Sunday, July 19, 2009
How I Became a Famous Novelist
Just bought a hilarious book, How I Became a Famous Novelist by Steve Hely. Really smart ass, sarcastic, and frighteningly accurate view of the whole process - why we write, how you get published, what happens afterwards. To say this book casts a jaundiced eye doesn't do it justice. Even the cover is yellow....
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Back from Arizona
I just got in from a trip to Arizona. Lots of hiking, spa-ing, etc, but Tucson is also the scene of my second novel. Walking around the desert got me thinking of all the ways that place influences a book. Not just in terms of describing the plants and animals and landscape, although even that is important. My recent Kripalu workshop with Natalie Goldberg made me re-appreciate the evocative power of place-specific nouns such as "roadrunner" versus "pelican" or "barrel cactus" versus "aspen."
But I was thinking more of how metaphor arises out of place. I've been trying to think of a way of saying the Kelly is frozen and stuck and numb in the beginning of the novel and as I walked I kept - of course - seeing these rocks. For some reason it jumped out at me that a lot of the stones in Arizona are approximately the size and shape of the human heart and the phrase came to mind "the stone-shaped heart" and I decided that I liked it.
It's small. It's a line, or not even a line. But it's also the sort of thing that pleases me as a writer. There's a little click that happens in your head when you find a word or phrase that seems right, a sense of completion, like a piece coming into a jigsaw and giving you a stronger sense of the overall picture.
Are we more likely to find these "really right" words or phrases if we immerse ourselves in place? I suspect it helps. Especially if you're the sort of writer, as I am, who is better at getting things down than at thinking things up.
But I was thinking more of how metaphor arises out of place. I've been trying to think of a way of saying the Kelly is frozen and stuck and numb in the beginning of the novel and as I walked I kept - of course - seeing these rocks. For some reason it jumped out at me that a lot of the stones in Arizona are approximately the size and shape of the human heart and the phrase came to mind "the stone-shaped heart" and I decided that I liked it.
It's small. It's a line, or not even a line. But it's also the sort of thing that pleases me as a writer. There's a little click that happens in your head when you find a word or phrase that seems right, a sense of completion, like a piece coming into a jigsaw and giving you a stronger sense of the overall picture.
Are we more likely to find these "really right" words or phrases if we immerse ourselves in place? I suspect it helps. Especially if you're the sort of writer, as I am, who is better at getting things down than at thinking things up.
Monday, July 6, 2009
Why is plotting so darn hard?
As I mentioned in the last blog, I have started compiling notes for the book on ballroom dancing. And it has brought me right up against my worst dread.....(drum roll)......plotting.
Just the word sends a shudder down your spine, doesn't it?
I know it does mine.
Why is this so tricky? And why have I taken on not just another novel but one that has way more characters than I'm used too and thus way more character arcs.....and why have I chosen to toss the word "commercial" around in a cavalier manner, knowing full well that it implies "tightly plotted"?
There is a part of me that relishes the challenge of trying to simultanously advance multiple story lines and bring them all to fruition at the same point....there is another part of me that is terrified of the challenge.
When I get back from Arizona next week I'm going to start research in the form of interviewing. Maybe that will get me going on story and while I realize that story isn't the same thing as plot, they are closely related and maybe that will unfreeze me a bit. Wish me luck.
Just the word sends a shudder down your spine, doesn't it?
I know it does mine.
Why is this so tricky? And why have I taken on not just another novel but one that has way more characters than I'm used too and thus way more character arcs.....and why have I chosen to toss the word "commercial" around in a cavalier manner, knowing full well that it implies "tightly plotted"?
There is a part of me that relishes the challenge of trying to simultanously advance multiple story lines and bring them all to fruition at the same point....there is another part of me that is terrified of the challenge.
When I get back from Arizona next week I'm going to start research in the form of interviewing. Maybe that will get me going on story and while I realize that story isn't the same thing as plot, they are closely related and maybe that will unfreeze me a bit. Wish me luck.
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Plowing
When I left New York ten days ago my editor told me she would read "The Gods of Arizona" pronto and let me know. My agent told me he was off to France for a week but that when he returned he would follow up with her pronto and let me know.
I still don't know. That's to be expected. Nothing happens fast in this business. There is no pronto in publishing and writers can become paralyzed with the waiting. Paralysis is my greatest fear. So I have spent the past week thinking a lot about the third book, the one about ballroom dancing, the one I'm tentatively calling "The Nature of the Dance." I am trying to produce a sample chapter and a 500-word pitch of the idea.
This is the exciting part of the process. The beginning, when the horizon is flat and broad and there is the sense that the story could go anywhere and that your heroine could become anything.
This is also the part of the process where you go into a bit of a fog. First drafts are physically exhausting to write. They really force you to go deep into the subconscious mind. My grandmother used to use the phrase "plowing the field" to describe complete exhaustion as in "I feel like I've been plowing the field all day." She was born in the rural south in 1905 and knew what plowing really felt like. I've never had my hand on a piece of farm equipment but first draft writing feels like a kind of plowing - taking this unbroken landscape and beginning to dig ruts in it, to create perameters and rows, to decide what goes where....to begin to enforce a type of order onto nature. You have to throw your back into it. You strike a lot of rocks.
So I walk around in a fog, obsessed with the story. The kind of headspace where you walk into the kitchen and wonder why you're there, where you pull off the road into a parking lot and begin to scribble notes onto a receipt you dig out of your purse. Oddly happy and oddly distracted.
When I first started writing, I never thought about publishing....or, if it did flit across my mind it was only in the context of "I need to sell enough to allow me to keep writing." That's pure and proper - publishing should always be in service of writing. But at some point things shift. The publishing part of it grows bigger in your mind and if you're not careful the tail begins to wag the dog (another one of my grandmother's pet phrases) and you find yourself spending a lot of time wondering what will make a book sell. Instead of "I need to publish so I can afford to keep writing" you begin to think "I need to write what I think they'll publish." In some ways that doesn't sound like much of a shift because both are important - you won't have any sort of career in the long run unless you give serious thought to both the creative and the financial side of your decisions. But even taking into account that both matter, the writing still has to come first.
When I told my editor I was thinking of a book about a ballroom dance studio her eyes lit up and I thought "I can sell that book." All I had was a concept. But in the ten days since that my mind has been furiously churning....who is this woman who has begun dancing? What does she want....and will I give it to her? I guess I'll give it to her slant, as in Emily Dickenson's line "tell the truth but tell it slant." That seems the way people always get what they want - they might get what they originally wanted but then find they don't want it anymore, what they think they want changes over time, they come to an understanding of themselves that renders the original desire moot. There are a thousand variations of this story and the parallels between Abby's pursuit of dance trophies and my pursuit of publication are not lost on me.
I may have started this book based on my editor's reaction, and the fact I thought I could sell it but the deeper question is: Can I fall in love with it to the degree that I would want to write this book even if I knew I could never sell it? In the meantime I just wander around dreaming the story, stopping sometimes dead in my tracks when a phrase or idea strike me as being real.
This is the exciting part of the process. But god do I need a nap.
I still don't know. That's to be expected. Nothing happens fast in this business. There is no pronto in publishing and writers can become paralyzed with the waiting. Paralysis is my greatest fear. So I have spent the past week thinking a lot about the third book, the one about ballroom dancing, the one I'm tentatively calling "The Nature of the Dance." I am trying to produce a sample chapter and a 500-word pitch of the idea.
This is the exciting part of the process. The beginning, when the horizon is flat and broad and there is the sense that the story could go anywhere and that your heroine could become anything.
This is also the part of the process where you go into a bit of a fog. First drafts are physically exhausting to write. They really force you to go deep into the subconscious mind. My grandmother used to use the phrase "plowing the field" to describe complete exhaustion as in "I feel like I've been plowing the field all day." She was born in the rural south in 1905 and knew what plowing really felt like. I've never had my hand on a piece of farm equipment but first draft writing feels like a kind of plowing - taking this unbroken landscape and beginning to dig ruts in it, to create perameters and rows, to decide what goes where....to begin to enforce a type of order onto nature. You have to throw your back into it. You strike a lot of rocks.
So I walk around in a fog, obsessed with the story. The kind of headspace where you walk into the kitchen and wonder why you're there, where you pull off the road into a parking lot and begin to scribble notes onto a receipt you dig out of your purse. Oddly happy and oddly distracted.
When I first started writing, I never thought about publishing....or, if it did flit across my mind it was only in the context of "I need to sell enough to allow me to keep writing." That's pure and proper - publishing should always be in service of writing. But at some point things shift. The publishing part of it grows bigger in your mind and if you're not careful the tail begins to wag the dog (another one of my grandmother's pet phrases) and you find yourself spending a lot of time wondering what will make a book sell. Instead of "I need to publish so I can afford to keep writing" you begin to think "I need to write what I think they'll publish." In some ways that doesn't sound like much of a shift because both are important - you won't have any sort of career in the long run unless you give serious thought to both the creative and the financial side of your decisions. But even taking into account that both matter, the writing still has to come first.
When I told my editor I was thinking of a book about a ballroom dance studio her eyes lit up and I thought "I can sell that book." All I had was a concept. But in the ten days since that my mind has been furiously churning....who is this woman who has begun dancing? What does she want....and will I give it to her? I guess I'll give it to her slant, as in Emily Dickenson's line "tell the truth but tell it slant." That seems the way people always get what they want - they might get what they originally wanted but then find they don't want it anymore, what they think they want changes over time, they come to an understanding of themselves that renders the original desire moot. There are a thousand variations of this story and the parallels between Abby's pursuit of dance trophies and my pursuit of publication are not lost on me.
I may have started this book based on my editor's reaction, and the fact I thought I could sell it but the deeper question is: Can I fall in love with it to the degree that I would want to write this book even if I knew I could never sell it? In the meantime I just wander around dreaming the story, stopping sometimes dead in my tracks when a phrase or idea strike me as being real.
This is the exciting part of the process. But god do I need a nap.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Wild Mind Weekend
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.
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.
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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