Nancy Springer's Blog: Last Seen Wandering Vaguely - Posts Tagged "revision"

The first book: it’s every aspiring writer’s dream, and when it happens – the professionally designed cover, the first good reviews, sub rights sales, honors, money – when it all happens, then the newly anointed author’s heart sings a paean of joy, love, and triumph over epic adversity.
And if the first sales figures should chance to be sweet, from the new author’s editor comes ringing a bugle call for the second book.

Then the music changes for the writer, who starts to sing the Second Book Blues.


Oh noooo, oh noooo, what am I going to dooooo?
I must complete this ms in six months or less,
when the first one took a decade or two!
It might be okay if I could disobey,
But they want another one just like the other
Only more so and in a different color, thank you,
And I got the second book blues.


I assure you this is a real phenomenon. Astute readers call it the sophomore jinx, and the more gleeful reviewers wait to pounce on a book that almost certainly will not be as good as the first. Luckily, the second book comes only once in a writer’s career. . . .

Or so I thought until I signed a two-book contract.

Hoo boy. The first book, DARK LIE, had been written and rewritten during a number of years. Then, with coaching from an excellent editor, I rewrote it once more before publication. Somehow during its lengthy gestation period it became better in a different way than any other book I had yet written. A lot of people like it very much.

Perversely, this scared me, because I had no idea how I had managed to write DARK LIE. Yet, to complete my contract, I needed to write, within a year, another book very much like it.

So I applied Brain. The contract called for psychological suspense. I had the “suspense” part pretty much under control – an abducted child -- but I needed psychology, so I gave one of my characters a psychological problem that affected whether the victim could be re-united with his family. This character (please allow me my veil of secrecy) was a challenge to write, and I tried my hardest to make her “sympathetic.”

When my agent read the manuscript, however, she told me that I had succeeded only in making the character pathetic with no sym. In fact, my manuscript sounded as if I did not even like this character.

True, but I was not yet ready to admit it. I rewrote the entire 90,000 word manuscript as if trying to save a bad marriage, forcing the screwed-up character to get likeable.

By now it was time for the editor to look at the book. Indeed, it was time to choose a title, create a cover illustration, and go into production.

I was of course at home in the Florida panhandle at the time, but I understand that my editor’s screams could be heard across several blocks of Manhattan. Certainly my agent heard them. My editor (with my wholehearted sympathy) wanted to drop the book over a cliff. My agent talked her down and assured her I would rewrite Very Fast.

I rewrote. On this, my third time through the book’s four hundred some pages, I no longer cared whether it resembled DARK LIE or whether it met the definition of psychological suspense. I just wanted to put together something publishable. I tore out the offending character, gender-reversed the roles of the victim’s parents, threw out a kid sister’s journal and turned her into twins, brought in two new characters, and completely replaced I don’t know how many pages, more than half the manuscript. But I had no time to sing the second book blues because I was working on my rescue mission morning, afternoon and night to get it back to the publisher in time. The publishing date – November 5, 2013 -- was already set and the title already decided upon: DRAWN INTO DARKNESS.

To my great relief, my editor agreed that the third go-round was much stronger and more entertaining. However, we were not finished yet. In a detailed, seven-page revision letter she clarified what remained to be done before Frankenbook could come to life. One big problem was that I had sometimes messed up the chronological order in which the pieces should be put together.

So I rewrote the book for the fourth time. By the time I was finished (I thought), DRAWN INTO DARKNESS bore almost no resemblance to its original self, although it had begun to resemble DARK LIE just a little. Anyway, it had finally come together.

Or had it? Sending the manuscript back in its ready-to-publish electronic format, my editor gave me a heads-up that I still had a chronological problem. She had told me before, but in one of those disturbing episodes of brain slippage that occur too often as I get older, I had not been able to see it. I still couldn’t see it until she spelled it out for me. Then, in a blinding flash of the obvious, I realized I had to add one whole day to one character’s storyline.

Aak!

I wrote it in the form of several paragraphs of Track Changes and did a 24-hour Rip Van Winkle on the character. He had every reason to need a nap; he had been up all night for two nights in a row. And once I had him tucked in, naturally he overslept into the next night and couldn’t get going again until daylight.

Whew.

I turned DRAWN INTO DARKNESS around in a few days and e-mailed it back with the tentative topic heading, “final?”

It was. Finally. Final. But I didn’t feel really great about it, because I didn’t know whether I was the author who submitted a disastrous second book or the author who pulled off an amazing save. I didn’t know whether I was a hero or a goat.

I still don’t.

But when the time came for me to read the proofs, it didn’t matter. Some time had passed. I found myself drawn into the book as I read, finding it – lo and behold – suspenseful! My wacked-out writing process didn’t matter. DRAWN INTO DARKNESS ended up alive, all right, but not a Frankenbook. I enjoyed reading it. It was good!

So finally I can start singing a happy song. No more second book blues. My new suspense novel is the very first DRAWN INTO DARKNESS I ever wrote.