Category: craft

In the Writing Trenches

I have been letting my work-in-progress, Looking for Home, absolutely kick my fanny the past two months. I started off with a good bit of material that I had pulled out of the older manuscript, and I had one chapter where I could see it absolutely play out like a movie with some filling in.

Then I decided to write the opening chapter and I froze up solid for the better part of a month and a half. I couldn’t figure out how to start it and get in the backstory needed and get into the action, too. I wrote five pages that I knew shouldn’t be the beginning, but I couldn’t think of how else to do it. It had Carlton with his family making the road trip moving from Pass Christian, Mississippi to Counce, Tennesse. After I finished the trip, I cut those first pages and started with the ending scene and wrote 13 new pages to get to an existing three-page scene I already had.

I think those were the hardest 16 pages of my life to date. I was working in the consciousness of a sixteen-year-old boy who’d lost his mama a few months before, and that was foreign territory, to say the least. Trying to get him settled into the world he’d been thrown into and him not doing such a very good job with it. I’m doing one thing a little differently; I’ll have scenes that come in my head, and I know they need to be in the story. But I have no idea where they’ll go. That’s the fun part of it all I suppose.

So that’s why you haven’t been hearing much about the work-in-progress–It’s been absoluely refusing to cooperate. Until now. Maybe I can get the next chapter wrestled to the ground. Until next time . . .

Juggling The Work

Well, since I don’t have the final proofs for Hurricane Baby yet, I am working on my three-novella project Looking for Home. I only have two more scenes to write for this POV before I’m finished and can go back further into the past and write the first POV character, Carlton Dixon. Right now I’m working on the POV of Cassie Beck, the adopted teenager that comes to find Carlton, claiming to be his daughter by his teenage girlfriend, Merrilyn Beck. (Cassie’s POV is the part that sold for the novella anthology.) I’ve already outlined what I want to do for Carlton’s POV and Merrilyn’s POV, so that changed a few things that happened in Cassie’s POV. And I’m sure that when I’m finished with the first two parts, I will need to revise Cassie’s part again. But that’s OK.

I want to finish the new draft for this project before Hurricane Baby comes out in August. And I am chipping away, bit by bit, paragraph by paragraph. I am keeping up with my daily word count in a notebook so I can see when I write best and have the best production and figure out what goes well on those days. Is the outlining helping or hurting? Is it better to plan out what I’m writing beforehand or write without a net to catch me if it goes awry? That sort of thing. We will see.

Kicking around ideas of who to pitch publicity opportunities to for Hurricane Baby. I’m looking at book podcasts, regional magazines, radio shows, newspapers, festivals. Once I get to pre-orders, I’ll start sharing that link around. Just getting together my ideas and what all I want to do. I hope I can start getting the word out seriously by then. Wish me well!

First Proof Copy!

So last Friday I got Hurricane Baby’s first proof copy, a preliminary PDF of what the book will look like once it’s printed. I was so moved by the care my publishing company is taking with this book! Art on the title pages, beautiful formatting within, just wonderful work so far!

My job was to proofread it yet again. And guys–I found over a hundred and seventy typos. I was appalled at myself. I have been slaving over this manuscript for almost twenty years. And I found commas that were supposed to be periods and periods that were supposed to be commas and double periods and sentences without periods at the end and a very few spelling errors (thank the Lord). Inconceivable that I even got any kind of hearing from anyone I sent it to. The line-editor before this proof had found over three hundred errors.

I was so embarrassed for little ol’ me, sending something so flawed out into the world. I had checked and rechecked and run grammar and spelling checks over and over. I had read it printed out, onscreen, everything.

But I don’t need to just beat myself up–so now I have a plan. I know my eyesight isn’t good and won’t improve any as I get older. I am going to have to magnify up the font to I guess the size where the manuscript will have 500 pages and read line by line at every stage of writing. I don’t want to embarrass myself like that ever again.

So now it is back in the hands of the publisher, and I will wait patiently to see what comes next. I think it will be a final proof copy that I will read again for errors, then in February it will go to print!

SO EXCITING AND GETTING REAL!

Moral of the story: editors are human, and so are you. But taking the time to re-read is never wasted. Other eyes are a big help, too. Let’s be careful out there!

Finding a Passion Project

Sigh.

I realized I just don’t feel enough of a push to actually work on my memoir, When I Went Crazy, as I thought I did.

I’m not rushing to the computer to work on it like I did Hurricane Baby last year. I was seriously excited to do that project, and when I wasn’t excited, I was fueled with a grim determination. I WAS going to finish it, and I WAS going to revise it, and I WAS going to sell it whether anyone liked it or not. I had a real drive that pushed me through all the hard work.

And I’m not feeling that right now except about one project–selling my novella, Looking For Home, as a standalone project.

Looking For Home grew out of a scene I had written while floundering around with Hurricane Baby the first time. I had written it in the context of Wendy and Judd’s baby growing up and going looking for Judd when she was a teenager. I didn’t go that direction with Hurricane Baby, but I did think I had written a perfectly serviceable scene. So I dreamed up a new idea for a story about a teenaged couple, Carlton Dixon and Merrilyn Beck, giving up a baby for adoption because Merrilyn was only sixteen–and that baby coming to find Carlton once she got to be a teenager.

I had a really good time writing that story just like I had enjoyed doing Hurricane Baby, with a rich backstory, told with multiple narrators. On the advice of an editor I had asked to help me with it, I cut it down to one point of view and created a novella, which I sold to a publishing house in 2018 as part of an anthology. Well, the rights have reverted back to me, and I want to sell it as a standalone book.

So I’ve been researching publishing houses that publish novellas and sending off to them. But the story has really held up through the years since I wrote it. I don’t see anything that really needs to be changed about it. And if it doesn’t sell as a novella, then I may take it and redo it just like I did Hurricane Baby. Only this one I think I would write as a duopoly or trilogy of novellas in one book. I would harvest the original manuscript to write the story of back-when in Carlton’s point of view, write the intervening story in Merrilyn’s point of view, and leave the current novella in Cassie’s (the teenager) point of view.

(Hm. I will think about that some more.)

But back to my point. If there’s no flame to fan in your heart for a project, maybe it’s not time for you to work on that project. I have No real excitement about going back into those thoughts and feelings right now. So I will wait for the right project to come along. (Or I may have just found it. I’ll keep you posted.)

Working Through Setbacks

(I wound up in the hospital ER last Sunday afternoon so that was why I did not post.)

But once I got home, I started back working through my printed manuscript. I am working through my big continuity problem–I had aged Mike and Dinah Seabrook, up to where they were in their early fifties. Guess what I forgot to do?

Age their kids.

I had them with a two-year-old boy and two elementary-age girls.

So now I stepped Mike and Dinah down to in their mid-forties and put all three of the kids in middle school. I remember how stupid I felt once I realized what I had done! I guess I was just very very lucky it wasn’t caught by this publisher’s reader and rejected. (That may have been the trouble all along!)

So I am editing the old-fashioned way–notes in the margins, etc. Once I finish this once-over today, I’ll have plenty of time after I get this health issue straightened out to make the changes in the final manuscript and be done with this stage.

Of course, there’s no telling what’s going to happen once a project editor gets hold of it. I am just trying to get it in the best shape I know how, then take their edits and make it even better!

Next week: talking about cover images! Can’t wait!

Read-Through

So today I sent my book to be printed at Office Depot. I ordered two copies–one to document this iteration of the book, and one to mark up as an editor.

And boy, does it need an editor.

Still some periods that should be commas and backwards quotation marks–stuff you have a hard time seeing on screen that’s easier to pick up in a print.

And I’ve found one minor and one major continuity errors. I will need to do a lot of work to straighten up the second. But that’s why you keep making pass after pass through it–to catch that stuff before it goes to print and you embarrass yourself.

So that’s been today. I was hoping to get the read-through done today, but I guess I’ll have to finish tomorrow then start marking the text up and input the changes each night.

Good work ahead–can’t wait!

Hurricane Baby The Play Update!

So when I signed my book contract, I made sure to keep the rights to Hurricane Baby, the play. And the Mississippi Repertory Theatre (which has gone through a lot of drama in the past few months) sent me a message yesterday that it plans to go ahead with a staged reading in Oxford, Mississippi soon, dates about to be determined!

So knowing what I know now, I said I wanted to work on it a bit and give them a clean script tomorrow. So that is my job today.

The artistic director said they were looking at doing a new plays festival in Oxford in 2025 with a full production. I told him about the book release, and he said something to the effect that he’d like to tie the play to the book’s release. So a lot of things have to happen for that to occur; so I need to see what develops in the future.

It seems that I’m going to be my own publicist, so I need to make a list of what all needs to be done between here and the book’s release. I know I want to go toa few bookstores in Mississippi and Louisiana, I hope to do the Louisiana Book Festival and the Mississippi Book Festival and the Welty Symposium, so I need to work on those avenues closer to the book’s release. Any other publicity needs to start about four months before the book’s release date.

So that is where that project is at. Can you tell I am still excited? Happy all the way through.

Revamp

So I have started in earnest on the quick Hurricane Baby rewrite for July. I am working with the last reading Cheryl gave it and finding new ways to ratchet up the tension throughout. I am on story number 12 so far, and finally ran into one of them I’m not sure I can improve on. But I’m going to keep thinking on it to make sure. I am using Cheryl’s notes to work through problem passages that she pointed out that need either rewriting or cutting.

The story I just went through was a good example of what I am doing. In the last rewrite, I realized that each individual story had three impactful scenes in it, a rising tension one, a big climax, and a third scene leading into the next story in that arc. I just went through the story where Cindi leaves Tommy and realized the third scene was really flat. It didn’t have any stakes for Cindi and Tommy; it was just a memory of Cindi’s. So I made the scene have some more meat to it and added to the stakes of the fight between Cindi and Tommy over his drinking.

Another particular one that Cheryl had commented on was a story told from Rosie’s point of view, and Cheryl felt like it was Wendy’s story to tell. It had been originally in Wendy’s POV, but I wanted it to be in Rosie’s so she could have her say about the events in the book as well. But I hadn’t told a story about her in it. On this rewrite, I made the story about their relationship as sisters. I made it have stakes between them instead of just Rosie finding out about Wendy’s relationship with Judd. Hopefully that gives the story more depth and meaning and makes a better case for Rosie as the narrator.

I’m doing that with every story, checking that the number of scenes is right, that the stakes are high, and that each story is told from the right character’s POV. So we will see how it turns out.

Wish me well–I will need to be sending it back out soon after July to the new places I found to submit to. Here’s to second chances.

Swap

My writing buddy Cheryl sent me back her read of Hurricane Baby: Stories, and her read was much more favorable that I thought it might be. She noted a very few places in the manuscript where she lost track/got tripped up in the narrative, and she thought I could actually cut some places where I was describing actions that didn’t necessarily move the plot forwards–she urged me to focus on the action throughout, which was a nice surprise. She said she really, really loved it, and her favorite character was Tommy Hebert, the one I turned from a peripheral character to a major one –she said his character arc really held her attention.

So now I think I know what to do with it in the next stage of revision, which I am probably going to take up next year (if it doesn’t get picked up by someone before that) after I draft my new project I want to work on. I am going to make each story as individually strong as I can and start sending them out to see if I can publish them in high-profile places and get them some attention. We will see what happens.

Some of the items she mentioned I can fix now before it goes out to anyone else this year–they’ll be quick. And I need to finish reading and reacting to her manuscript before the end of the month. So i am gong to look for some time to finish that before May 30.

i am very glad I did this new swap. I feel more confident about the manuscript’ strengths and know where to fix the weaknesses. So good. Onward and upward!

Ready to Swap Again

I’m on the verge of doing another swap of Hurricane Baby with another writer, this time Cheryl Pappas, who I met through the workshop I attended last summer. She is writing her first novel even as we speak, so I will be beta reading that for her, and she will be reading Hurricane Baby.

I’m not sure what I can actually accomplish by having it read again and revising it again. I may can make it better so it gets accepted at one the eight places left on my list where I haven’t yet sent it. Which is a heck of a tiny margin of error or success, depending on how you look at it.

Or I may can make it better and send it around again in 2030.

That looks like a damn desperate concept when I say it that way.

Or her feedback may convince me to shelve it altogether and start over with my new story idea and just work on that for a while.

Or I may can take the feedback, make each story the best it can be, and try to sell the individual stories around to see if I can get one or three picked up by journals to have a better chance once I start sending it around again.

That sounds more hopeful than giving up. Or simply waiting around after revising.

I guess the moral is: Keep fighting for your work. Even if it means a strategic retreat from time to time. The fight IS the work in that case. So that’s what I’m doing: Fighting.