When It’s Too Late for Editing (i.e.- crazy fans are getting wordy tattoos)

Okay, this is when you know that you've made it, that your work will stand the test of time, because you see it tattooed on the bodies of young girls when you go to the mall.

Or it's a sign that you really need to invest in that Taser you've been thinking about. But this blog is not about someone else's permanent love for an imaginary man. (Imaginary class of man, really.)

Not musings about how they are going to explain THAT to their Mothers/grandmothers/significant others. It's about me and my sister, and how proofreading would have saved us a lot of money.

It's about an idea that went too far, too fast.

For instance, if I'd only waited a few days or run it by my crit group—they're great at picking out details like this-- I would have gotten "I am Bella", not "Bella is ME". It's too passive, like Bella is taking over my soul. Which, now that I think about it, kind of makes sense.

And, I wouldn't have gotten Team Jacob on my forehead. 'Cause I'm totally team Edward. How can I take that back though? Will Edward forgive me? I have hope since he so graciously forgave Bella when she kissed Jacob. What's worse, to kiss another guy, or to have another guy's name tattooed on your forehead?

And poor Cindi. Her tat artist…well. It was really late at night. He was about ready to go home, and I guess he was in too much of a hurry. The picture is a little grainy- if you can't read it, it says "Team Eddward"

In our defense, we can cut bangs.

I know it's morally questionable to give children tattoos, but Jojo is so cute…so pale and curly-haired. Edward—er, Nathan and I couldn't resist.

This quote is from Eclipse. (He's been throwing a lot of temper tantrums.) The lines are a little crooked because that needle hurts! He wanted to stop after 'freaking out', but I told him, "No. I told you before we started that you had to do it all the way, or nothin'."

It reads: "I'm okay. I'm just. Freaking out. Give me. A minute."

It will be really cool in middle school, won't it?

I read an article about a sci-fi author (I apologize for losing track of who it was) who HATED the new title the publisher picked. So when he signed copies of that book, he crossed out their title and wrote his own in.

What if something about a passage really bothered you, but you didn't figure out how to fix it until it was already published. And then you're walking down the street, and this girl walks by and she's got it stamped on her back? Can you, legally, take out the permanent marker and fix it? I know the ink isn't really permanent, but just to make yourself feel better? I'm thinking hard about that, and it gives me one more reason to keep on keepin'on.

Line-edit, here I come.

(For those of you who don't know me well enough, I read the Twilight books and thought they were fun. That's about it. Stephenie Meyer's story is rather inspiring:stay-at-home mom takes over world, but that's it. No actual craziness going on here. Just having a good laugh.)
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Editing and Persistance

How To Get Published

Okay, I'm not published, but here's how I'm going about it. I am writing an awesome story, and that has to be number one. I will estimate that I have spent two-hundred-fifty hours a month for seven months thus far writing a total of about 200,000 words, including all of the edits and deletions. (The finished MS should be around 100,000-110,000) I write whenever I can. Literally.

Right now, my four year old and two year old are sitting on my bed with me, playing with a deck of 'Go Fish" cards. Yesterday, when all four of the kids were playing on a big inflatable water slide at the neighbor's house, I sat out there and edited a chapter. (Thanks again for the laptop, hubby. Best birthday present ever. Ever ever ever.)

I remember when I was a kid, my grandma would pick a Harlequin Romance out of a big box that she and her sisters passed around, sit on the the swinging bench on the edge of the pond, and watch us swim for eight hours every summer day. I still don't know what she would have done if one of us had gone under. The water was brown with tannic acid from the cypress trees, and she couldn't swim. None of us drowned, so I feel okay about following her example.

Potty training while writing a book is a little more challenging, however. That's all I will say on it.

As the writing improved, I tried to get some home grown criticism, but decided it would be better for my relationship with my family if I sought impartial criticism from...impartial sources. That was tough for me. I honestly felt sick to my stomach waiting for that first crit. Down to the twentieth email notification of a new review, they all made me ill.

I'm over that; now I just get a little excited. There is a whole world of writers out there, and some of them are going to like what I'm doing, and some will have other preferences. They've all been helpful, though, since the different comments have given me new insight into what other people are bringing to the table.

So, do I start a blog, write some things so clever and interesting and helpful that people pass it on and a new weed is born? Perhaps, but I don't expect that.

Mostly I'm writing this because I want to. I have read a lot of blogs on writing: queries, synopses, hooks, POV, even articles as forward thinking as how to get a good contract!

What I hope is that the more contact I have with the writing world, the more I will understand the mindset of agents and publishers, and what they are trying to do. Why some books are published and others are not.

Is there really such a book as "this is fantastic, I couldn't put it down, but the timing is just wrong"? I'm not sure I believe in that. I think that is a nice way of saying "this is pretty good, but I don't think it will sell because it's missing 'something'."

I will not let 'something' elude me! I will be patient, waiting to query until I can read through the MS without having to stop and change anything. Seeing possibility for change is okay, but seeing something that has to change is not.

Here is my anticipated querying process, step-by-step.

1. write query (this is the hardest part. I've done four versions already)
2. send query via email (no stamps needed, no SASE- very good)
3. wonder if the query has arrived (SKIP this step! I love it! I will save three days of obssessive worry right here!)
4. wonder if they've read it.
5. three months later, still wondering if they've read it?

I am hoping that the turnaround on emailed queries is faster than this, as it is purported to be. I have a short list of agents that claim to reply within a day or two most of the time. That is extremely attractive to me. Even if it's a no, I'm okay with that.

My query is developing, just like the book has, and they'll both be ready one day. In the meantime, it has helped me answer coherently when someone asks me what I'm writing, instead of 'it's about this girl, and, um...she has this uh....problem..."

I hope that I am correct in assuming that, though I will be sick about the first round of queries I send out, it will not kill me. Then the second round will not be too bad, and eventually, agents will be just as much 'real people' to me as crit partners are. Real people who should just give my book one little chance. Pretty please?

That's my plan. Editing and persistance.

Excuse me now, I have to go mop...somehow the floor got wet.
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Evolution of an opening paragraph.

How could editing a book take so long? I thought it would be fun (relatively speaking) to get together all of the versions of the opening paragraph of my work in progress, PULSE. The title itself is still open to change. It’s been THE WINNOWING (very, very briefly), THE HOME (Kind of a default title, just so I could name the folder) and after some thought, it stands as PULSE. Though an agent who wanted to call it “File 14442: Lara” could get me to consider it with the right paperwork. Like a publishing contract.

This is my current opening:

“The day began as I perched in the highest fork of the geroth tree. The dawn bent down to kiss my bare face before spreading in an arc of light across the garden. My hands caressed the silvery bark as the breeze exerted its invisible pressure, rocking me in the arms of the oldest of the sacred trees.”

But I started here:

“Watch it, girl,” snarled a young man. He had very active eyebrows. They narrowed and lifted and arched with over-emphasis as he spoke to me. He glanced over to a pair of figures wearing the same ‘uniform’ as he- jeans, a white t-shirt, heavy black boots. They were nondescript in every way, and were circling at the end of the broken sidewalk twenty yards away. I knew from my lessons they dressed that way as a protection to the group- it was harder to catch someone if they all had the same description. One of them casually threw a glass bottle as they started toward me, too. I started planning my escape, which I would have done before I had even left Home if I had been caught up on my homework. I never really thought I would need any of it in real life. The young man waved them away, and they yelled back, but sat down.

This opening was a nice idea, but too long, repetitive, wordy, passive, etc. I read in several places-- including “The First Five Pages: A Writer’s Guide to Staying Out of the Rejection Pile” by Noah Lukeman-- that opening with dialogue is a bad idea. I think it’s equivalent to blindfolding the reader, spinning them around, and throwing them in the pool. You just have NO idea what’s going on.

I was trying to tell and show, instead of just show. i.e.- ‘He had very active eyebrows. They narrowed and lifted and arched with over-emphasis as he spoke to me.’
It would be better cut the first sentence and say- ‘His eyebrows narrowed and lifted and arched with overemphasis as he spoke to me.’

Or better still- ‘His eyes browed narrowed and arched as he spoke.’ This cuts twenty words I into nine. Besides, how many things can your eyebrows really do?. Describing the young man’s eyebrows does make it stand out from ‘tall dark and handsome’, but this was too much. It was useful as a writing exercise, but not a keeper.

There are too many problems here to go over them all, but the other main one is that Lara is thinking instead of doing and that’s boring here.

I revised, thought I had it perfect, and put this up on the Online Writer’s Workshop for Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Horror (hereafter OWW). It’s a great group of writers who have been precise, yet courteous in their reviews. Perfect fit for me!

‘I could feel that someone was following me, but dared not look. I hurried across the faded asphalt, avoiding the crumbled depressions that might trip my feet under my long robe. I tried to slow my breathing, tried to focus on anything but the single-minded pursuer: the bright cloudless sky, the sunlight bathing the apartment buildings and pawnshops in ambient light. It was not a place I would be comfortable after dark.’

A comment from a reviewer reads, ‘Good opening line. I’d keep reading if I picked this up in Barnes and Noble’, which is good. But, the rest of my chapter was too much, too fast.

Most beginning writers start with a chapter that explains who, where, what…and I went along with the (correct) idea that it would be preferable to skip the intro and start at the action.
However, multiple readers commented on how confused they were, so I decided to experiment again, trying to find an opening that would allow me to ease the reader in.

‘Mother was very careful with her feelings, and so it had taken a long time for me to be sure there was something wrong. But sometimes, when we were side-by-side in the dirt fertilizing the newer trees, her distraction would leak out, and I would want to hide things on her behalf…but what to conceal I did not know. I tried not to be too worried near the orchards, and the’

This was an attempt to start Lara in her environment, but boring. And somehow the last sentence was left hanging. I needed to start with an event instead of musings, so I tweaked.

‘The day I lost faith in Mother began perched in the highest fork of the geroth tree. The dawn bent down to kiss my bare face before spreading in an arc of light to the garden below me. The muted gold and green leaves awakened as the stream of electrons activated the photoreceptors, and the colors sang to me in full spectrum. Smooth silvery bark caressed my hands as the breeze exerted its invisible pressure, rocking both me and the oldest of the sacred trees.’

It felt too jargon-y and hoighty-toighty. Too much vocab and not enough flow…

‘The day began as I perched in the highest fork of the geroth tree. The dawn bent down to kiss my bare face before spreading in an arc of light across the garden. My hands caressed the silvery bark as the breeze exerted its invisible pressure, rocking me in the arms of the oldest of the sacred trees.’

This leads directly into a very intense scene that reveals Lara’s character, her major struggle, and the setting. I don’t think it will change much. But I’ve been wrong before!
Maybe this would be better:

‘I perched in the highest fork of the geroth tree, and the dawn bent down to kiss my bare face before spreading in an arc of light across the garden. My hands caressed the silvery bark as the breeze exerted its invisible pressure, rocking me in the arms of the oldest of the sacred trees.’

‘The day began’ is repetitive with ‘dawn’, but it seems AWK to me as is. I’ll have to come back to it.

Has anyone else gone through this process? When do you know you're ready?
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