April Davila's Blog, page 20

A Thanksgiving Poem: The Blow

As has become a Thanksgiving tradition on this blog, I’d like to share a poem. This one is called The Blow, by Pablo Neruda.

The Blow

Ink that enchants me,

drop after drop,

guarding the path

of my reason and unreason

like the hardly visible

scar on a wound that shows while the body sleeps

on in the discourse of its destructions.

Better

if the whole of your essence erupted

in a drop, to

vent itself on a page, staining it now

with a single green star;

better, perhaps, if that blot

gathered

my whole scribbling lifetime

without glosses or alphabets:

a single dark blow

without words.

I love the line breaks on this one.

Read it once through without pausing at the line breaks (only the punctuation). Then read it again, pausing at the line breaks. Did you get totally different imagery?

Poetry is cool.

Happy Thanksgiving.

A Very Important Meeting

I know things are crazy right now. Even if you don’t live in the States, you’ve probably heard – we had an election yesterday. It’s kind of big deal.

But I’m not going to talk about politics. I voted. I did my part. Hopefully you did too. And from here on out the wheels of democracy will turn without out help.

I implore you: turn off the news, stop watching the coverage, and schedule a meeting with your writing instead. Let the great world spin on around you and make time for your creative work.

Making Time to Write

A few months ago, I started hosting a weekly online group wherein we meditate for a few minutes to quiet our minds, and then write. I got some great feedback. We all agreed it was good for us personally as well as creatively. The only downside seemed to be that the time I chose didn’t work for a lot of people.

So I joined forces with another mindful writer friend (who happened to be hosting her own mindful writers group) to expand our calendar.

We built ourselves a new website and set up scheduling software that automatically sends reminders. We’re calling it A Very Important Meeting and we’re offering 13 sessions a week (with aspirations to add a lot more in the coming months).

A Very Important Meeting

I love writing with these groups. And the craziest thing is that they’re no less compelling for being online. That was a surprise to me. And being online has allowed us to welcome writers from San Diego to New York, Australia to the Netherlands. It’s very cool.

If you’re a writer (and I assume you are, because you’re reading my blog), check it out: https://www.averyimportantmeeting.com/

Let the politicians ramble on with their vitriol. We’ll be writing.

Don’t Waste Your Feedback Reads

One of my biggest pet peeves in writing workshops is offering feedback on a story to a fellow student and hearing the phrase “yeah, I kind of knew that.”

Every time I have this interaction (and I feel like it has happened at least once in every workshop I’ve been a part of), one of the following is true:

The writer was trying something new or different that they weren’t confident with yet.The writer was too lazy to fix the flaw before giving it to the group for feedback.The writer didn’t think anyone else would notice the flaw. The writer was okay with their flawed writing and figured the story was good enough.

To which I respond:

Respect. You get a pass. And good on ‘ya for trying something new. If you’re too lazy to fix something you know isn’t right, don’t ask me for feedback, you’re wasting my time.Your arrogance is wasting my time.You’re satisfied with mediocre storytelling, in which case you’re wasting my time.



Life is Too Short

There’s a theme here. Life is too short to waste time giving feedback to writers who saw it coming a mile away.

What’s more, as a writer, honest feedback is a precious thing. You only get so many feedback reads (depending on the patience of your readers). Don’t waste your reads by asking someone to give feedback on something that isn’t as good as you can possibly make it.

The best possible scenario when receiving feedback is that we’re surprised by every note. The most effective set of notes is the one that pushes us to consider things we hadn’t before.

Easier Said Than Done

Right?

Because we’ve all had that moment of realizing we kind of knew something wasn’t right. I’ve spent the last decade setting my own bar as high as possible in order to get the most out of any feedback that comes my way, and it still happens.

In fact, that’s what inspired this blog post. I got a set of notes from my agent yesterday. He loved the draft, which is always exciting, and had five main story notes for me.

Four of the five were surprises. They were really good questions about the story that opened up avenues I hadn’t considered. Awesome. But that last one – when I read that note I realized I’d already had the same thought.

The Note-I-Already-Knew

The note-I-already-knew was in regards to the framing chapters of my story. I added these short, in-between chapters last, and so they were the freshest writing in the manuscript. Fresh writing is rarely good writing. At least, not for me.

Words need to marinated. Phrases need to settle in. This is one of the reasons I try to put as much time between rewrites as I can. There’s something magical about time that just makes writing better.

But I was excited about the draft and anxious to get my agent’s feedback, so I sent it anyway. I was kind of being lazy (in not polishing up those pages), but mostly I didn’t want to spend a ton of time on the framing chapters until I got some feedback that they were working. I was trying something new. (See bullet point #1.)

Onward

Thankfully, it seems the framing chapters are working, but the pages themselves need a little more substance. I’m not surprised by that, but I am encouraged, which I guess is also a good outcome.

Pushing ourselves to do as much of the work as we can BEFORE we get a feedback read is one of the ways we become better writers. Writing is hard, particularly if you wan to do it well.

So dig in, fight the good fight, and have faith that every time you catch a misstep in your writing before someone else does, your authorial muscles are getting stronger.

Write on.

Letting A Draft Rest

I finished a draft of my new manuscript last week. This is Novel 2 (titles are hard, I’m not ready to commit). If you follow along, you know that I like to print out my drafts and put them in a drawer for a while. Letting a draft rest is the single most important sign that I’m taking my work seriously.

That may sound a little backwards. I’m taking my work seriously by not working on it? Yes. I find I need at least a month away from a piece to be able to see it with any real perspective. And a fresh perspective is super important when it comes to editing.

Time Away

While I’m spending time away, I give my beta readers a copy to dive into. The plan that has worked for me in the past is to schedule a lunch date with them (to get their thoughts on the work) about a week before I plan to get back to it.

Usually I love this period of time of stepping away. I spend a little more time with the kids. I tackle home projects that I put off while I was writing. I start playing with ideas for new stories. But this time is different. I’m super anxious.

A Strange Year

Maybe that shouldn’t be surprising. Everything is different in 2020. For one, I’m not hurting for time with my kids. We spend ALL DAY together, every day. Second, all those home projects? Yeah, they all got done a while ago. We’ve cleaned the garage, power washed the side yard where the dogs pee, organized the pantry. All of it.

The biggest difference for me this time around is that I sent the draft to my agents. (I have two agents who work as a team, one on the east coast, one on the west. Sometimes I think of them as one person and just say “my agent” but they are, in fact, two distinct people).

They’ve been asking to see it, but I wasn’t going to send them anything until I felt like the plot was solidly in place. This draft they got was draft three. It still needs a serious polish, but I’m really happy with the story.

Or at least I thought I was.

Second Guesses

A day after sending it to them I started questioning myself. Should I have done another pass? Is it any good? What if they hate it? How long will it take to hear back? Is it a bad sign if they take a while, or are they compiling a thoughtful set of notes?

I’ve never done this before. And every agent is different, so there’s little to be gained by googling. Believe me. I tried. What I do know is that there’s no deadline on this, so anything they have on their desk that has a deadline is going to get their attention first. I need to be patient.

Patience is not an arena in which I excel.

Inigo Montoya The Princess Bride GIF from Inigomontoya GIFs

The best solution is probably just to keep working on Novel 3. I get anxious when I’m not working. I don’t know why, but writing settles me. Maybe because it’s such a habit at this point. Or maybe it’s my way of creating a little sense in this world that in increasingly unspooling.

Whatever the reason I know it’s true: I just have to keep writing.

It is a blessing and a curse.

My More Authentic Self

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how to be more authentic in my life. Like a little baby turtle sticking my head out into the world, wondering if there’s a place for a more authentic me in it.

The Idea

My intention to live more authentically formed as a little zygote of an idea a few years ago when I realized that I desperately wanted attention and I wanted it in a quantifiable form. That’s embarrassing to admit, even now, but it’s true.

It manifested most noticeably in my writing. I was obsessed with how many hits my blog posts got, how many short stories I published, how many twitter followers I could accumulate. And then when my book came out I latched onto book sales, checking my Amazon Author page every Friday morning to see how many units I’d sold and in what regions of the country.

There was a disassociation between what I was doing and why. I had thought I was writing because I loved writing, but in reality I was writing to get attention.

An Unquenchable Thirst

But knowing that I wanted attention didn’t do anything to quell the need I felt. I had this sense that there was a certain number, some qualifiable unit of something that would make me feel like I had accomplished something. And then I could let go.

But every time I reached what I thought would be a threshold of satisfaction (x number of newsletter subscribers, y number of books sold), the marker would move. Suddenly that didn’t seem like enough.

I felt a deep emotional exhaustion. I was exerting all my energy on these things that were writing adjacent, but not really my writing. I argued in my head that they were important for building an audience, and to a certain extent that was true, but I was giving them far more weight than I needed to.

Taking Stock

I started to think about what it would mean to be more authentic. I actually do enjoy blogging. It’s a space to ruminate on things I’ve learned about the craft and business of writing. And sharing things (like how I crafted my query letter, or why I did an audio recording of myself reading my draft) feels like a way of supporting other writers, which is important to me.

But this past spring I was posting to my blog 4 times a week and tweeting dozens of times a day. I spent SO much time writing blog posts about Scrivener, and grammar tips, and California trivia. Why? Because the posts I write about Scrivener and grammar and trivia get the most traffic. Yes, they are helpful, and yes, I actually do think Scrivener is the shit (I am genuinely a big fan), but I didn’t write all those posts because I loved writing them. I was trying to drive traffic, to get attention.

And there’s nothing inherently wrong with that. But I had to stop and think about what it was that I really wanted. What I realized was that I believed that attention -> income -> more time to write.

Time To Write

Ignore for a moment the HUGE assumption that attention -> income. I could write a whole other blog post on the perpetuation of that myth.

What I really wanted was more time to write. And you you know what? The less time I spend doing all of this other shit, the more time I have to write.

So I’ve made some adjustments.

I stopped spending so much time on social media. I quit Facebook and it has been glorious (seriously, if you’re still on Facebook, you should quit). I stopped writing posts about Scrivener and all that other crap. I stopped writing posts with numbers in the title (like this one: 10 Ways to Support Your Writing Career, Even When You’re Not Writing) even though they get more hits. I’m blogging a lot less.

In fact, I’m only writing two posts a month now. The slower pace gives me the time to dive deeper, write more authentically about what I’m thinking and feeling. It’s writing I really enjoy.

So Far So Good

The craziest part? For all the things I’ve stopped doing, my numbers actually haven’t changed at all. Yes, I checked. I mean, I managed to go weeks without checking, but out of curiosity (sparked by writing this post), I looked at my blog traffic, and it hasn’t dropped at all. Weird…

I’d like to think that’s because I’ve traded quantity for quality. I’m not switching to full hermit mode (yet). I still live in Los Angeles. I am still on Twitter, but I’m trying to be myself and drop the writing guru voice. I never wanted to be anyone’s guru.

I am still blogging (obviously). But I’m trying to do it in a way that feels true to who I really want to be. I’m being careful to spend the majority of my time writing fiction, working on the things that really matter to me.

Most importantly, I’ve stopped waiting for someone to tell me that there’s a place for me in this world. I’m here. I didn’t need anyone’s permission. And I can be whoever I want to be.

And if you’re still reading after all that, maybe you’re having a similar shift in your writing life. Maybe you too are trying to nurture that little voice inside that knows what you really want to be working on. And maybe, like me, you still have trouble letting go of doing other things you think will please the strangers on Twitter, to get you that little hit of approval.

If so, drop a note in the comments. We should probably be friends.

The First Chapter: Get To The Good Stuff

Back in March, I posted this photo to Instagram showing off the printed pages of the second draft of my second novel. This was right after my book tour was canceled, just a week or so into homeschooling the kids.

Back then I found I actually had more time than usual to write because I wasn’t rushing around, shuttling kids to soccer games and jujitsu practice. I was letting the kids watch movie after movie because, you know, it was temporary, they’d be back at school soon. I would work on some edits through April and May and have a draft by June. No problem…

The Best Laid Plans

Here we are, well into September and I’m finally holding a printout of my third draft. It is reassuringly substantial despite having taken so much longer than expected. I took the long weekend to read it through and realized that, even though it’s coming together really well, there are still a few things I need to change.

The most important item on my list is the first chapter. I was feeling a little lukewarm about it as I settled in with the pages and I thought maybe it was because I’m too familiar with it, but then I got to chapter two and the story started thrumming. So I have to admit that chapter one just isn’t where it needs to be yet.

Don’t Hold Back

I’m big believer in getting the good stuff up front. You can’t expect a reader to hang in there until a story gets interesting. It has to be engaging from the very first page. It has to pose questions. It has to intrigue.

And it has to do all these things while also informing. Ideally, I want my readers to know within the first page:

where my story is setwhen my story is setwho my main characters are (ideally by name)the time of yearthe question that will be answered by the end of the book

On the flip side, I want to avoid:

any ambiguity on any fronttoo much backstorytoo many names

To do all this requires concise, specific writing.

And so I’m going to spend a little time rethinking my first chapter. What can I cut and save for later in the story? How can I get to the good stuff more quickly?

Beginnings Are Hard

Facing these edits would be daunting if I didn’t know that beginnings are always hard. Maybe that’s not the case for every writer, but for me, it proves true over and over.

For me, it’s always best to write the first chapter last. And then re-write. And then study what other writers have done by pulling all my favorite books off the shelf and re-reading their first chapters. Then re-write mine again.

Resisting A Plan

So that’s where I’m at with it. As a planner by nature, I’d love to say I’m going to spend X number of hours on this for the next Y number of days and come up with a date by which it will all be done, but if 2020 has taught us anything it’s that planning is not really something we can do any more. Gotta let that go.

Because, as I sit here typing, there is ash falling down on our lawn from the Bobcat Fire and the Santa Ana winds are predicted to kick up in the next 12 hours or so. Things feel always on the verge of going up in flames. Literally.

So I’ll check the fire reports every night before bed and again in the mornings. I’ll help the kids navigate their online schooling. I will change the air filters in the AC so it’s not too smokey in here. And in the moments between those things, I’ll keep writing, grateful to have my story as a refuge from it all.

Writing Difficult Times

I heard a story once about Ruth Ozeki’s “A Tale For The Time Being.” It was 2011 and the book was done, like, done done, at the printers done, when the tsunami hit Japan. The story is about a Japanese teenager and apparently she felt strongly that she couldn’t put a book out into the post-tsunami world that didn’t address the impact of the event.

The version I heard was that she recalled the book from her publisher and rewrote it to include the tsunami. If you’ve read the book, you know she made the right choice. It’s a wonderful story.

As writers, we (usually) aim to ground our stories in a time and place. But what do we do when a particular time (and I’m not naming any names here *cough* 2020 *cough*) sucks?

When we are writing in difficult times, do we change our stories to reflect the terrible things that are actually happening, like Ozeki did? Or do we ignore the sad and depressing and write a story that somehow manages to avoid the things we wish were different. Or maybe we write into a future where we might expect/hope things are better.

I’ve been tracking some interesting murmurings on this topic on Twitter. Here’s what I’ve learned:

You Can Rewrite Your Story

It’s entirely possible that your story will be more interesting if you embrace the pandemic and write a new draft, set squarely in 2020, face masks, protests, politics, and all.

PRO: Whether you’re writing difficult times in fiction or non-fiction, you’re embracing the reality we’re living in, and people will be hungry for these types of narratives in the future, needing to see their experiences reflected in the stories they’re reading. It might also make your story a cultural marker of sorts – a creative documentation of what we’re all living through.

CON: On the flip side, it’s possible people will not want to read pandemic narratives. I would certainly understand if people didn’t want to revisit this time. But you can only write what you feel compelled to write. If you’d rather not embrace the pandemic you can always…

Ignore Our Current Reality

While it’s not really an option in our lives, we can absolutely ignore reality in our fiction. You could write fantasy set in another world, or historical fiction set in a time far removed from the present. You could set your story in 2019 so that it’s modern day, but avoids all the grossness we’ve fallen into as of late.

PRO: Even if your story is straight-up-the-middle literary fiction set in modern day, there is probably a way to write around the pandemic. Maybe your character is by nature a bit of hermit, reluctant to go out bars and restaurants even in the best of times. Maybe they live on a ranch far from anyone, and they’re dealing with deep, personal family drama that doesn’t invlolve the outside world.

CON: If you set a story in 2020 and don’t at least mention the pandemic, it will not read like 2020. And that is a totally valid artistic choice. Just be aware that it will come across as a semi-alternate-reality kind of story. My advice, if this is the way you want to go: just don’t ever say 2020, or mention anything that happened this year. Plenty of books do just fine without ever stating what year they’re set in. People will assume it’s 2019 and carry on.

Or Jump To The Future

What I’ve done with my current WIP is to set it in 2022. My thinking on this is two-fold. First, I’m hoping it will come out in 2022 and feel contemporary. Second, I’m not writing 2020. I’m just not. 2020 can suck it.

PRO: The benefits of this choice are obvious. It allows me to set my story in a time when things have gotten back to normal (let’s hope). There is a reference to the pandemic that happened in 2020, but it’s history, past tense. I’ve taken the (hopefully not too) optimistic stance that face masks will no longer be a thing and we can ride the bus again without buckets of hand sanitizer.

CON: I could be wrong. I mean, what if things gets worse? Like the bad joke goes: what if 2020 is just a movie trailer of the epic shit storm that’s still to come? What if an earthquake rips California down the middle or COVID-19 mutates and gets worse?

Time Will Tell

I’m banking on things getting better, but I am absolutely willing to rewrite at any point, up until the moment the publisher prints the first run. It would be disappointing to have to dive back in, especially now that I know how much work goes into getting a final draft ready to print, but Ruth Ozeki made the right choice. I hope I would have the artistic strength and integrity to do the same.

How are you dealing with the pandemic in your writing? Are you embracing or avoiding these difficult times? Or maybe there’s some middle ground coping strategy I haven’t thought of? Would love to hear from you.

My Writing Community: An Invitation

Writers are a solitary bunch in the best of times and this pandemic has made it a lot tougher for us to get over our introvert tendencies. No readings to go to, no bars to drink in, no coffee shops in which to set up our laptops and knock out those pages.

As some of you may know, if you follow along, I am nearing completion of a two-year meditation teacher training program. The final step to get my certification has been to teach a couple of classes and I had planned to do it in person, but the pandemic set things on another path.

Well, I recently finished teaching my first online class and, long story short, I’ve found I really like getting together with folks online.

So in July I started an online Mindful Writers Group. We meet Fridays at 9:30am PST for an hour. There’s really not much to it. We log on, meditate for about 10 minutes, then write until the end of the hour. After that, those who need to bounce do, and the rest of us hang out for a bit.

We talk about whatever comes to mind. No agenda. And I’ll tell you, my Fridays have been transformed. Having a writing group again feels really good. My mood is so light after these little social sessions. It’s remarkable.

And the best thing about it is that all we have to do is show up. We don’t submit pages. We don’t read or critique. We just show up, sit quietly for a few minutes to clear our heads, write, and then chat.

I share all this not to brag about this great thing that has come together for me. In point of fact, I’m writing about it to invite you.

If you’re reading my blog, I assume you have some interest in writing. Furthermore, since you’re reading my blog, you should know I already consider you a part of my literary community.

And so you should seriously consider hopping online and writing with us one of these Fridays. I would love to see you there.

All The #AmQuerying Details

I finished the final draft of my manuscript for 142 Ostriches in January of 2018. At that point, I blogged a lot about everything I was prepping to query agents, but I was nervous about sharing too many details. I just didn’t know what to expect, and it was the first time I was really putting the work out into the world. I played it close to the vest.

But last week a Twitter friend, M.K. Beker, asked if I would be willing to share all the material I compiled for my query. It seemed like a fun thing to do, and I can see how it might be helpful to writers getting ready to do their own queries, so here it goes.

This is the letter I wrote to the man who is now my agent (I’ve added numbered notes to comment where it seemed like there were details to add):

Hello, Mr. Gotler,

We met years ago, when I was a student of Gina Nahai’s (1). I came in to your office to discuss the novel I was working on and you gave me some great advice on the story. You said that, when it was ready, I should send you the first three pages (2). Well, the time has finally come.  

142 Ostriches follows 22-year-old Tallulah Jones, who wants nothing more than to escape her life as a hired hand on the family’s ostrich ranch in the Mojave Desert. But when her grandmother dies under questionable circumstances, Tallulah finds herself the sole heir of the business just days before the birds mysteriously stop laying eggs. Guarding the secret of the suddenly barren birds, Tallulah endeavors to force through a sale of the ranch, a task that is only complicated when her extended family descends, threatening her ambitions and eventually her life. With no options left, Tallulah must pull her head out of the sand and face the 50-year legacy of a family in turmoil: the reality of her grandmother’s almost certain suicide, her mother’s alcoholism, her uncle’s covetous anger, and the 142 ostriches whose lives are in her hands. (3)

At roughly 85,000 words, 142 Ostriches is upmarket fiction with an almost entirely female cast of characters. It’s Daniel Woodrell’s Winter’s Bone meets Aryn Kyle’s The God of Animals. (4)

While working towards my master’s degree in writing at USC, I studied under Janet Fitch who continues to be a mentor. (5) I have also worked with Rick Moody at the Summer Writers Institute at Skidmore, and Mark Sarvas at UCLA Extension. My short stories have been published in F(r)iction, The Santa Clara Reivew, TrippleQuick Fiction, and more. My blog was recently listed by Writer’s Digest as one of the 101 Best Websites for Writers. (6) 

The first three pages of my manuscript are below. I hope you enjoy them and look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,
April

I first met my now-agent in 2009 when he came to speak to a class I was taking as part of my Masters Program at USC. Wrote a blog post about that back when it happened. Three pages was him being generous. He said he usually knows after the first two pages if he’s interested. Wrote a post about that too.I labored long and hard over this paragraph. In this post I share the iterations it went through and why I kept editing even after I thought it was good enough. I’m pretty proud of these comps. They are well-regarded novels, and the first was made into a movie that won Jennifer Lawrence an Oscar. So I was comparing my story to two that were successful, but not so successful as to be unrealistic comps. Also, my book really is reminiscent of them both. My now-agent repped Janet’s first book, so I knew dropping her name would get his attention. I honestly don’t think these last few statements mattered, but hey, you’re supposed to toot your own horn here, and those were the toots I had to give.

The following day I got this email:

Can I see the entire manuscript? Thanks. Joel

So I sent it to him. Four days later he asked to rep me. Talk about dream scenarios.

You’ll notice I didn’t need an elevator pitch and he didn’t ask for a one-page summary, but I had both ready.

The elevator pitch went something like this (and still does, whenever someone asks about my book):

It’s the story of a young woman who inherits her grandmother’s ostrich ranch in the Mojave Desert. When the family all comes to town for the funeral the skeletons come out of the closet. It’s much more about the family, rather than the ostriches, but they’re such weird birds, I just loved using them as a backdrop for a story about a struggling family.

It changes a shade or two every time I say it, depending on who I’m talking to, but that’s basically what I say. And frankly, it makes me cringe. I never have found a one-liner I’m satisfied with.

Then there’s the one-page synopsis I had all ready. I’ll post it below. Here’s how I drafted it. If you haven’t read the book, be warned, there are spoilers, because from what I’ve read, your one-pager should tell the ending.

So I was pretty well prepared. I had all the things you’re supposed to have, and more importantly, I had all the things this agent in particular asked for. I addressed it to him personally, I had a good reason why I was emailing him and not some other agent.

If folks out there have questions about any of this, go ahead and leave them in the comments below.

Here is the one-pager. SPOILERS BELOW. If you haven’t yet read the book, I humbly suggest you stop now and buy a copy.

You’ve been warned.

22-year-old TALLULAH JONES wants nothing more than to escape her life on the family’s ostrich ranch in the Mojave Desert. But three weeks before she is scheduled to leave, her grandmother dies in a head-on collision. Tallulah inherits everything. Though she has no proof, she suspects that her grandmother’s death was actually a suicide, a final effort to trap Tallulah in the family business. Unwilling to accept this fate, Tallulah resolves to sell the ranch to her biggest competitor.

Her plans to sell are almost immediately endangered when the ostriches stop laying eggs. The vet finds nothing physically wrong, but the sale will not happen if the birds are unable to reproduce. Desperate to sell, Tallulah guards the secret of the suddenly barren birds by moving long-refrigerated eggs to the incubator, hoping to pass them off as viable.

Her efforts to wrap things up on the ranch are threatened further when her family descends on the property for her grandmother’s funeral. Last to show is Tallulah’s mother, whom she hasn’t seen in eleven years. Tallulah is reminded why her grandmother brought her to the ranch in the first place. Mom is an alcoholic and a flake. 

Tallulah’s uncle, angry at being passed over for the inheritance, relapses into old patterns and disappears on what all expect is a meth-fueled bender. No one hears from him until the morning he steals one of the ostriches. Tallulah, shotgun in hand, tracks her uncle deep into the desert and confronts him. Seething and drug-addled he attacks her. In the ensuing struggle, Tallulah shoots off two of his fingers. 

The implications pressing in on her, Tallulah delays reporting the incident, and instead seeks distraction with her on-again-off-again boyfriend. Frustrated at his marginal role in her life, he calls Tallulah out for refusing to see the reality of her situation. Tallulah is shocked to realize that she, like all the women in her family, willfully ignores unpleasant truths at the expense of her future. Horrified that she has become the very thing she has so long resented, Tallulah takes a first step towards addressing life head on and turns herself in to the Sheriff. Her uncle is found by the authorities, unconscious in a pool of his own blood. After a night in jail, Tallulah is released on her own recognizance. 

Tallulah returns to the ranch only to find her competitor’s property inspector making his final notes. Her ruse has worked. The sale will go through, but the victory feels hollow.

Driven to sleepless wandering about the property, Tallulah finds a fresh egg. But her elation vanishes when her uncle’s truck plows through the corral fence. He chases her down with a pair of clippers, looking to remove two of her fingers as vengeance. As they struggle, his cigarette drops in a pile of hay setting the barn ablaze. In the flicker of firelight her uncle holds her down as he cuts off her pinky. Just as he moves to take the second finger, a shovel crushes the back of his skull, killing him. Tallulah scrambles away to see her mother, shovel in hand. Tallulah is rushed to the hospital. 

The next day back at the ranch, Tallulah finds more eggs. She understands now that she has the chance to do what her mother and grandmother never did – to accept the blessings and burdens of life as they come. Her head finally out of the sand, Tallulah sees the beauty of her desert home and decides not to sell.  She will stay and build a life caring for those she loves, including the 142 ostriches whose lives are in her hands.

You Never Get A Second Debut Novel

You never get a second debut novel.

These are words I remember hearing at writing conferences, and from teachers in my graduate program: you don’t get a second debut novel. I kind of dismissed them at the time. I mean, duh. You only get one debut. But now that I’ve come up and over that hill, I have a new perspective on the idea.

Good Enough Never Is

When I was younger, I was a big fan of “good enough.” Once, in my early twenties, I really wanted to make a bookshelf (because books). I went to Home Depot, bought some planks of wood, some metal brackets that looked like they’d do the job, and a handful of screws.

Did I look up HOW to build a bookshelf? Nope. Did I sand and finish the wood? Nope. I just slapped that baby together and put some books on it. Not surprisingly, it lasted about a week before it started to lean and fall over.

Maybe it was the fact that I was always struggling, always hustling to try and make ends meet, but I continuously felt like I didn’t have enough time for things. I just needed them to be done.

But writing a book takes time. There is simply no way around that.

Taking The Time

I’ve blogged a lot over the years about how to write. Little tidbits of do-this and don’t-do-this. Because I learned a great deal about the craft of writing as I pushed to get my first novel out into the world. But arguably the most important thing I have learned along the way was to slow down. Get it right.

Every time I thought my book was done, I put it in a drawer for a month and then read it through. Every time I did that I realized it wasn’t done, no matter how much I wanted it to be. Because when I read it through, with a little perspective, I didn’t feel like I wanted to feel.

So I kept working. And working. And then, finally, after 10 years, it became the novel I wanted it to be.

Publication

Now, admittedly, this is the WORST time to put a debut novel in the world. Even if people can tear themselves away from the news of the global pandemic, racial injustice, and bipartisan politics, there’s not a lot of head space left for fiction.

And yet, it’s been deeply flattering to see reviews that reflect the years of hard work I put into it. Publications I admire and trust have used words like “vivid,” “unique,” “uplifting,” and “compelling.” (You can read more reviews here.)

The thing that is hitting me, now that the book is out in the world, is that I’m really proud of my debut novel. What’s more, I think this pride is what my teachers were trying to push me toward when they said you only get one debut novel.

More Than Marketing

I always thought they were talking in terms of marketing. And perhaps they were. Every agent, every editor, wants to be the one to discover the next big break-out author, and you only get to be a debut author once. But there’s another layer to it.

Because no matter how well your book sells, no matter the state of the world when it’s released, it will always be your debut novel. You might, in this digital age, get to go back and fix a typo or two, but you’ll never get to rewrite the book.

Take The Time

So my advice to writers working on their debut novels is this: take the time. Take care with every sentence. Create characters that resonate with purpose and desire (even your villain). Paint the setting in a way that makes your heart ache to visit.

Go ahead and assume your debut novel will not be paying your bills. Take the pressure off yourself. Write for the love of writing. Rewrite for the love of rewriting. And when you’re good and ready (ONLY when you’re good and ready) go ahead and put it out into the world.

Because you only get one debut novel.