How Not to Revise

This monsoon season has been a tease. The clouds loom, promising rain, and then evaporate. I watch it on the weather radar - the greens condensing, flashing orange and red - and then it dissolves away again.

As I mentioned yesterday, I've been in revision mode, refining The Body Gift. Actually, now that I think about it, I've been in revising/editing mode for quite some time now. Between revising Obsidian for a revise & resubmit, working on developmental,, line and copy edits for Sapphire and Feeding the Vampire, and now adding to TBG to send to this agent, I haven't done any real drafting since March.

Sure, some of this has involved adding new words, but really, working on a story that's already *there* is a different process.

You know how sculptors (it might be a specific one, but I forget who and I'm feeling too lazy to try to find it) say that sculpting is carving away the extra stone, to find the shape that already exists within? (Maybe it was Michelangelo?) I've always loved this idea. This is how writing and revising often works for me.

Once a draft is complete and the story is pretty much *there* (this is a technical word I've used twice now. feel free to borrow, but use carefully - it's a powerful term), it's like a block of marble. Maybe it's like a rough outline. Or like the horrible, globulous beings that are what remains of people when the transporter malfunctions. Kind of shaped like something, but not really discernible. Not alive, for sure.

I think it works this way for me because I don't really plan my stories. It's more like I download big chunks from elsewhere. Unlike A.S. Byatt, however, I don't get mine in perfect dictation. So there I am, with my amorphous thing, that has some really lovely bits and some pretty damn icky ones. That's when I begin carving.

Revision is an acquired skill, I believe. It takes care and judgment. You have to be brave enough to knock off big pieces that must go, but also patient enough to do the detail work. Over and over, you have to step back and see how you're doing. It takes objectivity and precision.

And, oh yes, you can ruin it. I truly believe that.

There comes a point where, instead of refining and polishing, you're hacking it to bits. Sure, with writing, you can always add it back in. This is the advantage the writer has over a sculptor who accidentally whacks off the nose. The story, however, that brilliantly alive creature, can slowly suffocate, wither away and die if pummeled too much. You're left with a corpse. Maybe a pretty corpse, but a dead body nonetheless.

I know no one wants to hear this. We all want to believe that, with enough crit, enough time and dedication, we can make the book PERFECT. Maybe a truly practiced writer can. But, just as with sculpting, it takes skill and experience.

This is what I'm learning about revising: it's important to keep the final image in mind.

We all start with a seminal image or idea. That changes as we go along. But, at some point in the process, (yes, yes, I know you pre-plotters claim you know it before you even start writing) you have to decide on what you want it to look like when you're done. All revising should be directed to that idea. Don't get halfway through polishing your Running Dog sculpture and then think, hey! a Running Cat would be way cool! Write down the Running Cat idea and go back to working on the DOG.

Having editorial notes helps with this, because you can keep going back to the line where your editor says "do this." I've started keeping a list of what I'm revising towards. To remind myself of that final image.

I imagine that few sculptors create a perfect sculpture on their first try. This is why most writers I know have at least one novel under the bed, maybe several. Those are the corpses.

Like clouds promising rain, sometimes they don't produce.

May they rest in peace.

Recalibrating

I caught a bit of sun on this one, but I love the happy look on Granddaughter Aerro's face.

We spent the weekend with family, celebrating David's birthday and Tobiah's a bit late. It's fun to do these things, to see everyone, but I ate lots of food I don't normally eat, got no writing done and got all out of my routine.

I know - I'm cantankerous.

I think this is why so many people dislike Mondays though. It's much easier to stay with a routine than to start it up again. My folks are retired and they don't notice the days of the week so much, except for planning events. Sometimes I think that's the best way, just to let the flow of time be even. When I'm home for the weekend, though I sleep a bit later, it's not by a huge amount - maybe an hour - and my exercise and writing schedule is pretty much the same. Then Monday isn't so much of a shock.

This morning, though...

So I'm gearing up. Lots to do this week. I'm almost done revising The Body Gift. I've been strengthening the hero and it's working. I found myself mooning over him the other day, which is lovely, because he's been very difficult to get to know. I'm 70% done, with 15 chapters to do over the next 7 days. Totally doable, right?

(There is the small matter of adding an entirely new scene where my characters end up in this very particular image I have in my head, but I don't really know how they get there or what happens. The story magic will fill that in, right?)

Then I send it off to my (potential) agent who is enthusiastically (I like to think) waiting for it.

Okay, off I go to catch a wave. Wish me luck!

Craving the Pain

We bought rain barrels. Plastic ones that won't, oh, fall over and shatter. Not as pretty, but far better for the long term.

We've realized that last year, our first year in Santa Fe, spoiled us terribly, with all the snow and rain. This year is far more dry and we fell behind on watering. We're catching up now, and the flowers are coming along. Fortunately, as children of the West, David and I are both habitual water-savers. We just need to adjust our thinking, take it a bit further.

I am thinking longer-term in many ways.

I mentioned yesterday that I'm not willing to take The Body Gift to self-pubbing, or even digital publishing yet. See, I have a Plan. This is a Plan suggested to me by a lovely agent-friend who can't take me on as a client right not, but offered me unlimited advice. (I'm not sure if that's just her very gracious way of saying no while remaining friendly and supportive, but I don't care. She also told me I seem to be doing just fine on my own and you know where flattery will get you with me. Hey, I'm a Leo - I can't help it!)

At any rate, she suggested that with each new novel, I shoot as high as I can, walk it through all the Big Show venues and then, if no one bites, offer it to digital. I like this plan. I know many scoff, because it's still clinging to the traditional route, which so many are forsaking. Why put myself through the pain of the Big Filter when I could just skip all the rejection and waiting, go straight to Smashwords or one of the innumerable start-up epresses that seem to snap up all and sundry.

Why?

I want the filter.

I want the writing I put out in the world to be the very best it can be. Even though I hate the pain, I want my work to receive ruthless editing and the stern eye of marketing. I know NYC can have a narrow view. I also know traditional publishing has been putting out incredible books for my entire life.

I want that to be my books.

And I don't know about all of you, but I've been reading a lot of less-than-stellar stuff lately. Digital publishing is coming up in the world and some of the digital imprints seem to have pretty high standards. Others.... erm. Not so much. As much as I would love someone to embrace my book and publish it, I don't want it at the price of quality. I'd rather revise.

I know it's hard to know these days, what a press's standards are. But if you look around, you can figure it out. Read their books and you'll know. The ones who haven't put out any books yet are a bigger gamble. Every publisher has some lemons, or books that you hate. More than once I've wondered what Ace was thinking, or who is reading some of what Kensington puts out. I also know they have exhaustive acquisitions processes, so I figure I'm not their reader.

So, I don't want to be the person who doesn't want to belong to any club that would stoop to admitting the likes of me, but I do want to make the grade.

I want to be part of the Big Show.

And I won't stop until I get there.

Anger Management

This is a Cinco de Mayo rose. I just love the subtle lavenders in with the brighter shades. I bought this rose at Santa Fe Gardens, which is the local bricks & mortar presence of High Country Gardens. If we weren't on water restrictions that forbid new plantings, I'd go every weekend and pick out just one new friend to take home.

It feels good to me to garden again. To spend some time with the earth and the plants.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote on Word Whores about how I've given up so many hobbies, to make time for writing. I don't regret that choice, by any stretch. The last couple of years have been very productive for me. You folks out there might not be able to tell, because it's mostly going to yucca juice right now, but I've been writing these fabulous novels that will be published ANY SECOND NOW. I've got a good root system of several series going. When I look at my portfolio, it feels good.

Hell, I feel sexy just saying I have a portfolio.

Yesterday, I mentioned to the fabulous author Laura Bickle that I'm trying not to be angry that I'm going to RWA this year with the same novel I pitched last year. She told me she thought I should be angry. That it's healthy to express that anger, rather than tamping it down and seething over it.

She's right.

I am angry and that feels good, too. It makes me mad that no one has fallen in love with this novel like I feel it deserves. It pisses me off that so many agents tell me they love it, the premise, the writing, the characters - and ask me to send them the very next thing I write. I'm angry and that fires me up.

Yes, I know I could self-publish. Or submit to a press directly. I'm choosing not to at this point.

I see so much dithering in the publishing world right now. So many of the industry professionals are hunkered down waiting to see what will happen. I hear many editors have been instructed not to acquire anything at all. I see agents making what seem to be desperation moves, selling clients' work to epresses with no track record. Established authors are turning down NYC deals to self-publish. (Courtney Milan is the latest news that way.)

We all want to make the thing happen. To get the stories to the readers, to make a living doing what we love. Everyone seems desperate to get rich and terrified of going under.

So, I'm coming back to the idea of balance. I'm spending more time in the garden, hand-watering and adding mulch to retain moisture.

I let myself be angry and it felt good, too.

It's good to want things.

Boy on Boy

I'm just about out of Tucson photos. I need to get busy around here again.

I'd hoped to be taking a lot of nifty pics in Boston this weekend, but alas we've canceled our trip. Ironically, I also finished my revision of The Body Gift, which had been consuming my thoughts and energy. So I don't even relish my suddenly free weekend to work on it.

I am, however, going back to the novel I started before Christmas, which I think I'll call The Middle Princess for the time being. No, I don't always do three-word titles. Sometimes I do one-word titles or, in a salient example, an eight-word title.

At any rate, I've been thinking about male/male romance.

What - you didn't follow that transition? Keep up!

For those of you living under a rock, m/m romance is a huge trend these days. These are essentially traditional romance novels, except that the hero and heroine are a hero and hero. The novels are largely written by women and read by women. There's all kinds of debate about whether or not the stories are accurate depictions of male homosexuality, and if they should be. Every once in a while someone will produce an article where gay men make scathing comments about the romance/sex/level of realism. And they speculate about why women want to write and read this stuff.

The astute women ask why hetero men like to watch girl on girl so much and leave it at that.

It would be kind of amusing to see an article about girl on girl porn scenes, asking lesbians about the level of realism and whether these scenes accurately portray a lesbian love-affair.

So, I read one of these books a bit ago, partly to broaden my horizons and partly because the book received such a good review. I enjoyed it, too. One of the characters was more dominant, a business-man who wasn't openly out of the closet. The other, flamboyantly gay, "never topped." The dynamic felt familiar. One man was more ambitious, busy and closed off, the other more emotional, who loved to cook and read.

Some conflict revolved around being out together in public, with the one being so flamboyant, dealing with family and similar issues that this less-acceptable sexuality brings. But the main conflict came from the balance of power in the relationship, vulnerability and intimacy. As the more flamboyant man sulked, threw fits and struggled emotionally, I realized that a lot of that behavior would have annoyed me in a female character. It was as if, by being male, he had license to behave as outrageously as he wished. In some ways, his emotions were more valid to me, than they would have been in a female character.

So, this is one book and I'm not a sociologist. Still, I've grown up in a culture where women's emotionality is considered boggy ground. As professionals, we're expected to behave more like men emotionally. In relationships, being too emotional is considered cheating. I wonder if the m/m romance gives more room to explore the love relationship without bringing up those damming triggers.

When I brought this up with a group of writer friends, though, the ever-saucy Darynda Jones blinked at me and said, "I just think they're hot."

There you are then.

First Time's a Charm

When I was in school, lo these many moons ago, the common wisdom was to save time at the end of the exam to review your answers.

I don't know if that's still the advice these days. But it never worked for me. I found that, if I went back and changed my initial answer, I nearly always changed it wrong. Seriously - the questions I'd miss on the test would be the ones I changed upon review.

I don't know what this says about me, but I've noticed it in other areas of my life, too. The first time I try a recipe, it comes out perfectly. After that, not so much. When I try to photograph something, inevitably my first shot is the best. This generally works out fine for me. I prefer to be decisive - make a decision, commit to a course of action and have done - so my experience that my first attempt is usually the best reinforces that preference.

The downside of this is, I really don't like revising.

In fact, I've become superstitious enough over the years about "changing my first answer," that I fret that revising makes my story worse.

I know, I know. You hear that noise, like marbles clattering around in a jar of olive oil? That's my critique partners rolling their eyes at me.

Revising is necessary. I understand that, here in my head. It's my heart that gets all nervous about it.

I once had a John Irving quote that I cut out of a magazine somewhere, that I recall as being "I have learned to have no fear of revising." I'm almost certain he said it about Cider House Rules. However, the closest I can come online is this one:

No, this isn't religion, there's no fear in changing the text.

Superstition and religion. Do I detect a recurring theme?

At any rate, I've nearly completed the revision of Act I of The Body Gift. I'm tossed between the exhilaration of seeing how much better the story flows now and genuine terror that I've ruined it forever.

(Yes, I know I can change it back - this isn't rational.)

But, when they're not rolling their eyes at me, my CPs are reading it and pronouncing it much better.

I don't know if I get an "A" on it, yet, but at least I haven't changed it wrong.

Murky Is as Murky Does

A while back, I took a class in play-directing.

Okay, this was almost twenty years ago. So a titch more than a while.

At any rate, I had several reasons for doing it. I was in grad school getting a PhD in neurophysiology and all the science was making me feel like a left-brain cripple. Some of my best times in college had been running with the theater crowd. I took enough acting classes and performed in enough shows that I could have added a theater minor to my biology major, had it occurred to me. In grad school, I found myself lonely among the science-heads. I auditioned for a play, but I'm really not a very good actress. Where they didn't know me, they didn't even toss me the bit parts I'd had before.

(Yeah - the role I played in Equus? I totally got it because the director called me when the actress he'd cast was so offended at the role's minor nature. Ask Jeffe - she'll do it! It was fun, too.)

So, I thought I could break into the scene and make some little friends in the bargain, by taking a class. Finally, I was noodling about creative writing and I recalled how the Assistant Director of Equus had been an MFA student in playwriting and his adviser suggested he learn how to direct, to better understand how a script comes alive on stage.

(He also might have been a handsome blond from New Orleans with whom I had a little love affair, but that's beside the point.)

It didn't work out so well. I remained an outsider in the theater clique. Plus, because I was an outsider, I had a great deal of trouble casting my scenes - all the best people got snapped up by their friends.

However, I did learn something very interesting that serves me still today.

Though I seem to need to relearn the lesson, over and over.

The course culminated in two nights of One-Act Plays open to the public. Five of us put together about half an hour long plays. Mine was this creepy one (I forget the name) about a cold marriage where the wife kills the husband's cat - either deliberately or through negligence. The husband then channels the cat (either becomes the cat or just flips out), stalks and attacks the wife.

It was a cool play.

And people liked it. They really liked it! (That's me channeling Sally Fields.) I loved people telling me how they enjoyed it, with their faces lit up. You don't get that in science. Then they'd say, "except I didn't get if she killed the cat on purpose or not." Or they'd say "I didn't really understand if he was crazy or if it was the cat's spirit." This wasn't in a contemplative, I'll have to mull over the implications way. They were genuinely confused.

I realized that, in every spot of this little 30 to 45 minutes, where I hadn't been crystal clear on what was going on, the audience hadn't known either.

I thought I could leave some bits murky, but I lost them in every place I did.

Yeah, you know where this is going. I've completed the storyboard for The Body Gift. You can see it in all its Post-It glory above. I'm eliminating an entire POV, because its murky and I have a choice of de-murking (yes, that's a word) or nuking it. I'm not sure I can de-murk, so off it goes.

The pink and dark blue notes? Those are places where I'm not crystal clear on why the characters are doing and saying what they do and say. See, my particular curse as a writer is I follow the characters and write the story as it happens to them. This means that I have to find out things about their world that they don't tell me straight out. It doesn't feel to me like I get to make it up.

The writers who plot out ahead of time call us Pantsers, because they see us as flying by the seat of our pants. I prefer the term Mister. That's how it feels to me - like I sink into the mist and things come to me out of it.

It's just not always easy to get the exact right thing to come out when I want it.

But, it's clear I have to. Where I was murky on this story, the readers were confused.

Lesson learned.

And remind me next time.

Piecing It Together

I used to sew a lot. My grandmother was a great seamstress, so I suppose I come by it naturally. In my twenties, I really got into quilting. Some of them turned out pretty fabulous, too, including a King-Size Wedding-Ring quilt I made for a college roomie.

Eventually I had to quit. I quilted more than I wrote, so I finally gave it up. Following a dream requires sacrifices and that was one of mine.

When we moved, I even gave away my sewing machine, along with bags and boxes and piles of fabric. It really kind of broke my heart to see it go. But it was one of those table sewing machines and I absolutely knew there would be no place for it in the new house. Plus I wasn't sewing. I let it go with a pang, and a promise that if I did want to start sewing again, I'd get a snazzy portable machine.

I really hadn't given sewing much thought lately, largely because my attention has been on novel-writing, as it should be. But I used the old family Christmas-tree skirt this year, the one my mom forced me to take when we cleaned out her house. That's the skirt in the top picture. It used to be a white felt skirt, that my mom had everyone in the family sign. Then she embroidered the names in red yarn. We did that when I was about six or seven. Over the years, the white got dingy and stained from various pets and accidents. My mom asked me to cut it up, saving the embroidered names and make a new skirt that matched her living room. Which was *not* red and white.

So I pieced a skirt of mauve silk and burgundy velvet and appliqued the names with a bit of lace edging. I totally don't remember doing this, just that I did. So this Christmas I used it, as I hadn't thought I would. It took a bit of cleaning up and so I noticed what a good job I did on it. The seams are strong. It lays nicely, holding up well these twenty years later. I used beads from one of my grandmother's necklaces as buttons, with satin loops to hook them. Most of the people who signed it are dead now, so I'm glad we saved it.

It's funny to me to think that I probably could not do as good of a job on it today.

But I'm taking this class, with Alexandra Sokoloff, in an effort to learn her screenwriting tricks to better structure my novel. I needed to make a storyboard and, rather than run to the office supply store, I pulled out my grandmother's cutting and measuring board.

It's one of the few pieces of sewing equipment I kept, not only for sentiment, but because it's a really useful tool that is nearly impossible to find these days.
And now I'm laying out The Body Gift events on it. I've only just completed Act I and already I see things I couldn't before. Blue is the heroine's POV (point of view, for the uninitiated) and yellow is the hero's.

Yeah - I'm thinking I'm going to lose his POV altogether. A shocking move that may be exactly what the book needs. Then I'll applique and embroider in what's missing.

My grandmother loved to read, too.

Waffles for Breakfast

Quote of the Day from Crazy Lady at the Gym: "This frosty weather is messing with our gardens - it's not natural."

I had no words. Which is saying a lot for me.

My spooky Halloween decorations look cool at sunset though, don't they?

Clearly I'm feeling quite rambly today. I'm looking at my list of potential blog topics and none look interesting. My writerliness might be getting sucked into this new story I'm working on. It's called (right now) "Sapphire" and it's an erotic contemporary romance. An editor requested to see it, so I'm getting it all finished up. It's interesting how, because it's contemporary, I seem to be getting more into the thoughts and emotions. My modern career-gal, Taylor, has far more neuroses and hang-ups than virginal Amarantha did. Of course, they both get ravished just the same. Some things transcend era.

The big question is what to write next. I'm trying this schedule of spending three months drafting a long work, setting it aside for a month to "cook," writing something short, then spending a month revising, then another short. October sees the end of this "writing a short" month. (Okay, I'm running about a week behind -have been since July. You can dock my pay.)

What this means is: time to work on the next big project. And I'm not sure what that will be. Oh yes, I have a list. I have several manuscripts in various phases from a jotted-down idea to one that's 36K complete. Allison asked me which is tugging at me and I confessed it's still The Body Gift. I haven't quite cut that umbilical cord.

Of course, if I get an offer on it, I'll almost certainly be diving back in with revisions. That's pretty much inevitable. I know that, so that might be feeding in.

At any rate, I'm contemplating going back to a nonfiction project. Part of me thinks that, since I don't have any other strong tuggings, I should pick the project that's most marketable. Then I think, who am I kidding? If I was good at picking marketable projects, I'd be Nora Roberts. KAK has a vote in for me to finish the 36K one, which I might. It's also probably the most unsellable project under the sun, so I'm waffling...

See? I warned you I'm in a rambly mood today. Say, I don't solicit comments often, but let's play Vote on the Next Manuscript!

Here's the list: (I'm keeping each description brief, so as not to unduly bias my judges.) (And, no Marcella, none of these are good loglines, I know.)

The Daughters (36K done) - Fantasy, lots of sex magic, about girls being manipulated by a cult

Writers Group story - Nonfiction, 12 intertwined stories about women in my first writers group and how they ended up

St. Johns love story - contemporary romance, a woman travels to St.Johns because she falls in love with a singer's voice

Wendy story - literary fiction. 30 yo woman living in small-town Wyoming with parents

Sorority book - Nonfiction, intertwined essays (yeah, it's my thing right now) about women from my sorority, then and and the ensuing years, what sorority life was like

Papa book - narrative nonfiction, from the divorce scandal that banished my grandparents from theater mecca to the ashes of alcoholism

Post-apocalyptic vampire story - could be expanded?

Okay! What do you all think? Feel free to say you hate something, too. All suggestions welcome!

Continuous Partial Attention

This is a Colorado short-horned walking stick.

It lives in New Mexico, however. They normally stay camouflaged during the day and move around at night. This one was on our glass front door on Saturday morning. It never moved, even when we transferred it to a piece of paper. It embodies still stick-ness. Even looking at it in real life, it looks like a twig and not an animal.

So many variations in the world.

This weekend I cranked on The Body Gift. I managed to get myself in a bit of a bind: I'd queried a new agent on Friday, just to keep the ball rolling, and she emailed me back within the hour to request the full manuscript.

See, that just never happens.

Okay, clearly not "never," but very rarely. Usually they ask for something like the first 30 pages or the first three chapters or, if they're really interested, the first 100 pages. And really, no one else has answered me that fast.

So, while The Body Gift is finished (or I never would have queried otherwise, since it's a real no-no to query a book that isn't finished, since finishing a novel is never to be assumed), I was in the midst of rewriting the middle section. My work obviously cut out for me, I spent the weekend writing about 40 pages (a little over 8,000 words).

No, I don't think I could do this every day.

Well - maybe I could, if I wasn't working full-time. It would be interesting to see.

At any rate, my online community rallied 'round, sending me Facebook Mojo (which seems to work equally well for writing output as for white-blood cell count). Kerry was fortunately available to read for me as I went and Marcella, also revising, helped me brainstorm through some sticky spots. I pretty much parked myself under the grape arbor all weekend.

When my mom asked me, via instant messenger, how it was going, I said that just then Marcella was helping me brainstorm. My mom asked where she was. I said on her sailboat, but parked in the harbor, or she wouldn't have internet. My mom thought maybe Marcella was sailing and talking to me on the phone.

Absurd thought.

No, we don't talk on the phone. We're all about non-simultaneous conversations, which allows us to have continuous partial attention. My mom was terribly amused and requested that be today's blog post.

I live to serve.

And no, I didn't make up that phrase. Someone else did and I thought for sure I'd blogged about it before. But I looked through the blog and I can't find it. Turns out a casual Google search shows quite a few hits, so I'll let you do your own research, if you're fired up. Really, I think "they" all view it as a bad thing, because one never puts their full attention on one thing. For me it means that I have tools at hand that allow me to dip in and out of resources as I need to.

In return, I can be more easily "dipped into," because helping someone else doesn't require that I drop what I'm doing.

I realize this way of operating sounds appalling to some people. It has its benefits and drawbacks.

So many variations in the world.

Ant-Shadows

If the light is right, even an ant casts a long shadow.

This is very deep, I know, for a Monday. But isn't it cool how the ant-shadow has more visual substance than the ant itself?

I feel certain this means something.

It's funny to me that, after seriously pursuing writing for about 14 years now, I'm still discovering new things about my process. It shouldn't surprise me, because that is one way to define an art over a craft or simple production. An art should evolve and change over time, growing as the artist grows. Craft or production is simply producing the same thing over and over.

The martial artists talk about this. In simple exercise, you might engage in the same routine over and over. A martial art, such as Tai Chi or Pakua, should change over time as the practitioner's understanding changes, as new aspects are discovered and old ones discarded as no longer useful.

I've never been much of a reviser. I produce pretty clean drafts, which has always enabled me to skate by with the revising.

Yeah, I'm lazy.

But this new novel, The Body Gift, I knew I'd have to revise. It's complex, with many layers. I also think it's pretty good and I want it to really shine. As soon as I finished, I planned to turn around and revise.

And I just could not do it.

This surprised me, because when I have revised stuff before, it wasn't that big of a deal. Print out. Read out loud. Proof read. Incorporate reader comments. Bim bam boom. Not like it was rocket science or anything.

It was worse. Which is saying something because I am not an engineer by any stretch.

I found that I'd really drained my well and had nothing left to work with. I had no choice but to put the manuscript in the proverbial drawer. My readers had it anyway. I had other things to do. Fine then.

Now I've discovered that, after spending a month in the dark drawer, the book is ready for revising. I have perspective on it that I lacked before. Gone are all the swirly, lovely, pleased feelings I swam in while writing. Like wine fermented in the bottle, the book had ripened into something of its own. Something I can work with.

Kind of neat, actually.

All from just a different change in the light.

Sweet Peas and Gratitude

Remember back in March when I planted my sweet-pea seeds and wondered how they'd do here?

Oh yes - so very pretty.

I was all about planting the seeds then, about six weeks into what would become The Body Gift. Full of hope and uncertainty.

Now my sweet peas are blooming, The Body Gift is done, but I'm still waiting to gather my rosebuds.

(I know - I'm just full of poetic references these days. No, I have no idea why. I've been working on burning fat. Perhaps the old lines of poetry, like emotional energy and toxins get stored in the fat cells, too? When that cell is emptied, it all dumps into the bloodstream, pathos and literature together.)

What I'm reaping lately is favors. People have been helping me in a way that touches my heart. An author friend wrote an email to her agent introducing me and saying all kinds of nice things. An editor friend gave me a list of agents she likes and told me to drop her name at will. Another author friend maneuvered me at convention to sit next to agent and editor friends.

I'm supposed to be good with words, but they fail me on this.

To have people go so out of their way to help me - well, it moves me. I get a little teary about it. So many people complain about the cutthroat nature of publishing, the competition, the professional jealousy. It's the incredible generosity that stuns me.

The Body Gift has all the help she can ask for. Two of my readers promise me comments soon, so I can take action if the novel isn't snapped up.

If I don't hit it with this novel, it's not because no one cared.

Hope Is a Thing of Dorkiness

We're heading into good sunset season again.

Once again I'm reminded how lucky I am to be able to witness this from our front porch. Last night was a hot night, unusual for us. At about 10:30 I went and sat on the patio. Heat lightning flickered around the valley and the moon swam silver through black clouds. It felt lovely and peaceful.

I might be refilling the well for a while here. I feel considerably less depleted today, however.

I also managed to finish a big chunk of a project for the day job yesterday, so that made a huge difference.

And I sent The Body Gift off to the agent. No, not *my* agent, but my potential agent. The one I'd really like to work with. She's responsive, positive, really good at what she does and she likes me. When she finally rejected Obsidian, she asked me to "please, please query again." She's the one who called The Body Gift a stellar idea (stellar/sterling - I got mixed up. forgive me). I'd emailed her last week to find out her reading schedule and see if there was a good time to read it. She wanted me to send it right away, so she can read it before National (eep).

So I sent it yesterday morning. With a little "Here it is!" And I sat there and stared at my screen, sifting through all the things I wanted to add. Wanting to pour all my hopefulness and excitement onto this little email, which adds or changes nothing. And she knows how I feel anyway. Every agent knows how writers feel when we send our manuscripts.

Finally I typed, "I know this is silly to say, but I really hope you love it."

I know - I'm a dork.

But she replied later in the day, saying "Me too!"

Which is sweet of her. And it reminds me, should remind all of us of something that we forget. The agents really want to love our stuff. Every time they read our pages, they are also full of hope. Hope and anticipation that this will be something they can love and champion and hopefully sell for enough money that their 15% will buy more than a week's worth of groceries.

We take turns waiting on each other. They wait while we write. We wait while they read. Each of us hoping the other will come through.

Hope feels like such a silly thing, where cynicism feels so wise and mature.

But hope is what keeps us going.

Fragments of Something

I'm calling it "Fragments."

Yes, I finally did something with the pot Alex shattered. I planted some little heat-tolerant plants around it, too - they're just difficult to see in the photograph. All in all, I think it looks pretty decent. And I planted the roses, too.

I thought about calling it "Fragments of a Dream," but that seemed, well, spectacularly melodramatic, especially since there aren't any shattered dreams around here. So I decided to leave the title of my found art as just "Fragments" - that way the viewer can fill in his or her own thing that's disassembled.

I went through The Body Gift, too, and made everything match up (I think, I hope, I pray). Sent it to three of my Critique Partners and one, who hasn't seen any of it, has declared herself in love already. Big sigh of relief there. The agent I'd love to sign with said to send it so she could read it before the National convention, so I'm going to have to trust in the story and send her off soon.

Yeah, okay, I'm nervous.

And depleted.

My well is bone dry. I think I'll even take this week off from writing and not even look at any wordcounts. Plus, this will be a busy time. David's birthday is Wednesday. We go up to Denver for my high school reunion on Friday. Then next Tuesday, I head to the RWA National Convention.

Somehow my Julys always seem to end up really busy. Here's hoping for a lazy August!

Post-Partum

So: it's officially done.

The Body Gift was completed at lunchtime yesterday, bouncing into the world at 102,242 words, 460 pages.

Some of that is baby fat, of course, and will be shed in these first few days of polishing and tightening.

For the first couple of hours, I felt exhilarated, still riding the rush of the climactic scene, which turned out to be really exciting, even though I knew what would happen. Then I crashed. I felt bereft and lonely.

It was as if this huge bubble of a thing that had filled me up, with particular intensity these last few weeks, had suddenly departed. It's still there, but it's more like a hot air balloon tethered to me, rather than all that heat and color being in my heart.

This is a better analogy than the baby one. Victoria Dahl, a very fun romance author a great Twitter presence, has been on a rampage lately that books are not babies. She has a good point, that authors get themselves into trouble when they treat books like babies and not a commodity or a piece of art.

Still, this postpartum depression is real. Though dictionaries tend to define "postpartum" as "occurring after birth," the Latin word "partus" means a bearing, a bringing forth. Which fits this scenario.

As the evening wore on, I felt better. Little bursts of relief that it's done followed by intense paranoia that everyone will hate it. I get to go through now and make a few rules reconcile that I changed along the way, make sure all the correct seeds are in place. Then I'll cut my balloon free and see if anyone shoots it down.

Meanwhile, I need to tend the garden. It's doing okay, but not as well as last year, which is pretty much because I suck. Not at gardening in general - the irony is I once created a garden from scratch that was on our (admittedly small town) garden tour. Now I have these flowers I bought when my folks were coming for 4th of July weekend that I thought I'd plant to supplement the garden. But apparently I can't remember that days have passed since I watered them. They're looking quite scraggy now from drying out and I feel guilty because they were really gorgeous when I bought them. It's like I got a puppy from the pound and tied it up out back and forgot about it.

What? You know I have an overactive imagination!

At any rate, it's time for me to move back into the world instead of seeing the world of The Body Gift everywhere I look.

Move away from wordcount and into pages edited.

And get those roses planted already!

The Body Gift

I worked on the novel all weekend.

And it was good.

All day Saturday we sat under the grape arbor. I wrote, David worked on a project for his herb class and Isabel hunted a packrat through the grape vines.

All day, she hunted this rat. At one point, it came crashing through the leaves, hit the ground and dashed over to the massive climbing hydrangea to hide. That was a dramatic moment though. For the most part, her project was as quiet as ours: lots of stalking. The occasional creeping over the vines and wires, pink jellybean toes wrapping for purchase.

She sat in the sun on the adobe wall for so long she had to retreat to our shade and lie there, panting.

And I'm nearly done. I think I have about 25 pages to go. It's been slow-writing as I tie in each plot thread. Much like the beginning of the book, the ending has seemed to require that I immerse. I only wrote about 4,000 words over the weekend, but I was in it for hours all day Saturday and Sunday. When I started back in February, I did the same thing: low wordcount, lots of noodling.

I'm excited to see it come together like this, seeing moments from early in the story bear fruit.

I've decided on a working title: The Body Gift. The ending is confirming that choice, with all kinds of resonance. Of course, I don't delude myself that the title will make it all the way through publication, but I'm happy with it for pitching and querying.

But now: to finish.