If Only It Were This Easy

My five-year-old granddaughter wrote and published her first two books last week: Spring is Here and The Chick Finally Hatched. After some discussion, she dictated her story as I typed, and once it was printed her sisters helped her color and illustrate, and voilà! She is a published author, so proud of her work. Going through this process with her, I thought, boy, if only it were this easy!

After working on my second novel for more than three years, I have lost count of the number of drafts I have completed so far. There was a time about a year ago I thought I was close to finished, that the story was just about as complete and true as I could get it. How wrong I was.

Throughout this process, I have been fortunate to receive a great deal of feedback—from family, friends, and my weekly writers’ group. How enlightening it has been to see my writing through fresh eyes. I am so grateful for their insights, their perceptions of my characters and their actions, and their tough questions. This close analysis, of course, is something you can’t do with a five-year-old, especially with her first foray into writing.

While my granddaughter didn’t have the benefit of too much feedback and too many questions about her story, as her editor and publisher, I believe it was just enough. Her process seemed so simple and straightforward compared to my process, but I believe that will develop in time. For now, these are her stories, and they are the very best she could tell them.

My goal is to publish my novel this summer. The more I work on it, the closer I get to the truth and the heart of it. And there’s the polishing, the language, all the nuances of storytelling. So much. It’s not meant to be easy, but I am grateful for the joy and sense of accomplishment writing brings.

Shifting Focus

It’s been three months since I sent my second novel, Some Kind of Justice (originally A Thousand Secrets), to a dozen or so agents that looked like a good fit. Only three have responded, with polite rejections. My lofty goal was to self-publish if I hadn’t heard anything positive from an agent by the spring, and here we are.

While waiting for responses, I’ve been working steadily on the sequel to A Better Life, making good progress, on my own and with insightful feedback from my writers’ group. I have been hesitant to go back to Some Kind of Justice, afraid I will lose my momentum, and also a little worried Jenny and Margaret will feel I abandoned them.

I have read quite a few authors who encourage setting aside a “finished” manuscript for anywhere from a week to a year, then looking at it with a different perspective, fresh eyes examining the work more objectively than when you’re deep into the creation and development of characters and their world, their story. Because I am a person who always has to feel like I am moving forward, setting writing aside for any length of time always seemed a little frightening to me, but I have, and I survived. Now it’s my plan to return to it and read it more as a reader than its author.

My goal is still to publish Some Kind of Justice this year. This is the moment to shift my focus and go back to this manuscript that has been untouched for three months and commit myself to getting it into the hands of readers. Of course, I’m not completely abandoning Margaret and Jenny. I think they know by now I’m here and open for those fortunate times they want to share with me.

Writing and Wordle

Yes, I’m a fan. And I’m glad there is only one puzzle a day. I have enough puzzles in my writing that are far more interesting and rewarding to solve. I did realize this morning, though, how both require paying attention, realizing mistakes and a willingness to change course.

The directions for Wordle are simple and direct. In the beginning, however, when I guessed the right letters but in the wrong places, I left them there for my next guess, trying to figure out how to make them work. They didn’t, of course, but I continued as if they could. I think just having a correct letter or two gave me hope. I thought I could make them work where they were. Somehow, I forgot the directions and ignored the truth. Then, when I realized what I was doing and that my approach had to change, I corrected it and moved on.

As I write, I need to pay attention always, but especially when something isn’t working. Now that I have been at this a while, I don’t write as many pages that I need to totally discard, and, at this point in the process of writing this particular story, moving scenes is mostly what I’m doing, placing them where they work better (at least for now). I’ve never written quite like this before, writing dozens of pages, knowing they are part of the story, but not knowing exactly where they will go yet. What I am pretty sure of, though, is that they are pieces of the puzzle.

Struggling?

This word is used a lot. People struggle with their feelings, struggle with a problem, struggle with finances, struggle with beliefs. If someone were to ask how my writing is going, right now I would say I’m struggling. It’s early in this new novel, early in the process of getting to know new characters, trying to build their worlds. It’s a daunting task. But struggling?

When I looked it up, the definition I found was, “forceful or violent effort to get free of restraint or constriction.” Restraint? Maybe. Constriction? Kind of. But forceful or violent? I don’t think so. Writing can be difficult for sure, but the rewards of having put words on paper that tell a story, portray characters in a way that makes readers feel something far outweigh these feelings of being inadequate and lost.

Instead of a forceful or violent effort, I’m taking a simpler and gentler approach, one that I believe will work for me. I’m starting again. I realize I have become much too attached to what I have written so far, so attached I have become reluctant to admit it’s not working, that it’s not good enough, strong enough or genuine enough to support the rest of the story. I know better, but I have been doing it anyway.

It’s like when you’re going somewhere, whether it’s to a physical place or an event, and you start having second thoughts. You have a feeling you should turn around, and even when the feelings get stronger you keep going, maybe telling yourself, Well, I’ve gone this far . . . The last thing you want to do is turn around and go back, but sometimes that’s exactly what you need to do. Maybe not all the way back to the beginning, but where you took that turn or went right at the fork when you should have gone left. Or maybe, like me, a new beginning is exactly what is needed.

As a writer, I know I need to be willing to go all the way back to that very first sentence, examine what I’ve written as closely and objectively as I can, and let go of what doesn’t work. I know that out of these thirty or so pages I have put time and effort and heart into there will be a sentence, a character’s thought or observation, maybe a paragraph that is real and true and belongs in the telling of this story.

I already feel better knowing this, having this plan to begin again, instead of struggling to work with what I have been desperately trying to hold onto that isn’t working. I will continue to work every day, doing my best to develop a solid understanding of the truth of this story, holding onto the belief that I can eventually trust where I’m going.

A Sense of Direction

Many people who know me know I have a poor sense of direction. While we sometimes refer to our older son as “the human map,” I am pretty much the opposite. When I am finding my way in a strange place (without the benefit of GPS), whether on a street or in a building, it’s a safe bet that whichever direction I think I should go is wrong. Almost always, it’s the other way. I am finding this is true as I begin my third novel.

I am slowly, but pretty surely, finding my way into the first seedlings of this story–writing the draft, writing about writing the draft, as well as thinking and daydreaming about my characters and what they want. It’s all part of the work and world of writing.

Each morning I go over what I’ve written the day before, and this early in the process, as I make my way in the near-dark, I find myself changing some details to the opposite of what’s on yesterday’s page.

This morning, I realized two of the new characters, people I am just getting to know, are not who I thought they were (or who I tried to make them be). The boy I thought was a nice, normal kid, maybe even a little too good, isn’t. And the man I thought was a shady and even dangerous guy, isn’t so bad. There is, of course, a possibility these early characters won’t even make it into the final draft. Or they will reveal themselves to be crucial to the story. Just as with any journey, I need to keep going as I find the right and true direction, and have faith I will get there.

Oh, and the working title for this novel? A Detour Home.