Monthly Archives: September 2016
THE LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL
THE LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL
I’m done, I’m through, I’m exhausted and happy.
Just a few minutes ago I put the last period on the last line of the last sentence of my cozy. It’s not really finished. Nothing is really ever finished until you can’t change one jot or tittle of it. With a book that means after it’s printed. I’m only done with this revision, and boy, was it ever a lulu.
Tomorrow, after I make sure that all the ducks on my thumb drive are in order, I’m taking it off to Staples and having MY NOVEL printed on paper from the first word to the last. For me that is the achievement of a lifetime and I’m going to milk this happy glow for all it’s worth.
After that it’s more revision. But I want you know how much I’m going to enjoy this one.
- it will be on paper. That means I can flop anywhere and read it, mark it up, scratch out whole sections and put others in.
- it has been written from front to back. It’s a whole story and I can read it like one and make sense of it.
- The pages can be flipped back and forth, I can see things more clearly, see where a sentence could be to better advantage if I placed it just so, where a scene might need more something.
Oh, you can do all that on your computer using state-of-the-art programs and what-not? Well I can’t. And I’ve heard the moaning and groaning that accompanies learning how to manipulate these programs. I am barely computer literate. Jane Austen did just fine without a computer program, but, unfortunately, I somehow sense that given one, and the computer to go with it, she would be able to make better use of it than I can.
But, nevertheless, I have reached a jumping off point in the revision process. I’m one step closer to being able to submit my cozy somewhere. I had set a goal to finish this revision by September, and I’m only a little late. I’ll have to work harder on paper.
I will be pitching this in November (beginning of!) to an agent (as yet unknown) at the annual New England Crime Bake in Massachusetts. It is organized by the New England Chapters of Sisters in Crime, and Mystery Writers of America. Sounds good, no? Heidi and Karen, fellow bloggers here, will be going also. The line-up of classes is very impressive and we’re looking forward to going. So, the next sound that you hear will be that of a whip cracking. Maybe several whips, if H and K are pitching also.
The life of a writer is a hectic one. If I’d started sooner I might have had several books under my belt by now, but I’ve always been a late bloomer, and life is as it is. So, hecticity stalks me, and I embrace it. What else can you do with a socially accepted addiction.
A Pilgrim in the Family
I think I’m addicted to genealogy, specifically that of my family and now my husband’s family. I started researching my father’s family history in order to join the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR). I already knew I had a Revolutionary War Minuteman for a fourth great-grandfather from a family history, which made completing the application for DAR membership less daunting than I anticipated. That done, I wanted to learn about his parents beyond their names and dates of death–were they born in Maine (which is where they lived when two of their sons ventured to Groton, VT)?; where are they buried?; where did their parents come from?;–the usual sort of questions you want answers to. But there isn’t much information on Ancestry.com, my main research site.
Not making much progress there, I moved on to the German side of my family. When I realized that I would need my German-speaking mother’s undivided attention for about six weeks to make any headway in that arena, I decided that my husband’s family might be easier to research. We already knew about the Civil War soldier who died at Andersonville Prison but we weren’t aware of the two Revolutionary War soldiers I unearthed.
“Mayflower Harbor” by William Halsall, 1882, Pilgrim Hall Museum, Plymouth, MA
Then–JACKPOT!! I am 99% certain that my husband is a lineal descendant of Governor William Bradford of Plymouth Colony who arrived in New England on the Mayflower. With a Pilgrim in the family, Thanksgiving will never be the same.
My own research brought me to this conclusion and when I ventured out to Wiki Tree, a free genealogy website, there it was, printed boldly on the bottom of my mother-in-law’s record: “Mayflower Descendant (Gov. William Bradford). I immediately sent a text to my three daughters: “SOMEBODY CALL ME! I am hyperventilating.” Soon I was talking to one daughter on my cell phone (left ear) with another daughter on the home phone (right ear). I’d say they were excited as well–but not as much as their mother was. And it’s not even my own family.
“King Henry VIII” by Hans Holbein the Younger, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, England
One of my granddaughters was not impressed by the Mayflower connection. Her comment: “I don’t care. I just want to know if I’m a princess.” Hmmm…I think we would know if that were the case but just for fun I went looking for a royal connection. I’m certain I violated all rules of genealogy research when I just clicked away on every link to every father of the next male in the line until I reached a dead end. It just happened to be on Sir Edward Rogers, born in 1498, who served as a courtier to Henry VIII. Yes, that Henry VIII. Sir Edward may not have been a prince but he did hang out with a king! What remains to be determined is if he is a relative.
Real genealogists take their research seriously. Which is what I should be doing with my writing. Is this new hobby of mine just another means of avoiding writing? (That’s a rhetorical and, by now, annoying question. So don’t answer it.) I’m stuck in the saggy middle of my murder mystery–the saggy middle of my outline of the novel, not the actual writing of it. My latest goal is to generate the same enthusiasm for writing this mystery that I have for researching dead ancestors. Wish me luck!
A Modest Enlightenment
“Stories about women’s enlightenment often feature damage to domestic equipment.”
I found this parenthetic remark by a modern Buddhist teacher in his commentary on the koan called A True Person of No Rank. The domestic equipment in question was a doughnut pan, whatever that is. Its newly enlightened owner rushed off to her Zen teacher to present her enlightenment, and later became a “famous teacher” herself.
I don’t know if writing is equivalent to enlightenment, but it seems to have the same effect on household efficiency. Most of the women writers I know, or whose blogs I read, complain about the pile-up of housework that occurs when they take large chunks of time to write. I notice that the more successful ones usually report ignoring the pile to do the writing. We amateurs use it as an excuse for why we didn’t write.
Both ways of dealing with dirty dishes exist, of course, but I think they miss the deeper relationship between scutwork of all kinds and writing. Scutwork is, by definition, menial and repetitive. Dish after dish into the dishwasher. Or in the office, memo after memo into the files. Sweep the floor again, just before they track more mud in.
In other words, it’s the maintenance of order. A lot of us are willing to admit doing trivial tasks to avoid facing the blank page in the typewriter. (Remember typewriters?) But why are those tasks preferable? Because doing them, we accomplish what, at the moment, we can’t accomplish with our writing. Mostly it isn’t the blank page that scares us off. It’s the roily-boily mess on the dozens or hundreds of already-filled pages that were supposed to be a book but look like a dog’s lunch. Rather than plunge into that abyss and be lost forever, we put a load of wash through.
So, the washing machine is churning. What now? Like the psychiatrist dealing with a phobia, we may inch just a little closer to the neurotic fear. The desk is in a state of chaos. Chapter outlines have fluttered to the floor, and sticky notes encroach on the keyboard. The character list has become a bookmark on which coffee-mug rings make the Olympic symbol. We straighten up the desk. In doing so, we will have to read at least some of each slip of paper, to find out which pile it belongs in. The names of characters and places fill our minds with detailed images and inch us toward our fictional world.
The next step may be the most dangerous. A lot of that paper should not have been put in the piles or the files; it should have gone into the wastebasket. The abortive outlines and mad, scribbled notes on every possible plot twist or additional detail that might conceivably, someday, end up in the final draft need to be out of your sight, if not burned to ashes. You are where you are. By all means, reread a little of the last chapter to get a good run-up to the current one. Just don’t start over. Planning and outlining were all very well in their time. Re-planning and re-re-planning are avoidance.
Your washing (or your doughnut pan) have done the trick, no smashing required. At this point, you scroll down to the blank space below your last word – and write. Feel free to make some doughnuts later.
Is Your Plot Line Screwed?
IS YOUR PLOT LINE SCREWED?
I just finished reading Richard Russo’s, Everybody’s Fool, which takes place in the present in a forty-eight hour time period. There are 447 pages in the book. That indicates a lot of detail crammed into those two days. My assignment was to unfold the the un-tangential secrets of his plot line.
I thought of a screw. Of course, why not.
Screws come in different sizes and types. Their job is to hold things together. A story is like a screw in that it has to hold itself together.
Screws are usually classified as Type A or Type B. A’s are coarse threaded screws; they have fewer threads per inch for holding together lighter materials. B’s are finer threaded screws with more threads per inch. They can hold together more and heavier materials.
Stand a screw on its head and imagine that the threads are the actual storytelling of a book which ascends in an orderly circular fashion along the core (or plot) of the screw (or story). You can tell at a glance if there will be a lot of description, or a little, if it’s coarse threaded or fine, if it is holding together a light weight book or a heavier tome.
Light writing, heavier writing; both are fine. They just need the right screws. They need to hold together and not have tangents that fly off the page.
Russo did a lot of plotting. Every character, even the dog, had his or her own plot line. The town and the physical terrain had plot lines. Maybe there was an instance or two of too much plot and the story line escaped and flew off the handle.You could feel it as you read. There the description, an added character, or a sub-plot line were impediments to the smooth turning of the screw. They were not firmly attached to the main core, they did not ascend in that even circular movement, with the rest of Russo’s neatly constructed plot lines, all the way to the denouement. They were irritating flanges on the threads that needed to be filed off. They were gluts of cream that escaped a centrifuge and slopped out of the book. A darling perhaps?
Everybody’s Fool is an example of a long screw with very fine threads; a tightly wound screw. I only used his, maybe only one, instance of unnecessary flange-ness, to point out that no book is perfect. For the most part Russo kept his character descriptions and plot and sub-plot lines in an orderly fashion, but not so orderly that it was boring, as they rounded and tightened the story. His writing drew the reader in, instead of flinging her out. The facets of the story were firmly attached to the core and to all the other characters even as they moved along and around each other and the story line.
I should be so meticulously careful in my writing!
I could add that all of Russo’s characters were screwed from the beginning, even the dog, as was the landscape, but for the main characters the ending was as redeeming as an ending should be.
Eleanor Ingbretson
Karen Whalen
llandrigan
Heidi Wilson
Mike M
Thursday Night Writes 