ONE DOWN

Wow, it's been a while.

Tonight I wrote the final words for the first draft of my new book.

It created a crazy confluence of emotions: relief, victory, excitement, fear, responsibility (really?), you name it, I'm feeling it.

Suddenly I'm committed. Suddenly I have this entity to mold and massage and make into something readers will enjoy.  Maybe that's where the responsibility piece comes in.

Thank goodness for beta readers and editors. It's not all on me.


But...


It's all better with friends.

THE END

I finished the first draft of my new story, The Sacrifice, Thursday night. Writing a satisfying ending is almost as fun as writing a great first scene.

There's a reason why it's important to let a recently completed manuscript sit for a few days before beginning the first round of revisions.

Interested?

Yes, part of it is to allow for enough time to revisit the story and characters with fresh eyes but it's also to take care of all of those little details of life you've let slide while writing.

So today, I'll be cleaning my house. Probably tomorrow and the next day too. The physical activity will feel good. Accomplishing a project in hours rather than the months it takes to create a manuscript.

With my house all sparkly, I'll sit down with the printed mansucript, a red pen, and a pile of sticky notes. Scissors and tape will be on hand for those scenes that need to be cut and spliced and moved around, and for the next few days the little details of life will once again be put on hold.



I love this process.



It's all better with friends.

When Something Doesn't Feel Quite Right

Well, I finished my first draft of the new manuscript on Thursday. I posted a little about the emotional aspects on Crime Fiction Collective today. I'd love for you to pop in and comment.

But here, at Suspense Novelist, I'd like to focus a little bit on how I got there. How I was able to finish it in the first place. What my process was.

Writing the last few scenes sat in front of me for days. I didn't exactly ignore them, but I wasn't completely on board with a couple of the aspects I'd carried over from the original manuscript to try and use again with the new one. I didn't really know I felt this way until I realized there was something making me reticent to keep writing. Something felt off.

As writers, we need to pay attention to our instincts. To our own bodies. When we feel uncomfortable, we're probably on to something important. Rather than muddle through and end up with something I hated (and readers would hate at least as much), I took a little time and tried to figure out what felt "icky."

Most of my ending felt great. It hummed. It connected. But one little element felt contrived and totally amateur. Something my husband would hate. With the help of my morning pages brainstorming session, I came up with an alternative. Not nearly as melodramatic, but equally absorbing. At least I hope so.

The take-away here is to have a plan, but be willing to veer from that plan when necessary. Pay attention to whatever reluctance you might have about a part of your plot, or a character, or a setting. Examine it. Decide whether it even merits a place in your story. When you are fighting something, there's probably a very good reason.


CR: California Fire and Life by Don Winslow.

It's all better with friends.

Self-Editing, Elizabeth George Style

Self-editing.

Are you shaking in your boots?

One of my all-time favorite writing books is Write Away by Elizabeth George. If you're looking for a craft book where the author lays out her process in a clear and easy way, I recommend George's work. Of course, it could be I love it because it's similar to what I have bumblingly put together on my own. However, because I want you to get something out of this post, I'll go with George's detail, not mine. She's much clearer because she's done it some twenty-five times. Me? Um . . . twice.

George does an incredible amount of prep work before she begins. Because of the preliminary work, when she's finally ready to settle down and create her first draft, she doesn't have to worry about what's going to happen next or how her characters should respond. She's able to focus on the best words and use them to create a compelling story.

That doesn't mean things don't change and new ideas don't surface, it just means she's free to allow them to do so without concern about how they fit into the story she is telling.

When she's finished with her first draft, she prints out a hard copy and tries to read it through in a couple of days. She makes no changes to the book. Let me repeat that, because—at least for me—this is the hardest thing to do. She makes no changes to the book during this read through. On a separate piece of paper, she makes notes of where the story needs some kind of work: clarification; delete areas of repetition; delete purple-prose; improve sub-plots; etc. She's simply looking for ways to make the story better, in an editorly way.

Then she writes herself an editorial letter as a guide for her second draft. She doesn't say this in Write Away, but I hope she gives herself a few pats on the back while she points out the weaknesses of the manuscript.

Her second draft is done pen-to-that-untouched hard copy. She goes through and deletes, adds and moves things around with the real cut and paste concept. If she needs to create something longer than three handwritten pages, she'll consider typing it up. Otherwise, this is where she literally gets her hands dirty, uses a bright red pen to slash through paragraphs, and scissors and tape to move paragraphs or scenes around.

This second draft is done at the rate of about fifty pages per day. When she's finished with her marked-up, cut-up and pasted draft, she types all of the changes into the computer, prints out a new copy and gives it to one cold reader. She includes two documents. The first one contains questions her reader should know about prior to the cold read, the second one is sealed and contains questions George didn't want her reader to be influenced by beforehand.

If there are further changes that need to be made, she makes them. Then it's off to her editor.

Have you read Write Away? Does this process appeal to you?



CR: Seed by Ania Ahlborn.

It's all better with friends.

So You Want to Write a Novel

Did you have a vague idea of what this process was like when you first began writing seriously? My closest mental picture was from the opening of Murder She Wrote where Jessica Fletcher is typing away at her kitchen table, pulls out the last piece of paper and places it in an impossibly thin leather binder—manuscript perfect, complete and ready to go off to her publisher. All before breakfast.

Did you think you were going to be discovered? I know I did. For about a week. Then I began to learn a few things.

If you had known then what you know now, would you have ever sat yourself down to write a book? Me? Probably yes. Because knowing something and living it are two different things. And because it's just what I do. Who I am.







CR: House Rules by Jodi Picoult.

It's all better with friends.

Not Yet Seamless

I went on a search the other day for an earlier mention of something in the book I'm writing. Scrivener was a great help, because all I could remember were the basics of the scene and in whose POV I'd written. So I went looking for the lilac colored scenes roughly in the place I thought my search would take me.

I found it. But, sorry to say, I found so much more. I'm now a little terrified to finish my SFD and begin the rewrite.

Here's what I'm sure is just the tip of the iceberg:

~ Names of characters who I only used once. They were probably meant to play some small role at some time, otherwise, why did I give them names?

~ Threads that should've gone somewhere, but are just blowing in the wind. And when I saw them, I thought, "Oh yeah, that was good."

~ Threads that should've gone somewhere, but are just blowing in the wind. And when I saw them, I thought, "What in the world was I thinking?"

~ Threads that should've gone somewhere, but are just blowing in the wind. And when I saw them, I thought, "Watching cement dry would be more exciting."

The closer I get to the end of my SFD, the more little bubbles of acid blurp up my throat.

Angst-acid.

CR: Still working on the Lisa Unger. I'm trying to reconfigure how I read books and my Kindle now that I've had LASIK.

It's all better with friends.

Perfection Rejection

Repeat after me, "First drafts are not perfect. First drafts are not perfect. First drafts . . . "

I'm far from perfect. In fact, I'm lousy at perfect. But that doesn't keep me from trying. And falling flat on my face.

Why do I expect myself to write any different than I live the rest of my life?

I've read Bird by Bird, where one of my favorite non-suspense novelists, Anne Lamott, gives me permission to have low expectations of my first draft. I love her for trying to help. I've read On Writing where Stephen King does pretty much the same thing.

So what gives?

Maybe there's something else going on . . .

CR: The Best Revenge by Stephen White.

It's all better with friends.