Okay, I Can Breathe
Edits for Watch Over Me are finished… And when I say finished, I mean finished until I get the galleys. I’m sure then I’ll make a few changes here and there, tweaking a word or two that doesn’t sound right, removing an overwrought sentence. And, of course, the acknowledgements, though I have so many people who helped in the research of this novel, I’ll have no problem writing them.
Tomorrow, I dive into book three. I’ve started it, but now I can push Watch Over Me out of my head and let the new novel take over. I’m looking forward to it. As much as I complain, there is something about crafting words on a page that is infectious, inescapable, compelling. No matter how I try to run from it, eventually the phrases and sentences in my brain need to tumble out. Sometimes it takes days, sometimes weeks or months, but they continue to build until I can’t ignore them.
I don’t know if I’d call myself a writer. But I do need to write.
Random Neurotic Writing Thoughts
I’ve been away from this blog for several weeks. I’ve had excuses – busy, finishing classes, rushing here and there. It’s all avoidance, really. I’ve developed a sort of phobia of the written word.
The editing that does it to me, that final push when things become, well, final. I have to finish the reworking a few places in Watch Over Me. A handful of sentences, a paragraph here, a timeline glitch there. Not many things at all. But I feel a sort of panic when I think about it. I’ve come to hate my novel. I remember some of this with Home Another Way, and it will pass. But hopefully not too late. I’ve given my editor a concrete deadline – “My edits will be in Friday or Monday,” I said, though why I put Friday in there, I don’t know. It will always be Monday, always the very last moment to allow for proper procrastination.
I have a bit over four months to finish novel three. Twenty-five pages per week. Doable? You would think.
I finished reading Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinkingand now I want to go back to writing in the first person. There’s something loose and flowy about it, something that gives a bit of rambled latitude. But my WIP has two POV characters, and I won’t do that, flopping back and forth between first-person chapters; personal preference, of course. I’ve seen it done well in other novels by other writers. So, first person has to wait until book four. Will there be a book four? Lord, just get me through this third one.
I have a love-hate relationship with writing. Will I get past this? I don’t know. I doubt it. I know authors who say they’d die without writing, that it’s their passion, that they wake up with words on their fingertips and can’t wait to get settled in and press the words into life. Oh, they admit to having off days and slow days, and days when writing is a chore and a discipline. For me, writing is a war. The words fight me, like the fish in The Old Man and the Sea. I come away exhausted, bloodied hands and sea-burned eyes, and I wonder, am I enjoying this? Does it matter if I am or not?
Perhaps I like making things difficult.
This is where I am, four days before I turn in the changes to Watch Over Me. I had three people tell me they liked it better than Home Another Way. I had my sister tell me it didn’t make her cry, and why didn’t it make her cry? And I have a list of five edits I need to make; they will sit here making me sweaty until I cross off each point and press send on my email. If I’m honest with myself, that will be early Monday morning, 3 a.m., 4 maybe. If I’m not, well, I’ll just pretend I’ll be working on them tonight.
Watch Over Me Preview
Want a sneak peek at Watch Over Me? Here’s an (unedited) excerpt from chapter one:
The kids slumped against the hood of his squad vehicle, not clinging to each other but wanting to. Their shoulders and hand-stuffed pockets pressed together, brown dust pasted to the toes of their sneakers. Benjamin Patil knew why. Blood hid under the dust.
“You kicked the towel?” he asked them.
“I fell over it,” the boy said. “I didn’t know what it was.”
“Are we in trouble?” the girl asked.
Kids. They must be fifteen, sixteen maybe, and he thought of them as kids. He was only ten years their senior. Only.
When did he get so old?
“You’re trespassing,” Benjamin said, taking his camera from the car. He snapped some photos of the bloody towel, of the red flecks across the grass. He listened to the chirps of his camera, the rustling beneath his feet, the Say’s Phoebe and Dickcissel chattering around him. “Want to tell me what you’re doing out here?”
The teenagers shifted from one hip to another.
“I didn’t think so.” He pulled on a rubber glove, shook open a transparent evidence bag, and grabbed the balled-up towel. It unrolled, and a pulpy, grayish blob plopped to the ground.
“Oh, man. Is that a brain?” the boy asked.
“No,” Benjamin said. “Get in the car, both of you.”
“What–”
“Now.”
He shoveled the towel and placenta into the evidence bag, dropped it through the open window of his nine-year-old Dodge Durango. Head down, he tracked the speckles of blood until they turned to drops, then splotches, leading him toward a thin, heat-eaten stream. Something yellow was tucked in the sloughgrass on the near bank. He strode forward, needleandthread awns snagging his pants, trying to stop him from finding what he knew he’d find. And then he was there, at the stream’s edge, staring at a white grocery sack, yellow smiling face printed on it, two tiny feet twisted in the handles.
“My God.”
He dropped to his knees, clawed at the bag, the plastic stretching like skin, tight over his fingertips. It split and he saw human flesh before a swarm of mosquitoes poured into the air. Benjamin swiped them away; one dove into the sweat on his forehead and stung him. He crushed it against his brow, and, in the same, sweeping motion, gathered an infant from the bag and into his hands.
Startled by the light and the rush of air against its body, the newborn scrunched up its face and wailed, fists flailing like a prizefighter’s, knuckles bluish-gray and filmy. The umbilical cord hung from its – her – belly, a dirty shoelace knotted near the frayed end. Benjamin laid her across his knees, tugged at the buttons of his uniform, opening the top two and then yanking the shirt over his head. He wrapped the baby in it and sprinted to the car.
“Tallah, get up here,” he said.
“It’s a…a– ”
“Just get in the front seat. And belt up.” The girl did, and Benjamin gave her the baby. “Hold onto her, you hear?”
The girl nodded, her arms tightening around the bundle, and Benjamin flipped on his siren.
Why Tell Stories?
This came in an email from a dear friend this morning, an answer to a non-fiction writer who stated in one of her books, “I learned that I was to write truth – not fiction.”
Quoted from Matthew 13 (The Message):
The disciples came up and asked, “Why do you tell stories?”
He replied, “You’ve been given insight into God’s kingdom. You know how it works. Not everybody has this gift, this is insight. It hasn’t been given to them. Whenever someone has a ready heart for me, the insights and understandings flow freely. But if there is no readiness, any trace of receptivity soon disappears. That’s why I tell stories, to create readiness, to nudge the people toward receptive insight. In their present state they can stare until doomsday and not see it, listen till they’re blue in the face and not get it. I don’t want Isaiah’s forecast repeated all over again.
Truth is the foundation of fiction. Truth the the thread woven throughout and holding it together. Fiction is holding up a mirror so people can see themselves–and do something about it!
Editing Done…Check
I finally finished my edits for Watch Over Me. Of course, finished is a relative term. While I did send my rewrites to my editor, I’m sure there is more work to be done. I’m dissatisfied with three chapters, so I’ll need to revisit them. My editor will also have questions and comments as she rereads, and those tweaks will have to be made, too.
The process was quite different than with Home Another Way. I had very little to rework with my first novel, mostly due to the fact I had three years to develop and write it. Watch Over Me was a much more rushed, stressful process – sophomore angst; changing plots; desperate attempt to create distinctive characters unrelated to Sarah, Jack, Memory and Beth; deadlines. Also, I cut nearly 5,000 words from Home Another Way (most of that was one long chapter of Doc’s back story my editor didn’t feel fit well in the book), my word count ending up just over 80,000 words. As I edited Watch Over Me, I kept adding more, the novel currently weighing in at 87,500 words. I expect, before I’m finished, it will be 88,000. I suppose three distinct main characters – all with their own plots, as well as interwoven story lines – will do that.
Now, on to book three.
