Butterflies and other developments

I have permanent butterflies in my stomach these days. I think I am going to have to name them. There is one called Stanley who tends to look on the dark side of things - he says, "It may all seem like good news, but what about ..." and then proceeds to list all the problems. And there's one called Oswald who jumps about going "Ohmygosh ohmygosh," is a bit over-excitable, and refuses to see any potential drawbacks in a situation. He's just too damn excited.

All that rambling basically means that I am feeling nervous and excited about the book. All the time.

I emailed my advisor this morning, asking if I can start approaching publishers before the book is officially submitted and marked. His email response was titled "Yesyesyes" and went on to say "the sooner the better." He gave me the email address of the writer-in-residence at the university, who has a UK agent, and I sent her a message asking if I could make a meeting time to chat about the publishing process. In a best-case scenario, I may even be able to get a referral to her agent ... but whatever happens, it will be so nice having someone to hold my hand (metaphorically, of course) through the scary finding-an-agent process. I freaked myself out this morning by looking through agent websites and reading all the statistics - how few authors actually get accepted, and after how many hundreds of attempts. Sometimes the Internet is more of a hindrance than a help (same thing applies when you're sick and look up your symptoms - bad idea).

I also emailed another writer friend today - she has published two novels in NZ so far - and asked about the agent thing. She also recommended getting an agent in the UK. So I think the magic 8-ball of opinion is pointing towards England as the best place for publication.

Lists and such

Right, LOML's back, and I feel like I can relax and get stuck into my work again. Here's the plan:

1) Finish secret-project-that-I-don't-want-to-jinx by Friday. And email my advisor asking if I can start approaching publishers before the novel has been officially marked for the MFA.
2) Next week, finish the final revisions of the novel. LOML gave me a couple of great points to think about after his reading - I'm lucky to be married to someone who is a very good unofficial editor/proofreader. And I still haven't addressed the last points my advisor made. So that will keep me busy for the whole week. Also, I need to hand in aforesaid secret project by that Friday.
3) In the first week of September, I'm going to seriously tackle the supplementary essay.

And then I will be DONE with the Masters, and I will have a big party and get very drunk. No, actually I'll save the big party for when I get a publisher.

(Maybe we could have two parties?)

Developments!

Well, I heard back from my advisor today. He's finished reading the book. And what he says is great, but at the same time a little scary. He thinks I'm ready to submit the book to the marking panel, after I've written the supplementary essay. I really didn't think I would be finished with my Masters this soon ... it's a bit of a mental adjustment.

The supplementary essay has to be around 5,000 words long, and has to describe how the project came about, what my experience of it was, how it all came together and so on and so forth. Luckily I have this blog to refer to! I think it documented the process pretty well.

This also means that I'll be able to start submitting the book to publishers very soon. At the end of his email, my advisor said, "you've written a pretty damn' good piece of work here, one that in my view will find a publisher worth having. It reads relentlessly, and ends very well." And I'm thrilled about that. My aim through this whole process has been to find a publisher who can distribute the book internationally. But I'm scared! It seems silly to be scared. I think it is because I feel like I'm on the brink of all these exciting developments, and part of me wants to climb under a duvet and hide from it all. I guess there's nothing wrong with hiding under the duvet and feeling overwhelmed for one night, so long as I suck it up and get going in the morning.

This post is brought to you by the letter 'C'

C for Confused, that is. I am having a Confused day. It has been rather a Confused year, actually.

You see, I put Zimbabwe out of my mind for a long time. When we arrived in New Zealand, I hit the ground running and tried to put as much distance between myself and what happened there as I could. This year, however, I finally wrote the book that I had always been planning to write, and it opened up a lot of things that I hadn't thought about for almost five years (wow, has it really been that long?). I want to get this story out so much that, when I think about it, I feel a bit sick. Scared that I won't handle it right, or let people down - the people who lived through the same things that I did. I want to tell their story right. I hope I have. I hope I can get it published, sooner rather than later. Anyway, that is why I am feeling Confused with a capital C at the moment. I feel like I have been given a task to perform, and I hope I don't stuff it up. We'll see.

Monday morning ...

I'm hoping to get a really good day's work done. I have to, if I'm to finish the second draft and send it off on Friday.

I'm being a hermit this week, to some extent - I'm not good at multi-tasking. I get overwhelmed very quickly if I have a big long list of things to do. I wish I wasn't like that, but I am. If I'm going to write, I need hours of uninterrupted time. I know this is a luxury, but luckily it's one I have at the moment.

Here's the plan for the week:

Monday - this may be a little crazy, but I'm aiming to finish all the editing today. There are 64 pages left to do, and it will mean working very hard, but ... I think it's doable. We'll see. Dream big, and all that. I'm not going to do any rewrites today, but I'm going to flag the places where I see rewrites or additions are necessary. Which brings me neatly on to tomorrow's work ...
Tuesday - rewrites and additions.
Wednesday - rewrites and additions.
Thursday - check the second draft against my and my advisor's notes on the original manuscript, to make sure I've addressed everything.
Friday - final read-through, and send!

Okay, back to work. Oh, and the photo shoot yesterday was so much fun! I'll post some of the shots later.

Revision stats

Phew! A hard day, work-wise. I am very affected by the weather - took me a while to realise that, as in Zimbabwe we didn't really have weather. Not like we have here - four seasons in one day. Once we moved to New Zealand, I noticed that my mood (never the most stable at the best of times), rose and fell with the temperature and the cloud-cover. Now that I am aware of my seasonal mood-swings, I can work around them, and sometimes shrug them off. Today was like that - I felt a bit crap because it was wet and gloomy and icky outside, but I tried to put that aside and get my work done anyway. Mostly succeeded.

Here's where I stand at the moment:
Word count: 111,000. And that's with some rewrites and additions. Yay! It shouldn't be too hard to get it below 110,000 by the end.
Pages revised and edited: 154 of 232 (A4, single-spaced pages, that is). Which leads me neatly onto ...
... Chapters revised: Twenty-one. There are thirty-three in total. Which puts me seven-elevenths of the way through. That's nice and confusing.

I solved a couple of plot problems today as well - I haven't finished the necessary rewrites, but I've made a start and I know what I need to do. Half the battle. I still have a lot of work to do if I'm going to finish by next Friday. Luckily, I work best to a pressing deadline. The coffee machine and I are just going to have to continue on our symbiotic path.

For now, I'm going to have some away-from-screen time.

Great progress!

Whee! I have just radically restructured three central chapters of the book, and it has made such a huge difference for the better. The initial re-jigging of scenes opened up the way for a new scene that I think is really necessary for the development of one particular character. I'm working on that scene now.

Amazing. It's like moving the furniture around in a room - suddenly you have so much more space and light and interest.

Can I get a whoop-whoop?

Woo-hoo - I have successfully cut 10,000 words from the book! This may not sound like a good thing, but in general books (particularly first books) are 80,000 - 110,000 words in length, and publishers tend to back away slowly if you overstep that. Of course, I still have a bunch of rewrites to do, so this is in no way a final count, but I like to have my small triumphs.

Perhaps I will celebrate with coffee.

A still, small voice?

Terry Pratchett is, without a doubt, my favourite author, and has been since I discovered a battered copy of Witches Abroad in a classroom bookcase (I nicked, it, I'm sorry to say. Still have it). I was devastated to hear of his Alzheimer's disease. And I was incredibly moved by this article, in which he speaks about his thoughts on God (and gods).

Mysteries

Mystery #1

I keep finding this weird listing on Amazon for a second-hand copy of my book in hardcover (which doesn't exist - it was only ever produced in paperback), selling for NZ$117. Whoever is selling it must be crazy. I know copies of the book sell for several million dollars in Zimbabwean currency (I used to keep track just so I could say to people, "Hey, my books sell for $7 million a copy!" and see their expression before I confessed it was in one of the world's weakest currencies), but this is in New Zealand dollars. It is very odd. Also, I used a lot of parentheses in this paragraph, which probably made it confusing to read. Sorry.

Mystery #2

A snail appeared in our fish tank yesterday. We didn't put it there. The only explanation I could think of is that there was a snail egg on the oxygen weed when we bought it, which subsequently hatched. I named the snail Stanley.

Mystery #3

The snail disappeared after a couple of hours, and hasn't materialised again. Has he been eaten? Is he hiding somewhere? Will he come back? Life's tapestry is rich indeed.

(I should never have named him).

In the bleak midwinter ...

It has been snowing today - not in the exciting, White-Christmas way, but in the sleety, slushy, sludgy, onomatopoeic way that results in wet feet and a general sense of lassitude. Luckily I have nothing more to do today, and can snuggle up on the couch with soup and chocolate and watch a DVD with my husband.

I just finished the book Floor Sample by Julia Cameron (author of The Artist's Way, among other things, which was hugely helpful to me). It is not so much an autobiography as a memoir of her creative journey. I started reading it in the bookstore yesterday afternoon, then realised I had been standing in the same spot for almost an hour and should probably buy it so that I could continue reading in more comfortable circumstances. I see a lot of myself in her book, which is comforting. Reading the book gave me a few ideas about how to progress with the book, and with my creative life in general ... when I figure out how to word them in plain English, I'll let you know.

One thing I've decided, anyway, is that working on the revisions from home isn't, erm, working. It's too cold at the moment to work upstairs in the study, so I've been working at the dining room table. Which means I'm very close to the kitchen, which contains the fridge and the coffee machine and all kinds of lovely distractions. So I think on Monday I'm going to start working at the cafe again.

Fathers and father figures

As you probably know, Zimbabwe's opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, has withdrawn his party from the run-off election. I am sad, but I understand. There has been such a calculated and widespread campaign of violence and intimidation that there is no way the elections would be free and fair. Perhaps it is better for him to withdraw. It certainly seems to have drawn international attention to how horrific the happenings of the last couple of months have been.

I am very worried about my book and how my father is going to feel about it. I know that the character of the narrator's father is an amalgam of several people, but will he? He is one of the most easily offended people ever. We have been estranged on and off for the last four or five years, but things have started to get better again ... and I really don't want to slide back to that dark place. But I also don't want to dilute the book for the sake of not offending someone. I'm not really sure what to do.

Rambling incoherently

I'm reading through some of my old, half-finished novels and thinking about Life and Art and other things that begin with Capital Letters. I am thinking about the book I am writing and the other book I am semi-writing and the books I never wrote and the ones I plan to write, and all those things are competing for space in my head and mean that I can't construct a coherent blog post (see?). So instead I give you some words from one of my favourite writers, Joss Whedon, written during the Writers' Strike in Hollywood ...

Except this is exactly the problem. The easiest tactic is for people to paint writers as namby pamby arty scarfy posers, because it’s what most people think even when we’re not striking. Writing is largely not considered work. Art in general is not considered work. Work is a thing you physically labor at, or at the very least, hate. Art is fun. (And Hollywood writers are overpaid, scarf-wearing dainties.) It’s an easy argument to make. And a hard one to dispute.

My son is almost five. He is just beginning to understand what I do as a concept. If I drove a construction crane he’d have understood it at birth. And he’d probably think I was King of all the Lands in my fine yellow crane. But writing – especially writing a movie or show, where people other than the writer are all saying things that they’re clearly (to an unschooled mind) making up right then – is something to get your head around.

And as work? Well, in the first place, it IS fun. When it’s going well, it’s the most fun I can imagine having. (Tim Minear might dispute that.) And when it’s not going well, it’s often not going well in the company of a bunch of funny, thoughtful people. So how is that work? You got no muscles to show for it (yes, the brain is a muscle, but if you show it to people it’s usually because part of your skull has been torn off and that doesn’t impress the ladies – unless the ladies are ZOMBIES! Where did this paragraph go?) Writing is enjoyable and ephemeral. And it’s hard work.

It’s always hard. Not just dealing with obtuse, intrusive studio execs, temperamental stars and family-prohibiting hours. Those are producer issues as much as anything else. Not just trying to get your first script sold, or seen, or finished, when nobody around believes you can/will/should… the ACT of writing is hard. When Buffy was flowing at its flowingest, David Greenwalt used to turn to me at some point during every torturous story-breaking session and say “Why is it still hard? When do we just get to be good at it?” I’ll only bore you with one theory: because every good story needs to be completely personal (so there are no guidelines) and completely universal (so it’s all been done). It’s just never simple.

It’s necessary, though. We’re talking about story-telling, the most basic human need. Food? That’s an animal need. Shelter? That’s a luxury item that leads to social grouping, which leads directly to fancy scarves. But human awareness is all about story-telling. The selective narrative of your memory. The story of why the Sky Bully throws lightning at you. From the first, stories, even unspoken, separated us from the other, cooler beasts. And now we’re talking about the stories that define our nation’s popular culture – a huge part of its identity. These are the people that think those up. Working writers. - Joss Whedon

It's real!

LOML printed out my book at work!

I am so excited to see it in the flesh. As it were. It's actually 260 A4 pages long, but he printed it double-sided to save trees.

Next job is to read it. I'm not going to read it with a red pen first time round - instead, I'm going to try and read it like I would read any other book. Hopefully this will highlight any story and structure problems.

Just when you thought it was safe ...

I want this shirt.

Come to the dark side

Here's an interesting thing. I really don't read much while I'm writing a book. And if I do read, it tends to be either non-fiction or research materials, or something that I feel very drawn to which will in some way contribute to my own project. The two books I have been drawn to this week are Perfume by Patrick Suskind and In Cold Blood by Truman Capote. Both of which have particularly grisly murders in them. I'm drawn to the dark stuff at the moment because that's what I'm writing. And, weirdly, it's one of the things I most enjoy writing, even though it's horrible.

More bookcases ...

This one was designed by Josefin Hellström-Olsson, and was found through The Style Files. I want it!

Bookcases!

Check these out. This bookcase/staircase was designed by Levitate Architects in London (found through Apartment Therapy and The Style Files).


And this 'floating' Sapien Bookcase from Design Within Reach is Pretty Damn Awesome as well - has the look of a big pile of books without the drawbacks - i.e., taking a book out and watching the whole stack fall over and crush unsuspecting passers-by.

Books and moods and bad titles

We went to see my dad (stepdad number two) quickly this afternoon, and he told me that his sister had found my book in a shop the other day. She got really excited and bought three copies, one for each of her grandchildren. So I'm expecting millions of dollars of royalties to flood my coffers any day now. Actually that's probably true, except that they will be Zimbabwean dollars and I will only be able to buy a stick of chewing gum with them. All the same, it's nice to know that it's still out there. My publisher passes on the occasional letter to me from a reader, and it's always a surprise to remember that my book is out in the world being read. A nice surprise.

We haven't done much this weekend. Yesterday was a real energy trough for me - it was raining, and gloomy, and I was tired, so I lazed on the couch for most of the day and then felt guilty about it. I'm not looking forward to winter, although it has its good points, because that's when depression tends to rear its ugly head. It's amazing how much my mood is affected by the weather. I think it has been excellent timing, writing the first draft in summer. Winter is a good time to do all that nitty-gritty editing and rewriting stuff, but I think creating from scratch would be a bit of a slog while my energy and mood levels were so low.

One thing I forgot to mention after my meeting with my advisor the other day is that I confessed my complete lack of talent for coming up with good titles for my books. On the computer, they are all saved under names like "Book 1", "Book 2", "Other Book". The current one is actually saved as "Chapter 1" because I intended to save out all the chapters as separate documents, but that didn't happen (stupid idea, actually, until I come to the editing. It needs to be one solid mass of text while it's in a state of flux). So, my advisor has promised to keep his eyes open for good phrases or images that would make a snappy title. I really need the help.

A sense of style

I have tried to write regular reviews of the books I read from time to time - or even just lists of what I'm reading - but it never works. It feels like drudgery, and I always abandon it after a while. Also, reading a book, or sometimes two, a day meant that I would have to be constantly updating. As I mentioned before, I'm taking an accidental break from reading.

I did want to upload a list of books that I have found particularly inspiring, though, in terms of their writing style. I feel an affinity with writers whose style is lyrical, vivid and quite spare ... I admire Tolkien's decision to use strong, Anglo-Saxon words that have more punch than the more flowery French ones that came into the language with the Norman invasion.

Anyway, here they are (the ones I can think of at this moment, anyway):

The Bone People - Keri Hulme
The Sparrow - Mary Doria Russell
A Passage to India - E.M. Forster
The Last Unicorn - Peter S. Beagle
What I Loved - Siri Hustvedt
Ladder of Years - Anne Tyler

If I think of any more, I'll add them ... the sun has cooked my brain somewhat today.

Oh, and worth mentioning for fantastic first-person narration:

Tamsin - Peter S. Beagle
I Capture the Castle - Dodie Smith
Mukiwa - Peter Godwin

And as you can see, the word count has climbed to 61,000! Hurrah.

I have just been looking at the information in my right-hand sidebar. It's a little misleading. I have published one novel, yes, and I am working on a new one, but in-between those two points there are all kinds of finished and half-finished projects. There's the sequel to the published book, and the half-finished third one (it was intended to be a trilogy, though each book stands alone), which will never get published now as: a) publishing books in Zim, where the first one came out, is no longer viable; and b) I wrote the sequels when I was sixteen, and if I read them now I would probably cringe and bury them in the garden. Since then I have also written two young adult fantasy novels: The Story Spinners (which I always mean to go back and revise); and Destiny, which I sent off to a few publishers a couple of years ago. Destiny generated some interest, and Macmillan was vacillating a bit, but nothing came of it. I'm glad now, because I really want the current book to be the first one I publish here.

There is also a half-finished one about an exchange student coming to live with a New Zealand family which is languishing in a drawer ... and one that I really want to pursue when this one is well and truly done, which I won't expand on because of my superstition that that would jinx it somehow.

(I won't go too deeply into the hideously embarrassing historical romance I wrote when I was fourteen ... that one will never see the light of day. Oh, and the fantasy novel I wrote when I was eleven. Actually, the one I wrote when I was six might be worth printing. I think it was about ten pages long and boasted the gripping plot of me finding a unicorn in the garden. One of the characters was a fairy called Angel. Or possibly an angel called Fairy. I forget.)