Kim: Cool question, but I actually already have one....invisibility. When I was a kid I wanted to be invisible. It was the Cold War era and I was always pretending I was a spy. Constantly hiding behind the couch to eavesdrop on the adults, that sort of thing. It turned out to be excellent training for growing up to be a writer and I still love to sit somewhere in public and pretend to be reading while actually I'm spying on people and/or recording their conversations. It gives me the chance to be, for at least a few minutes, invisible.
If I could choose a writing superpower I didn't already have, I'd become Sequencing Girl, able to know exactly where each scene belongs in a novel. Because now I spend so much time in cut and paste frenzies - moving stuff all over the place, trying to get every line, scene, and flashback into the right sequence.
Mike: Do you have any superstitious rituals? I met with this editor lady who says she always writes better in her lucky pajamas....
Kim: I'd love to have a pair of lucky pajamas. I don't have any particular rituals, although I do write better in the mornings so I structure my day to take advantage of that fact. And if I get stuck, I switch venues and write in public. Most of my first draft writing is done in coffeehouses and cafes or on planes. Planes, come to think of it, focus me especially well. Maybe because part of me feels like I'm getting ready to die.
Mike: Who do you model your writing after?
Kim: No one. When I was in school I did like Melville, Fitzgerald, and Joseph Conrad especially well, which may be where I got my penchant for first person POV. But I would say that my style is my own.
Last week I was talking to a writing buddy who said an editor once gave her a spectacular line edit, which is interesting because I can't stand to be line-edited. I think it breaks voice. I'd much rather an editor tell me to change the plot or a character...I'm like "Sure, I'll kill off Litttle Susie, just don't ask me to cut the word 'very' from that last sentence."
Mike: Is there a book out there that Love in Mid Air would remind people of?
Kim: I was very impressed with Tom Perrotta's Little Children and I think my book is thematically similar. My story is nowhere near as dark as his.
Mike: What do you enjoy doing when you're not writing?
Kim: As followers of my blog know, I dance. American Smooth - the foxtrot, tango, and waltz. I'm obsessed with it. It scratches the same creative itch that writing does, but it also has a performance aspect to it, which I love.
Mike: What would you be doing if you weren't writing these books?
Kim: Talking about writing these books. I always knew I had to be a writer. There was no Plan B.
Mike: Will Love in Mid Air be part of a series?
Kim: Yes. It's like Elvis Costello says in "Everyday I Write the Book"....I own the film rights and am working on the sequel.
Showing posts with label new novels. Show all posts
Showing posts with label new novels. Show all posts
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Friday, February 27, 2009
Six and a half weeks
To continue the story....
I emailed my agent and suggested that we show my editor the plot treatment and the 100 sample pages. I also told him that I was trying to get into writers colonies this summer and that if I did I should be able to finish the book within a matter of weeks.
He wrote back quickly, but he must have misunderstood my email because he said "Well, since you're within a few weeks of finishing it, we may as well wait until you have the whole thing."
I started to correct him. There's a big difference between being a few weeks away from finishing it right now and going to a colony next summer and then being a few weeks away from finishing it. But once again I did this thing I rarely do, but need to do more often. I paused. I let time pass.
And during that time I talked to my writing friends, a couple of whom are farther down the path of publication than I am and who pointed out a very real truth. If you show a half-finished manuscript to an editor she might like it, she might take it, she might give you money for it. And that's all great because it gives you a cash cushion during the time you finish the book and because it shows your editor is committed to your long term development as a novelist. But what isn't so great is the fact that if an editor buys a book based on a half-finished novel or plot treatment she's going to create in her own head a sense of how that book is going to be as a finished product. By selling a book to an editor based on an idea, a plot treatment or a half-finished work, you invite a sort of collaboration.
And from watching the careers of my more experienced friends I know that this sort of collaboration has its dark side. It can plunge you into a circle of hell known as collaborative rewrites. I sold the first book intact. It took a while to sell it, granted, but once I finally found an agent and an editor who liked it, I knew they liked it as it was and they made virtually no suggestions for changes. A couple of additional scenes and I was good to go. This spoiled me. I didn't have to go through the months or years of rewrites some authors experience, trying to incorporate the suggestions of the agent and then the editor.
I mulled. My agent was thinking - erroneously, but optomisitcally - that I could have a rough first manuscript to him within 6 or 7 weeks. Could I? Could I push through and finish the draft earlier than I planned? If so, perhaps he could sell it and and then I spend the time this summer polishing an existing manuscript. It was a tempting thought.
I wrote him back and told him I'd have the full thing to him by the middle of April.
Maybe nutty, I know. But as I said in the last email I sense a window of opportunity is open to me now and I want to at least try to poke the second book through it.
Wish me luck.
I emailed my agent and suggested that we show my editor the plot treatment and the 100 sample pages. I also told him that I was trying to get into writers colonies this summer and that if I did I should be able to finish the book within a matter of weeks.
He wrote back quickly, but he must have misunderstood my email because he said "Well, since you're within a few weeks of finishing it, we may as well wait until you have the whole thing."
I started to correct him. There's a big difference between being a few weeks away from finishing it right now and going to a colony next summer and then being a few weeks away from finishing it. But once again I did this thing I rarely do, but need to do more often. I paused. I let time pass.
And during that time I talked to my writing friends, a couple of whom are farther down the path of publication than I am and who pointed out a very real truth. If you show a half-finished manuscript to an editor she might like it, she might take it, she might give you money for it. And that's all great because it gives you a cash cushion during the time you finish the book and because it shows your editor is committed to your long term development as a novelist. But what isn't so great is the fact that if an editor buys a book based on a half-finished novel or plot treatment she's going to create in her own head a sense of how that book is going to be as a finished product. By selling a book to an editor based on an idea, a plot treatment or a half-finished work, you invite a sort of collaboration.
And from watching the careers of my more experienced friends I know that this sort of collaboration has its dark side. It can plunge you into a circle of hell known as collaborative rewrites. I sold the first book intact. It took a while to sell it, granted, but once I finally found an agent and an editor who liked it, I knew they liked it as it was and they made virtually no suggestions for changes. A couple of additional scenes and I was good to go. This spoiled me. I didn't have to go through the months or years of rewrites some authors experience, trying to incorporate the suggestions of the agent and then the editor.
I mulled. My agent was thinking - erroneously, but optomisitcally - that I could have a rough first manuscript to him within 6 or 7 weeks. Could I? Could I push through and finish the draft earlier than I planned? If so, perhaps he could sell it and and then I spend the time this summer polishing an existing manuscript. It was a tempting thought.
I wrote him back and told him I'd have the full thing to him by the middle of April.
Maybe nutty, I know. But as I said in the last email I sense a window of opportunity is open to me now and I want to at least try to poke the second book through it.
Wish me luck.
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