Sandra Gail Lambert

Charting the novel. (You won't see this in textbooks.)

 

I'm between the "This is going to take some work" and "This sucks and it's boring" stages.  Click to enlarge.   

This helpful graph came to me from Layce Gardner's link to Sonje Jones' blog (The author of "smutty lesbian detective novels," Sonje knows writing and isn't afraid to curse about it.) and Sonje says it was sent to her by Kristan Hoffman (another new-to-me writing blog to check out).  Have I said recently how much I love the internet?   
 

Novel Writing - Never Say Never

After eight days of every day having people work in my house (or waiting for someone to come work in the house - I still haven't seen that plumber), the Little Dog and I are alone, in the writing bed, with two yellow pads and an open computer file spread over my lap and her back. 

It's time to get serious.  To organize.  To see what I have so far and pull it together a bit.  In my other, non-writing life, I am an effective and efficient organizer.  I mean, I used to run a bookstore - talk about detail management.  But with my writing I've always been a "go with the (messy, spacey) flow" type.  Just Saturday I was at the Lesbian Potluck and Readings evening (23 years of meeting almost every month) and going on and on about how I found making an outline just impossible, maybe even detrimental. 

This morning I'm making an outline.  It unsettled me enough that I had to take a break and write about it.  I don't think it's a real outline.  But I'm breaking down the days and days of yellow pad writing into scenes.  And organizing the order of the scenes.  And deciding what the friggin' point of each scene is.  And noticing when I need to allude to the next scene and the past one.   

Okay, back to this, whatever it is.  Wish me luck.      

 

Research Road Trip

I wonder what the players at the Poker Room down in Citra thought about the lady in a wheelchair, tucked close along the wall, scribbling into a small notebook. (I thought a yellow pad might be too obtrusive.)  

No one seemed to mind.  Everyone either ignored me or was friendly.  And I had to keep from shouting when, while watching the different styles of dealing (flicking the cards across the table, floating them, slapping them down), I suddenly understood that my main character's ex was a dealer and had the whole scene of how they meet again right there complete in front of me. 

Now, who knows which, if any, pieces of this will make it through draft after draft, but the energy of these moments is what gets the blank pages filled. 

 

Researching the Novel: Poker rooms, bog bodies, and car wrecks - oh my!

Okay, this is how it works for me.  Characters, places, events come into my mind.  (Do not ask me how that happens because I don't know.)  I scribble them down onto yellow pages. 

"Poking around" research follows.  This is way fun, but it must stop before any deep, novel-constricting, procrastinating delving grabs hold.  I put aside, for instance, the four hundred over-sized pages of Windover: Multidisciplinary Investigations of an Early Archaic Florida Cemetery  (Did you know that 7,000 years ago people took great care with the disabled and elderly members of their community?  And that their weaving - no, no, shut the book.) 

Anyway, I return to those friggin' blank yellow pad pages and each day write scene after scene.  I try not to worry about how they connect.  I try not to worry about sentence structure.  I write without looking back, whatever came to me in the night - a whooping crane in flight, the emotional difference between eyes that sparkle and those that glitter, or the sudden, certain, concrete picture of the opening and closing scenes. 

But that writing energy collapses.  Which is where I am now.  So on to the next layer of information gathering, but this time the emerging novel guides the research not the other way around.  I've interviewed friends about their car wreck experiences, soon I'm off for my first visit to a "Poker Room," and the five pound weight Windover: Multidisciplinary Investigations of an Early Archaic Florida Cemetery once again leans against my hip. 

I hope this lasts awhile, because next is the pull it all together, probably a year's worth of actually writing the novel stage.  Yikes.        

Party, Party, Party

 
The manuscript tweaks are done.  My agent says she has everything she needs.  I've gathered the wide scattering of yellow notepads, printed pages, and memo notes into a file and the file is on a shelf.  The novel is backed up to a flash drive, an external hard drive, and a dedicated e-mail account. 

So, it is time to party.  But I'm not sure I'm doing it right.  Does bathing the dog, shopping for a bra, and taking friends to the airport count? Actually, I'm sort of worn.  Tomorrow, maybe, I'll party.   

Creating the New York Times Bestseller List

I know, I'm getting a bit ahead of myself, but I already feel better about my as yet not published novel not making the list. 

The Novel is On Its Way

 
I've done three heavy loads of laundry, washed salt water off a bunch of kayak gear, written bills, played Angry Birds on the I-Touch, taken the dog on a long pre-rain storm walk, and now, it's still only 9am and I don't know what to do with myself.  After six weeks of daily obsession, the revised novel is off to my agent. 

I know, I know - get back to work on the next one. Sigh.  I think the toaster oven needs a good scrub.   

Make Your Own Writer's Retreat

 
Leave the little dog with her good friends, take a Cedar Key hotel room with two walls of windows that offer a glimpse of the Gulf, and add a daily afternoon stroll to look out over the water and eat seafood.  The whole rest of the three days read through the entire novel one more time before it gets sent off to your agent.  Have a kayak trip planned with friends for the fourth and final day.  

So far all is going to plan.  I'm over half way into the novel and half-way through the time allotted.  This final reading is an odd thing.  I cruise right along for fifteen pages making small adjustments and then, oops, I screech to a stop and spend an hour yelling at a single paragraph until it fixes itself.  

But on Saturday, when I'm floating in the Gulf, maybe listening to the huff of dolphins, perhaps I'll also be celebrating. 

"We Edit to Let the Fire Show Through the Smoke" - Arthur Plotnik

And Ursula LeGuin says the chief duty of a narrative sentence is to lead to the next sentence.  These two scraps of advice pinned to my bulletin board, along with my agent's notes about confusing scenes, awkward sentences, and my embarrassing overuse of "it's", have pulled me through these six weeks of revision obsession.  

Last night I found myself on the last paragraph of the last chapter.  After saving the manuscript to a flash drive, to an external hard drive, and to a separate e-mail account dedicated to storing my writing, I lay back into the pillows of my writing bed and considered the ceiling for about an hour.  Then I went to bed.  

This morning I woke up knowing that in Chapter Three when she looks in the mirror she should see her mother.  That the poetry book in Chapter Two must reoccur in Chapter Six.  And especially that the last paragraph of the last chapter needs more - the amorphous more that comes from me reaching somewhere beyond own self.  

But not today.  For a few days the manuscript will rest.  This next week I have three days by myself in Cedar Key.  There I will read and revise the novel as a whole.  I will watch for dolphins.  I will eat seafood every day.  Perfect.                 

 

Revision and Playing "Take Two"

 
If you've ever played "Take Two," you've seen good players take their scrabble tiles and willy nilly, with a quick sweep of palm, "wreck" and reassemble their crossword.  Not me.  I clutch fast to each lovely, laboriously formed intersecting of clever words.  And, almost always, I lose. 

This week I'm revising Chapter-Two-Of-The-Novel.  I pulled it apart, I moved things all around, I added, I took out.  I messed with the time line, went wacky with the point of view, and dithered over the friggin' tense (changing "s" to "ed" back to "s") until I had something.  What, I'm not sure yet.  But, maybe, this time I won.  

I Have an Agent!

 
 Or is it that "my novel has representation."  Or am I "handled" by an agent?  (No, that makes me seem like a troublesome basketball star.)  Anyway, I need to figure out the lingo so I can be all professionally casual.  But right now, there's no casual.  All those cliches about being excited - that's me.  Each time I say "my agent," goosebumps and giggling follow.    

So check out Joan Timberlake.  She's my agent. 

P.S. Obviously, this photo is so not of me.  It's of Aaron Fotheringham.