Writers’ Negotiations End

Could it be?

It looks like the writers have made progress.

Latest contract reflects some of the changes the Guilds were fighting for.

Writers receive “significant gains in compensations for movies and TV shows distributed online.”

Hip hip hooray!!!!

Revision (Good to Great part1)

“By its nature, any novel that hasn’t been read by several other people is a rough draft, no matter how often it’s been rewritten.” — by Ann Rittenberg (top literary agent) from Your First Novel

One of the things Rittenberg recommends to “Go from good to great” is to become a member of a writer’s group.

You may already be in a workshop, turning in your pages regularly, learning from critiquing others’ work and hearing about your work. Writing groups can be helpful in your writing, but can also keep you near other writers. Spending time with other writers will help you keep writing. If you keep writing, eventually you will have that Ahaa piece, the publishable piece.

I have finished revising from reading my novel aloud and have made changes from my writing group’s critiques for over half the novel. I’m still workshopping 15 pages at a time for the next few months. I’m not in a hurry. I want to make this novel the best I can make it.

Rittenberg says that agents and editors “are looking for polished manuscripts, not rough drafts.” This revision process takes time: the time to work, the time to wait, the time to work some more, the time to wait some more. She recommends that when you finish your novel, you print it out, read it, then take a six-week vacation from it.

Two more of Rittenberg’s “Ten Ways to Go From Good to Great” are “Sign up for a writing workshop” and “Take a creative writing class.”

Your First Novel

If you’re in Texas, you can check out The Writers’League of Texas to see if they can help you find a writer’s group, and they definitey have writing workshops.

Judy Reeves has some great info on her site. Scroll down to “Excerpts”.

For creative writing classes, check out your local community college.

Gotham Writers’ Workshop

“Resist the impulse to quit early. Do it all. Give yourself the space you need to achieve true mastery.”          –Donald Maass

Raymond Smith, Thank you

A mentor to writers. 1930-2008

Joyce Carol Oates on her husband, Raymond Smith.

Blessings to you both.

“Santa Maria”

I set a goal to finish my second draft by the eighteenth. Didn’t happen, but it helped me push and also gave me the credibility to ask for help from Super Husband.

Enjoying hours at coffee houses or restaurants thumbing through pages and making changes.

Won’t be blogging long entries for a few days.

But I do want to leave you with something.

This music impassions me.

Video of “Santa Maria” by The GoTan Project

February 2008 Thank You, Raymond Smith

Heard that a great mentor of writers passed away: Raymond Smith. Here’s all I know on The Elegant Variation.

My condolences to your many friends and to your family.

What was your life like?

What was your life like with Oates?

Bless you.

Thank you.

Humbly,

Laurie

Fondle, Breathe, Complete, Repeat

Dear One,

The good news for me is that I completed my read aloud. A moment of silence for my small completion. Now I’m typing in the revisions from that and from my workshopping.

If you are thinking about starting something, start. Buy the canvas. Fondle paint tubes. Begin freewriting everyday and look for characters or voices that reappear. Carry that camera with you everywhere even if it’s inconvenient.

If you are in the middle of something, show up again. Start one more time. Sit in the chair or stand in front of your canvas. Put your fingers on your piano keys.

If you are close to the end, breathe, and continue to show up. Have conversations with your characters. Say “No” to engagements, volunteer work, baking for the classroom. Spend time every day with your latest Art Affair.

If you are revising something, first, see what you have. What is its general form, shape, color, texture?

Does it Fly, Float, or Sink? All of the above? Do you care?

If you care, I care.

Bravo, you have finished something! One of many completions.

In Fearless Creating, Dr. Eric Maisel says “A creative work is completed many times over.” He even says that if you don’t allow these completions to matter, your satisfaction level dives, and without “enough satisfaction,” you will “abandon art.”

Your completions matter. Every one of them. Even if its “the gessoing of a canvas, the sprucing up of a single sentence, the righting of a single chord progression.”

Celebrate your completions, and complete again.

Learning about Revision

How to Revise

This is something I am learning now.

With my first book I learned that I could write all the way through to The End. I learned that sometimes the characters take me through, but I have to mold the clay before they can walk and talk.

With my second book I learned that I don’t like to write when I know everything that happens. I used a basic outline and wrote the last chapter first. About a third of the way through, I felt like it was work. It wasn’t fun anymore. I learned how to let go of a bad affair not because it was wild and bad for me, but because it bored me to the point of digging my own grave.

With this book I am learning how to create a plot that isn’t a mystery. I am learning how to be inside someone’s head even when it scares me. To stay with the scary parts instead of folding my laptop.

I am learning that I see parts inside my head that don’t end up on the page, yet I swear they are there, and that other people are under writers, too.

I am learning about REVISION.

I am learning that it takes several hours to read a novel aloud. I am averaging 25 pages aloud in an hour.

I am learning that no matter how much I think I know grammar, I make mistakes in the flow and I have to go back through and check for periods, commas, misspellings.

Now, I know that when a scene isn’t working out, I don’t have to panic and whine, “But, how do I fix it?” I know I can sit in a comfy place and breathe, relax in to a clear meditative space, then bring up the scene. I can talk into a tape recorder or write about it as I dream it. Robert Olen Butler says, and you’ve heard me say this before (his class [not a workshop!] raised my writing exponentially), When rereading, listen for the TWANG and then REDREAM that scene. (Check out his Most Excellent book based on his lectures to his MFA classes, From Where You Dream.)

I am learning that Revision is as important as writing the novel.

Revision

“The trouble with our conscious mind is that it tries too hard.”–R. Reid Wilson

That is just where I find myself in my revision.

This past Saturday, I was workshopping with some fellow authors. We regaled ourselves with strawberries, smoked salmon, bagels and brownies and discussed each other’s work. Thank you Ron, Cindy, and Gordon.

Afterwards, I was still rolling in that semi-conscious, in the flow space, so I pulled over near a large pond with a water fountain (near the Arboretum). I strolled past a young woman in rolled up jeans and skimpy shirt, reading with her tiny dog. I passed ducks and geese. Moms and Dads and kids were there. I walked along the wall and stopped every so often to lie down on my back. I felt the cool flat limestone through my shirt and the heat of the sun on my front. No matter where I was around that pond, the water came towards me in little waves.

I was clear there. Went back to the car and pulled my sheets we just workshopped. It was easy to redream the scene that everyone had problems with. I underwrite and some key reaction to a shocking admission was missing for everyone. I enjoyed filling in the pieces.

But today, I dread my mom coming tomorrow. I love my mom and want to see her, but her being here to watch Wise One will give me time and space to work on my second draft. How can I know how good it feels and still dread it?

Just that fear. That fear of failure, of rejection, of acceptance, of responsibility, of myself and most of all, of mediocrity.

“What I have set down in a moment of ardour I must then critically examine, improve, extend, condense. Sometimes I must do myself violence before I can mercilessly erase things thought out with love and enthusiasm.” –Pyotr Ilich Tchaikovsky

“You must go on, I can’t go on, I’ll go on.” –Samuel Beckett

Thanks Mom for coming.