ok, so i'm a writer: major revisions

in honor of a susan g. komen event we are holding at our restaurant tonight, this whole post will be pink. just throwing that out there.

over this past week, i did a big thing. a big, big thing. well, first, i spent the week in florida, writing and trying to relax while i worked on a new novel. and for the first couple days, that worked out. i had my five-subject, college ruled office depot spiral notebook with me pretty much everywhere i went. it was 80 degrees most of the time, so i had to get creative with how i wrote (nothing more annoying than sweaty spf on a page of hard work...).  but i did it, and i loved it. this new story is totallllly different than my other ones, so i welcomed the change of scenery and change of writing style.

fast forward to midweek. it was still a work-week for me (remember "vacations" aren't vacations for a writer. that's when we work the best!), so i was on the phone with sarah (my rockstar agent). we had been discussing the possibility of trying the story out in first person ever since another amazing agent got involved in our latest pitching process. emmanuelle you are my jam. it was previously written in a very loose third person, with a lot of the character spilling out, a lot of asides. in other words, i wasn't very neutral in my third person pov. but, being the expert she is, emmanuelle kept saying we might want to try the voice in the first person, that my character might connect more. 

for those of you who don't know what that would exactly entail from me, literally ever single "she", "her" "their"....every time I referred to anything really, all of that had to be changed to "I" "my" "mine". And of course a lot of the "and then this happened", matter of fact sentences had to be changed to be less "tell"...more show. always. 

i had 390 pages .  

i could have said no, i guess, but it didn't even occur to me not to try it. when someone that experienced gives you a tip that huge, never mind how much work--why are you doing this if you don't want to actually work?--you do it. you try it. worst case scenario, it doesn't make the book any better and you  revert back to the manuscript you had. best case? well, it's freakin' better! 

pre-sick, first person transformation workstation 

so, we started out with just a chapter, trying it out. i changed it, sent it in, and by friday, i was on the phone with sarah and her amazing assistant (who just got a killer position at random house....go michelle!) it was a go. i was going to keep changing the whole thing. 

i probably should have a little freaked out or overwhelmed or something. that would have been normal i think. but i was so excited! a chance to make "my baby" better? heck yes! i'm still an amateur at this. i love writing as much as a seasoned veteran but i know i don't know what i'm doing...technically. so to be able to have this freedom to change my entire work around...it was kind of awesome. 

how long did it take? well, as you can imagine, it took a few days. i planned on working through it in a weekend...and i was on track until i got sick and threw up all night (yuck), so of course when that happened, i was pushed back a few more days to recover. who wants to be staring at a screen whiel they are nauseous? not me! but i ached to be able to  anyway. so, let me do the math: i started early saturday morning...then i had to stop until monday morning when i was on my flight back to tennessee. and i finished last night. so probably collectively 3 days? not that bad. they were intense, mind you, but YOU'RE WRITING! how bad can it ever get????

 so, i sent the first draft of the first person pov revision last night, and i am waiting to get started on the second one now, but i thought i'd post while i had a moment--since i hadn't since the fifth of this month. holy cow! 

i can't wait to keep going. this is fun. i think i might print it out. 

have a good thursday!

awkward 

naples

marco island

ashlyne

ok, so you're a writer: phone a friend

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do you remember the "phone a friend" option on that who wants to be a millionaire show? well, i want to extend the idea to your life as a writer.

i've probably said this a number of times before, but it just helped me out big time, so i think it's time to remind.

i have this story i'm writing (p.s. my last post about that series? i got a more pressing idea in the meantime, so i have to switch gears and write this new one first--you gotta go with your writing flow. if there's something you know you have to write, you must do it. otherwise, you'll be thinking about it the whole friggin'time you're trying to write the other one. tried it, been there, following my heart now. don't make my mistake if you can help it...it will totally save you days/or week.)

so again, i have this new story i'm writing. it's closely related to real events, just like most fiction out there. but of course, it's not going to be a biography of this person. i am going to pull truths out and attach them to untrue/could-be-true events, ultimately making something new. but i was having trouble un-attaching with the truth. just like sue monk kidd said in her talk concerning the invention of wings. she had so much information on sarah. her journals, her history and very little on hetty handful. one would think it would be harder to make up a character you have zero information on than someone you have research on. but mrs. kidd said it was the opposite, that because she had less on hetty handful, she could let hetty speak for herself, come to life on the page. for a while, she felt a little more bound to sarah's actual life, her actual words written in 19th century sentence-structure. but once she let go of the bullet points, sarah came to life just like hetty.

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but how do you let go? if you're a writer, you are a thinker, and sometimes you think so hard that you have absolutely no wiggle room for the thoughts. you are trying to remember everything, trying to make sense of everything, and by accident, you make creativity nearly impossible.

my answer: phone a friend. i talked to lindsey, my lovely friend who lives too many states away in pennsylvania,  and it all made sense. just simply talking to her, about stuff she's never heard, knows nothing about, cares nothing about (except for the story it becomes) put all my thoughts in a row. i all of a sudden knew how to make it all work, how to start the whole story off.  goldmine i tell you, goldmine.

find your friend. he/she doesn't have to know anything about writing (of course it doesn't hurt).  the person just needs to know you and how important it is for you to let it all go. they don't need to be someone who would rather hear bullet points. they need to get that you need to spill your guts, ramble, go on until it makes sense. and it will. if you're willing to be vulnerable and let some bad ideas fall out with the good, you'll find that your gold was there the whole time, just covered up by rigid facts and details.

oh, and by the way, i have never actually watched who wants to be a millionaire. just slumdog millionaire :)