing going! And I sent out an awesome query that invited agents to read a book that wasn't quite good enough.

When I started this one, my mantra was, Not this time. I am getting it right, even when I want to steam ahead. I'm going to be patient and let this be the best it can be. And, up until now, I feel like I've done the process justice. Even though it's been much quicker, just 6 months start to finish, it's been thorough, and I've spent probably an average of 4-6 hours a day on it. Lots of research, lots of plotting and character development went into this before a single word went down on the page.

And I feel like I am at the end now. I feel like the first 230 pages are really strong. Edited, clean, direct, purposeful. It's been read by others, and every comment taken into consideration, the majority of them implemented. The last 80 pages I still have in front of me, and I am starting, just the last few days, to really want to rush it. I want to be done already, and start to query.

And when the itch is just so great I'm about to scratch.... Jen and Nathan. Gentle reminders. It's not about querying. It's about writing and hopefully publishing the very best book I can write. And that's not going to happen if I have a great 230 pages that end with a weak 80.

The closer I get to the end, the harder it is to focus.

Lost: Main Character. Please Come Home!

Well, I finished editing/rewriting the second third of my book! I am ahead of schedule, which would make sense I suppose since I do basically nothing all day except go to the gym and then come home and sit on my tush and write. It's a fantastic feeling, seeing it buzz along, and feeling really good about it.

My snag, though, is that I seem to have lost one of my characters. I realized this yesterday as I was trying to "fix" my narrator's husband. Both the wonderful and difficult part of writing this book is that absolutely no one in the book is based, even in the teensiest way, on any real person. Not even an actor. They are completely made up. Which is great fun, except that Travis, for some reason, never really got fleshed out very well. My wonderful critique group pointed this out in a very nice way ("um... he seems kinda boring. Is he supposed to be this way?"), and so as I've been editing/rewriting, I have been trying to really nail him down. Except last night I realize, I have no idea who he really is. (Except he is really not anything like that picture!)

When I began writing Some Kind Of Normal (which may soon have a different name, but more on that another time), I had a good idea of who Travis was. I saw him in my mind. I saw his favorite lazy chair. I saw his nightly dozing in front of NASCAR, his love of pork rinds and grits and his well-worn Willie Nelson tape. What I couldn't see was his face, and what I totally didn't see coming was his strength. And now I am trying to reconcile the character I created with the character the story demands he be. And I'm not sure I'm doing that part very well.

While everything else is falling into place, I find myself thinking about Travis, and trying to figure out who he really is. He isn't a hugely main character in the book, but he's big enough I should at least have a really good feel for him. (For instance, in any everyday situation, I could tell you immediately what Babs would do. Stuck behind a lousy driver? She'd honk and yell out the window. Travis? I have no idea.)

In all this editing, though, I am getting much closer to querying. Even writing that makes my heart skip a beat! I've started perusing agent websites again, jotting down books I love and finding their agents, reading Miss Snark again, just for fun. I'm starting my dream list. I think my query is ready to go as soon as the book is. I'm trying not to rush this. Really I am.

But I think this one is it. I do. And maybe one day I will have to come back and erase this part of the post in embarrassment, but I feel really strongly about this book right now, like nothing else I've ever written. And I'm just so darn excited!

Update on the Bon Bons and Talk Shows

Turns out, I don't have time for them at all!

The new schedule is working out like a dream! After dropping off my kids at the school, I hit the gym and then I come home and write/edit for about four hours. You think I'd be done with the book already, but in five days I've added over 4,000 words and edited almost half the manuscript.

Unlike my first novel, I don't feel like I am spinning my wheels on this rewrite. For one, I'm keeping the vast majority of the original and making mostly small, word-choice changes along with adding some supporting details. But no major changes. And even on this read through, when I usually am groaning over everything, I feel like this one is strong.

What surprised me? How fabulously fun this is!

But after reading JKB's blog about editing for an agent, I realize the hardest work is yet to come. It's easy to identify what I think is wrong and fix it. It's much harder to have someone else give suggestions and try to edit to satisfy them.

But one step at a time. Finish my rewrites. Send queries. Get agent.

Then the hard work begins.

Bring it on!

Demystifying Voice: My definitive definition

Nathan Bransford had a post yesterday in which he asked people to write in about their pet peeves in writing. The result? A comprehensive list of just about everything in writing.

At first, going through the comment section, I thought, I do this! My book has this! Oh no, it has this too!

After all, what book doesn't use the word, "said," use descriptive passages, narrative, short sentences, long sentences, adverbs. If you try to please everyone, you can't have either a surprise ending, or a predictable ending, can't set your book in New York or Seattle, have dreams, any real purpose in telling the story other than to just entertain, have religious or anti-religious themes (This from the same person... apparently any mention that faith might in any way play a part in someone's life, even if minutely, is off limits), include too much dialog or not enough dialog.

Are you getting my point?

Much ado has been made lately over an author's voice. I've written about it myself. Almost every agent who has a blog has written several posts about it. Writers write about it. It is tauted as the most important part of a submission. Yet no one can define it.

Well, I'm going to.

Voice is writing like you. Not trying to write like someone says you should. Not changing your setting because ten people are tired of books set in New York. Not cutting out every descriptive phrase. Not changing every "said" to something more creative like "replied" or "whispered" and then cutting them out altogether, and then putting the "said" back because, heck, at some point you've got to know who is doing the talking, right?

Voice is not writing a story and then changing it to make it the way everyone else says you should. Voice is saying, "This is the story, and I'll evaluate the critiques I get, and understand that for many of them, there is an opposite opinion and I'll decide if the changes are really right for me."

In my critique group I get the chance to read lots of stories by some really great writers, and then offer suggestions. Sometimes I find myself writing, "I'd change this to this," and then realize, I would, but they wouldn't. I could take everyone's writing and change it to sound like me, but what's the point of that? So I offer some suggestions, and then I am fine with whatever they decide to do. After all, it should be their voice shining through, not mine.

I think voice is strong when you can tell a writer is writing with confidence. That they know exactly the story they are telling, and are telling it the way it should be told, the way they hear it.

If you have kids it's likely you know of Arthur the aardvark, the adorable series of books and PBS shows by Marc Brown. There is one that illustrates this perfectly. It's called Arthur Writes A Story. Every author should read it. A third grade aardvark writes a story he absolutely loves, is passionate about. Then he submits it to his critique group - his sister and friends - who all suggest new and different things they would add or change, and what he ends up with is a mess no one likes at all because it makes no sense. When he changes it back to what he originally wrote, everyone suddenly likes it. Because his voice is his own.

So there you have it: the official demystifying of voice.

Go, write. Stop being scared that someone isn't going to like what you wrote. I'll tell you right now, there will always be someone who doesn't like what you write. But there will be people who do, too. The story plot could be anyone's, but how you tell it is yours. That's your voice.