Diane Chamberlain's Blog, page 33
April 14, 2010
Caring About Strangers
I love the Internet for so many reasons. It makes researching a book so much easier than it used to be. I can be in touch with experts in minutes. I can Google absolutely anything. I can chat with old friends. But one of the most fascinating facets of the Internet is our ability to connect with strangers.
My work-in-progress, The Midwife’s Confession, has a character with leukemia. She doesn’t have a central role, but she’s important. To understand her and her family better and to educate myself to her medical treatment, I began reading the many blogs about children with leukemia. I finished that research about a month ago, but there was one blog I’d stumbled across that I’m still reading. That’s because I came to care about the girl at its center. She and her family don’t know me and I don’t know them, but every day I check her blog for news about her, praying that it’s good. I worry about her and I marvel–absolutely marvel–at her strength and that of her family. Where do people find such courage and endurance? Her family is loaded with love and that comes through in every post.
I realize that’s what I write about in my stories: love and courage. I saw so much love and courage in my former career as a medical social worker and psychotherapist and it inspires every story I tell. But this post is not about my books. It’s about our ability to connect with people we don’t know. To care about them and worry about them and imagine ourselves in their shoes. The Internet can be a place filled with negativity–porn, kids bullying other kids, scams, identity theft. But it can also be a place filled with compassion, education and connections between strangers. My character will be all right, and I want the same outcome for the little girl who teaches me every day that we’re all in this together.
My work-in-progress, The Midwife’s Confession, has a character with leukemia. She doesn’t have a central role, but she’s important. To understand her and her family better and to educate myself to her medical treatment, I began reading the many blogs about children with leukemia. I finished that research about a month ago, but there was one blog I’d stumbled across that I’m still reading. That’s because I came to care about the girl at its center. She and her family don’t know me and I don’t know them, but every day I check her blog for news about her, praying that it’s good. I worry about her and I marvel–absolutely marvel–at her strength and that of her family. Where do people find such courage and endurance? Her family is loaded with love and that comes through in every post.
I realize that’s what I write about in my stories: love and courage. I saw so much love and courage in my former career as a medical social worker and psychotherapist and it inspires every story I tell. But this post is not about my books. It’s about our ability to connect with people we don’t know. To care about them and worry about them and imagine ourselves in their shoes. The Internet can be a place filled with negativity–porn, kids bullying other kids, scams, identity theft. But it can also be a place filled with compassion, education and connections between strangers. My character will be all right, and I want the same outcome for the little girl who teaches me every day that we’re all in this together.
April 12, 2010
Sometimes Change is Good
If you had a chance to change something you created a decade ago, would you take it? I have that opportunity as some of my older books are being reissued, and since I’ve been asked if the reissued books are identical to the originals, I thought I’d talk about that here. The truth is, it varies from book to book.
I didn’t change The Courage Tree at all, so if you find an old copy somewhere, the story should be identical to the reissue. In Breaking the Silence, though, I made a small but significant change that I believe heightens the suspense and makes the outcome more suprising. A reader’s experience will be different if she reads the original vs the reissue. I did no updating of the story itself, though, because the CIA Mind Control Experiments drive everything that happens. Since those experiments really took place, I needed to stick to specific dates in the book.
Summer’s Child, which was just released, has minimal changes. I did update the story a bit so that the styles of clothing, cars, etc, aren’t jarring to the reader.
Right now, I’m rereading Cypress Point to see what I want to change and I’m playing with this one a bit more than the others. First, I have to say I adore this book as much as I did when I wrote it. It’s an intriguing, twisty, and throught-provoking story, if I do say myself. So what am I changing? Maybe I shouldn’t admit this, but what the heck: as I read Cypress Point, I find that something relatively minor about one of the characters is really bugging me and I plan to “fix” that person. It seems so strange to tamper with a character who’s existed in one form for so long, but it also feels great to be able to make the book better. When I wrote Cypress Point, I was perfectly happy with the character, so what’s changed? Me. And my writing. This character needs some tweaking to bring him or her (not giving the identity away!) up to my 2010 standards. I believe it makes the character more believable and more sympathetic. There’s something else I’m altering, and that’s a love scene. Too graphic for my current taste. So if you love a steamier scene, you might want to stick with the original version!
If you’ve followed my blog for a while, you know my publisher wants to change the title of Cypress Point. I had strong reservations about this and I know some of my readers still do. I hope you can get past it because I finally have. My editor came up with a title I adore: The Shadow Wife. It fits the story incredibly well, and I’ll do everything in my power to be sure my readers know that it was previously published under a different title.
And finally, the original Cypress Point cover has always been one of my least favorites and I can’t wait to see what my publisher comes up with for the reissue.
So how about you? Do you wish you had a do-over on work you did ten years ago?
I didn’t change The Courage Tree at all, so if you find an old copy somewhere, the story should be identical to the reissue. In Breaking the Silence, though, I made a small but significant change that I believe heightens the suspense and makes the outcome more suprising. A reader’s experience will be different if she reads the original vs the reissue. I did no updating of the story itself, though, because the CIA Mind Control Experiments drive everything that happens. Since those experiments really took place, I needed to stick to specific dates in the book.
Summer’s Child, which was just released, has minimal changes. I did update the story a bit so that the styles of clothing, cars, etc, aren’t jarring to the reader.
Right now, I’m rereading Cypress Point to see what I want to change and I’m playing with this one a bit more than the others. First, I have to say I adore this book as much as I did when I wrote it. It’s an intriguing, twisty, and throught-provoking story, if I do say myself. So what am I changing? Maybe I shouldn’t admit this, but what the heck: as I read Cypress Point, I find that something relatively minor about one of the characters is really bugging me and I plan to “fix” that person. It seems so strange to tamper with a character who’s existed in one form for so long, but it also feels great to be able to make the book better. When I wrote Cypress Point, I was perfectly happy with the character, so what’s changed? Me. And my writing. This character needs some tweaking to bring him or her (not giving the identity away!) up to my 2010 standards. I believe it makes the character more believable and more sympathetic. There’s something else I’m altering, and that’s a love scene. Too graphic for my current taste. So if you love a steamier scene, you might want to stick with the original version!
If you’ve followed my blog for a while, you know my publisher wants to change the title of Cypress Point. I had strong reservations about this and I know some of my readers still do. I hope you can get past it because I finally have. My editor came up with a title I adore: The Shadow Wife. It fits the story incredibly well, and I’ll do everything in my power to be sure my readers know that it was previously published under a different title.
And finally, the original Cypress Point cover has always been one of my least favorites and I can’t wait to see what my publisher comes up with for the reissue.
So how about you? Do you wish you had a do-over on work you did ten years ago?
April 7, 2010
I Honestly Don’t Know How I Wrote that First Book!
I’m not talking about how hard it was to come up with the idea; that had been rolling around in my mind since I was twelve. I’m not talking about the challenge of structuring the story; I made it simple and told it in chronological order. I’m not talking about creating believable characters; I’d known them in my imagination for years and they were very real to me. I’m talking about the fact that I wrote that book, the first draft of which was over 700 pages, on a typewriter. How did I ever do that?
Imagine not being able to simply delete a typo. Not being able to move sentences and paragraphs around on a page. Or change a character’s name. Or add a cool subplot that you think of around page 300 but which requires loads of foreshadowing. “Saving” in the dark ages meant putting your manuscript in the freezer, since that was the one place you could be pretty sure it wouldn’t burn if the house caught fire. “Copying” meant putting a sheet of carbon paper between your sheets of typing paper and/or standing over the Xerox machine at your local copy center for hours. I know I’m really showing my age here. I finished my first book, Private Relations, in 1985, which is also when I bought my first dinosaur of a computer. I typed the whole book over again (onto a floppy drive) and thought I’d died and gone to heaven.
Sometimes I wonder how my writing would be different now if I couldn’t do it on a computer. I wouldn’t be turning out a book every nine months or so, that much is certain. I love being able to rearrange my chapters on a whim, go back and add details as my research nets me new information, and audition new character names whenever I like. (I remember changing one character’s name in that first book. I had to be sure I picked another name with the same number of letters so that when I replaced her name with the new one, it wouldn’t change the pagination of the entire document.)
We twenty-first century writers are a lucky lot! I’m going to give my computer a big kiss now and say good night.
Imagine not being able to simply delete a typo. Not being able to move sentences and paragraphs around on a page. Or change a character’s name. Or add a cool subplot that you think of around page 300 but which requires loads of foreshadowing. “Saving” in the dark ages meant putting your manuscript in the freezer, since that was the one place you could be pretty sure it wouldn’t burn if the house caught fire. “Copying” meant putting a sheet of carbon paper between your sheets of typing paper and/or standing over the Xerox machine at your local copy center for hours. I know I’m really showing my age here. I finished my first book, Private Relations, in 1985, which is also when I bought my first dinosaur of a computer. I typed the whole book over again (onto a floppy drive) and thought I’d died and gone to heaven.
Sometimes I wonder how my writing would be different now if I couldn’t do it on a computer. I wouldn’t be turning out a book every nine months or so, that much is certain. I love being able to rearrange my chapters on a whim, go back and add details as my research nets me new information, and audition new character names whenever I like. (I remember changing one character’s name in that first book. I had to be sure I picked another name with the same number of letters so that when I replaced her name with the new one, it wouldn’t change the pagination of the entire document.)
We twenty-first century writers are a lucky lot! I’m going to give my computer a big kiss now and say good night.
April 5, 2010
Pre-Release Peek at The Lies We Told Video!
I know I should wait until The Lies We Told is available before sharing the video with the world, but I love it so much I can’t wait! I’ll tuck it away after this blog post and bring it back when the book is released, but I thought you might enjoy hearing how John and I created it, thus my excuse for this blog.
Book videos are hard to make. Movie trailers are easy (by comparison) because movies are visual and you can simply take carefully selected scenes from the film. You don’t have that luxury with books. It’s tempting in making a book video to try to interpret the story literally, using narrative either typed on the screen or in a voice over. She was beautiful and good hearted. (Cue image of beautiful, good-hearted woman). Until the night He appeared. (Image of scary looking but very handsome dude. With a couple of tattoos. Nice ones). On that night (Image of dark night, clouds drifting across a crescent moon) her young brother disappeared. (Image of young boy slowly fading to black).
Okay, they’re not all that cheesy, but you get the idea. They’re hard to do. I like my two previous trailers, one for Before the Storm and its sequel, Secrets She Left Behind, but I think I like this new one best. In my opinion, it gives the feeling of the book and the central themes (our family stories are not always what they seem and the powerful relationship between sisters) without actually trying to tell the viewer the story.
We toyed with a bunch of approaches to the story, which is about two sisters working for a Doctors Without Borders type of organization after a hurricane demolishes Wilmington, North Carolina. We pulled stock images of hurricane destruction, helicopters (a helicopter crashes in the story), doctors (yawn), and all sorts of other photographs. Then I came up with the idea of using the first page of the book (if any of you have an ARC–Advanced Reading Copy–the first page is missing, so don’t bother looking for it!). Even though I’m no professional narrator, we decided I’d do the reading. We added a sentence to help the viewer understand a bit better what’s going on. I recorded the narration about ten million times with long gaps between each sentence so that John could use the best take of each one.
Then we began pulling stock images and video to fit the narrative. John found most of them. I think my favorite is Rebecca. Whoa, did he ever find the right clip for that woman! John put together the rough cut and we reviewed it and made a couple of changes. Then he assembled the finished program, and voila! Here it is.
I hope you enjoy it and look forward to your thoughts.
Book videos are hard to make. Movie trailers are easy (by comparison) because movies are visual and you can simply take carefully selected scenes from the film. You don’t have that luxury with books. It’s tempting in making a book video to try to interpret the story literally, using narrative either typed on the screen or in a voice over. She was beautiful and good hearted. (Cue image of beautiful, good-hearted woman). Until the night He appeared. (Image of scary looking but very handsome dude. With a couple of tattoos. Nice ones). On that night (Image of dark night, clouds drifting across a crescent moon) her young brother disappeared. (Image of young boy slowly fading to black).
Okay, they’re not all that cheesy, but you get the idea. They’re hard to do. I like my two previous trailers, one for Before the Storm and its sequel, Secrets She Left Behind, but I think I like this new one best. In my opinion, it gives the feeling of the book and the central themes (our family stories are not always what they seem and the powerful relationship between sisters) without actually trying to tell the viewer the story.
We toyed with a bunch of approaches to the story, which is about two sisters working for a Doctors Without Borders type of organization after a hurricane demolishes Wilmington, North Carolina. We pulled stock images of hurricane destruction, helicopters (a helicopter crashes in the story), doctors (yawn), and all sorts of other photographs. Then I came up with the idea of using the first page of the book (if any of you have an ARC–Advanced Reading Copy–the first page is missing, so don’t bother looking for it!). Even though I’m no professional narrator, we decided I’d do the reading. We added a sentence to help the viewer understand a bit better what’s going on. I recorded the narration about ten million times with long gaps between each sentence so that John could use the best take of each one.
Then we began pulling stock images and video to fit the narrative. John found most of them. I think my favorite is Rebecca. Whoa, did he ever find the right clip for that woman! John put together the rough cut and we reviewed it and made a couple of changes. Then he assembled the finished program, and voila! Here it is.
I hope you enjoy it and look forward to your thoughts.
March 28, 2010
Sam-I-Am
Is your name Sam? Probably not. Neither is mine. Neither are six of the seven major characters in my work-in-progress, The Midwife’s Confession. But last night, my Word program suddenly decided that if the name Sam was good enough for the guy who really is named Sam in the story, well then, it’s good enough for everyone else, too! While Word was at it, it also decided that the town of Wilmington, North Carolina should be named Sam. Also, the fictional Hunter High School. And the fictional babies-in-need program I’d dubbed Stork Village? Word thought the name SamSam sounded much better.
But wait! There’s more! Like many of my high school English teachers, Word didn’t think I should begin any sentences with the word “but”, which I’m afraid I do all the time, so to punish me, it decided all capitalized buts should also be named Sam.
Yes, this is how I spent last night. I was happily working on a scene when I noticed that I seemed to have written the name Sam instead of the name Shannon. I scrolled back and discovered that somehow, all my Shannons had been changed to Sam. Very weird, I thought, but I could deal with it. I would simply do a “find and replace” function to carefully select the Sams that needed to be replaced with Shannon.
That’s when I discovered the terrible truth. Shannon, Noelle, Emerson, Ryan Ann, Tara and Anna–all of them were now Sam. Wilmington, But, Hunter — all Sam. Stork Village — SamSam.
What to do? I back up my documents religiously and in many different ways (thumb drive, Dropbox.com, emailing them to myself, etc), and I have Word set to save every single minute that I’m working. But my last backed up copy had been from an hour earlier and I’d written a ton in that hour, so I decided I would simply have to change the Sams back to their original monikers. If I had this to do over again, I probably would surrender and go back to an earlier version, because the path I chose took nearly two hours of utter torture.
What to do with a sentence like the following? “What?” Sam asked, and Sam and Sam both leaned across the table toward Sam. That ripping sound you heard last night was me tearing my hair out!
The problem is solved only for the moment. I don’t know what caused it (a friend believes it’s a virus in the Word program itself, not in my computer which appears to be clean) and I don’t know how to fix it. Knock on wood, it’s behaved itself so far today, but to say I’m a little nervous about what might happen next is an understatment.
In the meantime, I’m thinking of changing Sam’s name. I’d like to never read that word again.
But wait! There’s more! Like many of my high school English teachers, Word didn’t think I should begin any sentences with the word “but”, which I’m afraid I do all the time, so to punish me, it decided all capitalized buts should also be named Sam.
Yes, this is how I spent last night. I was happily working on a scene when I noticed that I seemed to have written the name Sam instead of the name Shannon. I scrolled back and discovered that somehow, all my Shannons had been changed to Sam. Very weird, I thought, but I could deal with it. I would simply do a “find and replace” function to carefully select the Sams that needed to be replaced with Shannon.
That’s when I discovered the terrible truth. Shannon, Noelle, Emerson, Ryan Ann, Tara and Anna–all of them were now Sam. Wilmington, But, Hunter — all Sam. Stork Village — SamSam.
What to do? I back up my documents religiously and in many different ways (thumb drive, Dropbox.com, emailing them to myself, etc), and I have Word set to save every single minute that I’m working. But my last backed up copy had been from an hour earlier and I’d written a ton in that hour, so I decided I would simply have to change the Sams back to their original monikers. If I had this to do over again, I probably would surrender and go back to an earlier version, because the path I chose took nearly two hours of utter torture.
What to do with a sentence like the following? “What?” Sam asked, and Sam and Sam both leaned across the table toward Sam. That ripping sound you heard last night was me tearing my hair out!
The problem is solved only for the moment. I don’t know what caused it (a friend believes it’s a virus in the Word program itself, not in my computer which appears to be clean) and I don’t know how to fix it. Knock on wood, it’s behaved itself so far today, but to say I’m a little nervous about what might happen next is an understatment.
In the meantime, I’m thinking of changing Sam’s name. I’d like to never read that word again.
My Life Right Now
Well, first of all, it’s very good! My life, I’m talking about. Spring is here, I feel great, I’m working out and have discovered muscles I haven’t seen in about fifteen years, I’ve got a super family and wonderful friends, two goofy happy dogs, and an ever-expanding legion of readers who appreciate my books. It’s all good.
But my life is also out of balance right now, as it always is this close to deadline. I don’t care. I’m having a great time rewriting The Midwife’s Confession, but my blog readers are going to have to hear me blather on about how crazy everything is from now until my May 1st deadline. Hope you don’t mind.
Here’s how my life is different now than the usual: I get up about an hour earlier and I skip reading the paper (Oh, I hate not getting to read the paper!). I take my early draft of TMC to Starbucks and go over the next few chapters with a red pen, making quite dramatic changes at this point. I go back through my plant list to see what I need to add to the new draft. I’ve made some serious character and point of view changes and have to add all of them. And I have to pretty up the writing, which is extraodinarily rough in my early draft. Around noon, I go to the gym to be a good girl. Then I go home to the computer and start putting in the changes I came up with at Starbucks. I do a lot of rewriting at the computer and I can easily spend an hour on a single paragraph. I stop for dinner, which I usually cook (ahem…), then it’s back to the computer. In the non-deadline days, John and I usually watch movies in the evening, but he’s on his own for now.
In addition to writing, I’m working with John on the video for The Lies We Told, with my assistant on my next e-newsletter (sign up on my mailing list to receive it if you haven’t already), with my publicists on events, and rereading Cypress Point to prepare it for its November re-issue.
As deadline gets closer, I’ll be going to bed later and getting up earlier and probably be having lots of bad dreams. But back in the good news department, I love the book! Whew. I never know till I get close to the end how it’s going to turn out, so that’s a relief.
So, tell me about your lives. Let me experience your normal lives vicariously, please. What are you up to these days?
http://www.dianechamberlain.com/blog/...
But my life is also out of balance right now, as it always is this close to deadline. I don’t care. I’m having a great time rewriting The Midwife’s Confession, but my blog readers are going to have to hear me blather on about how crazy everything is from now until my May 1st deadline. Hope you don’t mind.
Here’s how my life is different now than the usual: I get up about an hour earlier and I skip reading the paper (Oh, I hate not getting to read the paper!). I take my early draft of TMC to Starbucks and go over the next few chapters with a red pen, making quite dramatic changes at this point. I go back through my plant list to see what I need to add to the new draft. I’ve made some serious character and point of view changes and have to add all of them. And I have to pretty up the writing, which is extraodinarily rough in my early draft. Around noon, I go to the gym to be a good girl. Then I go home to the computer and start putting in the changes I came up with at Starbucks. I do a lot of rewriting at the computer and I can easily spend an hour on a single paragraph. I stop for dinner, which I usually cook (ahem…), then it’s back to the computer. In the non-deadline days, John and I usually watch movies in the evening, but he’s on his own for now.
In addition to writing, I’m working with John on the video for The Lies We Told, with my assistant on my next e-newsletter (sign up on my mailing list to receive it if you haven’t already), with my publicists on events, and rereading Cypress Point to prepare it for its November re-issue.
As deadline gets closer, I’ll be going to bed later and getting up earlier and probably be having lots of bad dreams. But back in the good news department, I love the book! Whew. I never know till I get close to the end how it’s going to turn out, so that’s a relief.
So, tell me about your lives. Let me experience your normal lives vicariously, please. What are you up to these days?
http://www.dianechamberlain.com/blog/...
March 24, 2010
Head Hopping
Six weeks from the deadline for The Midwife’s Confession, I’m doing some deep thinking about whose head I’m in. One of the most important things a writer must decide when starting a novel is point-of-view. Will the story be told from an ominiscient perspective in which the narrator knows everything? Or will one character alone tell the story? Perhaps several characters will share what they know with the reader. Will the character tell her tale in first person (”I spotted the owl as I stepped onto the deck”) or third person (”She spotted the owl as she stepped onto the deck”)? Or will the writer mix and match these narrative voices, something that must be done with extraordinary care to avoid jarring or worse–confusing–the reader.
I just finished reading a book in which the author head hopped from character to character within the same paragraph. There’s no law that says you can’t do this, and I’ve read the rare book in which it worked. By that I mean, I barely noticed. But in this particular book, I found myself thinking, Huh? Whose head am I in?? I don’t want my readers ever to ask that question. Still, I often use some challenging approaches to point-of-view when I think the story will be best served through my choice.
In two of my most recent books, Before the Storm and Secrets She Left Behind, I wrote from four first-person points-of-view. Let me tell you, that wasn’t easy! It was crucial that each voice was unique to that particular character. In The Lies We Told, coming out in late May, I do something a little different. The story is told from the points of view of two sisters, Maya and Rebecca. Maya’s chapters are told in first person and Rebecca’s in third. I did that because I felt that Maya’s story was more significant and I wanted the reader to feel closer to her.
I liked that approach so much that I decided to use it as I wrote The Midwife’s Confession as well. I gave one of the characters, Tara, the first person role and three other characters third person. I wrote the entire first draft that way . . . but I had a lot of trouble doing so for two reasons: the other characters kept slipping into first person as I wrote, and as the story unfolded, it became clear that Tara’s story was not more important than those of the other characters. So I am now giving them a more equal voice in the rewrite. I won’t pretend that changing several hundred pages of first person to third is fun (it’s not!), but it’s the right thing to do for the story. By the way, making that switch is far more complex than changing “she” to “I” and “her” to “my”. When I write in first person, I feel instantly closer to the character and that closeness is reflected in how the character thinks and feels. Changing point of view changes everything.
The challenge of maintaining separate voices that I dealt with in Before the Storm and Secrets She Left Behind is even bigger in The Midwife’s Confession because all four points of view are female and three of those women are around forty years old. Think of three middle class women you know of a similar age. They probably “sound” very much alike. Giving them their true and separate voices is tough. I see the differences in them because I know them so well, but I want my reader to be able to open the book to one of the chapters and know whose head she’s in. Not easy. And that’s why I’m going to end this blog post here and get back to work!
http://www.dianechamberlain.com/blog/...
I just finished reading a book in which the author head hopped from character to character within the same paragraph. There’s no law that says you can’t do this, and I’ve read the rare book in which it worked. By that I mean, I barely noticed. But in this particular book, I found myself thinking, Huh? Whose head am I in?? I don’t want my readers ever to ask that question. Still, I often use some challenging approaches to point-of-view when I think the story will be best served through my choice.
In two of my most recent books, Before the Storm and Secrets She Left Behind, I wrote from four first-person points-of-view. Let me tell you, that wasn’t easy! It was crucial that each voice was unique to that particular character. In The Lies We Told, coming out in late May, I do something a little different. The story is told from the points of view of two sisters, Maya and Rebecca. Maya’s chapters are told in first person and Rebecca’s in third. I did that because I felt that Maya’s story was more significant and I wanted the reader to feel closer to her.
I liked that approach so much that I decided to use it as I wrote The Midwife’s Confession as well. I gave one of the characters, Tara, the first person role and three other characters third person. I wrote the entire first draft that way . . . but I had a lot of trouble doing so for two reasons: the other characters kept slipping into first person as I wrote, and as the story unfolded, it became clear that Tara’s story was not more important than those of the other characters. So I am now giving them a more equal voice in the rewrite. I won’t pretend that changing several hundred pages of first person to third is fun (it’s not!), but it’s the right thing to do for the story. By the way, making that switch is far more complex than changing “she” to “I” and “her” to “my”. When I write in first person, I feel instantly closer to the character and that closeness is reflected in how the character thinks and feels. Changing point of view changes everything.
The challenge of maintaining separate voices that I dealt with in Before the Storm and Secrets She Left Behind is even bigger in The Midwife’s Confession because all four points of view are female and three of those women are around forty years old. Think of three middle class women you know of a similar age. They probably “sound” very much alike. Giving them their true and separate voices is tough. I see the differences in them because I know them so well, but I want my reader to be able to open the book to one of the chapters and know whose head she’s in. Not easy. And that’s why I’m going to end this blog post here and get back to work!
http://www.dianechamberlain.com/blog/...
March 20, 2010
Excerpts Galore!
Summer’s Child is available for preorder now.
I just did some minor updating on my website, adding pages for my reissued Summer’s Child and the upcoming, brand new The Lies We Told. That means you are now able to read excerpts of each of these books (along with excerpts from many of my previous books, if you haven’t already read them).
Summer’s Child will be published on March 30th, less than two weeks away. It’s almost mean to invite you to read the excerpt from The Lies We Told now, since it won’t be out for another two months, but it’s there if you can’t wait.
I’ve also updated the printable booklist on the books page with publication dates, the various titles of different books in different English-speaking countries, etc. Hope this helps ease some of the confusion many of you have had as you try to figure out if you’ve already read a book or not.
As usual, if you encounter any problems with my website, please don’t hesitate to let me know. It’s there for you and I want it to be a snap for you to use.
http://www.dianechamberlain.com/blog/...
I just did some minor updating on my website, adding pages for my reissued Summer’s Child and the upcoming, brand new The Lies We Told. That means you are now able to read excerpts of each of these books (along with excerpts from many of my previous books, if you haven’t already read them).
Summer’s Child will be published on March 30th, less than two weeks away. It’s almost mean to invite you to read the excerpt from The Lies We Told now, since it won’t be out for another two months, but it’s there if you can’t wait.
I’ve also updated the printable booklist on the books page with publication dates, the various titles of different books in different English-speaking countries, etc. Hope this helps ease some of the confusion many of you have had as you try to figure out if you’ve already read a book or not.
As usual, if you encounter any problems with my website, please don’t hesitate to let me know. It’s there for you and I want it to be a snap for you to use.
http://www.dianechamberlain.com/blog/...
March 15, 2010
My Work-in-Progress (and a request for help)
I’m a month and a half away from deadline on my twentieth book, The Midwife’s Confession, and I’ve had some requests to tell you a bit about it. Those of you who’ve read my blog for at least a couple of years might remember this picture. I love it and have it on my desktop to keep me focused as I write. I originally posted it back when I first started writing this book. . . before I was derailed by a decision at my publishing house. I had to put TMC aside and come up with a new idea in a few days’ time. Ironically, I ended up loving the book that grew from that new idea, and in a couple of months it (The Lies We Told) will be in your bookstores. But now I’m working on TMC again, engaged in the story and the characters.
Set in Wilmington, North Carolina, The Midwife’s Confession is about four women who’ve been friends since their college days. They call themselves the Galloway Girls after the dorm they lived in at UNC-Wilmington. When the midwife who delivered some of their children commits suicide, she leaves behind a destructive legacy that puts their friendships to the test. Meanwhile, in Washington DC, another woman tries to save the life of her desperately ill daughter. As her world collides with that of the Galloway Girls, the women are pitted against each other in a fight for their families—and it’s a fight that may leave no winners behind.
Now, how can you help me? I’m having name problems! I named my characters long ago, but when I was on retreat with my writer buds recently, I was telling them the storyline and they pointed out that four of my characters’ names end in “a” and they were getting confused. So I think I need to make some changes.
It’s hard to change names this deep into the book. My friend, author Emilie Richards, was recently thinking about changing some names in her own work-in-progress and she said she felt as though she was trying to change the names of friends. It felt wrong. I understand that and feel the same way. However, my readers will have no attachment to the names I’m using now and I’m sure they’ll accept the characters’ new names without a problem–and it’s my readers who count. What’s most important to me is that they’re not confused as they read, wondering which character is which.
So I’ve decided to change two of the “a” names. I won’t tell you their current names so you don’t start thinking of them by the “wrong” name. Instead, I’ll describe the characters to you using their current first initial.
G is a 16-year-old high school junior. She’s average looking but has one of those personalities that draws people to her, guys included. She’s a nice girl, concerned about her friends, family and community.
A is a 44-year-old woman, the director of a missing person’s organization. She’s divorced and the mother of a 12-year-old girl. She’s down to earth and a bit irreverent. Her daughter is her best friend.
I welcome your ideas!
Set in Wilmington, North Carolina, The Midwife’s Confession is about four women who’ve been friends since their college days. They call themselves the Galloway Girls after the dorm they lived in at UNC-Wilmington. When the midwife who delivered some of their children commits suicide, she leaves behind a destructive legacy that puts their friendships to the test. Meanwhile, in Washington DC, another woman tries to save the life of her desperately ill daughter. As her world collides with that of the Galloway Girls, the women are pitted against each other in a fight for their families—and it’s a fight that may leave no winners behind.
Now, how can you help me? I’m having name problems! I named my characters long ago, but when I was on retreat with my writer buds recently, I was telling them the storyline and they pointed out that four of my characters’ names end in “a” and they were getting confused. So I think I need to make some changes.
It’s hard to change names this deep into the book. My friend, author Emilie Richards, was recently thinking about changing some names in her own work-in-progress and she said she felt as though she was trying to change the names of friends. It felt wrong. I understand that and feel the same way. However, my readers will have no attachment to the names I’m using now and I’m sure they’ll accept the characters’ new names without a problem–and it’s my readers who count. What’s most important to me is that they’re not confused as they read, wondering which character is which.
So I’ve decided to change two of the “a” names. I won’t tell you their current names so you don’t start thinking of them by the “wrong” name. Instead, I’ll describe the characters to you using their current first initial.
G is a 16-year-old high school junior. She’s average looking but has one of those personalities that draws people to her, guys included. She’s a nice girl, concerned about her friends, family and community.
A is a 44-year-old woman, the director of a missing person’s organization. She’s divorced and the mother of a 12-year-old girl. She’s down to earth and a bit irreverent. Her daughter is her best friend.
I welcome your ideas!
February 26, 2010
My Sloppy First Drafts
Plant.
I’m nearly done with the first complete draft of my work-in-progress, currently titled The Midwife’s Confession, and if you were to check it for the most often used word (after “the” and “and” and character names), I bet it would be “plant.” Even though I’ve outlined ad nauseum, the characters and story change as I write, which necessitates changes in the chapters I’ve already written. Rather than stopping my momentum by returning to the earlier chapters to make the changes, I type the word “plant” followed by my brilliant new idea. Once I finish the current draft, I’ll do a search on the word “plant” and write down longhand all the changes I need to make in the next draft.
I write a very sloppy first draft for two main reasons: one is that I know I’ll need to make a million changes as the story emerges, so there’s no point in making it pretty the first time through, and two, I want to write fast to get the entire story down. That’s nerves, I think. I’m anxious to get it all down to see where I stand and what needs to be fixed. I can always pretty the writing up later; it’s the story and its structure, pacing and characterization that matter to me during the first draft. I envy those writers who polish as they go, ending up with a clean, nearly complete book by the end of their first draft. I’ve given up trying to make that system work for me. We all have to figure out what works for us as writers. There is no right or wrong way to write a book.
I take about nine months to write a book and although I don’t have a set schedule, here is how my timing usually works out. During the first month, I come up with the idea for the story–the “what happens.” I start working on the outline, completing it sometime during the second month. Then I begin working on preliminary research, learning just enough to see how it will influence the story. Month three, I get to know my characters on a new level, using a variety of techniques I’ve developed over the years. Learning about my characters continues throughout the entire writing process. The next few months I spend writing, fiddling, restructuring, and figuring out what works and what doesn’t. Around month five, I start seriously writing the first draft, and as I mentioned, the surprises continue and I fill the draft with “plants.”
Here’s an example of a plant from The Secret Life of CeeCee Wilkes. When I outlined the book, Eve (CeeCee’s alias during her secret life) didn’t have rheumatoid arthritis. As I wrote the first draft, I hit a chapter late in the book in which Eve was suddenly limping, and I decided she should have RA. It would give the story and her character an interesting new dimension. So I wrote (plant: Eve has RA). In the second draft, I went back into those earlier chapters and “gave” her symptoms of RA. There were other more intriguing plants that came up during the writing of that book, but I’d be giving away too much if I told you what they were here. Suffice it to say, if you were surprised as you read that book, I was probably just as surprised as I wrote it!
I’m going back to work on The Midwife’s Confession right now. Can’t wait to see what I’ll plant next!
I’m nearly done with the first complete draft of my work-in-progress, currently titled The Midwife’s Confession, and if you were to check it for the most often used word (after “the” and “and” and character names), I bet it would be “plant.” Even though I’ve outlined ad nauseum, the characters and story change as I write, which necessitates changes in the chapters I’ve already written. Rather than stopping my momentum by returning to the earlier chapters to make the changes, I type the word “plant” followed by my brilliant new idea. Once I finish the current draft, I’ll do a search on the word “plant” and write down longhand all the changes I need to make in the next draft.
I write a very sloppy first draft for two main reasons: one is that I know I’ll need to make a million changes as the story emerges, so there’s no point in making it pretty the first time through, and two, I want to write fast to get the entire story down. That’s nerves, I think. I’m anxious to get it all down to see where I stand and what needs to be fixed. I can always pretty the writing up later; it’s the story and its structure, pacing and characterization that matter to me during the first draft. I envy those writers who polish as they go, ending up with a clean, nearly complete book by the end of their first draft. I’ve given up trying to make that system work for me. We all have to figure out what works for us as writers. There is no right or wrong way to write a book.
I take about nine months to write a book and although I don’t have a set schedule, here is how my timing usually works out. During the first month, I come up with the idea for the story–the “what happens.” I start working on the outline, completing it sometime during the second month. Then I begin working on preliminary research, learning just enough to see how it will influence the story. Month three, I get to know my characters on a new level, using a variety of techniques I’ve developed over the years. Learning about my characters continues throughout the entire writing process. The next few months I spend writing, fiddling, restructuring, and figuring out what works and what doesn’t. Around month five, I start seriously writing the first draft, and as I mentioned, the surprises continue and I fill the draft with “plants.”
Here’s an example of a plant from The Secret Life of CeeCee Wilkes. When I outlined the book, Eve (CeeCee’s alias during her secret life) didn’t have rheumatoid arthritis. As I wrote the first draft, I hit a chapter late in the book in which Eve was suddenly limping, and I decided she should have RA. It would give the story and her character an interesting new dimension. So I wrote (plant: Eve has RA). In the second draft, I went back into those earlier chapters and “gave” her symptoms of RA. There were other more intriguing plants that came up during the writing of that book, but I’d be giving away too much if I told you what they were here. Suffice it to say, if you were surprised as you read that book, I was probably just as surprised as I wrote it!
I’m going back to work on The Midwife’s Confession right now. Can’t wait to see what I’ll plant next!
