Getting My Imagination Back Into Shape

By Claire Booth

My final edits for Another Man’s Ground have been turned in, and I’m now back to my work in progress – the third Hank Worth mystery. With the holidays and some other writing projects, it’s been a while since I’ve been able to work on it every day. I’ve popped in and out, certainly, but the consistent daily work had to take a backseat for a while.

It’s wonderful to be back. It took me a couple of days this past week to get there, but I’m back in my groove. I love the steady satisfaction of pages of text appearing on the computer screen. The kick of creating something from nothing. And it gets easier the more I do it.

It’s a lot like exercise. It’s hard to drag your butt off the couch, but when you do it – and the more consistently you do it – the better you feel. And your imagination needs a work out just like any other part of your body or mind.

The revisions I’d been doing were great (making everything better is always a good thing), but the first draft of a novel is where my imagination really gets a workout. I’ve got a couple of great new characters, including a real jerk. And I’ve got some existing characters grappling with heavy-duty problems. I don’t know how I’m going to solve them yet, or whether I’ll solve them at all. We’ll have to see where my imagination leads me.

Making it better

by: Joelle Charbonneau

So, you've finished writing a book.  Congratulations!  Celebrate.  Get out the marching band and pop the cork on the champagne.  You've earned throwing yourself a party.  Because I truly believe that getting to THE END is one of the hardest things a writer can do.  Especially writers who are first starting out.  So--please--when you hit THE END acknowledge the accomplishment.  You did it.

Now what?

Should you start trying to decide who to query or whether to self-publish.  Um...nope.  Now you need to make the manuscript better.

It is time to revise and edit your manuscript and turn it into a book.

What?  Hitting THE END doesn't make your manuscript a book?  Well, I suppose depending on who you talk to some people would say yes.  Me...not so much.  Because to me a manuscript is something that isn't quite ready for public viewing just yet.  There are lots of steps still ahead so that the story is turned into something others will hopefully want to read.  Manuscripts are filled with potential.  Doing revisions and editing are about turning that potential into something better and more readable.

It is not a coincidence that I am writing this post today.  Why?  Because I just finished revising GRADUATION DAY and am now working on editing A CHORUS LINE-UP.  Now, you might ask, aren't revisions and edits the same thing.  Well...some people might say yes.  Me...not really.  I use those two terms to define two very different processes.

For me revisions refer to the process of changing major plot points and character moments in the book and then pulling those changes through the story.  In GRADUATION DAY, my editor asked me to consider moving a plot point from page 89 up in the story.  I did.  It is now on page 38.  Altering the story in that way shifted the pacing, the character development, the sequence of events in the book and just about...well...everything.  Revisions to me are about moving pieces around and trying new things.  Writing the manuscript is about telling the story.  Revisions are about tearing the story apart and seeing if you can tell it in an even better way.  For me, revisions are exciting and incredibly challenging.  It can mean taking a leap of faith, cutting a hundred or more pages of a book and trusting that the story will be better for it in the end.  Sometimes it is.  Sometimes it isn't and you have to go back and try again.  But I have always become a better story teller by going through this process.  I truly believe there is no wrong way to tell a story, but there are better ways than others.  Revisions give you the opportunity to find the best approach to tell your story.

Edits (when it is me doing them, not my editor) is something very different.  When you see me on twitter talking about editing a book, it means that I am going line by line through the manuscript and tweaking every word to make sure the cadence is exactly what I am looking for.  Too many words in a line can ruin the cadence and spoil the humorous moment or the tension I am trying to built.  When I edit, I look at sentence structure to see if the lengths of the sentences on the page are varied enough to keep the reader zipping along.  I also make sure that the continuity of the story and all the plot threads that I have woven together are tied up in the end.  This work is very detail oriented and can get irksome to some authors because while it is important, it doesn't feel as creative as the drafting and revising part of the process.

Call me crazy, but I LOVE editing.  Adding that final polish and making the book sparkle is fun.  It requires time and focus, but there is something wonderful about shining up a page and moving onto the next one.  Revisions are scarier to me.  I really enjoy them.  I enjoy the challenge of trying new things and seeing where it will take the story.  Because I don't outline (I wish I did, but I just can't!) I never know how the story is going to turn out until I get to those final pages.  Revisions are my chance to finally see the big picture and find better ways of getting to that final moment.

Regardless of what you call your process after getting to THE END, making a manuscript better should  receive just as much attention as getting to the last page.  Trust me...you don't want to have people read the manuscript.  You want them to read book that manuscript becomes.

And for those who have offered to read Graduation Day...nope!  It has only been revised--once.  I'm betting there's at least one more revision to go.  Then it will need to be edited.  But I really appreciate the offer:)  But I promise that when you do read it - it will be the best version of that book that it can possible be.  (At least...I hope so!)

Schizophrenic writer wanted

by: Joelle Charbonneau

This is one of those weeks. The husband is out of town for a trade show. College auditions are approaching for some students. The tot is sick. My grandmother is in the hospital. A snow storm hit Chicago yesterday making things a little scary out on the roads and I’m racing to finish a manuscript. Which of course means this is the week that two sets of revision letters arrived. One was for MURDER FOR CHOIR which hits shelves on July 3rd. The other was for THE TESTING, my post-apocalyptic young adult novel that will make its appearance in the spring of 2013.

Now, I love revisions. I happily dove into the revisions on MURDER FOR CHOIR and had them out the door in lightning speed enjoying every minute of the revisions. (Yeah – go ahead and throw things. I’m betting I can duck faster than you can throw.) Fun, quick revisions are great, but I also I love revisions that challenge me to think harder, go deeper and work like mad to make the story the best it can be. So, I was totally stoked when I got a revision letter from my editor at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt that does that. They are the kind of revisions that scare the hell out of me when I first read them and then challenge my brain to work overtime. I’m having trouble sleeping because I have all sorts of great ideas rolling around in my head. Only—I can’t work on it yet.

Why, you ask? Well, I have about 4 or 5 chapters left of the current book I’m working on, END ME A TENOR. Why does that make a difference you ask? Well, if I keep to schedule, I should be typing THE END on the last page sometime in the next 10-14 days. Because of the family issues I’ve been dealing with, I’ll admit that getting this book done was a struggle. While it hasn’t taken me all that much longer to write (I started the first page near the end of October) it feels like it has taken years. I want to climb the last stretch of the mountain, plant my flag at the top and do a happy dance celebrating the completion of this round.

Of course, I could write on END ME A TENOR during the tot’s nap time and then work on revisions at night. In fact, I ache to do this. Only, there’s an even bigger issue.

My mystery voice is punchy and a little off the wall.

My YA voice is dark, taught and a bit plaintive. (At least, I think so…who knows what the critics will say.)

While some people excel at writing two projects at the same time, I’m mostly a tunnel vision kind of girl. I affix my eyes to the light at the end of the tunnel, no matter how small, and step by step work in a single-minded fashion until I get there. Aside from page proofs and copy edits, nothing interrupts that hike to the finish line. And while this week I was able to edit MURDER FOR CHOIR while also writing on END ME A TENOR, I was able to do so only because they were the same voice. There was no transition. No worry that one would bleed into the next. Last year, I made an attempt to write the opening to THE TESTING while I was writing the beginning of SKATING UNDER THE WIRE. Um…not such a good idea. Every time I sat down I had to work hard to keep my mind in the correct tense. It took twice as long for me to get that day’s work on the page. The minute I decided to focus on one project things fell into place. The first three chapters of Rebecca Robbins 4 were finished and polished in about 9 days. I then turned to THE TESTING and watched my fingers fly.

So I will wait. I will remember that while other people can write on two projects, and in two distinctly different voices, at the same time I am not one of those people. I have to stick with what works for me.

But of course, I am curious to know what works for you. Can you work on two projects at once? Are the voices similar? Or are you like me who looks at longing with that second project knowing no matter how much you might want to play, doing so will only make things more difficult?

Getting There

It's a weird thing.

I've been banging away at this second draft of my novel for what feels like forever. I knew my first draft was a complete mess (as it should be), that I didn't know my characters well enough yet, there wasn't enough tension, and all the motivations didn't work well.

And, to me, knowing that is half the battle. I know where the problems are, and fixing them, while keeping the same skeleton, can be a problem. What makes these characters--which were originally just chess pieces--do what they do? What is coming off as false in the novel? What rings hollow?

And this book, well, this book has been a bitch.

Characters didn't feel realistic. Motivations felt like they'd been done before and some were way to complicated. In my head, the set-up was really simple. On paper, it was like I vomited ideas.

And, so, I started to bang away at the revisions. I started cutting, like I was pulling trees out at their roots. Characters became different, but better. More real.

But it felt mucky. I threw every trick in the book at the novel. Combining characters, cutting whole characters, eliminating ideas, outlining my revisions. But each day I tried to get closer to the ending. It's been hard. Blood from a stone hard.

But today I looked up and I was... at the biggest plot twist in the book. I was at the start of the 3rd act. I was... getting there.

And that felt really good.

I'm not done yet. Not yet.

But I'm getting there.