Sandra Gulland's Blog, page 22

Putting the press to bed

My most treasured acquisition this year was a limited edition copy of THE PARADISE PROJECT by my good friend and brilliant writer Merilyn Simonds.

That my copy was #1 (!!!) makes it extra special, but this beautiful book is beyond extra special: end papers made from the flowers in Merilyn’s garden, a special plant-related cover paper, block prints by her artist son throughout, pages that need to be sliced open to read: yes, very special indeed. 

And now, a video of that final day, as Merilyn’s husband, writer Wayne Grady, reads a poem he wrote: “We’re putting the press to bed.”

 

Everyone knew it was a special moment … as is each moment you hold this lovely book, as is each word you read. 

And now, a brief catch-up in GullandLand: I’ve worked myself up to 1000 words a day on the first draft of the Young Adult novel about Hortense. It’s fun, and I’m enjoying it. I’m writing every day, which is key—on “free” days I commit to 100 or 500 words. No excuses! 

Any day now I’ll see a cover for THE SHADOW QUEEN. ARCs (Advance Reader Copy) are in preparation. I survived the massive Author Questionnaire. Now it’s time to start thinking about acknowledgements. (Always the last bit to be written.) 

I’m reading massively: Pride and Prejudice, Astray, The Dark, plus any number of How To books and research texts on my Kindle ap. 

YouTube adventures

I’m working on the Author Questionnaire for Doubleday’s publication of The Shadow Queen, and that requires a bit of time mucking about in my promotional and publication history. I just found this charming video on YouTube about The Many Lives & Secret Sorrows of Josephine B.: 

Any day now, I will see the first pass on the book cover: I’m excited. I’m already madly in love with the interior design:

Meanwhile, I’m cranking up the word count on the Young Adult novel about Hortense, going slowly at first. We will have the pleasure of our now 1-year-old granddaughter Kiki, our daughter Carrie and her mate Bruce this long weekend, so I’m only aiming for 50 words a day. Dipping a toe in—that’s all—but it’s important to do it every day. This morning I aimed for 50 and chalked up over 200. I’m very much enjoying exploring this youthful story. 

Glutton for book books

I’m a glutton for print books during our Canadian half of the year. The other half my husband and I are in Mexico: books are hard to get and I enjoy the ease of an e-reader, but by the time we get back to Canada, I’m ready to go hog wild. 

And I know why: because a book book is a 3-D experience. 

I just finished Nocturne by Helen Humphreys. Her writing always knocks me out, but this memoir about her brother, his life and death, is extra special.

I sat for a very long moment after I finished it, teary, holding the book, turning it in my hands, running my fingers over the slightly raised type of the title and author’s name. Turning this little volume again and again, taking in the beauty of the cover image, relishing that curtain-down-on-the-last-act fullness. Encore! Encore!

Yes: a book book. There’s nothing quite like it. 

Thank you, Helen, for your crystal clear prose, as beautiful as both music and silence.

And thank you, as well, to HarperCollins Canada and editor Phyllis Bruce: it’s clear that you loved this beautiful book. 

Juggle this! On plotting, beginning a 1st draft, making a final edit, tweaking a shout line and filling out a beastly author questionnaire …

I’ve begun to gallop along on the YA about Hortense. I’m still struggling with the plot, but nonetheless I’ve started falling into scenes, letting them flower. The processes for plotting and writing are different (plotting is so very cerebral), so it’s not a bad idea to do them simultaneously. 

Needless-to-say, I’m busy. There is nothing quite like the absorption of the early stages of a novel to make one just a little forgetful. 

Recommended this week: ”How to shop at a bookstore: an easy 20-step guide for authors.” This is hahahaouch funny & sad. The one thing I would add is that writers give consideration to appearance before going up the the counter and offering to sign a book. If I’m looking somewhat grubby, I will pass. 

The article made me nostalgic. I remembered walking by a bookstore just before I was first published, realizing that I would never again go into a bookstore as a carefree-wandering-reader. Once published, there’s a working relationship. A delicious working relationship, but a working relationship nonetheless. 

The copy-edit of The Shadow Queen is now back with Doubleday. I always find it surprising how emotionally tangled up I can get over whether a word is capitalized or not.

Now I’ve the beastly Author Questionnaire to finish filling out. The required AQ is perhaps the best reason to stay with one publisher! On the first page (of many pages): list every edition of every book you’ve ever published in all languages. No. No. No. 

The catalogue copy of The Shadow Queen for HarperCollins needed some tweaking. (The title was wrong, for starters.) Here’s what we’ve got now for a “shout line”: 

A seductive, gripping novel about the lure and illusion of power, and the plight of a woman caught up in the deadly black magic of the woman she loyally serves: the Shadow Queen. 

Shout lines are damn hard … Some suggest that you begin writing the shout line at the same time you begin writing the novel. 

As usual, I’m reading too many books at once. (A little ADD anyone?) Pride and Prejudice, as well as a book about Jane Austen—as mentioned in my last blog. Tiny Beautiful Things by tell-it-like-it-is Cheryl Strayed. Astonished, by my friend (and fantastic writer) Beverly Donofrio. A historical novel for a blurb—I don’t recall the title, but I’m enjoying it very much. Manage Your Day-to-Day by Jocelyn K Glei, for obvious reasons.

Etc. etc. etc. If only I had five lives. 

And … how could I forget! I’m nearing the end of Henderson the Rain King by Saul Bellows. Primal lion screaming! I read that Joni Mitchell was inspired to write “Both Sides Now” reading this amazing novel. I read it in my teens and loved it. Although I found it a little thick in the middle, it still has incredible power. 

At the top, a very unusual portrait of Hortense by Appiani. Antique images from BibliOdessy.

It’s all about Jane …

I’m reading a lot about Jane Austen right now—or, at the least, I seem to be surrounded by books and blogs about her. Yes, I admit, I’m seeking her out. 

For example, this wonderful website: What Jane Saw, an exhibit she actually went to see. Follow in her footsteps; look at the paintings she saw. 

I’m reading—very, very slowly—the Harvard University Press annotated edition of Pride and Prejudice. This is a sumptuous book (a sumptuous series).

(For a video on this book: click here.)

Another book I’m reading is The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things by Paula Byrne: delicious.

And another: A Dance with Jane Austen by Susannah Fullerton, which I discovered through the wonderful blog Jane Austen’s World. This is a wonderful book. 

“Why Jane?” my son asks, and I have to tell him frankly that I don’t think she’d be his cup of tea. But then neither might be Dickens or Shakespeare, at least not in his fast-paced world. In a University course: certainly. And then, forced into another time and pace (the beauty of higher education), he might think, “Wow.” For she’s right up there with the greats of literature. 

This in spite of the fact that she is so very subtle, so not showy. Who was it who said—I think it was Virginia Woolf—that it’s very hard to catch Jane Austen in an act of greatness. 

She wrote during the day, and read what she’d written to her family in the evening. She did not have a desk of her own, much less a room. 

It’s a mistake to think that her’s was a purer world. The worlds she create are pure, yet a man she and her sister admired, a nobleman, had a strange affection for drinking the blood of his servants. (Note that such details do not show in her novels.) 

For Mother’s Day, my son suggested I pick a t-shirt from this wonderful site: Out of Print Clothing. 

Which one did I pick? Well, of course: Pride and Prejudice:

I love it! (And no: this is not me.) 

What’s your favourite Jane Austen? And why? 

For links to all the books mentioned on my blog, explore “Words &” my on-line bookstore.

Lost in Memory Lane: on character development, The Next Novel, The New Novel, and letters in the attic

Sometimes a silence builds up like a damn: I’ve so much to report I don’t report anything.

So here goes:

Today I sent my Canadian and U.S. publishers suggestions for the cover art for THE SHADOW QUEEN. (Wow: it’s really happening.)

This took all morning—during which there was an earthquake!—and entailed poking around in my old files.

It was moving opening up a file of the original images I had used for building my characters years ago. I’m in the process of “building” characters for The Next Novel (the Young Adult about Josephine’s daughter Hortense), and it was a pleasant reminder of how helpful it can be to scout out character images on the Net. (I used Morgue File.) 

Here is the image I selected for Claude (Claudette), heroine of THE SHADOW QUEEN: 

I KNOW: it’s a guy, but something in his look spoke to me of Claude, who is a masculine woman.

And then later I found a Rossetti painting that struck me as Claude at court:

I was shocked to see how much alike these two images were — compare their eyes, eye brows, nose, lips. Amazing.

This Sargent painting is my image of Claude at the end of her life: triumphant! 

In a few weeks I will get the copy edit of THE SHADOW QUEEN. It will be entirely edited in Word. (With every novel the technology changes, in large part because I am such a slow writer.)

Then, after, I will plunge into writing the first draft of The Next Novel.

Juggling two historical periods is a bit of a challenge. I’m not having much luck making room on my shelves for new books.

The rest, in brief:

•The advance praise for THE SHADOW QUEEN—that is “blurbs”—has been fantastic.

•I’m reading Jane Austen in preparation for The Next Novel. More on dear Jane later. 

•Both my husband and I are sick with colds only a few days in advance of a trip to New York. (Grrrr.) 

•I began looking through the two boxes of the letters I wrote to my parents, found in their attic after my father died. I read through all of 1969: what a slice.

Lost in Memory Lane indeed. 

 

Avoiding bookkeeping, and Jeffrey Eugenides on getting it right

I’m getting ready to pack up my winter office in Mexico and return to Canada. This entails going through piles of papers, journals stacked up, bills.

Instead of attending to that last stack, I’m quickly posting here from a page I tore off from  Bookmarks Magazine (Nov/Dec 2011: note the year!), regarding an interview with Jeffrey Eugenides.

Question from Bookmarks: What is the most challenging—and rewarding—aspect of writing?

Eugenides: The hardest thing is getting it right. And the most rewarding thing. What I mean it, there’s only one task when writing a book: to seize the reader’s attention and hold it as long as you can. To do that, you have to make your story both compelling and credible, you have to sand down the rough edges … 

Getting it right is so hard, and takes so many drafts. I’m pleased to say that finally The Next Novel not only went off (to be copy-edited), but it has a tentative publication date (March 18, 2014) and a title:

THE SHADOW QUEEN

It has also has been sent out to writers for quotes if they like it. I am absolutely thrilled that so far three have sent in glowing — glowing! — blurbs. 

I not the sort of writer who ever thinks I’ve gotten it “right,” so I’m relieved, I confess, that writers I very much respect have been so swept away.

Frankly, it makes me teary! 

Why I’ve been quiet

We’d been at the beach for 2 weeks with poor Net connection, and it was too frustrating to try to post anything from there.

The first warning of trouble came while we were there: my father had had a fall and was in the hospital, but he was okay.

My father and I were close: I usually called him every day, but it had been difficult to call from the beach because the Net connection was so poor. I’d begun to use my international cell phone (when I could get a signal), which sends a call from the southern coast of Mexico, to London, England, to Oakland, California. The miracle of modern-day communication!

“I’m in the hospital!” he said, dismayed, and then he was overtaken by pain and there was nothing more I could say except “I love you!” I didn’t know then that these were my last words to him … at least words he could hear and understand. 

 And then, no sooner back home and unpacked than we got the call: he was dying. I flew to California to camp at Motel 6 and sit by his bedside with my family in the Kaiser hospital in Hayward. “Comfort Care” were the instructions on the white board: and that’s exactly what he got. Excellent comfort. (Such great nurses there.) 

My dear 95-year-old dad passed away peacefully in his sleep in the early hours of January 31. I wept in Motel 6 and on the airplane back to San Miguel. 

Getting back to work is its own form of comfort, that and working on the memorial and mailings and all the busyness of death. 

I knew that at 68 myself, I was lucky have a surviving parent, especially a dad who was so perpetually cheerful. He lived in the beautiful home I’d grown up in the Berkeley hills.

He was a ham radio operator all his life, and his ham radio buddies made a last call to W6UMP (my dad) and wished him well in his new life. 

And so, if I’m a bit slow posting here now, it has a lot to do with catching up on my work and helping to prepare for my dad’s memorial (which is going to be wonderful, I know). 

What I have done:  

• Continued to update the facts regarding Hortense’s life into Aeon Timeline (in preparation for the outline: alarmingly overdue!)

• Made a final draft of my NET PROMOTION FOR WRITERS AND OTHER LUDDITES in connection with the workshop I will be giving on Sunday the 17th. I plan to publish this as an INK e-book soon. For the time being, if you email me with Luddites or some such in the subject line, I will send it to you free. Basically, it’s Everything I Know and then some.  

• Sent in the “final” draft of IN THE SERVICE OF THE SHADOW QUEEN. Bar a few tweaks, it will likely go into copy editing now. I’d always been a little perplexed about the dedication. I had thought of dedicating it to my dad, but I’d dedicated a book to him before. But even so, two of the characters in this novel are so very much like him. And so: without a doubt, the dedication now reads:

In memory of my father, Robert Zentner
(1917 — 2013)
whose lovable eccentricities are reflected
in several of the characters in this novel.

 

 

Tilling new ground: preparing to write

 

(Cover of Do the Work by Steven Pressfield, an excellent and motivating book on writing. “Send!”)

I dreamt last night that I was tilling new ground. It was hard going, shovel-load by shovel-load, turning the hard, caked earth. Slowly, I worked the edges, moving toward the centre. I thought: it’s hard clots; I will have to break it down further. I will have to add mulch. 

I woke realizing that that was a perfect metaphor for what I’m doing now, preparing the ground for writing about Hortense. 

Of course I then got completely distracted by another sort of digging: revision of this website. There’s nothing quite like HMTL to get one’s brain in a knot.

And now: getting ready to leave for the beach for two weeks, taking my thick stack of plot index cards with me. And my computer, of course, with the amazing Mac plot software Aeon Timeline on it. (More on that later.) 

So: off to clear the desk and finish packing. I leave you with this:

I especially love #10: Creativity is subtraction. What do you think? 

Lost in your story? Here are some tools to help find the way.

I was just in a on-line discussion with a group of authors. One of them had lost his way in the novel he was writing, and a number of us, knowing the “lost realm” well, suggested the tools we used to help us get back on track. 

I recommended Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat. I’m using his system now to help me see the shape of the two YA’s I’m writing, and I used it last year, as well, to find my way out of the maze of The Next Novel. His book is irreverent, far-from-literary, but it gives you plot basics with a good dash of humour. Plus, it’s short and to the point. 

Another author recommended “The Hero’s Journey”,  a fantastic on-line site—here—based on the great book by Volger, The Writer’s Journey.

Both these books are written for scriptwriters. My own conviction is that scriptwriters are story-specialists, and that novelists can learn a great deal from them. 

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