Spring coming, and with it the flood tides and the ebb tides and all manner of change. This is my time of year, the time when the trees become a riot of blossoms and the flowers start to emerge from the earth and everything – everything – seems possible.
1. I don’t believe in God or Fate, but I do think that the universe has a way of putting what we need in our path when we need it. Continue reading ““Gold Dust””
Things accomplished during my vacation (in no particular order):
painted my toenails light green, in honor of springtimeWhich is to say, it was a pretty kick-ass vacation.
1. I have fallen completely, utterly in love with the new Kate Bush album, 50 Words for Snow. Late to the ball on this one, I know, but I thought it was a Christmas album, and I refuse to even go near those. However, after finding the album on Spotify I thought I’d give it a listen (especially since none of the titles of the tracks seemed Christmasy). It blew my mind. I finished most of the last 100 pages of Persephone with it playing in the background.
2. Somewhere around the third draft of Persephone, I realized that I needed to rethink the whole plot thing. By which I meant that in order to do the rewrite I had to sit down and plot out the whole novel, and then go back through what I’d written and refit it into the plot. Figuring out what happened in the damn book was probably responsible for about 1 year of the rewrite. (The other three I blame on law school.) This last draft only took 8 months, and would have been even shorter if I’d started making myself wake up early and write every day back in August.
3. I’ve had a new novel in my head for a month or so now, waiting patiently for me to plot it out. Which, quite frankly, I’ve been dreading. Part of what I love so much about writing is finding out what happens next. I’ve always been afraid that if I stopped to plot it out, the magic would disappear, that I wouldn’t want to write a story if I already knew the ending.
I couldn’t have been farther from the truth. Over the past few days, I’ve plotted the basic outline of the new novel. I still need to sketch in the scenes, but I know where it starts, I know the crisis points and the resolutions, and I know how it ends. And now that the skeleton is there, I’m even more excited to write it. It’s oddly reminiscent of the moment I discovered the absolute freedom of poetic forms.
4. I baked cupcakes earlier this week, and send a batch to Kat Howard. Judging from her response, I think she liked them! Recipe (which I created my very own self) after the break.
@KatWithSword You guys. You guys!@thegirlhaswings SENT ME CUPCAKES. KEY LIME CUPCAKES. THAT SHE BAKED HERSELF. I am the Happiest of Kats.
Back in New York, and a strange sort of not-quite jet-lagged. We started in the Keys at 8:00 yesterday morning, spent the night somewhere in the Carolinas, and crossed the river onto the island at 4:30 this afternoon. In some ways, I think it’s easier to get onto a plane and travel across a continent than it is to drive that same distance. At least with the first, you can fool the body into thinking it’s only gone a short distance.
Florida was wonderful. The last time I was there was in Jan 2007, in St. Pete at Writers in Paradise. It helps that all of Florida (at least, the part that’s not the panhandle) looks like all the rest of Florida. Wide roads, low mission-style buildings, palm trees. In fact, we even stayed in a bright pink hotel. And even though we were on the other side of the state, and it was a good 30 degrees warmer, it felt like coming back home. Had drinks at South Beach and watched the tourists, went swimming at night after all the tourists left, came home covered in sand and sunscreen.
Thinking about New Year’s, and resolutions, and slowly coming to the realization that I am exactly where I am supposed to be. It’s frustrating in a way, because I’m almost thirty and I’m not nearly anywhere I wanted to be. Instead, I’m slowly learning how to get to where I’d like to go.
My resolution this year is to get serious about my writing. First, to finish Persephone and send her off into the world. I’ve held onto her entirely too long. Second, to start a new novel, and to do it right this time, plotting first and writing second. Third, to try to write a short story a month, even if the first draft is no good, even if I have to sit down and pound out twenty pages of dross. I’ve had a love-hate relationship with the short story for a long time, always hating how little space there was in which to create a world and admiring those writers who could do so successfully. I’m realizing, though, how much room there is to play in a short story, how essential it is to learning the architecture of building worlds.
I’m giving myself (by which I mean that I am forcing myself to sit down and write for) an hour each day. Not as much time as I would like, but I suspect there are going to be days where taking an hour seems all but impossible. I’m going to try to do it, anyway.
I feel as though I’ve finally been inducted into the ranks of actual writers now that I’ve received my first rejection. He was rather sweet about it, kindly offering up sandwich style criticism and a sincere-sounding hope that another agent would find it more to their taste. Not that it didn’t sting, but it was a kinder and gentler let down than I suspect is the norm.
The whole auction process felt strangely like being back in a freshman level writing workshop. There’s the part where you, the immature writer, gamely attempt to coalesce the whirling ideas in your head into story. There’s the part where the rest of the class reads it, and doesn’t get it, and then proceeds to give you feedback in the form of variations on what the girl who went first said. And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the part you’ve been holding your breath for all class, the part where the instructor tells you what he thinks, because let’s face it, he’s the only person whose opinion you really care about anyway, and he says it’s not a bad attempt at characterization and moves on to the next story.
I’m still not sure what to do with the feedback I got. Most of it revolved around a suggestion an early commentator made about not liking the scene as a flashback. Which would be fair enough if it was a flashback, but it’s not. It’s more like a prologue. This is the story the character tells herself about who – and why – she is. It’s what she’d tell you if it were late at night, and she’d had more to drink than she should, and you asked her why she looked so sad all of a sudden. It’s structured the way it is because I want the reader to carry this memory with them throughout the book. It should be something that they don’t forget – something they cant’ forget – because she doesn’t.
Whether or not that works as a structure point, or a plot point, or a literary device, or a whatever you want to call it is still up in the air. But it frustrates me that the bulk of the feedback I got was on a point which, in my mind, is moot.
As for the rest of it… The skew of both the entries that got bids and those that didn’t as well as the comments I got made me realize something I hadn’t really thought of before. The agent matters. It’s not merely a process in looking through profiles and choosing someone who’s represented authors I like or someone I’d want to have a cup of tea with. It’s finding the person who’s looking for the type of fiction I’m writing. Because that’s the person who’s going to ask to read more.
For the curious, the link to the auction page is here. And if you’ve read this far and are interested in more, I’m still looking for beta readers.