twovictorianladies

You never know which of your life experiences are going to appear out of nowhere and affect what you write.

One of my almost-finished novels has a major character – the hero, in fact – who was in a car accident at the age of 9. The accident was caused by a drunk driver, my character was the only survivor of the accident other than the driver who caused it, and it left him with permanent injuries. You need to know that to see where I’m going with this.

The other day I was facebooking with a friend who was telling me about a tragic accident in her town. In sympathy, I shared a memory of an accident that occurred in my town when I was in high school. The high school and the middle school were across the street from each other; the main parking lot was outside the middle school but the gym was in the high school. So you had to park on one side of the street and cross to get to the basketball game. The crosswalk was about two thirds of the way down a rather steep hill.

After a game one December night forty years ago (aaagh…I never should have stopped to do THAT math!) a crowd of people – students, parents, younger brothers and sisters all – were crossing the road back to the parking lot. Everyone was happy; we’d won the game. It should be noted that they were crossing legally. Out of nowhere, a car came over the crest of the hill, driving much too fast, and plowed right into the crowd. Two students were killed, several others injured. It hit our small town hard. I still know the exact date of the accident and the names of the students involved. I don’t think any member of the classes of 72, 73, 74 or 75 will ever forget those details. This is not a memory that sinks into the background – while I’ll go for months or even years without thinking about it after all this time, it’s never left my conscious memory.

I was describing this accident to my friend, when a random thought crossed my mind – “Sort of like what happened to Josh,” (Josh being my character).

Thwack! Right upside the head. This is a book that is all but finished, and a memory that’s never quite out of mind, and never once before did it occur to me to tie them together.

I’ve always known that I use my writing to deal with what’s bothering me. I do that consciously. I sometimes sit down quite deliberately to fictionalize my problems. I had done that with this book, only I’d intended it to be an entirely different issue. And to some extent it did, but I’d been surprised by how much Josh had to say. He hadn’t been initially intended to dominate so much of the story. But of course my unconscious or subconscious or whichever it is would use this memory given the opportunity – why had I never seen it before?

It’s all out there, folks. The story will take whatever it needs out of your life experience, and use it to its best advantage. This book is quite possibly the best thing I ever wrote, or will be by the time I’m finished with it – I just never realized before where it was coming from.

Still shaking my head.

Been a long time since I’ve blogged anything. Truth be told, I hit the busiest time of year for my day job, and writer’s block, all at once. There’s probably a connection there…I was so exhausted after work that I didn’t have the energy to be creative. Even now, I’m having to force any efforts.

But I’ve reread, or am re-reading, three of my unfinished efforts and with the new year, it’s about time to get back to work. So here I am, with this blog open in one window, the book I’m most determined to finish open in another, and a grim expression on my face. What’s the next step?

The problem is this re-write. I mentioned in an earlier blog that it feels like building blocks – taking down one version piece by piece and rebuilding it in a different order. Just before the writers block, and work, hit, I found where I had used the same piece in two different places.  I think that was what started the writers block, as a matter of fact; “Oh, good grief, how do I re-write it now?” But I have an idea now and am going through it to see if the new idea will work. I THINK that barring unseen contingencies or additional writers block, I can have it ready by the end of January. Hello, Amazon?

The sequel to this one will need only minor revisions in order to put it in line with the new storyline of the first one. That one can probably be fixed in one sitting.

Meanwhile, I reviewed a book that is technically finished but that I’m not satisfied with. I know what has to be fixed, but I didn’t have a clear sense of where to make the fix. Unfortunately, after reviewing it, I can see that while it’s okay as it stands (with the fix I have yet to make) it really needs more than I’d planned in order to make it the book I want it to be.  I haven’t decided yet if I can still do it with minor revisions or if I’ll have to make major ones. Either way, I’ve got my work cut out for me.

The last one I reviewed is nowhere near ready – it’s still only about half a draft. But at least I don’t see any major flaws in it. Still a long way to go but I’m happy with what’s there.

I’ll try to be more faithful about my blog here, too, in the new year. Have a safe new years eve, everyone, and a wonderful 2012!

Well, since I lost posted, I’ve gotten about halfway through tearing my book apart and putting it back together. There are huge sections that only need minor changes made, and other parts that have to be re-written entirely. It’s the re-writing that’s the most difficult. Writing something from scratch allows you full freedom, within the confines of the story, of course, to take off with the only limit being that of your imagination. Rewriting has more of a limit, requiring that you catch every possible reference to the changes in the story.

I’ve hinted about what I am doing. In the original story, two of the main characters elope between Chapter 26 and the epilogue. In the revised version, they elope in about chapter 4, and instead of happening off-screen, as it were, the entire elopement is described – right from the planning of  it to the family sending representatives after them. Only the wedding night happens (mostly) while the reader is looking somewhere else. Some of my Facebook friends will recall my once mentioning that I was trying to “write a sex scene without any sex in it” – that’s what I was working on at the time.

But as well as writing all this new material, I also have to review some of the old material. The elopement happens because her mother has another match in mind for her, and her other suitor is (eventually) murdered. The murder originally took place in about chapter 16 or so;  by the time we reach that point in the story there would be no reason for him still to be there – the girl he wanted would already be married to someone else. So it has to happen earlier.  (Naturally, since the marriage also took place almost a year earlier, related incidents also need to be adapted.)

So that murder comes forward. The second, semi-related murder, can take place where it originally did but all references to the original murder have to be identified and reviewed for accuracy in the light of the new story. Since the two characters are now married almost a year earlier, certain other processes related to marriage also move up.

So if someday I ask you to read a draft of the book, and a character looks out a window in July and sees snow, you’ll know why!

I haven’t written anything here for the last few days, just because I’ve been so busy with tearing my novel apart and putting it back together again. (Then there’s the obvious issue of earning a living, but we won’t talk about that.) Last night I went over and over one scene, trying to get it right. It’s one of the very few places where we get to hear one secondary character’s own voice, rather than seeing him through the other characters eyes. Since he has so few opportunities to make his case, I found that I was over-writing the scene, trying to make my point – or rather, make his for him. It was much better when I backed off and tried to include a lot less exposition as explanation and just let him speak his own words.

On my way into work today, I was listening to a piece of music that hammered that point home for me. It was written by a little known folk singer from the mid-west, and the power of this one song literally leaves me shaking sometimes. And yet the songwriter managed to create that very powerful image without really stating his point at all.

The words of the song are the ramblings of a man getting ready to go on a trip. As we listen to his stream of consciousness, we learn that he’s going to Memphis for a big meeting; that it’s spring; that his wife is a bit worried about what might happen but he isn’t – this is just something that he feels he should do. As the song continues, he arrives in Memphis on the bus, looks for a cheap hotel, goes to clean up. He mentions the garbage piled up on the street corners – figures it’s too early for the pickup. And then we learn that the year is 1968 and he is in Memphis hoping to shake hands with – who else? Dr. King.

And that, my friends, is where the song ends.

We all know what happened at that big meeting Memphis in April of 1968 and the huge loss to the world when Dr. King was assassinated. But by leaving the song on the note of hope, the songwriter managed to make a much stronger impression than if he’d written another verse describing the assassination itself.

I long to be able to write like that.

If my loyal readers, all three of you, are wondering where I’ve been this past week, I’ll tell you. I’ve been completely re-writing a book that I thought was complete and ready to go.

We knew that the beginning was slow, and that we needed to pull people in a bit more quickly. We found a way to do it; now an event that took place “off-stage” as it were, in chapter 26, now takes place in full view of the readers in chapter 4. By moving this event so far forward, other events that are related to it need to be relocated as well. New linking scenes need to be written; some scenes that didn’t exist now need to be added. References elsewhere in the book need to be adapted. It’s fun, but it’s a lot of work!

It’s in some ways sort of like building blocks. Grab pages 116-117, cut and paste them into the middle of page 222, and smooth the transition out with a trowel…er…slight re-write. It’s going to be a  much more entertaining book when it’s done. But it is kind of eating into my time.

Well, that and hurricane preparation…

I finished reading a book on my Kindle this morning. It was an action/adventure story, the first book by this particular author. I was a little hesitant about trying it; not because it was a debut effort but because of the story description, which just barely fell within my area of interest. The reviews were pretty good, though, even if two of them were from family or friends who had read previous drafts, and I decided to give it a try.

From a literary critic’s position, this book was a disaster. The premise had all the believability of a SyFy Original disaster flick.  The characters had the depth of poorly executed line drawing, with the exception of the hero and, to a slightly lesser degree, the heroine; they had the depth of well executed line drawings. The author used the deux ex machina device for practically every incident. One subplot proved totally unnecessary – its only purpose was to put some of the characters at one particular place at one particular time – surely this rather silly subplot could have been dropped and another method found to get them there.  And the epilogue was flat, flat, flat; I’ve seen more energy in soda bottles that have been open for three days.

So why didn’t I just click on the “Remove from Device” icon when I hit chapter 3?

Because one thing the author did right was keep that story moving. It may not have been particularly well crafted, and it certainly was not overly believable. But he knew how to keep the action going. It was a roller coaster ride that didn’t stop from page 4 (the set up pages were a bit slow) till the end of the last chapter. Which is one reason the very flat epilogue came as such a shock. I will be the first to admit that beginnings and endings are difficult, but the contrast kind of let one down.

It was clear from the way he left it that he plans to do another book with the same hero. It will be interesting to see whether his writing improves as he goes. Despite the shaky writing, I would read another book of his just because of the energetic story. I probably wouldn’t read a third unless I can see evidence of improving, but I’d at least give him one more shot.

Hopefully my future readers will be willing to give me the same chance!

One of the most entertaining parts of writing fiction, I find, is naming my characters. The name has to match the character, and once the character’s personality is established, changing the name can change the person. Even changing the spelling can affect the character; Gillian and Jillian are two different people. So are Kate and Katie, and neither of them is the same person as Katherine.

At one time, a very large portion of one book had to be shifted from Ireland to Scotland for weather related reasons that were important to the plot. This required renaming a significant number of characters; not just Christian names but surnames as well. Some accepted change easily; a Brenda became Bradana with very little fuss. Characters whose surnames began with Mc, did not argue when I introduced Mac. Other characters clung to their Irish names and refused to accept a Scottish substitute. I changed one young woman’s name three or four times; I never was completely satisfied with the only Scottish name she would accept without completely changing her personality, and she will still always be Brighid to me, even though her name in the book is now something totally different.

The men are just as bad.  It was fairly easy to shift Kevin to Kennon, but my co-author still refers to him as Kevin half the time.  We finally gave up and let Denis stay Denis – he simply would not be anyone else. I think we just gave him a more Scottish surname and let that be enough – Denis and it’s variants are originally Greek, anyway.

At the same time, I can’t blame my characters. People’s names are who they are.  If my mother suddenly started calling me Cindy, I wouldn’t know who she meant. Fictional characters have as much of a right to their name as anyone else. At the same time, I can’t have a lot of Irish characters running around Scotland. So what do I do? Work with me, people.

With one exception, they’ve mostly become accustomed to their new names now. I’m just grateful that none of the major characters needed new names. That would have been an utter disaster; the secondary characters were bad enough!