The Sun Rises on a New Year

"Dates that come around every year help us measure progress in our lives. One annual event, New Year's Day, is a time of reflection and resolution."
                (Joseph B. Wirthlin)

Here we are at the time of year when resolutions figure in many people's conversations. What are your New Year's Resolutions? That's a question you have probably heard this week and perhaps have even asked. Losing weight is generally a favorite of many of us and one I need to make after too much Christmas goodies!! What are some others that you hear? Perhaps to read through the Bible? More time with family? Exercise every day? Be kinder to those you meet? There are so many ways we can resolve to be better.
 
For many years I would write in my personal journal around the first of the year. Most of the resolutions I recorded in my journal were writing related. Perhaps to sell a new book. Or to not give up hope in spite of rejections. To come up with a new idea. To finish whatever book I was writing. 

Tonight while considering what to write here on my blog, I decided to dip back into one of those journals in the hopes of finding something I could just lift out of a New Year's entry to share here. I went back to 1981 and leafed through the journal. While I didn't really find anything I thought would interest anyone but me, it was eye-opening for me to look at myself as a writer thirty plus years ago. 

In 1981, I'd published two books, paperback historical romances in the general market. I was hoping for the third and fourth historical books I'd written that had yet to find a home. As it turned out it took twenty plus more years for those particular stories to find a publisher and make their way out to readers. Meanwhile, as I flipped through the years, I walked through some rejection valleys until finally in 1985 I sold a young adult novel. 

That began several years of writing for the young adult market and the oft expressed worry of whether the stories I came up with were going to be ones the editors I was working with liked. I had one editor who filled my ears with great words of praise but then would send back my books with lots of red edits and suggestions for rewrites. One day with her, I'd feel on top of the world when she said something like she could "pick out one of my sentences anywhere" since I had such a unique style and then I'd get a letter saying I needed to "trim the lard" out of my story. Up and down, but all the time I was learning. Not only how to write, but how to deal with those ups and downs of the writing life. I was so young as a writer then. I had two kids in college, but I was still so young. 

Oh, to look back through the years and remember. And now I feel so blessed to have books published. To have my stories out there for readers. To have the promise of being able to share more stories with readers in the year ahead. 

One of the most interesting things about glancing through several years of my 1980's writing life was that I mentioned stories and characters that I don't remember at all now. Obviously the books didn't sell or I gave up on writing them. One I mentioned trying to write through several years. The character's name was Candra Lynn. I often refer to my books in my journal by this or that character's story rather than a book title. But now I don't remember Candra Lynn at all or her story. Too many characters through the years have pushed her deep into my memory where I can no longer retrieve it without some reminder. The story is probably here somewhere on my rejection shelves. Someday when I don't have a newer, fresher idea to take all my attention, perhaps I'll seek Candra Lynn out and see what story she tried to get me to tell. 

Here's a snippet of a journal entry from January 1987. 
"You wouldn't believe the things I'm doing to keep from beginning work - including writing this. I've even been cleaning my desk drawers, looking through old letters, etc. 
    I'm timid to plug in my typewriter in and begin. I keep worrying the words won't come. I know they will but I also know how hard their coming sometimes is. But this book may be a gift."

That book did turn out to be a gift, one of my very favorite young adult novels, The Discovery at Coyote Point. But when I read through the journal entries while I was writing it, I often spoke of the struggle in the writing. I suppose that's what I need to remember as the sun rises on a new writing year - that the words may come hard, but the story may nevertheless turn out to be a gift. 

Thank you all so much for reading. You are a definitely a gift to me each and every time you come by here to visit. 

Tell me what you are resolving for the coming year. 

Editing Down to the Interesting Bits

"I'm a big fan of editing and keeping only the interesting bits in." Sarah Vowell

I finished up the editing on the galleys of my Rosey Corner book, Small Town Girl, that will be released in July. Publishing a book with a traditional publisher is often a slow and exacting process. I know there are ways now that a writer can write a story and have it in front of the public in days. Maybe hours as they upload to the net and have the story available for download almost immediately. I've been told it's not even that hard once you get a few of the basics down. But I still prefer the traditional publishing route. I like that editors are double checking my stories and making sure my words make sense. Of course, conscientious writers can hire editors to make sure their work is polished before it goes live online. That's always a good idea.

So that's what I did last week. Polished. Corrected. Made my words easier on the readers' eyes. Gave the story a word by word look over to attempt to make it the best it can be. At least, that's the aim and with great editors it has a better chance of happening. Fresh eyes, eyes that haven't been living with the story and reading it over and over can very often note things that a writer misses. Have you ever typed something - a report, an e-mail, or maybe a Facebook comment - and think you've done it without error? You may have even proofed it, but then you hit the send button and all at once a glaring error pops out at you.

That's why it helps to work over the galleys to eliminate those glaring errors. I had one in this book. I changed the name of a character from one paragraph to the next. She was a minor character, but she definitely needed to keep the same name all through her few moments on screen! My copy editor didn't catch that either. But the good thing is that this isn't the final read through. Next out are the pages when the writer watches for typos and little errors. Can't make big changes at this stage, but a wrong name could be changed. Anyway, that's why it's good to dig into the galleys and make sure I've eliminated all the unnecessary words and only kept the interesting parts. You can see in the illustration that I did do some changing. I probably could find things to change until the cows come home, (if you're a farmer, you know getting the cows home isn't always easy.) But then no new stories would get written. So there comes a time when you send it back to the editors and hope you've fixed the things that needed fixing and didn't fix things that didn't need fixing.

With this story, I had my pet word as always. I have worn out a number of pet words. "Just" is still a favorite. And I do love "still." "Of course" popped up in my book before this one. But this time it was "before."  What's so wrong with "before?" I wondered that as well, but when you use it four or five times in two or three paragraphs, a pet word has surfaced. So I had to find ways to get rid of a lot of befores. I have found the delete key to be a great aid in editing.

"Editing is the same as quarreling with writers - same thing exactly." Harold Ross

Mr. Ross might be right about this for some books, but I never feel as if the editor and I are quarreling. Not most of the time, anyway. Instead we're working in tandem to make my book the best it can be. I like editors. I even like editing most of the time.

Remember I'll be drawing three winners in a couple of weeks for my blog giveaway. Enter by leaving a comment here or on Jocie's Hollyhill blog, www.hollyhillbookofthestrange.blogspot.com.  One entry per comment on different posts.

Watch for my newsletter. Hope to get one sent out next week with details about a giveaway to celebrate Scent of Lilacs being available again. Thinking something lilac color. If you're not signed up for the newsletter, that easy to do. Just go to my website and click on the newsletter link.

As always, thanks for reading.

Editing - Then and Now

My goal is to strip things down so that you need just the right amount of words or shape to convey what you need to convey. I like editing. I like it very tight. ~ Maya Lin

That's what I'm doing now with my current work in progress - editing. If, as a writer, I work hard enough then the reading is going to be much easier for the reader. That's my purpose. I want the reading to be so easy that the reader forgets he or she is reading and is simply caught up in the story and riding along an imagination train watching the story unfold before his or her eyes. 

I don't mind editing. Well, maybe I'd better qualify that. I don't mind editing if it's my idea. Sometimes I'm not as happy about the editing when it's somebody else saying this or that should be done differently or better. Not that they aren't right, but I think it's harder for me to get into their mindset. So it's harder for me to make the changes they suggest. But now I'm in the first part of editing. My part, where I read the story over and change every word that clangs in my reading ear. Sometimes I change it by deleting. That's the easiest way. Sometimes. Sometimes not easy because I will have reworked the passage a dozen times when I finally realize I don't need it at all. But just think of all that practice I got switching words around. 

The picture above is the way I used to edit prior to writing on a word processor. Yes, I know some of you can't imagine that long ago, but some of us can. I was slow to the technical age anyway because those word processors used to be really expensive when they first showed up on the scene. Back then I typed all my first drafts and then rewrote them by slashing and marking out and adding in. You can see I even have some written in the margin. Then there were arrows and lines. I was never a cut and paster the way some writers were, but I did a lot of scribbling between lines and x-ing out unnecessary words.

Now I do everything on the computer. Words deleted fly off into the never-to-be-recovered land. New words are inserted with ease. Want to change a character's name. No problem. You don't have to read through and mark out the old name, add the new one, and worry you forgot to change it somewhere in the writing. You can hit the find and replace and change a hundred Harry Browns into Perry Jones in five seconds. 

But however it is done, editing needs to be done. So now I'm taking my first chance to improve and tighten the story. Plus I need to cut some words. I always write too long. But the good thing is that I will get those other chances to edit with the fresh insights of editors who aren't as attached to the words of the story as I am. New eyes see new ways to tell the story better. So tonight and next week, I'm trying to make my eyes new so I can work hard to make your reading easy.

Nothing much has been easy around here lately though with Mom not doing well at the nursing home. She hadn't slept for 36 hours before tonight, but she was finally asleep when I left. However, I'm expecting a call any minute saying I need to come back, that she's awake and trying to get out of her bed or chair. The dementia keeps her in a panic, especially at night. Typical, they say, of dementia patients. So I'm hoping she'll have a good week so that I can have a good week editing and make my deadline.


Thanks so much for reading. I appreciate each and every one of you. And I am going to have that giveaway for The Gifted very soon. I've found some Shaker gifts, so stay tuned.


 

Editing The Seeker

~~After Christmas and New Year's, it's time to get back into a working routine. Not that I wasn't working during the holidays. I was working double duty - trying to get things done for Christmas and working on the galleys for my book, The Seeker, due out this summer.
~~I like editing and trying to make my story the best it can be. I want to catch all the awkward phrasing or places that are fuzzy and might not make sense to the reader. I appreciate editors who point things out that I sometimes miss. For instance in one of my Hollyhill books, I had a character reading a mystery writer whose books weren't published until after the time of my story. I should have checked that out, but I didn't. I'm glad the editor had a sharp eye.
~~Of course that's not all an editor notices. There are always places that can be written better. New ways to describe something or better words to bring a scene to life. The editor points out some of these, but I always see more and am glad for the chance to make my writing better. My goal as an author is to somehow write so smoothly and crisply that the words will disappear and the reader will be swept up into the story and live it along with the characters without thinking about the words he or she is reading. That's the way I like the books I read to be. I want to be totally absorbed in the story.
~~And so The Seeker is off back to the publishing company to go through the next phase of making its way to the stores' shelves. It's been available on Amazon and other internet sites for pre-sale for a couple of months now. I hope readers will like the characters, one a Southern belle and the other an illustrator for newspapers during the Civil War. Some interesting history with an extra generous helping of romance - even if part of the story takes place in my Shaker village, Harmony Hill, where such romance is strictly forbidden.
~~I also had to do a titling page for my book, tentatively titled Angel Sister, that is scheduled to release early in 2011. I'm excited about the story, but those titling pages are difficult for me. They always ask for a couple of snappy sentences to describe the book. I struggle trying to condense a novel down into a couple of sentences. Snappy sentences. I finally came up with two sentences. Not sure they snapped all that much. Here they are to see what you think.
~~"Nadine and Victor Merritt's love has survived their fathers' opposition and a World War, but the Great Depression is threatening to break their hearts. Their daughter, Kate, is determined to save her family and protect the little girl she found abandoned on the church steps even if it means defying her grandfathers, befriending the village odd woman, and being in the middle of a raging forest fire."
~~My editor would probably tell me that last sentence runs on a little too long, but I had so much to say. I always have so much to say. Guess if you've been reading these blog posts, you already knew that.
~~I plan to send out a newsletter soon, so if you'd like to sign up to be sure you get one, go to my website and click on the sign up for the newsletter link or send me a message. I'm trying to come up with a new giveaway that will make some of you smile even if the weather does turn frightful wherever you live.
~~I've been dwelling on happiness this last week, so here's a happiness quote to end tonight.

"Those who can laugh without cause have either found the true meaning of happiness or have gone stark raving mad." Norm Papernick

~~Well, at least we're laughing and the Bible says laughter worketh good like a medicine.