Revision

I just read the review of a novel that took its author more than twenty years to create.  The book received a wow of a review, which made me feel better since I first had the idea for my novel Selkie Song more than fifteen years ago. 

Selkie has undergone dozens of revisions over the years, some of the deepest innitiated by writers' groups or workshops I've attended.  I am in the process now of editing the novel to send to an independent press.  Inspired by the feedback at the most recent meeting of my current writers' group, Scribbling Women, I am looking at every word, every sentence, every paragraph and chapter through fresh eyes.  

One of my sister writers asked me to contemplate how I would tell the story of sixteen-year-old Ben Corbin and Eloyn, the seal woman he discovers and saves, if I were writing it for the first time now.  Ben is so different already from the character as I originally imagined him, I resisted my group member's suggestion at first.  Now I feel Ben's story opening up in a new way, and I am endlessly grateful.  

Will keep you posted on the journey of Selkie Song as it unfolds.  Wishing all of you a very Happy New Year!

Awakening

It's been a challenging couple of months. The car broke down three times. I've been unwell twice, including my present head cold. The computer broke down, as I believe I mentioned before, but all is well now. And I realized I've worked non-stop on Judith since well before I left for the research trip back in April.

A more important realization has unfolded over the last couple of months, something I've known for years but only with my head or my brain. Now I comprehend it with my heart, or my full consciousness. Something like that.

I realized that every time I revise a manuscript--or every time I've done so up until now--I've believed "this was it." It. The final draft. But as I've worked through this very special revision, which integrates the research from my week in the library, I am recognizing that there is more yet to do. Another revision probably won't be enough. I can glimpse Judith and her friends, her neighbors and enemies as they grow more fully into themselves and into their world.

They're just not there yet. How many manuscripts have I written now? A dozen at least, from children's book manuscripts, murder mysteries, the memoir and more. Yet I feel I'm only beginning to understand the old maxim, "Writing is revision." And revision is seeing again, more clearly.

It feels like I've outgrown (or at least broken through one layer) of the familiar writer's urge to be done. To have written instead of being inside the writing. I'm happy to be here.

Remember the Velveteen Rabbit?

I just spent several days on the road with my youngest sister and her two little girls, Greta Jo and Clara Louise. Though I took a chapter of Judith with me for hand editing, by day's end . . .

No, well before noon, I was too wiped out for even minimal mental effort. There's a reason parents are often in their twenties or thirties. At 51 I suppose I qualify as a Grandmother/Aunt! Anyway, for the first time in months Judith took a back seat in my consciousness for more than a week. My writer self sat beside her.

When I checked my email on my return, guess what was waiting for me? Proofs of the cover for my memoir, Love is the Thread. Remember the Velveteen Rabbit? Talk about becoming real. After weeks absorbed in the novel in progress, and then days out of the creative loop, those images brought the reality that my life as a writer is truly unfolding.

Now it's time to get back to Judith. She's part of that reality, too.

Prepared for Assyrian Chariot Attack

Finally starting to crawl out from my research-mode cave. I averaged 7 hours a day in Young Library, as I researched everything from Hebrew undergarments, circa 600 C BCE to Assyrian battle tactics. I am now prepared to face down any Assyrians who aim for my village walls. They won't approach head on, but at an angle. Each chariot will hold at least three soldiers--the driver, the bowman, and a third soldier who carries a large shield to protect all of them.

Amazing the number of essential issues I intuited while I wrote the early drafts. Members of a writers' group I attended for a while tore into me because Judith is friends with her maidservant Abra. I'll fix it later, I told myself. This is just so I can get rolling with and complete the draft.

Guess what? Turns out the Hebrews were the only people who considered slaves members of the family in most ways except inheritance. Who knew? Not me. Not until last Wednesday at a sunny table in the Young Library reference section. Every day offered me at least one similar miracle, the joy of research combined with the benefits of sitting down and really listening to my characters before I started each new chapter over the last year or so.

I love research, not for its own sake but for what it confirms in the realm of intuition, and for how it brings the past alive, not just on the page . . . but for me.

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.

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.