The Writing Life

Writing as a Blessing

Monday, November 7th, 2011 | Random Thoughts, The Writing Life | 2 Comments

Every time I sit down at my computer to begin the next phase of my novel, I realize how blessed I am.  When I begin my work, my characters show up to tell me their stories, to open the door into their world so that I can step into it with them, and hopefully bring my readers with me.

It is a privilege to do this work, and a joy to watch as a new world unfolds before me. I feel almost as Michelangelo did when he said that the sculpture exists already beneath the marble, and he was the one to free it. I am no Michelangelo, but I think every creative person knows a shadow of what he means. The work as it is meant to be born lurks in the darkness just beyond our reach, whether a piece of sculpture, a painting, or a novel. As a novelist, as I begin to give myself over to the work and to the story the characters want told, the novel begins to unfold before me almost like magic.

I do not mean to say that it is easy and effortless and that birds are always singing and that rainbows light my path. Sometimes it is dark where I’m walking…sometimes the Cave is a lonely place. But always, no matter how long it takes to bring a novel into the Light, the book and the journey to create it is a blessing.

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Bad Reviews and the First Time Author

Wednesday, October 26th, 2011 | The Writing Life | 15 Comments

“It is better to do your own duty badly than to perfectly do another’s.”

The Bhagavad Gita

Bad reviews are the tough part of being published. Not that there aren’t other things that are difficult once your first book comes into the world, but reviews from people who hate your work can be devastating, especially for first time authors. Please know that everybody, and I mean everybody, gets them.

No matter how hard we work to write a good story, to hone our craft, to develop our characters and our story arcs, even the most careful, meticulous work will not please everyone. Even when most of the people who read our work understand and enjoy it, even when most are moved as well as entertained, there will always be people who do not speak our language, who are not a part of our tribe, who simply will not like our books. Sometimes the voice of the author bothers a reader, or the author’s style. Sometimes a reader does not like the protagonist. As hard as it is to read those reviews, those people are entitled to their opinions and to their voices, just as we are. Hard to accept when they hate what we do, but accepting the reality of bad reviews and differing opinions is a necessary part of being a professional author.

Those are the people who read a book and genuinely, honestly, and openly do not like it.

Then there are the destroyers.

There are some people in the world who live to tear things down. They don’t seem to have much interest in what they attack, or whom. They do it for sport, because they like the taste of blood, because they can. I don’t pay much attention to these people anymore.  It’s easier for me now simply not to read these reviews, but when I began this work, they were very tough to take.

In this world of opposites, destroyers have their place. But remember always that you also have yours. Every writer, every artist, must face those who would tear down their work simply because it is there. Creators have always gone on creating in the midst of destruction. I think that will be the true harbinger of the end of the world: when creative people lay down their pens, and allow themselves to be silenced.

Do not be silenced. Keep writing. The world needs your stories. No one else can speak with your voice. No one can tell your stories but you.

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Making the Dead Live

Wednesday, October 19th, 2011 | Random Thoughts, The Writing Life | 1 Comment

History came alive for me for the first time in the 11th Grade. Mrs. Johnson told stories about George Washington and Thomas Jefferson as if they were real people, as if she had just had lunch with them that day. And it occurred to me for the first time: the dead were once as alive as I am.

I know this sounds ridiculously simple and obvious. And if someone had asked me that before that day, I would have said, “Well, of course they were alive once.” But before Mrs. Johnson began speaking about the dead there in that classroom, I had not really believed it.

Suddenly, people like Napoleon and Thomas Jefferson became real for me. I read everything I could find about these men, trying to uncover the mystery of who they were. Not just their deeds, which were great, but the men behind the things they accomplished. I was looking for their souls.

I went on to study history at Duke University and continued to learn earnestly about the dead. History, even social history, does not ask questions about the souls of the dead, but that was still my interest as I read and studied and wrote. It was another five years before I realized that if I was searching for the souls of the dead, the best way to find them was through fiction.

Princess Alais caught my attention and held it for three years. Eleanor followed on her heels and changed my world.

I have no idea, through my work and research and writing, if I actually have caught a true glimmer of who these women were.  I hope so. For that has always been my goal: to examine the past, to unpack it, the facts and the great spaces in between them, seeking always something elusive, something just beyond the edge of the page of any book, fiction or biography. These women as they were. These women as they might have been.

Climbing the Mountain

Friday, October 14th, 2011 | Editors, The Writing Life | 4 Comments

I know I have spent the last weeks obsessing over first drafts. Their joys and difficulties, the work that goes into them, the satisfaction that they bring. Today, on a completely different subject, I would like to muse on the moment when you send a semi final draft to your editor.

Turning your work over to another is always daunting. No matter how many times you have gone over it, no matter how well you have crafted it, you always know that it needs to be fixed. No manuscript is perfect, no matter how hard you work to make it as perfect as you can. And the day you send your baby off to your editor is the day you have to face that reality in spades.

Of course, it is exciting, too. The thought of the book you have worked so hard on going into the hands of the woman who will read it, who will later pass it back to you with queries, clarifications, questions, and suggestions. Sending a manuscript to the editor is the next big step in making the book better, the next step in bringing the book into the light, where others can read it.

It is a wonderful moment, standing on a plateau, looking down the mountain at the distance you have already climbed in the process of creation, the path you took to write and revise the book in its present form. The day will come when you get your notes back from your editor, and begin revising. That is the next step on the mountain, on the path you climb to bring a book into the world. But the day you send your manuscript to your editor is a wonderful time to stop and remind yourself of all you’ve accomplished. It is hard to remember sometimes, when there are so many deadlines, so many other projects, and work that needs doing.

But I try to stop and savor the moment. Standing still, looking back at what I’ve already done is a wonderful thing. A time to catch my breath before I begin the climb again.

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Finishing the First Draft

Wednesday, October 12th, 2011 | First Drafts, Shakespeare in Love, The Writing Life | 2 Comments

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air;
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve;
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

(William Shakespeare, The Tempest, IV.i.148–158)

I have finished the first draft of my latest work in progress, and it is an amazing moment of bliss. It is also a little sad, because those characters that I have come to love so much have faded. As soon as I turn my computer off, they vanish, just as Shakespeare’s visions in The Tempest. That is the nature of fictional characters…they come to enchant us, then they step back into the dark, and new characters rise take their place.

The beauty of working on a novel, one of many, is that the first draft is just the beginning. I will start again tomorrow with the second draft, and the characters I’ve come to love will live for me again. I will have to be more analytical, more careful, the internal editor will be in full force, out of retirement with the red pen in her hand. But I’ll still get to enter another world, and when the book comes into my readers hands, hopefully they will be as enchanted by that world as I have been. That’s the goal, after all. Not just to tell ourselves these stories, but to offer them to each other.

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