Growing as a Writer

Gaia’s Hands, the novel I’ve gone back to revise, was my first novel, and it’s been a problem child since its conception. I have amended it, added to it, subtracted from it, tried it as a novella, and still it’s been not quite enough.

It’s always seemed like a small novel, one in which not much happened, even though a lot happened. A novel in which a relationship developed and then, after a few chapters, Jeanne’s getting persecuted by her department, and then …

Almost like there were two halves of the book — first half relationship and second half disaster.

Why didn’t I figure this out sooner?

I’ve been growing as a writer. Those rejections from agents and publishers have helped me to seek out improvement. My dev editor, Chelsea Harper, has helped me to see where I can improve. The rewrites have helped me to see what I can become.

I don’t know that I would have gone through this process of improvement if I’d gone straight to self-publishing. I’m glad I have to work hard for my dream.

Excited about Editing

I really want to get done with my work today (readings for online class, taking the Introduction to National Incident Management System course and exam, driving to Kansas City, visiting an intern). I REALLY want to get done with my work today.

I’m very excited about where Gaia’s Hands is going.

I knew there was something wrong with it before, but I didn’t know what. But after editing Apocalypse and understanding that it got into the plot too quickly, I realized that Gaia’s Hands needed buildup in the early chapters as well, but in its case, the beginning meandered and the plot appeared out of nowhere.

So I’m excited about the editing. I’m excited about seeing what is possible for the book now that I have a handle on editing. There’s going to be a bit of editing.

But I’m looking forward to editing.

My routine is anything but.

Back from the conference, and back to my routine —

No. I have to go to Kansas City for intern visits on Wednesday and Thursday. Hope to find some time to hole up and write some more and —

OMG! I forgot to tell you! I figured out how to fix up what was wrong with Gaia’s Hands!

Interestingly, it was the same thing wrong with Apocalypse — not enough of a ramp-up. This time, however, there was too little going on at the beginning — a lull — rather than a too short ramp-up and there’s the battle. So there’s a long-overdue revision.

Richard and I laid out the revision of the first part of the book (other parts need revising but not whole chapter rewrites) and the challenge of course will be time, energy, and patience.

Wish me luck.

Rewriting another novel

I finished my rewrite of Apocalypse, and currently I don’t have enough distance from it to look at it objectively anymore, which is why it will go back to dev edit shortly.

So where does that leave me relative to writing? I can either start a new book, figure out what to do with the idea for Gods’ Seeds (I’m struggling with that — there’s so much I want to do that it could be two books, my usual problem) or I could look over the post dev edit on Gaia’s Hands and see if I can feel better about it.

I’ve decided to work on Gaia’s Hands. If (when?) I get Apocalypse published, Gaia’s Hands would be a prequel. As such, I’d like to get it polished while I have the time to and before I come up with any other bright ideas. Whose Hearts are Mountains, which still needs a developmental edit, would be the next novel after that.

Yes, I have a plan. All I need is for the stars to align so that I can actually get something published. If you pray, put in a good word for me.

The Beauty of NaNo

Last night, I hit the 10,000 words mark — twenty percent of the novel is done! No, not really — first of all, there’s the fact that I’m writing between two novels. Second, 50,000 words is not the optimal length of a novel.

But it’s a big, round number, and that’s the idea. Not even NaNo pretends that you’ll have a publishable final product at the end of November. But you’ll have something to start with, or something that you keep to yourself and say, “I wrote this!”

Progress as it stands — I can see the finish line of Whose Hearts are Mountains, knowing that I have a lot of work to do afterward. Richard has restored some of the stuff I took out in the edit of Gaia’s Hands and emphasized things I need to emphasize. He has lots of work to go. It’s nice to think that that novel can be salvaged.

I’m still waiting for the other publishing editor to come up with edits of the first 50 pages of Prodigies. I am beginning to wonder about her — she couldn’t find anything wrong with my query letter, whereas the other publishing editor helped me improve my query letter in ways even I could see. I would work with one of these people again — not so the other one.

I’m beginning to feel like a writer again. That’s what NaNo does for me.

Dissecting Gaia’s Hands and Learning Nothing Yet.

Maybe Gaia’s Hands wasn’t the best book to enter to Kindle Scout.

I’ve proofread it, demolished it, paired it with another book, trimmed that back so that I have two instead of four main characters, re- and re-proofed it, and still when I look at it I wonder if it’s a solid novel.

I’ve never known what to do with it. I love its plot lines — discovering one’s mystical abilities, a convincingly menacing pattern of harassment to one of the main characters, a taboo May-December romance (taboo because the woman is older than the man). I adore its characters — a talented botany professor, a precocious young poet, his best friend the surly engineer, the refined yet hangdog lab assistant Ernie, enigmatic waitress Annie, and even the smooth dean and hostile department chair Jeanne has to face.

But I’ve never known what to do with the book. The scenes almost come off as vignettes, with the connections between strands unapparent at first. The plot is subtle, not as action-packed. The characters carry it, but I always wonder if the book starts too slowly. I edit it again and feel something’s not quite there, I don’t know what the “something” is. With all the improvement I’ve done in writing for the past six years, there’s something in Gaia’s Hands too quirky for prime time.

Gaia’s Hands strikes me as a YA, except the male protagonist is too old at 20, the female protagonist is way too old at 50, and there’s not enough angst. (For all the harm Twilight did to women’s expectations of men — it’s okay to be a stalker? Really? — it did angst exceedingly well. And it sold.)

I look at Gaia’s Hands and feel like it’s missing something. Despite my greater level of experience, my writing skills, better knowledge of writing dynamics — my writing is missing something, and I can’t tell what. Maybe my style, my “voice” isn’t acceptable. I don’t know, but I wish I could figure it out.

Another Excerpt of Gaia’s Hands

Trigger warning — this excerpt deals with PTSD/rape. The description is not from a salacious point of view, but from traumatic memory.

This is an excerpt from Gaia’s Dance, which I don’t know if it should be in the book even though it survived three edits. But it mixes trauma, magical realism, and relationships, and may be a quintessential part of the plot, even though it’s a sideplot:

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On his way to Jeanne’s house, he rode past throngs of students drinking in costume or just drinking. He swerved around a pony keg that had rolled out into the street. Past downtown, he rode his bike under a tree full of birds flocking for migration south. Jeanne had called them starlings, but their frenzied voices mocked him. Josh imagined them as the tengu, bird kami, of Japanese folklore and hoped they would protect him.

Josh arrived in front of Jeanne’s bungalow, a cream-colored cottage with brown trim, the landscaping brown and desiccated by the frost. He remembered her saying that the trees in the back hosted islands of lush edible growth – vines, bushes, creeping greens, all dormant now. Her koi pond slept, dreaming of spring.

He rang the doorbell. Jeanne, pale and weary, let him in and shut the door behind them. He stood in an apricot living room with burgundy and gold accents. “Pick a seat”, she said tersely. He chose one on the wood-framed couch, leaving enough room for her if she wanted to sit. She stood.

“What’s wrong?” Josh breathed, his stomach clenching. “I’ve missed you.”

“Oh, Josh,” she fretted. “I’ve been really busy lately.”

“You have never been too busy for your friends. I worry about you.” And about me, he thought. And us, even if you don’t think there’s an ‘us’.

“There’s a lot going on –”

“Did I do something wrong? You act like you don’t trust me.” He remembered seeing her flinch that day in September when she shied away from talking about her past. He searched his memory to see if he had ever been aggressive, had ever overstepped his bounds.

“You don’t understand. It’s not you I don’t trust, it’s me.”

Around her, he saw snow fiercely blown by the wind. He stood up, faced her, close enough to touch but not touching her. “What do you mean, you don’t trust yourself? I trust you.” As she shook her head, he realized he had said the wrong thing. He took a deep breath and started over. “Could you tell me what you don’t trust yourself with?”

“I don’t trust my judgment. Not when it comes to getting close to people.” She shivered as the snow billowed around her in the warm room.

“Why not?” He would not allow her to walk alone in the blizzard.

“I’ve let the wrong people into my life. Over and over, because I wanted attention,” Jeanne murmured.

“Don’t we all want attention? Love?”

“Not when people hurt you with it …” Her voice broke. Her eyes swam with tears. “Not you, Josh. Just …”

“Who was it, then?” Josh winced; he spoke too loud.

“Something really bad happened when I was young.” Jeanne’s voice was small, barely audible.

“Tell me. Please.” Josh took a deep breath against the churning of his stomach.

Jeanne responded in a soft monotone, “It was a sunny day in March. The phone rang at four in the afternoon. My sister Clarice was at Eastern, and my parents worked Saturdays. I thought the call was for one of them. Instead, it was for me.

“My neighbor Malvin ca
lled. He had two little girls, 4 and 6, with platinum blond hair and pretty blue eyes. I used to go over with my sister and help her babysit them, so the girls got to know me pretty well. He asked me to come over and do the girls’ hair so he could get them portraits at the mall in Champaign.

“I knocked on the door. I remember I felt this chill across my shoulders despite the nice weather. I didn’t understand why. There were people Mom didn’t let me visit, and she never let me have male babysitters growing up because she said she didn’t trust them not to hurt kids. But Mal and the kids — they weren’t strangers, they were neighbors.

“Mal let me in. He seemed nervous. His hair looked sweaty and greasy, and he smelled of beer, and something didn’t sound right about the way he talked — he sounded like he read off a script. He wouldn’t really look at me. He told me the kids were in the back room. By the time I realized that I didn’t hear the girls, he pushed the door open and shoved me in.

“I trusted Mal. I trusted him; heck, I helped him with the kids all the time. The kids weren’t there, they were with their mother, and he and his friend told me they had a different game in mind.

“I won’t tell you, not even you, all of it.

“When they had finished, they threw me out of the house and I ran home. I saw blood and slimy streaks in my underwear, bruises where fingers had dug into my arms. I felt pain, shrieking pain, where those two men had no business going. So much for being a virgin till marriage.

“Oh God, I didn’t do anything,” she cried. “Mal and his buddy said things to me: ‘Hey, fat girl, let me see your tits. Do fat girls put out? Are fat girls easy?’ I didn’t even know what they were talking about, never heard the words before. But they showed me, and it hurt. I tried to stop them, I tried, but I couldn’t.

“They laughed when I screamed. That hurt me the worst — my neighbor laughed when I screamed.

“I buried the clothes; I scrubbed away the evidence so my parents would never know.”

Josh felt weak, vaguely ill. He remembered the drunk woman at the house party, and how scared and ashamed he felt. Multiply that by a hundred, and maybe that was how Jeanne felt. Age thirteen, two men, no way to fight them off. Only powerlessness and pain. Too much darkness, too much, and he could do nothing to redress her past. He knew that he could only give comfort. He took a deep breath to center himself, then caught and held her gaze. “You didn’t cause it.” His hands rubbed up and down her upper arms to try to remove the chill that had nothing to do with ambient temperature.

“No I didn’t,” Jeanne breathed through tears, “I’ve come to believe that. It took a long time.”

“Not just the assault.” He couldn’t bring himself to say rape. He had to keep his composure for her.

“Don’t blame your judgment either.”

“I trusted Mal – “

“Your parents trusted Mal. You believed your parents. We believe our parents at that age. Your judgment told you to run when your mother’s guidance told you everything was ok.”

“Oh, God,” Jeanne paused, then broke out in sobs, “Oh, God, you’re right. I never trusted Mal. He looked like a rockstar, but I could feel something mean about him.“

Jeanne crept into his embrace and cried, and they walked through the blizzard together.

***************
Now, that you’re at the bottom, a question: would you like to read this book? It’s likely going to be something I self-publish on Kindle, but my readers deserve to get a free copy, which I can send to you.

Welcome to the glamorous life of a humanitarian aid worker.

Welcome to Atlantica! It’s 5:29 Atlantica time, and I almost froze themo death. Richard and I snagged a private room in the tactical building only to find out that 1) our sleeping bags stowed on site had disappeared, and 2) Hotel Atlantica (not the more amenable digs above) wasn’t heated. We found a hidden cache of blankets and survived the night.

I hope beyond hope the coffee is drinkable.

*****
Not much time or energy for writing here; but I’ll check in now and again.

Apparently my link to the Kindle Scout campaign for my book Gaia’s Hands was broken. Here’s a functional one:https://kindlescout.amazon.com/p/250Q7OJ0R0F8W/

Today’s the beginning

It’s February 28, and my Kindle Scout campaign is up and running! I myself am at the National Preparedness Institute, which is not nearly as impressive as it sounds. I’m setting up for moulage as you read this, possibly. This link should be live now:

https://kindlescout.amazon.com/p/250Q7OJ0R0F8W

But here’s the story again according to Kindle Scout (2018):

A book is a new, never-before-published work of 50,000 words or more that you’d like to see published. In my case, the book is called Gaia’s Hands.
An author is the person who has written and submitted a book to Kindle Scout. That would be me, Lauren Leach-Steffens, also the author of this blog.
Readers (that means all of you) scout the site and nominate books they want to see published.
Nominations are how readers show support for a book. Readers can nominate up to three books at a time. This is what I’m asking you to do.
A campaign is a 30-day scouting period during which readers nominate books to be published. Mine is from February 28-March 30.
The Kindle Scout team makes the final call on which books are published by Kindle Press. This will depend largely on how many nominations. This is what scares me, because it sounds like a popularity contest and I’ve never been popular.
Kindle Press publishes the books discovered through Kindle Scout. This is my goal — not for the $1500 cash advance, or royalties. I want to be read and enjoyed and maybe make people think. (Although I could get a new computer with the royalties, one that can handle graphics so I can map my landscapes using SketchUp without bombing the computer)

Considering self-publishing

I’d like some feedback from my readers: Would you read my e-book? Click the comment link below and comment. You can stay anonymous so you can honestly say, “I wouldn’t read your book. I don’t even know why I’m reading your blog except that I’m your long-lost great grandma and I’m so proud of you!”

I’m actually considering self-publishing for the first time, even though my books will probably languish there without anyone reading them except my friends (and I have few close friends who will go out of their way to read my work). Why?

Because I need some sense of closure.*
Because I can’t make an intelligent decision of whether to continue writing unless I get feedback**
Because I can’t change the world, even a little, with them on my cloud drive.
Because, although agents appear to disdain self-publishing, I imagine they disdain my queries, so I’m not behind.
TWO HUNDRED REJECTIONS.
Because, in a fairy tale, I might get discovered in e-book.
Because I believe in what Quakers call leadings***.

The book I would self-publish would be Gaia’s Hands, a prequel to my Mythos series. It doesn’t touch on that series directly — no Archetypes — but involves the origin of the modern Garden of Eden, and the influence of Gaia, the Earth-soul. It also involves two unlikely protagonists — a professor of plant biology and her much younger poet suitor — and a seemingly sentient bean stalk. If you squint closely, you’ll recognize the terrain as Central Illinois, my childhood home. (Aunt Peggy, Carla, and others who read a previous draft — this has been edited and rewritten extensively.

* Books on one’s cloud drive don’t feel like finished works.

** Again, why I keep hoping people will comment.

*** (Sorry to get minority religious here). Quakers don’t necessarily believe everything happens for a reason, so we’re not going to tell you God needed a little angel when your kid dies. However, they strongly believe God tells us to pursue something, and when we get that feeling, we seek clearness committees of our peers to sound out our leading. I never had a clearness committee on my leading to write, which may be the problem. I haven’t been able to suss out a meaning myself, because of my bad luck in getting an agent/getting published.