It was the best of times, it was the worst of times

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness; it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity; it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness; it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair; we had everything before us, we had nothing before us; we were all going directly to Heaven, we were all going the other way." - Charles Dickens

Who knew the French Revolution and manuscript revision had so much in common?

I have almost finished the bulk of the changes on the manuscript, and have a satisfying number of pages with big blue ticks on them (as in, the tick symbol, not big blue blood-sucking insects). Tomorrow's job is to write some missing scenes that I need ... and then I'll print out another typescript and give it to my beta reader. I have learned that revision is the most torturous and tedious part of writing a book. It is also, in a way, the most exciting, as you chip away everything that isn't your story to reveal what will be, hopefully, a tight, polished version. Hopefully.

It has taken over my life and turned my brain to chewed bubblegum, but it is also immensely satisfying. I'm going to crack on with the rest of the changes now, and then go to my mother's to watch American Idol. A dose of Adam Lambert will be a suitable reward for a long day of work, I think.

P.S. Ooh, and if you live in Christchurch, try to see Miss Saigon before it closes! It was absolutely glorious and I'm still on a high. Amazing evening. The only low point was the dreadful man sitting behind us who complained that our friend was "a big lad" and he couldn't see past him (he's really not, he's average height), and made us switch seats. We did it, to avoid drama, only to be stuck behind his enormous bald head for the rest of the night. You see, he was "a big lad" too.

P.P.S. My friend Hannah has started a blog: she's new to the blogosphere, so if you have a chance, stop by and say hello. She's such a glamorous lady, and I'm so looking forward to seeing all her outfits online.

Various disconnected ramblings

I'm crazily busy at the moment with the book and with client work, and am really looking forward to kicking back with some friends and a bottle of wine tonight. I have developed a new technique for squeezing out a few more drops of work before I stop for a break. You probably all do this already, but I'll tell you anyway - I pick a page of the book at random (just edited page 113, for example) and edit it ferociously. Just that page. And then I have a cup of coffee. It is somehow less of a slog doing something entirely random and small, and it's a nice surprise when I come across an already-edited page in the normal course of things.

I will leave you with a couple of great quotes on revision that the lovely Annie King shared with me.

“First drafts are for learning what your novel or story is about. Revision is working with that knowledge to enlarge and enhance an idea, to reform it….The first draft is the most uncertain—where you need the guts, the ability to accept the imperfect until it is better. Revision is one of the true pleasures of writing.” -
Bernard Malamud

"My method is one of continuous revision; while writing a long novel, every day I loop back to the earlier sections, to rewrite, in order to maintain a consistent, fluid voice; when I write the final two to three chapters of a novel, I write them simultaneously with the rewriting of the opening of the novel, so that, ideally at least, the novel is like a river uniformly flowing, each passage concurrent with all the others." - Joyce Carol Oates

I hope you're all having a great week!

P.S. Just realised I used the phrase 'in the normal course of things' twice in this post. In the normal course of things, I don't use that phrase at all.

Books are not babies

A lengthy post about manuscript revision follows. Just a warning. GET OUT WHILE YOU STILL CAN!

So, the book is now nearly unrecognisable. I felt depressed about this on the weekend, as I looked at the hundred thousand words I spent last year toiling over and realised that a great deal of them were gone. I shook myself out of that funk pretty quickly, however, by recognising that all that material needed to be written in order for me to find the novel that was inside it. As Mark Twain said, "The time to begin writing an article is when you have finished it to your satisfaction. By that time you begin to clearly and logically perceive what it is that you really want to say." This applies to novels too, I think.

The novel was sliced and diced into bits. I had a lot of ideas and a lot of questions, and I needed to get a clear vision in my head of the shape the finished book would take.

I (metaphorically) sat down in the middle of all the shredded paper and bits of bleeding manuscript and asked myself, "What am I ACTUALLY trying to say with this book? What is it really about? Really, really?"

(A pretty good question to ask oneself before beginning, I'm sure, but hey, I'm a maverick - as in, I'm probably doing it wrong).

Once I'd asked myself that question, it was relatively easy to peel all the layers of story away until I was left with a kernel. It reminded me of a segment on the special features of the Lord of the Rings (yes, I am an enormously geeky person and spent an entire summer holiday watching all three films and every single special feature over and over, every day for about three months. I am not exaggerating. Luckily my husband was doing it with me, which makes it a bit less sad. But I digress). In this segment, Peter Jackson was discussing the editing of the three films. They shot for a record number of days, and ended up with a wealth of material. Too much, in fact. They had a very difficult time in the editing studio trying to trim down all this material to match the script in a way that advanced the story without slowing it down or digressing. It was a nightmare. Finally, Jackson went away and thought about it, and came up with a simple and brilliant solution. He asked himself what the story - this lengthy, hugely detailed, complex monster of a story - was really about, and decided it was about Frodo and it was about the ring, and it was about the journey of these two entities.

This made their decisions far easier. Even if they loved a particular piece of footage, they asked themselves, "Does this support the central story?" And if it didn't, out it went. (Of course, they had an extended cut as well as the cinematic cut, but we humble book-writers don't have that luxury).

I had a similar revelation, and I found this article by Holly Lisle remarkably helpful for the process, as is almost everything on her site. I wrote down what the book was about, in fewer than fifteen words. It took a while to get down to fifteen, but I worked at it until I had the briefest summary I could possibly have. Then I went through my plot outline and cut out everything that didn't serve that central story in some way. I also wrote down the main theme in fewer than fifteen words, and the sub-themes in the same way.

This meant that I have had to ask myself some hard questions over the past two weeks. About every scene and every character I have asked, "Does this matter? Do I need this? Is it important?" Quite often, the answer is no. It has been tough. I thought I was handling it quite well until I realised that a particularly beloved character and subplot did nothing but slow down the story and distract it from its real purpose. Cutting that one hurt quite a bit. Essentially I am taking a microscope to the core of the story and discarding everything else, which means both that the central story needs to be fully developed and that I am going to end up with a much stronger book at the end of the (hellish) process.

Then came another hard job. One of the problems I saw with my original manuscript was that my narrator wasn't strong enough. She was an observer rather than an active participant. I also felt that she didn't show enough significant growth throughout the story. So, I took some more of Holly Lisle's suggestions, and wrote a one-line story arc for this character - the journey she takes through the book. I also asked myself:

"What does she want more than anything else in the world?"

and

"What is she most afraid of?"

These questions are so revealing. I think these are the two most important things to know about any character - the answers show you the motives behind any person's actions. They're trying to achieve the one, and they're trying to avoid the other, and if they're a compelling enough character they feel passionately about both. Once I had a clear story arc in written form, and the answers to these two questions, I felt like I knew my protagonist a lot better. She came more sharply into focus, and the rest of the book came with her.

I also made the decision to switch the book from first to third person. It's a big job, but I think it's necessary.

If there's anything I've learned while working on this book, it's that I have a lot to learn. Novel-writing 101. It is definitely humbling, but also very exciting. And a lot of hard work. I've written 'novels' since I was very young, and even had one published, but I've never had to work so much on the brick-by-brick construction of a work like this one. I think I (arrogantly) assumed that I would get everything right by instinct, but no matter how talented you are, it takes a lot of revision and hard work to make a successful book.

My three main tools at the moment, as I work through the rewrites, are: a synopsis; a chapter-by-chapter breakdown; and a page of character notes. I have found them all unbelievably helpful for keeping me focused.

I say synopsis, but there are actually three synopses - the one-sentence one I mentioned earlier, a very detailed one that's about seven pages long, and a shorter one that's about the length of the blurb on a book cover. After a couple of hours working on these, I went a bit mad and started ending the plot summaries with silly things like "WITH HILARIOUS RESULTS!", "BEFORE A GIANT METEOR HITS THE EARTH," and "TO FIGHT THE INVADING SPACE PIRATE ARMY." At least I find myself amusing. (And no, my book does not contain an invading space pirate army).

So, as you can probably tell from all this, I'm stitching together almost a new book altogether. I think it's going to be worlds better when I'm finished, but there is an enormous amount of work ahead. Occasionally I have a minor panic attack, but then I go for a walk, buy something, eat a piece of chocolate or put a pot of coffee on (hey, I didn't say they were all healthy solutions) and get back to it. Speaking of which, I had better get back to work.

To explain the post title: books are not babies, thank goodness, even though they are often compared to them. "It's like sending your child out into the world!" "I feel like I've given birth to this book." I understand those sentiments, but the analogy falls apart when it's time to revise. You wouldn't give a baby plastic surgery, change its gender twice and its name three times and try six different noses on it to see which one looks best. I hope.

P.S. A bit of housekeeping. I am dreadfully behind on comments again, so thank you for bearing with me - I am crazily busy and will catch up as soon as I can. And if you're waiting for a package from me, you won't have to wait much longer ... I'm sending them out next week! Hooray. Oh, and I'm also having a big closet clean-out very soon and selling some lovely vintage dresses, so I'll keep you posted on that too.

Souffles!

Since I was done with the 'flu, I thought it would be nice to pass it on to LOML. I'm all about recycling. So he's in bed, and it's my turn to make cups of tea and nag him about drinking enough fluids and going to bed early (payback time, LOML!). I made it outside today - hurrah! - and found some amazing things to put in the next shop update. One particular dress is stunningly beautiful, but too small for me, which makes me sad. It will, however, make some small person very happy.

I spent the rest of today experimenting with the first chapter of the book. In case you're interested, here's a brief overview of the changes I'm making.

1) Narrowing the focus - originally the book spanned fifteen years. Now it spans three. As the lovely Rachael said to me, this is a common trap for books based on autobiographical material. You tend to keep events and characters in because 'that's how it was', and not because they're important to the story. Even though my book is (ostensibly, I see now) a novel, there was a lot of autobiographical flotsam and jetsam in there that wasn't really important to anyone else but me. I've zoomed in on the important stuff. This has the double benefits of making it read more like a novel and less like a memoir, and making the whole thing more urgent and pacey.

2) Cutting out redundant characters - some of the characters, when I really examined them, served a similar purpose. When these literary twins occur, I'm blending them together or erasing one of them.

3) Some under-used but essential characters are being inflated and are coming to the fore, and some characters who took up way too much space for their level of importance have been deflated.

4) The narrator was too passive - things happened to her and around her rather than being initiated and driven by her. I'm making her much more of a decision-maker in her own life.

5) Unnecessary sub-plots that served no purpose are being snipped out.

6) The stakes weren't high enough. I'm upping them. High stakes make for exciting reading.

7) I'm giving the 'villains' more of a human face.

I've learned a lot about novel-building from this book, which is fantastic. It has been encouraging, but humbling too - I get a lot of things right by instinct, but I also get a lot of things wrong. Constructing a novel is hard, and definitely not something you can do by the seat of your pants. I know all the things listed above probably seem glaringly obvious - Novel-writing 101 - and they were. Six months after I finished the book. Not at all obvious one month after. Just goes to show that you really do need to allow your work time to rest - to rise or sink, like a souffle. I think my book rose around the edges but had a big soggy indentation in the middle. Metaphorically. I wish I knew how to create the acute accent on souffle. Does anyone know how?

I hope all this made sense - it is quite late, and when I start talking about souffles, it's probably time to go to bed.

Big news in our household today - LOML and I are going over to the UK in August to see both sets of our grandparents, and we'll probably be in the States for a while as well. So excited.

I hope you all had a good start to your week!

Rainy days and Mondays

It would be great if someone could come round and get me out of my own head today. Seriously. Come round, unscrew the top of my head, tuck my brain under your arm and take it for a walk. Take it to an art gallery, or out for a coffee. It needs the fresh air. And I'm sure it's great company for anyone who hasn't been spending the entire morning arguing with it and poking it with a (metaphorical) stick.

I think my brain and I need to start seeing other people.

Currently, planning out the new shape of the novel feels like trying to get Mink into his cat-box when we're taking him to the vet. He suddenly becomes a lot bigger. And spikier. And grows about seven more legs. Just when you think you've got him in, you realise he still has a toe outside. When you've pushed the toe in, you realise his head is out.

I've already cut the book down from 108,000 words to 92,000. And I'm only just getting started.

Friday the 13th

I always wince when I have to print out a copy of my book. Hundreds of pages! Not only bad for the environment, but also bad for the wallet, as our printer cartridge always seems to run out when I'm printing manuscripts. Those things are seriously expensive. But, it is necessary. I am a very visual person, as evidenced by the Amazing Wall of Post-its. So, as I write scenes that need to be added into the New Improved Book and cut scenes that need to die, I have to see some physical representation of those processes. Printing it out seemed a good idea, and I started this morning. Of course, halfway through printing, our cartridge ran out. And we are broke. So I yelled at the printer for a while, then did a sort of angry hopping dance around the house. Now I am annoyed and working on-screen until pay-day, when we can get a new cartridge. It's just not the same!

I found a good article on revising your novel by Holly Lisle. I particularly liked this part:

"When you finally finish the first draft of your novel, the temptation to just print it, box it, and start it on its rounds can be almost overwhelming. By the time you've written anywhere from 90,000 to 150,000 words, you can be pretty tired of the storyline, the characters, the plots and subplots, and you're generally itching to start that new project, too -- the one that started creeping into your dreams three or four months ago and that has now become almost an obsession."

Very true, and it's hard to take time away from my new project to dive back into the old one. Especially since it's such a daunting task. I have already cut about 10,000 words from the novel, and I'm just getting started. Whole scenes have to be added in. Whole sections have to be rewritten. The chronology of the book is changing completely. It's going to be an almost completely different book, in lots of ways - but still the same, in the way an axe would still be the same axe, theoretically, even if you replaced the head and the handle.

Being me, I need a deadline by which to complete the revisions. Holly Lisle says she does it in one or two weeks. I don't think I'm there yet. I'm giving myself one month - till 13 March. Which my calendar tells me is also Friday 13th. Is this a good omen or a bad one? I choose to think good. I am a little freaked out because I'm not sure when the oral examination part of my Masters will be, or what client work will come up in the next few weeks (the cursed unpredictability of freelancing!), but then my natural state isn't far from freaked out anyway.This weekend's job is to complete the new outline. I've started writing down long lists of notes on all the changes, but I want to go through chapter by chapter and write a summary of what happens in each. Wish me luck!

On the plus side, the Masters thesis (book plus supplementary essay) is all handed in. It will be ready to pick up from the Registry next week, and I have to cough up $40 for the privilege of having the university print and bind it. You think after paying thousands of dollars for the fees that they would throw in the binding for free. That would be nice.

I completely recommend reading that Holly Lisle piece if you're at the same stage in your novel as I am - it's ridiculously helpful. And it gives you permission to go out and buy lots of fun stationery, which is one of my favourite things to do.

And so it begins

It is so hot! Well into the thirties. Too hot to do anything. Too hot to be wearing clothes, really, but that would be illegal.

I am freaking out completely. I've gone through the book slashing and burning, getting rid of everything I don't think I need, and I am left with scraps that need to be re-knitted together to form something of an entirely different shape. It is depressing, because my beloved book is lying in pieces on the floor. It is exhilarating, because I know that it is going to be a better book once I'm finished. Most of all, though, it is overwhelming, and I'm kind of a wreck today. I'm changing so much! It's terrifying! It requires a lot of exclamation marks!

I have written out an outline of the 'new' book - the new shape I think it should take. It is a much more novel-like shape. It's fun to listen to my brain throw up all the excuses it can to escape working on these changes.

"Ooh, I've suddenly had a brilliant idea for a painting/sewing project/song that I need to get started on RIGHT NOW. After all, that's creative, right? I mean, I shouldn't put off something CREATIVE."

"Good lord, that patch of wall I've been staring at has a mark on it. Not only do I need to spend fifteen minutes getting it out, I also need to go all around the house looking for other marks to erase. Even some that are invisible to the naked eye."

"I'll just pop out and have a look at my local op-shop. Just to have a quick break."

"Hey, someone's updated their blog. I'm going to take a quick look ..."

"Time for another pot of coffee."

"Oh god, I'm such a failure. I'm going to go and think about what a failure I am for fifteen minutes."

"The house is a mess. I can't work when it's a mess. I'd better just get everything cleaned up first."

"I'm hungry! For something very specific that requires a trip to the supermarket!"

"There's no way I'll ever make it as a writer. I'm going to spend an hour updating my CV and looking on job websites for jobs that I would never apply for in a million years."

I'm kind of interested to see what form my resistance is going to take this week. I'm sure it will appear. It usually takes the form of an eye infection, for some reason, but it has also manifested itself as insane busy-ness, a recurrence of panic attacks, a crisis of some kind. Today I have been crazily restless - tapping fingers, jigging my knee up and down, wiggling my feet, trying to restrain myself from jumping up and doing something. It would be quite entertaining to watch if there was a hidden camera, I would imagine. I think 90% of writing discipline is keeping your bottom firmly attached to the seat.

Long post ahead!

Oh jeez. Breakthroughs galore (I feel like it should be 'breaksthrough', like 'culs de sac' or 'passers-by', but then I would have to start saying 'hamsburger' and 'lawnsmower').

So. I have been reading through Old Book (as in, the one for the Masters) and proofing it, ready to be submitted. As you know, I started submitting it to agents back in September, only a couple of months after it was finished. I felt confident in the book, and I wanted to get it out there as soon as possible. I had edited it exhaustively, but I hadn't really spent enough time 'out' of it to get any sort of distance. Reading through it today, however, I experienced an unexpected revelation.

I haven't felt really, rock-bottom down about any of the rejections from agents. I have been sad, sure, but I have never felt like giving up, and I have never felt like I'm pursuing something that's out of my grasp. I don't think I am. The rejections, despite their obvious downside, have been 'good' ones (you know what I mean). If I was going to summarise the pros and cons from each letter, I would say that all of them said that the book is well-written and that they enjoyed it, and all of them said it would be hard to sell because it reads more like a memoir than a novel.

There are different types of criticism. There's the amorphous, unhelpful kind: "I just didn't like it." There's the personal, even less helpful kind: "I can't believe you wrote this piece of crap. What were you thinking?" And then there's the useful, constructive kind, the kind that makes you go "Aha! So that's it! I can fix that." You hear it with recognition and gratitude (and okay, maybe a little petulance, because you are human, but only for a second), because some part of you knows it is true. That kind of criticism opens doors rather than slamming them in your face. And that's what the statement "it reads more like a memoir than a novel" did for me. Because it absolutely does. Reading over it now, now that I've had a few months to let it settle and gain some sort of objectivity, I can see that far more clearly.

I'm not sorry I shopped it out to agents so soon after editing it, though, because in a weird way the rejections I received were a sort of validation. They were saying, "You're in the right business, you're a good writer, but this needs some work before I'll take it on." And I've learned an awful lot about the agent-hunting process, and feel a lot more confident approaching them. But what I do know is that I can see a clear path to creating a more novel-like version of the novel. A way to make it better. A way which will involve a LOT of work which I will have to do while I'm working on Current Novel. Totally worth it.

This is not to say I'm giving up on finding an agent for the book - after all, it's still sitting with several agents who are yet to respond. I just feel like I can rework it while I'm writing New Book, and make it better - solve some of the problems. We'll see.

On an entirely different subject, I have a great story to tell you! You may remember the vintage dress that LOML bought for me as an anniversary present, while we were in Nelson. Well, I went to Tete a Tete Vintage yesterday (and bought something lovely to show you when the weather clears up, but that's another story), and spotted a coat hanging on one of the racks. It was made of identical fabric to this dress, and had the same very distinctive button detail, one on each lapel. The buttonholes are edged in a darker fabric - very unique. When I looked at the label, I saw it was made by Juliet of Christchurch, same as my dress. It was surreal. I turned to Vanessa (one of the two owners) and said, "I think I have the dress that matches this." When I told her I had bought it in Nelson, she got all excited as well and told me that a friend of hers had bought the coat in Nelson. Evidently someone had separated the two pieces up there and sold them separately. But what are the odds that I would find the dress up there, and then find the coat in my favourite vintage store here in Christchurch, miles away? Synchronicity, I tell you!

I put the coat on lay-by, of course. I mean, how could I not buy it? Fate will not be denied.