I am getting so tired of editing.
That’s all I’ve been doing this summer — editing/rewriting whole novels, starting with Apocalypse (almost ready for querying) and continuing with Gaia’s Hands (my current source of despair). But it’s between that and putting them in a drawer somewhere, and I think that, now that I have a sense of what the novels need, they deserve the second (actually fifth) chance.
When I started writing, I thought that my first draft was the final product, which was my honor-student hubris speaking. Those rejections were the best thing to happen to me, because they made me work harder and learn more.
That being said, it’s time to go back to editing Gaia’s Hands. My commitment to Camp NaNo is one hour per day, but I’ve been doing two just to be safe.
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Now, an excerpt:
On Wednesday, Jeanne arrived at her office after her 11:00 class to find Dean Davidson, who she had previously only met at college meetings, standing at her office door with two other men. All wore bespoke suits that probably cost as much as her monthly salary.
“Jeanne,” Dr. Davidson said in his light, cultured voice as he stood at her office door with two other men. “This is Jack White, the Chief Financial Officer of Growesta — “ Jeanne shook hands with a middle-aged man with silver hair and a tan — “and Enzo Patricelli, Board of Directors.”
Jeanne shook Patricelli’s hand. His eyes, ice blue in a pale, strikingly handsome face, held eye contact for a hair more than was polite, and Jeanne wondered if he was from another country. He seemed foreign to her with his auburn hair falling just a little too long for Corporate America, and a slightly stiff manner about him. Austere, even chilly, but handsome in a compelling way. Jeanne wondered what his role in the proposal would be.
They discussed nothing significant on the trip to the steakhouse, nor did Jeanne expect to. Nor did they talk over the dinner of steak and potatoes. True to what she suspected, the men served the proposal with dessert and coffee.
“Jeanne,” Dr. Davidson led the gambit, sipping his coffee, “I understand you’re applying to become a full professor this fall.”
“Yes, that’s right,” Jeanne said. “I have my materials together; you should receive them for review the first of August.” She remembered the earlier hints Davidson had dropped.
“I’ve noticed you haven’t brought any grants into the department lately,” Davidson replied.
Jeanne felt herself tense up, her hands flatten on the table. She took a deep breath. “I received a grant two years ago, a sizeable grant from the National Science Foundation.”
“Still,” Davidson said. “I believe we can offer an opportunity that would not only fund your research, but would vastly improve your changes of promotion.”
“Okay,” Jeanne said, knowing she sounded tactless, “tell me about it.”
“Well,” Jack White began, “Growesta is reaching out to make connections with promising faculty in various agricultural institutions, and we decided to start here at home. We at Growesta have been following your career with interest. You have an excellent track record in research with your — uh — Jeannie Bean. You have media exposure in the Chicago market talking about your research, and you come off with integrity, all things we’d like to capture.”
Capture. Jeanne hoped that was an unfortunate choice of words. “So what is it you’re offering?”
“We’d like to invite you into a collaboration with us where you could help us promote new varieties of beans for the agricultural market. You’re known for your work with beans.”
Jeanne took a deep breath. “You’ve looked at my work. I bred a perennial bean for larger bean size to make it more interesting to a consumer market. These beans were developed to be planted within the context of permaculture gardens, which are by definition organic. Are you offering an opportunity for me to work with you on promoting beans for organic applications?“
“We aren’t pursuing organic strategies at this time,” White replied. “But someday, I suppose, we may get to that point. We want you to promote our herbicide-ready products to the public, who has become increasingly distrustful of our products. You have captured the imagination of — of at least the marketing department at the University, and the regional media as well, as is evidenced by your interviews with Chicago-area stations. We would like to have you speak for us.”
“But my research — “ Jeanne stammered. “It’s not —”
“I know what your research has been,” Dean Davidson interrupted smoothly, “and it has been excellent research. But look at the opportunties here. We’re talking about money for you to continue your research, which we will treat as a grant for the purpose of your portfolio and taxes. Upward of $50,000 a year. And this should pretty much guarantee your promotion to full professor.”
That money would fund a lot of research, Jeanne considered. But tenure … “You can’t guarantee me full professorship.”
“You would be surprised,” Patricelli spoke for the first time, in clipped words. “Corporate dollars go far into greasing the wheels of the college administration.” In his words, Jeanne heard promise — and warning.
“I don’t know,” Jeanne nearly stammered, meeting Patricelli’s eyes in their icy regard. “Please let me consider this offer.”
“Okay,” White said. “But we can’t wait for too long. The ad campaign would need to be drawn up soon.”
Tag: Gaia’s Hands
Strange activity on the blog
Occasionally, my blog will get bursts of energy, with several countries visiting all at once — a bouquet of visitors from Japan and Ukraine and Moldova and Sweden and Moldova. All on the same type of browser. All reading the same note — which is not the current post. Usually a day or two after I’ve last posted on a slow post week.
The most obvious solution is that my post count has been increased by a bot, probably one that can spoof countries. But why? Why bother spoofing different countries? Why bother actually connecting to a post? (I’ve noticed times when my hit count has increased with no specific blog posts hit). It doesn’t seem to be an effort to disseminate porn links (which happens now and again). If it’s a DDOS attack — well, it’s too modest for a DDOS attack.
The only thing I can think of is that something or someone is trying to inflate my reader numbers. Thanks, I think.
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Today I’m at the Graduate Hotel in Iowa City, IA, home of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop (the ranks of which are too rarefied for me). Here’s a picture, apropos of Gaia’s Hands:
Writing in Beaver Dam WI
Another day at Higher Grounds in Beaver Dam having just finished another three hours of writing. I’m at 14 hours out of 30 for Camp NaNo July, and I’m at least getting more words for Gaia’s Hands. I think it’s going to go through another dev edit because it deserves it and it’s now a much different book.
Richard has just gone through a line edit of Apocalypse, which means a couple fixes and it’s ready to go into Query Mode. It’s a very different book than the one that failed in querying. I think I’ve grown a lot from when that was the second (and third) book I’ve written.
One thing I’ve discovered: Nobody’s impressed that I’m a writer. I’m secretly amused by this, because there’s this part of me who dreams of impressing people. In reality, it’s “Oh, you’re a writer? You’re not published yet? Have you tried children’s books?” I have nothing bad to say about children’s books, but unless they involve ancient lore, preternatural bad guys, and the reincarnation of King — Oh, sorry, that’s Susan Cooper’s Dark is Rising sequence. Loved that stuff.
I stay optimistic, maybe because I’ve won one short story contest and been a runner-up in another. (I’ve been rejected by three times this many zines and contests, though).
All that’s left is the bones
That scream you just heard? That was my story after I gutted and flayed it.
I am revising Gaia’s Hands — or so I thought. I looked over the structure of my story and realized it needed … a lot. The bones are solid: the unlikely couple of Jeanne Beaumont and Josh Young, their struggle against a corporate-academic partnership that threatens Jeanne’s livelihood and more, the development of their relationship with the World-Soul Gaia and their talents. The flesh on the bones — the particulars, the pacing — all off.
In other words, the outline needs reshaping, and large amounts of it need to be completely rewritten knowing what I know now about writing.
I really don’t know if I’m up to rewriting this story.
Sigh.
What I’m up to
What I’ve been up to lately:
Yesterday I wasn’t feeling it — at least not feeling like revising Gaia’s Hands or trying to figure out if another old book, Gaia’s Eyes, was worth resurrecting (as a short story, novel, birdcage liner, who knows what.)
So I entered a couple short story contests and a flash essay contest. I always feel more optimistic when I have things in the pipeline, whether they be queries or submissions. I still don’t know about DAW. I keep hoping.
I got the dev edit back for Apocalypse, and my work is cut out for me there. But it’s so promising now, and I want to get it in the hands of an agent. I’ll be proofing that starting today after I give platelets (or instead of platelets if my hemoglobin is low).
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I have a problem with this blog right now. I keep getting visits from some Eastern European porn site blog. The one time I thought I’d isolated it, it was from Ukraine. The sad thing is, I get random hits now from other Eastern European countries like Moldova and Asian countries like Azerbaijan (sp?). I’m afraid these addresses aren’t real and are being spoofed by the porn vendor. Sigh, time for that marketing plan. (Although I’m likely to wait till I have product.)
Wait for it.
So what happens when you come out of an affirming moment into ordinary life?
If you’re me, you feel like someone launched you out of a cannon into … a field. A muddy field. In the middle of nowhere. With cows placidly munching on grass.
“What should I be doing in this field?” I ask, realizing that a chair and my laptop have materialized in the field beside me. I sit down; the chair sinks into the mud about an inch or so, and I realize these shoes will never be the same.
I set myself to writing on a story, but I don’t know which one to write on — the serious rewrite of Gaia’s Hands? The attempt to write a short story out of the long lost Gaia’s Eyes? Some other short story? A new novel?
I ruminate: Will I ever get an agent? Will I ever get published? Is there a reason for all this? Is this God’s will? Is there really a God, and if so, doesn’t She have something better to do than land me a writing career? A placid bovine eyes me with sympathy.
Restless, I stand, setting the laptop on the chair. The cows low about me. Disgruntled, I take a deep breath and remind myself:
I am out standing in my field.
Interrogating my characters: Josh Young
I arrived at my favorite chair at the coffeehouse to find Josh already there, mug in hand.
“You’re looking for me, I take it?” I asked, setting my things down.
He looked up at me, brown eyes laughing. “You were looking for me.”
“You are going to give up my chair, right?”
Grinning, he moved to the other chair. “You have some questions for me, right?”
I study him — a slight young man with brown-black hair barely long enough to pull into a tail; big brown eyes, slightly oblique; a long nose, a full lower lip, a fey smile.
I cut to the chase: “Why Jeanne?”
“You make the assumption everyone does, that there’s no sane reason I should be in love with someone old enough to be my mother. Is there a sane reason to be in love with anyone?”
“Probably not, come to think of it,” I muse.
“So, let’s look at the insane reasons,” Josh continues. “No woman has ever stood out to me the way Jeanne does. It’s like walking through a forest in a fog, and you can’t see any of the trees clearly so they don’t seem real, and then there’s one tree you see with perfect clarity, and you realize that’s the tree you’re looking for.”
“Except the tree is a woman, and the woman is Jeanne.”
“Exactly. And she wasn’t just a good enough tree — ” Josh chuckles. “Enough of that metaphor. When she said we should just be friends and see what happens, I couldn’t be mad because that’s what needed to be said. And that’s another insane reason — we balance each other. Like the taijitu — the yin and yang. My yin, her yang and vice versa.
“And then there are the visions …”
“Visions?” I ask.
“When I first met Jeanne, I had a vision of her as the tender of a riotous garden with vines and plants and trees laden with fruit. More greens than I could put a name to, and she, a voluptuous woman, stood in their midst. How could I not engage with such a woman?”
I consider telling him he’s not the typical twenty-year-old male, but that goes without saying. “What do you think the vision is about?” I ask.
“I think,” he reflects, “it’s about Gaia.”
Bonus post: Interrogating Jeanne Beaumont
(For those of you relatively new to the blog, “interrogating” is when I interview a character in my novel to get insight into their character and motivations.)
I sit on my favorite easy chair at the coffeehouse, musing. How do I explain a relationship — a solid relationship? — between a twenty year old male and a forty-five year old female? Is that even possible? The biology is against it …
A sturdy woman with greying chestnut hair in a ponytail sits down at the chair next to me and sets her latte on the table. “You want an explanation, don’t you?” she shrugs. “What if there is no explanation?”
“Jeanne,” I caution her. “There’s always an explanation. Even for you and Josh.”
“Look, I’m a biologist. A plant biologist, maybe, but I know at least some of the animal side of things. A sociobiologist would say my relationship with Josh shouldn’t exist — he should be looking for a young thing he can make babies with, and I — well, I shouldn’t bother looking. Older women are obsolete in the biological world.”
“You don’t buy that,” I challenge. “You and I are both here, and biologically, older women notice young men. After all, cougars exist.”
Jeanne burst out laughing. “I’m hardly a cougar. I’m a pretty solid woman who’s grown comfortable with her single life. And then came Josh.” She took a long sip of her latte. “I can’t find an explanation. Society says — those pesky sociobiologists again — that women should have no patience with young men because they don’t know where they’re going in life. But then again … ” Jeanne paused for another drink of latte. “Then again, isn’t the belief that any of us know where we’re going to be tomorrow a bit of an illusion?”
I think of my marriage late in life, my developing career as a writer. “I think you might have something there.”
“Understanding that something, anything can interrupt our trajectory frees one up to look at a situation differently. Stability has to be balanced with resiliency. Although evolution favors the random mutation that happens to work with change in lower creatures, humans can adapt on the fly to changes. So someone like me can be an outlier and maybe that’s a good thing.”
“Enough of the biology, Jeanne,” I chuckle. “Why you and Josh?”
“I have trouble believing in mysticism, you know, but it’s almost something like that. Like, when he showed up at that table that night, we connected. I do alone pretty well, listening to the music and typing on my computer, but when he showed up, I wanted to be in his presence. It was a momentary ego trip spending time with such a beautiful young man, I suppose, but it was more than that. It was like he said to me, ‘I know where I want to go, and I want to go there with you.’ And what he said made perfect sense, if I wanted to tell society to go hang. And I did. I never have regarded what I’m ‘supposed’ to do with much love.”
“So you and Josh were supposed to be,” I teased Jeanne. “Which flies in the face of biology.”
“You would have to say that,” Jeanne muttered. “I feel foolish looking at it that way.”
“But that’s the way Josh would look at it.”
“Yes, it is,” Jeanne mused. “And he might be right.”
How I started writing novels
Well, I finally wrote/revised for three and a half hours yesterday, fueled by copious amounts of coffee. I didn’t accomplish that much word-wise — maybe 1500 words at most. But I think I’m getting closer with Gaia’s Hands. Lots of work to go, though.
Gaia’s Hands is my first novel. It’s always been a problem child of a story. When I wrote it, I had no intention of writing a novel. I had written a short story based on a dream I had about an encounter between myself and a younger man. (If you think the dream had to do with the fact I was approaching my 50th birthday, you’d be right. And the dream was far more bizarre than anything I wrote from it.)
I wanted to know more about the dream, so I started doing a Gestalt dream analysis method where one tells the story from the viewpoint of the different characters, and even the important inanimate objects of the story. (I didn’t go that far). During this set of writing exercises, a story developed. And then another.
After the third story that developed from the dream, my husband Richard looked at me and said, “You’ve got all these stories. Why don’t you write a novel?”
I had never written a novel before because I think in terms of short stories — small plots with big twists, big themes. Novels have big twisty plots, and I wasn’t sure I knew how to plot those. I wrote Gaia’s Hands anyhow. Its original name was Magic and Realism, and it was heavy in theme and extremely light in plot. It was basically a love story, and although I have nothing against love stories, the characters did little more than hang out together.
And then I wrote more novels, some of which collapsed into each other (For example, Magic and Realism became Gaia’s Hands, and then it subsumed another novel during the same time period called Gaia’s Eyes and that’s the novel I’m currently re-editing) and somehow I got better at writing big twisty plots.
It’s been a lot of hard work editing and re-editing, and then getting help editing from a developmental editor and re-editing, but I’ve learned my goal has shifted from getting published to getting good, then getting published. I don’t want to grow to regret anything I’ve published.
I guess now I can call myself not only a writer, but an author, because I have devoted myself to growth. And it literally, cliche notwithstanding, started with a dream.
DIscombobulated
I really want to write today.
But so far, my calendar seems to thwart me from all directions. I have (another!) dental appointment* this morning, followed by a meeting with the outfit that is sponsoring the National Guard training which my husband and I will be doing moulage** for. And, depending on how long that will take (too long, I suspect; I have no patience with dawdling) maybe then I’ll have time to write.
I had great ideas last night for my rewrite/character development of Gaia’s Hands, and of course I forgot some of it and I’m trying to piece the rest of it together with Richard***. I need a good stretch of time to write with more coffee to fuel me****.
I’ve written today’s blog and I have promised myself at least an hour on Gaia’s Hands. Hopefully, I will feel inspired.
* I was born with an enamel deficiency and rather soft teeth; I have all my teeth crowned, but one or two of my teeth have broken off and require further work.
** Casualty simulation; making up volunteers to look like victims for training purposes. This run-through is an earthquake simulation to train the local National Guardsmen. For the first time ever, we’re getting paid for it. Woo hoo!
*** Richard is the husband previously mentioned.
**** We’re currently drinking our way through a coffee blend that is supposed to taste like chocolate; no matter how we roast it, we aren’t getting any chocolate notes, just something that tastes like really good commercial coffee. Sigh.
Words Like Me 