Re-re-re (Not a reference to Aretha Franklin)

In the midst of a reread, re-see, revise of a novel I started more than a dozen years ago. The story has gone through four major overhauls, the most recent eighteen months ago. A publisher is interested, so I'm fine tuning, and finding a few places where that deep revision cut out some connections between or within scenes. A character on her feet in one paragraph, then in a rocking chair the next. Not too many frightful continuity skips, but enough to make me pay attention.

It's interesting revisiting the story, though. I really love these characters. And for the most part, it really feels done at last.

Time Off

One of my favorite chapters in Lawrence Block's Telling Lies for Fun and Profit--an excellent writer's guide, older but not outdated by any means--traces Block's protracted "time off" from writing. He owned and worked in an art gallery, and at once point took a hiatus from writing that lasted a number of months.

I rarely let a day pass without putting fingers to the keyboard and/or pen to paper. Today is one of those days. I've done a good bit of revision lately, my own and for/with other writers. Time for a recharge from all that revision. There's a big difference between an intentional break and writer's block. But for now I'm not going to describe the difference except to say the first provides rest and the second stresses.

I'll let you know what written fruit the day bears next time.

Additions and Issues

Now that Love is the Thread is on my publisher's desk, ready to start the transition from manuscript to galleys, I've been re-reading Selkie Song, my YA novel, with a mind and heart open to growing some new scenes.

Selkie was in the hands of a literary agent for nearly a year. He suggested edits and revisions that tightened and improved the manuscript. The narrative has a smoother, more powerful flow now. Even though the agency ultimately decided not to represent me, I'll always be grateful for the suggestions. But as I read the story afresh, I am seeing possibilities for a few new scenes, ones that link the story in a fuller way, as well as some additions to several existing scenes.

Though I am not altering the novel's core, just listening to the needs of the characters and the logic of narrative, I do not think I would have recognized these openings without the agent's criticism first. (Another author suggested some of them about four years ago; I couldn't glimpse even the possibility back then! So I'd better thank her now, too.)

I'm also in the prep stages for the next issue of Memory Stick, my zine. Although the stories for each issue are new, the format--the framework--remains the same. Cover, Table of Contents; a book review, a brief, amusing anecdote for the back cover. And a theme for the particular issue, from romance to embarrassment. Today I'm recognizing parallels between the ways that a book manuscript becomes galleys becomes a first edition of a book, all the same story and yet subtly (or not so subtly) different from each other, and the ways a zine changes from issue to issue and yet still remains the same. Selkie Song has always been the story of how a magical creature changes an ordinary boy's life, and vice versa. Memory Stick is always a way to share family, personal and ancestral narratives. A transient publication like a zine, and the longer, slower process of a book--both go through additions and editions. It's all a matter of finding the strongest framework and the clearest story flow.

OPS

A couple of decades ago I visited a writer friend for the first time. She gave me a quick tour of her house and we wound up--of course--in her study. On the shelf alongside her writing books sprawled a well filled file folder marked "OPS." When I asked about it, the writer said, "Oh, that holds other people's stuff. You know from our writers' group." After each bi-monthly meeting, where we exchanged manuscripts and offered each other criticism and support, she took home other people's poetry, short stories and chapters. Every once in a while, she read through their manuscripts, along with the jotted comments she had made. "It's a great way to remind myself of what another writer did well . . . along with examples of things I might not want to emulate." We laughed together, knowing both of us had provided other group members with the same examples.

Now that the holidays are over, I'm moving back into the other part of my life as a writer. I'm dealing with OPS in a different way. Clients come to me for help with their stories and together, we develop, revise and edit their work. As in the different writers' groups I've belonged to over the years, it is always easier to see where someone else needs to slow down and shift narrative summary into a scene or scenes, to recognize and improve dialogue that conveys vital information but isn't quite natural, or develop a character who needs to speak for him or herself rather than for the writer. Though my focus is always on teaching clients how to develop the skills needed to make those revisions (ultimately) without me, today I recognize that an element of OPS sharpens my own eyes when I return to my own work after the appointment ends.

The give and take in my present writers' group and with my one on one writing partner offers a greater depth of those insights, since the group and partnership are founded on mutual feedback. Still, as my editorial work picks up again now that we're in 2011, I am grateful for more than the income. I'm excited to be in a position to help clients' writing evolve; and I'm grateful for the element of personal insight offered by OPS.

Day to Day Reality

A couple of people in my life are jealous of me. "It must be nice to be able to sit around doing what you want day to day," they've been known to say. Since reading a story or a chapter in a novel doesn't take that long, I suppose they may think writing it comes as fast and easy. Maybe they picture me spending my days on the sofa, notepad in one hand and a box of bon bons in the other.

Nice theory.

A friend I knew in graduate school told me that four hours of serious concentration equaled ten hours of hard physical labor. I don't know if it's true, but since I've worked sixteen and eighteen hour days at challenging physical jobs like being a dresser in the theater--imagine running up and down flights of stairs, helping actors rip off costumes and hustle into the next outfit, all with time frames limited to seconds before you dash across to do the same thing with someone else. My definition of a difficult job is high stress and poor pay interspersed with phases of boredom.

Anyway. That was a lengthy interjection. Suffice to say that I've worked jobs that ended with me trembling at day's end with physical and emotional exhaustion.

My muscles may not ache at the end of a day of writing, but I do feel just as wrung out. Also exhilarated . . . or depressed . . . or uncertain. In the last 48 hours, I've drafted, revised and submitted an article to a bimonthly magazine that regularly publishes my stories, fine-tooth-combed a quarter of my memoir so I can submit the final draft in as perfect a condition as possible, and jotted original draft for some new scenes in one of my novels, and had a preliminary meeting with an editing client. Not to mention the life stuff of caring for horses in below freezing weather, helping my youngest sister with her fifteen month and month old daughters, gone to shamanism class and so on.

I am not complaining--I love my life and am grateful for the writing opportunities continuously opening for me. I'm just saying that, though my waist isn't as trim as when I raced up and down all those steps and back and forth through the backstage area, I'm not lolling around on the sofa with a box of candy, either.