Huh. Apparently, I Know More People Than I Thought I Did (and other lessons I'm learning as I make an address list to promote my book)

I'm all about following directions, which is why I spent most of the past weekend putting together a list of every single person I have ever known in my entire life.

I got this advice from an awesome inspirational/writing how-to book called Making a Literary Life by Carolyn See. This is a book that I return to again and again because it's chock full of good ideas, ranging from how to plot, to the nuts and bolts of revision, to what kinds of clothes you should pack when you meet with your agent in NYC for the first time. I could probably write ten blog posts touting the stuff I stole from Carolyn See. She's got nifty tricks for creating characters (it has to do with throwing people you love and hate into an elevator and breaking the elevator down). And I follow her advice to the letter on how to take a crappy first draft into not so crappy second draft territory. Also I know that her suggestion to write thank you notes for rejections saved me from wallowing in despair on more than one occasion.

If you're a new writer starting out, or someone who's slogging along in the When Is This Ever Going to Happen segment of this fun journey, check this book out pronto. If nothing else, it will make you laugh (through your despair).

So anyway, See's got an entire section of her book devoted to what to do once you get your book deal. "Don't be vengeful," is one of her sage bits of advice. Write notes to all the people you know, even the ones you sorta don't like:

"You can send out copies to your most bitter enemies (in fact, it's a lot of fun to do that)," she says. "But be sure to keep your notes as clear as consomme'. Your note may say in invisible ink, I hope you're sorry now, you slut! But the regular ink should say: I wanted you to have a copy of this. I hope you like it as much as I do. It reminds me of a better time, when we had so much fun." 

But before you write any notes, you're going to have to build an address list. Here's who you should put on it, according to See:

"People who should know about your book. They include your old professors and schoolmates, your carpet cleaner, the guy who fixed your roof. Before you say, Oh, I couldn't ask them, think for a minute. If these people aren't going to buy your book, then who on earth is going to buy it?"

Okay. I believe you, Carolyn See. First step: I wheedled my husband, the excel spreadsheet wizard, into setting me up with a spreadsheet--with columns for name, address, email and all these cool ways to sort them--and I got down to work, beginning with everyone I send Christmas cards to. Ah, my lovely, supportive relatives and close friends, you are ON my list, people, just so you know.

Will they buy my book when it comes out? Um, maybe? Out of pure curiosity, if nothing else? It's a young adult novel. My great aunt might not understand it, but wouldn't she want to have a copy anyway? To show to people at her condo complex? I hope so.

The relatives and close friends were the easy part. What about the friends I've lost touch with? The people I knew in various cities where we lived over the years? Teachers I taught with and students I taught? My sorority sisters? My bunco group? My former PTA friends? My kids' viola teacher?

Nervous gulp. And then, I am adding them to my list.

Ditto, the lady who does my hair, the person I talked to in the dentist's waiting room, and the woman I just met the other night at a dinner party. Why the heck not, is my new motto.

My plan is to print up postcards with my book cover on it (don't actually have the book cover yet. It is still in the works, but when I get the go ahead...) and mail those out to all of the lucky people on my longer-than-I-thought-it-would-be list.Hey! Just a friendly reminder! That weirdo shy girl you went to high school with has a new book in case you want a birthday idea for the teen reader in your life.

Maybe they will run out and buy the book! (I am talking about WHEN the book actually comes out. I am such an eager beaver I am making this list a year in advance of the book release.)
Or
um
Maybe they will chuck my postcard in the recycle bin!

I am totally okay with it either way. Really. And I guess I should end this post by saying if I haven't hit you up yet for your address and you want your name added to my list, let me know and I will get right on it.

As an added incentive, if you act now, I will send you a free bookmark...

Revising Can Be Fun

Okay, I’m lying.

It’s not exactly fun, but taking a mess of a first draft to the next level—a not so messy, more coherent second draft—can be somewhat painless. The trick is to keep your eye on the big picture. This means not bothering with line edits and stray typos, but really looking at your manuscript as a whole and stepping back to see what you have. Carolyn See says in her helpful book on writing, Making a Literary Life:

Revision is when you first get to recognize the distance between what you wanted to write, what you thought you were writing, and what you actually did write. That recognition often makes you want to throw up.

The old me would’ve stopped at that point and wallowed in nausea. I didn’t know what to do next and basically I’d just go through the manuscript once more and check the spelling then start sending it out. Needless to say, I wasn’t very successful. I kept hoping a kindly editor would pluck me out of the slush pile, fall in love with my flawed manuscript and tell me what to do. TELL ME WHAT TO DO. That was my motto. But really I didn’t think there was anything that needed to be done. And in any case, I didn’t feel like doing it. But there must have been a part of me that knew I still had a lot to learn. I kept writing and reading and going to conferences and talking to other writers about how they wrote.

Over the years I’ve cobbled together a process that seems to work for me (in the absence of that kindly editor. Whom I fear does not exist. Sigh.) What I figured out is that if I want my book to be better, I’m the one who’s going to have to make it that way. So for what it’s worth, here are some helpful tidbits I’ve picked up along the way, the things I wish I’d known ten years ago:

1. When you finish your first draft, print it off in a different font from the one you wrote it in, then put it away and don’t look at it or think about it for at least six weeks. Your mind needs a break and some distance from the made-up world it’s been living in for the last few months. Rest. Clean your house. Watch crappy TV. You earned it. Then write something else.

2. Read your book, looking for the BIG PICTURE. What is your story about? Someone said once that all stories come down to one thing: a character wants something and he can’t have it. Your main character goes somewhere, learns something, faces some challenge. What’s his conflict? Who is his adversary? The amazing editor Patti Gauch says that every book should have a driving question that will keep the reader turning the pages. Will Dorothy get home? Will Stanley in Louis Sachar’s novel Holes have to keep digging holes? Will Jaws eat the sheriff? Etc. You may have had an idea of your question, your big picture, when you started writing your book. Then again, maybe not. Or it may have shifted along the way. Here is the point where you need to find out if what you’ve written all hangs together. If it doesn’t, don’t despair. See number 3.

3. Number 3. Outline your book. (Yes, some writers do this before they start writing. I am not one of them.) But now is my time to outline, so I gather up a set of index cards and record one scene per card. I want to be able to see my entire book at a glance and not have to continually shuffle through 250+ pages. Then I lay the cards out in order on the floor. There. My book. (You still may want to vomit at this point, but resist the urge.)

4. Look at those scenes. Here is where you realize the strands that worked and the ones that didn’t, the bits that started off and petered out, the cool things that popped up at the end but were never properly introduced and developed. What is your book’s driving question? Does each scene contribute to it? Does each logically follow, one after the next? Or can they be shifted? Combined? Cut? Move the index cards around. Staple several together. Leave blank spaces where scenes are missing.

5. Make a new outline. I title mine (with a huge nod to Carolyn See): What I Have and What I Need. As I type a short description of each scene, I add the elements that need to be deleted and those that need to be added to contribute to the overall arc of the story. Now I’m ready to go back into my manuscript and scene by scene, make my changes.

6. Do that, and wah lah! You’ve got a not so messy, more coherent second draft. Congratulations. This is a good time to send your manuscript out to a few trusted first readers, good friends who won’t be afraid to tell you, kindly and lovingly, what’s working and what’s not. Their comments should give you the little push you need to make it through Draft Number Three.

7. Finally, it's out into the publishing world, and you can start the process all over again by writing another first draft.

Revision. Again.

Until a few years ago I didn’t really understand how to revise. When I first started writing seriously, back in college, I never revised at all. I remember going over poems and stories with professors in my writing classes. They’d make helpful notes, suggesting things that could be improved on a piece, and I’d just smile and nod. I had no intention of going back to fiddle with something old. My thought was I’d apply what I learned to the next assignment. I was writing mostly by instinct then anyway. I prided myself on being able to write a story in three hours. Sometimes I cut it kind of close—starting a paper exactly three hours before it was due, then printing it off and running up to the building where the printer was to retrieve it (this was in the very old days when the printers weren’t kept in the computer lab. My school stuck them up on the third floor of the English building for some reason.) Once I huffed up the three flights of stairs and found that the printer had jammed and I had to run back down (past the class where the paper was due) to print it off again. Lesson learned: allow another half hour for computer glitches. It never occurred to me to write something a few days ahead of time, maybe read it over and make some changes before turning it in.

The first few novels I wrote I could hardly stand to look at, much less read, when I finished them. I revised as I wrote, was the lie I told myself. Also, I used my computer’s spell-check and grammar-check and thought that was enough. I know better now. But it’s still hard sometimes for me to tackle revision. Look at my word choice here: tackle. Revision is work.

I’m thinking about all of this because I just started a new revision project today. Really, the work began a few days ago when I forced myself to sit down and read my book (if anyone is keeping tabs, it’s the one I finished in November, literally bleeding on my keyboard at the end in my quest to get the thing finished in time for the holidays). I knew it was a big, over-written mess and I was afraid to face the reality of it. But when approaching the revision of a novel, step one, is to figure out what you’re dealing with. If you can read the whole thing in one sitting, all the better. The trick is trying to see the big picture. It’s also what makes reading a first draft so scary. The big picture is usually that you’re going to have a lot of work ahead.

Here’s what I’ve learned happens when you’re writing a book: what you think you’re writing about somehow morphs into something else. Plot strands that seemed interesting in early chapters disappear. New plot strands spring out of nowhere in later chapters. You find that you’ve repeated yourself, that characters act inconsistently or have confusing motivations (or no motivation). Carolyn See in her book Making a Literary Life talks about reading your first draft with a glass of wine in your hand. I haven’t tried that. But it’s a thought.

Step two is to put your head back into the book. I do that by charting out each scene on its own index card. (Let me say here that how I approach revision is certainly not the only way to do it. Other writers—probably wiser ones—logically plot out their books before they start. Since I don’t do that, now is the time.) Once I have all my scenes on the index cards, I literally line them up on the floor so I can “see” my book at a glance. That’s when it starts to become clear what I actually have, and what I may be missing. Then it’s time to take the metaphorical scissors and go back in to cut.

Next lesson: How Do I Cut Thee Let Me Count the Ways

Giving Thanks

I hesitate to share this little bit of advice. If too many people followed it, it might dilute some of what makes it so great. But in the spirit of giving thanks it seems almost criminal to keep this idea to myself. So here it is: Charming Notes.

This comes straight from the always inspirational Carolyn See in her book Making a Literary Life and I’m not sure I can do it justice, so if you’re still doubting at the end of this blog that writing charming notes will make you feel wonderful, cause others great joy, and generally increase the power of love in the world, then read Carolyn’s chapter about it. Because I’ve failed.

A charming note is nothing more than a handwritten thank you note. And oh, wow, have those gone out of style these days. I’ve even given up hounding my kids about them lately, instead urging them to facebook or email a gift giver. Which is sad. But I digress.

The main idea underlying the charming note is that writing is such a solitary activity--you toil alone at your keyboard or holed up in your attic ala Emily Dickinson, and unless you’re published, you rarely get a response to what you’re creating. I suppose even published writers feel this way. How nice it would be to get a little note in the mail one day, a few words about how much a story you’ve written meant to someone else. The next time you finish reading a book that moves you, TELL the writer how you felt. And no cheating—emailing a writer on his webpage. Carolyn See says to go out and buy the most beautiful stationery you can afford and have it engraved with your name. Write your note of thanks on that. Send it c/o of the admired author’s publishing company. You’ll be surprised how many will write you a charming note back. I’ve received nice thank-yous to my thank-yous from Sara Zarr, Kate DiCamillo, and Rebecca Stead. Each one mentioned that they rarely received handwritten notes anymore.

In addition to sending out the love to your favorite writers, you’ll also want to thank your favorite editors. Now, you might be thinking, but I don’t have a favorite editor. I’m an unpublished writer. The only response I get from editors is curt little form rejections with an occasional “nice story” tacked on at the end.

Now follow me here: you’re going to get out your lovely engraved stationery and thank these people for taking the time to send you a rejection. This is a bizarre idea on the surface, but I promise you, the next time you get a rejection and feel your insides churn and your heart clamp up with despair, writing a thank you is the only thing that is going to help. (That and gorging yourself on chocolate and/or drinking a bottle of wine. But I digress again)

Every rejection is a little stab at your dream that makes you question your decision to keep writing, and believe me, you do not want this dark cloud of bad karma hovering over your head for the next few days as you try to create. Thank that editor, and be sincere. No snarky, thanks so much for rejecting the novel I spent three years laboring over that you merely read the first ten pages of and pronounced unworthy of your time. It was sooooo freaking kind of you.

NO. You’re going to really mean it. This editor is a person (albeit a very young one) who DID in fact take the time when many other editors simply tossed your manuscript in the recycle bin. Who knows what she’ll think when she gets your note. It really doesn’t matter because you’ve taken the bundle of negative rejection energy, changed it into something gracious and kind, and sent it hurtling right back.

Try it. You’ll be surprised how good it feels to reach out to other writers, to connect with editors—to forge a tiny bond in this world of writers and readers—one that you are a part of too.