Rachel Neumeier's Blog, page 35

Crossing the Finish Line

From Writer Unboxed: Crossing the Finish Line

I am breathtakingly, tantalizingly close—so close I can feel it, taste it (it is sweet), and see it. And what I see are the words “THE END” typed across the bottom of my 300+ page manuscript. I can’t wait.

What a rush, right? It’s like those moments we’ve witnessed in the Olympics, when Simone Biles nails the triple-double and sticks the landing, or sprinter Julien Alfred crosses the finish line to clinch the first-ever Olympic medal (gold) for her tiny country (St. Lucia). Years of hard, often discouraging work culminating in something you weren’t sure would ever happen. Finishing a novel can feel like that. It’s a huge accomplishment.

Which is why approaching the end of a book can be a treacherous path, because the temptation to hurry up and get there already is powerful.

YES YES YES, with the caveat that I’m looking at “THE END” typed across the bottom of a 1200-page manuscript.

Actually, I’m fine with the hurry-up urge, which is, by the way, producing a heck of a lot of words in August compared to, say, June. (It was 30,000 words in June; it’s already past 45,000 words halfway through August.) A lot of words in a hurry is GOOD. It just means you’ll probably be doing a fair bit of revision to those words later. That’s how it works for me.

I catch myself sometimes taking shortcuts, rushing to get to a certain climactic scene, writing scenes that aren’t as essential or tight as they need to be because hey, it’s forward momentum. 

So? Rushing to get to (or, in my case, through) climactic scenes really IS forward momentum. It’s only a problem if you don’t bother to tighten it up later. Actually, the linked point is kind of making the same point, which surprises me a bit considering the beginning of the post.

The post winds up with a great couple of paragraphs:

Savor it. Finally, we write for a lot of reasons, but I assume that all of us write because, on the most elemental level, we love it. We love crafting sentences and creating characters and building worlds and trying to say something essential about what it means to be human. Books can and do change lives—heck, sentences can change lives.

I recently finished reading a book I loved, Niall Williams’ This Is Happiness. This sentence stopped me cold: “…I came to understand him to mean you could stop at, not all, but most of the moments of your life, stop for one heartbeat and, no matter what the state of your head or heart, say This is happiness, because of the simple truth that you were alive to say it.”

That really is a great sentence. That reminds me of the days immediately after I was involved in a (very minor, truly!) car accident in which my car flipped over. Thanks to my seatbelt and luck, I was perfectly fine, and walked around for many days thinking things like, “Walking! Look at this! How nice to be able to do this!”

Here is the first chapter of This is Happiness.

***

It had stopped raining.

***

That’s it. That’s the entirety of chapter one. How do you feel about that? Charmed? Amused? Irritated at the artificiality of starting a book with a chapter that is four words long? I am in fact feeling charmed and amused.

Here is the beginning of the second chapter:

***

Nobody in Faha could remember when it started. Rain there on the western seaboard was a condition of living. It came straight down and sideways, frontwards, backwards, and any other wards God could think of. It came in sweeps, in waves, sometimes in veils. It came dressed as drizzle, as mizzle, as mist, as showers, frequent and widespread, as a wet fog, as a damp day, a drop, a dreeping, and an out-and-out downpour. It came the fine day, the bright day, and the day promised dry. It came at any time of the day and night, and in all seasons, regardless of calendar and forecast, until in Faha your clothes were rain and your skin was rain and your house was rain with a fireplace. It came off the gray vastness of an Atlantic that threw itself against the land like a lover once spurned and resolved not to be so again. It came accompanied by seagulls and smells of salt and seaweed. It came with cold air and curtained light. It came like a judgment, or, in benign version, like a blessing God had forgotten he had left on. It came for a handkerchief of blue sky, came on westerlies, sometimes — why not? — on easterlies, came in clouds that broke their backs on the mountains in Kerry and fell into Clare, making mud the ground and blind the air. It came disguised as hail, as sleet, but never as snow. It came softly sometimes, tenderly sometimes, its spears turned to kisses, in rain that pretended it was not rain, that had come down to be closer to the fields whose green it loved and fostered, until it drowned them.

All of which, to attest to the one truth: In Faha, it rained.

But now, it had stopped.

***

I’m still amused and charmed. I picked up a sample. I’ve never read anything by this author before, but perhaps this is that rare object: a literary novel that, rather than wallowing in despair and ennui, invites the reader to notice moments of happiness.

Dreeping does, by the way, appear to be a real, if unusual, word.

Verb

dreep (third-person singular simple present dreeps, present participle dreeping, simple past and past participle dreeped)

( Scotland ) To lower oneself from a height and drop the remaining distance. 

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Poetry Thursday: Christina Rossetti

I didn’t actually realize how long ago Rossetti was writing! Here’s the one I memorized when I was in college — I remember this poem from one of the required Humanities classes. I believe it was actually assigned; I know I loved it. To me, it seems somehow soothing. It was first published in 1862.

Up-Hill

Does the road wind up-hill all the way?
   Yes, to the very end.
Will the day’s journey take the whole long day?
   From morn to night, my friend.

But is there for the night a resting-place?
   A roof for when the slow dark hours begin.
May not the darkness hide it from my face?
   You cannot miss that inn.

Shall I meet other wayfarers at night?
   Those who have gone before.
Then must I knock, or call when just in sight?
   They will not keep you standing at that door.

Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak?
   Of labour you shall find the sum.
Will there be beds for me and all who seek?
   Yea, beds for all who come.

***

***

Let me look for one I’ve never read before, or at least don’t remember.

Oh, whoops, I tripped over another one I know well, another favorite —

Remember

Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you planned:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.

***

***

One more! This time, a poem I don’t think I’ve ever seen previously. Rossetti has a lot of poems about loss and death; on first glance, I thought this one was about love. But on second thought, I kind of think this one is also about loss and death.

A Bird Song

It’s a year almost that I have not seen her:
Oh, last summer green things were greener,
Brambles fewer, the blue sky bluer.

It’s surely summer, for there’s a swallow:
Come one swallow, his mate will follow,
The bird race quicken and wheel and thicken.

Oh happy swallow whose mate will follow
O’er height, o’er hollow! I’d be a swallow,
To build this weather one nest together.

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Happiness is Validation

From Jennifer Crusie’s blog: Happiness is Validation

What made me happy this week is that people liked Rocky Start. Every time I finish a book, I think it’s the end of my career. All I can see are the weaknesses, how far it is from the book I wanted it to be, the PERFECT BOOK. …every damn time I’m sure this one is a failure. So when people come back and say, “Hey, it was good,” the relief is intense. [NOTE: THIS IS NOT ME ASKING FOR COMPLIMENTS. I’M NEEDY BUT I’M NOT THAT NEEDY.]. Reading the reviews and comments for Rocky Start this week made me very happy.

Feel free to cross out “Rocky Start“ and put in “Rihasi.”

I mean, I wouldn’t go so far as to say I feel like every book is a failure. No. Sometimes I’ve very certain (VERY CERTAIN) that a book is good, possibly great, and that most readers will love it. I felt that way about Tasmakat and about Marag.

But I do often feel that a newly completed book may not necessarily be hitting the ball out of the ballpark. I do often feel, somewhat grimly, that a book is likely to get suggestions for serious revision. Rihasi was one of those books. I was like, “It’s too episodic, isn’t it? Characters come and go too much? I mean, I bring some of them back … at least in the epilogue … is this too episodic? It is, right?”

To sum up the responses from 100% of early readers: “No, it’s fine. It’s not too episodic. What are you even talking about? But, hey, can you do this totally trivial and easy thing?”

And that was such a relief! This is one major benefit to having multiple early readers. I honestly wasn’t worried at all about reader responses after getting back early responses. On the other hand, I didn’t necessarily expect it to still be sitting at 4.9 stars a month after release. I think that is its permanent star rating, and you know what? That makes me really happy! Because validation!

I do often worry about a new book as it goes live. Is Tano too intense and does enough happen, plotwise? Are readers going to like something that is a bit of a departure, like No Foreign Sky? Have I managed to handle difficult, iffy plot elements in a way that works at all in Invictus?

Well, Tano is sitting at 4.7 stars, No Foreign Sky at 4.6, Invictus I at 4.6 and Invictus II at 4.8. This is indeed validating, and you know what, validation does indeed equal happiness. Not quite as much as a warm puppy …

… but nevertheless, yes. I suppose that’s not surprising, actually, as the books are just as much my babies as the puppies.

I will add, I’m ALSO right there with Crusie when she adds [NOTE: THIS IS NOT ME ASKING FOR COMPLIMENTS. I’M NEEDY BUT I’M NOT THAT NEEDY.].

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Choreography

At Jane Friedman’s blog: Moving Characters Around in Your Story Space: Improve Your Choreography Skills

And OMG have I mentioned I’m doing a series of chapters where almost everyone is in the same location? Wow, do I remember why I sent everyone off in different directions in the first place. SO MANY CHRACTERS. And everyone who is in a scene HAS TO ACTUALLY BE THERE. Talk about choreography! I just hate crowd scenes! Maybe for my next project I will write a whole novel where only one character is on screen for 90% of the novel. Oh, yes, and of course this one too.

I always admire that when someone pulls off a just-one-character novel, but the fact is, right now I’m thinking that having just one character in a novel would be SO MUCH EASIER.

Anyway:

What do they do? Where are they and why? Which direction are they looking? Where do they move to? How big is the space?

When you start thinking about those things, it’s easy to tear your hair out about how many ways you can say “looking” or “walking.” But the words themselves are often secondary. What matters is the picture you paint in the reader’s mind so they can be in that space with your characters without distractions. They don’t have to see it exactly as you do, they just have to see it enough for it to make sense.

And a character’s movements and gestures in that space similarly must convey enough without becoming too detailed. At the same time, to create that magical sensation, your characters (or you, in memoir) have to bring their whole selves to the spaces they inhabit and occupy them realistically.

That result depends on making good decisions about what to leave out as much as what to put in. It’s a delicate balance that can be hard to achieve.

Yes to all this. Then the linked post presents a scene and revises the scene, looking for the happy medium where the characters are in the space and readers can see them there well enough, but without describing every flower on the wallpaper or whatever.

For a crowd scene in particular, I constantly have to

–Check to see if specific characters have disappeared and if so, keep them in the scene.

–Make sure the characters occupy space relative to each other and relative to their surroundings.

–Not let reader notice that any of the above is difficult.

AARGH yeah, well, at least the epilogue of Silver Circle, though crowded, will be fine. Even though a lot of the epilogue will take place in a crowded venue, the epilogue will nevertheless consist of, basically, a series of vignettes, each with just two or at most a few

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Update: ABE = All But Epilogue (plus pictures)

And if I’m exaggerated to say that I’m all the way through except for the epilogue, it’s not by much.

A lot of progress over the past week, and I mean a lot. I think I may pause, go back, and start to do some of the biggish revision before I touch the epilogue. That’s mostly because having the epilogue in front of me is motivating.

I’m still aiming to get the full thing to early readers pretty soon, but I’m also contemplating chopping it up right now and sending the much, much more polished Part I out maybe as early as this week, long before I’ve finished revision and polishing of Part II …

… or, and this is not set in stone, but perhaps also Part III.

Because I’m now seriously considering cutting the thing up into three books. The only downside, really, is having to think of yet another subtitle, ugh, subtitles, titles, so much trouble! Also, oh, that reminds me, also I would have to write three books’ worth of back cover copy. And, of course, get another cover. Plus a boxed set cover for Silver Circle I, II, III, in case I decide to do a set like that, which seems fairly likely.

But still, I am seriously considering this option.

A) Does this push back release dates?

Probably not. The fundamental determinant for the release dates is going to be feedback from early readers, which will show me how much revision I have to do. That is largely unaffected by how many pieces the final story gets cut into. However —

B) If I cut Silver Circle into three pieces, that means I’m pretty likely to stretch out the release over at least two or possibly three months.

I realize readers do not like this. However, stretching out the release dates is useful because it gives me much more time to do final revisions, polishing, and proofing for Parts II and especially III. I can very easily imagine setting release dates like Oct 2, Nov 2, Dec 2 for the sole purpose of giving myself more time to tweak and proofread. You all know that I ask multiple people to proofread, right? I also read each book at least three times in different formats to tweak sentences and proofread, and this just takes a certain unavoidable amount of time, and I can’t make it take less time.

Those would, however, be Amazon release dates. I’m more likely to compress release dates at my Patreon, partly because people who get it there have been super helpful in catching the last handful of typos. What was it for Rihasi, like at least a dozen? I don’t remember, but it seemed like a lot. I could see dropping them there at two-week intervals. But it will depend on practical considerations and how long revision takes for the second half of the story.

It’s also possible that I will just decide to set Amazon release dates of, say, Nov 2, 3, and 4. Or possibly Dec 2, 3, and 4, whichever, given how revision looks. With, of course, release at my Patreon three or four weeks before that.

C) I remain committed to getting the whole thing out this year.

That’s largely because I really, REALLY want to bring out Tano’s next book in January of 2025.

My royalties are always crappy in January. I’m not sure what will happen if I release a new book January second, because running a sale in January/February definitely does not produce nearly as good results as running a sale in July, and I mean there’s no comparison. But if anything will move the needle in January, releasing Tano’s next novel will, so that’s worth a try. Then probably Tano’s third novel later that spring, like April or something. (I’m thinking too far ahead. Back to Silver Circle.)

D) Okay, so how long IS Silver Circle as of this minute?

It’s 350,000 words. And that will go down when I start cutting the second half, but I’m betting it will also go up as I bring out certain elements, mostly relationship elements, more strongly. And of course when I finally write the epilogue.

I had no idea it would go this long. I was thinking: Pick a reasonable number of words. Add 40%. That will be in line with normal book expansion. Well, not this time. This time it’s more like pick a reasonable number of words and double that and then add 40%.

On the other hand, taking nearly seven months to write THREE books seems fine, compared to taking that long to write one. Or even two. So the third reason to cut it into three parts is to enhance just plain authorial satisfaction with the year.

Meanwhile, we had nice weather for all this past weekend, which made the dogs happy because we got to go to the park.

From front to back, Haydee, Joy, Naamah and Conner, all settling in for a nap after getting back from the park

The grass was wet, that’s why Joy’s legs are so dark. Yes, she now is getting my spot on the couch wet, and yes, this is why I change couch overs frequently.

Also, this cute moment from Magdalene.

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Powerful but false: The Crane Husband

Earlier posts on this topic:

What creates power in fiction.

Powerful novels: Night Watch

Powerful novels: From All False Doctrine

***

I read The Crane Husband by Kelly Barnhill late last year.

I had two primary reactions to this book, one immediately and one more toward the end of the story.

The early reaction, to which the lovely cover contributed, was: Wow, this is beautifully written.

The late reaction, as I saw how the story worked itself out, was: Wow, this is awful.

Here’s the post I put up at the time. I’ll pull part of that out below, but first, here are the boldfaced quotes above the description at Amazon:

“If I had to nominate a worthy successor to Angela Carter, I would nominate Kelly Barnhill. “—Laura Ruby, two-time National Book Award finalist and author of Bone Gap

“A slim little novella that packs a narrative punch more intense than that of many books ten times its length.”—NPR

Award-winning author Kelly Barnhill brings her singular talents to The Crane Husband, a raw, powerful story of love, sacrifice, and family.

I don’t know anything about Angela Carter. I admire Laura Ruby — I’ve only read two books of hers and I admire them both. One was Bone Gap and the other was Thirteen Doorways. Ruby is a heck of a writer. I think both those books are powerful and both are also good and both capture something true. I would be more inclined to pick up a book because Laura Ruby put a comment like this on the cover — or I would have been, before reading The Crane Husband.

The NPR comment is correct: The Crane Husband does pack a punch. That’s because of the beautiful writing. It is intense. Of course intensity and quality have nothing to do with length, so not sure about the rest of that comment. I think NPR’s reviewer was saying This is a powerful book. I think they’re right. It is powerful.

That exact term, powerful, is then used in the third bolded line: a raw, powerful story of love, sacrifice, and family. Yes, that’s quite true. What that line doesn’t say is: The Crane Husband is about love that is self-destructive and helpless. It doesn’t say: The Crane Husband is about sacrifice that is worthless and saves nothing. It doesn’t say: The Crane Husband is about the family as something that can’t be saved from hidden or overt evil, and also isn’t worthy of being saved.

Here’s the description:

A fifteen-year-old teenager is the backbone of her small Midwestern family, budgeting the household finances and raising her younger brother while her mom, a talented artist, weaves beautiful tapestries. For six years, it’s been just the three of them—her mom has brought home guests at times, but none have ever stayed. Yet when her mom brings home a six-foot tall crane with a menacing air, the girl is powerless to prevent her mom letting the intruder into her heart, and her children’s lives. Utterly enchanted and numb to his sharp edges, her mom abandons the world around her to weave the masterpiece the crane demands.

In this stunning contemporary retelling of “The Crane Wife” by the Newbery Medal-winning author of The Girl Who Drank the Moon, one fiercely pragmatic teen forced to grow up faster than was fair will do whatever it takes to protect her family—and change the story.

Bold is mine. Look at that. The girl is powerless. The crane is violent, abusive, threatening, and in the end deadly. The girl is powerless to protect her mother. The girl might “do whatever it takes,” but her efforts fail. She does not change the story. Her mother dies. Her family is permanently shattered. This is not necessary; if the girl had acted in exactly the same way, but earlier, she might have saved her mother. Her early paralysis means that she fails when she might have succeeded.

The girl is acting, at the end, primarily to save her younger brother. He doesn’t die, but he is lost in the foster care system, runs away from his foster family, and is never heard from again — an ending we see in a short epilogue that exists, apparently, to make it clear that the girl has indeed saved nothing. That epilogue shows a damaged girl turning inward, fully rejecting even the memory of the mother she failed to save, the mother who failed her children — it’s failure and rejection all the way around. The core message of this story is: No one can save anything, and there was never anything worth saving.

In my earlier comments, linked above, I said, in part:

This story presents a problem that cannot be overcome in time to save the family; love that is unbearable and broken; relationships that irretrievably shatter; a nameless protagonist who is highly competent and yet unable to save anything she loves; and all of this against a backdrop that showcases the implacable and impersonal destruction of personal history and the roots of families – but the long history of this family is also shown as implacable, impersonal, and destructive. …

Unlike with other stories, I don’t feel that the protagonist is ineffectual because the author lacks the skill to redesign the plot in order to make her effectual. As I’m sure the author has every bit of the skill she would need to do anything, I’m left to conclude that she deliberately chose to draw a world where it’s impossible to win, and worse, a world where winning wouldn’t get you anything worth having because the history of the family is based on abuse, and family bonds are seen primarily as bonds, particularly as bonds for women. The family is shown here as something to escape, in particular for mothers to escape, and if you actually have something worthwhile within the family, too bad, because here we see a situation where even the best family bonds are shown as inevitably and irretrievably shattered.

To sum that up even more briefly: the themes in this story reflect a thoroughly distorted world, a world in which determination does not pay off, where good people first strive ineffectually against evil in order to save relationships that cannot be saved, then realize nothing was worth saving and turn entirely inward. The end.

Or you could say: a world in which families are prisons, in which loveless men use women to produce children, generation after generation; in which mothers both reject their children and are rejected by them; in which families cannot be saved and are not worth saving. The end.

Because Kelly Barnhill is such a skilled writer at the sentence and paragraph level, because she is is skilled at the story level, these themes can’t be accidental. I mean, they don’t have to be conscious. But, whether she thought about this or not, this is the world Barnhill shows the reader. Because she’s a skilled writer, The Crane Husband reverberates with power. Because every theme in this story is both false and pernicious, I’m not too thrilled about that.

It’s not, by the way, that I don’t realize families can be destructive to the people held to them by relationships that are harmful. It’s that this is not usually the way families work and not the way families ought to work and not the way families ever do work if the people in the family have the least notion of how to be decent people. The presentation of the world in The Crane Husband is therefore a thoroughly distorted vision — but powerful.

Because thinking about this story is pretty unpleasant for me, I want to end this post by contrasting the above view of family very briefly with the view of family we see in From All False Doctrine, via a direct quote. This is Kit explaining a revelation about what a family should be and can be:

“But then I met the Peachams, and saw how they had created this home that was a place of such love — on purpose they had done that. Not that it was difficult or anything … you wouldn’t find it anything particularly out of the way, I daresay. They’re just a happy family. But I remember the first time I thought, I could do that. … [Watching the Peacham family] was like … seeing the inside of a car, how the engine works or something. … It was a revelation: they work at it. They try, they do the right things, most of the time, and the result is this beautiful place where love presides even over stupid arguments. And it flashed into my mind that I was probably capable of doing the same thing, that this could be one of the things I was for. You know how if you learn a language later in life, you might never pass for a native, but if you work at it, just because you have to make that extra effort, your grammar and your vocabulary and everything can be excellent … It’s like that.”

There you go. Barnhill, in The Crane Husband, holds up a view of family that makes you want to run screaming from the very idea. She tells you that if you try to build a family, you’re building a prison; that even relationships that seem positive will shatter and be lost. Degan’s view of family is aspirational. She holds up an example of family that makes you want to build stronger, better relationships and tells you that you can do that. They’re both powerful stories. That’s why power and truth aren’t the same thing.

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Poetry Thursday

Long ago, I was caught by an image in one of Adrienne Rich’s poems. I want to share some of her poems with you, but it’s tricky because they’re still under copyright. Therefore, today, I’m going to cheat by showing you a few lines of a poem and then providing a link. I really do hope you will click through and read the full poems. They are each short, and they are each intriguing and compelling.

Here’s the first stanza of a poem called “Song”. This is the poem that caught me when I was in high school or college. I think this might have been the only poem by Adrienne Rich in the literature book; if not, it was definitely the one I remembered for decades and thought of today.

I’m realizing that Adrienne Rich is one of the poets who can make me appreciate unrhymed verse. A lot of the time, unrhymed verse strikes me as just lazy — the poet not wanting to bother with rhyme, structure, or much of anything, really. I realize this may not be quite fair. But my point is, Rich’s poems don’t strike me that way at all. She’s using language beautifully. One of the things she’s using is repetition. Another, of course, is metaphor. Here are three short poems, one stanza of each plus a link.

“Song”

You’re wondering if I’m lonely:
OK then, yes, I’m lonely
as a plane rides lonely and level
on its radio beam, aiming
across the Rockies
for the blue-strung aisles
of an airfield on the ocean.

Click here to read the whole thing — it’s four stanzas — the last stanza is why I love this poem. Though this first stanza is pretty great too.

***

I went looking for other poems of Rich’s. Here’s one of the many I’ve never seen before.

“Storm Warnings”

The glass has been falling all the afternoon,
And knowing better than the instrument
What winds are walking overhead, what zone
Of grey unrest is moving across the land,
I leave the book upon a pillowed chair
And walk from window to closed window, watching
Boughs strain against the sky

Click here to read the whole thing — again, it’s just four stanzas.

***

One more. This poem is why I used the word “intriguing” to describe her work. Still unrhymed, but this is not exactly free verse, and by “not exactly,” I mean not at all. The structure of this poem is very neat and you will not be able to appreciate it unless you click through and read the whole thing.

“Final Notations“

it will not be simple, it will not be long
it will take little time, it will take all your thought
it will take all your heart, it will take all your breath
it will be short, it will not be simple

Click here to read the whole thing. Once more, just four stanzas. This is an amazing poem, though I’m not sure what it’s about. Life? Death? Love? God? All of the above? I’m glad I decided to spend an hour reading Adrienne Rich’s poetry and picking out a few for this post; otherwise I might never have happened across any of her poems other than the few I happened to remember from long-past classes.

Should you happen to be interested, here is a link to a collection of Adrienne Rich’s poetry.

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Choosing an editor

Here’s a post at Writer Unboxed: Choosing an Editor

I’m uncomfortable with suggesting that aspiring authors pay a professional editor because, judging from people who link to their newly published books on Quora and ask how to improve sales, a lot of early efforts are really terrible. Paying a professional editor to critique a really terrible book would be a waste of the author’s money and actually pretty much a waste of the editor’s time as well.

I’m kind of reluctant to point at specific books, but I don’t want to say “really terrible” and leave that judgment just sitting there either. I want to make it clear what I mean by that.

So … look. Here is the description copied from a book’s product page at Amazon. This is a self-published book, as I think will be clear. This illustrates what I’m thinking of because this is a real book (300 pages) published by a actual aspiring (if young) author. It’s not 30 pages long or AI generated or anything. It’s an actual book. Here’s the description:

Ash gray smoke fills the air with loud explosions of bombs everywhere, and lets just say it’s not what Aleksander DePru has imagined his sixteen year old life to be like. Aside from the world in a war, Alek has still been haunted by the way his father has died and left him to lead the army for America.
With everything at stake, Alek and his best friend and co-commander Cyra Angelique, are sent on a doomed mission by the Emperor to form an alliance for America and capture a girl back.
As they fly to another planet, questions and fate loom in their heads. But things get more interesting when the Russians enter the picture, and a dangerous game of acting lies in their futures.
But worse, a plot from the past will threaten everything and so Alek must do everything in his power to guarantee his family will be safe and so will be his life.
When secrets unravel, Alek and Cyra have to create a new plan. A plan that considers the past, will create a good future, and will question their loyalty, duty, and responsibility to the throne.
Will this mission succeed? Or will it end like how it’s destined to end; in failure? With choices every step of the way, taking one false step will lead Alek and his team to a place of no return.

What would a professional editor do with a book written by this author? Serve as a writing teacher to teach basic punctuation? Is that what an editor, generally speaking, wants to do? Guide the author through every sentence, teaching the author how to keep track of pronouns? Ask how it is possible that a sixteen-year-old is leading an army and encourage the author to rethink the plot?

Would you, or anyone, suggest that this young author should spend thousands of dollars to have a professional editor go over this book with her?

I wouldn’t. I would strongly, strongly suggest (and in fact did suggest) that this author take the time to learn basic grammar and punctuation on her own, perhaps by working with an English teacher at her school, for free, to correct every single sentence in this book, with the teacher scaffolding until the author is able to correct the rest of the sentences on her own. Then I would suggest that the author set this book aside and write something else. I suspect the above book is unsalvageable. I strongly suspect that an editor willing to take this author’s money would be acting very nearly like a scammer, or at best as very an expensive writing tutor.

There are lots and lots of authors like the above. I really am curious: what would you say to this person if she wanted to hire you to edit this book? Either as a developmental editor or a line editor or both? Wouldn’t you turn them down? Or at least suggest that what they need is an English tutor before they even think of hiring an editor?

I think it makes MUCH more sense to suggest to aspiring authors that they get with a critique partner or something like that and see how that goes, and that they hire an editor ONLY if they decide, for real, that their book is pretty good — publishable as it stands, in fact. Beta readers and editors are helpful at THAT point, not before.

So, back to the linked post. What does this person at Writer Unboxed say?

In Kathryn Craft’s WU post for May 9 (“To Diagnose or to Characterize?”), David Corbett makes the following comment:

“Having been in reading/writing groups early in my career, and having counseled students who’ve received curious feedback from other group members, I’ve come to realize that you have to be able to discern valid criticism from that which is something other than valid.” 

These words registered with me. In part because of problems I met up with in a writers’ group, I have become a strong advocate for writers submitting their work to professional editors. It costs money, but in my view it’s money well spent. This assumes the writer takes pains to learn all she can before choosing an editor. But an editor and writer form a two-member writers’ group, so knowing how to “discern valid criticism” is no less important.

And you see that this does say the author had better have “taken pains to learn all she can,” which basically suggests the same thing I just said, that if the author isn’t ready to work with an editor, they really shouldn’t.

But this post does make a good point, because I honestly don’t think a writer’s group is the same thing as a critique partner at all, far less the same thing as an English tutor. I, as a dyed-in-the-wool hermit, do not join groups, basically, ever. (Well, hardly ever.) I’ve never been a member of a writer’s group, I’ve never even contemplated joining a writer’s group, but I have heard about writer’s groups, and I bet you have too.

The 4 Hidden Dangers of Writing Groups

Writer Groups – More Harm Than Good?

Ten signs your writing group is bad for you

And so forth and so on. The author of the linked post seems to have come down on the side of “writer’s groups are bad for writers,” and I think this is highly justifiable, although actually I do know of at least one writer’s group that appears to be beneficial and supportive. But authors certainly need to be somewhat cautious with writer’s groups and also probably ready to step away. And very definitely ready to ignore criticism that does not suit their work.

The rest of the linked post is about choosing an editor once you’ve decided to work with an editor, and yes, that seems important. It’s an eight-point post.

#1 — Check the editor’s own writing. Points #3 and #4 are basically the same as #1.

#2 — Ask for a sample edit. That sounds crucial to me.

#5 — Be sure you’re clear on the differences between copy editing, line editing, and developmental editing. This goes with #6, which is basically understand what you’re paying for.

#7 — Ask previous clients for their opinion. That seems like it might be a lot of trouble, but I guess it’s not a bad idea.

#8 — Remember that you are the final arbiter.  This means, basically, does the editor seem sympatico?

This all sounds reasonable to me. I would also suggest:

#9 — Find an editor who is a genuine fan of your genre, preferably of your subgenre

and

#10 — Find an editor who prefers the “tone” you prefer; eg, on a spectrum of grimdark to positive, where do they land? Same place as your book, more or less? Because it’s had to believe an editor can do their best work if they loath your book.

This is reminding me of beta reading a book for another author earlier this year and saying to myself (and eventually to her) that the book featured stunningly beautiful description which I just loved, but that I feared I might not be the best reader if the protagonist is impulsive, none too bright, unable to articulate her principles because she doesn’t really have any, and also by the way I absolutely can’t stand betrayal as an important plot element.

What I wanted this author to do was rewrite the book entirely. I did not, of course, say that. What I said was, “Would it be possible to justify this thing here a little better?” and “If this protagonist thinks she follows this guiding principle, should she perhaps feel worse about it after she doesn’t?” and so on. But I also thought: how could we better make sure that a beta reader is well suited to a book?

I don’t know that it’s possible, because it’s not practical to list all the things you hate in a book vs all the things you admire. But how about this: list ten keywords that make you likely to pick up a book and read the first page, and ten keywords that make you unlikely to do so. Five, at least.

For me: the chances I’ll look at the first page go way up if the description contains the words: friendship, trust, integrity, loyalty, lyrical.

The chances I’ll look at the first page go down a fair bit if the description contains the words: impulsive, angst, doomed, obsessive.

The changes I’ll look at the first page go way, way down if the description contains the words: betrayal, treacherous, tortured romance, ruined, humiliated.

There you go. Now you know you shouldn’t ask me to beta read if your book can be accurately summarized this way: “Beautifully told with lyrical prose, a lovely but impulsive and dimwitted protagonist falls into an obsessive love affair, but her heart is ripped out when she discovers her lover is utterly treacherous and in fact is actually and irredeemably evil. Can she save any vestige of the love she thought she had? No, but maybe she can settle for an actual decent person once she she has no choice because despite everything she can do to save him, her evil lover is finally, after doing quite a bit of harm, killed.”

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Update: ALMOST THERE, plus cute pictures

So, good weekend overall! With some annoyances embedded in it, sure, but I’m making real progress, which is satisfying, although it doesn’t give me a lot to talk about.

Let me see, so last time I said there were now 56 chapters, right? Not counting the epilogue. Well, now there are 57, but this doesn’t mean I’m changing my mind about anything important; it just means that I have sliced the penultimate chapter up. And why, you may ask, have I done that?

Well, I kept hitting some moment and chortling to myself because if I switched pov right there, that would produce a heck of a cliffhanger. But only very briefly! Because the next chapter picks up the action in a way that resolves that cliffhanger. But it sure makes for a series of chapters where you really can’t stop. Which should be fine; this is the climactic series of chapters, so I imagine everyone is going to understand that the pace will be fast through there, with lots of perhaps somewhat terrifying moments.

So the penultimate chapter isn’t going to be a braided chapter after all, but a series of shorter single-viewpoint chapters. Oddly, I now think the ultimate chapter will be braided, but not in a way I had anticipated.

ANYWAY, I am now well into the climax, so yes, progress. I’m at 320,000 words, more or less, but I seriously am getting near the end, truly. Plus, I expect to do some trimming. I will somewhat surprised if the final draft, the one I send to early readers, is much over 300,000 words. (I’m gazing at the previous sentence, thinking in some amazement that somehow I have begun thinking of 300,000 words as “not all that long, really.”

By this time next week, maybe I’ll be posting an update that does NOT include the word “almost” — if all goes well!

Meanwhile! How about some cute pictures to finish off this short post?

Conner and Haydee (uncle and niece) in a quiet moment

Morgan and Joy, sharing an equally quiet moment.

Magdalene and Maximilian, sharing, yes, a peaceful moment

A visitor, untroubled by someone standing on a deck twenty feet away, taking pictures.

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Powerful Novels: From All False Doctrine by Alice Degan

Earlier posts on this topic: What creates power in fiction.

Powerful novels: Night Watch

Okay, so I read From All False Doctrine by Alice Degan in 2020, it was one of my two favorite books for that year, and here is the post where I commented about this book. I said, among other things:

At times it’s useful to do comparisons, right? So, sure, let me try to do that. From All False Doctrine is like … it’s kind of like … okay, it’s sort of like a cross between a Wodehouse novel and In This House of Brede by Rumer Godden. But with demonology.

… If you wanted to pull out its defining characteristics, you might say it’s a story about personal growth wrapped in a comedy of manners, with romance. Oh, and demonology.

I read this book slowly — very slowly — a chapter or two per day. This is sometimes, not always, the way I read a particularly powerful novel. This is because sometimes power goes with (a) beauty of the prose, and (b) density of the prose. I don’t think any of these are the same thing — I mean power, beauty, and density. I don’t think they’re even related, necessarily. Let me see. All right:

Power is where you read a sentence or paragraph or passage and then you read it again because you are so struct by its compelling expression of truth. Or possibly by its compelling expression of falsity.

Beauty is where you read a sentence or paragraph or passage and then you read it again because it’s just lovely, like reading poetry.

Density is where you read a sentence or paragraph or passage and then you read it again because you’re trying to wrap your mind around it. What does this even mean? you ask yourself. Something that might be big, or might be true, but there’s a lot there and you need to re-read it multiple times just to try to understand what it’s about.

Well, the beginning of From All False Doctrine isn’t powerful or beautiful except maybe in retrospect, when you can really see what the author is setting up here, but right from the start, it’s just masterful in terms of crafting the scene. It’s a fabulous example of starting a story quietly, in a way that works. It’s also an example of starting a story with dialogue, in a way that works. I’ve probably pointed to the beginning of this novel before for those reasons because pulling off this kind of opening is impressive. Here’s the first page or so:

“It isn’t a question of actually believing the teaching,” said Elsa, drilling two neat holes in the sand with the heels of her shoes. “It’s whether or not they believe in the authenticity of the manuscript, that’s all.”

“Gosh, you had better hope that’s all,” said Harriet cheerfully. “It would be so tedious for you, wouldn’t it, to have your research interrupted every so often by cultists wanting to worship the thing you were studying? In my department, now, we don’t have such problems.”

“Good heavens, Harriet — you study money! All sorts of people worship that.”

“Oh, true. Have a grape while I consider a suitable riposte.” Harriet proffered the tin of green grapes that had been nestled on the blanket beside her.

They were seated in the shade of a large blue sun-umbrella — Harriet’s property, like the blanket and the grapes and the vacuum flask of iced tea and the basket that it had all been packed in. They had been there since noon; they had moved the umbrella several times to adjust their pool of shade, and the tea was nearly finished. The day had become blazingly hot, the sky arcing blue-white out over the lake, the water flashing in the sun.

It’s remarkable that Degan can open a novel with a nice, peaceful chat on a beach and have this hook the reader. Elsa and Harriet meet Kit and Peachy and have a nice chat, and that’s it, that’s what happens. This is what I was thinking of when I said this story is like a cross between Wodehouse and whoever. This initial scene is brilliantly written, nothing happens, it’s fun to read, everything is set up, everything is foreshadowed and I’m still in awe of this opening, which you should really come back to and re-read after you’ve read the whole book because you can’t appreciate the foreshadowing and setup unless you know exactly where the story is going. Regardless, this is a masterfully crafted opening. No doubt it wouldn’t hook all readers everywhere, but it worked beautifully to hook me. One reason I read this novel so slowly was to enjoy the writing. The other reason was that I kept wanting to take my time thinking about things that had just happened in the story and where I thought it might be going.

So yes, I think the prose here is top notch and that is important to the power of this novel. The prose isn’t what I would call exceptionally lovely, though there are some lovely passages here and there. Then he heard a sound: a voice, or an instrument, or a rush of wind and water and beating wings, wordless, or thundering out in verse upon verse of poetry, or one great word, its syllables not yet finished. That’s lovely. But mostly the prose is witty and precise, like Wodehouse, rather than beautiful.

The prose is not just witty and precise, though; it’s also filled with humor and good will. That, to me, is the attitude that comes through just about every word in this novel. The second chapter, when Kit happens to bump into Harriet at that home for delinquent boys, is filled with humor as well as wit — I would say that humor is warmer and without bitterness or scorn, while wit can definitely be cold, bitter, and/or scornful; that’s the difference I have in mind. And that chapter is filled with good will as well as humor — for the boys, for Harriet, for Peachy, whose personal weaknesses are becoming rather apparent by the end of this chapter, but still, it’s impossible to think too badly of him because we’re seeing him through Kit’s eyes.

The power in this novel comes from humor, good will, and truth. The humor and good will are part of the truth. This attitude comes from Kit, but it’s more than that; when Kit takes this posture toward people, this is also the author saying, This is a good way to meet people. This is a good way to meet the world. The world is worth meeting his way: with a kind and charitable attitude.

Here’s something true that I’d like to point out because it’s about ordinary life made into something a little more meaningful:

“I learned to bake a few things after the War, as a kind of therapy. Readjusting to civilian life and all that.” Kit flipped a couple of pieces of bacon. “Actually, it was to prove that I believed in the goodness of Creation. I didn’t have any talents — I mean I can’t paint or write poetry or anything, and I’m not good with my hands — but I wanted to do something, make something material. Something good. So … it seemed like a nice thing to do.”

And this is a great moment, a moment that illustrates a great way to view normal life, particularly the humble things in normal life, with humor and good will and a belief that they matter and that what you do matters, even what you do in small things. This isn’t just Kit speaking to Elsa. It’s part of his character to say this and part of her character to hear him; but it’s also the author speaking to the reader.

Mary Catelli said in a recent comment: The next real literary “rebels” in this country might well emerge as some weird bunch of anti-rebels … who treat plain old untrendy human troubles and emotions in U.S. life with reverence and conviction. Who eschew self-consciousness and hip fatigue. These anti-rebels would be outdated, of course, before they even started. … The new rebels might be artists willing to risk the yawn, the rolled eyes, the cool smile, the nudged ribs, the parody of gifted ironists, the “Oh how banal.”

I answered, I feel that when someone says, “Oh, how banal,” that’s diagnostic of a terrible modern attitude that combines an air of superiority with a serious lack of anything to feel superior about. I’m thinking very specifically of Herman Hesse here. This is the precise view of normal life as banal and normal people as contemptible that is the single most objectionable attitude we all have to endure in this era. It’s not just Hesse, obviously; this attitude is quite casually presented at admirable, as we see in the opening of the recent bestselling YA novel Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. Here’s the second paragraph of the book:

On a late December afternoon, in the waning twentieth century, Sam exited a subway car and found the artery to the escalator clogged by an inert mass of people, who were gaping at a station advertisement. Sam was late. He had a meeting with his academic advisor that he had been postponing for over a month, but that everyone agreed absolutely needed to happen before winter break. Sam didn’t care for crowds — being in them, or whatever foolishness they tended to enjoy en masse. But this crowd would not be avoided. He would have to force his way through it if he were to be delivered to the aboveground world. … as much as possible, he weaved through the crowd ... He found himself uttering a series of “excuse mes” that he did not mean. A truly magnificent thing about the way the brain was coded, Sam thought, was that it could say “Excuse me,” while meaning “Screw you.” … People — the ordinary, the decent and basically honest — couldn’t get through the day without that one indispensable bit of programming that allowed you to say one thing and mean, feel, or even do, another.

And when I posted about this book, I specifically said, It’s well written, but this attitude of superiority is repellant. The crowd of normal people, ugh, these ordinary, decent, basically honest people, obviously Sam is very much superior to them, says the author, and the reader generally goes right along, I suppose, as this book is a bestseller.

Well, From All False Doctrine is the complete antithesis to that attitude of self-conscious superiority and contempt. It could not be a more total antithesis if the author had said to herself, By gum, I can’t stand this modern attitude of amused, condescending, superior contempt and I’m going to drive a stake right through the heart of that attitude. If Degan said that to herself, she sure pulled it off. But I don’t think that’s likely, of course, because if someone sits down to deliver a message, it’s hard to bury the message so completely that you write an actual story rather than a sermon loosely disguised as a story. I think the warmth, humor, and goodwill comes through so clearly because it’s genuine. I don’t think the author set out to create that feeling, it’s just something that poured into the story because of her conviction that this is the right, true attitude with which people ought to meet life.

Perhaps I should mention here that I’ve never met Alice Degan, haven’t ever corresponded with her, and so all this is just what I’m taking out of the actual story she presented to the world. On the other hand, it wouldn’t be there if she hadn’t put it there.

The actual heart of From All False Doctrine is Elsa’s internal movement from atheism to faith. That’s what the story is actually about. It’s about making that journey in the real world, because you’ve begun to see the real world differently. We see this when Elsa thinks, There had been nothing supernatural going on. Either that … either that, or what was supernatural was so large, so intricate and leisurely in its unfolding, that its details looked unremarkable from close to. She went in to polish candlesticks with the Altar Guild in a world that had not changed after all, that was just, illogically, as beautiful as it had always been.

And the author is saying, The world is, perhaps illogically, beautiful, and you should notice this because it is important. Which is true, so this is one of the true things this book is about and one of the reasons it resonated for me. When a story is about true things, you don’t pull the truth out analytically; you feel it. It resonates. But sentences like this still stop you — at least, they stop me.

Or again, later, when Kit thinks, Virtue wasn’t a thing that you carried around carefully, trying to keep it in one piece; it was a process, it was little things that you had to do every waking moment, and that he very frequently did not do, had not done; it was work.

This is a thought about something true; and Kit is thinking this in reaction to being told things that aren’t true, so this is important. This is what a great writer can do — re-state something true in a way that the reader hasn’t seen before, so it stands out from the rest of the story. So that it stands out, reverberates, and becomes a permanent addition to the way the reader thinks about the concept.

Permanently changing the way the reader things about something, that really is powerful. The author can’t do this defensively. They have to believe something and put it into the story with conviction. From All False Doctrine is filled with conviction. Sure, I’d have quibbles about some details, but nevertheless, it’s a story I perceive as powerful, and powerful in a good way because it’s also expressing things that are true.

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