Echoes in a Hollow Space

Closing in on the end of The Rewrite That Will Not Die 2: The Winnowing.

Chapters completed: 29

Revised page count: 590

Revised manual word count: 145,041 (net words cut 2213)

Revised Word line count with a zero stuck on the end word count: 144,760 (net words cut 1890)



It seems to me that in these later chapters as I'm racing towards the climax, the writing is much tighter than the saggy middle where I did so much hacking. I'm making a bunch of small cuts, the rare paragraph here and there, but not big blocks of text like before. And I'm happy I made it down to 145k. I think realistically, given that I've only got 4 chapters and an epi to go, I can probably expect to get this down another thousand or so, but I probably won't make 140k. Still, I've cut 11,000 words out of this draft so far.

The other thing I'm noticing in these late chapters is that at a certain point I started to do a lot of shortcutting. There's a certain point where you can see the fatigue set in to my writing and I just started taking the easy way out. When I did the second draft, I eliminated quite a bit of shortcutting, but again, the fatigue hit me there, too. There's more to do—but I'm done with this ms. at the moment. When I complete this draft, I'm going to polish up the synopsis and first 60 and set it loose to wander the world for awhile. At some point, I might like to go over the last ten chapters or so and see if I can clean up some more of that shortcutting, but I'm just too tired of it all at the moment. I so want to move on to something else.

Of course, if someone would pay me to do edits, I think my energy level might renew dramatically. :-)

I might even have finished the final chapters this weekend, but my friends are kidnapping me today and taking me to the Getty Museum to see two exhibits currently up:

http://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/sea_tails/

This is a reassembling of an 80's art installation featuring sound and visual recreations of the sea.

And "Coming of Age in Ancient Greece" doesn't appear to have it's own web page. It just went up last weekend.

Then my friends are taking me to dinner at a nice restaurant in Brentwood—Zax. I plan to allow myself to be thoroughly feted.

Here's the latest on The Rewrite That Will Not Die 2: The Winnowing:

Chapters completed: 16 (though that's actually through revised chapter 17)

Revised page count: 607 (marked down from 635)

Revised manual word count: 149,220 previously 156k

Revised Word line count with a zero stuck on the end word count: 148,290 previously 154,860


So, I'm feeling good about me these days. Much of the cutting has been language fat, but the chunks of text I've removed have not felt like they hurt the integrity of the story. On the contrary, they bogged the flow down, so good riddance. Sometimes all it takes is asking myself the question: is this necessary information to the story I'm telling now? That puts a good perspective on what can stay and what should go.

I cut over half of one chapter and stuck what was left on another, so I'm back to my original chapter count (from the first draft) of 33 chapters plus epilogue. And I feel real good about getting this sucker below 150k. Since I'm not even halfway done, I dare to hope that perhaps I might get it down to 145k. That's still too long, but a heck of a lot better than 156k. If I can get it down further than that, huzzah and hallelujah.

Now, back to the salt mines...

Finished through: Oh golly, I seem to have run out of manuscript!

Word count: 153,458  (No, I didn't cut 2000 words.  More on that below.)

Left to go: I've got to write an introduction to a scene--100 words, tops--and do a bit more chapter rearranging, but that's it for the major revisions.  I think.



I finally gave in and did the manual word count thing.  It's ridiculously easy—I'm just lazy.  But that shaved 2000 words off my total.  Yowza!  I'm going to "manualize" all my stories now.  I've got some that are close to acceptable word counts but I just can't seem to whack them down any more.  Maybe manual word count gratification is the way to go. :-)

Next I plan to go through my novel just for the sake of cleaning up the language, especially on those first 60 pages I want to send off.  I did a certain amount of that this go round, but I was concentrating on a lot of different aspects at once.  I think honing in just on the sentence-level stuff would be a good idea.  'Course, I've got to finish the last part of my synopsis, too.  The synopsis I have is pretty good, I just didn't revise it for the last five chapters or so.  Then there's the dreaded query letter.  Must resist the urge to say, "Remember me?  I think you'll find this novel is much more brilliant than the semi-brilliant novel you rejected last time.  And there's so much more of it to love!"  Must resist that at all costs!

Bigger is better, right?  Oh, Lordy...

I suppose I should talk more about that writing thing here, but it's so boring.  No, not other people's writing things, but my own.  Because, basically, I'm just slogging away right now, getting through the heavy revision phase of the second draft.  Not much to report day-to-day except that I'm doing it.  Besides, I'm just not the faithful diarist type. 

However, yesterday I did accomplish something of note:  my word count actually went down.  Yes!  I managed to cut something.  True, it was only about a page and a half worth, but the word count on this beast has been slowly creeping up—which is seriously not a good thing.  That's mostly due, I think, to clarifying and straightening out some very twisted timelines.  I haven't been too worried about cutting this time around because the problems in other areas, in mechanics, seemed larger.  So unless something is clearly superfluous  fat and padding, I give it a reprieve until next time.  Once I have a straighter ms., timeline-wise, backstory-wise, I can worry about the other stuff.  I find that if I try to accomplish too much at one time—take on all monsters in one battle—it can weaken my efforts.  I get a better rewrite if I offset my battles.  So I make one pass to clean up mechanics, followed by another to clean up aesthetics.  Then I sincerely hope it's time to send the sucker out.

This story was a really complicated one in which what happened in the past was just as important as present action because what happened in the past is the root cause and prime motivator for the story.  (Though some may argue with me there.)  And since what happened in the past was often complicated, the timelines, et al., got complicated.  Sometimes overly so.  And sometimes I fell in love with peripheral characters and didn't know when to keep them down to one or two succinct paragraphs; and sometimes letting them have their say illuminated new aspects of the main story.  It's always difficult to walk the line between intrusive tangent and deepening  a story.

But there is no better remedy to "my precious prose" syndrome then to give myself a little space.  Time is the greatest editor of them all.  Things that I wouldn't have dreamed of cutting a year ago now seem perfectly disposable to me.  I doubt I can hack 25k off this beast, but you never know.  Once the cutting starts, sometimes the blood flows freely.

And on that happy metaphor, adieu...

Finished through:   chapter 28

Left to go:  seven chapters  (Groan) (Technically, six chapters plus an epilogue)

Word count: 149,800--ugly, ugly

Oh well, not actual pleasure.  But to the word itself--yes! Yes!  Oh God! Yes!

Right.  You guessed it.  I've been rewriting a sex scene.  This one written back in November or December so I've got scads more perspective on it.  And in each and every case, the use of "pleasure" was not only totally unnecessary, it was clunky and distracting—and yes, giggleworthy.  (Yes, Jon, you were right each and every time.  Mark this date on your calendar.) 

But it's easily remedied:  just scratch the danged word out.  Of the possible descriptors (ecstasy, rapture, blech blah blah) pleasure is perhaps the least idiotic, but the use of such descriptors is completely unnecessary.  Have your character shiver and groan and most people will get from context that it isn't because they're in pain. 

Well, in some sex scene universes I guess you might have to distinguish between the two, but mostly nah, I don't think so.  "Context carries emotion.  Trust your readers.  They will get it."

Yes, Master, use me at thy will...

Oops.  Wrong context.

P.S. I've finished through chapter 22 (old chapter 21) if anyone is counting.

The Rewrite progresses.  I finished chapter 12 yesterday, and that leaves only 22 + Epilogue to go.  =:0  As is usually the case when I'm firmly committed to one piece of writing, other pieces start singing their siren songs to me.  "Oh, you'd much rather be working on me."  Usually I am able to regretfully but firmly decline—even though some of them grow quite insistent as time passes. 

When I was working on the last half of the first draft of Shivery Bones I kept getting insistent calls from a young woman named Hortensia, star of my novella, "Hortensia's Man," currently up on the Online Writing Workshop: http://sff.onlinewritingworkshop.com/

She insisted that her story was important and needed to be told, and even though I agreed with her, I explained she'd have to wait her turn.  She wasn't satisfied with that, even when I did the historical research for the story hoping to appease her.  I begged off writing by telling her I couldn't start her story until I'd finished that research.  It didn't work.  She kept insisting.  I let her out of the box on weekends sometimes, but she never wanted to confine herself to weekends.  Still, over a six or so month period, her story did get told.

After I finished the first draft of ShivBo, I took about three months off.  The first month, April, I was busy getting ready for my trip or actually being on the trip, but I let the muse know that if he was so inclined, I was open to suggestions.  Nothing.  So I worked on stories from the trunk for about a month and a half, revisiting stories I hadn't looked at in over a year, refining and reworking.  I did another big chunk of work on a (still) unfinished story called, "The Green Ones."  Even so, nothing new tickled at my brain; none of the stories in my Ideas file decided they were ready for the next step.  I decided it was time to seriously launch into the rewrite.  Of course that's when all the new kids decided to move onto the block. 

First up was a story inspired by one of my own blog entries.  Which is somewhat like picking lint out of one's own navel, but whatever.  That story, "Green Horse Bone" gushed out about 1400 words in a few days, weaving in and out of the rewrite, before going on hiatus.  "Okay," I said, "you got that out of your system, now it's time to focus seriously on ShivBo."  I did, but GHB continues to weave in and out—dribs and drabs here and there when my back is turned. 

Then the Muse started playing an old, favored trick on me.  At night when I lay my weary head on the pillow—always on nights when I have to get up early for work the next morning—the Muse launches sneak attacks.  Just as I'm thoroughly relaxed and beginning to drift off, blam!  Into my head pops a great opening line for a story that's been sitting in the Ideas file stewing for awhile.  I'm just at that stage of tired where I really don't want to get out of bed again, but these openers are killer, the obvious gateway to the good stuff to follow.  And I know if I don't jot them down, they won't be there when I wake up.  I keep a bedside notebook so I roll over, sit up and jot.  Surprisingly, when I wake up the next morning, these openers read just as well as I thought they would.  I type them up and put them in the story folder for later when I have time to expand upon them. 

Last night was one of those nights, only it wasn't just an opening line, it was a whole opening sequence that presented itself for a story I've been cogitating over for a couple of years:  "The Story Shaman."  I groaned, rolled over, sat up.  Both sides of a handwritten notebook page is almost always about 250 words.  When I'd written both sides of the page and started on a new one I reminded myself that I had to get up early and it was getting late.  I was able to go to sleep then.  That reminder—and sleep—wouldn't have come unless I'd finished for the night because if I don't get it all down, I just keep coming up with new stuff and have to get up again and do more jotting.  The Night Muse does not care if work comes early and inspiration comes late. 

Fortunately, when I do sit down to write those stories, those openers (even if I don't use them for many months) open the door and let the story flow through.  Openers are crucial.  If I make them up with the forefront of my mind, they don't work.  If I let the hindpart loose, they usually work.  Sometimes I do have to rewrite those, but they are more likely to stay in the final drafts.  The forefront openers almost always have too much preamble, don't get into the story fast enough or with the right vision or voice.  Voice is a particularly key component of these hindpart-generated openers.  I know how to tell the story then, whenever I take it up and go forth.

Which is why it's worth getting out of bed.

And oh yeah, that's going well. I'm progressing slowly—a chapter a day—because I'm reading through the first time and making changes based on my own instincts as an editor. Then I'm going through and rereading the OWW reviews for the chapter and incorporating where appropriate.

Since I posted this thing between Feb '03 and March '04 [7-6-04: oops--got my dates wrong] (and I'm sure it seemed much longer to those few intrepid souls who stuck with me all the way—thanks people), some of those crits were like a walk down memory lane. Some of those critters are no longer with OWW and I miss them. Some of the people who still crit my stuff started with chapter one of Shivery Bones, so it's like seeing them for the first time all over again. (Hi, Kev.)

And I was really lucky in my crits. I got, for the most part, thoughtful and helpful input. Back in those early days of the novel, I got a ton of crits, too, so going through them does take some time. That will change as I get further into the novel. The crits were just as thoughtful, there just weren't as many of them. I'd rather have a half dozen thoughtful crits then a dozen piffling ones, though.

My sense always was that the front end of the novel would need the least amount of work, and that seems to be holding true. My sense was that chapter 5 would need some work, and it did. So, my sense is that the middle part will probably need a lot of work. We'll see if my instincts hold true there. I imagine I might slow down as I approach those pesky chapters.

One of the cool things: my subconscious is definitely on the job. I had a piece of writing that I'd moved from a late chapter to chapter five, but I wasn't sure it worked there. I knew for sure it needed to come early rather than late, but I didn't know if five was the place for it. I woke up yesterday morning and knew exactly what to do with that piece of writing. I moved it to chapter ten, which at this juncture seems the perfect place for it. I hope my right brain continues to stay on the job. Thanks, unconscious.

And thanks again to all the people who reviewed Shivery Bones. Your help was invaluable.

Over the weekend I decided to go to Trader Joe's—a wonderful, mostly-West Coast alternative market chain. I've been hungering for real English cheddar, not the crappy bland version you get in the ol' USA. English cheddar has such a subtle range of flavor and having eaten quite a lot of it on my trip, the American stuff tastes a bit like cardboard to me these days. Anyway, Ann said I could get some of the real stuff at Trader Joe's, so off I hied me.

The particular TJ's I hied to is in a hyperthyroidized mini mall near LAX: not big enough to be a grown up mall, too big to be a baby mall, a middling mall. There used to be an interesting warehousey kind of store there called Westchester Faire which housed three floors of antiquers—shop after shop of purveyors of fine kitsch, mostly. Unfortunately, Westchester Faire tanked last year and all the kitsch had to find new homes in flea markets and swap meets elsewhere. But I noticed something else had taken over the building. There was no name out front, just "Giant Book Sale," but since the sign touting the sale was permanent, I guess that's the name of the joint.

"Hmm," I said and resolutely parked near TJ's. I got out of the car and headed towards TJ's, but...It's like I was programmed at birth. Any time anyone says or I see the secret code word "book" it activates the computer chip in my brain. Try as I might to keep my feet headed towards TJ's entrance I kept veering off, until I finally just groaned and said, "Maybe I'll peek in here first." I never did make it to Trader Joe's.

It turns out it was one of those stores selling nothing but remaindered books—hardcovers ranging from $4 to $8, high end paperbacks for $3-$5, and low end paperbacks for only a buck or two. A lot of big names represented in that place, but I didn't feel so bad for them. So they didn't sell out on the 3rd or 4th hardcover printing of their blockbuster. It isn't going to kill their career to be remaindered. But then, there were a lot of midlist people represented there, too, folks who hadn't done so well on initial sales, or folks whose older novels, published after a moderate success with some other book, didn't do well. I got an uneasy tingle up my spine when I crossed paths with those, thinking how hopes rise so high when we get a publishing deal, thinking about all the hopes and dreams those books represented, how the world tends to level hope off rather brutally—a psychic stripmining sometimes.

But the ones that made me feel really bad were the ones that hadn't even made it to midlist and the self-publishing remainders, all the painfully obscure stuff that looked like it had been sitting in somebody's garage in boxes for awhile. It was like being confronted with the ghost of Christmas Future, I tell you. Which is one reason I'll never seek self-flagellation—er, I mean, self-publication. I just have this uneasy feeling anything I self-publish would turn into a garage-filler.

I kept looking at these things and thinking, "Didn't anyone ever tell these people that plot had been used 15,000 times? Didn't anyone say, 'Ooo, that title's way unfortunate'?" Of course they didn't, or those books would never exist. All their well-meaning friends told them it was the greatest thing since folded tortillas. Or, alternately, someone did tell them and they just believed so hard they didn't listen. They had utter faith in their project and weren't going to change it for any naysayer.

Belief is a shiny, bright thing with a sharp edge.

So when I got to the sff self-published paperback called Death Wears The Emperor's New Clothes I knew it was time to get the hell out of there. I was just too creeped out. So I took my purchases up to the cash register...

Yeah, that's right. Despite my whinging and philosophizing, I bought books there: an Alice Hoffman novel, a Graham Joyce novel, the classic sff novel Flatland, and one by an OWW ML member. I felt bad about buying that particular remainder because it won't do this member any good, but I bought it anyway. Hypocrite! If I'm really, really, really, really lucky maybe that member will be able to turn the tables on me some day. Because for me that's the ultimate lesson of a trip to a remaindered book store: these folks at least took a shot and got some kind of prize, even if it did turn out to have a hidden booby trap in the middle.

And on the personal writing front: Ramona has probably gone on hiatus for the time being. She wanted to go somewhere I didn't want her to go and it's been a power struggle all week. I know the fault lies with me, not her. I have to get my head around what she's trying to say—or more correctly, my heart. And I have a deep suspicion that the lesson she's trying to give me here has more to do with the Dos Lunas novel, Venus In Transit, then it does with the short story cycle I've been trying to complete. But whatever, the Dos Lunas cycle is probably not going to get done at this juncture until I can work through the Ramona block.

Ramona was my very first inhabitant of Dos Lunas county. She just wants me to know she isn't going to play second fiddle anymore. So I'll let her go on hiatus while I process and probably...start the rewrites for Shivery Bones next week.

Last night I drove east on Washington Boulevard near the Culver City-L.A. border and passed a mini-mall on the corner of Washington and Rosabell. Normally, the marquee outside this mini-mall holds a white plastic neon-lit rectangle prominently featuring the name of a cut-rate dental office. Last night, the front and back panels of this rectangle had been removed, leaving only a framework with vertical bars of neon lights spaced like the bars in a cell door. They were lit, pumping out bright white light, a neon prison. Perfectly framed behind this prison of light was the full moon. She looked a sad, weary sister behind that artificial brightness. Once she'd been the brightest light in the night sky, now she'd been overwhelmed by the human need for attention-getting.

I found myself thinking how much I related to that forlorn moon.

I must explain that I was extremely sleep-deprived yesterday. Boyfriend of Ms. 207 upstairs was on an real rip-snortin' tear Thursday night-early Friday morning. The two of them, but mostly him, woke me up every half hour between 11 p.m. and 1:30 a.m. I have to get up at 6 for work, so you can imagine I was a wee bit tired. It was one of those situations where just as I drifted back to sleep, another noise eruption broke out and I'd be awake again. It culminated with them having loud, raucous, bed-thumping, screaming vocalization sex at 1:30. Before that, just before one, Boyfriend had cranked up the stereo and was singing at the top of his lungs (off-key). I guess he was anticipating the loud, raucous sex to come. But one good thing about that loud, raucous sex (from my POV, anyway) is that once it occurred I knew I'd probably get some sleep because, well, the darling young things would most likely be going to sleep themselves soon after. Indeed, that's what happened.

So, there I was exhausted and blue Friday evening, feeling a kinship with the dimmed moon imprisoned by the human need for exhibitionism. It had been an ugly, busy week at work, too, and I'd been ill with some stomach virus early in the week. I'm in the culmination phase of my novel, writing the finale chapters, and although that's going pretty well and I see the dim light at the end of the tunnel, the latest chapter I posted on the writing workshop (27-28 out of 32+epilogue) did not do particularly well. I got only one critique in over a week. I'd been doing well on the workshop before this current posting, had good luck with my posts for the last two years, but natural attrition has caused some critters to drop away, and at a certain point nobody new is going to sign on for critiques of the advanced chapters of a novel. My friend Jon says not to take it personally, and he's absolutely right, but it's hard not to take it personally. Finally, two friends took pity on me and there were two more posted critiques waiting for me Friday morning, but I was already in a massive funk by then. Aided, I'm sure, by only 4-1/2 to 5 hours sleep. I was on the point of pulling everything off the workshop and slinking into a hole somewhere to hide.

But I've learned not to make significant decisions when I'm depressed and sleep-deprived. I'm still in a bit of a funk, but the questions I'm asking myself today are somewhat different. Like: why the hell do I even bother to write?

You know, there are head answers to that question, and there are soul answers to that question. You could probably generate some of the head answers yourself:

o I write because it's a great means of self-expression.
o I write to explore universal truths.
o I write because it's a fun exercise of my imagination.
o I write to see my dreams and fantasies come alive on the page.

Etc., etc., fill in the blanks. All of those head answers--and whatever other ones I or you could come up with—are true, as far as they go. But they are all, essentially, irrelevant—they don't, at least for me, get to the heart of things. Because there's only one true answer, the soul answer: I write because I have no choice.

I would write even if no one was reading (and most times I think no one truly is). I believe there are writers who can say, "Enough," and move on to something else, but I'm not one of them. I've tried, and was utterly miserable each time. It was like having a writhing itch I couldn't reach, and it didn't go away until I started writing again. Once I even stopped writing for four or five years: the longest, most miserable years of my life. I said "Uncle" that time and never went to that place again, because I realized there is something in this particular form of artistic expression that I must do. It's my essence, ingrained in the whorls of my soul.

Trust me, I know how melodramatic that sounds. But it's also true. There's no rule guaranteeing that the truth isn't also melodramatic. Or maybe I've just never learned to express it in better terms. At any rate, if I ask my soul why I write maybe I can try to be honest:

o I write because I want someone to pat me on the head and say, "Good girl."

That's fairly honest, but only partially true. I wrote in a vacuum for years and it still did the trick for me. It's only recently that the need for attention has become part of the equation. And I can easily foresee a time when I might go back into the vacuum because this need to be noticed may never be fulfilled. I'll write anyway. I have to.

o I write because my father was a consummate storyteller. I never pleased him otherwise, and although he's been dead for over twenty years, I'm still trying to please him.

Okay, a bit more honest. That was certainly a strong component in why I originally chose this art form. I do visual art, too, always have, but it's never filled me up like writing—and I'm sure the Freudian answer would be: Daddy. But at a certain point I realized I was no longer writing to please Daddy. I woke up one day and knew I had crossed that Rubicon; moved into a new world, a new way of doing things, left the old rules behind. I do this for me now, and that's a good evolution. I lost my dad when I was fairly young and before I'd had a chance to truly differentiate myself from my parents. I think I've achieved that now—and that's always a healthy thing.

o I write because it's the only thing that patches the holes in my soul.

Yeah, that's a true reason. I've had my dark times, my New Moon phases, I will again, but the work is always the remedy, even if the work is sometimes the cause of the darkness. I always turn back to it—for me, not for anyone else—and it always does the trick, like nothing else can.

So I guess I'm like the full moon after all. I may be trapped sometimes in a prison of artificial light, made weak by the need for attention-getting—but last night in my exhaustion and depression, I forgot the other lesson of the full moon. That once I moved further down the street, the moon was still there, no longer behind those bars. And if I travel out of the city and its wash of artificial light, away from the distractions and visual noise, the moon still shines, alone in a dark sky.