Novel 101 -- Or Why I Love Massages

Bet that got your attention, huh? Okay, so here's the scoop --

For the past five years or so, I've been getting regular, monthly massages. It's good for my health -- physical and emotional (and, as you'll see if you keep reading, also good for my writing). My massage therapist has become a friend, and I look forward to seeing her. But, I have a confession to make. Sometimes I cheat on her. Last winter a friend gave me a gift certificate to a spa for a massage (she didn't know I was already seeing somebody). And, you know, different can be good. So, occasionally, when say my regular masseuse and I get off schedule or she has to go out of town, I sneak over to the spa to see Geoff.

Or like today.

Last week I decided to up my workout and rather than just walk, I started jogging every few blocks. I was all about getting more fit. It was working well. Until yesterday when my lower back felt like someone was jackhammering on it. With flamethrowers. Geoff fit me in. I explained that I'd started running and my lower back was now killing me. He nodded. Told me to start out face down and left the room. I did as I was told. When he came back in he started working on my legs. And then he explained what had happened. My hamstrings were really tight. So were my glutes (not in a good way). That had caused my lower back muscles to seize up. Also, my abs are not as strong as they could be (like I didn't know that!), which caused further strain on my back.

Great, Judy, you're saying. Fascinating. So you're in bad shape. Why do we care?

Here's where it gets cool and morphs into Novel 101.

I realized that what often seems to be the presenting problem isn't always the issue. I'd been applying heat to my back -- which felt good but didn't help my hamstrings. Just like when a scene isn't working -- maybe it's because an earlier section is too tight (like my hamstrings). Or another part isn't strong enough (like my abs). Just fixing the immediate scene might not be the fix you really need. Unless your novel is just a bunch of vignettes (and even then, probably), the problems are more than likely systemic -- you've got to look at the whole. And when you shift one thing around, you probably need to see what muscles that change is pulling at. And when you can't get one part right, maybe rather than gnash your teeth and tear your hair out and rewrite that one specific part until you're blue in the face and ready to chuck the whole thing in the shredder, maybe what you should do is step back and think about what comes before and what comes after -- and ask if those parts are as strong as they could be. Or too intense. What needs toning? What needs to be unknotted?

Ah, now doesn't that make sense? And one more tip -- getting a massage is never a bad idea.

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Novel 101-"Ripeness is All"

So, it's been awhile since I've blogged here and even longer since I've had a Novel 101 post. Lots of reasons for this, but no good excuses.

The quote above is from my favorite Shakespeare play, King Lear. And, the point of it has been made clear to me yet again. (That's one of the totally cool things about my old buddy Bill -- the truths he writes about apply on so many levels and keep teaching me even when I'm not looking for it.). Let me try to explain.

I'm not a patient person. I try, but it's a struggle. (Just ask my family.) But, I know that plenty of things are better with age. With ripening. The tomatoes in my garden. Wine. I know that things take time. There are processes which should not and cannot be rushed. I mean, heck, I'm a writer -- getting an agent and publishing my first book took seven years. I've never been in the army, but I sometimes think the phrase "hurry up and wait" came from the submission process rather than the military.

But, as Shakespeare wrote, "ripeness is all." Things happen when they're meant to happen, being ready matters, and don't rush things that shouldn't be rushed. I know this; I just don't always embrace it.

Then, at the end of last week, after finishing the workbook for Writing the Breakout Novel, by Donald Maass, and after reviewing my notes and ideas and list of "what ifs" for my revision, I pulled out a hard copy of the MS of my novel, the one I thought I'd finished in February, but now know I haven't. The copy I hadn't looked at, not once, since February 28. And I started reading it. Almost immediately I went in search of several colored flair pens and these handy dandy little page flags:

Because, I'd discovered something in my MS -- it wasn't as "done" as I'd thought. Having not looked at it in four months had given me some perspective, some "ripening" -- I was finally ready to see the scenes that needed sharpening, the lines that needed some edge, the passages of prose that needed to be (eek!) killed off.

Even more important, as I started reading I understood some things about my protagonist I hadn't seen clearly before. She'd ripened as well, into someone even more complex than I'd initially seen.

We'd needed the distance from each other, the aging, the perspective -- as much as I hadn't wanted to be patient, it had been a good thing (okay, there, Mom, I said it. I finally learned it. Blah, blah, blah, okay, okay, okay, patience is a virtue!).

So, that's my tidbit of writerly wisdom for the week (or maybe month, we'll see how things go). As hard as it can be, as much as I might want to send the MS off to readers, to my agent, to the world, I have to wait for the ripening -- I have to allow for the cool days of spring and the warm rains of summer and the sunshine and moonlight and all that it requires. Then I have to look at it again and I have to trust that when it's truly ready, I'll know because my own words will tell me.

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Novel 101 -- and an evening with two stars

Last night, I was lucky to get to listen to Ann Hood and Elizabeth Berg speak about books and writing, and then I got to hear them read. I love listening to writers read their own words. Left Bank Books, one of those fabulous indie bookstores that are becoming far too rare, hosted them at an event celebrating book clubs. It doesn't get much better than that.

The best part, though, was when the moderator asked them if, when they start writing, they know what the ending will be. I was on the edge of my seat. This question is one I wrestle with. To know or not to know? I like knowing. It makes me feel in charge. Or at least not completely lost, grasping for a lifeline. But, sometimes I don't know. Can't know. And I'm trying to trust my characters to lead me where they need to go. But Ann Hood's response totally rocked.

Here's what I wrote down --

She spends an inordinate amount of time on her first line. (Yeah, first line.) Because, she said, she knows her protagonist will be in an opposite position at the end.

I love that. It frees me. I don't need to stew and worry that I don't know where my character is going to end up. All I have to do is look at my first line. Or, maybe for me, my first few pages. But it's right there. I know it even when I don't know that I do. How cool is that? My characters are in charge. They'll get me where I need to be. Or better yet, where they need to be.

In All the Numbers, I opened with Ellen frozen in her car, unable to carry her son's clothes into the funeral home. Not a good place. At the end? She's able to stand on that dock and release his ashes into the breeze and the water at the lake where he was killed. Opposite places. In Unexpected Grace? It opens with Kate, alone, sad, hoping, almost a year after his death, that she'll still be able to smell her fiance's scent on their sheets. At the end, she's holding her daughter and sensing the power she has.

So, as I write this next book, I have even more reason to concentrate on my first chapter (which I was already doing). And when I feel, somewhere around word 23,406 or 57,030, that I'm wandering or I've lost my way, I know I can turn back to that opening and find my way.

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Novel 101

For those of you wondering, I'm about 3000 words in on my new WIP.

And it's going well.

And I've always said ("always" being a term loosely applied since this is only book #3, or #4 if we're counting "the book that will never see the light of day"), each novel is its own adventure. Each one writes itself a bit differently. I'm a different author for each book -- my experiences (both as a person and as a writer) have changed. So I can't expect the writing or the writing process to be the same.

Here are a few of the starkest changes -- and they're good changes as far as I can tell:

~The First Chapter First. In the past, my process has been to get a completed draft done. Without a draft I don't have anything to polish, revise, work with. So, my goal was to get the story arc written, start meeting the characters I'd develop more fully in later rewrites, and not worry too much about anything else. For me, if I could get my first draft to 60,000 words I was in good shape. (My books tend to be in the 75,000 word range when completed.) But, this time around, I took some advice from other writers who've mentioned how much effort they put into that first chapter. And Julie, my very best reader/editor, talked to me last summer about how the first chapter should hint, in some way, about all that's to come. So, with that in mind, I spent most of this month working on Chapter One (and a two page prologue). I polished, I considered, I rewrote, I took my dog for long walks and thought about Jim and Maggie. And, if I say so myself, I think I nailed it. I might just be 15 pages in, but I established a solid base from which to go forward.

~Work From the Inside Out. I did this with All the Numbers. I did it, finally, with Kate in Unexpected Grace, but not soon enough to avoid major rewrites. (Yes, plural rewrites.). I know now to start with the heart. Of the story, of the characters, of the conflict. If it's not from the heart -- the emotion, the pain or glory or loss or fear or hopes of the character, then it's just going to be about what happens next. Or what just happened. And nobody will care. It'll be moving your characters from one event to the next. It'll be an agenda.

You'd think I'd have known that as many times as I taught this. (Go ahead and click over. Read the whole thing, or better yet, listen to it. I'll wait.) And every time I taught it, my throat would catch. It's all so quotable. And right. Faulkner says, much more eloquently than I ever could, what I've just tried to say: that we need to write of "the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat." I'm remembering his words this time around.

I'm just at the beginning stages of chapter two. So far, according to my only listener (my husband), I've tapped into the right vein. (Which is a challenge because for the first time I'm writing part of the story from a man's POV.)

It's a journey just begun. And I'm loving every step along the way.

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Novel 101 and etc.

Singing "Flew in from Richmond V-A American Connection" just doesn't have the same ring to it as "Flew in from Miami Beach BOAC" (3 points to the first one to identify song AND album!), but those are the lyric that've been running through my brain since I arrived home yesterday afternoon. I'm planning a post about my fun in Charlottesville later this week, with pictures, but until then, you can read Therese's account here. I'll just mention, very quickly, the grapefruit martinis rocked!

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It Might be a Small World, but I'm not Multilingual!
originally posted: April 15, 2008

Remember guidance counselors back in high school? Remember being told there were certain skills we'd definitely want later and so we should take those classes now? Classes like typing and Spanish or French? Remember also thinking those same counselors were older than fossils and what did they know?

Or perhaps that was just me.

But here I sit, wishing I had learned to type. (Okay, yeah, so I do have my own system. Speedy, yes, but inaccurate as all get out. Not the most practical situation for someone who puts "Novelist" as her occupation on her tax forms.) Um, and perhaps also wishing I'd learned to speak (beyond asking, "Cerveza, por favor") and read a language other than English.

Because I now find myself in the interesting situation of being blogged about in other countries (Sweden, believe it or not!) and having no way of knowing what's being said. And of getting copies of my book in languages that weren't even offered in my high school (so, that gets me off the hook at least a little bit, right?).

And I'm tickled beyond reason with the idea that somewhere outside of Amsterdam, folks are kicking off their wooden shoes and curling up to read my words in Dutch. But I can't help but wonder how closely some of my carefully crafted prose has been translated. Do my alliterative phrases sound as lyrical in Finnish? And just what are the reviews extolling? Or lambasting?

So, if any of you are fluent in German, Swedish or Dutch, give me a holler and I'll send you one of my copies and you can report back. I'll make the same offer for Finnish and Complex Chinese characters (what does that mean?) when those versions arrive on my doorstep.

And finally, here's another neat picture:

a basket of books for a bookclub I donated for a silent auction at an author luncheon which was held to raise funds for Juvenile Arthritis my buddy Jen Vido in Maryland was helping organize.

To paraphrase Dr. Seuss, Oh, the places these books will go

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Listening to my Muse
originally posted: March 6, 2008

So, I'd thought I was going to give myself a rest, a break. I was going to be, as folks in Hollywood say, on hiatus. I'd just finished a major rewrite of the novel I started in January 2007. I haven't even heard back from my agent about whether or not she deems it "submission ready." My sons will be home for spring break later this month (and one of them is getting his wisdom teeth out, so I'll be wearing my little nurse hat). Then I'm off to the Virginia Festival of the Book. The following weekend my husband and I will be in California celebrating my dad's 80th birthday. We're stretching out the long weekend even more to see Springsteen on April 7.

So, with all of that, it didn't make sense to immerse myself in starting a new novel. I mean, I wouldn't be able to establish any writing rhythm, and I might still have to make changes on the MS I just sent off. Giving myself a clean break would be good. Clear the decks, so to speak, so that on April 9 I could dive in. Spring is the season of new beginnings, after all, and we're still mired in winter here in The Heartland.

But you know what? All week, I've had this woman nagging at me every morning when I'm first waking up (my husband can insert his own joke here). And yesterday, the harping continued throughout the day. She poked at me when I was trying to read the paper. She followed me around the kitchen when I was putting away the groceries and loading the dishwasher. She even bugged me when I was in the shower.

So I opened a new document on my laptop. And I was her steno. I took dictation. She's got quite a story to tell. I'm just trying to record it. And I'm hoping the muse who brought her to me will keep her talking and will also introduce me to some of the other people in her life: her mom; Jim, her husband; and Maggie, her daughter. I figure they'll help me understand how she ended up in a parking lot on a hot June day about to pull the trigger.

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I'm a mom and a wife, a recently published novelist and a former teacher.

I grew up moving across the country every four years or so. I was born in Whittier, California, then traveled to Northbrook, IL (explains my baseball allegiance), Upper Saddle River, NJ (explains my passion for Springsteen), back to Northbrook, then to Dunwoody, GA (where I learned to appreciate the cadence of my favorite writers). Finally, I landed in Madison, WI for college and discovered home.

I now live in St. Louis, MO with my husband, our five kids, a really sweet (but very dumb) golden retriever and a diabetic cat.

Over the years I have worked as a waitress, grocery checker, copy center clerk, deli clerk, sales clerk, substitute teacher, and English teacher.

Check out my website, too.