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a writer's journal
Monday, January 6, 2003
At 9:15 this evening, I wrote "THE END" on the first
draft of Being Jericha Mize. The baby, begun on May 17,
2002, weighs in at just over 47,000 words, which is a nice size for a
young readers novel, which this just so happens to be. There's a ton of
small things to change and insert. There's tightening to do, work on a
consistent character voice, improved story pacing, etc. And old Uncle
Whit, as he first appears, is due for significant alterations. But it's a
draft, something to work with, something to make better.
Tomorrow, I catch up on neglected emails. Then
the fun stuff....the revisions...begin.
Wednesday, January 8, 2003
Dennis Palumbo writes in his book, Writing From
The Inside Out, that procrastination is part of the whole process,
that it should be embraced as such. Today I monkeyed around in the office,
rearranging stuff, trying to make a different place to attack that next
novel. In other words, I didn't open the file of that manuscript that is
begging for a quick revision. No guilt, though. It's all part of the
process. Right?
Friday, January 10, 2003
Tonight I completed a spreadsheet that details the
scenes is my young readers manuscript--the who, what, when, where, and why
of each scene in order. It is impossible for me to hold a novel in my head
and view its proportions. But on a three page spreadsheet, I have a sense
of how the parts fit together--or don't. As I start revisions, it should
be a big help. But it was a bear to produce, a no-fun effort that I had to
slog through, for the good of the rewriting, which is what I'd much rather
do.
Friday, January 17, 2003
Had me one eventful and productive week. Revisions have
progressed smoothly. I've been putting in six to eight hours a day.
Tomorrow I should complete draft two, which is essentially what I'll send
to the editor. Most changes from draft one amount to inserting details
earlier to serve later purposes, so things needed will appear and not reek
of author convenience. Also added more internalization by the first person
narrator, and moved some descriptive material from a later, action scene
to an earlier, more leisurely one. And I found a real boat online to
replace the imagined (unreasonable) one that existed in the first draft.
Third draft begins Sunday. This should simply
amount to smoothing over the patches, smoothing and evening out the voice,
and adding more emotional queues. Thirty pages a day should get
Being Jericha Mize in the mail by Jan 25.
Oh yes, the eventful part-- I learned this week
that Kentucky Arts Council is giving me a 2003 Professional Assistance
Award, cash money to spend on professional development. Blind jurying was
by out-of-state judges. Heaviest weighting was on the fiction submitted, a
short story, 'Things Kept,' in my case. I workshopped this story online,
in my face-to-face critique group, and then with Lee Smith at the
Appalachian Writers Workshop this past summer. Lee gave me loads of
encouragement and a couple hints on how to improve the story. Apparently,
they worked.
Tuesday, January 21, 2003
Work continues apace on BJM, with the
target date of Jan 25 still a possibility. My main problem has been
chapter one, getting the right information first, setting the voice,
establishing the voice of Lake in the reader's mind, as the story is
launched. I must have rewritten this chapter twenty times so far, and I'll
probably be rewriting it right up until I seal the manuscript envelope on
Saturday.
Otherwise, the thing seems to be rounding into
decent shape. I'm way too close to it to know how it reads. When I look
again in a couple of months, I'll know better. Unfortunately, I do not
have the luxury of letting the manuscript sit before polishing this time.
So we'll send it as a best effort and hope it's not dreck.
Sunday, January 26, 2003
I completed the final run-through of the novel on
schedule, printed out a crisp copy, and sent it to the editor yesterday.
Over the next few weeks, I hope I can pull away from it, get some
distance. Living with it as I have, distance has been completely
impossible.
'Completely
impossible'-- see, there's another problem. After several months of
writing in the voice of twelve-year-old Lake Malone, I now find myself
qualifying my absolutes with adverbs. It's characteristic of youth-speak.
Only now it has infected my other writing. I rarely used adverbs before,
and I never glued qualifiers onto absolutes. And 'get' rarely insinuated
itself into my writing--until writing as Lake, that is. And hyperbole, the
girl lives at the extremes of exaggeration. I'll have to do some serious
work to regain my former untainted, slightly pompous writing style.
Friday, January 31, 2003
Even without writing, it's been a full week--planning
for a reading at ArtSpace here in Berea, Silas House, Barbara Fischer,
Steve Lyon, and me. Working on fliers to get the word out. Reading short
stories (Best of American 2002, also New South),
critiquing one for Barb Fischer. Maybe I'm missing the regular writing.
I'm feeling downright irritable, that's for sure. I'm thinking about
writing, thinking about the character who will pick up the storyline in
"Things Kept." That's not really writing, though. My mood seems to know
the difference.
Sunday, February 9, 2003
I'm back from the Florida Suncoast Writers Conference,
three days of sessions on the craft and the business of writing. The worst
part was choosing which of five or six concurrent sessions to miss. The
best part was that there was always at least one great session going on.
Four hundred people, all writers, in one place--what an amazing
atmosphere!
Meanwhile, back in Berea, the reading at ArtSpace has
come together--Berea Arts Council, Berea College Bookstore, and Silas
House all on board for Feb. 27. I'll promote it to the hilt, and we'll
hopefully draw more than ten people.
How to resume and expand "Things Kept," how to find
Dexter Chalk's voice, that's the current big writing problem. And how
Being Jericha Mize is (or isn't) being received in California
is the big mental distraction, one that flashes through my brain 1759
times a day.
Monday, February 17, 2003
Another change-of-pace week. Made up fliers and posters
for the reading at ArtSpace on the 27th. Read quite a bit, trying to get
an adult writer's voice in my head after living with 12-year-old Lake's
for the past several months. Especially enjoyed the collection edited by
Shannon Ravenel, New Stories from the South 2002. Also
started reading Atonement by Ian McEwan. And I applied for
Indiana University Writers Conference and Workshop, primarily because of
the fiction section being taught by Robert Olen Butler. And I applied for
a KAC grant to help pay for it.
I did critiqued a couple stories for House Writers. And
I wrote a second and third page of two fun round-robin stories, the first
fiction writing since I put the novel to bed.
Other than that, it's Presidents Day today, so there is
no mail. Which means, no word on Being Jericha Mize. Maybe
tomorrow.
Friday, February 21, 2003
The good news is that I've been accepted at the Indiana
University Writers Conference in June. Still don't know if I'll be
assigned to Robert Olen Butler's workshop sessions, but the director says
my early application 'bodes well for your chances.' Here's hoping.
The less good news (okay, it's bad news) is that the
editor who read my young readers novel decided against taking it on. He
did refer me to an editor at another house who he thought might be better
suited to help with guidance and advice. She's an editor I've admired for
several years, so I'm really delighted by the way what seemed at first a
negative development became something quite positive.
Meanwhile, ideas for the novel growing out of "Things Kept" are
percolating. I am eager to get back to writing again.
Friday, February 28, 2003
But I didn't get back to writing all week. Instead I
worked at publicizing the reading at Berea's ArtSpace and preparing for my
part in the evening--combination local host and opening reader. The second
and third readers (Barb Fischer and Steve Lyon) were tangled in Lexington
traffic, arriving after I started to my great relief.
My reading (from
'Prologue') seemed to go well. I had to edit the section I read, take out
some of the intended awkwardness in Davis' letter and much of his stilted
writing. It simply didn't work read aloud and without context.
Steve and
Barb did superb jobs. Everyone stayed more or
less on the agreed schedule, and Silas House took the floor with the
audience not worn down. With Donavan Cain strumming banjo and singing, and
Silas reading from A Parchment of Leaves and, for the first
time, from his new ms, The Coal Tattoo, the two capped off
the evening beautifully. There was a brief Q&A afterwards, and most of the
forty or so people who came stayed to talk afterwards, slowly trickling
away over the next hour. It felt like a successful evening all around. (Group
shot made afterward.)
And now that that is over, I really need to get back to
writing real fiction. It's been a full month!
Saturday, March 8, 2003
The hardest part of getting started with the writing
again is just getting that first sentence down. With Dexter Chalk, I find
that I'm having to simply write my way into him. I have some ideas about
who he is, what his circumstances are. But he hasn't felt like a breathing
being for all my thinking, contemplating, and note-taking. So I've started
writing what may be text in his story (as always, editable first draft
crap with revise-or-discard options kept wide open), and in doing so, Dex
is becoming more palpable.
His story will interlace with LeAnn's story, "Things
Kept." That part should be fun, seeing the same or closely related events
from two points-of-view. If I control my 'urge to cuteness,' it could
actually work out quite well.
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