Chased by a Manuscript

by Joan

I have a manuscript. I won't reveal which one. But it’s my addiction. It’s a vampire after my blood.

Every time I sent out a submission, I answered the question: Is this the best it could be? With a yes. But in my heart of hearts, and with hindsight? Of course it wasn’t. Of course it still isn’t.

Barnabas Collins, Dark Shadows

More than once I put it away, under the bed, in the bottom drawer, back shelf, whatever your go-to coffin is. But even after I start writing another book, it lures me near a dark shadow to bite me.

Once bitten, I’m back in its grip. I fix plot, tweak tension. I add humor or texture, remove adverbs and extraneous words, revise and restructure. I poke and prod it, yet it hangs on for dear life. It has teeth and goes for my neck.

And so I take it out from time to time (or every night, but who’s keeping track), hyper-analyze sentences, pump-up dialogue, brainstorm with my critique partners.

Maybe I’ll get it right. Maybe it’ll be my sophomore novel. Maybe it will go quietly into the night.

All I know is, the more I write, the more I learn. And the more I try and run from the bloodsucker, it hunts me down.

I’ve tried sunlight and a wooden stake. Maybe next time I’ll try fire.

Of Course, You Can Read My Manuscript, Dear. (Gulp.)

By Kim

Since finishing the manuscript for The Oak Lovers I’ve been through several rounds of critique and revision. I’d like to think I’ve developed a thick skin, that I can take most of what is thrown at me graciously, and consider comments carefully before deciding if I agree with them or not. I turned into a quivering mass of raw nerves, however, when I handed the novel over to a certain reader yesterday.

I sat at my desk pretending to work. Behind me I heard a lot of typing. This reader is not the type to give many “roses” and so he must be finding a lot of “thorns.” He likes science fiction, fantasy, espionage and high-octane stories with big body counts. The Oak Lovers has no alternate universes, car chases, gore, or doomsday scenarios. It’s a (gasp) love story, and the only political intrigue takes place within the Toronto art circles of the early 20th century.

I paint with words. My husband, Mr. PhD-in-physics, prefers to think in equation form.

Madonna Ahrens circa 1910

I knew he wouldn’t be familiar with a single historical figure in the book other than Carl and Madonna, and he only knows them because Carl’s art hangs on our walls and he sees their photographs on our walls. This artfully-posed nude photograph of Madonna playing a cello hangs within sight of his desk. When he encounters a sex scene, will he picture her a little too clearly and feel he must keep his eyes forever averted from that wall?

If an agent hates my book, there are always other agents. If my husband does, I’ll be heartbroken.

Five chapters in, he called me over to his desk and went over his comments. As I suspected, literary references went over his head. There aren’t many, they aren’t obscure, and they make sense in context, but the unfamiliar names tripped him up. He called the story “enjoyable” though, and he’s neck deep in the courtship phase, which will be the least interesting to him.

Much of what he brought up won’t be a problem in my genre and tripped up none of my other readers. I don’t discourage him from marking up the book, though. The fact that he points things out and takes the time to comment on more than a stray typo proves he loves me enough to read carefully, even if it isn’t his type of book. It shows he’s taking an interest in my work and has a vested interest in my success.

To my writer friends: At what point do you show your work to your spouse? What has your experience been?

Let's Get It Started

By Susan

As some of you may know, my husband is a fantastic cook. He plans a meal by spending hours kicked back, scanning Cook's Illustrated, his fingers delicately flipping pages until he smiles, "Ah ha. Yes. This is it." He starts with someone else's recipe, then sets the book aside and makes it his own.

He begins his biggest productions with appetizers: goat cheese and sun dried tomatoes with garlic oil on crustinis paired with the perfect wine. Or maybe an opening course of French onion soup, salty and earthy in a crock full of bread and covered in Gruyere. (To the left is a shot of his sauteed risotto cakes with marinara from scratch.) The beginning, he tells me, prepares the guest for the food to come. It sets the palate. It gives you a taste for the flavor of the meal. It takes research, attention to detail, and flavor.

In my quest for the best possible beginning for my manuscript, I held a mini-workshop for myself last night, and I thought I would share it with you. In many ways, your opening scene is your appetizer to your meal. As I set the tone for my story, I can't help but think about the way my husband plans a meal. If this is helpful, let me know!

Here were my self-imposed assignments:
Read The First Ten Pages of My Favorite Novels (Read the recipes)Here are some opening lines: (Can you match them with the author and title? See the end of the post for answers)

“My wound is geography. It is my anchorage, my port of call.”
“You better not never tell nobody but God. It’d kill your mammy.”
“When he was thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.”
“I became what I am today at the age of twelve, on a frigid overcast day in the winter of 1975.”
“At night I would lie in bed and watch the show, how bees squeezed through the cracks of my bedroom wall and flew circles around the room, making that propeller sound, a high—pitched zzzzzz that hummed along my skin.”
“Alice Della Rocca hated ski school.”

What can I learn from these writers and their opening scenes? What is the pace? What tone do these opening pages set for the entire work?

Decide What I Want to Say (What are my ingredients?)
1) Who do I want to introduce?
2) What theme do I want to share?
3) Is my goal to paint a picture of setting, character, plot or all three?

Determine My Audience (Prepare the Palate)
Am I writing to impress someone or writing to tell a story? (To tell a story). What is the story I am attempting to tell? Is that story succinct or fractured? What is the strongest possible scene that can create interest and get that message across? Is it a scene I’ve already written or do I need to start again?

Clean It Up (Attention to detail)Is my formatting correct? Do I have consistent errors, typos, and mistakes that I can’t see?

There's more to an opening scene than just clean grammar and the introduction of characters. I want to make sure I am true to the work, true to the tone, and true to the theme from the first page forward. Just like a fine dinner, I want my novel to be an experience. And I want to prepare the reader, just as my husband prepares dinner guests, for a fantastic meal.

In your own work, revisit your beginning. Does it showcase your story and make the reader want more? The answer is one you may never know. Just don't allow self-doubt to cripple your voice. Write what you love, and write it because you love it. Hopefully, others will love it too.

Answers to opening lines:

Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides

Alice Walker, The Color Purple

Harper Lee, To Kill A Mockingbird

Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees

Paolo Giordano, The Solitude of Prime Numbers

A visit with author Tanya Egan Gibson

A few years ago, I corresponded with Tanya Egan Gibson online at Absolute Write Water Cooler. Now I get the chance to tell you about the paperback release of How To Buy a Love of Reading and share some writerly tips from Tanya.


















From Booklist:
Carley Wells is a high-school junior at a private school in upscale Fox Glen, where families spend an undue amount of time and money outdoing each other’s party budgets. Carley is overweight by 57 pounds (according to her personal trainer), “intellectually impoverished” (according to her English teacher), and has never read a book she liked. Worried about college applications, Carley’s parents (who never read themselves) commission a book for her—a book whose author will be ensconced in their mansion and shown off at Carley’s Sweet Sixteen party—as evidence of the Wells’ “devotion” to good literature. While Carley and “The Author” collaborate on the book, Carley continues to struggle scholastically and socially—especially with her best friend, Hunter, a senior chick magnet with whom she has a deep but platonic relationship. Hunter’s own problems have led to excessive Scotch binges and a Vicodin addiction, unbeknownst to his clueless and apparently uncaring mother. Brimming with literary allusions, commentary on the rich and famous, and the necessary ingredients for a successful novel, Gibson’s ingenious debut succeeds on many levels. --Deborah Donovan

Joan: I found the book to be much more than a story about the indulgent habits of wealthy parents and kids. There were some very touching universal sentiments, such as, “It’s not about money…It’s about someone’s less being her everything,” and “The worst thing in the world, she’d think later, was having to unlearn the lies you’d believed in.” How did you weave these ideas in so seamlessly, without coming across as melodramatic?

Tanya: Well, first of all, thank you for the compliment. I find writing highly emotional scenes (and having characters say or think emotionally loaded statements) to be a balancing act—because while I do worry about coming off as mawkish, I’m equally concerned about not going far enough. If you’ve ever read a book or seen a TV show where a character “kind of” feels things but doesn’t go all-out, you know what I mean. I would actually rather err on the side of melodrama than lack-of-drama. (More than anything, I read to feel.)

For me, big emotional statements like the ones you quote above have to arise naturally from what a character is experiencing, or else they ring false. That is, it wouldn’t work for me to come up with a statement like that because I like the way it sounds or I felt it or whatever and then try to reverse-engineer circumstances, dialogue, or thoughts to make that statement happen. The context of the first of the two quotations above, for instance, is Carley, a teenager, being really pissed off at Justin, an adult, for being insensitive to other people’s emotions—in particular the feelings of Bree, the author who has been commissioned to write a book for Carley. But Carley is not just annoyed at Justin—she’s really annoyed at everybody (including Bree herself and including Hunter, her best friend who she loves as more-than-a-friend) for being insensitive to who she is. She makes this “big” emotional statement because her frustration at people not understanding each other has built up until this point where she can finally express it. When I wrote those words, they felt like Carley’s (I could hear them in her voice), not mine.

Joan: Excellent point. And I think I might be guilty of that reverse-engineer thing you mentioned! Now, did you always know you’d work in the Great Gatsby parallels or did that come during revisions?

Tanya: I didn’t start doing it consciously, but once I started discovering that they were there, I went with it. I ended up reading a huge amount about Fitzgerald, and Zelda, and their contemporaries while writing this book—much of which was quite heartbreaking—and I reread FSF’s novels as well as much of his shorter work.

Joan: As in Gatsby, some of your characters are not very likeable, yet you managed to make them interesting. Did you worry that you had too many unlikable characters?

Tanya: You know, you ask really good questions. Just saying. Anyway, yes, I did worry about this a bit, but I hoped (and continue to hope) that readers would appreciate the difference between characters who try to change and characters who don’t. And, of course, at least one character who wants to change but can’t find the courage to do so. Whether change is indeed possible is an important concept in Gatsby. (Is one’s past escapable?) It’s a question I wanted to explore in HTBALOR as well.

Joan: Well, they’re all very complicated characters, which makes for lots of conflict! I like the way we learn of Hunter’s backstory—through an attempt at a college essay. As writers, we hear so much about keeping backstory to a minimum—but in HTBALOR, it’s backstory that shapes your characters almost as much as their present behavior. Was that intentional?

Tanya: In a word, yes. I was very conscious of all edicts about not letting backstory take over the story, but for me this story was all about backstory. So much of what dictates the characters’ actions—the lies that have been told, the affairs that have been had, the things that should have been said (but weren’t), Hunter’s descent into addiction, Carley’s loss of faith in her parents—actually happens before the story opens. The challenge for these characters is getting past their backstories and making new things happen in their presents. I think that in the real world, too, the past exerts a pull on us that can make moving forward a very difficult thing.

Joan: Very true. As writers, we struggle with how to write believable, yet unpredictable, endings. In my opinion, the ending to HTBALOR was perfect. Unexpected yet really the only logical ending. Did you always know how the story would end?

Tanya: I actually changed the ending of HTBALOR several times, though I always knew what the settings of the climactic scene and the epilogue would be. Since I don’t want to end up “spoiling” the ending, I won’t go into great detail about those plot points, but here’s how/why I ended up with the climactic event that I agree is probably the only organic ending: my agent suggested I get rid of a secondary character that she didn’t think added to the story. (In that draft of the novel, Justin had a beautiful, popular, and not-quite-sane teenage sister who Hunter was dating.) That character was integral to the original climax of the book, so when I agreed to remove the character altogether, I knew I’d have to brainstorm a new climax. While going through a mental list of “what if’s” I landed on an option I had never seriously considered—one I guess I hadn’t wanted to consider. I remember crying when I wrote the new scene—in part because it was a highly emotional scene, but also in part because it felt so right to write it.

Joan: Many writers, myself included, are relieved (and scared!) to know how much rewriting goes into a manuscript after we think we’re done. Your story is told in multiple POVs. Did you receive any resistance from your agent or editor on this?

Tanya: The draft I first brought to Susan Golomb (my agent for HTBALOR) was even more complicated in terms of POV: in addition to the third person multiple POVs, Carley’s sections were consistently told in first person, present tense—the viewpoint that Carley tells Bree, in a letter near the end, is the only way she can write because it feels most real, immediate, and honest to her.

Because there was already so much going on in terms of structure, devices etc., I understood why Susan wanted me to normalize Carley’s POV (which ended up helping me smooth out some sections, too, since it felt too jumpy to move from the third to first person—plus switch tense within the same scene). However, I did stay with the tense switch in the Aftermemory scenes (which you mention below), where Carley imagines her alternative universe in the present tense.

Joan: I’m intrigued by the question Carley asks Justin: If you could go back and change something you said—something that would make everything different afterward—what would it be? Is there something you did or didn’t do, pre-published, that you wish you could change?

Tanya: Not really. Writing and publishing and all—it’s a process. I’ll be a stronger writer with my next book, and I’ll have more experience with the whole publishing thing. But you only get better, in my own experience, by muddling through and pushing forward. Are there things I could have/should have done differently or better? Sure. But I did the best I knew how to do.

Joan: I love the concept of Aftermemory and how the theme comes into play a lot, and especially makes the ending bearable for Carley. In another interview you mention how you came up with this concept. Can you tell us a little about it here?

Tanya: I really admire people who can think on their feet, who say the witty thing at a cocktail party or deliver the perfect line in a dinner-table debate. But I am not one of them. By the time I put into words what I really wanted to say, the party is over. So back when I was a high school English teacher, I thought it was really interesting that one of my students told me that she spent a lot of time daydreaming about her social life and replaying scenes, changing what happened into what might have been. (This student also told me she’d never read a book she liked.)

Years later, when I started writing the book, I knew Carley would do this, replay scenes in her head, but I didn’t give her private universe a name until Glen David Gold, an author I greatly admire, read a section at Squaw Valley Community of Writers and cautioned me that a character who seems unlikeable at the beginning of the novel needed to have some special quality or skill that would make readers empathize with her or want to like her. When I pointed out that her revisiting-the-past as a special skill, he said I hadn’t emphasized it enough. He suggested playing it up and giving it a name. And so I did: Aftermemory.

Joan: I think it’s Justin who says, “Turns out all you need to become a famous writer is to want it enough.” Oh, if that were only true! Was your decision to write this as meta-fiction influenced by a desire to target writers as readers?

Tanya: It’s a great question—no one has ever asked me that! I don’t think it was conscious (I wasn’t thinking explicitly about either readership or marketing while I was writing it), but now that you say it, I suppose it’s a book that resonates differently with writers than other people. I find it interesting that often writers seem to be more interested in Bree than in Carley. (I, as a writer, was not more interested in Bree—which is why she is not the protagonist.)

I wrote HTBALOR as meta-fiction because I have had a love/hate relationship for a really long time—all the way back to high school, when I read Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead and was fascinated by the idea that the characters realized, on some level, that they were in fact in a play and were doomed to repeat their roles over and over. Around the same time, I read Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five and loved the idea that telling the reader at the end of the first chapter how the whole book would end (Poo-tee-weet?) added to the emotional punch of the ending rather than detracting from it. I was very lucky to have encountered these particular pieces—both of which are very emotionally resonant at that age. Later, in graduate school, I felt like a lot of meta-fiction I met was emotionally bereft—way too cerebral—but still I was fascinated by it. Thus, the conflicting feelings about meta- that, in part, HTBALOR explores.

Joan: Interesting. I noticed that you speak about Revision in workshops. I’m curious about the idea of “deepening” rather than just “changing” your writing. Can you give us a few tips!

Tanya: Revision, for me, is a lot like Aftermemory. You get countless do-overs. You don’t have to stick to the sensible or the expected. You can write outrageous things! Try out crazy points of view! Do weird stuff you’re not supposed to be able to do in a first novel! It gives you license to be brave. It also lets you get rid of all the boring stuff. For example, do you have a scene where people are talking in a restaurant? Restaurants are boring! Go invent a crazy, fun setting for these people. The nice thing is you already have the people and even the conversation. So now you can concentrate on putting them someplace more exciting where the conversation and action is likely to get more exciting as well.)

Joan: I love that advice, especially using the license to be brave! And I’ll think of Aftermemory every time I’m revising now! Your website shows a section where people can submit stories about how reading changed their lives. How did reading change your life? Was there one particular book that pushed you over the edge toward wanting to be a writer?

Tanya: I don’t know that there was one particular book, though I’ve mentioned a couple in an earlier question that were very important to me. As for how reading changed my life, it made me believe that anything was possible, and it has made me feel connected to strangers—connected to other people in general. I’m shy by nature (though I’m one of those introverts who pretends to be an extrovert, like Hunter in HTBALOR, and which probably makes me end up harder-to-read than just being regular-shy might make me), and I’m not always good at connecting with people. (They kinda scare me.) But reading reminds me that other people are just people, like me.

Joan: I can relate to that! HTBALOR just came out in paperback. When can we expect your next book and can you tell us a little about it?

Tanya: I’m writing a novel that (for now) I call Lands. (It’s probably a good idea not to get too attached to a title, as the author doesn’t necessarily get to choose it. The original title for HTBALOR was A Book For Carley.) It’s about an eighteen-year-old former competitive figure skater who ends up skating in the ice show in a underwater-themed amusement park—wearing a full-body jellyfish costume. The longer she is in the park, the more she starts to suspect that there is something “enchanting” about the park that goes beyond mere illusion.

Joan: Now that’s outrageous! And Lands sounds like it will be a great read! Thank you for taking the time to stop by What Women Write. Readers, head off to the bookstore (virtual or real!) to pick up HTBALOR! And make sure you stop by Tanya’s website—it’s very cool!

Back where I began (Sort of)

By Julie

Last week, for the first time in more than 20 years, I visited Denver, the closest thing I have to a hometown.

The main purpose for my stay was a three-day Immersion Master Class taught by Margie Lawson out of her beautiful log home above Denver in Coal Creek Canyon.

The class was a great opportunity to dig deep, one final time, into my current manuscript, to take it apart, bit by bit, and put it back together shinier than it's ever been. I'm still applying what I learned, but hope to be querying again soon.

My visit was also an opportunity to reminisce -- to see some of the neighborhoods I roamed when I was developing my love of reading and writing, and to catch up with not only old friends who influenced the person I am while I lived there, but new friends I've made in recent years via the Internet.

It was bittersweet at times. My years in Colorado were not the easiest ones of my life, but there were also good memories made there, and I recognize that my writing is largely a product of that time.

Driving through Cherry Creek, the neighborhood where I lived while attending high school, was a true test of my memory. Most of the businesses from those years are gone, replaced by trendy shops, offices, and lofts.

Developers had bulldozed the odd little house where I lived with my mother and brother, together with the house next door, the lots covered now by a small, but beautiful condominium complex.

The sign for the one of the original Village Inn Pancake Houses, which appeared in the first novel I attempted to write, still hangs outside the building, but the windows are dark. Perhaps the owners found more opportunity in their suburban locations, but I remember a time when a trip to the Cherry Creek Village Inn was a special treat.

The original Cherry Creek locations of the famous Tattered Cover bookstore serve other purposes now, just as the new store on Colfax formerly housed the Helen Bonfils Theater. I attended plays there as a student on field trips. It was bizarre, but fun to see the comfortable reading nook created from the former orchestra pit. (photo, left)

My hostess for my visit, a friend and fellow writer I met through an online writing class more than three years ago, lives in a neighborhood that used to be an Air Force base. "Back in the day," we had to drive miles out of the way to get to anything on the other side – now you can drive straight through while admiring the modern, multi-use community.

A visit to Boulder, where I spent my late elementary school years, brought an emotional "aha" moment. We parked in a city lot to spend an hour or so at a coffee shop in the Pearl Street Mall for one-on-ones with Margie, then eat dinner at the Boulder Dushanbe Tea House.

My throat thickened when I recognized the Boulder Public Library at the end of the lot -- my safe haven during a time when I'd moved from one part of the country to another and struggled to fit in, which seemed to become my theme, more or less, during my years in Colorado. (photo, right)

The librarians watched me arrive each week, nearly collapsing under the maximum number of books I could check out. They'd ask if I really read all those books, mock disbelief on their faces, but I knew they were delighted I was there. I suspect this influenced my decision to obtain my master's of library science degree eventually.

Strangely, I have no memory of the mountain that forms the backdrop for the building. As one of my classmates said that night, it was probably just wallpaper at the time. It took me completely by surprise.

I could go on, but it might take all night and a day besides to take you on the whole sentimental journey. Instead, let me ask you: What visits have you made to places years later, when they were hardly recognizable to you, yet as familiar as ever? Have these places appeared in your writing? Did you find, as I did, that not only have the physical locales shown up, but also the emotions you experienced during those times? Leave a comment and share if you'd like.

An advertisement for Margie – she teaches various classes online and in person. They're worth the hard work and money invested. I do believe the woman has more energy than anyone I've ever met.

If you take one of her Immersion classes, you might just get to see this view (which I used this week to make a new header for the blog!) on a quick hike to clear your brain from all the hard work you're doing.

Check out her website: www.margielawson.com

Magic Voice

from Joan

You have the perfect idea for a novel and complete your first draft. You revise and tweak it, conjuring the perfect concoction. You’ve instilled your magic voice.

Before you submit, you test it on your critique partners and anxiously await the results. Then your agent and editor scurry into the lab and Voilà! Out comes an even more alien brew. With enough riffing, the creation you deemed nearly perfect is saturated with remarks that read like Mystery Science Theater 3000 commentary: “You forgot the eye of newt,” or “No, your monster wouldn’t spare the girl. He’d chomp off her arms,” or “Turn back!”

Why didn’t I think of that? you reflect, and accept the change. Brilliant! you think, and incorporate another. I was going to write it that way, you justify.

Most likely, none of your advisors are mad scientists, just benevolent associates who want to see your book on the shelves. But, writer, beware! Pretty soon the concoction is theirs, not yours. Pretty soon you’ll need line-by-line credits in your acknowledgments.

If you’re lucky, your beta readers will suggest revisions without making it their own. My writing is better because of my brilliant critique partners. Even if I don’t agree with all they suggest, I learn from their input and I hope they concur. But sometimes I make a suggested change because it sounds better, only to discover later that the line or word sticks out. It’s not my voice.

My advice: Don’t write by committee; retain your story. Know when to turn back, take the intent of well-meaning suggestions, and mold them into your magic voice.

Save the riffing to the guys who brought you Mystery Science Theater 3000. (For hilarious new commentary from Michael J. Nelson of MST3K go to Rifftrax.com)