Susan Henderson's Blog, page 6

Question of the Month: Books You’ve Read Multiple Times

I used to not understand why you’d read a book more than once. But I do it now. These are books I’ve read more than twice: They Came Like Swallows (William Maxwell), Leaf Storm (Gabriel Garcia Marquez), Cane (Jean Toomer), Wuthering Heights, Tim O’Brien, Shirley Jackson, The Body (Stephen King).

Question of the Month: Big Picture Edits

How are you with feedback? Do edits on your writing leave you feeling crushed or excited? Defensive or freed up to look at something from new angles and with new life?

My agent is now the one and only person who has read my new manuscript, and while I was braced for criticism, I found, as I usually do, the whole process of feedback and big picture edits to be hugely fun and creative. Part of what I love best about getting his feedback is that he’s not a soft editor. He’s not afraid to kick the legs out from under the table and give me ideas that might require re-thinking the entire shape of the work.

But, bless him, he always begins with the strengths, or what creates the bedrock of the story for him—in this case, the world of the story (“It’s a spectacularly drawn landscape—physically and emotionally.”), the main character (“I love her and the way she interacts with dead bodies.”),  and two key characters (“Their relationship, their history, their rootedness to the town, each other, and the main character are perfect.”). This all helps build my confidence and my sense of what’s working.

But the important part for me is what comes next—What’s not working for him? Where and how can I make this book better? And so we spent a lot of time talking about the story’s villain (“His personality is too outsized for the story. He overwhelms the landscape. He’s not sympathetic.”) My villain, as he helped me to understand, is kind of like a Marvel Comic Book supervillain trying to fit into a Carson McCullers story. And so we talked about this character and why he doesn’t seem to fit, and how this problem creates other problems with my plot and my main character.

I have pages of notes from our talk—notes of what I can explore more deeply, where I should slow down, and all kinds of tangents and questions and challenges. This is all thrilling to me! My mind feels on fire, re-imagining my story with these new questions in mind and this new blast of energy.

And here’s the thing… I wouldn’t have thought of any of these things. If I took two more years to edit this book, I would peck away at the sentences and trail off into interesting quirks and backstories, but I wouldn’t have taken this turn. While I sensed there was something I couldn’t put my finger on that the book was lacking, I didn’t realize how much of it radiated from a villain who isn’t organic to this setting.

Getting feedback that inspires (rather than crushes or stunts or angers) takes having the right reader. And it takes trust. Trust that you and your early-reader can both take risks, be open to wild brainstorming, try out ideas that may fail spectacularly. I am grateful to have this kind of supportive but challenging feedback and psyched to get back to work. I can’t even slow down the new ideas, they’re coming in such a rush!

So talk to me. Tell me your experience with edits and editors, the good and the bad!

Let me close with some thank you’s: to June Sundet (The June Blog) and camillaho for kind words about UP FROM THE BLUE, to the chaperones on my sons’ AllStar tour for offering such love and care to the kids, and to the parents of MIT students who reached out to me to offer help and friendship for the journey that lies ahead.

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P.S. I had posted this a month or two ago on FaceBook but I thought I’d post it here, as well. It’s that important to me. I know I’m a little unusual in the way I use FaceBook and email, but for me, private messages are solely for my family and people directly involved with publishing my work. Everything else, including congratulations, questions about the business, requests for help, condolences, small talk and deep talk, belong in the public domain (in comment threads on my FaceBook wall or here at LitPark). I can’t keep up with all these many ways for people to reach me, and it causes me more stress than you could possibly know.

Here is how I said it on FaceBook:

A note about how I use FaceBook: I don’t read or respond to private messages. I do, however, enjoy interacting with everyone in the comments sections on my page. If you need to contact me for any professional reasons (interviews, blurbs, etc.), please go through my literary agent at Writer’s House. Thanks!

Question of the Month: Childhood Obsessions

What were you obsessed with as a child?

Part of what I loved about writing my new book was delving into old obsessions. When I was in elementary school, I loved looking through my mom’s nursing books with the often gruesome drawings of deformities and diseases. Sometimes, she took me to her nursing classrooms, where I remembered looking at human fetuses in jars and stacks of stiff cats in clear plastic bags.

When I was in middle school, I became obsessed with one of the authors on my mother’s bookshelf, Richard Selzer, who made surgery seem like poetry. I loved to read about the instruments, the cuts, the problems that couldn’t be fixed, the torment and wisdom of both doctor and patient.

All the while, my father would talk to me about the work he and his colleagues did at DARPA, the Pentagon, and the various colleges and institutions where he consulted. He told me about ARPANET, missiles, microchips, robots that tried to balance on one leg, digital speech, computers that might one day think, unmanned vehicles, robots that could go into dangerous places and try to fix the damage.

When I applied to college, I fully expected that I would one day be a biomedical engineer, something that combined so much of what had been swirling around me and piquing my interest for years. But after discovering the shock of my own limited brain and hopping through a handful of majors, I realized it was the stories of these things that fascinated me, not the idea of doing them myself.

As I stared at the blank page and wondered what my second book would be about, I found myself wandering back to these early obsessions with surgery and with the minds of inventors moving beyond what was known or what was even likely to be successful. I went back and read Richard Selzer’s books and found him even more fantastic than my memories (that doesn’t happen very often!) and suddenly, in fiction, I was able to go where I had failed in real life.

I will leave my story there for now. I’m still waiting to hear from my agent on the manuscript and looking forward to (and also fearing) his response. I know many of you know the feeling!

Okay, your turn. Let’s hear your stories of childhood obsessions, and which ones are still alive in you today?

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Some thank you’s: The Writer magazine, for including my thoughts in the July and August issues, and De Woordenregen.

Question of the Month: Catch-Up Time (and some exciting Book and College news!)

I’ve been away for a while so I’d love to catch up a little. How are you? What’s happening in your world these days?

I’m thrilled to say that after a month in Winnett, Montana, I finished the new book and have sent it on to my agent. He will be the first to read any part of it, so there’s always the butterflies in the stomach, the fear of being crushed, but also the excitement that he’ll take something important to me and show me ways to make it better.

A little about my trip… at the end of March, I flew to Missoula, Montana, where my brother lives, stayed over night at his place and caught up over wine and risotto. The next morning, we made the 6-hour drive to Winnett, a town of 181 people in Central Montana where where my father, uncles, and grandparents used to live, and where I’ve very-fictionally set my book.

My hope was that being in this small town would awaken all my senses and emotions during my final edits and ignite a physicality that seemed to be absent from my book. And, oh man, did it ever! I walked through and around town several times a day, looking, listening, smelling, touching.  The trip was envigorating, lonely, claustrophobic, inspiring.

If you’re my friend on FaceBook, you can see a whole lot of pictures of this trip, from my family cemetery to the mid-April snow to the newborn calf someone drove around in his truck to keep it from freezing. I will be sharing more about the trip and the book over the next few months, but I don’t want to make this post too long, so I’ll stop here for now.

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In other news, I am so, so happy to report that after a long, nerve-wracking wait, my 17-year-old has now heard back from all of the colleges he’s applied to, and he’s made a decision about where he’ll attend in the fall. His choice: M.I.T.

I am full of joy, relief, and gratitude that he’s able to go somewhere that is such a profoundly good fit for him. M.I.T., by the way, sends their good news in a tube rather than an envelope, and then they encourage the students to hack the tube. My son made his into a working stylophone.

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Some thank you’s for reviews and links: The Never Dusty Bookshelf, Fru Elde – En dag i mitt liv, Convertiv, Jocosa’s Bookshelf, Bethany Duvall, Crystal Clear As Mud, Well Read Westhampton, De Woordenregen, Laila’s Leseblogg, the Wesleyan University Community Blog, and something that made me cry at Juliet DeWal’s In Spite of All the Damage. Also, thank you to Emily Rapp for writing the beautiful non-fiction book, The Still Point of the Turning World, which I reviewed here at Great New Books.

Beautiful day so I’m going to get outside and walk!

Question of the Month: On Location

Tell me what it would be like if you spent some significant time in the setting of your current work-in-progress.

Because that’s what my plan is. I’m headed here to do the final edits on my book. Population: 181. That’s the sign to the hotel where I’ll be staying, and they do not take credit cards, I just discovered, but said they could give me a room with a table in it if I paid for the deluxe suite. Oh, yes, I will splurge for a table!

LitPark is on hiatus until the book is done, and then I’ll have so, so much to share! Be well, everyone!

Oh wait! Can’t leave without saying some thank you’s: Just Jenny, Feeding the Brain and the Body, howaboutabook, Med Bok og Palett, and to everyone who has ever written an Amazon review for my book because it’s a generous thing to do. Okay, see you on the other side of this adventure!

Question of the Month: Favorites

What are some of your favorite books of all time? And what is it about those books that you love?

For me, my absolute favorites include Albert Camus’ The Plague, Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, William Maxwell’s They Came Like Swallows, James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain ( I couldn’t find the right size cover for that one so picked another I love), Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle, John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, and yes, A.A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh.

I love these books for big and small reasons–for the dark journey or circumstances that brings the hero’s heart into conflict with itself, for the glimpses of light and dark in the world, for the experience of fully inhabiting both delicate and hardened minds, and for the poetry of individual sentences. (Okay, there’s nothing really so dark about Winnie the Pooh, but it’s some of the most amazing writing I know.)

Besides my all-time favorites, I also have a voracious appetite for gothic stories with Byronic characters facing big moral dilemmas: Frankenstein, Wuthering Heights, Dracula, and pretty much every Shirley Jackson story. Which leads me to the book I’m working on right now. My first novel was the one I needed to write. This time, I’m trying to write the novel I’ve always wanted to read.

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A quick interlude… here are my kids (on keys and guitar) and their two best friends playing jazz over the weekend. It was such a great show, and it’s such a great friendship to watch.

I’m grateful to all who blogged about my book this past month: Girlfriends Book Club, Cure for Crankiness, Cure, part 2, A Design So Vast, Jocosa’s Bookshelf,Daisy’s Book Journal, Storybook Careers, and my books, my life.

Okay, enough from me. Let’s hear about some of your all-time favorites!

Question of the Month: Renewal

Have you been able to use your winter vacation to rest ? If so, tell me what you did to recharge your battery. And if you find holidays more stressful than relaxing, tell me how you plan to recover so you can go strong into the new year.

Mr. H, the boys and I spent a week with family in Dolores, Colorado, a town of 800 people and one paved road. It was great to be together with no distractions, no lessons or activities competing for their time. There were games (Magic Cards, Ankh-Morpork, Fluxx, Munchkin), long walks in the snow, a day skiing at Telluride, and homecooked meals (everything from posole to spinach saag and dahl, to roast beef and Yorkshire pudding).

It felt great to recharge! I’m looking forward to carrying a renewed sense of energy into the new year. I plan on eating healthier foods (but without obsessing over calories or portions) and continuing my daily exercising (but making it more cardio-focused). Basically tweaking things that are already habits to make sure my time is better spent and I’m enjoying each day. And I’m going to finish the new book in 2013. I promise I’ll talk about it in more detail soon, but I can say I’m fully engaged in the writing and editing, and I’m having so much fun this time around!

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Some thank you’s: My Novel Thoughts, Bethany Duvall, Jessica Vealitzek, Writer’s Digest, Cure for Crankiness, med bok og palett, BookMovement, Fingers and Prose.

Oh, I published an essay about book clubs at both BookReporter and ReadingGroupGuides.com. Enjoy! And then come back here and hang out a little while!

Question of the Month: Drafts

Tell me about your editing process, and where are you in your current project?

In May, I completed what I called a first draft of my new book—that initial dump of all of my ideas that resembled the shape and length of a novel.

Since then, I’ve been structuring, cutting, moving, shaping, developing themes and emotional layers, adding and subtracting characters, simplifying some things and complicating others, panning in, panning out, balancing the length and pace of the chapters. All the while, I’m reading, reading, reading to train my ear, to keep the bar high: Camus, Baldwin, Steinbeck, Brontë, Gaiman, Stoker, Irving, Wharton, Dickens, McCullers. I’m nearly done with this second draft, and I like what I see.

Though I’m close to my next milestone, I still haven’t, and won’t, show my manuscript to a single soul. I’m enjoying this time of creating and dreaming alone. I love marking up a chapter, editing it until all the marks are cleaned up, and then starting again. I imagine two more drafts before I send it to my agent for feedback—the third draft where I pay attention to the individual sentences, concentrating on language, imagery, and rhythm; and the fourth where I spend a few weeks living in the town that inspired my setting. (More on that later. No reason to go on about the fourth step when I still need to nail the second.)

So how about you? Want to say where you are in your current project or anything about your process? I’d love to see how you work.

In other news, I’m interviewed at length in a new book written by Chuck Sambuchino and published by Writer’s Digest Books. CREATE YOUR WRITER PLATFORM is an incredibly fascinating and helpful book about how the publishing industry has changed and how writers can best adjust to the new expectations. I found myself underlining and dog-earing lots of advice, and there’s enough diversity of styles in the book to suit different personality types. I particularly like the interviews with Cal Newport and Lissa Rankin. Definitely worth picking up!

I’ll close with some thank you’s: Suder Blog, Esmee-Jacobs, Girl Called Beloved, Rhody Reader, True STORIES, Bitch Media, and The New York Times. I appreciate the press!

Question of the Month: Divided Attention

Tell me about something in your life that keeps you from giving your all to your current writing project.

This month, my manuscript took a back seat to my 16-year-old’s college application. He’s applying early to his first choice school, and on top of the time-consuming nature of applications—and having to balance them with a full course load of regular school work and outside activities—I was seeing him grapple with something I know all too well: self-doubt. How can I capture who I am on a piece of paper? What if I put every ounce of who I am into this thing, and it’s not good enough? What if I’ve misjudged my abilities and I don’t get into any college at all?

The good news is that this early application is now done, and I think he’ll be a strong candidate, though I understand the odds at these top schools. My son is hoping to study theoretical math in college, and luckily, they allow multi-media supplements to the application, where kids can communicate what doesn’t fit as easily into words.

Here is how he told the story of his crazy Moog project that’s made such a mess of his room and our basement:

And here are two examples of different keyboard playing styles (first ELP’s Tarkus, and then Deep Purple’s Lazy) which he needed to submit in order to take electives in the music department:

I know I set aside my own work again and again to tend to my son’s project and the emotions that came with it. But I wouldn’t have it any other way. The period of childhood is precious and brief, and I want to be fully engaged in it. For all of you whose children are in this same process, much luck to you. And for you writers who know rejection and self-doubt so very well, much love.

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Some thank you’s for the links and press this month: Huffington Post, Ragnh, the Star Tribune, Great New Books, and People Magazine. Hope you’re all enjoying fall (my favorite season!), and I’m looking forward to hearing your stories.

Question of the Month: Anniversary

Tell me about an anniversary you’re coming up on. It could be a time for celebration, mourning or reflection.

A year ago this month, I started writing my new novel. I learned so many lessons from the first book, and if there’s anything I can truly say I’m good at it’s learning from my mistakes and not being afraid to change course. So what guides me this time?

First, I have a road map. Driving blind may have been the right process for my first book, but this time I have a stronger sense of my journey. I think of it this way… Say I plan to drive from my house in NY to my friend’s house in San Diego. It feels sensible to know the main roads, the shortest routes, and to sketch out some places I’d like to stop at along the way. Driving blind may get me there, but the map gives me more of a guarantee, and it will save a lot of energy, not just on gas but on the driver’s stamina. Having a map won’t keep me from experiencing surprises on the road—something out the window may catch my eye, there may be an unexpected forest fire that forces me to re-route or pick up an injured passenger. In fact, the most memorable parts of the trip are likely to be the ones I can’t anticipate, and the meaning I reach at my journey’s end may be quite different than anything I originally set out to find.

Second, I’m enjoying the process, each phase of it, however long it takes. My emphasis the first time around was too often on the final product—Will it sell? Will others like it? This time I’m not interested in getting ahead of myself. Right now, I’m in most private and creative part of the process, and I’m in no hurry to involve others. Each morning I get to my office, I’m struck again how lucky I am to call this my career, and  how much I learn by wandering around the fictional worlds I create.

And finally, I am determined to have balance this time. I’m eating healthy, I’m exercising, I’m giving my eyes a break, I’m getting fresh air, and I’m enjoying my family, who can interrupt me at any time because they know they are my priority over my work.

I’m really happy with the process this time, and I’m trying my hardest to write the book I’ve always wanted to read. It’s such a welcome difference from the torment I lived through with my first. But enough of my anniversary. I want to hear about yours. Tell me your story.

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Many thank you’s for links and press this past month: Steph the Bookworm, The New Yorker, Women’s Fiction Writers, Bokkarete, Fairfield University, Sara’s Organized Chaos, Remote Appeal, What a Feeling, Twylah, The Brain and Body, Bokverdami, 2251 Wall St, TwitTVivo, Gossip Pirate, Remote Appeal, and the American Library Association.