Back to the Beta

Well, I've finished my edits on novel number two and it's back to the betas. Yep. Another round of "Why did you do that's" and "What were you thinkings." At least, I brace myself for those comments. Hopefully, I won't hear those words of despair. Hopefully, I've worked long enough and hard enough to squash those things before they're even a gleam in the betas eyes. But...



Sometimes "the best laid plans", as Burns said. If the Dog Pack finds fault, it's because fault exists. If fault exists, fault must be eradicated. I'm searching for an agent, someone who believes in me and my work. If the might-be agent has a faulty representation of my work, then the words "might-be" will be eradicated and he/she becomes the not-interested agent.



Long ago, publishing houses accepted books directly. For example, Forest Carter, an old cowboy from the plains, wrote a book called Gone to Texas. Mr. Carter went to the library, looked into western novels, found potential publishing houses, and sent his novel off to the house he found most interesting. The publishing house accepted his work, published his book, and a very famous director discovered it in the stacks. The book became the movie, The Outlaw Josey Wales. When Carter was interviewed about his new-found success, Barbara Walters asked what he was going to do. His response? "I think I'll buy a new pick-up truck."

Cute story, but...publishing houses don't do that very often. Nowadays, practically not at all. For some time, Algonquin Press would review the first thirty pages of a novel. I'm not sure if they still do that. Random House? St. Martins? DAW? Nope. They rely on the voice and the filtering of agents. That way the publishers can avoid the tedium of reading three-hundred badly written novels to get to the one good piece in the slush pile. Ergo: no agent/no publisher.

I need my betas to be tough. I need them to point out ALL the rough spots, the failed spelling (even an English major makes mistakes), the character flaws, ALL of it. If the Dog Pack approves, then I query, not one agent at a time but ten at a time. If I get the agent, I may be published.

Lots of ifs. Lots of maybes. Lots of hopes. The dream. Oh! One more 'if.'
If I get published, I'm definitely buying a new pick-up truck.

Bits and Snatches

It's 4:51 AM. I'm up. Can't sleep. What to do? Write, of course. At this hour, the house is quiet, the children sleeping, and even the dog's unlikely to seek a trip around the block. There's time now.

The average writer has a day job, gets about ten percent of what he/she writes published, and frets over finance on a regular basis. I'm an average writer.

One of the problems with having that day job, that family, and those financial woes is time. Ideally, a writer should spend at least four hours per day at the keyboard, banging out whatever he/she bangs out. In the real world, those four hours are hard to come by. The writer sits down and suddenly, little Susie needs some help, a drink of water, assitance with homework. Then the phone rings, and Grandma can't get her remote to work. The clock's ticking. The sudden realization that the milk is running low sends our writer to the supermarket or the growling stomachs of the family demand dinner. It's almost as if the fates are against the dream being realized, and let's face it. Becoming a successful writer is THE dream.

An author doesn't become an author by his/herself. It takes the village, so to speak. The family of any would-be writer should understand the dream. The writer must make the dream clear to the people who surround him/her. Seek their support. In my case, I've promised my six-year-old granddaughter that if Nana becomes a full-time writer and sells books, then we, as a family, can buy a farm. She's already picked out the kind of animals she wants: a pony, some cattle, and some pigs. Thank God, she hasn't asked for any sheep yet. (For those of you who don't know, sheep are the stupidest of God's creatures, they require excessive care, and they smell to high-heaven! Yep, they're worse than pigs.)

Whatever course you chose to chart in life, support is an issue. Some can brave the seas alone and reach that final destination, but not me. Unfortunately, I require support. I need alone-time to write. I can't work through the chaos of normal living. My family must give me space and quiet so that I can focus on the task, or in this case plot-line, at hand. So far (knock on wood), the other members of my household have been relatively understanding. Oh, I've kissed a few boo-boos and answered a few questions, but all in all, they've given the support I require.

I don't get high accolades from them. In fact, I avoid having them read my work. I recently took a copy of my second novel to my mother. She read it. Her response to my effort? She said, "It feels like something a real author wrote." :D

I guess that's high praise, but somehow, it doesn't give me goosebumps. Know what I mean?

Gone?

Have I slipped under the radar, moved to Mazoula, been lost in the Amazon and eaten by cannibals? No. I had a stroke. In fact, I had three mini-strokes within as many weeks. Tough? Kind of, but not deadly thank God. I'm back, slowly rising from the ashes of my clogged arteries like the Phoenix. I'm not as attractive as that legendary bird, but I'm certainly as tenacious.

Writing? Not much right now. My mind still has a few dents and scratches, but they're slowly disappearing. I'll be up to full force in no time, but in the meantime, I'm regrouping and finishing those final edits on novel number two. As my previous post indicated, I'm almost finished. I don't think I'll trunk it for as long as was previously planned. These minor health interruptions have had it trunked for three weeks already, so sometime within the next three weeks, I'll open the trunk lid and have at it again.

The third novel is coming along nicely now. It was also inadvertently trunked due to the health crisis. Crisis breeds opportunity. At least, it certainly has in my case. I've taken a fourteenth look at those first pages and already found some things that can be improved.

As most of you know, the first five or so pages of any novel are the most important. The unwritten rule is that an author must grab the reader's interest within those pages or lose that interest forever. Something has to happen in that first chapter, something important to the story and something that tends to pique the curiosity in such a way as to lead the reader onward. By onward, I mean straight toward the cashier at the local bookstore.

Yep! How you begin is equally as important as how you end. The story must begin to race early. Oh, sometime after you've caught hold of the reader's imagination, there's room for character development and subplots, but those first events on those first pages should be tied directly to the main storyline.

A test: Go back. Read the first five pages of your work. Wrinkle your brow, tap your fingers, then ask yourself, "What happened in those pages?" If your answer is related to introduction of characters, description of setting and only to those things, you've probably started the story too early. If those things are there but hidden in the background of the main event, then keep on trucking or, in this case, writing.

Trunks

Well, novel number two is almost ready for the trunk, so it's on to number three. Will it be less likely to contain the newbie errors I've been making? I certainly hope so.

According to the Big Dawg, it's all about the word count, not the actual word count of any individual piece but my personal, overall word count.

"You see," says Big Dawg, "the more words you write, the more short stories and novels you have under your belt, the more you learn. The more you learn? Well, the fewer newbie mistakes you make."

Makes sense to me. Essentially, the more you write, the better you get at it. If I were a carpenter, the third house I built would inevitably be better than the first. The same is true for any profession. Sooo...I have high hopes for novel number three. Practice makes perfect, or so they say.

The third book? The main character is female. That's all I'm going to give up, so hang in there and hope that the new one is the second part of a two book deal negotiated by my fabulous agent. Then you can pick it up at your neighborhood bookstore.

Funny Valentine?

Okay. So it's 10:15 on Valentine's night and I'm updating my writer's blog. Tell you anything about my life?:D

That's right. My life is wrapped around the idea that one day I'll get this writing thing right. I have hopes. High hopes. But 'hope' must be tempered with a strong grip on reality. Unless a writer is visited by the 'miracle fairy' it's very unlikely that that first novel will ever see the published light of day. Some first novelists do so well as to catch an agent's attention and still that novel is never published. Reality bites.

My first novel is currently 'trunked' for a year. What does that mean? Well, for one thing, that means I've written, re-written, re-vised, and re-visioned so often that I can't stand it anymore. Even an author can tire of their own work. For another thing, 'trunked' means that even with all that re-writing and editing, it's still not up to snuff. Someday, it might be sitting on a shelf at the local Barnes & Noble, but I have to separate myself from it long enough to make it feel 'new' when I fish it out of the trunk. That way when I start its next round of re-writes, I'll be more likely to find the way to make it work.

As for the second novel, it's much better. I can almost see it growing by leaps and bounds as I prune its pages. Pretty soon, I'll see the words 'the end' pop up on my computer screen. When that happens, the second book gets to visit the first. Yes, it goes in the trunk for a month or so. When the time is right, I'll go fishing, pull it up on my line, and read it again. While reading, I'll get out my writer's wrench and tighten up some things that are loose. I'll make sure that it doesn't fall apart at one place or another, then I'll send it back to the Dawg Pack and see if they chew it up.
The great hope is that they'll carry it back, wagging their tails, and say, "Hey! This is pretty good. Time to query."

"Time to query." Time for that nail-biting, heart-wrenching, nauseating period when I send out my lovely product and wait to see if some agent might be interested. I may get a few requests for partials or maybe even some requests for the full manuscript. But if the past holds true, mostly, I'll get silence or form letters that say things like: "This is just not right for me," or "I can't seem to muster enough enthusiasm to represent your book." I may not remember the lines exactly as they're written, but you get the gist of it.

My hopes are still high, and if my patience holds out, you might just be passing a bookstore someday and see something interesting by a great, new author: W. K. Everhart.

Almost...

That's right. I'm almost there. The revision process is taking longer this time, partially because of the stops and starts due to the new grandson's arrival and partially because I'm getting better at it. Yep. Better.

As my word-count rises (the number of words I've written in my efforts to become a novelist) and as my betas keep coming back with questions and those big purple marks, I'm beginning to notice errors on my own. I have some bad habits that I'm trying desperately to break.

For example: dialogue tags. For some reason (mostly attributed to those creative writing courses I took while in college), I tend to force a position on the speaker. Joe banged on the fireplace mantle. "Get out," he yelled! In reality, it should read something like this: "Get out!" Joe shouted, his fist pounding the mantle. The second presentation makes the words ring louder in the reader's mind and it gives old Joe an opportunity to emphasize the language. See? I am getting better.

Like all writers, my bad habits don't stop there. Because my work falls under the title "literary," I tend to wax eloquent when eloquence is unnecessary. You see, I love words and the images words produce in the mind. I use a lot of them, too many sometimes. The writers of the New Testament knew best. The shortest verse in the Bible is the most powerful. "Jesus wept." Two words. The Messiah weeping over the city of Jerusalem, looking down at the corruption in the streets, seeing the dim and bloody future. "Jesus wept." Instead of the long winded explanation, the writer chose to leave it to the two word, simple sentence. Those two words leave a lingering image in the mind of the reader. They're all that's necessary to get the point across.

Me? Well, I might have mentioned that it was dusk, that the sun had colored the sky a royal purple, or I might have noted the clouds grown red in the dying light of the sun. See? I'd have mucked it up. Never use eleven words when two will do. No matter how beautiful the passage, no matter how glorious the image, simplicity is best in dress and in writing. Words should never be measured by their beauty. They should be measured by their power to get the message across. They should be measured by their ability to advance the story. "Jesus wept" is powerful enough to make any believer hang their head in shame. That's what the author wanted. That was the point of the passage.

Now, I'm off to slice and dice, to remove those wonderful words I love so well. The Big Dawg calls it 'killing your darlings.' In many ways, she's right. I love words, images, metaphors. They are my darlings, and so, I must learn to kill them. True, I keep some passages in special files, leaving them only injured as I remove them from my work. Some 'darlings' simply must be remembered, saved for a day when, with a tiny tweak, they can be resurrected, reused some place where they leave the mark this author intends.

Once More into the Breach!

Well, the excitement is dying down. "Little Man" is home from the hospital. He's taking his formula, crying and fussy around four to six in the afternoons, and sleeping in four to five hour stretches at night. That leaves Nana time to work on her writing, and work it is, my friend.



I started the way I always start, from the beginning. I re-read what I'd done so far. Not bad, but I did give a little tweak here and there. Now I'm moving into the bulk of the work, attacking the main problem as I see it: transitioning time. I find that my section headings, those lovely dates at the top of one page or the other, aren't quite enough. As Big Dawg said, "The reader gets lost as to which year it is."



As the writer, I've created this community, these characters, and their living conditions. I've given them jobs, and I understand their motivations. My omnipotence when it comes to the story is unquestionable. I know the outcome from the beginning. I stand God-like above the words. No so for the reader.



The reader stumbles on the story cold, as if meeting a few people at a bar. The characters are introduced slowly, their life stories are a mystery yet to unfold, and their families, connections, and attitudes yet to be discovered. As the writer, I must forget my prior knowledge and magically become the reader. As I re-read my work, my goal is to see through the eyes of a hypothetical reader. If I come across an event, a time frame, a character that doesn't quite hit the mark, something or someone that might give the reader pause, it's time to do some word addition and subtraction.



The 'be-the-reader' segment of editing and revising is the most difficult. Wearing two hats, that reader/writer thing, causes problems because one hat often drops off without notice and it's usually the 'reader hat' that slips onto the floor. I keep picking it up and putting it back on, but alas, I look down and there it is again.

Beta readers, writing groups, crit partners: they're all important, no doubt about it. However, before a manuscript reaches those wonderful people, the writer should do their level best to eliminate as much of the interference as possible. I'm getting better at it, I hope, but after a beta reads a novel for the hundreth time, they tire of it. I'd prefer not to tire my betas, wouldn't you?