Judith

I leave Monday morning for my research trip to UK. My research questions spill over onto a seventeenth page, all single spaced and categorized, from Architecture and Agriculture to Wine and Weaponry. Many of the questions are actually variations on a topic that appears in dozens of places throughout the novel. (I included a chapter by chapter reference so integrating the research will be easier in the months after my return. That's the plan, anyway.)

I've also searched the library's online catalog so there's no time wasted on day one of my trip. As I always told my students, in the two decades when I taught college, "Don't be too task oriented." I'll find this original layer of texts . . . then browse the shelves in that area. Some of my most successful and enjoyable research discoveries all began that way, with a book or books I just happened to discover while I browsed the shelves.

That's how I've also often discovered authors I would never have read otherwise, in that different kind of browsing in bookstores.

Can't wait to get started. Keep your eyes on this space for details as the story behind the story (the research in support of the novel Judith) unfolds.

Did I write this?

As I work through the draft of Judith in preparation for my research trip to Lexington, I'm stunned to read passages that, while familiar, also feel as if someone else wrote them. Judith, perhaps? I always sit down and meditation before I write a new scene. I visualize myself in a location where Judith (or whichever character I'm working with) can approach me.

It's not unusual for me to have a feeling of "Wow, where did this come from?" as I read something I wrote a while ago. Never as strongly as with this manuscript, though. It feels so real.

Can't wait to get to the library and help make Judith's world even more solid, sensual and alive.

Submmission

So many of my posts here relate to works already well along the creation pipeline--Love is the Thread, on its way to becoming galleys. Judith, ready for serious research and then (ha!) one last revision. The Fairy Gate, inching its way toward completion. Yet I haven't really touched on the nerve-wrenching and often painful subject of submission.

I just sent a manuscript to a new publisher. A client and good friend just received a rejection. She waited several weeks, a relatively brief time, before she heard back from the publisher. I have at least eight weeks to wait, at least according to the publisher's response and website.

When my client and friend grieved over her rejection, I told her that I used to save all my rejection letters (or print outs of emailed replies) all together in a big manila envelope. Every once in a while I would take them out and read them, usually late at night when my soul was at low ebb.

Then one night after reading them, I realized I was as close to suicide as I'd ever been. I'd once imagined papering a small room or a large wall with the rejections. Now I asked myself why I was holding on it all? (As I once told my sister and fellow writer, Nancy, "I don't need men. I get rejected in writing!"

At that point, at three in the morning with the rejections scattered around me, the joke didn't seem so funny. So I made a list of which publisher had rejected which manuscripts, then tossed all that rejection away. I've also learned to submit a manuscript--and then forget about it until I hear back. If it does fly home again, I decide, "Ah, I must have misaddressed the envelope. I meant to send the manuscript to the best home for it."

Then I readdress and submit the manuscript again. We'll see how that works out this time.

Taxes

For the first time ever, this year I sorted out my taxes as best I could, then handed over the paperwork to an accountant. She's a lovely person, recommended by two different people I know, one of them another writer.

Only when we sat down with spreadsheets, last year's return and my W2s did I realize that the grant money I received last year is income earned for, at least because of, my novel Judith. It came out to about a third of my income for the year, maybe more.

Because I wrote a big chunk of fiction, though it isn't complete yet. Still have to do the research trip. Still, as the accountant said, "You need to frame a copy of that W2!"

I went into the meeting knowing that this kind of fact and number based work is vital to my life as a writer, ghostwriter and editor. I never expected to weep tears of joy in the middle of all the grunt work!

Research

I'll be going on a research trip for Judith in the next month or so. Now that I'm recovered from my stomach flu of last week--on my birthday no less--I'm going through the novel and finalizing my list of questions to be answered. I have a general list/outline already; now I'm breaking it down by the page.

On any given page, sometimes in any given paragraph I'll have one question and sometimes more. They range from details of Assyrian armor to women's hairstyles from the period. I don't expect (or need) to answer every question, but I'm looking forward to learning more about my characters' world.

I plan to work through the novel and gather information, make lots of notes and photocopies and bring the data home from my week at the library. The integration of that information? That will take place at home over many weeks, probably months. I once said I never expected to write a memoir. I never expected to write an historical novel, either! This will be a very different way to revise for me. I'm looking forward to it.

More on how that works as it unfolds.