My Name is Liz, and I'm a Hoarder

Last week I joined the Insecure Writers Support Group, and it was a smashing success. I discovered a ton of great blogs (check out 'My Weekly Read' on the left-hand side of the page), electronically met a bunch of other writers, and felt less alone in my nail-biting hair-pulling hand-wringing neurotic-isms - um, I mean, writing insecurity. So, a big heartfelt thank you to Alex J. Cavanaugh and all of the other IWSG participants who stopped by and left me comments. I love comments!

I'm still editing away at my poor manuscript, of course. And still having itty bitty little freak-outs about it. And then laughing at myself, which, by the way, is the single best sanity-saving tactic I've ever discovered.

So, in the spirit of good-natured self-teasing (something I just occasionally indulge in on this blog), I'm going to post a little bit more about editing Cloudland. Also, I still can't think about anything else.

My editor sent me another batch of slaughtered marked-up pages a while ago, and when we were discussing the proposed edits, she pointed out a scene - one entire scene, mind you - and suggested that I might not need it.

Let me just repeat that: she suggested I might not need an entire scene!!!

In order to understand my panicked repetition and over-used italics, you have to understand a little not-so-well-kept secret about writers: we are word-pack-rats. Writers talk about language the way that hoarders talk about piles of boxes. Tell a writer to cut a paragraph, and she'll respond with , "NONONO WAIT! DON'T GET RID OF THAT! There might be something GOOD in there!! Let me just see..." *rifles around in manuscript* "Yeah, yeah, this sentence - this sentence is GENIUS! And this one here -"  *more rifling; words fly through the air* "Oh yeah, this one is the KEY TO THE WHOLE BOOK!!" 

We are language hoarders. I realize I'm over-generalizing here, but show me a writer who never minds cutting anything she's written, and I'll show you a pint-sized hippopotamus who plays the violin and sings Carmen in perfect Italian.

This is what I'm talking about when I mention that I'm murdering my darlings: it's an often-used writing expression that points out how common it is for writers to clutch their favorite paragraphs to their chests with crazed Gollum-like desperation, and how important it is to cut those buggers out of the book because they are WEIGHING IT THE HELL DOWN. I write these sections that I think are lovely and genius and perfect, and then my editor comes along and tells me they're unnecessary. And you know what? She's right. Just because something is well-written doesn't mean that it belongs in the novel.

Here's how OCD we are: many, many writers (myself included) keep files of their cut paragraphs/chapters/scenes for so-called "use in a future book". You know, like your Aunt Bertha keeps massive boxes of junk mail and catalogs just in case she ever wants to order something from Ikea. And who knows? Maybe someday I will really use something I cut, and maybe some day Bertha will buy her seventeenth All-In-One Book Organizer/Vegetable Peeler. It's possible, so all hoarding tendencies aside, I'm going to keep that damn file and hope to use something in there, some day.

Incidentally, I didn't cut the scene. Instead, I took a look at why my editor was suggesting that it was unnecessary, and realized that I hadn't written it the way that I had intended. In fact, I'd written it wrong. It sounds dramatic, but I saw that the metaphors I'd used were almost the opposite of what I was trying to express. This is a scene that takes place towards the end of the book, in the magical land in the clouds, where everything is a metaphor; using the wrong one is a pretty major mistake. It was, I think, the last scene I wrote before I finished the first draft of the book, and I was both stuck for ideas and determined to finish the draft, so you can see how I might have rushed through it just a wee bit.

Anyway, I went back to the drawing board and came up with better metaphors, and re-wrote the scene. I'm going to send it to my editor - along with the rest of the entire draft HALLELUJAH!!!!!! - shortly. We'll see if it makes the final cut.

In the meantime, I'm gritting my teeth, and laughing a lot, and committing a hell of a lot of word-murders.

We Interrupt This Program To EMBARRASS THE HECK OUT OF ME

Hi, folks. I'm sorry about the unannounced radio silence last week. I fully intended to put up a blog post, but my birthday happened, and then my wife and I took off for heretofore unexplored regions of Western Massachusetts, where, it turns out, there are gorgeous views to look at and bountiful waterfalls and rivers to swim in and Bridges of Flowers (which, by the way, was a hell of a lot cooler and more lovely than it sounds) to cross, and very little in the way of cell phone or Internet service. So, I took a week off. Without really meaning to. Whoops.

But I'm back! And I am, as promised going to talk about plot this week - except - well, actually - if you don't mind -

I'm really not going to at all.

Nope. Sorry. Why? Because my editor has been tearing through great gobby sections of my manuscript with  unrestrained glee, and thanks to my unplanned week off, I'm now fighting to come up for air from beneath piles of marked-up pages and poor, dead, murdered paragraphs. Yes, that's right, it's time once again for small children and psychopathic criminals and abandoned puppies (look here for a key to that last sentence).

EDITING! HURRAH!

So, I'm once again wading like a lunatic through the seemingly endless pages of Cloudland, scythe in hand, slashing and burning and generally having a grand old time. Today, because I can't think about anything else at the moment, I'm going to treat you to an inside look at Liz's Bad Writing Habits, a.k.a. Stuff My Editor Is Constantly Cutting, a.k.a. Willing and Conscious Self-Humiliation In Seven Parts:

1. I've already mentioned one of them: a tendency to bash my readers over the head with over-explanation. Repeatedly. Ad nauseum. Just like I'm doing here. Oh boy.

2. I like the words 'long' and 'slow'. A lot. A whole, whole lot. I also really like them together, as in a 'long, slow moment'. There are (or rather, there were, before my editor's pen went hog-wild) a large number of 'long, slow moments' in my manuscript. I also really like it when people do things that are 'long' and/or 'slow': 'a long silence', 'a slow nod', 'a long, slow smile'. This is problematic, because, funny enough, readers seem to get bored with LONG, SLOW BOOKS.

3. One of my main characters, Sara, seems to like to avoid declarative sentences. For an example, see the sentence I just wrote. Does she seem to like to avoid them, or does she, in fact, just like to avoid them? As Shakespeare has Hamlet point out, '"Seems," madam? Nay, it is; I know not "seems."' 

4. I have a problem with pairing actions and body parts. Before your imagination runs wild, let me explain: I like to point out that characters nod their heads, and cross their arms over their chests. Because, you know, why just say that someone nodded, without saying what they nodded? I mean, that could be chaos! What body part did they nod?? There are so many choices! How will we ever know if I don't say it?!

5. I am a specific word addict. Once I find a word I like, I use it over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. And then I use it some more. My editor and I are compiling a growing list of Words I Am No Longer Allowed To Use in Cloudland. They include: fierce, wild, shift/shifting, murmur, quiver/quivering, long, and slow (see #2 above).

6. Emotions don't just happen; they happen in specific body parts. Or at least, they do when I write about them. I have a whole lot of instances of guilt rising in throats, and anger surging in stomachs, and grief filling lungs. I think at some point, someone told me that emotions should be visceral for the reader, and I, erm, took them rather seriously.

7. I love words. I really do. I love the way they taste, sound, look, smell, and feel (and yes, some words do have smells). This is not a bad thing, actually; it's just part of who I am, and a large part of why I love to read and write. The problem comes when I love them so much that I just keep piling 'em on. Hence, the collections of mass graves for my poor dead paragraphs.

I'm sure there are more Bad Habits I could name, but if you'll excuse me, I really need to get back to excising mine from my manuscript now.

Plot next week!! No, really!

Serial Killers, Toddlers, and Lonely Dogs. Must be Editing Time.

I'm supposed to be writing about characters this week. Why? Because I ended my last post with a sneaky little hook of a line that gave some hints about the main characters in Cloudland, and then said I needed to figure out who the hell they were. That was supposed to generate interest in my next post; I have no idea if it worked or not.

Well, I apologize, but that promised post about characters is going to have to wait... mainly because I'm bogged down in editing right now, and I can't pull my brain out of the editing mindset long enough to talk about characters. So I'm going to talk about editing instead, and I'll get to characters next week.

What is that editing mindset, you ask (or at least, I imagine you do, you shadowy mystery readers)? Well, I'd say it's a combination of an organized, highly intelligent, ruthless serial killer; an attention-challenged and disobedient two-year-old; and a very sad, lonely dog who just wants to sit on your lap and be petted. In other words, sometimes I'm brutal and cold-blooded, murdering any paragraph that gets it the way of the action. Sometimes I trample wildly around the manuscript, squashing random sentences because it seems cool, then losing focus and toddling off to play in another section. And sometimes, I really just want someone to come and pat my head and tell me I'm a good girl and everything is going to be OK.

Yeah. I know. It sounds psychotic. It kind of is. Editing the rough draft of a novel means you have to wade back in to all of the words you painstakingly crafted over countless long hours of your life, and try to look at them in a detached way, as if you hadn't just spent years of your life sweating over them, and then cut and slash and reshape them with a cynical, steady hand to make them better.

I know I'm making it sound like it sucks. It sometimes does, but it sometimes is really wonderful and rewarding, because at the end of a long day of hacking your beloved manuscript to bits, you realize it actually is better. And that's the best part of all.

Besides that, I'm lucky enough to be working with a kick-ass, brilliant, wise, and patient editor, who helps me look at this book with new eyes, and is willing to talk with me about it for hours and hours and hours. I know she worries that she's going to hurt my feelings, but honestly, I get to talk about this book I wrote with another whole person (can you tell that writers get a little isolated sometimes?) who is actually interested in what I produced. And that, believe it or not, is really, really fun.

So that's what I've been doing this week. More specifically, I've been massacring great populations of exposition, because said editor pointed out that I have this small tendency to overwrite things. Just a teeny tiny bit. As a dear friend and writing partner of mine once said (and admitted to doing herself), I write these things called "frying pan moments." You know, you're reading the book, and I'm standing behind you with a giant frying pan, smashing it down on your head over and over again. "Did you get it?!" (smash, smash) "Did you get it yet?!" (smash) "Did you get it, huh? Huh? Huh?!!" (SMASHSMASHSMASH)

You know those moments. Some TV shows have them all. The. Time. (Yes, Once Upon A Time, I'm talking to you.) And we hate them. So I'm trying to trust that I've gotten my points across, and cut the rest of the explanation.

OK, off to crazy-land (I mean editing) now. Characters next week, I promise.