Finished: City of Refuge. Good stuff and I recommend it.
In progress:
Paris Book (James Bankston, unpublished novel) and
The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life and Work, Joseph Campbell and Phil Cousineau (about halfway done with this one).
Reading slowly these days and last week I didn't even have writing to blame. I met my word count only two of my five writing days. Not for any particular reason or stress. I just felt very tired and had no energy. Trying to work out again and eat better to help on the energy tip but I think I just had an off week.
Monday
Tuesday
New Photos
Some recent photos of Zoe over on my flickr page.
We were invited to an Easter party and Zoe had a blast. She took the egg hunt very seriously. Last year she was just beginning to walk around Easter, so she only participated in the egg hunt at daycare (which consisted of the infants crawling around her room to find the eggs). This year was a little more exciting.
She got too distracted to participate in the egg race. She tried to do the egg rolling one but her egg rolled downhill too fast for her to keep up. Oh well, there's next year!
And, a word count for those of you following along at home. I'm writing fast, but I suspect not very well. It's a good way to generate words, but I'm not sure if I'll keep up this method on the next project. Too early to say right now.
Monday
Collecting
I've been wanting to write about my new project, but I'm hesitant to do so because I'm superstitious like that. I'm on my second of glass of red wine, though, and right now it seems like a good idea. Maybe I'll change my mind tomorrow.
I was lucky enough to meet and study with Janet Desaulniers in Chicago. Right now I'm trying her method of writing that she calls "collecting." She always encouraged people to do Nanowrimo, but collecting can be your own personal version of Nanowrimo. Essentially, you pick a certain number of days, say 30, and a certain number of words you will write each of those 30 days. And you don't put too much thought into writing; I think she does this by calling it "collecting." You start collecting a bunch of different words and don't worry yet too much about how they go together.
So I'm trying my own variation of collecting right now. I have these three ideas for what I think might be novella-length works (but knowing me and my tendency to write long, they will probably be short novels). The only thing that connects these stories is a sort of dark mood and place, the southwest. I couldn't decide which of the three to work on at first, so I was sort of piddling around. I'd work on this one for a bit, then switch and write notes for another, and then go to the third, and essentially I wasn't getting much done with all my dither-dathering.
I sat down and started writing notes for all three. And for whatever reason I could see behind door #2 most clearly and I had a sense of the shape of the whole thing, so I wrote a quick outline of 25 or so chapters, which in my case are typically 8-10 pages each. Or at least they were in the last novel. We'll see if that holds true again.
I started writing on April 1. Since writing novels sometimes seems like a fool's errand, this start day seems appropriate. I decided to give myself a daily word count (1200), but only for Monday-Friday. Weekends are kind of crazy around here, what with errands and spending time with toddlers and what not. So weekends are for revising (if I want to) or just getting life stuff done. So I've been doing this for almost two weeks, and nine days of writing. I have more than 15,000 words and I'm guessing at an end total of about 80,000. I could be wrong about that; 80,000 really is just a shot in the dark at this point, but it's a goal. 1200 has been very doable and so far I haven't had a hard time reaching my word count. Monday-Friday also seems to be working well.
Maybe it's just this technique, or maybe it's the story itself, but right now the writing is not hard. I'm writing quickly and not sweating over the details. And if there's something I know I need to add in later but at the moment I'm not sure what it is, I put these [ ] as a note to myself and move on so I can meet my daily word count. If I can continue at this rate, I could have a rough draft by the end of June. (Assuming I haven't jinxed myself by writing this. The first rule of fight club ...)
This project is totally fictional. There is virtually no element of autobiography and part of me wonders if that's why this feels so easy. It feels like playing is what it feels like. And a huge part of me distrusts it. I think: it can't be good if it's not hard. I haven't actually done much revising yet, because I'm afraid if I go back and read it and it sucks, then I'll stop. But it's okay, I keep reassuring myself, if this is my shitty first draft. If this is just the skeleton (to mix metaphors), I can add some meat on the bones the next go around.
I really hope collecting works. 'Cause right now it's almost summertime and the living is easy...
I was lucky enough to meet and study with Janet Desaulniers in Chicago. Right now I'm trying her method of writing that she calls "collecting." She always encouraged people to do Nanowrimo, but collecting can be your own personal version of Nanowrimo. Essentially, you pick a certain number of days, say 30, and a certain number of words you will write each of those 30 days. And you don't put too much thought into writing; I think she does this by calling it "collecting." You start collecting a bunch of different words and don't worry yet too much about how they go together.
So I'm trying my own variation of collecting right now. I have these three ideas for what I think might be novella-length works (but knowing me and my tendency to write long, they will probably be short novels). The only thing that connects these stories is a sort of dark mood and place, the southwest. I couldn't decide which of the three to work on at first, so I was sort of piddling around. I'd work on this one for a bit, then switch and write notes for another, and then go to the third, and essentially I wasn't getting much done with all my dither-dathering.
I sat down and started writing notes for all three. And for whatever reason I could see behind door #2 most clearly and I had a sense of the shape of the whole thing, so I wrote a quick outline of 25 or so chapters, which in my case are typically 8-10 pages each. Or at least they were in the last novel. We'll see if that holds true again.
I started writing on April 1. Since writing novels sometimes seems like a fool's errand, this start day seems appropriate. I decided to give myself a daily word count (1200), but only for Monday-Friday. Weekends are kind of crazy around here, what with errands and spending time with toddlers and what not. So weekends are for revising (if I want to) or just getting life stuff done. So I've been doing this for almost two weeks, and nine days of writing. I have more than 15,000 words and I'm guessing at an end total of about 80,000. I could be wrong about that; 80,000 really is just a shot in the dark at this point, but it's a goal. 1200 has been very doable and so far I haven't had a hard time reaching my word count. Monday-Friday also seems to be working well.
Maybe it's just this technique, or maybe it's the story itself, but right now the writing is not hard. I'm writing quickly and not sweating over the details. And if there's something I know I need to add in later but at the moment I'm not sure what it is, I put these [ ] as a note to myself and move on so I can meet my daily word count. If I can continue at this rate, I could have a rough draft by the end of June. (Assuming I haven't jinxed myself by writing this. The first rule of fight club ...)
This project is totally fictional. There is virtually no element of autobiography and part of me wonders if that's why this feels so easy. It feels like playing is what it feels like. And a huge part of me distrusts it. I think: it can't be good if it's not hard. I haven't actually done much revising yet, because I'm afraid if I go back and read it and it sucks, then I'll stop. But it's okay, I keep reassuring myself, if this is my shitty first draft. If this is just the skeleton (to mix metaphors), I can add some meat on the bones the next go around.
I really hope collecting works. 'Cause right now it's almost summertime and the living is easy...
Reading List 2009
Like I predicted, my reading has slowed down quite a bit due to my writing. Last week I finished Rapture in Death (guilty pleasure) by J.D. Robb. I read somewhere that she tries to write her In Death series in threes, and this is the fourth book in the series, which means she had a break after the first three and worked on other projects. It sort of reads like it too. There's a bit more fluff than I usually notice and it's just not as tight as some of the other books. But I read them as sort of a palate cleanser more than as a main course, so I suppose I shouldn't look at them too critically.
I am reading two other books simultaneously. City of Refuge, Tom Piazza (for fun, and what a great name for a writer) and The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life and Work, Joseph Campbell and Phil Cousineau (research).
At the rate I'm going it'll take me awhile to finish both of those. Writing is going well, so I can't complain.
I am reading two other books simultaneously. City of Refuge, Tom Piazza (for fun, and what a great name for a writer) and The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life and Work, Joseph Campbell and Phil Cousineau (research).
At the rate I'm going it'll take me awhile to finish both of those. Writing is going well, so I can't complain.
Wednesday
Gabo Says ...
""My job is to write, not to publish ... I'll know when the pastries that I have in the oven are ready for the eating."--Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Thursday
Writing Update
I "finished" a novel a few years ago, depending on how you define "finished." There was the point when I completed a rough draft, then points when I completed drafts, then when I decided I had too many characters and switched from six to five (cutting David as a narrator was one of the hardest things I've done as a writer to date), and then there's where I'm at now.
The novel may not be perfect, it may not be publishable/marketable. I honestly can't tell. I've submitted my book to agents and gotten some nice notes. I get a lot of: this is good writing, but I'm not in love with it enough to take it on. Here's the problem.
At this point, I'm really not sure what else to do with it. One person described writing a novel as putting an octopus to bed. As soon as you get most of the legs under the blanket, another one pops out. I really don't know what else to do with it to make it better. That's not to say that I'm against making changes or revisions. If I suddenly have a eureka moment, or if an agent or editor read it and gave me some feedback that I agree with, feedback that made me suddenly realize what's been missing all along and how I could make it better, I would certainly take that under advisement. But at the moment, all I can do is scratch my head. I did the best I could do and until I get a better idea, I'm going to leave it the way it is.
A couple of months ago I entered the amazon breakthrough novel contest. I made it through the first cut (from a potential 10,000 entries to 2,000) but I did not make the next cut, which was 2,000 to 500. One of the "perks" of making it past the first round was getting two reviews of your novel.
Here is my description of "The Belly of the Father":
THE BELLY OF THE FATHER is a 105,000-word novel about four generations of a Mexican-American family living in Midland, Texas, at the crossroads of two cultures. The story spans five decades and is told from five different points of view. Gabriel, a traditional Latino father and self-made entrepreneur, receives a buy-out offer for his two neighborhood grocery stores from a regional chain. His wife Magdalena struggles to find a balance between living her own life and meeting the demands of her husband and daughters, her aging mother, and even her dead father, to whom she made a deathbed promise she can’t bring herself to keep. Their three daughters, Eva, Isabel, and Jane, are each searching for fulfillment and caught between their Mexican heritage and their American goals. When the family’s annual New Year’s Eve celebration is disrupted—first by the news that single mother Eva has become engaged to a man the family loathes, then by the discovery that rebellious daughter Jane has taken middle sister Isabel’s savings and left the country—the family’s long-simmering tensions reach a boil. Will Eva marry her philandering fiancé in the face of her family’s disapproval? Will Jane return to Midland, and if so, how will her disappointed family react? Will Isabel’s crippling anger keep her from finding her own path to happiness? How can Gabriel and Magdalena help their daughters when they are unable to make peace with their own choices? Each character struggles between listening to his or her own voice, and following family expectations.
Here were my two reviews from the contest:
ABNA Expert Reviewer
Gabriel is a traditional father trying to let his daughters be women in the modern world. All he asks is that the entire family ring in the New Year together with their band of family and friends. His oldest daughter is too sexy and makes a life changing decision at this party without consulting him. Another daughter, a professional and more modest seems upset when she arrives. The third never makes it to the party.
At first I thought this was a set-up for a murder or missing person's story but then chapter two flashes back to Jane, the other daughter's life. I just couldn't figure out what was happening and that deeply disappointed me.
ABNA Expert Reviewer
"The Belly of the Father" is a beautifully written portrayal of a family. In a few pages readers get to know Gabriel Garza, his wife Magdalena, their three daughters, and Magdalena's mother. The author has a nice way with words that make you feel like you know these characters. The underlying tension that happens in all families is nicely portrayed on these pages. The second chapter switches from Gabriel's viewpoint to that of his daughter Jane and that chapter is as well done as the first. The author has a wonderful way of describing small things, like a peeling sunburn, that make the excerpt an even richer read.
The author of "The Belly of the Father" has created a family that readers will care about and want to know more about. Well done.
So there you go. Two different opinions. I'm not sure if they were able to read the description/synopsis, or only the excerpt (which in my case was two chapters). Some of the feedback I've gotten from agents is that they don't like the structure of rotating narrators/characters because it's confusing. Based on the two reviews, I think you either like it or you don't.
Since I'm not really sure how else to improve the novel at the moment, and I have three new ideas burning holes through my brain, I have elected to move on to my next project. I'll write about that more in a couple of days. Mommyhood calls: Zoe is hungry and it's time for dinner.
The novel may not be perfect, it may not be publishable/marketable. I honestly can't tell. I've submitted my book to agents and gotten some nice notes. I get a lot of: this is good writing, but I'm not in love with it enough to take it on. Here's the problem.
At this point, I'm really not sure what else to do with it. One person described writing a novel as putting an octopus to bed. As soon as you get most of the legs under the blanket, another one pops out. I really don't know what else to do with it to make it better. That's not to say that I'm against making changes or revisions. If I suddenly have a eureka moment, or if an agent or editor read it and gave me some feedback that I agree with, feedback that made me suddenly realize what's been missing all along and how I could make it better, I would certainly take that under advisement. But at the moment, all I can do is scratch my head. I did the best I could do and until I get a better idea, I'm going to leave it the way it is.
A couple of months ago I entered the amazon breakthrough novel contest. I made it through the first cut (from a potential 10,000 entries to 2,000) but I did not make the next cut, which was 2,000 to 500. One of the "perks" of making it past the first round was getting two reviews of your novel.
Here is my description of "The Belly of the Father":
THE BELLY OF THE FATHER is a 105,000-word novel about four generations of a Mexican-American family living in Midland, Texas, at the crossroads of two cultures. The story spans five decades and is told from five different points of view. Gabriel, a traditional Latino father and self-made entrepreneur, receives a buy-out offer for his two neighborhood grocery stores from a regional chain. His wife Magdalena struggles to find a balance between living her own life and meeting the demands of her husband and daughters, her aging mother, and even her dead father, to whom she made a deathbed promise she can’t bring herself to keep. Their three daughters, Eva, Isabel, and Jane, are each searching for fulfillment and caught between their Mexican heritage and their American goals. When the family’s annual New Year’s Eve celebration is disrupted—first by the news that single mother Eva has become engaged to a man the family loathes, then by the discovery that rebellious daughter Jane has taken middle sister Isabel’s savings and left the country—the family’s long-simmering tensions reach a boil. Will Eva marry her philandering fiancé in the face of her family’s disapproval? Will Jane return to Midland, and if so, how will her disappointed family react? Will Isabel’s crippling anger keep her from finding her own path to happiness? How can Gabriel and Magdalena help their daughters when they are unable to make peace with their own choices? Each character struggles between listening to his or her own voice, and following family expectations.
Here were my two reviews from the contest:
ABNA Expert Reviewer
Gabriel is a traditional father trying to let his daughters be women in the modern world. All he asks is that the entire family ring in the New Year together with their band of family and friends. His oldest daughter is too sexy and makes a life changing decision at this party without consulting him. Another daughter, a professional and more modest seems upset when she arrives. The third never makes it to the party.
At first I thought this was a set-up for a murder or missing person's story but then chapter two flashes back to Jane, the other daughter's life. I just couldn't figure out what was happening and that deeply disappointed me.
ABNA Expert Reviewer
"The Belly of the Father" is a beautifully written portrayal of a family. In a few pages readers get to know Gabriel Garza, his wife Magdalena, their three daughters, and Magdalena's mother. The author has a nice way with words that make you feel like you know these characters. The underlying tension that happens in all families is nicely portrayed on these pages. The second chapter switches from Gabriel's viewpoint to that of his daughter Jane and that chapter is as well done as the first. The author has a wonderful way of describing small things, like a peeling sunburn, that make the excerpt an even richer read.
The author of "The Belly of the Father" has created a family that readers will care about and want to know more about. Well done.
So there you go. Two different opinions. I'm not sure if they were able to read the description/synopsis, or only the excerpt (which in my case was two chapters). Some of the feedback I've gotten from agents is that they don't like the structure of rotating narrators/characters because it's confusing. Based on the two reviews, I think you either like it or you don't.
Since I'm not really sure how else to improve the novel at the moment, and I have three new ideas burning holes through my brain, I have elected to move on to my next project. I'll write about that more in a couple of days. Mommyhood calls: Zoe is hungry and it's time for dinner.