Loose Ends and Odds and Ends

Posted on March 15, 2011 by joanneeddy

I hate “springing ahead” and losing an hour of sleep, especially on a busy weekend when we were traveling. Today when we got back home I tried to catch up on e-mail. Writer’s Digest has a free internet version of their journal with great articles for would be writers which I would recommend to everyone. One article today was on Improving Your Blog. Among the suggestions: blog minimally one time per week, with a goal of daily. I’m not sure how I could blog on that level and make it meaningful while still writing anything of significance. But I can try for once a week, at least for now while I am betwixt and between books, and don’t have editing to do yet. I am not a patient waiter so while I am not chewing my fingernails off, or nagging those who are reviewing my book, not hearing is anxiety producing. I thought the book was so good they wouldn’t be able to put it down and would be instantly calling with rave reviews…so much for that hope! But I am working to stay convinced of the quality of The Call and not let my edginess inch me into a self-critical place. So blogging can be a tension reducer, I guess. Or a goad to start Book Two! Or just the impetus to finally begin the memoire/essay I need to start soon on my 9 11 experience…if I really want it published! I definitely need to tie a knot and hang on until my reviewers get back to me….and tie together the loose ends of my writing while I am at it!

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Next steps on my quest…

Posted on March 9, 2011 by joanneeddy

My grandchildren will never know what it was like without computers. My kids probably barely remember when we got a computer, if they do. My husband was the techie computer nerd guy. Not me. I love computers and have learned lots of programs for my job, so not horribly intimidated or anything, but that I would have a blog or a website, or Author’s Page on Facebook, or be looking into how to add a Facebook link to this blog, no way! Wow!

Yesterday I was researching as it seems I do endlessly for pointers on my query letter, on agents, on writing a great synopsis, and I came upon a great blog. I read several entries on getting published and then one on digital books…the wave of the future.  And then on needing to create a Facebook Link to your blog.  And here I thought I was ahead of the game because I followed the advice of Vernon Fueston, the leader of my writer’s group and actually created a blog.  Now doing an author’s page…I wonder if I can just post here and link the post to my Author’s page.  Boy I sure hope so!

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That Nagging Little Doubt….Becomes a Re-edit!

Posted on March 4, 2011 by joanneeddy

After starting The Call I left the job I had held for 10 years and the agency that had been a home to me for even longer to move to North Carolina.  I took a new position as an Executive Director of a Public Health collaboration and worked away for two more years in spare minutes of time on the book.  Over and over I reread and edited. I lost my position due to the state budget cuts a year ago. That gave me time to finish the work and as I broke the book into parts, at some point I did not reread Part One as frequently.  Yet every time I did I had a nagging little doubt about Chapter One which contained a flashback and a lot of character introduction.

They say that your first chapter is your most important, your first sentence the most critical. The reader has to be drawn in and I have a two page Prologue that I hope entices the reader to go deeper.  But Chapter One is still pretty critical, and for more than the reader.  Perhaps I should say it is vital to whether you will ever have a reader. Why? If you do get to send a part of the book to an agent or publisher the most I have ever seen that you can send with your query letter is the first fifty pages.  Often you can send ten pages or less, or only a synopsis. They have to be grabbed and they read lots and lots of ‘good’ books.  To be published you have to be better than just good, especially Chapter One.  The more I moved toward queries and submissions the more that nagging doubt about the flashback became deeper.

Barely had my writing partner, William Walton, read the first chapter of the ‘draft review’ book, but the same concern about it struck him as well. I don’t know how we had never discussed it, maybe I just didn’t want to change that beginning chapter. I had a kind of attachment to it.  When I finished it, getting it on paper made me believe that someday my book would exist. And by the time I finished Chapter Fourteen and the Epilogue I wanted to be done! So it was strange that when he told me I had been over-ambitious in introducing so many characters, and that the flashback slowed down the pace of excitement I had created by the Prologue, I felt relieved. You can never fix something you won’t admit is there. That nagging doubt was there, real and had to be dealt with.  So…..

Chapters One and Two have been rewritten!  Already.  In fact the two copies I was mailing out got revised before I even sent them!  I now feel so much better about Chapter One…though cutting out the flashback and putting the info it conveyed and the characters into Two slowed that Chapter very slightly, the gains for One are worth it. And Two is fine.

Another learning experience, when in doubt over something don’t think you are done…Doubts are there for a reason. I just so wanted to be done.  But now I am content with the revision. Calm. I am even okay with waiting to hear from the other reviewers. Their feedback is just the next hurtle.  Acknowledging the ‘nagging doubt’ was a much bigger obstacle.  Hidden and unvoiced it could have derailed my efforts to be published. Revising and removing it was amazingly easier than I thought.

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On Missing My Book…What Happens When You Are Done?

Posted on February 16, 2011 by joanneeddy

I have experienced several times in my life what people sometimes call transitions, where I ended something I had worked on hard. The one that stands out strongest was when I finished my Masters. While I was working on it, because I needed the money, I had a full-time job despite having two kids and a husband. My first year (30 hours) I could do part-time. My last ‘year’ (September – May) had to be done full-time. So I just knuckled down and did it (probably was how I learned to eat elephant!) I just never got more than 4 hours sleep a night. When I finished I celebrated being done and I felt free. I had a little sense of oddness at not having to have every single minute of time filled being busy at something, but it felt good. But the oddness of not having my book to work on is very different. It is more like missing a friend whom I loved to spend time with who is no longer there.
I have filled the time. I have done a little more of the research on Book Two of my series. I mailed out two manuscripts to friends/reviewers, which felt pretty good…but I am still missing my book, the intimacy of constant contact. Don’t know if other writers/authors feel this way, but I do, and I didn’t expect it. And maybe I should have. Whenever I have read a book I really loved I have always felt some regret when I finished it, some emptiness at not having reading it to look forward to. This feeling is close to that but is even stronger, of course, because The Call is heart of my heart, bone of my bone. What an interesting journey! So glad I took this trip!
Excerpt
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The Rules of Getting Published: How do you eat an elephant?

Posted on February 3, 2011 by joanneeddy

People come to me (in my therapy practice) all the time with issues that feel (and often are) overwhelming. They struggle, way too often feeling that they have to either solve the entire issue at once, or it is hopeless. And they get lost in that all or nothing dichotomy. I always remind them of the old joke: How do you eat an elephant?  Answer: One bite at a time.  Translation: You need a step by step plan.

So like Lord Edmond I have one. If you say you are not a planner, like many creative people, let me tell you, that is not my basic personality either. But even if it wasn’t naturally a gift of mine, I have learned that skill through years of running programs and the major division of a large agency.

You can learn this too. There is info on getting published all over the web. My research convinced me I needed a plan to get published and made me believe you will need one too, unless lightening strikes you. (Though it can.) But for me I am betting it won’t, so…

My plan can be reduced down to a number of steps:
1)DO the work. Research, know your topic!
2) CREATE  Get the first draft completed to a satisfactory level. I worked closely with my writing partner and my writing group. You need early input. Rarely are we objective about our work.
3) REVISE, reexamine, and reedit, shorten, tighten, find the pauses (see earlier post).
4)BROADEN the critique by having the manuscript read and edited by a wider audience. I have solicited ‘experts’ on writing, and on specific elements in my book (horses, herbs, medieval life/faires) and some general readers for pacing/enjoyment/clarity.
5) PROCESS  Evaluate all the critiques, let them resonate. Do not be defensive or write them off….if you cannot sell your self-selected audience you will not sell the general reading public.
6) RE-EDIT make changes based on your assessments of the validity of the comments.
7) FIND the right agent/editor. Do your homework. Know your subject. Maximize your chances of success by selecting the best match for your work.   (Remember: You will still be rejected.) 8)QUERY  Write specific Query Letter(s) that match the targeted person(s) you have selected and go through a comparable process getting feedback/editing your letter.
9) SUBMIT and don’t get discouraged. You will probably be rejected. DON”T GIVE UP
10) PARTNER  Work WITH the agent/publisher who selects you. Do not be defensive. Your book will be a child you share with them. They will be an ‘adoptive’ parent. Do what they suggest to help ‘your’ child. Create the blog, find the venues to publicize yourself and your work, DO WHAT IT TAKES.

SO, TO PUBLISH: You must believe to succeed. KNOW you will all the way down to your toenails! You can eat an elephant!

So that is my plan….you don’t have to follow mine, but I think we all need one.

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Over the Moon: From virtual book to actual reality

Posted on February 3, 2011 by joanneeddy

I got a little derailed by Christmas and lots of snow…but used January to read through and edit the whole book, twice! Finally I had a review draft ready to send to my volunteer readers/editors. Which meant I began to print the end of January.

I have spent almost three years writing and six to nine months before that researching and deciding I would write. I have read and reread chapters, rewritten some of them of them pretty seriously, done more research, edited and edited again and again. I thought I celebrated when I actually believed the book was ‘done.’ But I was not prepared for what it felt like to have a completed copy of the entire book in my hands. The closest that I have been able to describe it, is that it felt like it did when after nine months of pregnancy (and the kicks and sleepless night and equipping a nursery, etc to make it real), they handed my first baby to me. The reality of the ‘pregnancy’ was swept away by the living presence of my son. To hold the manuscript of The Call made my heart flutter, my pulses race, and the tears rush to my eyes (OK, like Lis, my heroine, I held them off.) It was amazing. I truly felt awesome. Not the awesome we blithely say all the time, but awe filled. Actual breath taking feelings in my chest.

If now or later any fledgling writer ever reads this I want to say…despite all that it took to get here, this is worth it. Sometimes it felt like I would write and write and never be done, never have something that felt finished, or good. I slogged through at times when I was stuck and couldn’t find the bridge between chapters, or events or between where a character was and where I wanted them to be. I am so glad to be here, so glad I kept on writing even when I couldn’t see myself getting to where I am today. That despite job pressures, family ‘stuff’, I kept at it. The reality of having done it, held it, is overwhelmingly better than I imagined. Keep at it….you will be overjoyed that you did!

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These Precious Days

Posted on December 15, 2010 by joanneeddy

Looking over my my last posts, it’s hard to realize where the time has gone.  An old song from my mom’s era came to me as I read the entries, The September Song:   “Oh, it’s a long, long time from May to December, but the days grow short when you reach September…..Oh the days dwindle down to a Precious few, September, November, but these few precious days I‘ll spend with you.”

So the news is I have a complete draft of my book done.  Prologue, fourteen chapters, Epilogue and Appendix including a Timeline and Family Trees.  I am hovering around 130,000 words and editing and cutting.  I originally planned to be done in the summer and have hard-copies out and returned by December…..then I was going to be done by September…then October…then here I am.  But the news is good because I at least have a complete work…it’s a work in process but it is still moving forward!  Never give up is certainly a motto meant for me.  So the days of this year dwindle down to a last precious few and I ‘plan’ to get my hard copies out by the first week of January.  Hopefully, done and published in 2011.  Now me, being me, had originally done a generous goal of being published by 2012, when Caroline, my granddaughter, and partial role model for Lis, my main character, was twelve so she could read it.  So on that basis I am ahead of schedule…unheard of for me, or Lis! (who is also partially me at least, and some of Caroline.)

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The Critical Beauty of Editing

Posted on November 4, 2010 by joanneeddy

Claude Debussy said “Music is found in the space between the notes.”  I went looking for this quote and had heard it used to describe Miles Davis’ music, but found out it actually was original to Debussy.  If you have ever listened to ‘Claire DeLune’ you know why he said it. The tiny pause between the first two notes, the holding of the rising second and then the pause to the third note sets in motion the evocative, breathtaking beauty of the piece.  In addition to finding out the origin of the quotation I found another quote on Debussy from a new writer’s blog that was so well phrased that with a couple of minor edits I am sharing it:

From the entry Clarity on Personally Inspired blog:  “Some of the best musicians, I’m told, play fewer notes than you actually hear. They play in such a way–and leave enough space–that your mind fills in more.  Artists know that negative space carries weight. It is not simply an absence of content. The ‘white space,’ as it’s sometimes referred to by graphic designers, IS content. And it’s not just the forgotten stepchild of a composition… it is a first-class citizen. A thing that deserves as much (if not more) focus as the apparent subject of the work.

Comedians say that “timing is everything.” But by “timing”, they almost always mean “the pause.” The PAUSE is not merely a void between the Things That Matter. Without the pause the humor could not exist. The pause heightens your anticipation….and enjoyment.(my addition)

Newbie writers (like me) are taught that it’s the words you cut out that matter most. We’re told to edit until nothing else can be removed. That’s great advice, and when I have time to edit (rare for a spare-time blog post, but required with my book), I start hacking off all those extra words. (Like, “off all those”). But removing words isn’t enough. We must insert space.         Space for the reader to become engaged.               Space for the reader to reflect, process         and co-create the meaning.”

Well said.  So as I finish writing my book I am anticipating my time of creating more space for my readers…so their meaning can flesh out mine, creating something more than perhaps either of us foresaw.

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My Writing Partner

Posted on October 8, 2010 by joanneeddy

Willam Walton, a friend for more than thirty years, is my writing partner. We share critiques that enhance both of our writings. His clear vision and perceptive insights on character development and plot dynamics in The Call hold my feet to the fire until I write better and with greater integrity. I am profoundly grateful that he shares his brilliance with me.  The characters driving his writing are always engrossing, their dialogue tightly and sparely written yet full of nuance and subtle complexity.

William has just published a story in the Honest Lie, an Anthology. It is the story of the downward spiral of a tortured soul who, despite feeling safe only behind his clown’s mask, still has a spark of yearning for connection with others. It is the faintest of sparks, though, and at his core he only wants to be Ozzie the Clown. Nothing more. This story, like others William writes, allows the reader to experience what the character is feeling or trying to feel. Many, like Ozzie, speak to the isolation we experience as individuals, how hard it is to bridge the differences that separate us, and the lengths to which we will go, or wish we had gone, to cross them.

Announcement: adapted from http://www.martasprout.com/marta-blog.php

Author William Walton

Congratulations are in order for my writing partner, William Walton. His wonderful story Ozzie the Clown will be released in print on October 31, 2010 in the anthology An Honest Lie, Volume 2: Delusions of Insignificance.

Click here for a great interview with William where you can meet the man behind Ozzie the Clown.

A discount is available on all pre-orders of the Anthology between October 1st and October 24th.  The book can be purchased online at  http://ahlvol2vote.debrincase.com by clicking on his name and then following up with your purchase.  Doing it in this manner will record  a vote for Mr. Walton which will assist him to obtain an ongoing contract.  Additionally A Honest Lie Vol 2  will be available from Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.

If you have any problems locating this title please refer to the ISBN 978-0-578-06925-8.

 

Well done my friend!

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Finishing isn’t all it is meant to be or is it?

Posted on October 6, 2010 by joanneeddy

Yesterday I wrote after a four month absence yet here I am. I was thinking that perhaps I would rather do this then finish my book. After a year of research and two years of writing you would think I would want it done, just finish it and move on to Book Two. Yet I find myself strangely reluctant. Before at the back of my mind it was there waiting to be created. I am not sure how I will feel when it isn’t anymore? Or maybe it is and I am just struggling with what it will be like to start the next in the series?

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