Keeping on Keeping On

The forward march is still happening. I woke up today without a specific writing agenda. I just put the pen down and the story took over. It's all long hand, so it is surely a mess, but it feels good.

Shall I invest in a spiral notebook? Yes, yes, yes,

Moving the Story Forward!

Keep yourself moving forward
Originally uploaded by Sec xi Linh

I decided that this weekend, I was going to push the story forward. I have had my characters stranded on the brink of a moment of truth for about a month now. I deicded to take a break from my pattern of enriching the back-story and just push the characters further up the timeline.

I am happy to be able to report that for the most part, it has been successfull. I wrote about ten pages of the fateful parking lot scene, when all the major characters are on stage at the same time.

I did it mostly in long hand, to keep me from erasing large blocks of text. That is a way that I have discovered that I blocked myself. I write, then I highlight text and delete it. When I write longhand, I don't do that. If I don't like it, I may start on a clean page, but when I calm down, I still have access to whatever I had written originally.

I need to go back and improve the scene I wrote, but I am not sure if I should save that for later. The improvement needed is that I need to make the scene more atmospheric. As it is now, it's like the characters are talking and acting without any encumberence from the face that there are in a public place in the middle of nowhere. I need to flesh that out. However, I think I am going to keep pushing forward. It's hard from me to figure out when I am hiding from the story and when I am improving it.

Also, FYI, I posted a short chapter of the story on my other blog
And, Ron, posted a video of me reading on facebook.

What I have to show for my weekend.

The weekend is over, so it's back to the day-job priorities. I am really really pleased with the work I did. I'll share a couple of paragraphs. It's pretty cool to think that it al grew out of unpacking a single sentence. Here's a little sample.

It’s not right to say that my daddy taught me to love cars. I was
born that way. When I was just three months old, sick as a dog with colic,
daddy rode me around in the Lincoln until I went to sleep. I would wake up
crying that high pitched miserable cry and daddy would get out of bed, go to my
rooms, wrap me up in a couple blankets and we might spend the rest of the night
driving around the city while Mama slept. It wasn’t just the wind from the
windows that soothed me, though I still like to drive with the windows open,
even in winter. I liked seeing that I was going somewhere.

Around that same time, Raleigh bought me a baby swing from Sears and Roebuck. He and my mother put it together when a flathead screwdriver and an Allen wrench.
They finally got it upright and sturdy and waited for me to start crying so they
could rock me to sleep in the pink and white contraption. I was a sickly
child, so I cried all the time. At the first whimper, Mama and Raleigh
scooped me up, strapped me in and started the swing to rocking. My whimper
morphed into something more in the category of a howl. Daddy was the one
who rescued me, told them to give it up.

While he and I were cruising all over southwest Atlanta, down by Niskey Lake, even winding through the beautiful paths at West View Cemetery, Mama and Raleigh were takingthe baby swing apart and fitting it back in the cardboard box.

All thatback and forth did nothing for me. I needed forward motion and the quiet
hum of a well-tuned engine.

When I was twelve, my dad took me out for my first driving lesson. Or course I had been behind the wheel even as a little bitty girl. It’s illegal now to drive a car with a three year old in your lap, her little palms on the wheel, but in the 1970s nobodycomplained. I can still remember stretching my hands grip the steering
wheel, Daddy saying “There you go girl. There you go.” When I was
twelve it was time to take things to the next level. It was time for me to
become a real driver, although the state wouldn’t allow it until I was sixteen.

Not bad, considering its humble beginnings...

Please grow

Please grow
Originally uploaded by BAD BAB

I took the ball and ran with it, regarding that little sentence "I have been driving since I was twelve years old." It ended up being a five page monologue from the point of view of Chaurisse's dad explaining why he wants her drive and why he chose driving as his profession. I am pretty pleased with this turn. It may well be a chapter by itself.

Moving forward. Slowly, slowly. But it's happening.

Unpacking

I haven't been over here in a while, because I haven't been working very much on the novel. My job and other responsibilities are interfering with my head time-- so what else is new-- but I am learning not to be so distressed over it.

Today is Saturday and I have three things on my whole agenda: work on the novel, clean up the bathroom, and go to the gym for an hour. I think that's manageable.

I have been sort of unhappy with the work I have done in the last six months. I know that part of that is my other issues peeping through and another part is that I worked three years on the first 200 pages, so of course the recent ones are going to seem thin in comparison. To make matters worse, I am teaching a literature class this term so I am doing close readings of really masterful works which are really showing me that I am not getting deep enough into my own stories.

I feel like these recent pages are like Sarah Palin in the debate. Deep enough to fake it, but not truly layered.

Anyway, on to this paragraph which opens a chapter.

I’ve been driving since I was twelve years old. The day after my sixteenth birthday, I’d taken my drivers exam in the Lincoln and parallel parked it like a professional. The examiner congratulated my father and Raleigh. “This little girl drives like a grown man.” At the time, it was one of one of the happiest days of my life. At 9 am, I’d been to the orthodontist who used a special pair of pliers to remove y braces. At noon, we were off to the DMV where I navigated the course while running my tongue over my smooth, straight teeth. By 5pm, I was driving Daddy and Raleigh to the Galleria for dinner at The Upper Crust, where we stuffed ourselves on designer pizza, bread sticks, and cheesecake. Raleigh slipped the water a $20 in exchange for letting me order champagne sweetened with grenadine. Daddy ended up driving home while I rode in the backseat, laid out with my head in Uncle Raleigh’s bony lap.

This morning when I took a look at it, I realized that A) the timeline is too crazy for a single paragraph and B) there is a lot to unpack in the first sentence. "I've been driving since I was twelve years old."

So I got up, made a little breakfast, and thought about the circumstances under which Chaurisse learned to drive so young. And, lo and behold, her father's back-story started revealing itself. Her dad is a chauffeur and he loves cars, but I have never thought of why. It occurred to me that when he is taking his twelve year old daughter out to learn to drive, he would tell her why driving is important and reveal more of his past.

So, that's today's plan.

Getting Out of the Way

I don't have any writing to report today. It was a long day at work-- in at 9 and home at 9. Never the less, I can feel the book gnawing at the edges of my brain all the time. It's like that song from the 1980s "Always something there to remind me." It's like the story is demanding to be written. I imagine that I were to keep ignoring this impulse, it would disappear.

Before, when I was feeling a lot of despair about not having time to write, I needed clean blocks of time to sit around and muse about where I wanted the novel to go. I was really mad at myself because I didn't get much done on the precious days I carved out for this. But I think that my brain was working on it and those ideas have matured.

I was teaching my class today and I just wanted to stop lecturing and take down some notes on ideas I have about the manuscript. As I was leading a discussion of Tony Grooms' beautiful novel, Bombingham, I could only think of how one of my characters would have been impacted by the Civil Rights movement. I actually jotted a note in the margin of my book.

The book is alive in me right now. It wants to be written. I am going to get out of the way and let it happen.

House Guests... Grrr

I had a really nice weekend with a friend who came to stay from out of town. I WROTE NOTHING. I also did nothing toward my other responsibililites. I also ate a lot, so that's hijacking my whole Weight Watchers situation.

My challenge today, this Monday at 11 am, is to get back on track. Because I was a Grade A slacker from Friday to the present moment, my school work is stacked up the the ceiling. Dare I work on the novel?

It's so weird, I felt myself getting angry at being kept away from my book although I was having a splendid time. We went to the spa, got fitted for better bras, did the shoe thing, saw a show. All things I like to do. But my book was calling me.

Anyway, I need to spend some Q-time on the book and a lot of time on my school work. And figure out how to clean this filthy house.

The Staple Trick

This weekend was really productive for me. I am reading over the manuscript. A new trick: Staple each chapter separately. That way, it is easy for me to move them around and figure out what order the work best in.

One issue I am struggling with is that the book is a little linear for me right now, at least the second half is. It makes sense since the end of the book is where all the plotlines come together, but I don't want to sacrifice art for action. Also, too much forward motion can make the book feel a little hollow.

I think I need one more chapter of meaty back story, preferably something about the father, James. I think he comes off more sympathetic in his "legitimate" daughter's story, but he needs something that is going to make the reader connect with him, so when he life falls apart, it hurts. I don't want it to feel like chickens coming home to roost.

Tuesday is my nightmare day at work. I just have to face the fact that there will be no writing expect for the 20 minutes I am about to spend keying in the edits I did last night.

Doing Much Better

The last couple of days were pretty rough for me, writing-wise. I got all turned around on the question of the "occasion" for telling the novel. I really got bound up in self-doubt. I was actually a bit weepy over it. For the first time, I really considered scrapping the novel.

The big problem was that any "occasion" I thought of had to do with marriage or motherhood. I couldn't believe that I suffered from some a failure of imagination that I couldn't punctuate my character's life with anything but this gender-bound crap. Then I realized that ALL the books on women are so punctuated. Even the lesbian novels revolve around romantic love. I was so upset with myself. I know this sounds dramatic, but I thought I was going to have to rethink the whole idea of feminine narrative. I was so upset that my stomach hurt.

While I was lying in bed, my blackberry rang. I almost didn't answer it because the number was unfamiliar. It turned out to be a bearer of very good news. Good writing news. I can't go into any detail at all because this is the sort of thing that has to be properly announced. But let me tell you that it really really cheered me up. I know that it's dangerous to get so stoked from outside affirmation, but I felt like this was a hug and kiss from the universe.

I got myself up out of bed and sat down at this here writing table and worked on the manuscript with a whole new confidence. I know that we all try to be above it all, but Lord, it was just what I needed.

If Not Marraige, Then What?

I am trying hard to find an occaision for telling for my character Chaurisse. An obvious occaision would be that Chaurisse is at some crossroads in her own romantic life and she must assess her parents' marraige. Maybe she's considering a marraige proposal? Maybe her own husband is cheating? The problem is that I don't feel completely honest in those plots.

One of my lingering worries from my second novel, THE UNTELLING, is that all the women in the novel are dealing with a serious long term relationship. Aria, the main characters, is trying to keep her fiance, Dwayne. Her best friend is planning an elaborate wedding and her student Keesha has a relationship with a guy named Omar. These details made for good tension in the text, but it felt al ittle false to me.

I am a single woman, 38 years old. Many of my friends who are also "professional black women" (ugh, I hate the phrase) are in the same boat. (Did you see that NYT article that 70% of PBWs are single? Even if you quibble with the number, it's still a significant population.) I don't want to have written novels that don't even have one character that lives the life that is most familiar to me. So certainly there is a reason that Chaurisse is telling her story that doesn't involve her deciding to get married or stay married.

So frustrating. So frustrated. I have dedicated this day to working and I don't have a workable idea in my whole head.

Trying to Settle Down and Just Think

I am really trying to get back into writing this novel. I don't know if I have told you what it is about. The idea is that Dana and Chaurisse are half sisters, roughly the same age. Their common parent is James. Anyway, short version is that half the story is told from Dana's POV and the other half belongs to Chaurisse. Dana's half is really right. I've been working on it for years. Chaurisse's was just born this summer and it is sort of hollow.

I think the real challenge is for me to figure out why Chaurisse is telling her story. Why now? And to whom? As the "illegitimate" daughter defending her mother, Dana has a clear agenda. What about Chaurisse? Until I figure that out, I really can't work on revising her chapters. I feel like I am wasting time just sitting here thinking, thinking, thinking. But there realy isn't any other way, I guess.

I am very frustrated. Also, I am eager to have the book done. It's been five years almost since my last book and I do't feel good about that.

An S.O.S.

(X Posted on my other blog.)


It's two weeks into the school year and I am falling into a very bad rhythm that I must break. I think I may have confessed to accomplishing next to nothing on my writing last school year. This summer, I went to the Blue Mountain Center, and wrote like I was on fire. Still smoking, I came home in July, spiffied up my writing room and wrote like crazy for the rest of the summer. Then school started. I have read over the entire manuscript, but I haven't been really in the world of the novel enough to write meaningfully. This is not good.

I have featured guest posts here for working writers-- working writers with KIDS even-- who find time to get their work done. One of the most popular posts on this blog was Renee Simms's excellent piece "Jazzing My Way Through." So why am I not jazzing? I come home, tired, hop in the shower, whimper into my Carol's Daughter, and crash, crash, crash.

I have urged people to snatch time while they can get it. I remind everyone that Judith Ortiz Cofer found her writing time while her baby's clothes were in the dryer. But I am finding that I need full immersion time, which is not only free time as measured by the clock, but I need free mind space as well. I can't work when I feel like I am stealing my time, when my to-do list is ticking like a bomb.

It's time for me to reorganize my life and refocus my efforts. I know that I usually am providing helpful hints for other people, but now I am sending y'all an S.O.S. Does anyone have any suggestions? I am three quarters through this novel. I can't let it go until next summer.

Calling My Inner Kindergardener

I recently deleted a plot point, which decimated two late-occuring chapters. The action was gone, but I there was still of lot of description that I wanted to keep and also some action that was related to the deleted episode. The combined two chapters originally were about 30 pages. I wanted to see if I could still salvage a chapter out of the remains of these.

I knew it was going to be tricky and I didn't want to do it on the computer. I needed a format where I could see all 30 pages and figure out what could be kept and what had to go. I would be keeping whole pages, so highlighting wasn't going to be a good idea. What I ended up doing was literally cutting and pasting. I snipped out the scenes that work and glued them to clean pages. Then I spread them out on the floor and arranged them in an order that made sense and felt good. The result is a pretty nice draft of the chapter that will end the first part of the book. I can't believe it worked out so well.

Still Reading Through The Manuscript

I'm still going about the business of re-reading the manuscript. I am very pleased with the first 100 pages. This is not such a surprise because those pages were buffed and polished and submitted to my agent a long time ago. The second hundred pages have not been vetted at all, and are rather rough. I still like them and still like the story, though.

There's one chapter that is particularly hinky and this is the chapter that sort of borrows from my autobiography. You would think that trying to write from experience would provide lots of details, but that chapter is sort of flat. There isn't the same musing that I employ when working in an imaginary world. If I can't get the details to become richer, I may just have to nix that whole subplot. I'm not giving up yet, but those pages really stand out from the rest of what I have written.

In other news, it turns out that I had a single chapter saved TWICE in the master file. There was, of course, that disappointment that comes from not having as many pages as I thought, but structurally it's good news because the repeat is in the first movement of the book that was running a little long.

That's all for today. More tomorrow!

Re-Reading, pp 1-57

After last week, I decided that I needed to re-read all the pages I've written if I am going to able to write the end of this novel in a way that really works. I started this book over four years ago, and, frankly, I can't remember everything that I have written. The end of the novel needs to have elements from the entire book, so I need to look at the entire book. That seems like a pretty logical way of approaching things, right?

There was a part of me that just wanted to keep writing and not spend two or three weeks reading back through. I am sure that hesitation comes from just wanting to be FINISHED. But also, there is fear that I will find something that will make me think that a major revision is needed. I have been so optimistic in the last five months about this book. I just don't want to find out that it was all in my head.

Well, I printed out the whole manuscript yesterday, and I must admit that I felt pretty accomplished seeing all those pages sliding out of the printer. Because of a hectic work schedule, I wasn't able to read them. Today, I got up early and gave a look-see.

The verdict: not bad at all. At least not in the first three chapters.

One thing I am noticing is that there are a lot of cool character details that I introduced and dropped. For example, one character keeps golf pencils in her purse and she pretends to smoke them when she gets nervous. Well, if that is her habit, it has to be her habit all the way through. I have a little notebook where I am writing such things down.

Tomorrow, I'll read the next 50 pp.

Why Another Blog

If you are reading this, you probably know that I keep an author blog over at my main website. That blog is a more general writing-related site. Most readers of that blog are interested in technique some, but they are more interested in writing news, opportunities, and reports.

I wanted to start this blog for those of us who are working on projects and want to talk shop more. The idea started with using twitter as a check in station for progress, but it seemed that a forum for longer posts would be helpful as well.

The tone here will be a little more conversational, more journal-like. I figured that this was a good place for me to start because I am just about finshed with the first draft of my novel. I imagine I'll keep this blog from today until the book actually comes out.