Waiting

A member of my writing group tells a long-winded story about a jackass and his master trudging through the desert. She keeps repeating the same lines over and over as a test of her listener's ability to wait for the punch line. Even the most polite member of her audience finally gets itchy and tries to hurry her toward the finish, and of course, that listener IS the punchline when he or she has the repeated line pointed toward him/her: "Patience, Jackass, patience."

I try. I really try to be patient, to wait humbly and silently for the group to finish their individual read through of novel number two. I work on other projects, read, or considering the season, garden. So far, I've planted ten oak trees (mostly because they were gifts from the forest service), two dozen Impatience, an Astrbilis, three Azaleas, twelve tomatoes, an equal number of pepper plants, four rows of beans (Blue Lake to be precise), and six rows of potatoes. I've read four short stories, all rather lengthy, and now I'm starting on a Stephen J. Cannell mystery (I won the book in a poetry contest. First place). Tomorrow? I'm dying my hair red....again.

See....patience isn't easy even when your brain keeps telling you it's all part of the process. Some time ago, I blogged about how the writer is very much like the hero in Shawshank Redemption, how we've all got our little rock hammer pounding against that concrete wall. I thought myself very wise when I wrote that, and now, I have to return to my words over and over again in order to reaffirm my own advice.

Only one pack of cigarettes remains in my carton, a carton that I promised myself would be the last. I'm sweating. After I plant the rest of my Impatience tomorrow and dye my hair, I'm sure I'll head off to the tobacco store to get the next "last" carton.

No one, and I mean NO ONE, is immune from worry. Although 'worry' is totally non-productive and, to the best of my knowledge, has never resulted in one, single accomplishment, we all do it. I worry about people who claim they never worry. I worry about the length of my dog's toe nails. I worry about the cat, the garden, the grandchildren, my truck. Now, I worry about that 120,000 or so words of mine that rest in the hands of my writing group.

The late Rita Riddle, my friend and fellow poet, once confided that she worried, too. She said that her poems were like her children and submitting one of them was like putting her five-year-old on the school bus for the first day of kindergarten. She knew what she had when she put the child on the bus, but she never knew what she'd have when the child got off the bus at the end of the day. Editors edit, and so do members of a writing group. It's all about trust. I trust my group, and I must trust that they will all operate in my best interests. They haven't failed me so far, so I've got the hair dye waiting in the bathroom and the shovel and gardening can are already by the flower bed.

It's been a while, a long while since I was here. I tell my students that if life were a highway and each living individual was traveling down that highway, eighty-five percent of us would be in the passenger seat, letting someone else drive our vehicle. When we're unwell (if that's a word), invariably, someone or something else slips into the drivers seat of our life-vehicle. For a few weeks, I'm afraid I joined the statistics and moved over to my passenger seat. I didn't like it there, so I bumped the driver and took control again. So far...it's working out all right.

Last night, I returned to the third novel. As always, I read what I had written earlier, performed some surgical incisions, removed a bump here and a scar there, and I think I might have something. I added another 500 or so words (Hey, I didn't start until like 10:00 PM, so don't fault me on word count), and I'm liking where it's going.

Problem? Of course, there's a problem. Research. I hate research, viewing it as a sort of cross between that proverbial sharp stick in the eye and constipation. I know what I want my main character to do, but I have to find out if it's really possible for someone to do that particular deed.

"But this is fiction," you say.

"Yep! This is fiction, but whatever the task you want your characters to perform, it must be possible. Without some measure of reality, the whole book might die of spontaneous combustion."

"Hey, don't give me that. What about that old 'suspension of disbelief' thing? If you're such a good writer, why can't you make the reader BELIEVE the impossible is possible," you scoff smugly.

It's true. Every writer must spin the tale in such a way that the reader believes that the consumption of mercury actually can create a mutant, twelve foot monster that eats babies for breakfast; however, the good writer must throw in just enough truth about genetic mutations, the long-term effects of mercury, and how and in what quantities mercury might be ingested in order to create the illusion that he/she knows what the hell they're talking about. Most people know it isn't nice to eat mercury, that it causes some pretty severe birth defects, so the writer must take that info and expand on it to build a bridge between reality and what might be possible. Research, therefore, is an essential part of any novelist's work.

Snake bites, for instance. In my first novel, I needed to have a character die from a snake bite. Through my research into how that might happen, I discovered I had the wrong snake. In the eastern US, we have a snake called a 'copperhead.' It's a beautiful creature but one to be avoided at all times. Copperhead's have short fuses, often attacking before they're really threatened, and I'd always heard they were deadly. Not so, or so says my research. Copperhead venom won't kill an adult, but it can make you wish you were dead, offering up a variety of symptoms which, although painful, do not usually result in death. I discovered that I needed an eastern diamondback, a purveyor of hemo-toxin. When left unfettered by anti-venom, the hemo-toxin races through the bloodstream of a victim and slowly dissolves internal organs, causing swelling, internal bleeding often characterized by large blood pools forming just beneath the dermis, delirium and then, you guessed it, death. Research. Without it, anyone who really knew anything about snakes would have thrown my novel into the fireplace, laughing heartily about my misinformed presentation.

I don't know why the word 'research' conjures up so many demons in the back of a writer's (or really anyone's) mind. We do research everyday without ever including the word in conversation. We look up phone numbers. We check recipes. We study the winning lottery numbers for previous weeks as we fill in the dots on our tickets, hoping we're choosing the numbers most frequently called. We research names for our unborn children. We research prospective colleges and universities. We ask questions about the new neighbors.

Researching the possibilities is just as important as writing the novel. Don't write about Paris if you've never been there. Lots of people have been to Paris, and they will recognize false information resulting in market loss, defined in this case as lost readers. As a would-be published writer, I can't afford to lose readers. I need everyone who can read to pick up my novel and 'ooh' and 'ahh' over the darned thing.

Well, that's it. I've put it off long enough. I need to find out how a hacker can hack, develop a cult following, and not be readily caught by the powers that be. Wish me luck!

Dreams

When I began this blog, I told myself I would never deviate from the process of writing, that I would devote these pages to my struggle to be heard. Sometimes, no matter how hard we try to remain within self-imposed parameters, we must move outside those boundaries. This, my friends, is one of those times.

In the past few days, I've been hearing chatter about a Scottish woman, Susan Boyle. A contestant on one of the myriad of television programs that echo the format of Ted Mack's Original Amateur Hour from 1950's America, Ms. Boyle took the plunge. She gathered her courage and auditioned for Britain's Got Talent. For the first time in her life, she faced more than her church's congregation. At forty-seven years of age and unemployed, she faced the sobering visage of Simon Cowell.

Ms. Boyle's nervousness gave the impression that she was just another addle-brained housewife looking for an opportunity to be on television. When Cowell asked, "What is the dream?", she responded, "I'm trying to become a professional singer." The audience roared with laughter, as did the judges, with Cowell rolling his eyes.

"What will you be singing for us?" was Cowell's next question.

"I Dreamed a Dream from Les Miserables," Ms. Boyle said as she gave the high sign to the audio engineer and he pushed the button to start the soundtrack. The rich music swelled and the dowdy little woman began. Within the first two bars, the audience rose to its feet as the purity of the voice brought many to tears. The soundtrack began to fade and Ms. Boyle almost whispered the last line, "Life has killed the dream I dreamed." The laughter with which she had been greeted was lost in the roar of the crowd and its standing ovation.

I can only imagine what Susan Boyle's life has been. Here, I give way to conjecture. Imagine spending nearly half a century with a dream. Imagine having heard the accolades of fellow choir members or from family. Imagine the times she's sung to herself and wondered if she was really any good. Imagine the one or two voices who dampened her dream. Think of the voice that whispered, "Actresses are beautiful. Take a look in the mirror if you think you can make it." Think of that voice that warned, "Showbiz is tough. You're good, but..." Think of the courage it required for her to stand on that stage.

Like Ms. Boyle, I have a dream. Like Ms. Boyle, I'm making the effort to realize my dream rather late in life, and I, too, have endured those discouraging voices. I can only hope that what I believe about myself is true. I can only hope that I'm not too late, that I'll have a moment in the spotlight and that, like Ms. Boyle, I can prove to myself and all those voices that talent transcends time.

WIP...BTW

The third of my attempts at becoming a novelist is slowly forming within my word processing unit. I've just rounded chapter six. Given illness and a death in the family, I suppose I should be happy that I've made it this far. I'm not. I'm beginning to get that nagging feeling that I should, as they say, 'get a move on.'

Why? Because, as always, I'm impatient. I keep telling myself that by now I should be working on revision rather than first draft. And believe me! This is a first draft. A friend of mine finishes her first draft and sends it to beta right away. She can. She's been at this longer, she's managed to snatch an agent and a publisher, and she knows who she is as a writer. She's not exactly Father Time, but compared to me, she's an ancient, wizened writer. I'm still a toddler while she's got the writing biz down to a science. Can she make mistakes? Sure, but she's far less likely to do so than this babe in swaddling clothes. What's she got that I ain't got? Patience.

I'm reminded of Shawshank Redemption, of the hero spending decades pounding through the concrete with his little rock hammer. The whole escape process from the movie is very much a metaphor for becoming a writer. We hammer at our keyboards instead of concrete but getting the agent and publisher we need is equally difficult. The main character in Shawshank never gave up, no matter what obstacles he came across or what voice told him it was impossible. He didn't rush the process. He looked at each segment of concrete powder, grinned, and kept on pushing until, one layer at a time, he managed to reach his goal.

That's what it's all about, I suppose. We just have to keep on pushing, pounding away at the concrete wall that separates us from success. The powder will drop to the floor each time we made headway, and then finally....poof! Goal reached.

I'll try to keep Shawshank's hero in mind as I struggle with the WIP. BTW, I'm feeling better already!

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.