December 2006 Archives

The boys and I wish all my readers a wonderful holiday, filled with friends, family and lots and lots of books!                        

Into non-fiction at the moment as I do more research for my Work-in-Progress. So I'm reading various books on Post-Partum Depression, which has definitely increased my sympathy for the poor mom (still without her permanent name) in my story. I'm reading about swim teams and fire departments, and I'm also reading books on afterlife encounters. Don't ask. . .

 I'm reading a book by an author I've read many times before (not naming the book until I decide if I like it or not.) Something is driving me bonkers in this book: the character's thoughts are in quotation marks. It's very disconcerting. Usually I'll put a character's thoughts in italics, but if I'm adding the words she thought, I'll simply leave the thoughts unitalicized, and certainly never in quotes. Quotes are reserved for things spoken. It's weird to read a sentence in quotation marks only to discover the she thought tagged on at the end.  I know this author doesn't usually do this, so I wonder if her editor made the changes or what. Anyhow, I am becoming a curmudgeonly reader, aren't I?

John and I just bought an inexpensive keyboard. I dabbled with piano as a grownup a couple of decades ago. I was never very good, but enjoyed it and missed it. I couldn't see buying a piano, though, for occasional dabbling. Similarly, John took lessons as a kid. We saw a keyboard at Costco and brought it home and now we're hooked! What fun! The best thing about it is you can use it with headphones so John doesn't have to listen to me practice (painful) and vice versa. The sad thing is, I'm a lousy piano player. (I'm a little better than Jet, though, who thinks the piano bench is a comfy place to relax). I remember when I took lessons in my thirties that I had an expectation I would be good--that I had some latent talent that would emerge and awe my teacher. Alas, it wasn't true then and it's less so now. Arthritic fingers don't help, but I really can't blame them for all the wrong notes. I've always hated practicing, no matter what it was that needed to be practiced. If I tried my hand at painting, I wanted my first attempt to be worthy of hanging on the wall (which is why I'm not a painter). If my first novel had never been published, I may have simply given up writing. So I'm trying to look at the new keyboard as simply "fun." A hobby. What a concept! John, on the other hand, is now studying music theory and playing scales and all that stuff that gives one a musical foundation to build on. To me, that's like studying math. Ugh. Guess which of us will be the better pianist in a few months?

I've heard from a few of you who are curious to know what's up with my WIP, which made me realize I haven't discussed it in a while. So here goes. If you're familiar with my blog, you know I'm a big believer in pre-writing. That means outlining the story and getting to know the characters. This is never a nice, neat process, at least not for me. As the storyline expands, what I need from my characters changes. And as my characters grow, they alter my storyline. It's my job to preserve the integrity of both my story and my characters. Pre-writing can take me as long as the actual writing of the book. When I write the story itself, I don't revise as I go. Other writers do, with great success (my friend Emilie Richards revises the previous day's work before she starts in each morning). But I have to write the whole story out before I go back and look at it. I happened to read the New York Times letters to the editor this morning while at the Opium Den. Douglas Light, a creative writing teacher in New York, wrote that he encourages his students to get their first draft down as quickly as possible. (This is what writer Anne LaMott calls the "shitty first draft".) Light says ". . . as most novelists will attest, the art and the beauty of a work come not in the first draft but in the consequent revisions and rewrites, and one can rewrite and revise only what has already been written." I love that!  But before beginning that draft, it's important to do the pre-writing. You need to know where you're going and who is going there with you (the characters). Pre-writing takes a good deal of time and effort to allow for the percolation of ideas. Often I think I've done enough of it only to discover I haven't. That's where I've been for the the last few weeks, ever since my marathon writing week at the Weymouth Center. I discovered a few problems while there, and it's taking me some time to work them out. For example, Joanna, the mother in the story, simply was not becoming the person I wanted her to be. I didn't feel the sympathy toward her that I wanted to feel, and if I didn't feel it, the reader surely wouldn't. I discovered a solution that may sound simplistic, but which is already working for me: changing her name. Two names are "auditioning" for the role. They both end in "ie". Instantly, they change my interpretation of the mother from serious, sober, stern and sad to someone lighter, approachable and vulnerable. I've also made her a school nurse so we can see that she cares for many people, not just her own children. I like her so much better! In addition to working on the character of the mother, I've been "going deeper" with the story. That means I've spent time thinking about theme and making sure my story doesn't lose its focus. It's very easy to slip off track when writing novels as complex as mine tend to be. Plot twists come to me and I have to ask myself if my reason for wanting them in the book is because they're fun and clever. . . or because they actually serve the story. If the answer is the former, I'll save them for some future book. Right now, I'm playing with one such idea (and taking lots of creative naps and brainstorming with friends because I LOVE the twist) but I think I may have to discard it because it doesn't belong in this book. Sigh. So, that's what I'm up to with my WIP. I have an April deadline for it and I'll soon be moving more seriously into the "shitty first draft" phase. Can't wait!  

  Wow, I don't get it. I'm reading this book for my neighborhood book group. I don't like reading historicals, and some of the writing in this makes me shudder.  "(I was) . . . in the cream gown that Anne had chosen for me, with my cream headdress pulling my rich hair off my young face." and "'Very pretty,' the queen said dampeningly." Yowks. But I can't put it down. 600+ pages and I don't want it to end, I'm enjoying it so much. I guess it is simply a good story, well-structured, and made even more fascinating by the fact that it is based on fact.   Also, and this is a biggie, the central character, Mary Boleyn, is painted as enormously sympathetic--not quite as beautiful, as smart, as witty or as quick as her older sister, Anne, yet she grows from a self-centered young girl to a woman full of love for her children and empathy for those around her. That's all it takes to put the reader on the side of the protaganist and to keep flipping the pages. It's painful, though, to experience the subordinate role of women in that era through Mary's eyes. Have any of you read this book? I'm interested in your thoughts.