Sandra Gail Lambert

"Good" Rejections?

Not to whine because I find whining (or whingeing as my mother's people say which I think is a much more onomatopoeic spelling, if there is such a thing) distasteful, but why, why, why can't someone just friggin' publish something of mine rather than send me all these "fascinating piece," "not quite right for this issue, but impressive use of detail," "send more" messages for criminy sakes.  

Why James Chartrand Wears Women's Underpants

Click on the excerpt below and read every word.  You couldn't design a better study about sexism.  It is fascinating, and, unfortunately, it is this woman's real life. 

"You know me as James Chartrand of Men with Pens, a regular Copyblogger contributor for just shy of two years.  And yet, I'm a woman.  This is not a joke or an angle or an analogy - I'm literally a woman.  This is my story.  Once upon a time, I found myself having to make some hard decisions.  The welfare application was on my kitchen table."

 

I am going to the Everglades!

 
I used to go every January.  I've whined about how wrong it is that I never get down there anymore.  No more whining.  My friend Ruby and I are stuffing both our kayaks in the back of my van and going to Flamingo.  We'll be there for the new year.  And yes, I've been upfront with her about the mosquitoes and cold showers.  She is not deterred. Especially once I mentioned the kayak trip on Florida Bay to see the mangroves where roseate spoonbills roost.   

The campsites don't have electricity so my writing goal is to have plenty of pages done on the current project.  I'll print them out for fussing with.  And, I'm thinking, being without computer means I should be in the writing moment more, fill yellow pages with what is around me, and maybe an essay or short story will emerge.     

Writing Memoir is Weird

After many years of writing fiction, I'm poking around in memoir. 

First, there's the point of view weirdness.  All the time there's at least two of them swirling around each other - the one that lived the experience and the one writing about having lived the experience.  Sometimes they show up in the same sentence.  For  those fiction years, I prided myself on rooting out point of view slips.  Now, it's slippery and confusing.  

And the other thing is the whining.  Or it feels like whining.  I don't like whiners.  Is it just that being personal feels like whining?  How does one know?  

I'm not committed to this project yet, but sometimes I have that looking-at-it-from-outside-myself perspective, and I'm not displeased.  Or ashamed.  So, I keep writing.      

"To Promote the Love of Books and Reading"

Bringing books and people together is the purpose of the New Zealand Book Council. We should have one here.  And in this era of book trailers, many of them, well, inane, they've produced one of the better ones for Maurice Gee's Going West. 

Double Take: A Memoir by Kevin Michael Connolly

 
It's a difficult concept to write, but I keep trying.  Being on view, watching the viewer watch me, ignoring it but not really but sometimes really, moving through the world being seen but not seen, what I watch in return. Connolly's photography, The Rolling Exhibition, was all about this. 

His new memoir explores it further.  And tells stories of wild travels throughout the world, wilder rides down ski slopes, and the risk of an open heart.  And the book trailer is very, very funny. 

Double Take Trailer from Kevin Michael Connolly on Vimeo.

Post Sarah Manguso writing

I know that if get myself out of the house to show up at writing events I'll learn things and get out of stuck places.  This is true even if I don't like the writing or if the author is snooty.  So when I do and they're not it's a lovely bonus.  

Sarah Manguso has charged up my current writing life.  Here I was writing yellow page after yellow page with snippets of memoir and struggling to make them longer, denser, fit into a plot - like chapters of a novel.  That night I paged through Sarah's just-bought memoir while I waited for her to begin.  Its structure flipped under my fingertips - short piece after short piece.

Now, I know all of this is obvious, but it was as if I was struck in the head and cartoon stars rang.  The very next day I started typing the little yellow pad stories into the computer, each in their own, separate file, and I haven't stopped.  I'm all loosey-goosey and easy with it.  I don't worry.  I don't try to make anything fit or flow. (Or I don't try much - I've not had a complete change of personality.) 

Back to the Sarah Manguso evening.  The segments she read from her memoir were good.  And the short, short fiction stories she read blew me away.  There's a collection of them in McSweeney's One Hundred Forty Five Stories in a Small Box. (Available at Goerings.)  I wish that she'd stayed another hour and talked more about "the sentence."   

Connie May Fowler - Writing the Novel

 
Connie May Fowler is offering a year long one-on-one novel manuscript consultation!  If I actually had a draft ready (I don't even have one started), this is the way I'd go. 

The week I spent in a workshop with her is why I have a completed manuscript right now and a much better one than I could have imagined.  I sort of swoon thinking of what it would have been like to have that sort of help not just for a chapter, but for an entire novel.  It's a chunk of money, but if you add up all the costs of about three group conferences, it comes out pretty close.    

So if you have a draft ready to be delved into, check this out.

And Connie is also offering a series of Writing Below Sea Level weekend workshops at Cedar Key - one of my favorite places in Florida.      

The Hard Work Part of Creativity

It went well, very well.

I'm back from my camping trip/writing retreat.  Oh, I love those days that start with waking up at 3am to write and feel good about writing until you fall asleep over the yellow pad and so you take your first nap of the day at 5am, but wake just in time to stroll over to the beach and watch the sunrise (accompanied by no-see-ums) and visit with a ghost crab before returning to the campsite to greet your writer and editor friends who are just getting up and so you have a morning discussion about foreshadowing, rejections, and writer arrogance (our own) before you go back to the van, stretch out over the bed, and peel a grapefruit and half write and half watch a fisherman pull in a flounder from the dock.  And it's only 9am. 

 

Make your own writers retreat

I'm off to Little Talbot Island State Park with my yellow pads, computer, butterfly field guide, kayak, and camera.  The best writing I've ever done, especially the beginning parts of a project, has been done propped up by pillows in my van's bed.  At this park, the view is of salt marsh.  But across the road, where I'll probably stroll most dawns, sometimes, hopefully, after writing since four in the morning, the view is of the sunrise over the ocean. 

And this trip, I've enhanced my do-it-yourself writing retreat by bringing in one of my favorite writers and one of my favorite editors.  And best of all, besides all that writing stuff, they've promised to cook a dinner.  Yum. 

All these photos are from previous trips to Little Talbot. 

   

Something to Declare - Reading and Book Signing

 Wild Iris Books, Friday October 23rd, 7pm - I'll be reading from my contribution to the anthology Something to Declare: Good Lesbian Travel Writing.  There are all sorts of good parts to the writing life, but this part, the part where I get to perhaps make a little money for an independent bookstore, thrills my old bookseller's heart. 

Anyway, I promise you a tale of churning rapids, naked women, the sweet gorgeousness of a Florida landscape, and, not least of all, gingerbread with hot lemon sauce. (There will be no actual gingerbread - only a story about it.)

Back to the Yellow Pads

 
The dog, much to my annoyance, can't just go pee.  Even after she finds the right spot, she jerks in frantic darts back and forth over the grass, she circles here and there, she changes her mind and rushes to the next mysteriously (to me) acceptable place and repeats the darts and circles until she stops and squats.  I ready her post-pee treat. 

It all reminds me of how I get started on a new writing project.  And this morning I squatted.  Which means the yellow pad is filling up.  Pages are flipped back on themselves.  It's that just-put-it-down-don't-worry-that-it's-crap beginning part of writing.  For a revision lover such as myself, it's a both wild and unnerving time. 

Now, what shall I have for my post-squat treat? 

Lavanderia - A Mixed Load of Women, Wash, and Word

Yippee.  Lavanderia - A Mixed Load of Women, Wash and Word is an anthology of written/spoken word and photography from City Works Press, and it includes a piece of my writing.    

Although I haven't actually seen a copy yet, anything that "highlights the universal ritual and common interaction of people, places, and things found between loads of laundry" and has chapter headings such as "Hose Stroll," "Dirty Deeds," and "Rocks and Rivers" has much promise.  

Here's a mini-excerpt from my contribution to the anthology:

Two arms snaked around her neck, overlapped on her chest, and tightened.  "Jesus loves you" was a whisper in her ear, and the moistness of the woman's breath dripped onto Ivy's neck.  Controlling the urge to bite the woman's flesh down to the bone, Ivy sunk only her nails into the soft forearms and held on as the woman tried to escape.  Ivy turned her head to bring their faces close. 

"Fuck you bitch, and fuck Jesus.  Touch me again and I'll call the cops. 

P.S. I can't make this blog editor put an accent over the "i" in Lavenderia.  Sorry.

  

Novel update

 

As you know, I wrote the novel, I wrote the query letter, I wrote the friggin' synopsis.  There is a lovely chart of the agents that have received some combination of the above. 

And there has been some "interest."  (Yes, I know I'm using the passive voice all over the place here, but it helps to put a little distance between me and this weird emotional existence.  

So.  Now, I wait.  And write.  And wait.  And walk the dog, visit friends, and wait.  

P.S.  The photo is lifted from Moonrat's blog.     

Pippin - My new writing aide

 It was just yesterday that I adopted her from Gainesville Pet Rescue, but already she's curled between me and the pillows on my writing bed and offering excellent low back support as I type.  

The Southern Women Writers Conference

Here's a reminder.  September 24-26.  Berry College.  Rome, Georgia.  There's still time to sign up.

 

 

More "Something to Declare" news.

For all of us Gainesvillians, Something to Declare: Good Lesbian Travel Writing is now available at Wild Iris Books.  And if my having an essay included isn't enough, here's more incentive to go get it - Booklist is giving the anthology a starred (meaning it is outstanding in its genre) review.  Whoo hoo.   

Paynes Prairie as writing aide

La Chua Trail is only five miles from my house.  It's open most days, all day.  Each visit the place is stunning, always in a different way.  Today's trek was midsummer lush and lotus.  And purple spears of pickerel weed.  Immature night herons.  Fluff-necked adolescent gallinules. 

It took a couple of miles before the twisted-up, has-anyone-responded-to-my-queries-yet, I-could-check-my-email-on-the-phone-right-here anxiety unraveled.  But it did.  I felt it.  Right in that place behind my stomach and in front of my spine.  Whew.  

I think I'll leave a few notes around my house to remind me to get out there more often.  Feel free to nag me about it.     

Writing While Waiting

Here's an update on my writing life. 

I am having one, moving forward from the recently finished novel, doing all those things you're supposed to do.  But mostly I'm waiting.  A batch of query letters are out.  There has been some interest.  Which means a flurry of sending out what has been requested and now - more waiting. 

Each time the computer dings that a new message has arrived, I scurry to open it.  If the internet connection is wonky, I scream things.  Bad things.  Today my cell phone rang.  It was an area code I didn't recognize.  I thought, this might be it.  It wasn't.  

Does anxious heart racing count as aerobic exercise?

   

Something to Declare - Tooting My Own Horn

The anthology Something to Declare is available from any of your local, independent bookstores.  And on page 72 (not that I have it memorized) is an essay by me about a kayak trip on the Withlacoochee (North) River.  There is just no way it's not fun to see my name in the table of contents. 

I've started reading the other pieces.  Whew, there are some good writers in this anthology.  

And here's an important thing to know if you're a writer sending things out, getting rejected, all that.  This piece was turned down by TWENTY-ONE journals and anthologies before finding a home.  Now, I did revise it a couple of times over the years, but please, keep sending things out there into the world.    

 

Su Blackwell - Three Dimensional Literature

 

Su Blackwell uses old books about to be tossed and revives their stories by forming the pages in sculpture. Cliche alert, but really, these take my breath away.  She says "the landscapes speak of a bleak mystery, a rising, an awareness of the air."  

  

Read this article about her process.  Go to her website.  Watching the video of her merry-go-round sculpture did something lovely for my heart. 

The Query Letter

So.  I have one.  Every night, just before bed, I look at it and change a word, change the word back, move a sentence to another paragraph, twist a clause,  

However - and in a few weeks I might be mortified about this - various versions are off to four agents.  I've already noticed that in one of them I did the "it's" "its" thing wrong.  The agents' names were checked over and over so probably only one out of the four is spelled wrong.  

Wouldn't it be great to say how I'm reveling in this lesson in letting go, of moving forward, how I'm celebrating this new stage, that in my head there's a big party going on? Yeah.  For me, it's mostly that after the party feeling - nausea and lethargy. 

Here's a snippet from the query.

"For most of these women it is the last day of their lives.  They are not famous.  None of them have children.  Instead, their stories rise out of the shadowed history of a river in Florida where sweet water billows to the surface from caverns of silent lakes."  

 

She Writes

(No, not me, not yet.)  She Writes is a new social network site for "women writers working in every genre."  It looks good.  So far I've joined the groups Fiction Writers, Feminist Bloggers, Disability Writers, Watcha Readin'?, Memoir Writers, and Queer Issues.  Maybe someday I'll be able to join the March 2011 Book Release group.   

Limbo

So, you know, that writing thing.  It seems I don't do that anymore,  

This is not the complete truth.  I do stare at my query letter drafts and sometimes change an indefinite article to a definite one.  Sometimes I change it back.  

 

Writing Below Sea Level - The Cedar Key Project

I've posted about Connie May Fowler's upcoming writing workshops before, but I want to again.  For one thing, the deadline for them is soon.  But also, as the days build up since the novel was declared done, I'm figuring out things.  Like, that you can watch too many episodes of Dexter on too many days in a row, that it's really exhausting not to be writing, and that the workshop I did with Connie May and the connections I made there over a year ago are a big deal.   

Long Past Any Memory - An Excerpt

 

I've posted a piece of the novel here.  Or just click on the tab in the header. 

Enjoy. 

Long Past Any Memory

 

I am finished.  The novel, Long Past Any Memory, is done.  Really.  Done, done.  It's printed out, wrapped in a pink and an orange rubber band, and flopped at the end of my writing bed.  I pat it from time to time.  Three years of work and there it is.  Oh my, I feel like I'm wandering around outside of myself. 

Despite the weirdness of it all, the work on the agent query letter proceeds.  The drafts have progressed from horrid through moderately awful to moderately okay.  Not that I have any perspective.     

 

Astraea Lesbian Writers Fund - there is still time

Are you a lesbian-identified poet or fiction writer?  Have you had at least one piece of writing published somewhere but no more than one book?  Could you use an award ranging from $1500 to $10,000?  Astraea Foundation has extended their deadline to July 15th.  Check out the other requirements and apply now.  

Here's some info about Astraea from their website:

"Astraea is a dynamic global foundation providing critically needed financial support to lesbian-led, trans, LGBTI and progressive organizations. Separated by continents, language and culture, Astraea grantees are seizing opportunities, and laying the groundwork necessary for women and LGBTI people to claim their human rights. Astraea staff, board, members and grantees all share a deep commitment to feminist principles, racial and economic justice and human rights."

 

How to revise a novel

 

Wander your kayak around mangrove islets.  Watch for crabs skittering along prop roots.  Surprise a burst of night herons.  Be ignored by an eagle.  Push against a rising afternoon wind to reach home. 

And in the middle of the post-kayak eating of shrimp and crab (caught in the same Gulf waters you just left) you will know what is important and how to begin. 

"My fingers press into clay.  I balance at the edge of my mind.  The excitement rises and wants to spill into bright colors and glare.  It whispers out of my bones and demands that I continue.  It says that I will not fail, that I know enough, everything."

Tayari Jones on finishing the first draft

I don't often do the touchy feely thing, but the truth is my heart just spread all the way out of my body as I listened to this. 

Any day now, after letting my novel rest for a few weeks, I'm starting the next revision .  Inside my head I've been doing the tough love thing - you must be unrelenting, you must have no mercy with extraneous minor characters, you must cut all that part about the young Seminole girl who charms snakes and wants to know how to sew bathing suits.  There's been more tough than love.

So when Tayari spoke of finding that "other kind of love," I sort of started crying.  And now I think I'm ready to begin this ending of three years of work.   

The query letter, a synopsis, and my underwear drawer.

This is an odd time for the progress of my novel.  It's done, sort of.  Another revision go through is needed, but I'm waiting.  It's out to a couple of readers and I want to hear what they have to say, and it should fester for awhile anyway.  

So, what to do?  My underwear drawer is very neat, my closet less crowded, and the toaster oven sparkly.  I've sorted through all the piles of photos and papers from my mother's move out of her apartment, and they are in a box under my writing bed.  (Perhaps, my next writing project?  But I'll have to sit on the idea for awhile.  Get it?  That's a pun.) 

Yes, I am a bit rambling these days.  But I have put together a query letter (halfway decent) for the novel and a, so far, horrid synopsis.   

 

  

Half done

I've revised my way through 140 of 230 pages and, to my great relief, at least so far, I think this novel is okay.  I mean, I don't hate it in general and sometimes, in particular, I'm sort of thrilled.  For me, about my own writing, that's pretty good.  

Another thing I'm noticing is how much help I've searched out and received these past three years.  I bid on a charity auction and won a chapter critique from Martha Southgate, and another section was brought to the Writers in Paradise Conference with Thisbe Nissen.  A whole year ago, (has it been that long?) Connie May Fowler brought together a fabulous group of writers for a week.  That's where she set me on the right, final path for the novel.  Then there was Kelly Cherry and the rest of my Atlantic Center for the Arts group who read a long, long segment, and just this week Laura van den Berggave me thoughtful notes as her contribution to a fundraiser for Dzanc Books educational programs. And right now, a novelist friend and her editor are reading the entire thing.   

Early on I had feedback from Suzanne Carlton who teaches a fine fiction writing class here in Gainesville, my poet friend offers support on an almost daily basis, and all along, most months, the Lesbian Readers Group and Potluck has listened to me read bits and pieces.  There is nothing like reading out loud, in front of other people, to make evey flaw evident.  

Okay, enough looking back.  It's time to get this done.   

The Compleat Novel

For all these three years, I've had this dragonfly scene scribbled in various forms on various pieces of scrap papers.  I've tucked them in with each chapter's notes as I work on it.  I've never found a place for it. 

So, on Monday, I was struggling again with this last little bridge thingee (highly technical craft term) that was all I needed to have done to have the whole book written and ready for revisions.  It was coming along okay, but.  In my mind, there was always the "but." 

I flipped through all the notes trying to figure something, anything out.  I found my latest additions to the dragonfly scene - "living veil," "riding her breath."  I closed the bridge thingee file, opened the computer to the last scene of the novel, wove in the dragonfly scene, and really, truly, right outloud, gasped.  I knew the novel was done.   

My skin tingled, my face flushed, all sorts of muscles tightened and released in waves (Yes, I know what it sounds like), and I just had to go outside and twirl around my yard.  

So, I've risked rereading the ending.  It needs some work, but yes, the novel is complete.  Not done or finished with revisions or anything like that, but still, let's celebrate. 

Writer friends

From the people I met years ago at a writer's conference who click "like" on my Facebook announcement that I've finished a draft to the fellow novelist who, in the whirlwind, anxious midst of preparing her own revised draft for an agent, says "send me the chapter to read," there is no way I'd be able to do all this that I'm doing without writer friends.  

Who knew?  I didn't.  All I knew was that I had done all I could in my comfortable, supportive home sphere.  In 2004 I searched the Internet for writing conferences that would be easy to drive to.  I found The Atlantic Center for the Arts, applied, and was put on the alternate list.  A week before the residency I got the call, and I'm still getting support (and giving it, I hope) to writers I met there.   

A poet friend called today to say she's been accepted at a writers conference this summer - her first.  She's taking her poems out there into the world.  I hung up, held the phone to my chest, and thought about how precious we all are to each other.  Thus, this post.   

Looking for Sarracenia

Hey All,

Tomorrow I'm finding my way over the flooded Suwannee River to the Ochlockonee River State Park.  For ten days, I'll be living in my van, parked between a bay and a pine flats chock full of wildflowers.  I've packed my six pillows, printer, extra ink, binoculars, computer, protein powder, two bags of books, camera, and only four sets of earrings.  I'm ready. 

My goals include revising this next chapter all the way through, writing up an application for a residency, visiting with a writer friend and her partner, and searching out sarracenias (pitcher plants).

It is unlikely that I'll be on the Internet until I return.  Here's the link to the eaglets.  Please check on them for me while I'm gone. 

The Inbetweens

The inbetweens nerve-wrack me.  Four days ago I tucked away a revision, pulled out the next chapter, copied Draft 4, renamed it Draft 5, and then closed everything - the computer files, the physical folder, the yellow pads. 

Since then I haven't written anything.  Part of it is having a somewhat workable wheelchair again and needing to fly around town doing things.  The other part is that same part that always happens - the I'm not a real writer, there's no point in continuing, I can't do this thoughts.  

This morning I woke up early, brushed my teeth, splashed my face, and instead of going to my writing bed went back to my sleeping bed.  When I woke up again, I had all sorts of thoughts - how to do the omniscient thing after the 1858 chapter, what the lady would be thinking about the tailor, and how the word "thicken" will be perfect in that problematic sentence in the 2006 chapter.  

Whew.   

73.5495%

My wheelchair is in the shop.  There are parts to be ordered.  Who knows when I'll be getting out of the house again?  After the anxiety, claustrophobia, and bouts of bureaucracy-induced rage, there is the part where I get to write more.  

So, here's the revision update.  According to the calculator on my cell phone, this go through is 73.5495% done.  It's inescapable.  If I keep working, I'll get to the end.      

Revision Update

It's been a week of rejections.  Sigh.  But, it's also been a week of finishing another chapter of revisions.  (Need I say it.  Not finished, finished.  Nothing is ever finished, finished.) 

I wasn't quite ready to delve into the next chapter so I did math.  I've revised 47,674 words.  The remaining,unrevised chapters add up to 28,797 more words. (So far.  That could go up or down, and then there's this little, interim, maybe omniscient voice segment set in 1703 that I haven't written yet.)

Anyway, that adds up to a novel of 76,471 words of which I've revised (this go around) 62.3426 per cent.  Okay, enough.  I'm going to open that next folder.    

Dzanc Creative Writing Sessions

Do you want your writing to receive affordable, right in your own home critique by skilled, generous authors?  Do you want to support Dzanc Books' writing education program for school students? Dzanc Books' creative writing sessionsare a fundraising effort for their educational programs.  Writers donate their craft, some of us pay for the help, and the money goes to fund writing classes for fourth through twelfth graders.   

I've already signed up for two hours of Laura van den Berg's time.  I met her at this past summer's workshop with Connie May Fowler.  She spoke to our gathering about literary journals in the most helpful of ways, and one night she read to us from her upcoming collection What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us.  I would like my writing to be that gorgeous. 

Check out the list of available writers.  For the price of the pesto gnocchi with tuna at The Top Restaurant followed by a cup of vanilla espresso gelato, these authors could be critiquing your poetry, editing a short story, or answering questions about form and voice. 

Atlantic Center for the Arts, Below Sea Level, and Writers in Paradise - Revisited

I'm revising a novel.  The first chapter was critiqued at the Below Sea Level conference with Connie May Fowler, the second at Writers in Paradise with Thisbe Nissen, the third has had to just make it on it's own, and now I've started in on the fourth.  This one has a fat folder of feedback from this past November's residency with Kelly Cherry at the Atlantic Center for the Arts. 

Yes, last year I was a bit of a conference slut.  Which is why the paint on the side of my house is peeling and my ramps still need to be power-washed and I'm making do with a frig whose freezer won't freeze. (I embezzled the registration fees out of my house repair funds.)  

Anyway, here I am opening these folders with check marks, exclamation points, cross outs, and arrows pointing sentences this way and that.  It's as if I have everyone back around the table with me.  And comments are making sense that didn't at first.  

So, to all of you who have taken a turn stirring the pot, kept it from bubbling over, suggested I try adding more roots, helped grind out a solution when it was too bland, or whipped up a spicy masala that I could swirl in at the end - Thank You.      

Collective Fallout is out

 

I arrive home after a 14 hour day of tucking my mother's whole life of belongings into one small room and leaving her for her first night in the new place, and in the mailbox there it is - a journal with my name in the table of contents.  It was such good timing.

Collective Fallout, edited by Eric Crapo, is a twice yearly journal "dedicated to queer-themed sci-fi, fantasy, horror, and mystery fiction and poetry."  It's available in print or as an e-download.  Just click here to order.  

Now, here's the place where I would talk about the other contributors.  However, I came home that night, my arms full of old papers of my mother's, tired into stupidity, and after flipping through the journal, I fell asleep.  I woke up, went right back to moving chores, and now, I can't find the journal.  I've looked everywhere.  It might be in that box with my dead father's Army Air Corps enlistment records from 1938 or maybe under the stacks of old checks from just decades ago. 

Looking obsessed me for awhile, but I've given up and ordered a replacement copy.  I can tell you my story has lesbians, the Everglades, a swamp goddess, a serial killer, and infidelity with a park ranger.    

My writing brain - on anxiety

Maybe I'm the only one.  Maybe other writers don't have twisted, folded all over and through itself anxiety. 

For instance - maybe they don't have a morning of writing where things went quite well, where the chapter hardly needed much revision at all and so they've moved way ahead of schedule on completing their novel, where all this smooshy feel good stuff is followed by full-body anxiety because they don't have any friggin' idea about what to write next, after the novel is done.  In fact, (they probably don't think) the best idea is to slow down, not to finish the book too soon, maybe ever. 

Daily read publishing world blogs

Here's a glimpse of my daily procrastinating life or my educating-myself-about-publishing life or my just-need-a-friendly-voice writing life.  The following are the web links I click on most days.  

New Pages - OMG - this is a fantastic resource for writers.  My deepest appreciation to everyone that devotes their time to its existence.

Bookends - A Literary Agency - these agents take shifts answering questions about queries, ranting, giving glimpses of an agent's point of view. 

Editorial Ass - The famed Moonrat, an anonymous book editor, makes me laugh on a regular basis.  And, like the best of the blogs, encourages a huge conversation about books. 

Tayari Jones - The author of Leaving Atlanta and The Untelling, offers one of the best writer blogs available - loads of links, community support, and all that it is that writer's do.

Swivet- Agent Colleen Lindsay's blog has practical info (Why I Rejected Your Query Letter), rants, Depends-necessary funny stuff - all in a queer friendly, genre friendly manner.  

Nathan Bransford - Another agent who makes me laugh. (Is there a theme going here?)  He has great contests. 

Booktour - Now this is the coolest site.  As an author I can post all my books, appearances, and where I'm based.  As a reader I can find out which authors are appearing when and where in my area.  Or if I want to set up an author reading I can see who lives in my area or who will be passing through. 

MediaBistro - basically a publishing gossip column.  Essential to every writer. 

 

I knew you were wondering.

So, how's the revision going, you ask.  I can say that I've started.  Many things that I hoped would be true, are.  Even from the first paragraph of the first chapter, the novel started to pull together as a, well, novel.  I'm tightening up the writing.  And only occasionally do I think that there's no way I can ever do this.

What bothers me the most is the inefficiency.  I write, ponder, and drop deeper until I feel the whole novel in my head all at once.  And now it's obvious that this chapter needs to end here, that sentence belongs in the third chapter, and I must, must have swallow-tailed kites appear right away.  Then, way before I'm done, I have to leave.  I scribble down all the connections, corrections, and shiftings around that are in my mind and hope they make sense when I return.  

Mostly, they don't.  So, I start over at the surface of my mind.  For a time management, list keeping, have everything at hand type, it's frustrating. 

Revision Plan

Okay.  I think I'm over the finishing-first-draft meltdown.  I stopped trying to write.  Then I poked and meandered through the chapters.  It was helpful to notice that not all of it was complete crap.  Now, I have a plan. 

This revision is about making the writing better and a first, light braiding of the chapters.  

There, that's a nice concrete plan.  I didn't even have one of those under arm stinging sweats when I typed it.  Today and tomorrow are OldEnglishLady days, but I'm ready.  

Speaking of my OldEnglishLady.  She knitted red/white/blue scarves in celebration of Obama.  Here I am wearing one and watching the Inauguration.

      

Post First Draft

I sat in front of my computer for days and days, not writing, having shame about not writing, being short tempered.  Yesterday I figured out that I was having just a teeny bit of an emotional fall apart after finishing the first draft of this novel. 

So I turned off the computer for a long time (five hours) and closed up the novel files (yes, actual physical files) and stacked them at the end of the writing bed.  For a few days, I'm going to do frivolous things.  Like watch this video.

All About Me

Yesterday, just before taking my mother to her doctor's appointment, I printed out a newly minted draft of a chapter.  Well, not just a chapter.  The last chapter.  I think.  I still need to write this one scene - a woman in the 1700's running/escaping through miles of long leaf pine - but then, most likely, that's it.  It, it.  The end.  The end of the first complete draft of this novel. 

Inside me somewhere are high-pitched squeals and ohmygods.  But not out loud, not yet.  I have to go research North Florida trade caravans of the 18th century. 

A Writer's Resolutions

 

1.  I will finish this novel this year. 

2.  I will show up at all the talks, signings, lectures, appearances of any kind of as many authors as I can.  

3.  I will add back into my life time to critique/exclaim over/support  other writers' works-in-progress.  

4.  I will read, read, read. 

There, that's it.  Is there something I've left out?

Lavinia by Ursula K. LeGuin

Okay. Why is this novel on my "2008 books that have changed my life" list?  First of all, I've sunk happily into LeGuin's novels for almost forty years.  Second, I'm working on a book that tells the stories of women and girl children who, like Lavinia, history would never have remembered.  Third of all, Lavinia is a novel written with such exquisite power that I think about it all the time even these many months after reading it. 

How does she make-up a story and it reads like an ancient myth passed down to you by ancestors and makes you also laugh out loud in parts?  How did she put so much strength into her characters?  How much owl imagery can I have in my novel and not be considered a plagiarizer?  I want to make readers feel the way Ursula K. LeGuin makes me feel - as if I've touched something ancient and deep and tender.