Nearing the End of the Novel

And so another month has passed and Uncharacteristic Behavior is nearing the end. I've been working on it constantly - not so much moving it forward, as filling out the characters, adding detail to the earlier chapters. There's a lot of material in my 'bits' folder ready for the last chapters, but I'm hanging back a bit, savoring these last few weeks before I put it all to bed.  Once again I'm experiencing that bitter-sweetness at the prospect of ending a book and wanting it to last just a teensy bit longer. I try to reassure myself that - although I'll miss my current ones - there'll be other characters, and there is even that possibility of revisiting Karen, if I do a sequel to The Place of Dreams.

As this is my fourth novel, I found it easier, naturally, than the first, but perhaps it's not as good, as no blood was drawn in the effort, as seemed to happen with that first one (which was difficult to write, but I hope not difficult to read). But I'm happy with it, and my who-dunnit reader likes it, so something must be going right.


Speaking of readers' difficulties, The Guardian published a relevant interview with writer, Nicole Krauss, on Sunday. I've added the link, although I was most taken with the following:

'On a long book tour of the US, Krauss was taken aback to find that one of the things she heard most frequently from readers was: "this book is difficult". "I was so surprised," she says. "I realise that it's challenging, that it refuses to come together too easily, but I didn't think of it as a difficult read." So how to explain it? Krauss believes – or at least, she worries – that in the west, we are moving towards the end of effort. "We've arrived at this place where we just thoughtlessly plunge towards whatever the thing is that will allow us to make less of an effort. We know we're diminishing experience. We know that it was richer to walk to the store, talk to the bookseller, maybe meet your neighbour than it is to click online. But we can't stop ourselves. We're programmed to do the 'easier' thing. That's why people have Kindles. It's easier not to have to turn the page. All that's left of turning is this bizarre little sound to remind us of it. People no longer have the concentration to finish things; we skim along on the surface, and it's miserable.'

I can't help but think that she's right. People have become lazy, perhaps always were. How many of you skim-read passages in a book because you see them as unnecessary or riffle through pages to get to the next 'interesting' bit? My who-dunnit friend finds Mark Billingham too wordy; I think all of his words are worthwhile. Will we shortly be publishing more and more books of under 70,000 words, because anything more will be too taxing? And when was the last time you read any poetry or a 19th Century novel? What? Did you say, high school? Give yourself a treat, pick up some Dickens, or Hardy, and wallow in the words. One of these days I intend to read Ulysses. I should start soon; time grows short.

So it was recently revealed, through letters acquired by the University of East Anglia, that J.D. Salinger wasn't the recluse we thought he was. I somehow always felt that a man of his insight would enjoy regular interaction with real people. Niagara Falls, Canada, eh? Who'd have thought it? I might have stood next to him a couple of times, just before we went to the casino for lunch.


As an aside, of all the postings I've done for this blog, the most popular appears to be about agent requests for full manuscripts. There have been dozens of searches on the subject, which obviously means you're all doing really well with your queries. Good luck to you, and certainly don't stress if an agent asks for the whole thing. Time to celebrate! Your query letter worked!

Perhaps, by the time I post again, I will have completed Uncharacteristic Behavior. Nice timing, as that's the beginning of the Australian autumn - not really fall, because most of our trees don't shed their leaves and nothing much changes in the garden; the perennial plants look a bit bored with everything and simply doze off. Being a cold weather girl, I prefer the end of the hot season. A couple of weeks ago, it was so hot (over a 100 F/40's C) that I didn't think I'd survive it. Like magic, courtesy of the new weather patterns (which have no pattern whatsoever), it dropped 50% the following week. Love it! With the cooler autumn weather, the MS finished, I'll hibernate with my next book idea (missing the carpet of maple leaves I used to have at my door), and pretend snow is not far away. I think better when it's cold.


Tell me what you're up to. You've all been a bit quiet since I moved. I miss the chit-chat.

Until next time...

Avoidance and Submission

I stole this from Jenaveve at August Street, who stole it from Hokey, who probably stole it from... oh, look - you could steal it too.


I don't usually blog on Tuesdays. I'm meant to be working on my agent submissions. So this morning I spent a couple of hours on my art blog, another couple researching for future art postings, and messed around with three of four long emails. I moved a cat bed to the top of the desk where Baby can look out of the window, made sure she was comfortable, and then I watched a bit of CNN and the BBC. In all, I've successfully dilly-dallied (like that one, Lapillus?) away five hours, because I started at 8:oo am.

So I want to talk a bit about avoidance.

I'm a very spontaneous person and not always particularly responsible. When I get the urge to go for something, I throw myself into it fully, bravely, and - yes - obsessively, if the idea is a passion. I should be at a stage in my life where I am settled, but at any moment - when the whim strikes - I could be off phoning shipping companies again, preparing to take off for another country. So one must conclude that I am adventurous and a risk-taker.

But this novel thing, this submission process, is a puzzle. Here it is, at last, the chance to go forward with the manuscript, and I hesitate; I rarely hesitate about anything.

I believe it's a mixture of fears. Here are the two obvious ones:

1) I could fail; after years of thinking of myself as a relatively good writer, I could be horribly misguided, on the wrong track. This would be somewhat of a tragedy. I've thought of myself as a writer since I was six.

2) I could succeed, finding fame and glory; this would be terrible for me because I would hate to live in the limelight. In fact, I can't think of anything worse than to be scrutinized by the media or the public. I enjoy anonymity (blogging is a safe way to connect with people without falling under their direct gaze). I so get what happened to J.D. Salinger.

In my perfect world, I would publish my book, never have to go on the road to market it, never have to give an interview, but receive thousands of letters from loving readers who can't wait for the next one. No one would recognize me at the store, but I would earn enough from royalties to own homes in three countries. You know where.

Not selling the book guarantees anonymity, right? (Huge sigh) Do we quiet little writers, who enjoy being locked away in our rooms creating our characters, who avoid social gatherings except to observe with our writer's eye, want to be out there? And the very word, 'submission', means surrender, doesn't it?

I wonder how you feel about it all. Perhaps you can re-motivate me... I would like to feel brave again in the morning.

Chapters One through Thirty-Four Today

Well, you can see that I now have just one place for you to click to gain access to the novel. I think the site looks a lot cleaner, and certainly makes it easier for you.

Only three chapters (I think) to go. I've been avoiding it, this last part. It's as if I am getting ready to say goodbye to an old friend. Of course, it will always be with me, and certainly still be driving me crazy when it reaches the submission stage. But the completion of it, the final resting of it, I hope, in my brain, should make for more normal days. I have been obsessed with it, as I think I told you.

I wanted to comment on something that has occurred to me at numerous times since I've been doing the revisions. I belong to another writing site, where we all critique one anothers' work - although I've been shamelessly lax, being so involved in this manuscript - and I've received suggestions for improvements to the ms there, which I mostly took on board. I also read a vast quantity of blogs and writing How-To sites, and, from all this wealth of information, it came home to me just how terribly complicated the process of writing a book is, way above and beyond the actual creation of it.

It stands to reason we must be very careful with our editing - proofing and proofing again - to make our words perfectly clear, not muddled. This, in itself, is the worst job of all, as far as I can see. I would pay someone else to do it, had I spare cash, but I don't.

On top of that, today we have to be terribly clever with our query letters, composing them like works of art in themselves. We need to have brilliant 'pitches', breathtaking synopses, and all typed very carefully in Copperplate Gothic, they say.

Thinking back to all the biographies or newspaper snippets I've read about famous writers of much earlier years, particularly those of the forties and fifties, it seems their publishers weren't so absolutely perfectionist about the condition of their manuscripts. Those writers, admittedly tops in their field, were famous for their sloppy pages, seemed to almost take pride in that eccentricity. I've seen some of them reproduced, their original submissions, and they were just filled with ink blots and scribbled-out words, hand-written, a lot of them, with misspellings and poor punctuation.

In those days, editors permitted this, humored their great talents, allowed them to be - let's face it - incredibly difficult reads, at least, at that stage. So the editors and proofreaders did the awful slogging, all the tweaking, with what must have been hundreds of blue-pencil marks all across the pages.

It could never happen today, could it? Unless someone like J.D. Salinger really did present that mystical new novel, all messy and awful because it's been sitting around for so many years. I guess they'd take it, whatever its condition.

Oh, how I wish it could be that way for me. And mine is so-oo clean.

Except for that little comma I missed out on page.....