Notes from a Desk
One of the great pleasures of spring and summer is cleaning up the garden and planting new things. At the end of a vigorous session in the backyard I look at the big tub of weeds—or the overflowing bed of the pickup truck if I’ve been really busy—and gauge my progress. At this point, one might admire one’s flowerbeds or vegetable patch and say to oneself, Hey, super good work, woman! This looks fabulous. You definitely deserve a chilled beverage. Aperol spritz?
I don’t do that.
I mean, I do drink the Aperol Spritz, but I don’t allow myself that positive self-feedback.
I only see the weeds.
Progress, for me, is gauged on the pile of ugly, invasive, stubborn weeds I’ve removed. Instead of admiring the beautiful plants that remain, or patting myself on the back for blending shades of purple and synchronizing bloom times, I immediately look for more weeds.
So, it has occurred to me that although it is important to control the weeds, it might be equally important to control one’s focus on the weeds.
When we’re writing a draft, it’s easy to get stuck in that overgrown, weedy place. Sometimes we’re overwhelmed, unable to see the beautiful blossoms or wildflowers mixed in with the bad stuff. Sometimes, when we’ve pulled the metaphorical weeds from a draft or else heard constructive criticism about what might get chucked out, we don’t stop to appreciate the work we’ve accomplished—that really good idea that inspired us and got us started. Don’t get me wrong, it’s helpful to self-edit and not just plow ahead like one is the greatest thing since the power lawn mower, but sometimes we don’t see the garden for the weeds.
I asked two questions of four fellow novelists. Here’s what they had to say:
What are your writing weeds, and how do you deal with them?
“Oh, how many writing weeds there are in the novel garden! Self-doubt. Scenes written into corners. Characters who don’t behave and go so far off track you wonder what story they’re trying to crawl to. Impostor syndrome (My God! I have no idea how to write a book!) The blank page. The anxiety and dread that THIS story will be the one that well and truly stinks. For me, the only way through all this is through. Figure out the word count you need to meet for each week. Visualize the consequences of not making your deadline, because that’s enough to keep your seat in a chair, I think. A good word count day is a positive day. There will be something that blooms in what you wrote. And PS – I love to kill my darlings! In fact, if I find myself with chest puffed out because I’ve just written a beautiful or clever line of dialogue or prose, I know it needs to be snipped out immediately.”
—Kim Taylor Blakemore, author of the recent novels The Companion ( Lake Union, 2020) and After Alice Fell ( Lake Union, 2021)
“My personal writing weed is overwriting. In particular, I’ve never met a prepositional phrase I didn’t like. While drafting, I often use prepositional phrases throughout. In editing, they magically disappear. The reason for this is that I […]
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Here is the truth: sometimes, you cannot have work/life balance. In the current world, that’s almost heresy, and as you know, I’m a deep believer in keeping the well full and taking care of yourself and loving the work. I like artists dates and measured hours for the writer and plenty of exercise. All that stuff.
But sometimes, the book is going to take all you’ve got. You will not be balanced and measured and sane. You’ll be unshowered and wild-haired and babbling about things that have no meaning to anyone in this world. Nor will you be able to have actual conversations with the living world because you have used up all your words on the book and there are none left over for live humans.
Sometimes this state comes about because of deadline, and that’s always the case for me. I am a working writer, and I’ve pretty much had a deadline for the next book for thirty years. Sometimes that deadline is a comfortable distance away, but most of the time, it’s coming up faster than I expected and then I have to go in my office, and shut everything else out.
But whether or not there is a deadline, there comes a point in every book when this has to happen. At some point, I have to open the window to the other world, the book world, and step into it.
And live there.
It takes a lot of effort to build the world of a novel. It’s a vast, complicated, layered thing, with about ten billion details you have to place. The landscape alone is complex, located in a particular place and time, with particular flora and fauna, and furniture and customs. Then we add the people of the book, the stars and the secondaries and the peas-and-carrots bit players. We conjure up weather and cars or horses or carts, and skies and sounds and meals and clothing appropriate for each one. Gestures. Habits. Longings and goals and frustrations and backstories.
Read MoreNote: This is my 500th post here at Writer Unboxed, so it had better be good.
It’s been my pattern of late to struggle with topics to write about here, and landing on a topic for Inside Publishing month was no different. Ultimately, I decided to go with the simplest truth relating to Inside Publishing that I can offer.
I talk with a lot of authors on a regular basis because of my position here at Writer Unboxed. Because of that, I hear things that authors don’t want to or can’t say publicly for fear of negative consequences. I hear about relationships with agents and editors that have turned neglectful or even hostile. I hear about publishing deals that have gone sour, sometimes seemingly overnight. I hear about strong books that became rejected options, and being let go from a house after enjoying what seemed a mutually beneficial relationship. I hear about dropped balls of all shapes and sizes, about the need for sales audits over questionable bookkeeping, about lack of funding to support a beloved release, about print runs that pale in comparison to initial promises. I hear about authors who are reduced to shadows of their former selves because poor sales or dysfunctional relationships or even fears over an uncertain future have made them doubt–their talent, maybe, or their ability to persevere within the business for any number of reasons.
So. My simple truth for anyone who has felt let down by the industry is something I tell author friends from all walks all of the time.
You are not alone.
Everyone is weak sometimes, and everyone doubts occasionally.
These things happen, quite a bit more than you may realize.
Recovery from setbacks happens, too, just as frequently.
Because problems–even publishing problems–are temporary.
And business is rarely personal.
You can get past this.
There are at least a dozen ways around it.
It’s just hard to see those paths when your eyes are glued shut with disappointment.
It’s hard to remember the taste of hope.
But you will.
Here’s what you need to do:
Read MoreA member of our Writer Unboxed Facebook community (hey, Karen Lauria Corum!) posted something last week that caught my attention. She wrote:
“I had my mentor tell me early on to never love one book too much because you would at some point have to let it go off into the world…”
It’s interesting advice. And while I understood the letting go concern–though I think that’s more a product of fear than anything else–I couldn’t get beyond the “love” part of her mentor’s instruction or the idea that there could ever be a “too.”
Love a book too much?
I responded:
“I think you should love the hell out of every work-in-progress, because you’re going to be with it for a long time, and love is the only good antidote I know for the resentment that can otherwise build up in a long-term, intimate relationship.”
Truth is, I’d been there, and not done that. Learned a few lessons, too.
To share this with you, I have to spill some of the Uncomfortable Real that Sarah Callender mentioned in her last post. My debut novel didn’t sell as well as my publisher had hoped following the generous deal I received in 2008. Granted, it isn’t an uncommon situation, and my book sale did come about seven-and-a-half seconds before our economy crashed here in the U.S., but the reality of my numbers left me with a big steaming pot of woe-is-me. On top of that, I had to write a second book because I had a two-book deal, and that second book carried a lot of weight on its embryonic thread-and-glue spine. It needed to, if it could, earn more than my first book. Be as good as if not better than my debut. It seemed then that my career–at least in its current incarnation–might have depended on it.
The one word that would describe my state of mind while writing the first draft of my second book would be disillusioned. Because this wasn’t how it was supposed to be after you’d worked and worked and sold your book in a fabulous deal and had so much support and love, and reviews had been good and expectations high, and…
Life isn’t always fair. Buck up. Carry on, old chap.
Got it.
But the chasm between reality and what I had anticipated (and been told to expect) was wide, and I began to feel bound to the second book against my will. Oftentimes while writing the first draft, I felt an edge of resentment for all of it–the work, my contract, others’ easy confidence that I could get through it when it felt anything but easy. And you know what? It showed. When I submitted that first draft to my editor at the time, she told me what I already knew: It wasn’t great. In fact, it was a long way from finished. [Quick aside: I love both Top Chef and Project Runway, and there are times when the judges critique a plate of food or an outfit and correctly guess that the contestant was in a negative head space while working. I think it’s safe to say that emotions trickle down to our art.]
Things began to turn around for me when I started […]
Read MoreThe last time I posted, I mentioned the notes near my desk–the ones I used to help pull me through while writing what will be my second novel, The Moon Sisters. I’ve already shared the first note: Don’t doubt. Just work. Today I want to share something completely different.
Anyone who’s followed this blog for any length of time knows I have issues with “the process.”
I’m a pantser by nature, but after the protracted process with my first book–the complete rewrite, the significant revisions on top of that–I developed a serious case of plotter envy. I didn’t want another Sisyphean experience with book number two. I didn’t want to be a writer who could only pop out a book every four to five years.
Though some pantsers shun plotting, saying the story will end up stale and formulaic if it’s planned out ahead of time, I’ve seen plotters work through outlines and synopses, use Scrivener and the like, and end up with beautiful works of fiction that read as organic and authentic.
So I decided.
I’d control the second book. I’d make the characters do what I told them to do.
Read MoreI’m in one of those weird in-between places with my writing. After a roller coaster ride involving the loss of an imprint and three editors, and a dark-moment-of-the-writerly-soul retooling of a premise, I’m able to take a breath. I’ve turned in line edits and now I’ll wait to hear back about copy edits, and etc…
I’ve been fretting over this story since 2008. Now, I feel a bit like a bear coming out of hibernation. Blinking at the light. A little hungry, a little grumbly and disoriented and restless.
What should I do? I ask myself every morning, re-assimilating to not having to work on a manuscript. I can go to the grocery store. Exercise. Play games with my kids. Bake brownies. Exercise some more. Consider, for the 207th time, becoming a banker.
Most recently, I faced my desk. It was thick with the evidence of battle, strewn mostly with stacks of old printouts of my manuscript. I examined the stacks, deciding what I needed to keep, what I wanted to keep, and what I absolutely had to toss. (Retaining seven versions of a story is somewhat depressing, as I see it only as more evidence that I am so not a natural at this.)
Then I look at the notes. And I don’t have the heart to remove a single one of them.
After my dad died–at the far-too-young age of 56–my 16-year-old sister began taping notes all around her desk at our family’s home. She wanted to finish school, and she was struggling mightily. “You can do it!” “You are stronger than you think!” (And the like.) It was a show of her strength but also of her demons–a need for her strongest self to argue against all of the other parts, and hopefully be enough to shut those parts up so that she might succeed. I always felt vaguely uncomfortable faced with her notes, and half-turned away from them whenever I was near. They were just so real and raw.
After my debut sold in 2008, when I became petrified about writing a second book–the downside for me of a generous two-book deal–I too turned to notes. In the next few posts, I’d like to share them with you, let you in on the daily struggle I felt over this manuscript. These notes saved me, in a way, and maybe you’ll see something in them for you too. Or maybe you’ll want to half-turn away; that’s okay. At the very least, you may better understand my “I wish I were a banker” jokes.
In later posts, I’ll talk about one note at a time–what it meant to me, how it helped me to push on. But for now I want to close by sharing a single note that should need no explanation.
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