What did you do when your book was finished?
Key Light went through a dozen re-writes, after it was finally retyped into my first computer. I'd written three drafts on a typewriter. In manuscript pages it was something like 650 pages, a whopping 150,000 words, which in successive re-writes got pared down to its final 115,000 words.
Going to the computer every day between my three jobs, I finally copied my book into the IBM database from printed sheets. I could move things around, shape things up, spell check and grammar check and tighten up my story I'd lived with for about four years.
And then ...
I finally signed on to Prodigy, which came with that first computer. What was it there for? I didn't need any such thing. And from no online usage at all I was soon exceeding my allotted time online in bulletin board posting to writing groups. Poetry rooms. Oh what fun. When I bought a house, there was no Internet at all in the new town for two years. I went through a painful Internet and e-mail withdrawal.
Being a painter, I whipped out a canvas and jumped into my other passion, painting. Surveying the box of colors I had, and it being June, I rapidly did a painting like the main character Sada would have in my just finished book, Key Light. I called it Pthalo Beach, pthalo blue being its predominant color. Summer. A beach. Water. Sand. Huge sweeps of color, wild energy, "This is how Sada paints," I told myself. Then I made a mistake and stopped. There's no Un-Do in painting. So the little flag-looking thing is where I pulled paint into where I didn't want it. I was too enthusiastic to let it dry before continuing, and the previous colors ran. Well, it's an abstract!
This time last year, when Days of Dante was finished, after its corrections and upgrades and feedback from "first readers" and "second readers" I was again at a loss for what to do. You come to the same computer you used every day, and you're still doing it, but what to do now? Of course I was sending out queries to agents. But there was all this time left over.
Now there are Yahoo chat rooms. Now there is Facebook, Twitter, eBay. Time fillers, all. And how about a blog? I studied everyone else's blog before I started one of my own, played this game of journal writing except now it was online, public, with more prying eyes and "tsk-ing" potential. So what? We're all in the same blog bog, being trivial while attempting to sound profound. In a year I'll have a record of my high points, low points, all this energy and smarts and ideas that could have gone into the new book
I made a quilt. Never made a quilt before. Blogged about it. Wrote a children's book about it, got that published.
Key Light went through a dozen re-writes, after it was finally retyped into my first computer. I'd written three drafts on a typewriter. In manuscript pages it was something like 650 pages, a whopping 150,000 words, which in successive re-writes got pared down to its final 115,000 words.
Going to the computer every day between my three jobs, I finally copied my book into the IBM database from printed sheets. I could move things around, shape things up, spell check and grammar check and tighten up my story I'd lived with for about four years.
And then ...
I finally signed on to Prodigy, which came with that first computer. What was it there for? I didn't need any such thing. And from no online usage at all I was soon exceeding my allotted time online in bulletin board posting to writing groups. Poetry rooms. Oh what fun. When I bought a house, there was no Internet at all in the new town for two years. I went through a painful Internet and e-mail withdrawal.
Being a painter, I whipped out a canvas and jumped into my other passion, painting. Surveying the box of colors I had, and it being June, I rapidly did a painting like the main character Sada would have in my just finished book, Key Light. I called it Pthalo Beach, pthalo blue being its predominant color. Summer. A beach. Water. Sand. Huge sweeps of color, wild energy, "This is how Sada paints," I told myself. Then I made a mistake and stopped. There's no Un-Do in painting. So the little flag-looking thing is where I pulled paint into where I didn't want it. I was too enthusiastic to let it dry before continuing, and the previous colors ran. Well, it's an abstract!
This time last year, when Days of Dante was finished, after its corrections and upgrades and feedback from "first readers" and "second readers" I was again at a loss for what to do. You come to the same computer you used every day, and you're still doing it, but what to do now? Of course I was sending out queries to agents. But there was all this time left over.
Now there are Yahoo chat rooms. Now there is Facebook, Twitter, eBay. Time fillers, all. And how about a blog? I studied everyone else's blog before I started one of my own, played this game of journal writing except now it was online, public, with more prying eyes and "tsk-ing" potential. So what? We're all in the same blog bog, being trivial while attempting to sound profound. In a year I'll have a record of my high points, low points, all this energy and smarts and ideas that could have gone into the new book
I made a quilt. Never made a quilt before. Blogged about it. Wrote a children's book about it, got that published.
Twitter lets you share your interesting moments even if before blogging you might never remember these things a year later. I baked a pie. I found a snake in my living room. I shoveled snow. I read hundreds of new books. I re-read many more. I tweeted what I read. The good thing about twitter is it all disappears in the glut of everyone else's insignificant tweets.
And in between, the new book changed its name from What You Wish For to Your Other Left. With word processing it's so much easier. One day you delete 15,000 words and the next day add only 2.000. You keep a log of word counts, that's important. A good day is 1,000 to 5,000 words. It would be nice if the output was steady, but it's not.
You have to stop to file taxes. There's that line on the 1040 where you get to put your Other Income, Royalties.
You have to stop to take a nap. A writer not writing is like everyone else but something is wrong. Not Finished is a scolding nagger pointing a finger at a writer not writing. Not Finished whispers unkindly that you're a one-trick pony, nothing left to show us. They told us it's the loneliest job in the world. They told us it's a job of self selection, self motivation. Nobody makes you write but you.
And in between, the new book changed its name from What You Wish For to Your Other Left. With word processing it's so much easier. One day you delete 15,000 words and the next day add only 2.000. You keep a log of word counts, that's important. A good day is 1,000 to 5,000 words. It would be nice if the output was steady, but it's not.
You have to stop to file taxes. There's that line on the 1040 where you get to put your Other Income, Royalties.
You have to stop to take a nap. A writer not writing is like everyone else but something is wrong. Not Finished is a scolding nagger pointing a finger at a writer not writing. Not Finished whispers unkindly that you're a one-trick pony, nothing left to show us. They told us it's the loneliest job in the world. They told us it's a job of self selection, self motivation. Nobody makes you write but you.
No comments:
Post a Comment