Annie Sez It

This week's Facebook Find, from Anne Lamott's page:

Amen, sister.

"Publication and temporary creative successes are something you have to recover from. They kill as many people as not. They will hurt, damage and change you in ways you cannot imagine. The most degraded and sometimes nearly-evil men I have known were all writers who'd had bestsellers. Yet, it is also a miracle to get your work published. Just try to bust yourself gently of the fantasy that publication will heal you, will fill the Swiss cheesey holes. It won't, it can't. But writing can. So can singing."

You Search for It Until It Finds You

When I was a young hormone, I once asked my father for advice on winning a girl's heart. I must have really liked that girl, because broaching such a topic with my father, at that age, was about as uncool and desperate an act I could imagine.

He started well.

"Chase her," he said. "Until she catches you."

That took me a minute. Gradually, strategies no doubt completely at odds with my father's meaning started  taking shape within the lines of my one-track mind. Show interest, but not too much. Call her, but a little later than you said you would. Look cool, not needy. I thought that maybe the old man was on to something. Then he blew it. He suggested I ask her to meet me at the library. 

The library? A girl? On a date? Um, right. Thanks, Dad.

I was reminded of this scene the other morning when something I'd been pursuing finally caught me. For weeks, I'd been trying to nail down the premise for a story. My efforts included exhaustive lists of themes that I find most interesting, the things I most like to read: relationships, betrayals, redemption, coming of age, death, change, sex, character development, endurance, individualism, families, friendships, loneliness, regret, hope, fear, triumph, defeat. Nothing seemed to be working. I started paging through my advice books: Lamott, Lerner, King, Zinsser, Burroway, Truby, Brande, Goldberg, Gardner. I outlined Campbell's Hero With a Thousand Faces, Vogel's Writer's Journey. I started and abandoned outlines, made notes on plot, character, conflict, inciting incidents, climaxes, cute meets, story beats, red herrings, beginnings, endings, middle acts. Created and discarded dozens of index cards. Scribbled madly in my writer's-block journal. And with each attempt, doubt grew. I saw the road ahead. Depression. Surrender. The writing on the ash-filled urn: Close, But No Cigar.

And then, as I stared out the window after staring at the blank computer screen after staring at my empty coffee cup after waking that morning convinced I was the Sahara of Inspiration, the Death Valley of Compelling, the Blue Hole (Ohioans will understand) of ideas: Boom. It slapped me a few times so that I could see it clearly. And in answer to my question, it said, "Been here the whole time, dumb ass. You were just too needy."

So wish me luck.  Bon voyage. Safe trip. Happy trails. Here we go.

And thanks, Dad.

De-obsessing

"What is that feeling when you're driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? It's the too-huge world vaulting us, and it's good-bye."

Jack Kerouac, ON THE ROAD

***

 For the past two-and-a-half years, I've been obsessed with the internal and external lives of the characters in my work-in-progress. I finally finished the story and sent it off to my agent. And so begins the waiting. And yes, Mr. Petty, the way-yay-ting is indeed the hardest part.


In the meantime, I've been fiddling around with some new story ideas. But what's surprised me is how much I've already let go of the characters that I've lived with 24/7 for a thousand days or so. Oh, I know I'll be spending plenty of quality time with them after my agent and editor read and (please, God, please) accept the manuscript. But in my mind, the characters are pretty much pacing the waiting room, bags packed. They're itching to escape the danger of yet another change to their appearance or motivation. They're tired of words being put in their mouths, of constantly being asked if their actions and reactions are realistic or "in character."  Some of the secondary characters are especially nervous, knowing that if it's decided they're not pulling their weight in pushing the story forward, they'll fall into the already over-crowded pit managed by that Charon of the keyboard, Delete.

I'm eager to make sure my beloved characters are in the best possible shape before sending them out into the world. But for quite awhile now, they've been the uninvited guests at the King house, occupying my thoughts in the early and late hours and, more often than not, during breakfast, lunch and dinner. They've dominated the conversations on "date nights" with my wife, and my children are becoming less and less tolerant of my grumpy battles with the main character. It's nearing time to say good-bye.

It will be nice for a while. A bit freeing, actually. But I know that soon things will start to get a little too quiet around here and it'll be time to meet some new friends. In fact, just this morning while shaving, I met an interesting character in a terrible predicament who needs a place to stay for a day or so. Or maybe a thousand.

Revision Update: How Novels Turn Into Short Stories

Well... not exactly. But you get the idea.

My first draft was up at about 110,000 words. Today I completed the fourth draft, and the word count is down to 93,743.

Not every one of those 16,000-or-so cuts hurt... but a lot of them did. Still, the story is a lot sharper and stronger as a result--which, of course, is much more important than word count.

Draft Four is now in the hands of my First Reader. Will there be a Fifth Draft?

Revision Update: Draft Three Complete

Big day today: I completed the third draft of my next novel. It's now in the hands of my first reader, my wife, Joanne. This is the first time she's read the entire story. Until today, she's only seen Chapter 1. My biggest challenge will be to resist hovering nearby while she reads.

And continuing with my strange fascination with the effect of my revisions on word count, as you can see from the graph below, the third draft claimed many of my darlings.

More Revisions, More Mayhem

People have been asking how my novel's going. Here's a visual update of the third draft so far, based on word count:

Revisions: Killing My Not-So-Sexy Darlings

For no particularly good reason, I've been tracking my progress with the third draft of my work-in-progress by charting the effect of my revisions on word count.

When I started last month, the word count stood at 103,095 words, down about 5,000 from my second draft. I began the third draft by adding more than 2,000 words. This is not the direction most revisions are supposed to go. After all, there's an old saying that when you revise, you have to "kill your darlings"; in other words, eliminate anything that doesn't move the story forward, no matter how well written you think it is or how attached to it you might be.

When the word count peaked at 105,601 words, the killing began. Gradually, at first. Then I hit the 104k mark. At that point, I was up to Chapter Seven. This was the chapter I had been thinking of as the "Sex Chapter" for reasons you can probably guess. As the chart shows, it was there that I embarked upon a rather murderous rampage. Some of those scenes, which I thought were pretty good when I wrote the second draft, made me cringe when I read them in preparation for revision. Cutting pages that you may have spent days or weeks or even months writing isn't easy. But in this case, I took up the task gratefully. This wasn't killing darlings. This was mercy killing.

The trend continues. I'm now about halfway through the manuscript and the word count stands at just above 100,000. I know from my previous drafts that I still need to add another scene or two for continuity in later chapters, so the count may climb once again. But I also know that there are still plenty of not-so-sexy darlings in the remaining chapters. There will be blood.