Category Archives: Writing

I have officially finished both a first draft and a first rewrite of my novel! I’d feel better about it except that this baby still has me on a pretty tight timeframe (four weeks till D-Day!) and the writing needs a lot of improvement. I feel pretty good about the characters and plot, even a lot of the dialogue, but it still needs help. So! Today, I printed out the entire manuscript and I’m doing an on-paper read-through. While I’m looking for weak points and places to expand or cut, my main goal is to go through and highlight all the adverbs so I can reduce redundancies and tighten my writing. Holy cow, are there a lot! I did a quick find and replace for the letters –ly and found 808 instances. They don’t all need to die—just the majority. I don’t really need my heroine to “say softly” when she could just whisper, or have some guy “run quickly” when he could sprint. It’s a lot of work—just going through and circling them all is wearing me down, but when I can go back and show through dialogue or actions how someone is being sarcastic versus writing “she said sarcastically,” I think I will be much happier!

I’ll admit, I have been putting this off: I have two first drafts of novels completed, both very different but both needing a LOT of work. I always thought that once I completed a novel, it would be easy to just polish it up, check for grammar, maybe get creative with a thesaurus. What I’m finding is that my first drafts are written in more of a jot-it-down-now-make-it-pretty-later style. And making it pretty is not nearly as easy as I thought it would be!

Anyway, the one I’ve been working on lately is one loosely based on my time working as a steward on a small cruise ship. I’d been exploring different ways of rewriting, namely, working directly off the already completed MS document versus printing out the manuscript and rereading that while starting on a new document. Neither one was working and I wasn’t sure why: I liked the storyline and I liked my characters. I didn’t need any of the major changes often found in a revision—switching viewpoints, changing the setting or deleting major scenes—so I wasn’t sure what exactly was the problem. I started obsessively searching online, hoping the powers of Google could tell me what I was doing wrong. Then, I had my epiphany: Most of what I had written was so vanilla that I was sick of looking at it, let alone able to put the effort into making it better. I was keeping the story too similar to what had actually happened, without allowing myself to really get creative with the people and the plot.

So! I pulled out my spiral notebook and spent some time nailing down the theme, sub-themes, the story arc and a brief description of each of the characters. I made a list of plot highlights and crises, adding and deleting from my original draft, and tried to imagine how I could make each one just a little more dramatic, make things more tense for my heroine and push the stakes even higher. I jotted down the main scenes and then I pulled up a clean, white document and started fresh.

Yesterday, I spent Nora’s entire nap writing, and I felt really good about what I’d accomplished. It was the lead-up to my heroine starting on the boat and, using my previous methods, it was one of those scenes that I was so sick of that just looking at it gave me writer’s block. Going off my notes, I realized that this was a place where, instead of trying to rush her onto the boat, I should be setting up her character traits and future dilemmas. The result, while it will still need some tweaking, is much more interesting—something even I now enjoy reading!

I definitely don’t feel like my first draft was a waste, but I will be using it as more of an outline as I work to finish this first revision. Wish me luck!

Just got off the phone with artist Dave Russo for a story I’m writing for the Summer issue of TQ. What a fascinating man! He won a scholarship in 1947 and, for his prize, chose to study with Picasso for a year in Paris. Picasso’s first response was that he didn’t take students but, after a friend interceded and Picasso learned that he’d get $2,000 a month for supplying the young Russo with room and board, the artist changed his mind. Dave has some really incredible stories about his experiences with the master, whom he refers to as the “uncrowned king of France,” including dinners with Matisse and, as a young Catholic boy, being forced to draw a very pregnant, very nude and very hairy model. The issue will be out in July with the complete story!

Well, it would appear that my short story, The Poe Manual, did not win anything in the Writers’ Digest competition. Regardless, it was a fun way to get me writing and to finish a story that would have most likely sat untouched otherwise. Working within the 4,000 word count was really challenging, but also really great for making every word count. Click below to read the story.
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It’s been a busy month! I had a few stories I finished up for TQ, but have really been trying to focus on my own writing as much as possible. I actually made pretty good progress on one of my works-in-progress, and recently got sidetracked on another. I’m thinking about trying to enter another Writers’ Digest competition: I have a short story that I’ve been revamping off and on for what feels like forever now and it would be nice to get it polished up enough to send it in. The competition has a word limit of 1,500, which is kind of nice because it really makes you think and rethink every single word, but is kind of confining because, well, it’s only 1,500 words. With the Thanksgiving holiday coming up, we’ll see how much I actually get done, but it’s nice to have goals!

It’s been a wonderful four-plus years! Wednesday was my last official day in the office, and we ended it with a company sail on the Tahoe Cruz out of the Tahoe City marina. It was a beautiful blue day, complete with great appetizers and tasty wine. I couldn’t have asked for better weather, better company or a better ending to my tenure as Tahoe Quarterly’s associate editor.

I’ve learned a lot with the magazine—not just about writing and editing, but also about HTML, design, interview skills, the arts, sports and, of course, the peaks, people and places of the Lake Tahoe region. I hope to be able to take those all with me as I embark on a new path as a freelancer, novelist (hopefully!) and whatever else comes my way.