Drawing from the Well
Scenes Arranged: 0
Total Scenes: 144
I could have SWORN I wrote two scenes the last couple of days. Looks like that is not the case. It was a busy weekend (not an excuse) so I must have let that sidetrack me. I mean, I missed a blog for heaven’s sake. I guess it was a productive, regenerative weekend.
Now for some words…
Filling the Well
That Hideous Strength: 10%
Sightwitch: 29%
Worth Her Weight in Gold: 100% (#10 of 25 for #ProjectBookworm2019)
Short stories have become so enjoyable for me. They pop up on the Tor newsletter and they’re by their top authors and take just a glimpse out of the world the authors create in their novels or worlds unseen elsewhere. Worth Her Weight in Gold by Sarah Gailey is set in the same alternate history of River of Teeth and Taste of Marrow. I have River of Teeth and was excited to dive into that world, but now I’m stoked.
Things are happening in Sightwitch, but I still haven’t quite gotten the point yet. As with all Sooz’s books, though, it’ll come around by the end and it’ll all make sense. As for That Hideous Strength, at least the tangential connection to Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra has been established. The true conflict of this book should pop up any time.
Polishing the Well
Though this is an exaggeration, it feels like an appropriate representation of what’s going on here right now. There are some hard lessons being learned in our house right now about…let’s call it balance. For those curious, my opinion is that technology is a distraction. If you can get all your “have to’s” done, then technology is fun; otherwise, it’s kind of the devil. That leads me to today’s Well Chat…
Well Chat
Incorporating Constructive Criticism When We’re All Children At Heart
Since we’re talking about hard lessons dealt in love at my house, let’s talk about it with regard to writing as well. I went through a unique process for me last summer: I hired an editor. I had submitted my book to multiple (not numerous) agents and gotten no offers for representations. Every time I submitted, though, a sinking feeling grew in my mind that this was not quite the book I wanted to submit and market. Something was off. I learned quickly that my opening chapter, one of the most important elements, was weak. Then I asked, “If the Chapter 1 is weak, what else is?”
And then it hit me, I didn’t have enough perspective to dissect this book. I couldn’t see the forest for the trees. I needed help.
So I did some research and found an editor. Sending her my manuscript was terrifying. It was letting someone into my world with the express purpose of judging it. This world that I had nurtured with little help or interaction for over a decade was not purposefully going to be picked apart. What had I done?
I’d made the best decision possible, that’s what.
Now, in researching the process of hiring an editor, I read a lot about the pitfalls therein. Primarily, many authors get defensive when they get their notes back. I feared this quite a bit. I wanted to write the best book I could. I knew I needed help. But this was my world that I crafted from my own bare brain. What if she didn’t like it? What if she said I couldn’t hack it? What if she said I had to go back to the drawing board?
To assuage my fears, I started looking at some hard truths. The first thing that happened was that my editor told me that, as a debut, my book was just too long. By double. She got that from the raw word count before she even read more than the first ten pages. So while she was reading and re-reading for edits, I sat down and looked at word count per chapter and per Eighth and started figuring out where my problem areas were. I wanted to know which chapters I could cut as fluff when I got my manuscript back. When it arrived back in my e-mail marked up and ready for improvement, a delightful thing happened.
I trusted my editor.
She had some high level suggestions that made sense and then the same line-level suggestions kept popping up until I had a clearer idea of how to attack my issues (well, those in the book anyway). After three months, I had cut my word count by half, rearranged some of the key scenes in the book, trimmed the fat, and distilled down to a better version of my novel, the best yet.
Her feedback was constructive, impassive, and unemotional. And I accepted early on that my manuscript had problems. That allowed us to have a constructive discourse about what changes needed to be made to make something better. I didn’t pitch a fit. I didn’t get defensive. I also didn’t accept every single change she suggested. There were certain removals that I rejected and left in, if in a tighter state. There were a couple of style choices I preserved. At the end of the day, I’m the author and this is my product. My editor’s job was to do her best from her objective perspective to improve it through her eyes and experience. We worked TOGETHER to make it work.
The same is true in real life. When we go looking for advice or guidance, we have to have an open mind to changes that need to be made. If we’re asking for advice, we already KNOW something is wrong. We have to let go of our pride. We have to open up. Only then can we begin the process of erecting spiritual scaffolding to build a better “me.”
May the tide carry you to safer shores.
BSG