The End

 by Catherine Dilts

The first killing freeze is late to arrive this year. My garden, lacking access to weather apps, has already slowed way down.

The tomatoes have quit producing, not realizing they could have gone on another couple weeks. The cucumber vines shriveled, the leaves turning dry despite regular watering. Instead of one sudden death in the form of a hard frost or early snow, things are winding down. The garden stumbles gradually toward The End.

In writing, two projects reached The End recently. That moment is glorious. Finally completed! Time to sell the books to an eager publisher, make a fortune, and move on to write the next bestseller!

Not exactly. Both novels were brutalized by beta readers. Am I being too sensitive? Maybe just a little. Like the garden, I'm not ready to give up yet. I received the most incredibly helpful comments on the big novel-of-my-heart from my critique partner. I’m getting a grasp on how to do revisions that will convince the rest of the world what a magnificent story I’ve created.

The second project is an ambitious YA co-authored with my daughter. After beta readers didn’t seem to grasp our brilliance, she became depressed. Almost ready to give up. Almost. Then something snapped. She’s coming up with amazing ideas that are giving life to characters, and placing them in ridiculously perilous situations. All the plotlines are weaving together with the strength of a bridge cable.

There’s hope these books will make it into the marketplace eventually. Soon? This rewriting and polishing is a hard task. The goal is in sight. Hope is reborn.

New life when you’ve just about given up. Like my two potted miniature cherry tomato plants. They are the only tomatoes still pushing out blossoms. They might create one last crop for me.

The End in gardening involves harvesting the produce, and doing something with it. Drying, canning, or freezing. (Canning jars ready for pickle relish.) Cleaning up the beds and containers before they're covered with the eventual blanket of snow.

The End in writing frequently results in realizing you’re not finished. There remains more editing, polishing, and review by trusted critique partners or beta readers. The absolute final step is doing something with it: sending it out into the world.

Each phase of gardening and writing is its own special season. Each requires a different kind of energy. And the courage to keep watering that bed if it promises to produce one last crop.

From zero to sixty and back again

AKA the ebb and flow of a writer's life. There is a schedule in the lives of writers. For me, it is this. I have about a year to fifteen months between book deadlines, and find it usually takes me a year to write a book. More if there is a substantial amount of research. I usually start almost as soon as the previous book is handed in to the publisher, and the early weeks consist largely of thinking. And chewing my nails. What should I write about? What should I explore next? What do I want to say? And what kind of trouble can I put my characters through this time?

During this time, ideas slowly begins to form and I push them around, looking at them from various angles, fleshing out the barest bones to see if there is enough meat. Kicking the tires, so to speak. After I settle on a promising, bare bones theme, I start to research. I visit the library, I search Amazon and order obscure books from ABE, I scour the Internet. I read and read, taking lots of notes while the bare bones take on more meat in my head. And because my head has only so much room, I start to jot ideas down in a file called "plot and research notes". I like Aardvark better, so may steal that for my next book.

Eventually the starting point for the book emerges out of the mists, and once I have that toehold, I start to write. Still researching, still groping forward, and with only the vaguest idea where I'm going. The plot and the ideas evolve as I write. I try to write every day, usually for the morning, and always try to finish a scene. The book and I lurch along in this haphazard, step-by-step fashion for several months, by which time I am about halfway through the books and six months from D Day. Deadline Day, or Dreaded Day, or whatever it feels like at the moment.

At that point I start thinking backwards from that D Day. I need to give my Beta readers at least a month, preferably six weeks, to critique my manuscript and I need at least two weeks to incorporate their critiques and do final polishing. Before I give it to the readers, I need at least a month to fix up the rough first draft and make it the best I can. There is no point in wasting readers' time with a book I know is still full of plot holes and crappy characters. Which means if I want to meet deadline, I need to finish my first draft three to four months before D Day.

Which gives me two to three months to write the second half of the book, when I have only the foggiest idea where it's going!

Yikes.

These past three months I have been in that boat, madly rushing to complete the first draft and fix it up to send to my beta readers. Which I finally did – yesterday. It's a very odd feeling. I've been desperately yearning for this day. Dust balls and dog fur balls have accumulated in my house, weeds have taken over my garden, the fridge is empty, and most of my friends think I've died or moved to Australia. I've had my pedal to the floor for several months, with the storyline and the characters in my head all day and feeling guilty whenever I couldn't give them the time they needed.

And now, suddenly, the foot is off the accelerator and I am coasting to a dead halt. The book is in "rest" mode for four to six weeks while I wait for the verdicts of my trusted readers. Now I have time to look around at the dog fur and the weeds, the full laundry basket and the empty fridge, and I don't even know where to begin. The morning stretches ahead, unstructured and without demands (except those listed above).

I know I will revel in the slower pace and the empty brain, and I will start to do all the things I have been neglecting. But for a week or so at least, the absence of "being a writer" is discombobulating. And I feel vaguely itchy.

As if I should be writing something. This blog, for example.

My First Reader

 I have been fascinated with a thread that has been running on this blog for the past week, beginning with guest poster Annie Hogsett's entry of last weekend, concerning who we envision as our reader when we sit down to write. Do you have an audience in mind, or do you write to please yourself?

When I am writing, especially a first draft, I do have an audience of one - me. I write a story that I would like to read. I did not always do this. I used to try very hard to write for The General Reading Public. But I began to have some publishing success when I forgot that notion. I write about what interests me.

Then, when the editing and rewriting process begins, I listen to suggestions from my pre-publication readers (sometimes) and from my editor (always), and tweak the story as per instructions in order to broaden its appeal.

My audience, therefore, is probably people like me. Sadly for the scope of my appeal, I am not a teenage boy or a romance-starved young woman. I’m not judging hero tales or romance novels, here. I think they are great, but my interests run in other directions these days. I tried to write a romance novel once.I had a wonderful idea, and I really think it would have been a good story, but I couldn’t sustain my own interest, and the book petered out before it was finished. I’m sorry to say this, because a popular romance novel will sell ten times as many copies as a popular mystery.

Having made the statement that I strictly write what I like and to hell with the audience, I now have to admit that I’m lying. I do construct my current series to please myself, but there are many things I’d love to write about, yet am not brave enough to attempt.

Even that is not true. I do write them, but am not brave enough to try to have them published. I fear that if I did, someone would send men in white coats to chase me around with butterfly nets.

And so I haven’t thus far tried to sell Kafkaesque expositions on the nature of reality. Instead, for publication I write something else that entertains me - historical mysteries.

I wonder how much can we tell about an author from what he writes? I know that when I read book reviews, I can often tell more about the reviewer than the book. Does an author reveal himself in his novels? Are authors like the characters they write about? Do they have the same fears and anxieties? Are they as intrepid, grieving, hapless, innocent, weary, or clever?

I’m an Oklahoman who has, until recently, written about Oklahoma.Am I like my protagonist, Alafair? In some ways, I wish I were, but I don’t think so.I live a hundred years later, I’m twenty years older, and childless, to begin with. Neither am I brave, intuitive, or nearly so sure of myself. Am I like my upcoming protagonist, Bianca LaBelle. Hardly. She's a willful, 21 year old adventuress who is as lucky as she is beautiful. I create a being with the qualities I wish I had, and live vicariously through her. I also indulge some of my more evil inclinations when I write, and not always through the villains. Do you do the same, Dear Fellow Author?

P.S. I’m building up my courage, so never fear, someday you’ll be able to read my Kafkaesque exposition on the nature of reality. While I’m writing it, I’ll laugh, I’ll cry, I’ll break my heart. And if I’m good enough at it, maybe you will too.

Editing yourself, Part Two

Barbara here. Two weeks ago I posted a blog describing my own, very personal process to editing once I've typed “The End” on the soggy, barely coherent 90,000-word mess that constitutes my first draft. Because I'm basically a pantser, there are a lot of plot holes, character inconsistencies, and dropped threads to be fixed up before the book makes much sense at all, and this macro-editing has to be addressed first. That lengthy, unwieldy, and challenging process was the subject of June 1st's blog.

This week's blog is about fine-tuning. I call it micro-editing, because this is the point where I examine the text page by page, line by line, and word by word. Naturally, because plot holes can trip you up in the most unlikely places, I keep an eye out for any remaining big-picture problems, but I am mainly concerned here with the power, precision, and economy of my prose.

Aline's Monday post about the difference between printed and on-screen reading is relevant here. To get the big picture of my novel, I always have to print it out to read and to make my changes in pen on the hard copy. I then transcribe those changes back onto computer and reprint it for the second go-around, and the third, etc. I do some tightening and fine-tuning as well during this process if the problem leaps out at me (if, for example, I use the same word three times in one paragraph) but my mind is on bigger things.

Once I have a fairly clean, final “big picture” copy, I read it through on the screen. As Aline says, the screen focuses on details without the distraction of the whole, and so I can examine my work one sentence at a time. I check for redundancies and superfluous words, for those silly extra adverbs and adjectives, for clumsy constructions and words that clang when read together. I look for length of sentence to ensure variety, chopping some up and combining others. Language should create a rhythm that draws the reader on rather than stopping them short.

Also in this micro-editing, I look at how effectively and vividly my words create images. I bear in mind the key points to good writing; show, don't tell, describe like a painter, not a photographer, remember the five senses. A few evocative, defining details will capture a character and setting far better than an exhaustive description. All this fine-tuning is done directly on the screen.

Once the manuscript is the best I think I can make it, I let it sit for as long as I can, which is sometimes only a few days, so that I have relatively fresh eyes for my last read-through. In hard copy. A final polishing, and it is ready for my beta readers. The advantages and disadvantages of critiquing groups is a topic in itself, but the group I use—my good friends The Ladies Killing Circle—are all experienced writers with novel series and/ or short stories of their own, and quite a lot of practice with an editor's pen. Because we have worked together a long time, we trust each other to be both honest and helpful, and I know that each brings a different perspective to the table. Some catch the character weaknesses, others the overall "feel" of the book, others the logic, the language, etc.

Each sends me back a list of comments, all of which I take seriously as I weigh their value and consider whether and how to address them. All writers, but particularly mystery writers, need objective input because, after a dozen or so rewrites, we are too close to the story. We don't know whether the ending is too obvious, the clues too obscure, the motives clearly enough explained, etc. Having beta readers who are skilled as both writers and readers, but also respect your style and don't try to rewrite your book for you, can strengthen your story tremendously.

By the end of this intensive process, what started as an incoherent muddle should be ready for the editor. Hopefully most of the hard work is already done.