Finally!

Okay. I've finally made some great headway. The one thing my beta-readers found unsettling in the one-now-two books I'm working on was character development. It seemed I slacked up a bit when it came to almost everyone in the story. Yep! As Robbie the Robot (oops! dated myself) once said, "Error. Error."

Character development appears in class number one of any writer's workshop. The key to success is to make the reader love at least one of the characters and have strong feelings about the rest, whether they're villains or heroes. When members of my writing group began the book, my main character was spellbinding. Well, that may be a little strong, but hey! They liked her a whole lot. When the book passed the half-way point, I began to hurry, letting my compulsive desire to finish overwhelm the characters, all the characters. Doesn't work. By the end of the book, most readers were glad the read was over, having seen the MC turn from strong and complicated to whiny and overbearing. Not good. Not good at all.

This go around, I'm trying to be more patient, to read the un-trunked volumes with an objective air, and through revisions, to tell readers what I already know: that the main character is indeed complicated, rootless yet strong enough to try to find a place in life to plant herself and grow. I'm hoping that all these revisions will work that magic and that by the time readers close the book, they'll want to open it and start again from the beginning. A good dream if I can pull it off.

Harper Lee did just that in To Kill a Mockingbird. Dare I hope to achieve that success? Well, a girl can hope, but I'd be happy with simply writing a good book and finally have readers other than my long-suffering writing group. Of course, no writer writes just to see hundreds of unsold books stacked in a dusty warehouse. I, like all authors (I sometimes call myself 'author' just so somebody says it), want to be read and often. My name on a bookjacket is a nice thought, but knowing that readers think I actually have something to say is a better idea.

I'd certainly like to think I have something to say, that my work will not only entertain the reader but also offer insight into the human condition. I write literary fiction, so far mostly historical literary fiction. For some reason, looking back at what we've been seems more appealing than looking forward to what we might become. We learn from history, or so I've been told, and history has always shown me a new way to view the present. As a writer, I can re-write history just a bit, hopefully just enough to offer that 20/20 hindsight we've all heard talk about. Some write about a future that we may never see. Their imaginations send us to apocalypse or to a wonderland in which all things evil are overcome by good. A nice place if you can find it.

My late husband was a visionary of sorts, even though, like John Milton, he was legally blind. He enjoyed Star Trek, not so much because of the scifi adventure but because the Trekkie world held cures for all diseases, hope that poverty would be eliminated, and laws that forbid the use of force except at times when Justice had been raped by burgeoning Injustice. Evil was always nipped in the bud, as Barney Fife once said. He liked to learn what visions writers had for the yet-to-come. To those who write futuristically, I doff my hat.

As for me and the 1800 or so words I've added to the WIP, I'm hoping my words give insight to the importance of personal history, to the idea that where we come from does as much to shape who we are as any other component of life. We're built, brick by tragic brick. We don't spring to life fully completed. Like the potter's clay, we're molded and shaped by circumstance, geography, and history, ours and the history of those around us. That's the point. We're born, yes, but then we must become.

My main character is finally becoming. What? Well, should the book be published and if you're interested, you must purchase a copy or otherwise, wait for the movie. :D

Running a Good Race

My good friend, Gini Koch, is expecting. Her second book will be on shelves come December, 2010 (Alien Tango), and two more are scheduled to be out soon. If she and I were in a race, I'm running well behind the champ. However, as she often reminds me, it took her a while to get where she is on the publication track.

I'm not so patient. You might even describe me as impatient (or so says Gini). I started my attempted writing career rather late in life. That fact shouldn't surprise anyone. I finished my BS when I was forty-five, and although I went straight from under-grad to graduate school, I was the oldest graduate teaching assistant in university history (I really don't know that for sure, but it certainly seemed that way.) Getting out of the gate behind the rest of the pack is something I'm used to.

Oh-Wise-Gini also reminds me that she worked hard at becoming a professional writer. She wrote countless volumes before she hit on just the right combination to catch the eye of her agent. She wrote hundreds of query letters and got almost as many rejections, some formula "I'm not interested" letters and some more personal. She's no novice, no got-an-agent-the-first-time-I-entered-the-race kind of gal. Gini is the consummate professional, a hard-working writer who's not afraid to take a shot at her dreams no matter how long the realization of those dreams take.

In this day and age when thousands of would-be writers are talking about the great books they're going to write, I'm told that only about 1% of those books are every really written. I've written three manuscripts. I hesitate to say that I've completed three novels because I'm not sure you can say that unpublished manuscripts are ever completed. I've even queried one of them with some success. I had several requests for full manuscripts from my query. That's why Ms. Gini calls me Query-Dog.

Am I back at work on my latest efforts? You betcha. I can't wait to get the okay from the BIG DAWGS (writing group) to go ahead and query. My old impatient self might just want to query with the work I have, but rule one of the writer's handbook: Never query on only a partial manuscript OR on a manuscript with issues. I've got rule one down pat!

Well, back to the race. I'm more like the tortoise than the hare. I came out of the gate rather late, but I'm ahead of the 99% of runners who never even finish the book. That's something, huh?

Late Nights

Well, it's 12:45 AM here on the creek. The moon is shining only half-full, and Buddy, my basset hound, is sleeping on the couch, as per usual. Now and again, some wayward night creature howls or yowls from the woods behind the house, and I catch a glimpse of a deer making his/her way across the lawn and toward the water. Unlike the citizens of Churchill, Manitoba (I'm hoping I got the province right), I'm not facing polar bears as they follow their migration route down main street; however, deer migrate from their hide-outs in the woods to open pasture at night.

Why am I up? Well, normally I'm not, but my daughter is heading home from a business trip to Chicago. I thought I'd wait up to welcome her home and get some writing done in the mean time, but 'the best laid plans' and all that. I find that I do my best writing in short spurts not those long, laborious eight hour stints I used to pull. Oh, I got a lot of words in when I forced myself to sit in my relatively uncomfortable desk chair and write. Nowadays, I'm not doing that to myself. Nowadays, I'm writing when the inspiration strikes, and I don't keep pushing if that same inspiration dwindles away. It's called self-preservation.

I still have the same desire to be published, but I'm not so willing to kill myself in doing it. I WILL get an agent. Of that, I am certain. However, I must exercise patience along with all that perseverance. Between the day job and the nightly sojourns into Creative-ville, I've allowed very little time for me to be me. Wisdom comes to those who wait.

Withdrawls!

Okay. I'm giving up on worrying, just like I gave up on guilt. Both practices are totally non-productive, as a wise man once told me. They serve no purpose except to steal any joy that might come. I'm not into allowing anyone or anything to steal my joy (it's such a rare commodity!)

The fourth of July has come and gone, the fireworks have fizzled out, and I am back at my keyboard. Writing has been more challenge than joy lately, but as I said, I simply refuse to allow the joy I take in the written word to be pilfered by my own insecurities. As of yet, I am an unpublished novelist, but I have been published: Raving Dove, Raphael's Village, EXIT 109, and others. True. I've been published mostly as a poet, but I've sneaked in a few essays and short stories. My days as an AGENTED and PUBLISHED novelist approaches. I refuse to have any doubts.

One day, readers will stumble across this blog and discover that ALL writers have insecurities, fears that their work doesn't come up to muster, and doubts that they'll ever see their name on a book jacket. I sound bold and confident here, but just a few short posts ago, I was wallowing in the quagmire of desperation. Comes with writing territory, I suppose. Keep up with me folks. Better days are coming. More words, more hope, and more works in print. Persistence wins the game, not that runner who shows well out of the gate but loses advantage in the long haul.

Keep smiling. Keep sending up skyrockets, and don't spare the word count!

Okay! Okay! So I need a job!

It's summer, and the university where I work during fall and spring semester doesn't give adjuncts summer work. What does that mean? It means summers suck, at least, financially. No worky-no earny-no earny-no buyee (That didn't come out just the way I wanted it, but you get the drift!)

I did pick up five weeks of work, teaching through a special program for disadvantaged high school students. I love the program and the kids, but it IS only FIVE weeks of work out of four months. Every summer, I tell myself, "You've got to get a real job." BUT every summer, I procrastinate because, darn it! I like to teach almost as much as I like to write. So what if being an adjunct means that I make very little money compared to other people who have MA's. So what, if I get no benefits from the state, and I have to pay for on-campus parking. So what if I spend Christmas vacation sweating it out as to whether I'll get a contract for spring! So what if public school employment possibilities are as dead as post secondary jobs! Teaching? What am I doing?

I'll keep teaching. That's what I do, but I also keep hoping that writing becomes my job and teaching is just my hobby. That's why I can't believe I let myself get so far down that I couldn't write. If anybody's out there, if anybody's reading this: DON'T GET THAT FAR DOWN! (That's right. I shouted.) Writing gets under your fingernails and embeds itself in the pores. It becomes as much a part of the writer as blood and bone. To punish myself by not hitting the keyboard is as bad as Van Gogh cutting off his own ear (an event whose validity recently became a subject of debate)!

I write. Writing is as much therapy as production. Remember that. Remember me, and for Heaven's sake, send me job suggestions! :D

Might-Moan-Again

It seems that moaning about my sad state might just have worked, ergo I might just moan more often. (Wow! That's a nicely alliterated sentence, if I do say so myself.) Anyways, after the moan, I found 1536 words, some not-so-evaporated editing skills, and two new chapters in my series. Not bad for someone who wanted to go to a cliff and beg God to have the rocks fall on her. See...it can happen. A writer who felt like she had no words left can find those words lurking in the most unexpected places.

The way I see it now is that anyone who's thinking about suicide should write a suicide note, then sit, read, and think some more. First question: Who the hell would care that I was dead? Second question: How long would they care? Third series of connected questions: Did I play the lottery this week? What if my numbers won and *gulp* I had already checked out? Would the undertaker find the ticket in my pocket, collect my winnings, sell his establishment before my service, and end up on MY beach in the Caribbean? Fourth series of connected questions: Hey! Wouldn't that dead lottery winner/undertaker thingy make a great plot line for a novel? Should I write the novel or let that damned undertaker take something else that belonged to me? That undertaker! Who does he think he is? (But I digress.)

See how it works? (Not connected to the above series of questions) Get sad. Okay. Everybody gets sad, and it's okay to be sad unless that "long barrel of despair" lasts longer than three weeks. (If it's that long-lasting, it's time for the doc and the happy pills. Depression, serious depression, is a serious matter with serious consequences unless taken seriously. I mean that!) The best solution for sadness that I've discovered is madness, not insanity but true anger. Don't be mad at others because the only person that can make you happy is YOU. There are no knights in shining armor, no surprise visits from previously unknown billionaire parents, no magic (other than the perfect sunset), and no one to snap your suspenders but you. In this case, ME.

So...after the previous blogged moaning, I thought about what I always told my clients: "It's not the hand you're dealt in life. It's how you play your cards." (I'm sure that I'm not the first person to use that line, and so I bow to the original purveyor of that great wisdom.) I looked at my recently dealt hand and then asked for four cards. Quite a risk, huh? Well, I didn't get a Royal Flush, but I picked up at least a pair and am still in the game. I got some employment for July, only July, but hey, a month of salary is a month of salary. Know what I mean? When I flick the switch on my wall, I like to have the lights come on. Bills are bills and, as hard as this is to believe, people actually expect payment. Just saying.

Everything Old is New Again

I've not been well...not so much physically as emotionally. My writer's muscle keeps freezing, storylines keep evading me, and I'm looking down the long barrel of despair. Job. Economy. The heat of summer-yet-to- come. Whatever the reason, I've been struggling. Oh, I have moments, moments when I jump back on that keyboard and gallop away, but they've been few and far between. Let's face it. I haven't even blogged since March and it's now the end of May.

I tell myself that I'm just in a slump, that the world will tick my way someday, and I'll get going. BUT the world never ticks my way. Hell, the world never really ticks anybody's way. It took months for me to realize that I had to wind my own clock, so to speak. Time doesn't wait, but it can sure leave you behind if you're not careful.

This blog is supposed to be about writing, about my efforts to write the great American novel. Well, whether my book (books in my case) will ever see the light above the printing press, I don't really know. I know there are stories in me: scary stories, romantic stories, suspenseful stories, and stories about ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. I know they're all there, waiting for my fingers to begin the rudimentary canvas on which each will be painted. (You guessed it I'm getting to another BUT) ...but...my dreams have gotten pressed between my health and my economic circumstances. Some are completely gone...shot to hell...others are still there, like that last tiny light just before the cigarette is pushed against the bottom of the ashtray.

I write this here because I've come to believe that no one reads it anyway. Some of my friends used to drop by and give me a boost/comment, but since I've been so slow to post, they've found other places to comment. Who can blame them? I can't say that I won't ever finish the two book series. In fact, even in this great, deep funk, I actually did some edits, starting from the beginning and reading through again. (I like the book, but then again, I'm not an agent.)

My computer was new in 2002. It's not so new anymore and it, like its owner, is showing its age. I've been getting lots of blue screen/disc errors and I've tried to back things up as much as possible, but soon and very soon, the old Gateway is going to give up its ghost. When that happens, I'll have to travel to write, and in order to travel, I have to have gas money. I'm hoping to finish at least the first book in the series before the thing goes "Ker-Plow", but who knows? The way my luck's been going lately, I'll probably do something brillant, then the screen will go blank, and it'll all be lost. (Knock on wood that that doesn't happen!)

Well, I'm going to stop complaining. I'm down to my last four cigarettes, and I've got the urge to chain smoke.