Just Me Ink

For reasons I won't disclose, I found myself in a dive bar last Saturday afternoon.  The bartender starts making small talk which escalates to book talk. He tells me he's an avid reader and when asked about his favorite authors he rattles off the heavy hitters: Dickens, Joyce, Orwell,Tolstoy, etc. The other patrons at the bar roll their eyes as he swears that 1984 is the best book ever written.

I'm halfway through my drink (and I should know better than to order wine in a dive bar) and he starts telling me about his own writing. Three novels in fact. One is a historical saga set in Spain. One is something that made me glaze over about five minutes into it and I never did get the full synopsis of the third book. Now the thing I found so curious is that he claims he writing three novels and yet he hasn't actually written them. Not a word. "I've got it all in my head," he tells me. "I can tell you everything that happens." I don't bother telling him that he already has.

Now keep in mind, he has no idea that I'm a writer. As in a writer who actually writes--every day. That was unimportant, he just wants to tell his story while I drink his bad wine. I ask what he's waiting for in terms of physically writing his masterpiece and he says he's just so busy but he knows that as soon as he has the time, he can just sit down and write it out because yeah, he's got it all inside his head.

You gotta love this guy. He reminds me of the guy who causally asks what you do and then follows it up with "I'm gonna write a book someday." Oh really? Would you tell a neurosurgeon you'd like to do a little brain surgery some day? (Sorry, I'll save that for another blog!)

Now don't get me wrong--I'm all for the underdog and hate to be a naysayer but I'll bet good money that we'll never see this bartender's magnum opus. Another thing I'll bet good on money on--I'll never again order a glass of wine in a dive bar!

Let me just start by saying that editing is my favorite part of the writing process. That's where the magic starts to happen and generally speaking, a manuscript needs to be pried from my fingers before I'll let it go. While editing, I'm always amazed to discover that it's more about what you cut than what you add in. I recently went through a line edit with a dear friend and for every line I added in, I cut ten more.

A lot of writers are reluctant to cut. And I get this--believe me, I do. They've either fallen in love with their prose, or else they're fearful that they'll lose something vital by cutting. But I'm hear to say that cutting is a writer's friend.

I remember when I was revising Every Crooked Pot, my editor was concerned about the length and asked me to cut the equivalent of 80 pages. She didn't specfify what to cut and after I recovered from hearing this news, I went back and questioned each word. What I found was that I was getting wordy and was repeating myself for fear that the reader wouldn't "get it". When I trimmed away the fat, the characters and the story emerged more vividly. It was a breakthrough experience for me as a writer.

I'm reading a book now (that shall remain title-less) and it's so weighed down by excess explanation and redundancies. It's a good book that could have been a great book if the author and the editor had taken a scalpel to it. 

Easier said than done, but I think we need to give our readers more credit. They're generally pretty smart cookies and when we overwrite, (as another dear friend told me) we rob the reader of the joy of discovering the characters and the story as it relates to them.

So my advice to anyone out there, writing, don't be afraid to cut. It's your friend!

Today I'm wondering what the digital age means to future of bookshelves. As more and more readers compress and tote their books in their Kindles and Nooks, what becomes of our bookshelves? 

I confess, one of the first things I do when I enter someone's house is check out their bookshelves, which (I know) can be a bit like snooping through their drawers, but I can't help myself. You learn so much about a person from the books they read. I remember once being at a party hosted by a woman whose shelves were lined with self-help titles like WOMEN WHO LOVE MEN WHO HATE WOMEN. I'd venture to say that every male at her party took note of this and not one of them ever took her out. I know another case where a man met a woman and when she took him back to her apartment, he saw shelves upon shelves of Nora Roberts books. Nothing against Nora Roberts, but for an extremely literary man this was the equivalent of a cold shower. He never saw her again.

As for my own bookshelves--they're packed two rows deep and take up an entire wall of my loft. I love them and the spines themselves tell a story, taking you through my different reading phases; the catch-up on classics phase, the thriller phase. You can spot my favorite authors, can narrow down my tastes. My books are an expression of who I am. If I go completely digital, what happens to that part of me? Of you? So the question of the day is, what happens to the future of bookshelves when we go digital?

When it comes to writing a novel, different writers get stuck at different points along the way. For some it's the beginning. Finding the right opening for your story is a little like finding the starting point on a roll of cellophane tape--you got round and round and round again. Other writers sail through those first 50 or so pages and then they hit a wall and for 100 or 200 pages they're trying to make thing happen. I refer to this condition as S.P.S. or Saggy Plot Syndrome. Then you have those authors who can't find their ending so they keep writing and writing.

As for my personal stumbling blocks... I'm usually pretty good with endings. I can get to the finish line but that's only after taking about 50 different attempts at the beginning and once I've got that nailed, I typically write myself into a corner every 100 or so pages. But other than that...

So where do you get stuck and what are you tricks for getting unstuck?

If you're serious about being a writer, you don't need to be a great speller (I'm horrendous!) or an expert in grammar (yeah, not great in that department either). What you do need is an imagination, a measure of talent, a lot of determination and a love of reading. But one other critical skill you need to acquire is patience. There's a lot of waiting in the writing business and you need to learn to do it with a grace (or at least make them think you've got that down).

At every turn in the process of writing a novel, you'll need to wait. You'll need to wait while trusted first readers make their way through 400 some pages. You'll need to wait for your agent to read, wait for your editorial letters, wait for page proofs, cover art, marketing plans. Waiting, I've decided has become as much of a writing skill as being able to type as fast as your brain spins the story.

Many writers would concur that, as Tom Petty put it, the waiting is the hardest part. How do you stop yourself from sending readers and agents obnoxious nudging emails? How do you keep yourself sane? How do you keep that imagination that helped your write the book from inventing a publishing horror story in your mind?

When it comes to waiting, I have one word:Distraction. Distraction is the name of the game. Keep busy, enlist the help of friends. I know some writers who decide that being on submission is the perfect time to paint their kitchens or living rooms. Whatever it takes, do it--and you'll look like a pro!