Done…ish

Are you ever really done with a manuscript?  Probably not.  Because as you grow and write more things your writing grows too and you could pick up a published copy of something you wrote ten years ago and take a red pen to it because you’ve learned so much  more since then.  But thank goodness you only knew what you did when you wrote that story, or that exact particular story would never have existed!

The reason I did not post last week was because I had just finished editing my manuscript…and the ending sucked.  Completely fell flat.  Totally lost.  It took me another week to fix it, but now it’s done.  It currently makes me cry, and I’m the one who wrote it.  It’s probably time to hand it off to someone else who can read it with a fresh eye.  I’m definitely too close to really catch everything that’s wrong with it.

In the process of fixing the ending this last time, I had to cut three scenes and change two.  Two of those scenes I cut had been there since I started chapter one.  It was really hard to let them go, but they just weren’t working and were completely not necessary.  It’s so much better without them.  But I still miss them.  They had their good points.  I saved them in separate documents, so I can keep them and maybe work them into something else.

Now I’m scared to do the whole consistency edit.  I need to sit down and read this thing from page 1 all the way to page 486 without stopping (except for food and sleep and stuff like that), but I’m afraid of what other “darlings” I may have to kill.  *sigh*  On the other hand, the sooner the consistency check is done and all typos and misspellings are corrected, the sooner I can send the first three chapters to the agent who requested them.

I am so close it hurts.  I think the only thing I ever wanted more than getting published was to marry the guy who is now my husband.

NaNoEDMo!

Since I have a hefty-sized manuscript already, I have decided to participate in a self-imposed “NaNoEdMo” while all my writing friends do their frenzy of writing.  I worked it out this afternoon that if I edited three chapters a week, I could be finished with this round of edits by the end of the month.  I rebroke all the remaining chapters and came out with a total of 36 for the whole manuscript.

At the end of the day, I have finished editing two and a half chapters and managed to write in enough extra material for one more chapter in the manuscript, so now I have a total of 37, which means I need to edit one and a half chapters tomorrow instead of just half of one in order to keep to my goal.  Ugh.

What’s making me really nervous is the fact that my manuscript is now well over 90,000 words, and if I keep adding chapters here and there, it’s going to be up to 100,000 pretty quick, and this is supposed to be young adult.  So I’m hitting my threshold of length, and I’m scared that I’m going to have to go back through and cut like 100-400 words from each chapter.  Granted, having to cut that much will make each chapter that much stronger, and it’s probably a really good exercise to do anyway just to make it that much more awesome, but it means another round of edits before I can send it to the agent who asked for it.

And I refuse to settle for sending her something that’s good.  I’m not sending it until it’s knock-your-socks-off awesome.  Every word will demand that she read more.  The plot will blow her mind.  The characters will fly off the page and drag her into their reality.

I will get as damn close to these goals as I can before I send this thing off into the world of agents.

Writing As a Career – the First Steps

This week is my first week back teaching and you’d think that the reason they have the teachers come back a week earlier than the students is so that we can prepare for the students, but really it’s so that they can take up all our time with meetings and not give us any time to prepare anything.  At least, that’s what it feels like this close to “zero hour”.

Anyway, I decided to make this week’s post simple.  Here is a list of things I did when I decided that I wanted to make writing my next career:

1. Decide to treat writing like a career (if I was willing to spend tens of thousands of dollars on my bachelors degree in classics, I should also be willing to spend tens of thousands of dollars on conferences, books, etc. to further my career in writing)
2. Read books about how to write (do the suggested writing exercises, and practice)
3. Read books that are similar to your manuscript (don’t steal, be creative, come up with new twists/ideas)
4. Join a writer’s association (it’s expensive, but it’s worth it, even if all you get out of it is the ability to say you belong to one)
5. Go to a writer conference (it’s expensive, but it’s worth it, especially if you meet an agent)
6. Join a writing circle (and attend!  Get feedback.  Give feedback.  Be brutally honest and learn how to gracefully accept the brutal honesty of others.)
7. WRITE! (start typing.  Now.)

Getting Lost in Writing and Vice Versa

I was talking with a friend the other day about philosophy and the meaning of life and explained that the reason I decided not to major in philosophy (and the reason that I do not allow myself to study it at all) is that I am afraid I would get lost in it and never come back and never be able to fully function in reality.  I’m the same way about art as well.  Latin, on the other hand, is something I enjoy and I can get lost in, but I can always come back whenever I need/want to.  Reading is harder to come back from, but the book always ends eventually anyway, which means that I will have to come back no matter what, so I don’t mind that pleasure either.

When I considered my relationship with Writing, I came to a conundrum:  I’m not sure whether it’s me who’s lost in my writing or if it’s my writing that’s lost in me.  I can sit down with a computer, or with pen and paper, or with the notepad feature on my cell phone, or even just the inside of my own head and compose any amount of writing and be completely lost in it.  When the inspiration passes, I come back to reality and am no longer lost in my writing.  However, I also often notice myself narrating my life and the lives of those around me without really thinking about it – as if I suddenly realized the pattern of my own breathing or the sound of my own heartbeat.  It’s constantly in the background, rasping and drumming as the bass-line of my existence.

So far, I have come up with two possible answers.  One is that I am already so overly consumed with writing (and always have been since I first understood the concept of storytelling) that I am already completely lost in it and will never come back (though, clearly, I can still function in reality quite well).  The second possible answer is that while I can get myself lost in my writing sometimes, my writing can also get itself lost in me.

That idea makes me wonder about existence in general and what would it be like to be just a character in someone’s book, at the mercy of some anonymous god I had never met but who controlled every aspect of my life?  How much free will do we as authors really give our characters and how much of that free will do those characters really accept and exercise (if they are truly capable of it at all)?  I am a big believer in developing your characters and allowing them to drive the plot and the story along as much as possible, and refraining from “divine intervention” whenever you can, but I wonder sometimes how much of that is illusion and how much of it isn’t.

Jane Austen The Complete Novels (with an Introduction by Karen Joy Fowler)

I have recently been desperate for something to read that my inner grammarian would not constantly comment on while I was reading it.  So, I decided to try something daring and picked up the Complete Novels by Jane Austen.  I have had this collection sitting on my shelf for several years, but have been waiting for “just the right moment” to open it up and start reading.  I’m not sure what I thought I was waiting for, but I do believe that I have found the right moment.  I skipped the introduction and jumped right into the first word of the first chapter of the first novel, which happened to be Sense and Sensibility.

Having just finished the first chapter, my inner grammarian can only say these:  “Well done, Ms. Austen!” and “What the hell happened to English grammar over the last 200 years?”  Her writing style is so charming and refreshing that I find it hard to put the book down regardless of the characters or the plot.  Her turn of phrase is quaint and the way she characterizes the people makes you think a little bit with a subtle, witty humor that interests the reader.  It does not entrap or entrance the reader as some modern novels will, but it does have a certain charming charisma that attracts the reader like a bee to a beautifully scented flower.  I look forward to reading and reviewing each of her novels as presented in this 1278-page volume.

I also look forward to trying a writing exercise in which I would rewrite all or part of a novel in my own style, touching up things that I would change and reworking it for an audience of my own choosing.  This will provide an opportunity to practice various techniques after examining how they have been used by the masters.  What better author to attempt to emulate than the great Austen herself?  I don’t expect to equal or surpass her, but if she is the model I am reaching for and starting from, how can I possibly go wrong?