Doubts and Decisions

Piles and piles of drafts, copyright Lori Gravley

I planned a new romance in early October, got my characters down, laid out my primary beats. I was ready for NaNo early because I had to travel beginning on Oct. 16.  

Then, I had time to think, and a new world began to form in my head.  A series of novels that would fit more readily in line with my brand for young people--interesting characters, a vivid world--ohhh, exciting.  So, I did some character development and decided I’d just pants a little with my beat cards (the note cards I have the describe each of the beats in general, I’ll talk about these in a later post).  

Last night was kick off, and . . . I wrote 1300 words.

Every single word felt like a struggle.  I went to sleep asking why. I often do this as sleep gives me answers that I sometimes can't find in the bustle of awakeness.  

When I woke up this morning, I realized it’s because though I love to write new things, love to create new characters and worlds, what I really need to do this year is to tend the old ones.  

In the past ten years, I have written: 

• twenty-five picture books

• one chapter book

• four poetry chapbooks.

• two full-length poetry collections

• one verse memoir

• two medieval mysteries for middle grade (in a series)

• two adult romances (with an entire world and possibilities for more)

• two paranormal mid-grade novels (in a four-book series)

• two stand-alone middle-grade contemporary novels

• a book about putting a poetry collection together

• a book of essays on writing

• a memoir about marriage

I have revised some of these projects upwards of forty times. I have sent them out sporadically, but still:

• I do not have an agent. 

• I do not have a book in the world. 

• I do not have a contract for a book. 

I woke up knowing that my plans for this month needed to change.  My world and my characters won’t go away, but writing my 41^st book wasn’t actually going to move my career forward.  

And I do want a career in writing.  I love the rush of energy that comes from creating a new world, it’s that post-partum joy of being a new mother that is such a rush.  But if I just keep pushing these babies out without helping them grow to adulthood, I’m doing my darlings and myself a disservice.  So, I’m announcing right now that this year, I’m a rebel.  

I will rewrite the book that I’ve been trying to rewrite for a year, Wild Things.  It’s a book I love and that I think might have a place in the MG contemporary market.  As a reward, I’ve told my world and characters that I will give them January and February to come alive in this world. 

After all, I’ll need something to do while I’m sitting around waiting to hear from agents about Wild Things.  

Giving Feedback

Giving feedback.  Image © Lori Gravley

I’m in a couple of wonderful picture book critique groups, and I’ve been critiquing for nearly 25 years.  I have a set of rules in my head, and I follow them.

In one of my groups, a member was feeling as if she couldn’t critique.  She didn’t know what to do or how to begin.  Leslee Anne Hewson shared two amazing resources.  The first is an overview of Critique Groups on Kidlit 411 which compiles links to a variety of resources.  The second is a list of Twenty Questions to Ask a Picture Book from Rachel Hamby.

These are wonderful resources, full of suggestions and things to think about, but they don’t focus on attitudes and mental approaches that can be the foundation of successful critiques.  Here are a few attitudes that it’s helpful for me to remember before I sit down to critique.

1.  It's the writer’s story.  It’s important to keep your critique partners intention for the story in mind when you review. Let’s say that a writer writes a story in rhyme.  You know rhyme is hard to sell, but you also see plenty of rhyme in the books you read. 

A good partner won’t try to convince the writer to rewrite in prose. Instead, a good partner might identify places where the meter or rhyme seem strained.  After all, it’s clear that this writer intends the story to be in rhyme. In this instance, it’s also important to find the story and the character as well.  I may not write in rhyme very often, but I know stories, and I have a trained ear.  So, I wouldn’t ask the writer to rewrite the story in prose, but I would ask questions and make suggestion so that my writing partner can write the best rhyming story possible.  Not only by thinking about the rhyme but also by thinking about the story as a whole. 

One of the hardest but truest critiques of one of my rhyming stories was that my story didn’t seem to have the narrative power for a book.  If my partner had only been looking at my rhyme, she might have missed the fact that the story wasn’t living up to a book-length narrative promise.  Her comments, hard as they were to hear, honored my intent.  I had to go back into the story and reexamine the narrative and character arcs.  Those tough comments helped me see the weaknesses in my story that the fun rhyme were covering up.

2.  Look for what’s going well.  I have to start here. I graded papers for so long that sometimes the negatives can take over.  I become a walking red pen.  I have learned to find the good in the story first.  This good appears both in my overall comments on the story and on the line edits.  I note lines that make me laugh, lines that seem just right, and lines that inspire me.  I always begin my critique comments with justly deserved praise, both general praise and specific praise, since general praise can sometimes seem false and generic if not backed up by specifics. 

3.  Find the places of tension.  Most drafts have places that slip—the voice changes, the language gets too formal or too casual, the story moves away from what seemed to be its intent.  Identifying those places of tension can show the writer where she might go back into the story to make it better.

4.  Don’t feel like you need to solve the writer’s problems.  If you have a suggestion, share it, but if you see a problem but don’t know how to fix it, feel free to just identify it. 

5.  Be careful with line edits.  Line editing can be helpful if a story seems nearly there, but if a story needs more work or some big revisioning, then line edits aren’t really helpful.  You can point out grammatical habits and vocabulary that don’t seem to benefit the story.   You might focus on words that can be deleted, but for the most part, in my critique groups, we’re still working on the big questions:  audience; tone and voice; beginnings, middles, and ends; etc.  If the writer is working on revisions, line edits can just be a distraction.  In my groups, if I think a story is mostly ready and I only want line edits, then I’ll ask.  

6.  Know that the writer owns the feedback once you’ve given it.  It’s a gift.  If they don’t find it useful, that’s fine.  You did your best and your comments helped the writer see her story again.  You don’t have to worry that you’ll give bad advice.  You don’t have to worry that you haven’t been hard enough.  The whole point of critique is to help the writer see the work again.  What she does with that work once she’s read your critique are up to her. 

Responding to a Rewrite Request

Image © Lori Gravley

I’m always rewriting my work—from small edits to larger revisions.  For me, this is where my work as a writer begins to feel like work: learning to see my poem as it is on the page and responding to it in ways that make the poem better.

Just reading that last sentence makes me shiver.  I realize that I’m surrounded, psychologically speaking, by my projections.  My husband very rarely comes into focus for me as himself, he’s often seen by me as who I think he is, the same for my children and my friends.  I’m working on this.  Yoga and meditation help.  Compassionate Communication helps. Getting older and becoming more aware helps. 

In revising my writing, the helps are the same.  Being patient, sitting with what is, being aware of common patterns, and running my ideas through wise guides help me see my work as it is and not how I expect it to be.

So does the list of revision thoughts I’ve compiled from feedback I’ve gotten through the years.

What’s making me think of this now when I'm immersed in planning my next novel is the feedback I just got from an editor.  He asked me to remove the I-ness from a poem.  My first response was, of course, the nerve.  But I slept on it and woke this morning to give it a try.  It was easy to remove the I and the new poem was a better poem.  I’ve added *examine the I-ness* to my list of revision strategies, it joins other useful tactics that I frequently apply when I revise my poems:

--inspect the articles and conjunctions,

--kill your darlings (find the poetic word or vocab word that sticks out in the poem and delete it),

--look for the form (is it organic or is it leaning toward a sonnet, a ghazal, couplets?)

--break the line, space the line,

--write to the turn (find the turn in the poem and then pay attention to what leads up to that turn and what happens after it),

--explore cutting the first and last lines,
and now --examine the I-ness.

Update: The advice he gave must have worked.  My poem, "Late Summer Song," will be published online at the beautiful e-zine Plum Tree Tavern. 

Doing What Scares You

The suspension bridge at Kakum National Park, Ghana

(built with funding assistance from USAID ;-).
© Lori Gravley, 2016

There is no illusion greater than fear.  --Lao Tzu

Yesterday, I went to Kakum National Park with the express intention of doing something that terrified me.  In Kakum, there is a seven-part rope walk suspended over 100 feet above the rain forest floor.  I am afraid of heights.

But, I've wanted to walk above the rain forest since I saw pictures of a canopy walk (as they are called) over ten years ago.  And I wanted to walk in the forest and get a feeling for Ghana outside the capital of Accra.

I had three other women willing to join me on the adventure.  So, we woke up early, ate a little breakfast, and then sat in market traffic for hours before we were able to truly leave the city behind and drive along the coast of Ghana to this beautiful park north of Accra.

We joined church and school groups on the short hike up to the first walkway.  Samuel, our guide, said, "If you're afraid of heights, don't look down." I repeated that excellent advice to myself as I stepped onto the first suspension bridge.  I grasped the ropes and walked step by step, making sure to put my feet firmly on the wooden planks.  I looked ahead.  I listened to the school children squealing and singing away their fear.  I smiled, if only to release endorphins.

By the third section, I was feeling more confident.  I could trust my feet to keep me on the path.  I could trust the bridge not to break.  I was far enough ahead of the children and teens that I didn't have to worry that they would do silly things to make the bridges sway or rumble.  I looked down, briefly.  I looked at the tops of the trees and a ground so far away and through so much foliage I couldn't see it. I put one foot in front of the other and enjoyed the walk.

It was a lot like the writing I'm sitting down to begin today, a re-visioning of my first Christine de Pizan middle-grade mystery, Bed of Bones.  I woke up thinking about a quote from Susan Jeffers that I had on my refrigerator when my first son was born, "Feel the fear and do it anyway."

I didn't fall yesterday.  I won't fail today.  And I'll try to remember Samuel's excellent advice, "If you're afraid, don't look down."  I don't have to see the ground in order to keep putting one foot in front of the other.  I'll just take the next step.

Above the canopy at Kakum National Park, Ghana. © Lori Gravley, 2016

Hanging Words in Air

Elizabeth Bishop used to hang her poems up around the house and read them as she passed by in order to get new eyes for revision.  

Robert Lowell wrote a poem for her that describes her practice:

Do

you still hang your words in air, ten years

unfinished, glued to your notice board, with gaps

or empties for the unimaginable phrase—

unerring muse who makes the casual perfect?

The wonderful find of a huge chalkboard with metal backing on the Yellow Springs garage sale page (thanks, Miracle), led to this adaptation of the practice. I may not have Bishop's talent or patience, but I'm looking forward to finding ways to make "the casual perfect."

Here's to seeing with new eyes.

Braids: A Writing and Revision Technique

Heather Seller’s wonderful book, Chapter by Chapter, discusses a technique called braiding. Now that I know the term, I see it everywhere. Even before I had a name for it, I’d been noticing it in books I enjoy. But I hadn’t found a way to keep track of the emotional, physical, psychological, and other sub plots and arcs that ran through my stories. I’d tried several paper models, but they hadn’t been effective in helping me see my novel clearly.

But, with my spreadsheet and a new understanding of braiding in hand, I thought, what if I make a new spreadsheet page to visualize the braids. Voila.

I used the information from my original spreadsheet to look at how the plot lines in Knowingintertwined. I could see when I left one plot for two long. I could see how plot lines and character arcs balanced and played off each other. I could see where there were holes and missing parts and I could make plans to fill them in.

In Knowing, Alex and Sophie have a cat named Ginger. While she isn’t a sub plot in herself, I found that I didn’t always use her well to reveal character and tension, so I gave Ginger her own small column in the Threads spreadsheet.

I’ve wondered if I might skip the plot-tracking step of the first spreadsheet and just make a threads spreadsheet. I might try that for later stories in the series where keeping track of what we know about each character might become less important, but for now, both the plot spreadsheet and the thread spreadsheet help me see my novel clearly so that I can make it an even better read.

Revision: A Spreadsheet? You're Kidding, Right?

With manuscript mini-me in hand, the next step I take is to jump over to Excel and type into the spreadsheet all the information I’ve intended to keep track of all along, but sometimes forget to update.

Mike Mullins was the first one to introduce me to the idea of using a spreadsheet to keep track of what’s going on in my novel. He shared his basic spreadsheet with me, and I’ve made changes to meet my own needs and issues. Thanks, Mike.

The categories change with each novel I’m working on, but in general I keep track of the following things for each scene. Each of the following categories are posted at the top of the sheet and locked in place

Chapter and Scene

Words

Characters

Setting

Scene Description

Scene Intention

Complication

Risk

Result

Timeline/Date

What do we learn about x (character, event, etc.)

What do we learn about y

What do we learn about z

Other

I could include other categories, but for me, these categories all fit within a single screen on my spreadsheet. They make it easier to see the parts I find it so hard to see once I’ve finished the novel.

In my dream of myself as a very organized writer (a somewhat fictional creation borne out of my own longing), I will update this spreadsheet every day as I’m drafting my next novel. We’ll see how that works out.

For now, I’m creating the spreadsheet from my mini manuscript. I don’t need the manuscript in mini form for this, but it helps. I’m unlikely to edit words that are so small on the page, so it makes the mini manuscript helps me focus on creating a spreadsheet.

I’ll often take some time once I’ve finished the novel to note the word count for each scene. I don’t see any need to track the word count for the whole novel since that changes so much, the scene word count will change, too, but seeing the words as I’m first beginning to revise calls my attention to areas that may be bloated or too thin.

It’s a full day or two’s work to create this spreadsheet, and when I was young and had a more consistent memory for details, I wouldn’t have needed it, but the spreadsheet gives me distance from my work that’s essential for the next steps.

Since the next steps also happen within a spreadsheet, it helps me to start a novel worksheet that I to as needed. The novel I just finished revising has these sheets: overview (the spreadsheet discussed above), braids, character quick sheet, and revision plans. The next novel I’m revising, an historical mystery, will likely add two sheets: clues and history.

Once I’ve created the spreadsheet, it helps me stay focused on the world in my novel. It also makes it easy to find specific scenes, to look at pacing, and to track the growth of each character. Perhaps most importantly, it helps to see the novel again, both as whole and in its parts. And it helps me take the next step, braiding the stories. 

My New Desktop Background

My reader's comment at the end of Knowing, Chapter 1.

Revision: Going Small as a First Step

My actual first step to revision has been to try and fail repeatedly at revision. There's something to be said about trying, failing, and trying again. But I said a lot of it in my last post.

So, here I'll share the one thing that helped moved the revision forward. I single-spaced my manuscript, made the margins .5 all around and shrunk the font to 7 pts.

Viola. A little mini-me manuscript.

I got the idea of shrinking the manuscript from Darcy Pattison over at writetodone.com (the post is here http://writetodone.com/revise-novel-glance/). Thanks to fellow Sunday morning writer Jude Whelley for sending the link.

I didn't follow any of Pattison’s other advice on what to do once the manuscript was shrunk, but shrinking it down was the perfect first step for the others that followed.

I am a whole-to-part learner. I can write a novel one page, one day at a time, with only a vague plan and a bevy of characters, but once my novel was written, I couldn't see it. I tried spreadsheets, notecards, and post-it notes. All those things asked me to look at parts to envision a whole. That didn't work for me. But 7 pt. font did.

Once I had my manuscript down into a manageable pile, everything was visible (so long as I took off my glasses and put my nose right on top of the paper). With my 34-page novel, I could update my spreadsheet more easily. I could track the character and plot arcs, I could make a visual key for where my characters appeared and where they seemed to disappear for no reason.

And, I could carry those 34 pages with me in a medium binder clip with my character quick notes, my plot braid, my novel calendar, and my character's class schedules. It was easier to get my papers out and flip through each chapter to look for continuity problems.

I’ll talk about those other elements later, but for now, I’ll leave you with this step. Feeling stuck? Shrink your novel in order to see it more clearly.

Some things I’m going to try this week before I print Bed of Bones to revise.

1) Find character names and replace them with highlighted character names (a different color for each character). This will allow me to skip the scan and highlight step I took this time around.

2) Search for common locations. In my novel, the Louvre, Hotel St. Pol, the Seine, the King’s Garden, and Rue this and that are important places that it might be helpful to track. I can search these and highlight them in order to see the movement through space better.

Figuring It Out

I wrote five novels before I figured out how to revise. I finished my first novel in 2006, then I wrote another novel over the next few years, then picture books, then poetry collections.  In 2010, I sat down the first of November, and started a novel that I finished by the end of November--50,000 words in thirty days.  

Then I wrote another novel, then a memoir, then another novel, then another memoir, a poetic biography, a poetic autobiography.  I wrote and wrote. Though I was able to revise the shorter works--poems, picture books, even poem collections--I wasn't able to revise a full-length novel.  

Every year since 2010, I've read about revision for two months, from December through the first of February. Every year, I've sat down on the first day of February to revise one of the many novels gathering dust on my hard drive. I've struggled, I've complained, and each time, I gave up. Another novel unrevised.  

Every June, I started another book, the old one unrevised, unpublishable.  I worked on poems, wrote a picture book or two, did research and planned for the next November novel.  

Every year I've told my friends, "This is the year I figure it out.  This is the year I'll find the process that works for me." My optimism was always well-founded.  After all, each year's novel has gotten easier to write.  Once I figured out the method that worked for me, writing a novel has become an almost simple thing.  Difficult, but simple.  

And every year, I've shown up at the first of June--frustrated, dejected, a failure.  

But, here's the thing, I kept writing.  June to Novemeber--study the craft, read avidly, create characters, research setting, write a rough outline, read some more, read new books on craft, write poems and picture books, read some more.  Write everyday, read everyday, fanny in chair, do the work.  You get the picture.  

And in November, 2,000 words a day, nearly every day.  Sometimes 8,000 words a day. Giving the chracters I've lived with for most of the year a month to come alive, to tell their stories.  Often, I'll finish my 50,000 words in November but have huge chunks missing in my novel.  I write those huge chunks in December. I start to read about revising.  Taking notes, making plans, developing spreadsheets, buying index cards, buying post-it notes.  

Then 1 February comes.  I read my draft.  It's good but needs work. I print it out.  I make index cards, I look at my revision notes. By mid-February, I'm avoiding my desk.  No poems, no stories, no research, nothing.  I'm stuck.  

I moan about for a few weeks. Then I whack myself and start to read again. I start to write again.

Lather, rinse, repeat.  

But this year is different.  Everything I've read, heard, and learned has finally borne fruit. I am just now finishing with my first complete revision of a novel.  I'm sending it to my first reader on Sunday.

My process hasn't been linear.  It hasn't been easy. But just as I discovered what worked for me as I drafted, I'm discovering what works for me in revision.

Lesson: keep working at it.  Eventually, you'll figure it out.  If you don't keep doing the work, you'll never figure it out.  This wisdom won't come to you in sleep.  It develops through the work, the 99% perspiration. 

Over the next few weeks, I'll write about some of the techniques I've used to revise.  Next week--7 point font size as a first step.