author: Nicole J. LeBoeuf

So this manuscript's trend of getting all Sasha's changes mixed up is only getting worse. I'm getting to the point where I'll be reluctant to mark up a page at all, simply because I'm still agnostic as to whether that page will still exist after I get all the threads sorted out.

What helps is thinking of the main story arc in three phases:

1. Sasha changes her attitude and the world responds
2. Sasha begins to notice physical and more blatant changes in herself and others
3. Sasha is actively causing supernatural change and things are getting out of control.

The end of tonight's mark-up session, page 109, had a scene that will be the main indicator that we have moved from Stage 2 to Stage 3: Sasha takes a strand of her crush's hair and magically entangles him into her notebook so she can affect him directly with the hot-and-heavy fantasies she's written in there.

Which brings me back to the problem of Sex and the Young Adult Novel. In my 2004 novel, things just got really adult, I'm afraid. There was no way around it; unicorn stories all hint at ideas of sexual innocence and experience, and the story arc wasn't coy. This time around, I think discretion is the better part of valor, and I'll do a lot of "between the asterisks" stuff.

And that's all I've got for now.

In case anyone's been paying attention to such things: Yes, my word count is somewhat lower than 50K. Have faith; all shall be as before, and better! Or at least that's what I keep telling myself. Remember what I said about having to generate more first draft as part of the rewrite? Yeah. Only, thankfully, it's sort of draft one-and-a-half, because this new material is being written by someone who actually knows where she's going. Joy!

Today's a home-all-day-writing day, so this afternoon after a couple hours on the other novel I should be able to whip out Chapters 6 and 7. Those'll be a mix of old material and new--there's still Brian's reunion at the house with Amy and what that reveals, only without the "just testing you" trip to the airport since Brian instead spent the evening getting reacquainted with his brother; and there'll be a bit more time, character development, and believable events between now and the end of the first half of the book.

I'm kicking myself for how many days I let go by without working on this poor beastie, but with any luck I'll make up the time and get it done by the end of the weekend--only a week later than my original plan--at which time I'm estimating the word count'll be closer to 75K and the chapter count'll be a nice round 20. If that doesn't happen, you have my permission to send me mocking emails on Monday.

Hit the first big need for a scene restructure tonight. Apparently, back in November 2002, three ideas hit me all at once, and I tried to make them all happen almost simultaneously. I'm thinking they need to be put in sequence. That'll draw out the main story arc a little longer, giving me more time to show gradual character change.

In less abstract terms: This book is about the price of getting what you wish for. It's about a high school freshman named Sasha--unattractive, un-admired, unaccepted--who wants to be pretty and brave and loved. It's about what happens when she gets her hands on a magic notebook, one that makes everything she writes come true.

She writes three changes in the chapters I marked up tonight. She writes herself a meeting with the boy she has a crush on; she writes herself a minor victory over her most feared bullies; and she writes herself a kiss. I'd managed to smoosh the first two up into one cycle of write-and-come-true, and the third sort of clumsily evolved from there. They'll turn into three separate cycles, each showing her confidence growing and the pace of change accelerating, magic spells having effects more and more blatant as the story progresses.

I also found a minor story arc hiding in a conversation between Sasha and her older sister. Not quite sure how to pull it off, but I can sort of see the shape of it from here. See, this is why the re-type doesn't happen until after one complete read-through.

Incidentally, I highly recommend doing the markup in the bath. Carolyn See recommends a glass of wine, to combat the writer's natural tendency to tense up when confronted with her own writing; I recommend a long hot soak. It may be time to invest in a bathtub desk.

Did I mention that I mailed the book proposal off Wednesday? I mailed the book proposal off Wednesday. I imagine it's in a towering stack of book proposals, manilla envelopes weighing a pound and a half each, early birds with first class stamps lording it over late-comers with their electronic priority mail postage stickers. I imagine a room filled with the smell of coffee, the slowly hystericizing giggles of overworked slush readers punctuated by the rip of envelopes and the flip of pages.

Well, no, it's probably a little early for slush readers to get slush drunk. At 8:00 AM Pacific Time, it might even be too early for slush at all. I have no idea what a WOTC slush reader's schedule is like.

And how's the book coming, you ask? You just keep right on asking that. You go right ahead. While you're at it, ask me how much sleep I'm going to get tonight. Uh-huh. That's right.

In better news, NaNoEdMo 2005 is coming along nicely.

And let's close this morning's entry with product placement: Have you looked through your share of keyholes today? Well, why not? Look at the kind of stuff you get to see! For instance, this blog entry features a lovely composite satellite image of Gasworks Park, in Seattle, where several important scenes in this story take place. Look! You can see the sundial!

(It should be noted that Google--who bought the software, incorporated it into their Maps Beta, and renamed it "Google Earth"--did not pay me to say that. But I wouldn't turn down payment for having said it. Should Google feel moved to grant me a free subscription for plugging this delightful piece of software, I won't complain.)

OK, so that bit about reading through once without a pen in hand? That went right out the window. Pages 1 through 47 are now rather ink-stained. I'll be surprised if I can read the scribbles later, knowing my handwriting; I'll probably be remembering more than reading, as the appearance of each note on each page reminds me what my brain was doing at the time I made the note. I don't have photographic memory, drat the luck, but I do seem to have a good head for associative recall.

Here's a true thing, for certain values of true: The first read-through, after a long wait, is the truest. The manuscript has sat on a Zip disk (a high-tech version of The Back of the Bottom Desk Drawer), unread, for more than a year now. Tonight I am reading it again with the freshest eye I can hope to bring to the work. If I weren't marking it up now, the things I'm noticing on this read-through might have never make it into my notes, because I might not have noticed them on a re-read.

I'm marking quick-fixes in the margins of the manuscript--typos and line-level errors that stand alone. Larger structural issues, such as the need to better develop a character's motivation or to convert a one-hit wonder detail into a recurring theme, go in a separate notebook. I'm also using the notebook to keep a running tally of what scenes I've written and what they contain. Hopefully the structural issues will inform a revision of the scene-by-scene outline, and then while I'm doing the type-in I'll be able to take care of the quickies on the fly. That's the plan, anyway.

Two hours down, 48 to go. Well, who knows how many left to go. 48 is enough to appease the NaNoEdMo Gods, but I'm betting it won't be enough to see this sucker publishable.

As a side note, Ms. Lisle says she can revise a 125K rough draft in one or two weeks. I expect that's at a higher rate than two hours per day. Gods know my attention span can't handle eight-hour devotion to a single project. When I worked a nine-to-fiver, I was forever switching back and forth between projects (ha! so it was a good thing that I always had three deadlines hanging over me at any one time?) and getting up for walks around the office, sometimes figuratively (visiting co-workers for a minute or two of gab) and sometimes literally (heading outside to circumambulate the building). I guess it's a good thing that I have two other projects to work on. But anyway, it occurs to me that before deciding to follow Holly's revision methods, I ought to read at least one of her novels and make sure her style and my tastes actually concur.

Reading, sadly, will have to wait until at least one of my three projects is done. I'm going to go away and whine now, thanks.

Yes I do. I'm-a gonna edit this novel into submission. I plan to clock two hours per day, with rare 1-hour exception days, until the 50-hour goal is reached and then keep it up until I like the shape the novel is in enough to give it to a beta reader.

We'll see how well that sticks. Considering that I'm still trying to get the 2003 novel ready to go out the door should someone ask for it, and that I've also got a short story that needs to hit the mail by mid-March, it'll be a crunch. Either it'll be quick-start tough-love lesson in Treating Writing Like A Real Nine-To-Five Job, or I'll end up sleeping a lot. We Shall See.

Meanwhile, after an initial attempt at applying Holly Lisle's One-Pass Manuscript Revision Technique to a NaNoWriMo draft, I have a better idea how to proceed. It goes something like this:

1. Print out and reread the manuscript in its entirety. Flinch if you must, but read. Don't write on the manuscript at this time.
2. Do what Holly says in the "Discovery" bit. Define what the story is about, who the characters are, how they develop. Get a rock-solid grok on the desired finished product.
3. Restructure as needed. Write a chapter-by-chapter outline. Go through your hard copy making marks as needed to bring the manuscript into line with the new structure. Figure out how stuff is foreshadowed. Plant the trees that need to grow; grow the trees that got planted. Lay on a patina of literary allusion and symbolism according to your preference. Think "macro."
4. Now, make a copy of the document file and get to work rearranging the manuscript to reflict this revised structure. Write new scenes where needed. Cut old ones. Be vicious. When you're done with this, you are done with this and you will not be allowed to revisit it except by editorial fiat (that is, if the book is accepted and the editor wants changes; or if the rejection letter says "do this stuff and then resubmit.").
5. Print out a new hard-copy and do some fine-tuning. Find oft-repeated words or phrases and apply thesaurus. Fix the sentences that clunk. Smooth out paragraph segues. Think "micro" and make that prose sing.
6. Print out a new copy and hand it to a trusted beta-reader. Forget all about this novel and work on something else until your beta reader gets back to you. Incorporate beta reader's suggestions, as appropriate. Repeat as necessary.
7. You're done. Now go out there and find someone to publish the beast.

In other news, I got my 10-year-old Canon BJ-10sx talking to my brand new, parallel-port-free Averatec laptop, by way of a USB-to-Parallel-Port adapter. They said it would be iffy! They said it would be expensive! They were right! But I got lucky. And the thing works beautifully. Installed the printer to port USB003, shared the printer on the network, did a NET USE alias using LPT3 to refer to the share drive, and told WordPerfect 5.1 (DOS) to print to LPT3. Whoo-hoo! Direct printing from my word processor of choice!

I can now say this: For an effective ego-boost, try printing to an ancient, slooooow bubble-jet. The hours it'll take to print a 237-page manuscript will impress on you that, Almighty Gods in Alphabetical Order, dude, you wrote a huge honkin' book! And isn't that a nice feeling?

This will not be news to you, for the subset of "you" that's defined as "folks what've already been through the novel-submitting process." But I thought I'd just mention it, for the benefit of y'all what haven't.

Synopsis-writing sucks.

Thank you.

Oft-heard advice to writers new to the novel-writing scene: "Do not send in your 3+synop to an agent or publisher until the entire novel is finished!" I agree. Until you've written a few of these beasts and determined for yourself how long it takes you to finish—hell, until you've determined that you can finish—it's sheer madness to send out the first three chapters of an unfinished novel. Not only do you risk getting a request for the full manuscript before the full manuscript is actually ready; you risk those first three chapters developing changes as you finish the rest of the novel, causing your original submission to become inconsistent with the full manuscript. Both of these problems are bound to cause you to lose reputation points.

Well, hey. Madness. Fine place to visit. I'm headed there Monday.

The WOTC deadline is March 1. That leaves only, erm, 9 days between now and then. And here's where I'm at: I've got three chapters done and edited, all except for the final fine-tuning. What the hey. Let's ship 'em off on Monday and then write like a fiend, right?

Reason 1: If I don't submit until after I've edited the whole manuscript, I'm going to miss the deadline. So it's go mad, or just stay out of the pool.

Reason 2: I've mostly been stuck on the edit because I know the novel needs a lot more structure and interim crises than it has at the moment. If I prepare a submission for mailing on Monday, that means I'll have written up a synopsis and a well-organized, exciting chapter-by-chapter outline. Ta-da! Structure and crises. After that, the rest of the edit should go swimmingly.

Reason 3: Submitting on Monday puts me in the position of either hoping they don't pick my submission as one of the ten finalists, or working like a dog to get the manuscript ready in case they ask for it on March 2. I don't enter contests that I hope not to win, which leaves me only plan B. Tricking the external world into enforcing my internal deadlines is a nice way to make deadlines stick.

Reason 4: This is not the novel I want to work on for National Novel Editing Month. Nope. This is. Accordingly, I need to get the current novel the hell out of my way by the time March 1 rolls around.

So, there you go. Four reasons for the absolute madness of a first-time novelist submitting the first three chapters without having the rest of the manuscript in hand. If I manage to get caught with my literary pants down, you'll be the first to know. But I ain't planning on that happening. Just You Watch.

To all two or three of you who actually read this and might be wondering: No, I'm not dead, and the novel's not dead.

As to the blog, I'm trying to do a bit of rebuilding on it such that it accomodates other writing subjects besides those novels I've drafted as part of NaNoWriMo. I've been doing a bunch of work on short fiction these last few months, and I've also been hanging out in the AbsoluteWrite forums where the demise or the cleaning-up of PublishAmerica is being ardently hoped for. So many writing subjects to talk about! So many ways to organize blog entries! Plus I wanna try writing my own RSS feed, too.

And as to the novel, I confess to dragging my heels. But! I've written a Whole New Short Story! To submit here! Go me.

So. More later, as available. Kisses.

Sent out two copies of my picture book manuscript today. This means I have fulfilled my "one submission a month" requirement for January. Nyah.

I'm very pleased with the latest rewrite--the story's a lot tighter now, all extraneous elements removed, each remaining Thing tying setup and ending together in a neat little bow. OK, well, it's probably not that perfect. I can think of one Thing still in it that serves no purpose except 1) to establish the main character's physical setting in a "Damn That Television" sort of way, and 2) to establish a Saturday morning routine for the family. But I do think a certain amount of extraneous detail of this sort is necessary; otherwise, your characters might as well be floating in front of a blue screen.

What do I mean by "Damn That Television"? Well, it happens to be the first line of a Talking Heads song, and it got stuck in my brain after reading a forum post by James D. McDonald. Who's he? He's the "Uncle Jim" of "Learn Writing With Uncle Jim" fame. The forum post I'm thinking of addresses the issue of Point of View, and quotes an instructive article by Rob Killheffer. (Notice that the link in the AbsoluteWrite.com forum post no longer works; the article had moved sometime since December 2003. My link does work. Please click on it.)

Here's the relevant excerpt:

Interlude: The Voyeur Camera

It’s television’s fault. Television and movies. Visual media. In so many of these indie publications the narrative point of view slides around like a hot rock on ice, and observations intrude without any clear viewpoint at all. Consider this, from Thoughtmaster: "a skeletal face…whose shifting features left the viewer confused." What viewer? Or this: "The voice was surprisingly strong from such a diaphanous figure." Surprising to whom? Surely not to the only other person in the scene, who knows the speaker well.

These writers’ imaginations have been shaped by visual storytelling, in which there’s always an implied viewpoint — that of the audience, the camera, the peeping lens. They conceive their scenes as if they’re presented on a screen, and when they commit their prose, the camera remains, lurking outside the frame.

There’s no other explanation for scene shifts like those in Exile. As Jeff Friedrick and his pal Carl leave the bar where they’ve met, we’re told: "At the bar, a man turned his head and watched them go. He was tall, and a brief flare of light revealed reddish hair. Before the spotlight moved on, odd points of light deep in green eyes gave the impression of motion.…" Gave the impression to whom? The viewing protocols of film and television help us make sense of it: The two men who have been the focus of the scene get up and head for the door, and the camera pans aside to settle on this watcher. His reddish hair is "revealed" to us, the audience. We’re the ones who receive the "impression of motion." It’s as if, in these moments, the authors are not crafting prose but working out a screenplay. I recall the oldest and most basic advice offered to the aspiring writer: Read! Read! And read some more! If you want to write a novel, don’t draw your skills from the big — or the small — screen.