My better half explains how the day's edits went better than I.

My husband is driving me a bit nuts. He just got the edits to his first novel back and I don't even think he remembers writing it as it was so long ago... Anyways, he is simply a huge grump around the house now. Major mood shift. He hates editing.

It's so wonderful being a wealthy writer. Look at the lovely view we have of the Rockies from our dining room.

There was this commercial not too far back where this guy is stuck in his tent in a blizzard writing in his journal. He starts the journal entry with Day 1: Coldest Day Yet. This is supposed to be ironic, of course. It's also supposed to help sell someone a product; but I couldn't for the life of me figure out what that product was. Bad marketing--they should have stuck with jingles.

I am stuck on Band-Aids, cuz' Band-Aids stuck on me.

The truth of the matter is that Day 1's always really suck, and today, the first day working with my editor's edits was no exception.

The biggest issue I'm dealing with his the thread unraveling problem. Let me give you an example: My editor wants me to remove a seemingly superfluous page and a half of setting detail before my character gets in a car to go somewhere. I happily delete the section. I read on, ready to slash more, and perfectly willing to do so. Then, I hit a section where I mention "The Ranch," a place that I'd given the setting detail on earlier...

Now, you see, I have a problem here, because calling this place "The Ranch" doesn't have the same effect now, because I've taken out the part that describes "The Ranch" to begin with, so I have two choices: eliminate all mention of "The Ranch" and have nothing take place on it, or leave in the original "The Ranch" mention, trying to foreshorten in such a way that the editor will still be happy with the edits.

Both solutions are fraught with conflict, and both underline the problem that I have with editing in general. You see, when I write, I write with the knowledge of everything that has gone before, just as the reader, when she reads, reads with the knowledge of everything that has gone before.

Editing, then, presents a problem, because you remove some of this knowledge. It's easy on you, the writer, because you know everything that you wrote before, and so it's not so obvious how this is problematic. The reader on the other hand, doesn't have any of this knowledge. When you name drop something like The Ranch, all kinds of flags go up.

It's really easy to unravel all the logic that was built into your story when you edit, and it's very hard as a writer to be aware of it. You have to be painstakingly vigilant, and I'm not sure I'm up to the task. There are countless examples of movies where too much has been edited out, leaving a flimsy plot that looks like it was put together by a Ritalin addict. Have you watched the new Star Wars movies? Or the Harry Potter films? Flimsy. Indecipherable.

I'm running into this problem already, and so far all I've had to work on is really, really minor stuff.

The stories about Marla Ruzicka, the young activist who was killed in Iraq recently, have been haunting me of late. You see, while we can shake our heads about what a sorry mess our country has made of Iraq, and point to the fact that we voted for the other guy, very few of us can actually say we've done something to repent for our country's sins.

For 13 years, I've been sitting on that novel that I've always intended to write, the one that, really, when I think about it, got me interested in novel writing to begin with. In 1993, I spent two months in the country of El Salvador, which had just had it's first peaceful elections after ten years of civil war. I went to a village called Santa Marta, which had just been resettled by Salvadoran refugees returning from Honduras. The project that I worked on was precisely the project that Marla was working on in Iraq, to count the dead. I went door-to-door and asked people about their family members who had died in the U.S.-funded war against the Salvadoran guerrilas.

I'm not patting my back about this. I was young and naive; and I didn't have the pluck or the organizational skills of someone like Marla. My count turned into a comedy (or tragedy, I should say) of errors, and nothing came of it. But I've always felt that this was the novel that got away, the one that I just didn't have the tenacity to write.

I suppose there's still time. The dead--may we never forget the one's who were brave and true.

In my spare time I've been training for a triathlon. Given my asthma, the sympathy weight I gained (and never lost) while my wife was pregnant, and years and years of moderate drinking and light smoking (don't tell my HMO!), this isn't exactly something I'm a natural at.

All the books, however, tell me that all I have to do is practice. Run twice a week, bike twice a week, and swim twice a week, going a tad bit further every week; and eventually you'll be good enough to swim a mile, bike 24, and run 6 in somewhere reasonably close to 3 hours.

Well, I've been doing this now for about 2 1/2 months, and despite my skepticism about experts, it actually works. I'm in good shape, and was able to run my first sprint triathlon (1/2 the distance of a full tri) in a decent time.

It reminds me a lot of what it was like 10 years ago, before I'd written my first novel. I wanted to be a writer and I wanted to write novels, but I didn't know how to do it. I read Stephen King's book, On Writing, and kind of pooh-poohed his suggestion that if you write at least 1,000 words a day, even if you have no idea what to write about, you'll get used to the rhythms of writing. Eventually, when the little angel lands on your shoulder and hands you a plot, you'll know how to exploit it.

Years later, I tried out the Stephen King method (I should point out that Stephen King is neither the only nor the first author to suggest writing to a page count... rumor has it that Ernest Hemingway would actually end each day mid-sentence), and it turned out to be the only way I could churn out World Leader Pretend.

All of this was just a long lead in to get you to take a look at a former writing instructor's wonderful blog, Michelle's Daily Dose for Writers & Readers. Michelle suggests a writing exercise a few times a week on the blog, so if you run out of things to write about, take a tip from her.

Labels: Writing Process

So I got back my first batch of edits from St. Martin's yesterday, and the second batch followed today. I was warned that it wasn't going to be pretty, but it's difficult when you see a 20 page chunk of material with an X on every page, and you do the calculations. (Bye, bye, one week's worth of work.)

Depending on my blood sugar level, I feel either:

a) disgruntled and sure that this is just another means by which corporate America is trying to dilute the emotional power of an individual's work, ensuring that literature has no value other than as entertainment for people stuck someplace where they can't access a T.V.

or

b) happy that I have a razor-sharp editor who's willing to do the cutting that I was too cowardly to attempt myself.

I'm really hoping that my wife disposes of this ungodly good Irish Oatmeal cake soon that's been unreasonably boosting my glucose levels. These mood swings are killing me.

Labels: Writing Process

So after much ado, the site is up. The amount of time you can spend toying with templates and such is limitless, especially when you know just enough about cascading stylesheets to cause trouble without knowing exactly how they work. Despite the time that should have been used doing other things, the site turned out quite nicely. Comments and suggestions are always welcome. Especially, if all the text is in Arabic on your Netscape browser.

Oh, and yes, for those lexiconophiliacs out there who may have flagged the blog's subtitle, I'm aware that agentless is not a word. How else, however, to express the fact that I sold a novel to a publisher without an agent? I'm not trying to brag; it's just a little factoid that engenders curiosity. What I'm trying to get at is that if you can come up with a subtitle that shares the same sentiment, and that uses words accepted by Webster, please send comments my way.

How did I get St. Martin's to take the book without an agent? Rather circuitously. Read all about it in my World Leader Pretend section.

Labels: Agentless is Not a Word