The Quiet Time...or, Mommy, Why is That Lady Muttering to Herself and Twitching?

Countdown to publication: Four weeks, minus 1 day.

This is when many authors go slowly nuts. All revisions on the book—for better or worse—are finished. Not even a comma can be changed; not even a question mark. Someone is working hard, turning manuscript pages into actual books; but the author’s part in the creation is over. Marketing and publicity plans have been finalized. The heady days of e-mails and phone calls between author and publisher are at a lull. Nothing now requires the author’s input.

Cue the nail-biting.

I’m no good at waiting for a bus, let alone a publication date. When it comes to the quiet time, it’s like all caffeine, all the time. I’m scattered. I can’t get to sleep. I fret about everything. That the book won’t get reviewed. That it will get reviewed, and the reviews will read exactly like hideous, cackling hyena laughs, if hyena laughs could be translated into English. I fret that the pub date will come and no one will notice because readers will be too busy swarming around another title. You don’t even want to know how many young adult novels are pubbing the same day as mine. In fact, I don’t want to know. I stopped counting at six.

So, yeah. It's the quiet time, and I’ve got the pre-pub jitters like you wouldn’t believe.

This is what helps:

My sweetie, who has the front row seat for every fret and anxiety I can dream up, and who still hasn’t run screaming out the door.

My writer friends, who get the deal because they’ve been through it themselves—especially Sally Nemeth, who took me on the hunt for a fab 1940s dress to wear to my publication shindig, and the hunt was good, and spoils were brought back to the lair in triumph. Did I mention the fabulousness? Oh, child. There’ll be pics, you just wait.

My non-writer friends, who are steeped in yet more wonderfulness because they get it, too. Or they’re all actors right up there with Cate Blanchett, only Cate Blanchett would be getting that narrow-eyed little frown of hers that makes ordinary people look like ferrets and yet she remains gorgeous as she telegraphs with her ice-making eyes, You’ve become a crashing bore, get hold of yourself, can’t you? Bloody American, and none of my wonderful friends are doing that. Yet.

Kitties falling asleep on my keyboard.

Working on the next book. Because no matter what flavor of reality ends up smacking itself all over the book about to hit the shelves, there’s always another story that needs telling. Publishing is one thing. Writing is a whole different beast. Writers write, and so…off I go.

While I wait, the next story is waiting for me.

The Art of Enticement...and an Announcement

For me, the most mysterious aspect of the manuscript-to-book journey has to be the cover art. Think about the cover’s job. Sure, it has to look good…but is that enough? In the bookstore, surrounded by hundreds of other books, the cover has to entice the reader. Look at me, it has to say. Don’t I look delicious? Don’t you just have to know what I’m about? Come on, pick me up. You know you want to. Once the book is in the reader’s hands, it’s up to the concept and the writing to clinch the deal. But first, the reader has to pass by all those other books and pluck this one off the shelf. We say “don’t judge a book by its cover,” but come on…of course we do.

In fact, the judging starts even before the cover makes it onto the book. Case in point: this early design for Ten Cents a Dance. When I saw it, I thought…nice. Just…nice. Would I pick the book up, though, if I was browsing through a bookstore? Well, umm... It's pretty, all right. But to be honest, it doesn't really pique my curiosity.

Well, as it turned out, nobody was really happy with that first design. And this is why I love my agent and my editor, and I adore the book designer, whom I’ve never met but if I do, I will wash her windows and her car and walk her dogs and make her dinner. Because once it became apparent nobody was really happy, she started again from scratch. Authors usually aren’t involved in cover design—many authors are shown their cover as a courtesy, and that’s it. But my editor asked for feedback, and bless her heart, my agent and I gave it, and they listened, and the book designer (who, by the way, is responsible not only for my book, but also for probably 20 other titles coming out this spring) knocked it right out of the park:



This is gorgeous and striking and enticing as all damn, and if I saw it in a bookstore, I would make a beeline and snatch it right into my greedy little book-loving hands. That girl looks like she's up to something--perfect for my main character, Ruby. The mood is more tense, more mysterious. And I adore all the little details: the pinstripes, and (you can't see this, really, but take my word for it) the way the woman's nail polish matches the color of the title font. And then there's the little tagline above the title: Bad boys and secrets are both hard to keep...

No secret that I'm in love with this cover. Kudos to the whole amazing team at Bloomsbury and to my wonderful agent. You've made this author one happy gal.

So what's the book about, you ask? And when will we see it in real life?

Here's a sneak preview of the flap copy:

Chicago, 1941: When her mother becomes too ill to work, fifteen-year-old Ruby Jacinski is forced to drop out of school to support her family. But her dull factory job makes life feel like one long dead end...until she meets neighborhood bad boy Paulie Suelze. Soon, Ruby discovers how to make money—lots of money—while wearing silk and satin and doing what she does best: dancing. Paid ten cents a dance to lead lonely men around a dance hall floor, Ruby thinks she’s finally found a way out of Chicago’s tenements…until swinging with the hepcats turns into swimming with the sharks.

A mesmerizing look into a little known world and era, Ruby’s story is resplendent with the sounds of great jazz, the allure of beautiful clothing, and the passions of a young generation in a country on the brink of war.

Coming to a bookstore near you on April 1! If you want to read an excerpt ahead of time--and have a chance to win a signed copy--be sure to sign up for my newsletter here.

Sunshine and Smartness

Last week, my sweetie and I left Oregon for what we hoped would be sunny Florida. Let me tell you, Orlando in January is one hell of a weather crapshoot. One day it was 72—the next, 52. The day after that, 65 and raining. Did we mind? We did not. Because no matter what Orlando decided to throw at us—including righteous thunder and lightning—IT WAS WARMER THAN PORTLAND.

I wish I could say we spent five days lounging on beaches, but alas. #1, Orlando has no beaches. Anywhere. I looked. #2, we weren’t on vacation. Nope, we were headed for the North American Veterinary Conference, on a quest for continuing education.

Knowledge expands so fast in this profession, it feels like a full-time race just to keep up. A lot has changed since veterinary school (all the stuff we crammed into our heads, back in the day, that has since fallen by the wayside...it is to weep, to weep). And it’s not slowing down, either. Veterinary medicine gallops along, and we have to gallop with it.

Which is why, every day for five days, we staggered our jet-lagged selves out of bed and into hotel meeting rooms, clutching coffees and nifty tote bags, ready to learn, re-learn, get updated, briefed, and brought up to speed. ABCs of Acid-Base Disorders. Common Canine Ocular Emergencies. Managing the Head Trauma Patient. Four hours of lecture in the mornings, three in the afternoons, and for the real diehards, another hour in the evening. (For the rest of us, there was the hotel bar.) Every hour of every day had at least three talks to choose from. How to pick between Canine Chronic Bronchitis: Confounding Issues, vs. Interstitial Lung Disease: What Does It Mean? Or, Soft Tissue Sarcomas: Your Questions Answered, vs. Let Your Fingers Do The Walking: How to Restrain and Examine Snakes? (OK, that one was easy; I don’t treat snakes.)

Five days of this, and I came away feeling quite smartified. And ready to seriously hurt the next person unwise enough to cut in front of me in line. Was I wearing an invisibility cloak, or what? I’m telling you, buddy—I’ve just spent the last two hours listening to Atopic Dermatitis: Developing a Management Plan, and you’ve put yourself between me and my SmartFood cheese popcorn. Woe betide.

One line I didn’t have to stand in? Believe it or not, the ladies’ room. When you’ve got a conference with six thousand veterinarians and seventeen hundred veterinary technicians—more than half of them women—you need serious restrooms. And the Gaylord Palms Hotel has ‘em. Not only enormous, but spotless too. I don’t normally wax poetic about ladies’ rooms, but I gotta hand it to the Gaylord—those folks GET IT.

Thirty-two hours of lectures later, we flew home, our brains resembling the best kind of sofa: comfortably overstuffed. The day after we got back, Portland received another sprinkling of snow, a dash of freezing rain. Sigh. But while we were gone, the crocuses buried in my outside pots started nudging up. They’re the first crack in winter’s grip…better for a winter-weary spirit (almost) than Florida sunshine.

We Gots Us Some Geeky Fun

Naming characters is always fun. For Tallulah Falls, I knew Tallulah’s name from the very beginning. Maeve's, too. I don’t know how; that’s just who they were, and I ran with it.

For the characters in Ten Cents a Dance (which I’m already thinking of as my “last book,” even though it isn’t published yet, to distinguish it in my head from the “new book,” the one I’m currently whamming at with a sledgehammer trying to get it off the ground—and if that sounds like a frustrating way to get something airborne, believe me, it is), Ruby’s name came to me fast. It’s colorful and sparkly, which fits her, plus it has that lovely 1940s feel to it.

That’s the thing about names. They have to fit the characters, and they also have to be true to the time period of the book. Which gets me to the main event of this post:

The Baby Name Wizard’s Name Voyager!

Now, I realize I am a geek. I find many things fascinating which put other people to sleep. Which I don’t understand, because they're fascinating, don't you understand? But OK, whatever. This, though—I showed this to a couple of co-workers, and the next thing I knew, ten people were crowded around the computer, yelling, “Put in ‘Leslie!" "Put in ‘Sam’!" "Put in ‘Ashley’!”

See, the Name Voyager is a Java interactive thingy whereby you type in a name, specify “boy” or “girl” or both, and its magical presto-chango graph illustrates, in lovely color, how popular that name has been in every decade since the 1880s. You heard that right. Eighteen-eighties.

Type in “Bella.” Middling popular until the 1910s, then it tanks and disappears by the mid-‘30s. Gone for decades, then…boom, 2003, folks start naming their baby girls “Bella” again. It’s shot up the charts and is still climbing. Why is that? No idea.

And then there’s “Lisa.” I know a million Lisas. It’s a name as old as the hills, right? One of those perennial favorites that’ll never disapp— Hey, wait a minute! Where’d it go?

Gone with the wind, my friend. The Lisa, she is gone with the wind.

I could spend hours on this thing, it’s so much geeky fun. No, wait—I have spent hours on this thing. Naming characters was always entertaining…but with the Name Voyager to play with, now it’s a wonder I get anything else done at all.*

*Shhh! Don't tell my agent. She thinks I'm working.

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Cassie Edwards plagiarism update:
(here's the original post)

Signet Books, which originally said this, is now saying this. (I can just hear their lawyers: "All riiiiight, everyone, backpedal! And a-one-two-three-four...")

One of the plagiarized parties, Paul Tolme, whose article on mating habits of the black-footed ferret—I swear to God I’m not making this up—was copied and pasted into Edwards’s novel, Shadow Bear, writes about his reaction in Newsweek magazine.

To top all off—because the whole thing isn't bizarre enough already, you know—an exceptionally dedicated searcher found this in Edwards’s novel Savage Obsession:

SAVAGE OBSESSION Page 284

The odors of the forest, the dew and damp meadow, and the curling smoke from the wigwams were left behind as Lorinda [...]

HIAWATHA by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Lines 3-5 of the Introduction

With the odors of the forest,
With the dew and damp of meadows,
With the curling smoke of wigwams


Holy freaking moly. Hiawatha?

A Rose By Any Other Name...Still Stinks

There’s a brouhaha a-brewin’ in romance publishing this week.

I'm not a romance novel reader, although I did go through a brief period in college during which I scarfed them down like Pringles (sour cream and chives flavor, yum!) I am, however, a huge fan of the Smart Bitches, and thereupon hangs this blog post.

The Smart Bitches, Sarah and Candy, run the romance novel review website Smart Bitches Who Love Trashy Books. I adore them because, first, second, and third, they are profanely funny. (Their style of humor isn’t for everyone, but hey, I like it.) Fourth, they take reviewing seriously. A lot of book review websites hand out five-star write-ups like prizes at a beauty pageant for toddlers (make sure everyone has a shiny crown to take home!), which renders them pretty much useless. The SBs, though, call it like they read it, and if what they read is crapola, they’ll not only tell you so, but their snarky analysis will have you snorting coffee out your nose. Fifth, one of their regular features is offering up romance cover art for unabashed critique. Straight shooters? These gals could plug a squirrel’s eye at fifty yards, and make the squirrel think it’s funny, to boot.

So when the Smart Bitches discovered that Cassie Edwards, a romance author with over 100 published books, has apparently lifted lengthy passages from other books verbatim and used them in her own novels, they did what any honest, sharp-shootin’ gals who run a book review site would do.

They documented their findings. And then they called Cassie Edwards and her publishers on it.

Inevitably, this being the Internet, the SBs received angry comments from Cassie Edwards fans. The gist of these screeds was 1) verbatim copying isn't wrong, and 2) the SBs are evil for creating such skeezy drama.

Well OK, you think, those are fangirls. Sure they're going to defend a beloved author (although I'd like to see their reaction if some other writer had ripped off Cassie Edwards, instead of the other way around).

Today came the official response from Signet Books. You can read it here, but in short, it tells the SBs to take a hike. An excerpt:

"The copyright fair-use doctrine permits reasonable borrowing and paraphrasing another author’s words, especially for the purpose of creating something new and original. "

Hmm. My Oxford English dictionary defines “plagiarize” as to:

“take and use the thoughts, writings, inventions, etc. of another person as one’s own.”

Now, I'm no lawyer, but I've read my publishing contracts. They contain a standard clause that says the work I submit to my publisher must be original. I've sweated blood worrying that somewhere in my new book, I may have inadvertantly used a phrase or sentence from a research source. I've checked and cross-checked obsessively, and still I worry. I listed my most-used sources in the acknowledgements, both to give credit to these outstanding works and to give interested readers leads on more information.

So I'm pretty confident that--no matter what Signet claims--verbatim copying, Cassie Edwards-style, is not “reasonable borrowing and paraphrasing.” Students flunk classes for this. Other authors get called on the carpet, in public. It’s plagiarism, and it’s unethical.

Just sayin’, Signet. Smart Bitches, rock on.

The Journey Continues: First Pass Pages

I thought I’d get to blogging about this earlier, but, you know, holidays and whatnot…so here we are, better late than never, talking about first-pass pages.

When last we left our book-in-progress, I was reviewing copyedits and going over the manuscript, looking for errors. Two months later, another big FedEx package lands on my porch. But for the first time, the pages inside aren’t a raw manuscript. They're still loose, not bound; but otherwise, they look exactly how they will in the finished book. They’re designed. The words are typeset, the chapter headings are set off in an amazing bold font. It’s beautiful. But my publisher didn’t send them for me to admire. No, it’s time to—once more—proofread for mistakes. But honestly, at this stage, how many can there be? I sit down with my pencil and Chicago Manual of Style, and not even three pages in, oh, my God. You’ve got to be kidding.

My editor and I ended up going over all the corrections via phone. Me in Oregon with my set of pages, she in New York with hers, both our copies bristling with colored sticky tags. A different shade for every person who’d found stuff to fix. Five readers in all: the two of us, the copyeditor, the proofreader, and my good friend/writing mentor/fresh-pair-of-eyes, Karen Karbo. The scariest thing? Each of us had caught something that the other four missed. That’s how sneaky some of this stuff is. And not just typos, either. I picked up a plot inconsistency that had completely eluded me earlier. D’oh! *smacks forehead with hard object*

And yet my editor somehow made this whole thing fun, rather than nervewracking. For this, she deserves sainthood. And me—when I find an occasional slip-up in a book I’m reading, I’m a lot more forgiving than I used to be. Because I know, somewhere, the poor author (and his poor editor) are smacking their foreheads, saying, But we went over it eighteen-bazillion times! How could we have possibly missed that?

Yeah, dude. I know. But it's still a beautiful thing.

If It's Not a Resolution, Does That Mean I Can Keep It?

I’m not a big believer in New Year’s resolutions. I’ve broken too many, I guess (the gym, yeah, I know. And my vitamins. And walking the dogs. And watering the plants. And washing my car. All right, already!) But I have a thought to keep in mind as I slug away at my third novel (currently in the research/deep imagining/taking-stabs-at-the-beginning phase):

Strive to stay outside my comfort zone.

It’s said that big risks mean big rewards. The flip side, of course: big honkin’ failure. Staying outside my comfort zone means working with the constant feeling that I have no idea what I’m doing. Forging ahead on a project that at times seems so out there, I have no clue whether anyone will be interested in reading it. An idea that spins off in so many directions and into such big territory, I don’t think I can do it justice. Or even if I can do it at all.

Then again, if it seemed like a cinch, that would mean my vision is too small.

At least, I’ll keep telling myself that.

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Besides wrestling the new project, there’s plenty happening around here in 2008. My second novel, Ten Cents a Dance, will debut on April 1st. (Yippee!) My website designer and I are busy cooking up a brand-spanking-new look for http://www.christinefletcherbooks.com/, including a slew of pages devoted to TCAD. (If you haven’t already signed up for the newsletter, you can do so here to get exclusive “sneak peeks” of book excerpts, contests, and events).*

Stay tuned to this space…and Happy New Year to all!

*Never fear that I’ll jam up your inbox with endless updates. I can guarantee no more than four newsletters a year, and frankly it’ll probably only be two. No New Year’s resolution, you see.

Dear Santa...

Every Christmas, the entire population of Portland engages in mass wishful thinking. This year, for the first time in maybe ever, our wish came true...

...it snowed!

Cozy as we were inside, the moment we saw the big flakes coming down, my sweetie and I knew there was only one thing to do. Scarves, gloves, hats, and two dogs on leashes later, we were outside basking in the wonderment. Here are Ginny and Inja, (aka Virginia Pearl and How Now, Brown Cow, aka Blondie and Brownie, aka the Most Wonderful Sweet Girls in the World) racing through the snowflakes.

Good thing we carped the diem, too, because a short while later, it was over. A couple of hours after that, all had melted...*sigh* But it was magical while it lasted. Thanks, Santa!

Christmas Cheer Bonus Pack

If you believe in Santa Claus—or wish you still did—check out this beautiful Christmas essay by Kerry Madden. (Kerry is the author of two wonderful young adult novels, Gentle's Holler and Louisiana's Song; her next, Jessie's Mountain, will be available on Valentine's Day, 2008.)

Ever wanted to write a novel, and wondered, "Just how does one do it?" Then skip on over to Libba Bray's blog. (Libba is the author of A Great and Terrible Beauty and Rebel Angels; the final book of the trilogy, The Sweet Far Thing, will be released tomorrow. Libba has more comedic talent than the entire population of most small countries, and she's also an accomplished dramatic novelist, which means I would hate her if only I didn't admire her so damn much.)

More on my own adventures in novel-writing next week...for today, it's eggnog, calling family, lolling on the couch watching hours and hours of costume drama DVDs, and spending quality time with my sweetie (who gave me the most gorgeous earrings even though we agreed not to get each other anything, and I would be mad at him if only I didn't adore him so damn much.)

Merry Christmas to all!

Beginnings

At the beginning of a new project, I’m in love.

The idea is not only brilliant but emotionally gripping. The main character…oh, I could swoon over her, she’s so alive and complex and unique. Snippets of dialogue and scenes start writing themselves in my head. The settings are Technicolor bright. Everything is exciting, busting with possibilities.

This euphoria lasts until I actually start writing.

When the project is contained entirely in my head, it’s perfect. The moment I sit down and commit words to screen, though, that sense of shiny-apple newness wears off faster than the bath I just gave my dog. Because once the work actually starts, problems start poking their ugly little fishy snouts into my vision.

Exactly how was I going to manage the—? Which point of view—? If you have main character X doing this, then she can’t go there, because—No, maybe she can, if I just—Why was she doing that to begin with? Wait a minute, now I’m confused. Where are my notes?!

This is never going to work. This idea is stupid. Whoever said I could write, anyway? Oh, look, Star Trek is on. Aliens with funny foreheads, now that’s a good idea! Maybe I should write science fiction instead. Yeah, science fiction, that’s it.

Get. Butt. Back. In. Chair.

Stare at computer screen. Type a few words. Delete them. Hunt for my notes. The notes don’t help. The vision in my head is still there, but trying to capture it feels like catching butterflies with a sledgehammer.

This is when a writer is confronted with Two Choices.

1) The sledgehammer.

2) Hold onto the dream of perfection forever.

If I choose 1), trying to club this thing onto paper, I know that my perfect dream of a book will sprout warts and grow twisted limbs and disappear, for long stretches, only to reappear looking like something out of Tim Burton's nightmares. But…it’ll be real, it’ll be out in the world. It will exist.

If I choose 2), the vision stays in my head. Forever perfect, and never taking on a life of its own. And I get to go back to work full-time.

Hm.

Where did those notes go, again…?

Book Blast!

When it comes to book promotion, sometimes you just don’t know which small action might lead to big results. A few months ago, I read on someone’s blog about a new website called BookTour.com. The idea is that authors sign up for a profile that lists all their scheduled events. Readers can then search for their favorite authors and find out when they’re coming to town. Readers also get a weekly e-mail which lets them know what other author events are going on in their area. Well, dang, sign me up! I filled out my own author profile and then—I admit—I pretty much forgot about it.

And then, out of the blue, I got an e-mail from one Bart King, author of the popular Big Book of Boy Stuff and Big Book of Girl Stuff, as well as An Architectural Guide to Portland, not that architectural guides to Portland are not popular, but it’s more of a niche market than boys and girls, if you see what I mean, and maybe I just better get on with the story lest I dig myself a deep hole from which I will never emerge. Anyway, Mr. King had seen from my profile on BookTour.com that I was a local YA author. So he invited me to join him and some other authors for Book Blast, a literacy event at Cedar Park Middle School here in Portland. Of course I took him up on it. And the Book Blast was, truly, a blast! I had so much fun with my student volunteers, M. and J., whose names not only rhyme, but who talked up my books to anyone stopping by our table. Thanks to their enthusiasm and energy, we sold all 20 copies of Tallulah Falls and gave away all 12 advance reading copies of Ten Cents a Dance. The best part, though, was the time we spent talking books, not to mention meeting and chatting with the other kids and their parents, and the other authors in attendance (shout-out to Annie Auerbach!)

So thanks a million, Bart King, M. and J. and all the students, and everyone at Cedar Park Middle School, for a fun and beautifully-presented evening of books and literacy. I’m already looking forward to adding Book Blast to my 2008 events on BookTour.com!

Wordstock 2007!

Whew! This past weekend was the 3-day extravaganza that is Wordstock, Portland’s Festival of the Book, and I’m still recovering. We kicked off the fun Thursday night, when my good friend and comrade-in-arms, Sally Nemeth (she of the funny and poignant YA novel, The Heights, the Depths, and Everything in Between) arrived fresh from the Hollywood writers’ strike. First on the agenda: catching up over pub food and some fine local microbrews. Then, Friday morning, Sally went off into the hills with a wild-food expert, part of her research for her new YA novel (check out her blog for more on her adventures in untamed NW cuisine).

In the meantime, I was having my own adventures. As part of Wordstock’s publicity blitz, those madcap book folks thought it would be fun to have authors sit in a store window in downtown Portland and read to folks passing on the street. When I first got their call for volunteers, I thought, No way. Never in a million years.

Whatsa matter? Chicken?

No, I’m not chicken! It’s just…

Bra-a-a-w! Braw-braw-bra-a-a-w!

I AM NOT CHICKEN!

So do it, then. Dare you. Double dare you.

ALL RIGHT, I WILL!

I shot off an e-mail to the Wordstock organizers: Sign me up! And then spent the next two days wishing I could take it back. I was only joking. Someone sent that e-mail without my knowledge. I have a family emergency. My house burned down. I lost my book. I lost my voice.

But when Friday afternoon arrived, here I was:



Wordstock did a bang-up job, not only making a cozy author space in the window, but setting red Wordstock armchairs outside so folks could take a load off while they listened. People would be hurrying past, on their way to wherever, and they’d glance up with puzzled looks (where is that voice coming from?) Then they’d pause. Sometimes just for a few seconds, but often for a few minutes or even longer. It was, as another author-in-the-window told me later, “Weird and wonderful!” By the end, I was wishing I could read some more.

Other festival highlights:















Here I am at the authors’ reception with Sam Moses (for an absolute nail-biter of a true story, check out his book At All Costs: How a Crippled Ship and Two American Merchant Mariners Turned the Tide of WWII) and Sally Nemeth.


Sally’s reading on the Children’s Stage:
















And then my own reading, Sunday afternoon. I shared the stage with my friend and mentor Karen Karbo, who read from the third book in her YA mystery series, Minerva Clark Gives up the Ghost.

I can't stand still long enough to speak from a podium. Even when I was teaching, I always had to move around. Plus, I talk with my hands. Drove some of my students nuts. Get over it, I'm Italian--I can't help it.


















The inimitable Karen Karbo. When I grow up, I want to be just like her.















And finally, last thing on Sunday night at the festival's close, a photo session in the big red Wordstock chair:

I already can't wait until next year. I'll be reading from Ten Cents a Dance--and if any store windows are up for grabs, get out of my way. I'm there!

Knitting and Brewing and...Writing?

My cousin Jenne Hiigel e-mailed me recently to let me know about her new book project, A Knitter’s Guide to Beer. Now that, I thought, is one intriguing title. Equally captivating are Jenne’s thoughtful and funny posts about knitting, homebrewing, and the process of craft. I especially loved “The Value of Ripping and Dumping.” When her knitting students are daunted at the prospect of having to rip out stitches and redo them, Jenne tells them that’s “more knitting pleasure at no additional cost!” Mistakes, she points out, are an essential part of learning the craft…and that the process itself should be valued and enjoyed, not just the finished product. After all, if you’re not having fun, why do it?

My first writing teacher, Verlena Orr, told us that most beginners have to produce about 10,000 pages before their work is good enough to publish. My heart instantly sank. At that time, I was lucky if I could produce one page a week. Compulsive geek that I am, I quickly figured that, at that rate, it’d take me one hundred and ninety-two years­ to get published!

Whether the 10,000-page-rule is really true or not, I don’t know. What Verlena was trying to get across to us beginners is that writing is a craft. Like any other craft, it takes learning and practice. It also takes a willingness to recognize when something isn’t good enough. When the work needs to be rethought, re-imagined, redone. Or even scrapped entirely. At that point, it’s tempting to get discouraged and give up. Or to hold on even more fiercely to the work, blaming everyone else when it doesn’t get the recognition we think it deserves.

Part of craftsmanship is never resting on your laurels. It's striving to always improve, to tweak a little something, get a little better, a little more original. That’s what keeps it from getting boring. That’s what makes it fun. It's how all of us—eventually—get to where we’re headed, slipping and tripping though we might.

What Do You Believe?

All my life, I’ve been bothered by the nature of truth. Who gets to say what’s true? And how come, anytime somebody declares something to be True, everybody else starts shouting Untrue! at the top of his or her lungs? Even as a little kid, I reasoned there had to be a way to figure out, once and for all, what was True. And then we could all stop arguing.

No wonder I took to the scientific method like a duck to water. From the very first I learned about it—in sixth grade, I think—the scientific method felt logical and right. As a way to make sense of the world, it…well, it makes sense. It’s simple and elegant and, if followed with integrity, its results are untainted with superstition, personal bias, or emotion. In a twisty world, it’s the straightest ruler we’ve got.

And yet, even the staunchest scientist has beliefs he or she can't explain with the scientific method. And that’s the premise for one of the most fascinating books I’ve read this year: What We Believe But Cannot Prove: Today’s Leading Thinkers on Science in the Age of Certainty. This gem of a book was sent to me by my good friend Walter, and from the first essay, I couldn’t put it down. The essays are short—a few pages, at most—and in each one, a prominent scientist or expert describes something he or she knows to be unproveable, and yet believes to be absolutely, incontrovertibly true. That intelligent life is unique to Earth. That intelligent life is spread throughout the galaxies. That there is life after death. That there isn’t. That God exists. That He doesn’t. That there is an external reality. That nothing exists except our own consciousness.

The essays are fascinating in and of themselves, but what I love best about this book is their tone. The writers may be scientists steeped in the scientific method—logical, rational, show-me kind of folks—but they write with such passion, such optimism and hope, that the book as a whole becomes much more than a collection of random musings. It’s a shout-out of human curiosity, spirit, and endeavor. It’s a distillation of everything contradictory, wonderful, frustrating, and inspiring about the search for truth. It doesn’t exactly have a three-hanky moment—it is written by scientists, after all—but for this geek, it’s the feel-good book of the year.

What do I believe that I cannot prove? That we are not the only sentient beings on this planet. That some animal species are intelligent, feel emotions, and are conscious of themselves as individuals.

What do you believe that you cannot prove?

Writer-Geek Heaven...

...is two days spent bundled under an afghan in a rocking chair , with my manuscript, a sharp pencil, big pink eraser, a cup of coffee, and the Chicago Manual of Style. Outside, it rained; inside, kitties snoozed on the bed. A cozier, nerdier time could not have been had.

It was time to review copyedits.

As I mentioned in my last post, I adore copyeditors. First, I strongly suspect that they are even geekier than I am. Second, as I noted before, it’s the copyeditor’s job to keep me from making an idiot of myself in public. As I went through the manuscript, one thing became clear: me and proper comma use, not so much acquainted. What can I say? I put them where the pauses sound in my head.

So if the copyeditor is catching all the mistakes, what is the manuscript doing back on my lap, the person who made the mistakes to begin with? Because my job, at this junction, is to go through every change suggested by the copyeditor. The author may not have final say over the cover or the title, but s/he has absolute, final say over the actual writing. If I felt it was utterly essential that those commas stayed where I originally put them, then all I needed to do was indicate so on the manuscript. Take that, Strunk and White!* My word is law!

Then again, my manuscript was blessed with a wonderful copyeditor who really knows her stuff. That, and I’m not an idiot.

Reviewing copyedits isn't all coziness; it's also stressful, and not only because I'm never sure if I'm making the little squiggle at the end of a line deletion correctly. This is crunch time, the last chance an author has to make any significant changes. By this time, I have so many different versions of certain scenes in my head, it's hard to see the words fresh on the page the way a reader will. And there's not much time to ponder. One week to turn the manuscript around. But by Monday afternoon, I was done, the sun was out again, and the manuscript was winging its way back to New York--in better condition, I hope, than when it arrived.

*"Strunk and White" is the nickname for the book The Elements of Style. It was originally written by William Strunk, Jr. a zillion years ago, added onto by E.B. White only a million years ago, and is the one essential reference on written English that everyone should have. Everyone. It's only about 80 pages long and it's plain, clear, common good sense and a masterpiece. So no, I don't really defy Strunk and White. But I could. If I wanted to.

From Manscript to Finished Book...The Journey Continues

So my editor has read the revisions, and my agent, too, and they love them. Whew! Can I just tell you what an incredible relief that is? I mean, you think the book is good, and that you’re making it better, and you hope so, but you’re never sure until someone objective reads it. So that enthusiastic thumbs-up from the Powers That Be means a lot, and it feels heavenly.

If the manuscript needed more revisions, my editor would have sent it back to me. But since it didn’t, it’s now gone on to the copyeditor. The copyeditor’s job is to catch mistakes that everyone else has missed so far. Those can be as minor as using the same word twice in a sentence, to as major as chapter structure and pacing. Copyeditors also do a lot of fact-checking, looking for inaccuracies. Yes, it’s a novel…but one grounded in the real world, amid real events. In short, the copyeditor is a sharp-eyed perfectionist, whose job is to keep me—the author—from making an idiot of myself in public.

I love copyeditors.

Meanwhile, work proceeds on the cover art. Just as with a book’s title, the publishing house has full control over its cover. Most authors are shown the cover art, as a courtesy, but we often have no input into the design. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. I can draw, but I’m awful at graphic design, and when it comes to color, well, let me just say that if it weren’t for my highly multi-talented friend Laura, my house would now be an awful shade of chartreuse instead of the lovely muted earthy green it is. At the same time, though, my agent and I had some ideas of how we wanted the Ten Cents a Dance cover to look. My editor, bless her heart, has been completely open to our input. I can’t wait to see what magic the art director at Bloomsbury conjures to convey the spirit of the book.

And what am I doing, during all this activity in NYC? Enjoying the brief lull before I get the copyedited pages back—catching up on house stuff, brainstorming the next novel, and of course practicing veterinary medicine. I expect the copyedits to arrive any day, and when they do, I’ll let you know what’s involved on my end. Let’s just say, it’ll be time for my inner geek to shine!

Re-Vision

Last sentence, last period, done. Stare numbly at the computer screen for a few minutes. Attach manuscript to an email and hit Send. The book flies away to New York City. I collapse on the couch with a big juicy comfort-food-style novel and turn off brain. Meanwhile, in NYC, my editor goes to work.

Several weeks later, the manuscript—printed, this time, rather than electronic—arrives at my door via the wings of FedEx. I open the package with a mixture of excitement and anxiety, riffle through the pages. Penciled in the margins are brief notes from my editor: Wow! and Great line and Tighten through here and, in several places, See ltr.

Ltr. means the editorial letter accompanying the manuscript. I’ve heard a lot of people complain that editors don’t edit anymore. If that’s true, then I’ve hit the publishing jackpot, because my editor is amazing. My first draft, like all first drafts, had its creaky places—the action in one chapter not quite tracking with what came before, the emotional pitch a little off, the characters’ motivations gone a tad wonky. Most of those, I thought I’d fixed, or convinced myself, No, it’s fine, really. But my editor has an uncanny nose for spots like this—she nailed every single one I knew about, and some I didn’t. If you’re having flashbacks of English comp class, getting your paper back with red marks all over it like a mouse after a cat’s done with it, fear not. The editorial letter is thoughtful, detailed, supportive, and encouraging. It's not criticism, it’s collaboration. Reading it left me inspired and enthused to tackle the rewrite, full of new ideas and possibilities for the story.

Inspiration and enthusiasm are key, because rewrites are tough. I heard this bit of writing advice once and never forgot it: “The first draft is the writer telling herself the story. The second draft is the writer telling the reader the story.” Meaning, the first draft is where we figure out what happens and what the book is really about. In the second draft, the job of revision is literally that—re-vision. Seeing the story again, but this time from the reader’s perspective. Almost every scene is re-imagined to streamline the action, heighten the intensity, get to truths that weren’t quite realized before. Some scenes are tossed completely. (Another classic bit of writing advice: “Be willing to kill your darlings.” Painful—but necessary.)

From the arrival of the the manuscript on my porch to a finished, revised draft: six weeks. Ten or twelve hours a day, five days a week (I work my day job the other two days). That last week, I was at the computer sixteen to eighteen hours a day. And then...

Last sentence, last period, done. Stare numbly at the computer screen for a few minutes. Attach manuscript to an email and hit Send. The book flies away to New York City. I get dressed, grab a protein bar, rush to my day job. Meanwhile, in NYC, my editor goes to work.*

*To find out how the revised manuscript continues on its way to a finished book...stay tuned.

And the Title Is...

Ten Cents a Dance!

That's the newly official title of my second novel. A lot of people are surprised to find out that authors don’t get final say over what their title is. That’s not to say that the publishing house won’t go with what we suggest; for my first novel, I was really attached to Tallulah Falls, and fortunately the folks at Bloomsbury loved it, too. Simple as pie, warm fuzzies all around.

In her book The Forest for the Trees, former editor Betsy Lerner recounts the story of how Peter Benchley’s first novel got its title. How to convey the terrror of a great white shark hunting humans at a popular coastal resort? They tried Death in the Water and Leviathan Rising and just plain Leviathan and The Jaws of Death and, Mr. Benchley estimates, perhaps a hundred other suggestions. Even his dad got in on the act, with What Dat Noshin on My Laig? But whatever someone’s favorite was, someone else was sure to hate it. Finally, with the book about to go into production, a choice had to be made. The only title that everyone didn’t absolutely loathe was…Jaws.

Which now, of course, seems the one and only perfect title for that book.

Titling my second novel, while not as straightforward as the first, was thankfully not nearly as agonizing as the Jaws experience. The whole year I worked on this book, I called it Taxi Dancer, mostly because I had to call it something besides Second Novel and I couldn’t think of anything else. I kept waiting for inspiration to strike, but then in March the manuscript was finished, it was time to hand it in, and still lightning eluded me. Nobody at the publishing house was crazy about Taxi Dancer—which was OK with me, I didn’t like it, either. My editor came up with Ten Cents a Dance, and that proved to be the winner, to everyone’s great satisfaction!

Next week, I’ll write about the editing process (which I just finished—whew!—and which is why I’ve been absent a while from this blog!)

Guest Blog over at Bookseller Chick

If you’re a writer, you know there’s tons of books, workshops, and advice forums for those struggling with their first novels. But what happens between books #1 and 2? Bookseller Chick invited me to guest blog on that very topic, and you’ll find it here. As I told her, guest blogging feels kind of like throwing a party in someone else’s house, hoping no wine gets spilled on the carpet. Thanks, BSC, for letting me set up a tent in your space!

English Only?

The other day an acquaintance sent me an email which said, “Where Do I Order Mine??” above a picture of this shirt.

My first thought was, I guess he would’ve kicked my great-grandfather out.

I used to ask my grandmother what Sicily was like. “There was nothing there,” she always answered. But if Sicily had nothing, America had everything, and her father, John Rio, grabbed for it. He opened a cobbler’s shop a Sicilian neighborhood in the South Bronx, where many of the immigrants didn’t speak, read or write English. He made enough money to bring his four children over. They worked, married, raised their own children, kept working. His granddaughter—my mother—spoke Italian before she learned English. She became the first in her family to go to college.

My great-grandfather died at the age of ninety, having spoken no language in his life but Italian. And yet he’d been granted citizenship by a judge, who declared that America needed people with his kind of spirit.

The “English-only” movement isn’t new. In 1780, John Adams proposed that an official academy be created to "purify, develop, and dictate usage of," English. Interestingly, his plan was rejected by the Continental Congress as undemocratic, and a threat to individual liberty.

The “English-only” camp maintains that our country is united through a common language. I have trouble with this notion. Languages are fluid. They evolve and change, year by year. What unites us as Americans isn’t any one individual language. What unites us are the ideas on which the United States were founded. Those ideas aren’t bounded by English. They’re immutable. They go deeper, and will last longer, than any one tongue.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness…

Say these words—or these—in any language, and they remain uniquely American. The judge who granted citizenship to my great-grandfather understood this. Now more than ever, instead of short-sighted, reactionary slogans, we could use more of that kind of insight.