Last weekend I was in Kripalu doing a memoir workshop with Natalie Goldberg. I always approach workshops with "name" teachers a little warily but this was a good one. Not a lot of ego on either side of the podium. We wrote and wrote. Prompt after prompt.
Natalie kept saying "I want to make sure everyone gets their money's worth." So Friday we wrote until 9 pm and we were going to reconvene Saturday at 8:30 am and she gave us three prompts for homework. So we show up Saturday and we write until 11:30. Reconvene at 1:30 and guess what? Two prompts to do over lunch. By the end of the Saturday afternoon I was brain dead. I had definitely gotten my money's worth but the workshop, following directly on the heels (I first wrote "directly on the hells" - interesing slip, Dr. Freud!) of the time in New York was just too much. I didn't do my Saturday night homework (and felt strangely guilty about it...where are you, Sigmund, when we need you?) and took off Sunday without attending the final session. I wanted some time to explore the grounds, sit in the hot tub, hang out in the bookshop, just chill.
Yeah, I was burned out when I showed up, thanks to NYC, but more to the point I really wonder how much first draft writing I can do in a single weekend without it making me spacey, queasy, and borderline sick. I can revise and revamp and research for hours. All those words that start with "re" - they just don't take that much out of you.
But that word that starts with W, as in "write"....it'll just about kill you.
Like I said, good workshop. I liked my roomies, had a nice walk to the gorgeous Kripalu lake and during the writing sessions I generated a lot of material for what I'm calling the God-help-me-third-book (catchy title, don't you think?) So the time was well spent. But it proved to me once again that when it comes to first drafts I need to pace my energy. I drove home from Massachusetts in a complete mental fog.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Jiggity Jog
Home again from my never ending trip up north. I'm tired, but it was all so worthwhile. Here's a synopsis of what I learned:
I have to go to New York more often. I don't know why I treat it as some big deal. But it was almost immediately apparent upon my arrival that there's no substitute for actually meeting with editors and agents face to face - for being a real person to them and not just a voice on the phone or an email address. The standard thing everyone says about editors....ie, that they're distracted and overworked....is actually quite true. When you're there sitting across a dining table from them you move, even if just for that hour, to the top of the pile and have their true focus and attention. I got more feedback in four days than I've gotten in a year at home.
The first day I went to Grand Central, ostensibly to meet with the publicity director about my first book, Love in Mid Air, the one that's coming out in March. And meeting the publicity person is a big deal, but I also had the secret tiny hope that my editor, who received the second book, The Gods of Arizona two weeks ago, would like it enough to make me an offer. An offer on Gods would solve a bucketload of problems, some of the financial and some of them emotional. A lot of novelists are one-hit wonders who spend years writing the first book (God knows I did) and then either never produce another or wait so long to produce another that everyone forgets about them, including their own publishing house. So if she committed to a second book I'd feel like I was really developing a career with my publisher, that my first book wasn't just a matter of "let's throw this against the wall and see if it sticks."
So I get off the elevator and almost the first thing she says is that she's sorry, but she hasn't finished the second book. In fact she had just started it and was only about 70 pages in. We soldier on, talking about publicity for the first book and what they will do (spend time) and won't do (spend money) to promote it. As we're all heading out to lunch, I'm swapping my heels for flats for the walk and make some comment about protecting my feet and we end up talking about my passion for ballroom dancing. I say, honest-to-God casually, that I want to eventually write a book about a ballroom dance studio and my editor just lights up. She loves the idea.
So now I'm thinking that maybe there's a third book in the works and that maybe even she'll buy the second book, for which I have a draft, and the third book, for which I have a one-line concept. It's unlikely on one level....everyone is saying that the market sucks, that it's an impossible time to come out with any sort of book at all, and that publishers have stopped giving big advances or multi-book deals. But on another level I saw that she was excited about the ballroom dancing idea and her interest in book three might nudge her to make a decision on book two. When I talked to my agent the next day, he thought so too.
After that I couldn't get this mythical third book off my mind. Started taking notes for it on the train back to Massachusetts, free-wrote on it during the writing retreat with Natalie Goldberg (more on that later), and was scribbling more notes while driving south on I-95 on Monday. And it seems crazy in a way to always be moving ahead developing new ideas before previous ideas are sold or even consolidated in your mind, but that seems to be how things have to work. Not every idea pans out....who are we kidding? Most ideas don't pan out. So you have to have a lot of them in order to survive this nervous marketplace. And then psychologically I need to feel like all my eggs aren't in one basket.
So....I'm tired, but it was a productive trip on all sorts of levels. I'll report more later.
I have to go to New York more often. I don't know why I treat it as some big deal. But it was almost immediately apparent upon my arrival that there's no substitute for actually meeting with editors and agents face to face - for being a real person to them and not just a voice on the phone or an email address. The standard thing everyone says about editors....ie, that they're distracted and overworked....is actually quite true. When you're there sitting across a dining table from them you move, even if just for that hour, to the top of the pile and have their true focus and attention. I got more feedback in four days than I've gotten in a year at home.
The first day I went to Grand Central, ostensibly to meet with the publicity director about my first book, Love in Mid Air, the one that's coming out in March. And meeting the publicity person is a big deal, but I also had the secret tiny hope that my editor, who received the second book, The Gods of Arizona two weeks ago, would like it enough to make me an offer. An offer on Gods would solve a bucketload of problems, some of the financial and some of them emotional. A lot of novelists are one-hit wonders who spend years writing the first book (God knows I did) and then either never produce another or wait so long to produce another that everyone forgets about them, including their own publishing house. So if she committed to a second book I'd feel like I was really developing a career with my publisher, that my first book wasn't just a matter of "let's throw this against the wall and see if it sticks."
So I get off the elevator and almost the first thing she says is that she's sorry, but she hasn't finished the second book. In fact she had just started it and was only about 70 pages in. We soldier on, talking about publicity for the first book and what they will do (spend time) and won't do (spend money) to promote it. As we're all heading out to lunch, I'm swapping my heels for flats for the walk and make some comment about protecting my feet and we end up talking about my passion for ballroom dancing. I say, honest-to-God casually, that I want to eventually write a book about a ballroom dance studio and my editor just lights up. She loves the idea.
So now I'm thinking that maybe there's a third book in the works and that maybe even she'll buy the second book, for which I have a draft, and the third book, for which I have a one-line concept. It's unlikely on one level....everyone is saying that the market sucks, that it's an impossible time to come out with any sort of book at all, and that publishers have stopped giving big advances or multi-book deals. But on another level I saw that she was excited about the ballroom dancing idea and her interest in book three might nudge her to make a decision on book two. When I talked to my agent the next day, he thought so too.
After that I couldn't get this mythical third book off my mind. Started taking notes for it on the train back to Massachusetts, free-wrote on it during the writing retreat with Natalie Goldberg (more on that later), and was scribbling more notes while driving south on I-95 on Monday. And it seems crazy in a way to always be moving ahead developing new ideas before previous ideas are sold or even consolidated in your mind, but that seems to be how things have to work. Not every idea pans out....who are we kidding? Most ideas don't pan out. So you have to have a lot of them in order to survive this nervous marketplace. And then psychologically I need to feel like all my eggs aren't in one basket.
So....I'm tired, but it was a productive trip on all sorts of levels. I'll report more later.
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
If I can make it there.....
A little excitement this morning. The UPS driver dropped off a nice big box of my advance reader copies for "Love in Mid Air." It's a kick to hold it my hand, looking like a real book and all.
Leaving Thursday for the major northward trek. Going to see Laura in Virginia, then Dawn in Mass, then NYC for four days to visit with editors and my agent and friends there, then to the Natalie Goldberg memoir workshop at Kripalu. All in all I am gone about two weeks and it's like zones of experience I'll be driving in and out of, each requiring some pretty significant shifts of focus (as well as some pretty significant shifts of wardrobe...you should see my suitcase).
This is also when I'll find out:
What publicity is being planned for the first novel
If my editor for that novel is interested in acquiring the sequel
Scary stuff. I'll report in the minute I get back.
Leaving Thursday for the major northward trek. Going to see Laura in Virginia, then Dawn in Mass, then NYC for four days to visit with editors and my agent and friends there, then to the Natalie Goldberg memoir workshop at Kripalu. All in all I am gone about two weeks and it's like zones of experience I'll be driving in and out of, each requiring some pretty significant shifts of focus (as well as some pretty significant shifts of wardrobe...you should see my suitcase).
This is also when I'll find out:
What publicity is being planned for the first novel
If my editor for that novel is interested in acquiring the sequel
Scary stuff. I'll report in the minute I get back.
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