Re-emergence

The first signs of spring are here:

peepers singing at dusk and dawn
earthworms on the sidewalk
sun higher in the sky
warmth in the sun, chill in the shade
annoyed skunks letting the world know they are waking up
writers re-emerging from their dark caves of creativity

I set out to finish editing my manuscript, edits based on comments from my critique groups and from agents who were kind enough to tell me what was wrong with the opening movement while rejecting the book.

I hit the goal on Sunday. One final read for the remaining typos and then it's off to agents for their reaction.

I'm glad spring is here. I even missed the stinky skunks. Most of all, I am so glad my saint of a husband lived with the slug all winter while I muttered incantations over words, sentences, phrases and chapters. Thank you, Terry, for being here and being my sounding board. You are truly a saint.

A literary week and then some

Last week was dominated -- happily (yes, I know it's a adverb!) -- by things literary.

The first event of the week was a fantastic presentation by Sharyn McCrumb and Adam Edwards, authors of Faster Pastor, Sharyn's third NASCAR book and the first one written with a co-author. I had the pleasure and honor of reading an advanced reader copy of the book and reviewed it for Valley Business Front earlier this year. If you want to laugh out loud, this is a good book to read.

Sharyn and Adam were very generous with their time, talking to a crowd of around 75 who braved sloppy, snowy roads, answering questions and signing books. The event was a fund-raiser for the Westlake Library, the newest community center at Smith Mountain Lake.

The second event was private. A few friends gathered over lunch to talk about marketing for writers, both self-published and commercially published. We have been working on a marketing plan for new writers. We challenged each other, asked questions, brought in outside ideas, and I captured everything in an organic document. We want to test this with some of our friends who have books in print. We also think this would be a good resource for writers who have yet to publish, but who are getting close. We all determined it was never too early to think about how to promote your works. We also decided that it was hard work, but worth the effort in the end.

And finally, the weekend concluded with me finishing My Name Is Red, by Orhan Pamuk. Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2006. This literary novel is worth the investment in time. It is beautiful. I wish I could read the original Turkish, but if the English translation is faithful, I don't need to. The novel breaks all the "rules" for what agents say they want. It has so many different narrators that you have to refer to the bottom of the page to see who is speaking. The narrators do not have different voices. There are descriptive passages, adverbs, and other contemporary taboos. Perhaps because it is historical fiction, set in sixteenth-century Istanbul, that Pamuk broke all the rules and still found an agent. I'm glad he did.

And now back to removing words ending in "ly" from my manuscript. (This caused no small amount of concern when I searched for "ly" and found over 1,000 of the bad critters. Then I remembered that a main character is "Emily." Solved that problem. For now, she is "Emilie." Can always change it back. . . .)

Have a productive week and to all my writer friends, keep cranking out pages.

February Wrap Up

Now that it is March 1st, I can safely say farewell to the Winter Olympics. Not that I watched all that much of the broadcasts. Nor did I care about which country won the most medals. I don't get curling and don't want to. I understand the origins of the biathalon, but after five minutes it was like watching paint peel. And what's with the twizzle? I hope I forget what it is in four years.

I did go to a "meet the authors" event at a local eatery on Saturday. I wanted to see how the venue works (it doesn't; it's right next to the kitchen). I wanted to see if the room was too small for a crowd (it was way too small). I wanted to see who turned out to talk with and listen to three local writers: Sally Roseveare, Karen Wrigley, and Becky Mushko. I learned that when the audience is 80% friends and family, you don't sell many books. Such events, while nice and provide a bit of local publicity, will not make or break anyone's writing success. Back to the drawing board to study how to expand beyond local venues and all the familiar faces.

And last, but not least, I am putting the finishing polish on my latest edit of what I call Mad Max 1. After receiving three rejections to query letters last year, in which three different agents made the same comments, I took their feedback to heart and rewrote about 70% of the opening section. Now with loose ends nearly knotted, I should be ready to resubmit and see what happens.

At any rate, one of my resolutions was to make Mad Max 1 the best book I can. A second resolution was to submit it to agents and see what happens. One nearly complete, one ready to begin.

The Well and the Mine

Disclaimer: I do not seek out Southern fiction, but sometimes it finds me.

A few weeks ago I read a glowing review in Publishers Weekly about a debut Southern writer. Gin Phillips chose to write about a coal mining town in Alabama in 1931. Pre-teen Tess watches a woman throw a baby into her family's well. In her child's mind, this becomes a mystery that plays out against rural America during the Depression, against racism, potential mine disasters, company towns, and poverty. Yet the family is strong and supportive, and the climax is subtle and profound. From her opening sentence, "After she threw the baby in, nobody believed me for the longest time." Now, THAT'S a hook.

Phillips has a fine ear for idiom, but doesn't bog down dialogue with regionalisms. Enough for the reader to get the point, but no more. Her characters are as down to earth as the coal dust in work-hardened hands. Her language soars and dips, spare and lush, and always drives the story forward.

I loved the experience of reading this book. I didn't put it on a Kindle. This demands the reader enjoy it in analog format -- a page-turning book.

Formal Book Launch

Last week, Becky Mushko, author of Ferradiddledumday, and her illustrator, Bruce Rae, launched the publication of their new book with a pair of a dramatic readings of said work. The global premier was on Tuesday, January 26th, at the Franklin County Library in Rocky Mount. On Thursday, January 28th, the pair gave another spirited performance at the Westlake Library.


The crowd got into the reading, er, performance, and laughed in all the right places.

The Lake Writers at Smith Mountain Lake and the Valley Writers of Roanoke (a chapter of the Virginia Writers Club) are rightfully proud on this publication. We all thank Cedar Creek Publishing for seeing the worth of this retelling of the Grimm Brothers tale of Rumplestiltzkin and bringing the work to light.

And now for the last shameless plug for a while: buy the book, buy the book, buy the book. I bought two and will buy more for presents.

Character Development

I've been reading John Truby's The Anatomy of Story and find it very informative. I finished reading his chapter on character development when I needed a break. My husband and I hied off to a movie, Up in the Air. The way the George Clooney character developed could have been directly out of Truby's work. I was spellbound, expecting and seeing the next stage of the character's transformation.

So, I recommend reading this chapter and then seeing the movie. Clooney transforms his character from detached to someone who begins to feel emotion. The character is not complete by the end credits, which makes the movie all the more intriguing to those of us who like to develop strong characters. They don't all have to begin as positive human beings, but they do have to face conflict, moral and psychological needs, and grow in the process. In fact, Truby wrote a brief analysis of this very point on his site.

All in all, an interesting juxtaposition of reading and cinema.

Animal Communication

On Saturday, I went to a public session on animal communicating led by Karen Wrigley. She worked with a golden retriever that stole the crowd's heart. She talked to several people directly, passing along messages from the pets, living and past over. I found her session uplifting.

Karen has a new book coming out in a few weeks. Called Beyond Woofs and Whinnies, it's full of stories from animals to their humans. Even if you are a sceptic about communicating with animals, I encourage you to get the book. I read the manuscript and found it both entertaining and encouraging. As we say, buy the book, buy the book, buy the book.