Tag: writing fiction

Plans For Revision

So I heard back from Laurie Marshall, my workshop mate that read Hurricane Baby. We swapped manuscripts–I read her fiction chapbook and read mine. She did a wonderful job with feedback–giving me notes in the manuscript, then writing me a document that noted big trends and suggestions for throughout the manuscript.

It was all very positive and uplifting with a lot of practical advice sandwiched in that I agree with. A few things are issues I always struggle with, like descriptions of settings and characters. I try every manuscript to get better at that and am glad when someone can push me to get even better at it because I know I struggle with it.

But the cast of characters is set, the plot is set, and the form is set. So that represents a huge advance in the process. She only judged one story as being much weaker than the others, and it was among one of the last I wrote, so I’m not surprised. It’s the last section of Tommy Hebert and Cindi Delafosse’s story, the new arc I added in this revision.

Tommy’s Hurricane Katrina story opens with him doing rescue work throughout the parish, and the subsequent drinking problem he develops after seeing a scene that scars him for life. I plan to plant the seeds for the resolution that is in that story earlier in the timeline throughout the other stories in that arc and plan to put in as much work as possible to bring that arc up to the standards of the others. I’m looking forward to starting Monday on the revisions!

Revision Finished

Revision number I’ve-lost-track is in the books. Now I am cleaning up typos, etc. in the typescript. I have a ton of backwards quotation marks. Not sure how that happened. I’m proofing a story a day while waiting on another read by various people and seeing what they have to say, and then I’ll dive into another workover based on that feedback.

I’ve collected a list of small presses to send to in the first round–they are all hospitable to Southern lit and I hope one of them takes an interest in it. I am looking over publishing guidelines and all those details to get them fixed in my mind so the final copies will hold up.

So Hurricane Baby is a few steps closer to reality. I hope you are enjoying this trip into the innards of writing a book. I’m still going to be posting on how everything goes with the new revisions and all the developments I anticipate in this journey. Come along for the ride!

Hard-Won Knowledge

Well, something interesting happened yesterday. I have always been a very particular writer. I write it out and don’t finish a piece until every word is as good as I can make it–the first time I write it. I am used to turning out very clean copy in a first draft and not having to revise. I’ve never been one to subscribe to the “crappy first drafts” mode of writing–where you just get a bunch of stuff on the page and sort it out later.

But yesterday I did exactly that on this fiction project. I was writing one of the last stories and wanted to get everything down that was in my head about this scene, but I realized halfway through that it needed more attention than I was giving it–I was “telling” a lot in summary when I needed to be showing it in scene.

But I just kept plugging along and finally finished what I could do that day. I went back and read it and made a big cut, and immediately the scene felt a lot better. Now I need to go back and put in the scenes I was summarizing. I have never really been able to revise my own work–I think it’s all good until someone tells me otherwise, then I can see how to fix it. So I think yesterday was a step forward for me as a writer in that I know I have to fix it and know what I have to do to fix it. Instead of just thinking it’s wonderful from the get-go :).

So today’s craft tip–go ahead and write the garbage. At least sorting through it later will help you separate the recyclable from the trash and find the treasures within that you didn’t notice at first. I’m awfully late to this awareness, but I’m glad I finally have it. Happy writing!

Protecting Characters

I have fallen into a peculiar trap I don’t think I’ve ever made for myself before. I have three characters whose stories I am trying to write more of, give them a voice–Holly Seabrook, Cindi Edwards, and Tommy Hebert. I suddenly don’t want anything bad to happen to them in the endings of the books.

I never felt this way about characters in the first drafts. And where I have let other characters experience consequences, I haven’t taken a lot of thought about it. But suddenly I’m very protective of these three.

I think I’ve gotten over it with Tommy, who is one of the new characters I am spinning out his story from bit player to major player. And his girlfriend Cindi I am thinking I just don’t know very well yet. And I feel a lot for Holly because of what she is going through in the story. But I think I need to remember three things:

Number One: I am not dealing with real people. I am dealing with figments of my imagination. If I were writing about real people, it wouldn’t be fiction. But one of the goals is for everyone to come off as very real, so I suppose I’ve fooled myself into thinking that as well.

Number Two: I am not chronicling real events. The book is based on a real event–Hurricane Katrina–but everything thing else is fake. Invented. By me. I am master of the domain. Don’t like what happens when I get through writing it? I have a delete key for a reason.

Number Three: Static characters are boring characters. Change has to come. They have to come to earth-shattering realizations. They have to see things fall apart and somehow rebuild them. So we will stay invested in their stories.

So that is what I am going to be working on–how to think about my characters as characters in a book instead of the living, breathing people I’ve come to think of them as. And that’s going to be interesting.

Downslope

So I feel like I am on the downslope of drafting the last three stories. I know what I plan to do in them, and unless I have somehow misjudged the characters and they surprise me in some way, I should have no trouble rounding out the final few scenes I have to do. I am still waiting on other beta readers to send me comments, but I am satisfied with the changes I have made so far.

I am going to continue to revise and edit up until August 1, when I will switch manuscripts with another writer I have connected with in my workshop this summer. Then I will revise based on her feedback and start submitting to presses in mid-September.

I am really excited to hit this part of the drafting/revising process. I don’t know as the process has been very orderly, but it has worked so far to take the stories in some unexpected directions and that is always good. I will keep you posted on my progress in the coming weeks as usual! Thank you for reading.

Drafting Tips

Writing your story from beginning to end sounds like the right way to go, right? You write the beginning, the middle, the climax, the denoument, and the end. Joseph Heller, author of Catch-22, once noted that the last third of a book usually took up only the last ten percent of the time to write, either from confidence in your story or maybe the narrowing of options for alternative endings.

But what happens when you don’t know what happens in the next chapter? My solution for that with Hurricane Baby was to write sections as I thought of them. I wondered about if Judd and Laine divorced over Wendy, how long would it be before Judd started dating again? I knew not long—he had a reputation as a womanizer in college and was still relatively young. So I wrote a scene where he met his second wife six months after his divorce was final. Ray would eventually figure out that Judy Ray wasn’t his—studies show that a child’s similarity in looks to their father peaks around two years old, so Ray would notice she did not favor him or his family in any way by then. What would he do?

I put the scenes I was writing in sequential order in the original manuscript as I drafted each one in my notebook. I would fill in what I thought would connect them as I went. The final scenes were the third ones I wrote. I knew where the story was going to go—but how did I get it there?

Sometimes the characters up and surprised me. Dr. Jack Rawson turned meaner and meaner with every scene I wrote him into. His playing-God ego was huge, and it led to Wendy being so uncomfortable around him that the scenes were excruciating to write.

So instead of writing linearly, where you write the first scene first and the last scene last, try going where the answer to the question of What happens? is burning a hole in your imagination. Write that scene. You may keep it, you may not. Pencils have erasers, and a computer comes with a delete key for a reason, right?  If you’re blocked on the Next Thing, try the next Next Thing and see what happens. 

Starting Revision

So I’ve gotten feedback from a few of my readers and some of the same issues keep cropping up. So I am starting to add more material and take out other material as I revise this month. I still have several readers’ comments outstanding so I am not changing any existing storyline too drastically–just adding a new story arc I dreamed up on vacation and adding a fifth story to each arc to address another comment that I knew likely was going to be said anyway. So I have more to revise and draft.

Luckily some of the new scenes can still come out of the old draft and be suitable with just a few revisions. But I know I have several new ten-page scenes to draft soon as well and will start work on that with an eye to finish August first so I can make a switch with another author I admire very much; I’ll read her chapbook and she’ll read the revised story collection.

I am truly excited about what has been said so far. I really think I’ve found the moves to finally tell this story and maybe reach the audience I want to reach with it. Now I just have to let the comments buoy me along so I don’t freeze up again. Again, I have done a lot of thinking ahead of time on what I want to say and need to just write down what is in my mind.

Fear Redux

I am trying to finish the last two stories in my manuscript this weekend and have been panicking every time I open the document. Thinking that I’m an idiot for believing I can finish a big fiction project like this again. Thinking that no one will ever bother to read it and care about the people I’m writing out or about the story I’m trying to tell.

I am just going to treat my self-imposed deadline as a hard one and pretend it’s going to be published do-or-die the day I finish it. We will see how well I can hoodwink myself into believing that. Fear is strong. Fear has bedeviled me my whole life. But I am going to be strong, and I am going to defeat the fear. No matter what.

Fear

So why was I afraid to pick this project back up and write on it when I got the idea for linked stories several months ago?

Number one was fear of failure. Would I start it only to find that it was unworkable? That it wouldn’t turn out as I envisioned? That fear is largely gone. I have ten stories completed in the conversion–several of which had been published in stand-alone form over the past few years. I need to have faith in my ability to craft something new out of what was already strong material.

Number two was fear of the blank page. This one is harder to fight. Where I have had to create almost an entire narrative from near-scratch, I have had a ton of problems. In fact, I have two stories left half-done after I pulled source material out of the main manuscript that have been a challenge to work on.

Number three is imposter syndrome. Many of us writers, when faced with a challenging task, can draw on past success at our craft as a reason to believe that we can face this new challenge, too. So why don’t we? Often it’s because we live in a culture that says simple success in completing a project is not enough; more must be done to make it “successful” by someone else’s standards.

Number four is fear of wasting time. This belief whispers to me that my paid work is more valuable than my fun work because it pays off financially. When I have paid work pending, it’s really hard to give time to unpaid work. This fear tells me that I am only a valuable writer when I’m earning money. I still work to overcome this obstacle.

Number five is fear of losing my mind. Many writers write from a place of trauma. I do so in my memoir work. Well, the first writing on this story came out of the trauma of Hurricane Katrina, which ultimately consumed me and resulted in a psychotic break. Many writers report re-experiencing their trauma when they write about it. I don’t want to go back to that some place I was when first crafting this story.

How am I working to overcome these fears? I remind myself that I am successful by my own lights and that is all that matters. I remind myself that computers come with a delete key to erase a poorly written sentence or paragraph or whole scene. I remind myself of Anne Lamott’s advice that no one cares as much as we do, and others do not live to tear apart our work.

Concrete steps I have taken have been to sign up for an extended flash fiction writing workshop where I can learn more about my craft and get used to the flow of writing fiction again in a low-stakes environment, one where my work is supported, and I am not writing only for my own satisfaction but for others who want to see me succeed. It basically comes down to getting my own confidence back.

I’ll keep you posted on how it goes.

Where We Are

So I picked “Hurricane Baby” back up this year to try to make it work as a series of linked short stories. I took the most dramatic episodes in the novel manuscript and am rewriting them to show how the hurricane affected the lives of various characters.

Wendy and Ray Magnum have to deal with the fallout of Wendy’s encounter with Judd McKay. Mike and Holly Seabrook work to overcome the damage done to their home and lives with Mike undergoing a serious crisis of faith. And James and Lisa King suffer through a dissolution of their marriage after Lisa decides she is never returning to the Coast again.

Each of the three storylines is told in four installments, alternated throughout the manuscript. Each of the twelve stories is told from a slightly different point of view. Wendy and Ray each have their own story, Mike’s point of view is illustrated through three stories, with Holly closing their narrative with her own story, and James and Lisa’s stories alternate from one to the other.