Tag: revision

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.)

My Final Copy

I turned in my final copy of the manuscript on November 1, early last week. Now it’s time for the editors to get going on it and find what I might have missed. I really worked hard to do all the corrections and typos and continuity errors, and I thought of one this afternoon I probably left uncorrected–in one particuIar spot, I called Tommy Hebert’s truck a diesel truck–and it’s not. So I need to at least correct that as soon as possible once I get the edited manuscript back. I’m hoping that’s the only glaring thing that’s there. I imagine there may be stylistic discussions, etc. as well. Which I do not mind getting into. If something needs changing to make more sense, etc., by all means, fix it.

I don’t know when those are going to come across–I figure after the new year with the way people usually work during the holidays. It needs to go to print February 1 or thereabouts. I just want the editing process to be smooth and not rushed. So I hope I hear back sometime in December while I am off for the holidays. We will see.

I am starting to turn my mind to my next project, and I think it may be my memoir project rather than any more work on Missing and Mentally Ill in Mississippi. I haven’t gotten any replies on it from the batches I sent out in August and September, and I was too sick to send many queries during October. And most of New York publishing shuts down during the holidays until the second week of January. I have the proposal, and it is still solid.

But I think I am going to invest in rewriting the story of those 24 months between when I told Bob I was pregnant with my youngest daughter and when I was actually diagnosed bipolar. And I can have my stats (if any!) from sales of Hurricane Baby to bolster my case for getting another publishing deal. Not sure exactly when I will get started, but maybe soon, maybe after the new year, maybe after i finish edits for Hurricane Baby. I’m going to start by reading that part of my thesis manuscript again and see what (if anything) I can incorporate from that manuscript to the new one.

Wish me well! Happy writing to you all!

Book Cover Planning

So in the author questionnaire I filled out for my publisher, I was asked my ideas for the cover design of Hurricane Baby. I’ve been asked this one other time, and my idea for the cover hasn’t changed–I wanted a faded black-and-white or sepia-toned photo of the barrier islands on the Mississippi Gulf Coast with the title and my byline in italics so it would look like the words were being blown across the page. My publisher thought that was a neat idea.

So last time I checked in with the publisher, she said I could start working on the cover by creating a “mood board” of pictures that I would like to see. She suggested I use Shutterstock, but I don’t have an account there, so I used Morguefile instead, a free site I have used before for blog post pictures back when I was guest blogging.

I used the keywords of “Hurricane Katrina Mississippi Gulf Coast” and got lots of pictures. I didn’t want any that were of graphic direct hurricane damage–i.e. houses broken down to matchsticks or anything like that, because the hurricane damage in Hurricane Baby is largely psychological, rather than physical. I didn’t want to give away much about the story, so I didn’t want an actual baby on the cover. So I pulled three photos that really evoked the mood–one of a clouded-over sky, another of surf on the beach, and another I really liked: a tree standing alone on the beach having not been knocked over by the winds.

That picture particularly struck me because Hurricane Baby is all about people who survive the storm but are changed forever because of it. They are still standing–but they’re scarred and alone in their inner turmoil.

Anyway, I sent those to the publisher and she latched onto the tree one as well. So that was happy. I told her that I wasn’t wedded to any particular picutre that I sent and she was welcome to send me any others when the time came to select the cover, but that these three represented the vibe I was going for. So once I get the manuscript to them after this edit I’m currently in, I will see what they come up with for the cover and have fun!

So if you will excuse me, I will go back to editing! Happy Sunday and happy writing!

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.

Surprise, Surprise.

I had another real gut check moment this week. Two, actually. I got into my revisions and suddenly realized I have to rewrite almost every bit of Tommy and Cindi’s storyline. The first story is fine–now. I have to totally rewrite the second for it to be from Tommy’s point of view, then that means that every other story in that arc has to be rewritten, too.

So I resigned myself to doing that. Scared I would mess it up by doing it, so popped out all five stories into their own document to revise on in case it’s too hard and I have to give it up.

Then Saturday I realized that once that one is beefed up the way I want it to be, that James and Lori’s story arc was terribly weak compared to the others. I needed more juice for it too. I started fussing to my writing friends. It was so demoralizing for about a day to think that just when I thought I was done, that those characters were crying for more development as well. But since I had already decided on one set of revisions, it seemed deciding on another set wasn’t as hard.

But oh, I fussed about it to my writing friend for this project. She listened so patiently over Facebook Messenger as I went “Augh!” over and over talking about how I knew it all needed to be done. She first advised me to not do it at all if it was going to drive me this crazy. Send it out as it was and see what happened.

I realized I’d rather not send it out at all than do that.

And then I thought of a book that just got published recently. By someone I knew. Who isn’t even a writer by profession–he was an accounting professor at my alma mater. By a press that had rejected Hurricane Baby when I first was sending it out.

So. I thought “Boy howdy, if he can get a book published in this environment, SO CAN I.”

So I am making the changes. Started last night during a rain delay of the football game I had been planning to watch. And I went in hot on it and am now on my way. I am going to succeed with Hurricane Baby as far as it remains in my power. I’m going to write something I am proud of, even if it never gets published. And I’m enjoying ever second.