Sandra Gulland's Blog, page 31

Side-swiped by first lines

Ever since we returned to our winter home in San Miguel de Allende (Mexico), I've been working like crazy, getting ready for the sprint-revision of The Next Novel, which I've promised to send to my agent at the end of the month. (It was last due in May!)

I've recovered from the 4th draft conversion from 3rd person to 1st. That seems easy in comparison to the challenge now, which is figuring out an emerging important character and what happens to him. His story has evolved into a fairly important subplot (at draft 5!).

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To help me figure it out, I've laid out all the scenes on the big dining room table, puzzling over the flow of the story. (More than once, I groaned over the difficulty of writing a fact-based biographical novel.) 

I've laid the cards out using the filmscript-writing structure proposed in Blake Snyder's Save the Cat – a short, punchy and tad corny how-to book that offers quite a lot of helpful plot wisdom. (Scriptwriting and novel writing are two different beasts, but there can be fruitful cross-pollination. More on that later.)

But I shouldn't be here, on-line — I should be figuring out The Story — but I got side-swiped this morning by the discovery that the opening line of The Next Novel made a shortlist of opening lines by agent Betsy Lerner in her irresistibly caustic blog: The Forest for the Trees. 

The line?

Winter was coming — I could smell it. 

Ironically, I changed that line yesterday to:

It was the season of turning, everything golden. 

What do you think? 

The most rewarding part of being published

The most rewarding part of being published is — by far — contact with readers.

This is not at all what I expected during all of that decade I worked in isolation, writing what was to become The Josephine B. Trilogy. I didn't expect to ever be published, much less read. 

Yesterday, I had the most delightful of proofs, once again, of how wonderful readers can be. 

I was invited to join a very special book club in Ottawa — special because they have named themselves the Glories after Josephine B.'s very lively circle of close friends in Tales of Passion, Tales of Woe.

(A cautionary warning to other clubs: they claim exclusivity on this name!) 

They are also foodies, and have a tradition of sumptuous meals, which I had the very great pleasure of experiencing at the courtly home of Jean and Suzanne Carr in Ottawa.

To begin with, a gorgeous table setting:

After a champagne toast by Anne (which made me weep), her exquisite squash soup …

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followed by a delicious warm cheese salad (à la française, bien sur) by Suzanne …

followed, in turn, by a sinfully creamy dessert by Josiane,

and the most amazing truffles by Cynthia.

After hours of lively talk of books, magic, horses and writing, I reluctantly had to part …

… sent away with gifts of lovely French soaps and a box of Cynthia's truffles.

 

How does one say "to die for" in French?

Merci, mes amis, for an unforgettable book club meet.

Time warp: on beginning The Next Novel

Was it only 2 1/4 years ago that I started to write The Next Novel?

It seems much, much longer, but I just discovered a video I took as I was starting out. At the risk of embarrassing myself (messy hair, no makeup, double chins!), I'm posting it here: 

Update: I never used the file system and the label-maker no longer works. (Sigh.) The novel, however, is crawling forward, way behind deadline however.

What do you think? Do you like this nuts & bolts stuff? What system(s) do you use?

A question for teachers …

I'm astonished to discover 39 — 39! — study guides for The Many Lives & Secret Sorrows of Josephine B. on BookRags.com: lesson plans, essay topic suggestions, tests (and answers) … the list goes on and on.

[Note: on the BookRags.com site, search "Sandra Gulland"—in quotations.]

The guides aren't cheap, but just glancing at the suggestions, they seem solid (to me, decidedly not a teacher).

What is your opinion? Are they a rip-off, or do they offer solid value? 

I've heard from teachers who have used Josephine B. in both High School and University courses. I think Josephine B. would be a great study tool, and apparently others think so as well. I'd love to find out how to promote this somehow. Any ideas? 

Adios, Steve Jobs

My first computer was the original 128K Mac, and I've been a Mac-fanatic ever since. I carried it home cradled in my arms like a baby, and typed a book into it that night. (128 K!)

Mac and I have been joined at the hip ever since. I wouldn't be a writer without it. 

Steve Jobs made Macs personal, and I think that's one reason his death is so upsetting: the feeling was mutual. We felt he knew and understood us — "got" us — and we were more than grateful to him for it. He gave us tools to think and connect, but most of all — to create. 

We loved his humour, his creativity and smarts. He knew what we wanted and needed before we did. 

We were his tribe, and he was our leader. Still is.

Can you read this blog post without blubbering? (I can't.)

Crashing through to Thanksgiving

Canadian Thanksgiving is coming — a big, glorious dinner for over twenty friends and family at our house — and then we begin our winter transition to Mexico. 

It's not easy moving an office back and forth. Or rather, I should say: it's not easy for a historical novelist.

I've begun to give thought to which reference books to take with me. I've a stack of books I brought back with me from Mexico in the spring — still untouched.

How many will I really need? The Net (Books Google), and the fact that many books are now available to me on iPad, have changed the way I research. Even so, I will inevitably take a small suitcase—a very heavy small suitcase—filled with notes, papers and books. I do it every year, and every year the decisions about what stays and what goes torments me. 

But the main thing I must do — before next weekend, I pray — is finish draft 5.2 of The Next Novel. I will print it out in Mexico, and read/edit it there. And then — by grace of the muses — I plan to have it ready to send to my agent, Jackie Kaiser, by the end of October.  

Enormous Changes at the Last Minute: I think often of the title of Grace Paley's novel, for it seems to capture my writing process (every time). I've a main character gradually, ever so gradually, coming into focus. I've entire chapters that need to be created to fill gaping holes in the reconstruction. The change from 3rd person to 1st not long ago seems easy by comparison.

In moaning to my writers' group, poet Jenifer McVaugh said, "You've got everything. You're just missing the heart of the story."

Exactly. That's what the process of writing a novel is about: finding the (damned) heart of the story. And it never, at least for me, seems to come early on. 

Novelists out there: what is your process? Is there any way to avoid this somewhat frantic scramble? 

And one more question: What do you think of the title This Bright Darkness?

{Image above: view from my office window.}

On giving readings

For any writer preparing to give a reading: I recommend this post on BeyondtheMargins.com. The one thing every author surveyed does (with one exception) is practice, practice, practice. 

When I first became a published author, I panicked at the thought of public readings. The book Never be Nervous Again by Dorothy Sarnoff helped me a lot. 

From Sarnoff, I learned to:

print out in big bold font every word of my talk, giving each sentence a line;
dog-ear the pages so that the turn easily; 
learn to look up and scan the room; 
practice in front of a mirror;
practice three times the day of the event. 

I chose short readings and talk a lot about writing and research before, during and after. Every sentence is composed and practiced beforehand. What I've learned is that to appear off-hand and relaxed, you have to practice. 

I print out the text of my book, as well. I will show the actual book, but I won't read from it. I'll revise the text, as well, so that it reads well. 

I'm curious: what do you do? How do you prepare for a public "performance"? 

[You can see some of my talks on YouTube: here. Some are an example of what not to do. It took time for me to evolve my process.]

On the home front, I'm intensely into editing/revising the 5th draft of The Next Novel. (Presently titled The Art of Enchantment: what do you think?) 

In preparation for my next newsletter, I put together a website page on my Sandra Gulland Ink ebook publication project. 

What do you think of the covers? (To see all of them, click here.) 

 

On collecting—or is it hoarding?

I admit I have a problem. I looked at my overflowing shelves of books and decided to begin weeding—inspired and guided by my friend (Catherine) Madame Mayo's blog post: "Decluttering a Library: The Ten Question Flowchart."

It is of course significant that I have taken on this task when I should be 1) doing taxes, 2) revising my manuscript, 3) preparing to launch Sandra Gulland Ink, 4) debugging my website, and/or 5) making Vol. II of my father's wonderful stories. 

In any case, I have begun, and I feel stronger for it. The ping-pong table in the basement begins to be covered with books—books to give away. Twenty of these are books on writing. What's shocking—truly—is that seventy-five books on writing remain, each one special to me in some way. 

"When is it a library and when is it hoarding?" Catherine asks. Good question. 

What does your personal library look like? How do you keep it in check? 

Au revoir, Josephine.

And so: the filming of the documentary on Josephine is over: at least the part that I'm in. Here are photos from the first and last days of shooting: day 1, and the last day.  

For day one, we re-enacted something I'd done a number of times after being at Malmaison: putting a rose on Josephine's tomb. 

I was moved to find out that every year on May 29, the day of Josephine's death, flowers are put on the foot of her bed at Malmaison, and a mass given in her honour.

Was Josephine present, one wonders? Once, after a musical concert at Malmaison, a number of people claimed to have felt a presence. 

For the last day of shooting, we met at Saint-Joseph des Carmes, where Josephine and her husband Alexandre were emprisoned.

Ironically, it was September 2, the 219th anniversary of the September massacres of 1792.  You can still see the blood stains on the walls of the small room Josephine shared with a dozen others:

After, we moved to the gardens of the Palais Royal, where I sat with Bernard Chevalier, talking of Josephine (as we were being filmed, of course).

I first met Bernard 20 years ago, when researching Josephine; it was a pleasure to have a chance to see him once again. As the former curator of Malmaison and author of a number of wonderful books on Josephine, it's fair to say that he's the foremost expert on her life. He and Dr. Catinat, who also worked at Malmaison at that time, helped me greatly in sifting through the fact and (often scurrilous) fiction to be found in the biographies about the Empress. 

As the crew was packing up, filming over, I asked him: If you could ask Josephine one question, what would it be? He gave that some thought before saying, "I would want to know if she slept with Captain Charles."

I laughed. "That's exactly the question I would ask."

Both of us doubt that she did (although it was possible). 

I also asked if he thought the Appiani portrait is in fact of Josephine, and he said that it is. And so, the mystery is solved: this is Josephine. (So lovely.)

Now it is time for me to put thoughts of Josephine away and get back to the world of Claude des Oeillets. It has been an emotional experience re-connecting with Josephine. 

Au revoir, ma belle héroïne.

Kate Pullinger: optimistic on the e-book revolution

I like what Kate Pullinger has to say in this audio interview:

Novelist Kate Pullinger speaks to Martha Kearney on The World at One (mp3)

I tend to agree with Pullinger that it's both a scary and exciting time in the world of publishing (or, rather, story-telling). 

I'm still in Paris—tomorrow will be the last day of filming the documentary on Josephine.

I enjoyed lunch today with author Catherine Delors and will soon be meeting Ann Mah. 

Photo above, filming at beautiful Malmaison. I've put more photos on flickr: here, here and here.