September 2007 Archives

The proposal for my new Work-in-Progress, AFTER THE STORM, crossed the finish line yesterday morning. Oh, joy! I managed to keep it to 16 pages. I was aiming for 10, but since I usually write proposals that are anywhere between 40-70 pages, I am thrilled. I've emailed the proposal to my agent and my editor, and now wait to hear their comments. And they will have them! I can count on those two women to make suggestions. I can count on myself to groan when I read/hear them. And I can count on the fact that whatever they come up with will make the book stronger. Now I return immediately to the revisions on BEFORE THE STORM, the prequel to ATS. I'm psyched about doing the revisions. It's fun for me to take something that's already complete and make it better. In particular, I want to focus on the four first person points of view, strengthening the differences between them. I've blogged about this challenge before, but I have not been as successful as I'd like. I want the reader to be able to flip to a page in the book, read a few sentences, and know which character's point of view she or he is in the midst of without looking back at the chapter heading to find out. It's truly a challenge in particular between the two female characters.  I also want to punch up the motivation behind a certain character's actions to be sure they're believable and not contrived. Andy's point of view (Andy is the guileless fifteen-year-old boy with fetal alcohol syndrome) is so delightful to read (if I do say so myself!), that I want to see if I can show a bit more of the story through his eyes. Finally, I want to neaten and strengthen the writing throughout. Given the fact that the manuscript is 410 pages long, filled with a complex story, I have my work cut out for me. As soon as I finish this blog post, I'm taking the manuscript onto the porch with a cup of coffee and buckling down. Oh, one other thing. A public thank you to reader and frequent blog commenter Margo Petrus for leading me toward the BEFORE and AFTER THE STORM titles way back when. Thanks to everyone who contributed their ideas. PS Are y'all loving the ClustrMap at the bottom of the page as much as I am? I absolutely love seeing where my blog readers are from! Click on the map for a closer look.

I keep a running list of topics I want to blog about. One of those topics is self-publication. By that I mean you pay the publisher to get your book into print instead of the publisher paying you. I have several friends who have done this, and I have no problem with it as long as they know exactly what they are -- and are not--getting for their money. It's hard enough to get store placement and reviews when you're published the traditional way. You can just about forget about it if you're self-published. I stopped by Tess Gerritsen's blog, as I do from time to time, and discovered her recent post on self-publishing. She says it all far better than I ever could, so if it's a topic that interests you, visit her excellent blog for an education. Meanwhile, I'm embarrassed to admit that I still haven't completed my proposal. However, today I made a big change in the story and felt that euphoric thrill of excitement that means I'm on target. By this time tomorrow, I should be finished with it. Wish me luck!

Every once in a while, something I've written (or am in the process of writing) strikes too close to home. That's the case right now as I (try to) finish the proposal for the sequel to BEFORE THE STORM. Those of you who read my blog as I worked on BEFORE THE STORM know it was about a fire at a teen lock-in. One of the injured boys is a central character in the sequel, so I've been immersed in his story. His arms were badly burned and in the sequel, he's dealing with the social, psychological, physical and emotional ramifications of that injury. Last weekend, a member of my very extensive extended family suffered similar burns, although--thank God--not quite as serious. Although I'm not close to this teenaged boy myself, I'm very close to people who love him and I ache for him and his family. The result is that he is much on my mind, and when I buckle down to work on the proposal, I feel the emptiness of committing to fiction what he's going through in reality. This has happened to me in other ways with regard to my writing. The most ironic and downright weird occurrence happened right after I completed writing KEEPER OF THE LIGHT in 1991. If you're familiar with the story, you know that a woman, Olivia, thought she had a happy marriage only to have her husband quite suddenly fall for another woman. I'd just received the galleys for KEEPER when I learned that my wonderful-till-then husband of twenty years was in love with someone else. Friends said I must have known about the situation on some level, and it came out in my writing, but I knew no such thing. It was a spooky case of life imitating art. (I am happy to add that, although little can compare to the painful end of a marriage, life does go on and in my case became much, much better!). So. . . I managed to get through the proposal today, but I'm going to sit on it another few days. I want to be able to read it with a fresh eye to be sure what's happening in reality didn't color what I need to have happen in the story. Meanwhile, my thoughts are with all real-life children who are the victims of fire. 

The Book: I'm home from New Jersey, back to serious work, and just finished reading this fantastic book. It had been gathering dust on my bookshelf for about a decade, ever since it was an Oprah pick way back when. At 900 pages, it simply wasn't calling my name. I'm not sure what made me pick it up a couple of weeks ago, but I'm so glad I did. What a rewarding experience! Of course it won't be for everyone. John, who read it years ago, called it a "slog, but worth it in the end." A writer friend didn't like it at all. I, however, was engrossed from start to finish. It's the story of identical adult male twins. One of them, Thomas, is psychotic , while the other--the story's narrator, Dominick--is not. Dominick carves out his own identity through the course of the book, which slips seamlessly between present and past. Intriguing to me as the granddaughter of Sicilian immigrants was the autobiography of the twins' grandfather, an abusive misogynist blow-hard who came to America around the time my grandparents did (I hasten to add, immigration from Sicily was the only thing my gentle grandfather had in common with this man!)  But one needn't have Italian blood to be drawn in by the story. It reminded me of another of my favorite books, Pat Conroy's Prince of Tides in both subject matter (twins, mental illness, dysfunctional family) and the narrator's first person, angry male voice. Set in Connecticut, though, it lacks the low country's atmosphere that colored Conroy's story, but that's made up for in the richness of character. Four and a half lighthouses.  The Writing Lesson: If you're a new novel-writer looking to write a complex story, I Know This Much is True would be a great book to study. My suggestion would be to outline it, as I did with some of my favorite novels when I was teaching myself how to write. There are many different threads Lamb follows in the book, each of which could form a heading in your outline. Below that heading, explore the ways Lamb lets the reader know what is going on. Then examine the way he handles secrets (beautifully!) and revelations. Finally, study the characters, both major and minor, to see how he lets the reader come to know them. It's not a perfect book. It should have been at least a hundred pages shorter. There is repitition, some of it almost word for word, as if Lamb didn't trust the reader to remember what he'd already said. But I did not for a minute wish it to go faster. If you've read it, I'd love to know what you think.

I'm spending the week with my sister in New Jersey. I have my laptop set up in her sunroom and I'm STILL working on the proposal (a synopsis/outline written for my editor to give her a sense of the book) for my new Work-in-Progress. Here's my problem: I want to write a shorter proposal than usual--say 10 pages rather than 50, but that's such a challenge for me. Once my fingers start tapping the keys, I can't seem to stop. I also keep changing my mind about the ending of the story . . . and every time I change the ending, I have to change what leads up to the ending. My deadline on this book is very tight (I'm not even going to mention the due date here because I don't want to scare myself). Tomorrow, I have nothing to do other than focus on the proposal, so I'm going to tighten it up, then put in the ending I like best at the moment. I can always change it later. Meanwhile, tonight I went out to dinner with my old (as in, I've known her a loooong time) college roommate from my Glassboro State College days. Jody and I have known each other since we were eighteen and although we don't get to see each other often, we can always pick up right where we left off. I love how, although our lives have taken such different paths, we still share the same values (and are both Big Love fans!). It was great getting to visit with her, our conversation ranging from how our families are doing, to memories of college friends, to politics. Here we are at dinner, after which we went to the Opium Den (Starbucks) for liquid dessert. It's after midnight, so I'm going to turn in and read for awhile (Wally Lamb's I KNOW THIS MUCH IS TRUE, which I'm really enjoying.) I hope the next time I post here, I can say I finished the proposal! That's my goal.

This was one of those movies that made me want to toss my fledgling Work-in-Progress in the trash. I keep reminding myself The Lookout and my WIP are not the same kind of story so I'm not being fair to myself to compare them, but wow. This is one good movie. Starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Jeff Daniels, it's the story of a young man struggling with a brain injury (don't worry--it's not all that grim) after a car accident. The accident was his fault and killed two of his friends. Gordon-Levitt is wonderful as an angry, guilt-ridden man trying to pull his life together again. A group of thieves take advantage of his disability to aide them in a bank robbery. The genre is thriller, but the characters are so well developed (with a couple of exceptions) that it's also a strong story of relationships, particularly that between Gordon-Levitt and his blind best friend, played by Jeff Daniels in one of his best roles ever. Some of you who enjoy my books may find it a bit too gritty, but it actually has quite a soft feel for a thriller. It grows quite dark at times, but dawn is around the corner. And what a lovely dawn it is! We rented it from Netflicks and I'm not sure how it ended up on our list, but I'm so glad it did. I'm heading to New Jersey to visit my sister tomorrow, and I plan to watch it again with her. Four and a half lighthouses.

Cellular Culture: Let's talk...Originally uploaded by sirchuckles Grr. I've griped about this before, but it's time to gripe about it again: contrived non-communication in movies and fiction. We watched THE NATURAL last night. I remember liking this movie quite a bit when it first came out. I still like it. Great story. But my pet peeve was much in evidence: Silly non-communication. Painfully silly. In case you don't recall the subplot, the Glen Close and Robert Redford characters were boyfriend and girlfriend when they were young. Then Redford was shot and dropped off the planet for a long time. Now they meet up sixteen years later. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that Close's teenage son is Redford's, but that's not my complaint. At least three times in the movie, they talk with one another and before the truth can be revealed one of them will say, "I've gotta go," for no apparent reason (except that the secret of the son's paternity needed to be kept until the dramatic last scene.) Now, I agree the secret needed to be kept until the end, but the "I've gotta go" device is incredibly lame. One of the things I learned as a novice fiction writer is that if the conflict between two characters can be resolved with a simple conversation, it's not a good enough conflict to keep the story (and suspense) going. This makes writing that much harder, because non-communication is such a convenient way to keep things rolling for many, many pages. And it can work if the reasons for the lack of communication are strong and believable. If the Close and Redford characters had no time to talk, for example. That could work. But they had plenty of time and by the third "gotta go," I was groaning. So if you're a writer, remember to make your conflicts complex and not easy to resolve. And if you're a reader (or movie fan), take more pity on the poor writer than I have here. It's hard to keep the suspense going without resorting to "gotta go." But it's worth the effort in the end.

CollesanoOriginally uploaded by lorca56 This has nothing to do with writing, but my brother Rob told me about a site some of you may already be familiar with: Flickr.com. You can upload your photographs to share with friends, but better yet (at least to me) you can search for photos, many of which can be legally uploaded to your blog. (For copyright info, click on the picture above or on the tiny letters to the right of it). To test Flickr, I typed "Collesano" in the search engine. This is the town in Sicily where my paternal grandparents grew up. Since I'm toying with geneology, I've been hunting for a picture of the village with little success. On Flickr, 30 images popped up! Only a few were of the town itself, but I love this one. I hope to visit Collesano one of these days. On the writing front, I'm determined to finish my proposal for AFTER THE STORM this week. More about that in a couple of days.