Cynthia Harrison's Blog, page 63

Series?

Forgot to mention to my publisher and editor that Blue Heaven is the first book in a series. Luke’s #1 Rule is the second of that series. I have an idea for a third…so anyway I finally wrote to my editor today and told her about the series idea. For me, as a reader, I do not want to read series that are obvious. I don’t want mentions of people who are not integral to the plot. I don’t want allusions to incidents past. Not unless it fits in the book as a stand-alone.

Every book in my series must first be a stand-alone. Since it is the setting, not the main characters, that stays the same, I think it shouldn’t be too much of a problem doing this. But really, I can’t believe that little “series” idea completely slipped my mind until this morning when I was pondering revisions. I shot off an email to the very kind and patient editor (this is not my first email to her!) and await her verdict.

Cutting Up the Book

Today I can see perfectly with both eyes again! And no headache on the horizon:) So of course I am ready to dive back into my manuscript to make the changes for the Wild Rose Press editor. She wants a big cut, and she’s right about that. But it’s not as much as I thought. About 50 pages.

First I had to dig through my closet to find the box with the proper manuscript. Then I lifted the top stack out of the box. I tend to save a couple of copies and photos and other things I use during a books’ progress, but I was pretty sure this pile was the right book, since I’d only sent it out a few months ago.

Greeting me on the title page was this note: “Pages out of order are corrected in Word and thumb drive.” So I spent almost an hour getting my pages back in order because they were a mess. And even now there are two pages of some and no pages of others. I was quite tempted to just print the whole thing out again but feel guilty about the wasted paper.

Why didn’t I organize my pages at the time? Because I was anxious to move to the step–submission. And then back to my Cher novel. So I tossed the manuscript into the box and forgot about it until now.

My filing system may seem shockingly low tech, but I am a little more organized than I used to be. I once sent a draft of a novel to someone who was in a position to help me get published. Because I failed to label it correctly, I sent the wrong draft. She sent it back saying “I think this is a rough draft…there are spelling mistakes…” I was so embarrassed. So now I take care to label every new version of my manuscript in a way that will immediately allow me to find the right copy.

When the current editor sent the ms. back, I labeled it with her initials, so I’d know that these are the correction pages, where I will use the editing tools. Yes, we revise on the computer in our publishing house. Again, saving paper, if not my eyes.

I was surprised how little there actually was in the way of remarks on the Word version she sent back. Most of her notes were in the revision letter, so at least she trusts me to know what to do with her suggestions. The big one was cutting the last 50 pages. The other big thing was showing instead of telling. Yes I make the same mistake I always warn my students against. However, in critique we talked about how sometimes you really need to tell. I hope I know the difference when I read through the manuscript. She points out maybe one or two places where she suggests this, but since she said it’s a BIG concern, I assume I have more than she marked.

That’s what I do, as a writing teacher. After the first few pages of inserting commas, I just tell them, you have comma problems, you need to fix them. Then I know they’re really learning instead of just using me as their editor for rewrites. So I guess where show or tell is concerned, everyone must learn to be their own editor.

Revision Letter

Life is just full of surprises. I got a revision letter from the editor who read my next romance novel  for TWRP. She got the main problem exactly right and I knew it in that way I have of knowing something in a story isn’t quite right but convincing myself that “oh it’s fine.” If I want to work on this revision with her, and I do, the last third of the book has to (mostly) be trashed.

I have a great black moment scene sequence, but it comes too early in the book. She’s right, almost everything after that is anticlimax. I need a quicker wrap up and that means I need more on the front end so I can hit that 60,000 word count for a print editon. That should not be a problem as she wanted more on the front end.

I got this revision letter on December 1 and immediately had to rush off early a.m. to my critique group. So I only had time to read her short cover letter before we met and went over our current WIP critiques. This is not an easy process. We four are each other’s editors, and we take that job seriously. I have a lot of work to do on Cher’s story. My critique pals gave me lots to think about and revise.

Got home and read the longer letter, which basically expanded on the cover letter major points, and then, I just couldn’t do any more critique. I’d been at it several hours and my mind just shut down. I thought I’d look at her mark up of my Word document the next morning, before my writer’s group Christmas bash.

12/2 had other plans. I woke up with a scratchy eye. I put in drops. Still painful, like a cat claw, every time I blinked. I looked again in my magnifying mirror and found a hard bump on an upper inside eyelid.

So I called my eye doctor instead of opening the Word document. I have never called a doctor on Sunday before, but with the new eyes (had cataracts removed six months ago) I was worried I’d damage the cornea. So I left him a message and he called back within 10 minutes. I asked if I should go to emergency room, he said no, he was going to prescribe ointment I could pick up at CVS. So I did that and it helped, but I couldn’t read the newspaper let alone a document on the computer. Also, I had to cancel my festive plans.

The side effects are a very blurry vision in one eye, and just to complicate things a bit more, the eye pain brought on a migraine. The migraine was worse on day 2 but the eye was getting better. I had to cancel Monday’s scheduled lunch with close friends, and, even worse, I am still not sure when I can kick into rewrite gear. Today I see well enough a few hours after my first ointment application and the laying on of warm wet towels that I’m at least going to open the document and take a look.

I have been waiting for this revision for two months. Am so frustrated that I can’t dive in full force yet. Hoping maybe tomorrow.

Motivated

A few weeks ago, I got some unfortunate news from my doctor. I have pre-diabetes. This is not the first time I have had sugar problems, and in the past, knowing the problem, I’d cut sugar out of my diet and the issue would solve itself. So of course, I vowed this time to cut out all treats that were made with sugar, while still allowing myself a little dark chocolate with high cocoa content, because I don’t binge on it and it’s healthy.

Shortly after making that promise to myself, I went out to lunch with a friend and ate the two free warm chocolate chip cookies that came with our meal. I didn’t eat them so much as inhale them. My friend Donna had one cookie, ate it slowly, and took the other home. So sensible. So not me.

I’ve been trying to beat my sugar addiction forever. Well, since I stopped smoking in 1987 and food started tasting good. Before 1987 I could care less about candy, cake, bread, chips. Eating was an annoying necessity. I was all about the nicotine. Pack a day for 15 years, except for the two times I was pregnant and the 10-20 times I tried to quit. But finally to my utter amazement I was able to quit nicotine. Harder to get off than heroin! So how come I can’t quit sugar?

I really don’t know the answer. I just know that I can’t quit trying to quit. I’m hoping Judy Smith, who has a chapter on indulging in her book “Good Self, Bad Self” will give me clues. She does have a method, it’s a little complicated, you really have to read the book, but I’m trying to put it into action. Today I figured out that I can actually work The Plan (a healthy lifestyle eating habit my friend Lisa came up with to successfully lose 30 lbs.) and exercise.  Instead of saying “well I’m shopping later so that’s exercise” I got on my treadmill and then hit the yoga mat.

And I’m still going shopping:) Will I be able to give up sugar with the same ease that I have incorporated exercise into my life? It seems so stupid to keep eating cakes and candies and cookies when I am headed on a fast train to giving myself shots of insulin. But I’m not stupid, just a sugar junkie.

I was able to add exercise because it makes me feel so better afterward. Yoga is a must for my back. I hurt if I don’t do some yoga every day. And walking helps cheer me up. I’ve been depressed, I admit it. I hate admitting that. But what I noticed when I started walking was that I am not depressed after 30 minutes on a treadmill. A little exercise gets me through a 24 hour day in a much better mood. Amazing!

Giving up sugar doesn’t have that same gratification. Sugar tastes good. It’s an instant hit of wonderful. I don’t feel a sugar crash like some people do. There is nothing tangible to keep me from indulging. Well, except my health, and I value it as much as my mood. Except when I am confronted with a delicious something full of sugar and slip into sweet denial.

I am motivated to quit sugar. Now I just need to get some practice with “no thanks” under my belt. I need a few successes. The next three days’ social events will all be sugar-rich opportunities. If I say no three times, I’ll have those successes to lean on during the coming holiday sugar rush. Wish me luck. And determination.

Christmas Reading

I love reading Christmas themed novels. It is my favorite thing to do in December and I don’t feel right unless I’ve got one going on my Kindle. I prefer to read new novels instead of returning to beloved classics, so I look for those released in 2012. Sometimes that date can fool you, as in the classic pair of novellas by the wonderful Mary Balogh. This year she re-released a double set of novellas first printed in the 1990s, so since it’s the first time the stories were pubbed in this form, the 2012 date was technically accurate.

I only learned they were classics when I read the “Dear Reader” note from Ms. Balogh that prefaced the book. That’s okay. The price was great and it’s been so long since I read ”A Christmas Bride” and “Christmas Beau” that I fell in love with these Regency set romances all over again. Finished “Christmas Bride” last night (Yes, I cried. Balogh always makes me cry.) and started right in on “Christmas Beau.”

For Victorian setting, nobody beats Anne Perry, who brings out an annual Christmas story. “A Christmas Garland” was quite a departure for Perry. She set it in English-occupied India. I had misgivings, but it turned out to be absolutely my favorite Perry Christmas novel to date. But then,  I always say that. The mystery really had me stumped and Perry realistically adds in a touching romance. Mystery is the main plot, however, and that’s fine by me.

I’m still looking forward to Shirley Jump’s “Mistletoe Kisses with a Billionaire” a contemporary romance. It releases December 1. That’s Saturday. I’ll have “Christmas Beau” finished by then:)

Happy for the Holidays

Nobody holds a grudge like I do. Not an admirable trait, but I’m working on it. Like so much of my inner work, I look to Marianne Williamson for spiritual guidance on how to forgive. My copy of Illuminata, her book of prayers first published in 1994, has a permanent bookmark on page 132, where her prayer for forgiveness begins. I’ve said this prayer many times, and have been gratefully amazed with the results.

The holidays can be a stressful time, especially if you know you are going to see someone who has hurt your feelings or harmed you in other ways so that you’re harboring a grudge. The longer the grudge is held, the harder it is to let go of…so you can’t just read pages 132-134 once and be done. I have a person right now I’m trying to forgive. It has been weeks, and I cannot get over what they said to me. What makes it worse is waiting for an apology that will likely never come.

For years I wondered why a person who found God and went total Christian failed to apologize for something horrible he did to me way back when. I had to work on forgiving him for years. I’m still working on it! And it’s harder without the apology. In fact, the minute someone says “I’m sorry” I automatically forgive them. But this guy, never gonna say those words. I finally figured out why: because it happened so long ago, he has a different story of what happened than I do. In his version, he did nothing wrong. In my version, my life was negatively impacted for many years, until I learned to forgive him by using Marianne’s prayer.

My mom and I had a Come to Jesus moment a few years ago, when she kept asking me to read a particular book. I didn’t want to because I knew the parents of the character in the book do something horrible to their daughter, the same thing my parents tried to do to me. Finally, after one more time of Mom saying “You must read this book!” I blew. “You know why I can’t.” Mom was clueless. So I told her. Which led to the whole drama of my teen years–some things she forgot, some things she remembered differently, some things she explained away. But she did apologize. Right after I told her that I had saved my teenage journals.

Anything I write in my journal, I know to be true. I keep journals for myself. Nobody else gets to read them. Anyway, back to this recent grudge. I knew I would see this person at a holiday gathering. I decided to say the forgiveness prayer with her in mind twice a day for ten days. It’s a long prayer, and that’s a long time to focus on one person and one thing. But it is the only way I know to put the grudge behind me for good and also not feel awkward around her during the party. Forgiving is so worth it. When we fail to forgive, it eats away at us, it fuels anger and frurstration, it is just plain bad. In Marianne’s prayer, we ask for forgiveness not only for the one who wronged us, but for ourselves, too. Because when we fail to forgive, we fail our best selves.

So…what if you don’t believe in prayer? I have atheist and agnostic friends. Prayer is just not their bag. But they are all very smart people who have used their intelligence to come to their own conclusions about life and death. To those people I say, use your intelligence to forgive. Just bring a mental picture to mind of the person you need to forgive and then say “I forgive you.” You may have to do it a lot. And don’t forget to forgive yourself in the process. If you use your mental ability, cognitive skill will help you get to forgiveness. You’re forming a habit of mind, and it is one that will make you happy for the holidays.

Discovering Theme

Alice Munro has a new book of stories out. In Dear Life, the final four stories are as close to memoir, she says, that she’ll ever write. I was disappointed when a reviewer mentioned that the quartet takes place when Munro was a young girl growing up on a fox farm in Ontario, Canada. She’s written about that before. What I hungered for were stories about her adult life, her writing life.

Munro is one of the few fiction writers who has been successful with  that short form, bringing out a dozen or so books. I’ve read them all. Twice. But so far, not the new book. Reviews can sometimes dissuade me and one in particular, by Sam Sacks, regarding Munro’s themes, caught me up in surprise. Sacks says that “…her themes are psychological estrangement, spiritual emptiness, sexual degradation and the pitifulness of death.” Sacks goes on to comment that  Munro’s overall take on life, at least in her stories, is “methodical bleakness.”

Wow. I think I probably have a naturally bleak outlook on life, because I love Munro’s stories and think they are beautiful. The writing is elegant and crisp, the stories compelling, but more, her themes strike my soul in a way that Sacks captured through close examination. The review made me think about my own themes. How do I hold up against Munro? Do I love her work because her themes mirror my own? I wish:)

Yes with psychological estrangement, no to spiritual emptiness. I’m spiritually optimistic, but if anything of my spiritual nature translates into fiction, I don’t see it. That’s my loss, and some day, when I’m braver than today, I intend to correct it.

Sexual degradation–yes, I find to my surprise that all of my work has that undercurrent. Somebody somewhere is sexual degrading someone else in my novels. Sometimes they do it to themselves. In The Paris Notebook, that theme was mostly excised from the text by my editor. Later, I used the story of self-degradation as a gift to readers of my blog. Sarah’s Survival Guide can be read right on my website or downloaded as PDF. So that theme was not lost, just placed elsewhere.

My novels are more about life than death, and I have not really explored the theme of death in fiction. I’m still getting used to experiencing it in life–when loved ones die, the grief of it. When they sicken and a sad slide into senility or physical incapacity begins, yes, it is pitiful. I’ve always thought it was more than pitiful, horrific in fact.

Except at a distance, like when Cher’s grandmother dies in flashback in Sister Issues, I don’t feel skilled enough to take on death in my fiction; it’s difficult enough for me to deal with in real life. In real life, I think of it every day. I mourn friends who have passed; I plan my own exit strategy. (Move to Oregon or Washington). Looking deeply into Munro’s stories, I see the shallowness of my own themes. But, also, I would rather write hopeful stories than bleak ones.

The Plan

For about a month now, I have been working every day on a non-fiction project with a good friend. Yes, I am collaborating. Something I thought I’d never, ever do. But it is going well and I’m glad to be attached to this particular project for a variety of reasons dear to my heart. Too soon to talk specifics, but we are calling it The Plan for now. Just a place-holder name.

Meanwhile, my unfinished novel sits in the drawer taking a nap. I’d like to figure out a way to work on both projects, a little bit every day. But then I think, well, I’m getting edits from my publisher 12/1/12 or so for Blue Heaven, and the holidays are coming, and etc etc. I do have a critique group meeting on 12/1/12 and I need to bring them something from the novel. So I have at least that to keep me somewhat into the unfinished novel (also very dear to my heart!).

Feeling a little torn. But really, I love my life right now. I get to pick my projects, I have a publishing house working to get my next release ready, the blog has a new look, I have three published books with a fourth coming soon and a fifth in the pipeline. Life is good for the moment.

Been reading lots of novels with death as a theme. It came to me that the reason so many people over 50, or over 60, are depressed is more than just “the kids never visit, they never call” — it’s because they are on the other side of life, looking at their accomplishments or lack thereof and possibly feeling sad about not fulfilling their dreams.

My dreams didn’t turn out exactly like I planned. (Who plans on an information superhighway in 1980? Not me.) But they have come to fruition in new ways and that make me happy. I knew it the minute I started this blog. The fire to “be published” began to cool. I felt published, even though blogging is self-publishing. For me, the happy feeling, the reward, is the same. I don’t blog because I need to promote my novels. I blog because I love feeling connected to other writers.

So the other side of 50 is working for me. I am still amazed that I teach college. If my high school yearbook had a motto, under my picture it would have said “most likely to burn out fast.” Or “least likely to succeed.” And at the time I believed those things to be true. That they are the opposite of true amazes and humbles me. Feeling grateful today. Hope you all are too.

Where Truth Meets Fiction

I wrote the memoir. It was a short piece for an anthology that doesn’t pay much, so just this morning, I decided not to send it. I don’t need the publication credit, and I don’t want it out there. It might hurt my husband or it might not, but he’s not the only one I’m thinking about. My sons don’t need to see this.

I think of all the people who I’ve hurt, all of those who hurt me, all of the times I’d had to forgive, the times I needed to be forgiven. The past–it will haunt you if you let it. The one who lifted my shirt while I was sleeping and touched me when I was a girl. The one who said a nasty thing to me, something a friend should never say. The one who talked to my chest every time I saw him when he should have been looking at my eyes. The one who grabbed my ass behind the bar. The one…well, you get it.

I still admire the idea of writing about stepfamilies and I realized that this is exactly what I am doing in my fiction. I am writing my second novel about “steps.” It’s a theme with me, and this is the way to get it out. Not through biography, but through my truest eyes. It seems strange, but I can be far more truthful in my fiction than I can in any other type of writing.

More on Memoir

My friends have been emailing and texting about yesterday’s post. This wanting to write but feeling like we shouldn’t is common. Sometimes writers wait until everyone who will not like the memoir dies, and then they write it. Mark Twain locked up his letters for 100 years, just to be on the safe side:)

I did finally read the heated, angry words I’d written a few nights ago. There are nuggets of truth in them about how I see my children’s stepdad. I kept getting off track and ranting about Al as a husband, not as a stepdad, so that needs to be cut. This is a narrow subject. It is not about marriage spats.

The call for submissions asked some good questions including how I got into the step situation and how I initially felt about it, and challenges it presented, all of which I have covered. But I didn’t talk about how being part of a stepfamily affected how I saw myself or how others thought of me. I think I banished the cultural myth of the eveil stepmother, I hope for good!

Things I missed because of being part of a stepfamily–I have a lot to say about that. And the gains, because there are those too. So it looks like I’m going to write this thing.