More danger

I’m officially a Midwesterner, moved in and (somewhat) unpacked in Orchard Lake, Michigan. I’ve dragged my writing chair to the corner of an office, near the window, where I can sit at 4 a.m. and write until dawn when sunlights drifts in and tells me to start my work day.

I’m whittling my way through a rewrite of a novel I sent to my agents, Julia Lord and Ginger Curwen at Julia Lord Literary, a couple months back. The book is what I hope will be the first in a new series set at a boarding school, a setting I left only a couple weeks ago, after living and working in that world for nearly two decades.

The feedback I got from Julia was simple: the middle dragged a little. “More danger,” she said. I don’t disagree (Stephen King, in “On Writing,” says, after all, “The editor is always right.”), but I’m into the revision and one promised cut –– a twenty-page section in which our protagonist drives out of state to locate the book’s other major player –– I’m not going to make. As I'm re-reading, I'm finding that too many clues are there to fully eliminate the section. I will, however, tweak to add “danger.”

As I'm working, I'm realizing the importance of nuance and that narrative tension can be controlled by subtle language moves.

I’m not changing the plot as much as I am adding and cutting words and lines, changes that punch up the risk and the consequences of a bad decision. In the book a man flees campus, his girlfriend is threatened with physical harm and that threat comes to partial fruition, and the narrator’s son goes missing. Questions that (hopefully) engage the reader and create narrative tension: Is the son with the fleeing man? Was the son taken? And who is behind it all (chasing the man off campus, the vanished boy, and the injured girlfriend)? These questions drive the book, and keeping them at the forefront of whatever decisions I make is important.

All of which has me refining the book's "danger" and even redefining the word. The physical need not take place if the threat of it exists. It's like the music in the horror movie. Toni Morrison said you can’t use fiery language to describe fire. I’m trying to create narrative tension with light brush strokes.

Here’s an example:


ORIGINAL

He heard something in my voice and sat up.

“Where was this picture taken?” I asked.

He held Liam’s laptop, squinting. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t recognize that room?”

He shook his head. “That’s Liam,” he said, “and that’s Taylor. Who’s the third person?”

“They aren’t looking at the camera,” I said, “but look at the picture in the background.”

“It’s Amy and Maggie.”

Given the photo, the person not facing the camera had to be Amy Boyd –– same hair, slight build.


REVISED

He heard something in my voice and sat up.

“Look at this picture,” I said.

He held Liam’s laptop, squinting.

“Recognize that room?”

He shook his head.

“You’ve never been there?”

“I don’t think so,” he said.

"I need you to look hard. Think."

“Dad, you’re freaking me out. I don't recognize the room. Is that where Liam is?”

I ignored the question and pointed. “That’s Liam. That’s Taylor. Who’s the third person?”

“They aren’t looking at the camera.”

“Look at the picture in the background.”

“It’s Amy and Maggie,” he said.

The person not facing the camera had to be Amy Boyd –– same hair, slight build. The location was on the file: Brunswick, Maine. It had to be Amy’s dorm room at Bowdoin College.

*

Aside from revision suggestions, during the call, Julia also shared some news: an agent at ICM, representing Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning playwright Bruce Norris and his screenwriter partner Caroline Wood, reached out to Julia to say the tandem likes my single mom/Border Patrol agent Peyton Cote and waned to talk to me about a “shopping agreement.” I spoke to Bruce and Caroline last week, asking about their vision for what a TV series might look like. It’s exciting because it’s different from one other foray into this discussion I've had. That time, the people who approached me hadn't actually read the series and wanted to move the character from her French-Canadian roots (the books are set in Aroostook County, Maine) to Arizona or Texas. Bruce, Caroline, and I will write a pilot and a pitch for what would be a one-hour-per-episode TV series based on the first book in that series, “Bitter Crossing" (which Caroline has read eight times). If it gets off the ground -- a big "if," of course -- my role will be as “consulting producer,” something I came up with, given I start at new (very) full-time job July 1.

Where does any of this go? Who knows? You and I both know many calls are made, but few shows actually are.

The art of the summary

Can you summarize your novel in two or three sentences? This is a litmus test many of us use. It’s helpful, and when I can’t do it, I know I’m in serious trouble.

This happened to me recently. I was talking to my agents, driving, when they asked me to summarize the draft of a novel I’d finished. Having sent it off to them, I turned my attention to the next book I’d write and drafted a short synopsis for book #2. It’s brief. A 1+1+1+1=4 summary of what will happen and why. (The why is the fun part and much of that I flesh out as I write.)

What occurred on the phone was that I realized I couldn’t offer them a short, succinct account of what happened in the book and why. My failure to do this was, I realized, directly related to questions they had surrounding plot points. I exhaled and told them I wanted the book back. Now I’m eliminating a character and revising.

A couple things happened in this case. The first is that I spent more time writing this book (18 months, maybe two years) than I have ever before. That’s too long. Stephen King, in On Writing, recommends three months. With a day job, I can’t do that. But I usually spend nine months or so on a draft. This time, I got sick, spent a month in the hospital, and when I returned to the book, I’d lost the thread of the story, had to go back, read it all again and made changes along the way, complicating the plot.

I’m not Tom Clancy and don’t want to be. I like books that work because of the characters, not because of the plots. I’m interested in human motivations and moral ambiguity. I guess, though, if you give me several weeks alone in a hospital room to think and rethink a story, my ego gets the better of me.

So I’m back at it, revising and streamlining my book so that in the end no one will say I didn’t play fair. It starts (and hopefully ends) with a three-sentence summary.

#

In other news, my 17-year-old daughter Audrey and I are traversing the midwest this week, visiting colleges. We’ve driven 1,200 miles (and counting), starting in Maine, turning around at the tail end of Ohio, and driving back, visiting seven colleges in five days, and meeting track and cross country coaches.

Children grow up too damned fast!

How long is too long?

I wrote my first novel in about 15 months. It wasn’t very good. I rewrote it several times, and despite all that CPR, it still wasn’t very good. But it was finished. When I got my first book contract, I was obligated to produce a book a year. I finished those first few books in about nine months each.

I’m starting a new series, and the time I’ve spent on this book has me thinking I’ve gone back in time. Life is more complicated now. I have three kids, for one thing. I had a health scare this fall that threw a monkey wrench into my pace. But when I’m done this book, I will have nearly two years into it. Not long, maybe, to some. But for a genre writer, who thinks of himself as a series author, two years seems like a long time.

If you write series –– and I love the process of seeing a character develop from book to book –– two years is too long. Publishers want a book a year. I get that. I grew up eager for spring because I knew the next Spenser novel was coming. You can’t create a brand and then run out of the product.

But we’re not making widgets.

So how long is too long to produce a book? The simple answer is as long as it takes. You need to write the best book you can, especially when you’re launching a new series. And once you “have the voice, the next one is easier,” the saying goes. Maybe.

Stephen King, in On Writing, says three months is optimal. I see his point: you need to be close to the text to follow the plot development. I have an encompassing day job, so writing a book in three months isn’t an option. My way around this is to work in 50-page chunks, writing and editing before moving on. If I hit a wall or have to go a few days without writing, I go back and reread the entire book again. This prevents me from losing significant forward momentum.

So how long does it take me to write a novel? Hopefully not two years each time out. But the answer remains as long as it takes.

I’d love to hear from others regarding this question.

10-minute (writing) workout?

Infomercials promise workout plans that can change your physique –– and, thus, your life –– in 10 minutes. Just 10 minutes a day. Sound too good to be true? Well, if it talks like a duck and it walks like a duck . . .

But what if we applied this theory, in concept and scale, to novel writing? Maybe I’m cynical, but I don’t believe you can get into shape by working out 10 minutes a day. You can get your heart rate up, hold it there, and that’s a good thing. However, life-altering results, it seems to me, require more.

But novel writing? Creating a 100,000-word manuscript, even a rough draft, certainly takes a sustained, concentrated effort. In college, a professor told me he wrote poems because “writing novels takes large chunks of time.” Stephen King, in On Writing, says something to the effect that one should try to write a novel in three months. I understand his reasoning –– writing a book in such a short period of time guarantees that the story, characters, and conflicts remain burned into the forefront of your consciousness. It makes sense.

But it’s just not possible for many writers to write a draft in twelve weeks. Life usually gets in the way, and if it doesn’t, the fact is that few authors write as fast as Stephen King. And most don’t or can’t write as often.

Since many writers don’t have the necessary “large chunks of time,” can there be a 10-minute workout to turn your brilliant idea into a 100,000-word manuscript? Or more specifically, how does one write a novel without multiple hours each day dedicated to the task?

I try to write a book a year. That’s always been the goal. (It seems easier when a contract looms over your head.) And to do this, theoretically, one must only write a page a day for a year. Theoretically. But everyone knows the process on day 1 is not the same on day 51. Or day 251. The plot has a way of jumping up and grabbing you by the throat and squeezing the life out of you every hundred pages or so. (Or it does that to me any way.)

So I concentrate on time –– two hours a day. I can get 500 to 750 words of fresh copy written (or read through 30 pages) in two concentrated hours. It’s what I shoot for.

I’d love to hear what others who lack “large chunks of time” do to get their novels written.

Body in Motion

On Tuesday night, I had trouble sleeping. I tossed and turned and wanted to throw something at the alarm when it went off. But I had an appointment -- with a physical therapist. My doctor asked if I'd like to see one after she concluded that the occasional sharp pain I was having around my neck and shoulders could be related to fact that I spend most of my working days at a computer. She suggested that a therapist might do an evaluation and give me some exercises to do.

The therapist did her evaluation and noted that I had limited range of motion in my neck before experiencing pain and that there was a problem with the distance between my shoulder blades. I nodded and explained my bad habit of sitting too much at the computer, even though I use my adjustable standing desk when I work at school. But I have two monitors on that desk, and looking back-and-forth between them counts as "repetitive motion". And at home, I tend to work a lot at my dining room table on my lap top. Wrong position for arms, too much looking down. Even more when I read a book with my head down while slouching in a chair. The physical therapist mentioned that spending hours not moving from a sitting position can be as bad as smoking.

I heard all this and still expected to walk out with exercises to do and come back in three months. Instead, the therapist went off to get a large heating pad and a device with electrodes. She wrapped my neck in the heating pad, put the electrodes on the back of my neck and left me with a magazine. The heating pad to reduce inflammation felt wonderful, so did the pulsing from the electrodes. When the session was over, she came back with the exercises that she wanted me to start doing. And the news that she wanted me to come in twice a week. But the problem should be better soon if I work on my bad habits. Set an alarm and get up and move every hour. Watch my posture. Position my computer properly. Do the exercises.

Actually, I already knew I've been engaging in body abuse. That was why I requested an adjustable  desk at work. But I hadn't allowed myself to think too much about how that might be counteracted by sitting for hours at home, carrying around a shoulder bag that weighs at least ten pounds, and trying to make one trip from garage to house with two grocery bags and a 24-count case of cat food.

Thinking about writing and the body reminded me of a book that is somewhere on my shelf -- diet and exercise for writers. I know it's somewhere, but I haven't found it yet. I did come across Stephen King's On Writing. If you've read his memoir, you'll recall that he is candid about his former drinking problem that he justified at the time with "the Hemingway Defense" (that writers are sensitive, but real men don't show their sensitivities, instead they drink). About his life now, King observes that having a healthy body and a stable relationship (his marriage) enhances his writing. And his passion for writing contributes to his health and his marriage. King has a schedule, writing in the morning and the afternoon when necessary, but reserving evenings and weekends for his family and relaxation.

We all know, writing can be a pain in the neck, the back, the legs, and the posterior. Writing can lead to carpal tunnel syndrome, and weight gain. We get eye strain from writing. Too much time alone or the stress of a deadline can make us grouchy and give us insomnia. Knowing when to move our bodies -- to stand up and step away from the computer -- is essential.

I'm going to do better. I don't have the time to go to therapy two times a week, so I will sit up straight and get up when the alarm goes off and pretend I'm my cat, Harry, who wakes up from a sound sleep to turn around and stretch. Zumba. Interval walking. Will do. Yoga. Meditation. Will try.