Ernest Hemingway said, “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”
Somerset Maugham said, “There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.”
And there you have it, folks, the essence of writing boiled down into two quotes.
Anyone can write a book. Seriously. The Book Police will not kick your door down and demand you stop. The reason most people do not write books is because they choose to do more sensible things with their time and mental health, like jumping out of perfectly good airplanes or driving armor-plated vehicles into tornadoes.
But . . . there are those of us who sat down one day and said, “I’m going to write a book,” and because no one tried to stop us, here we are.
After writing “How to Live with a Ghost,” I wonder how many half-finished or even completely finished manuscripts are gathering digital dust because their authors aren’t ready to take the next step—letting someone actually read their work.
Handing over something you’ve written, even to a trusted friend, is terrifying. It’s worse than the dream where you walk into your first day of junior high school wearing nothing but your underwear. Suddenly, all the brilliant, clever, complex, vibrant prose you crafted comes off sounding like “See Jane run.” The characters feel two-dimensional and plot collapses into ash. The idea of letting anyone read it makes you swoon like a Victorian lady whose corset is laced too tight.
The first time I finished writing “Ghost,” (yes, the first time. There were many times. Please don't ask how many. Just. Don't.), I had a vague idea it was ready for publication (it wasn’t) and if I queried enough literary agents, one of them would recognize the brilliant charm of the manuscript and want to publish it immediately (they didn’t). So, in the long-held tradition of dog trainers and writers, I started over to fix the stuff I’d screwed up. (I credit 50 years of patient, amenable competition obedience dogs for granting me this skill. It would have been better not to have screwed it up in the first place but writing, like dog training, comes with a learning curve.)
Novels demand the author juggle things like character development and plot arc and rising conflict and realistic dialogue and imagery and structure and voice and setting. If you don’t address those elements—along with whatever the heck Jane is running from and the reason why it is chasing her—you got nothing. When it’s all said and done, how do you find out if you’ve done right by Jane and her pursuer? You let someone read your manuscript.
Horrors.
Many drafts ago, I stepped onto the relentless, gut-wrenching roller coaster ride of beta readers, manuscript critiques, developmental edits and line edits. I am forever grateful to my beta readers. You got the roughest of rough drafts. You got the first cake baked by a 9-year-old 4-H kid and dutifully eaten by her family, who forced smiles while thinking, “She has to get better, she can’t get any worse.” You got the cake full of air holes, the tough one that was over-mixed and under-baked and maybe had a few ingredients that were mis-measured or left out entirely. You know who you are. We’re still friends. Thank you for your patience. For pointing out the cringe-y spots. For being blunt. And for saying, “I think you could go somewhere with this.”
In order to go somewhere, I needed professional help. Now the people reading my work were getting PAID to do it. They got out a microscope and scalpel and brought up issues I didn’t even know existed. And they were without exception, encouraging and helpful. I couldn’t have gotten “Ghost” to this point without any of them.
It also got weirdly funny—funny, in the way that if you don’t laugh, your brain is going to explode. The editing process is insanely subjective. Fortunately, I’m in a position where I get the final word (providing it’s not libelous) regarding content. That’s not as easy as it might sound.
In an early draft of “Ghost,” an editor questioned my use of the word “township.” She was not a Midwest native and had only lived in larger cities since moving to Iowa, so knew nothing of county layouts in rural Iowa. She advised me to elaborate on what a township is for the reader’s benefit. Fair point. I hoped my book would sell far and wide and perhaps someone in Timbuktu would also want to know what a township is. So, I wrote a brief explanation of the nature of townships as geographic divisions of counties.
Only to have another editor, further down the line, bluntly say, “Take this out, it’s a waste of words. You’re not teaching a geography class.”
Well, then.
I took it out. But I’m thinking about putting it back in. Shhhh . . . .
That’s the nature of editing. One person will enthusiastically say “More of this! Less of that!” while the next editorially-inclined person to get their paws on your manuscript will, with equal enthusiasm, say “Dear God, woman, what are you thinking? Less of this! More of that!”
I read somewhere that the first draft and the final draft will never look like twins. Cousins, perhaps. Still the same family tree but a different branch. As I worked on it, “Ghost” changed in both plot and length. At one point, it was a lumbering, unwieldy 110,000 words. Unless you’re Diana Gabaldon or George R.R. Martin, you don’t get to publish 110,000-word books. Also, Diana Gabaldon has never in her life written anything lumbering and unwieldy.
At this point, “Ghost” is now a statuesque 91,000 words, which is still a bit hefty but acceptable. Why the fuss over word count? Paper and ink cost money, and publishers have a bottom line that they would prefer to keep in the black. This is less of an issue for digital versions, but in a world where many readers remain adamant about preferring hard copy over e-readers, word count became my new obsession.
Cutting nearly 20,000 words was . . . painful. Again, I have editors to thank for making me aware of scenes that stumbled on for too long, dialogue that rehashed the same topics, too much exposition and occasional passages that galloped off into the sunset as if their GPS had gone haywire. Most of my over-writing fell under the heading of “It sounded like a good idea at the time.” This meant I liked the way it sounded, and I wanted to leave it there, chiseled in stone forever, because d*mnit, I wrote it!
That’s what first drafts (and to be honest, second and third and twenty-eighth drafts) are for. Write the stuff that sounds like a good idea. You can sort it out later.
Thanks for coming along on this journey with me. Next week: developing writing habits and other ridiculous expectations.
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