PecanSpringsJournal

What's going on here?

For the next few months, I'll be using this blog to document the writing of Wormwood, the 17th book in the China Bayles series. There'll be entries about the research (the book is set in a fictional Kentucky Shaker village), the writing, and other book-related business. If this is the kind of thing you're looking for, I'll be glad to have you along for the ride. You can join the Feedblitz email list (in the right panel, toward the bottom) to be notified of posts. If you'd rather read about herbs and such, click on over to China's website for recipes, podcasts, book reviews, information about the published books, and lots of other good stuff. Or for a wider view of the writing life and what's going on at our place in the Texas Hill Country, check out my Lifescapes blog. --Susan Albert

Bloggers, listen up!

China Bayles and I are planning our Nightshade blog tour for the last couple of weeks of March and the first week or two of April. If you're interested in being a blog host for this tour, you'll find all the details and a sign-up sheet here. Deadline: March 1. After that, we'll start putting the tour together and will post the tour schedule on China's website.

Catching Up

I took a holiday from blogging while I finished the book and worked on a couple of other writing projects. for those of you who've been following this project blog (the writing of Wormwood) a note about the disappearance of the posts. This blog was set to display only the current month, so you needed to look in the archives for the posts in November, October, etc. I've changed the setting to display the maximum number of calendar days, but as time passes, the posts will continue to be moved to the archives. Go there for a look.

Now, back to business, catching up. I'm finished with Wormwood, although there is still some clean-up/fix-up to be done to the last couple of chapters--and Bill has yet to read and critique the full book. The book (one printed copy plus an e-file) isn't due until the end of March, so I have some time to work out the wrinkles and crinkles in the last chapters and write the end note on wormwood, the signature herb.

Turned out to be more problems than I anticipated in pulling the two stories together: the Shaker back story and the mystery that China has to solve in contemporary time. And I always have trouble with disposing of the villain at the end of the book, because I don't want the conventional shoot-em-up conclusion. But I lived with the problem for some weeks, until I was eventually struck by a bolt from the blue: you'll understand the full significance of that when you read the book. Which won't be until April 2009 at the earliest. Next steps: final cleanup, submission (end of March), revisions requested by the editor (sometime next summer, if any), copyedit (November-December), bound galleys (January 2009), and bound books (April 2009).

Writing log. Altogether, I've logged 95 calendar days on the project, 67 working days, and 87,000 words (which will probably be close to 70 working days and 90,000 words, when all is said and done). This book seemed to stretch out forever, primarily because I took time out for the blog tour and time out when my daughter came for a week's visit. We'll call this done for now, since I need to turn to another writing projects: getting the final text of the memoir (now titled Landscapes of the Heart: A Memoir of Marriage and Place) ready for the editors at the University of Texas Press, which will publish it in Fall, 2009.

Reading Note. Long before I wrote stories, I listened for stories. Listening for them is something more acute than listening to them. I suppose it's an early form of participation in what goes on. Listening children know stories are there. When their elders sit and begin, children are just waiting and hoping for one to come out, like a mouse from its hole.--Eudora Welty [I wonder if families tell stories any more, or do they leave storytelling to the television?]

Writing practice

In a recent comment, Dani asked several questions that I hear fairly often. Here they are:

Do you have a set writing schedule? A certain time of day that you get in your xx number of words? Days off from writing? Are those scheduled? My great challenge with writing is staying on task. I read recently that one author wouldn't allow himself to pee until he wrote his quota everyday. :D I'm about ready to try that.

Yes. Yes. Yes. And yes. (Re: peeing. Whatever works.)

Writing calendar. I'm writing two series at the moment, which means two books a year, with hard deadlines. I also write an "extra" book about every 18 months, usually with a softer deadline. If I didn't organize my work, I couldn't meet the deadlines, hard or soft. So I calendar my projects, just the way you calendar projects at the office. I give each book a 90-day slot on the calendar, hoping to get 60-some good writing days out of that period and still leave time for life. I calendar six months a year for series writing (China Bayles, the Cottage Tales), which gives me plenty of time for an "extra" project, like the short story collection, the Book of Days, the memoir that will be out in 2009, and fun editorial work, such as What Wildness and the book review site.

Writing schedule. I am enormously privileged: writing is my day job. Which means that I go to work when everybody else does (rather than writing nights and weekends, the way I did when I was first getting started and I was still working at the university). I show up at the computer about 8:30, after morning chores and the morning dog walk. I work on the current project until 4:30, with some time off for lunch. I allow myself to be distracted by Bill, email, interesting Web stuff, uninteresting household stuff (laundry etc) and dogs. I aim for 1500 words a day and usually get it, more or less. At that rate, it should take me just under 60 days to come up with about 85,000 words. Add in another 10 days for revision, and I'm up to about 70 days. To reduce the forgetting factor, I prefer to corral as many consecutive days as possible for the work (yes, this does include weekends). I don't like to work half-days. If I've got to go somewhere in the afternoon, I don't try to write in the morning, I do the laundry instead. As I said, writing is my day job. It's a wonderful privilege. It's also a responsibility, and I take it seriously.

Days off. Sure. There are scheduled days off. This month, I planned to take time out to speak in Lubbock, Dallas, Georgetown, and at the Texas Book Fair. I also went to Austin for a couple of Story Circle events: Reading Circle and the launch of the Kitchen Table Stories. And I planned to take Thanksgiving Day off to cook, knit, and watch a movie (Amazing Grace--good!). But there are unscheduled days off, too. A sick dog, a four-hour power failure, shopping, an emergency trip to the dentist, an unexpectedly large pecan harvest, garden work (has to be done in the daytime now, with dark coming just at dinner-time).

Staying on task. A deadline is a great motivator. And humans are great procrastinators. Without a deadline, most of us won't stay on task. I give myself quotas and set myself deadlines--these are the monkey tricks that keep me sane, as William Conrad says in Heart of Darkness. But writing is my life. I love it. I have to do it. Staying on task isn't a problem for me. It's making time for other life stuff that is often my challenge.

Writing practice. Years ago, when I first began studying Buddhism, I saw the connection between sitting practice and writing practice. (This was before Natalie Goldberg began writing her books about writing and Zen practice. She saw it too.) For me, writing is a kind of meditation practice. When I'm writing, I'm paying attention, the best kind of attention, to the real world at large, to the imaginary world of my fiction, to the interior world of mind, the sound of words, the play of thought. I do this best when I'm focused, clear, intent, motivated (either by the pressure of the story or the pressure of the deadline). If an unnecessary distraction comes up, I let it go. If a necessary distraction comes along, I pay it the attention it deserves, then come back to the work.

Reading about writing. There's lots of good stuff about writing out there. Natalie Goldberg and Anne Lamott, for instance. Oh, and Stephen King--I really like his On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. King is a 2000-word a day guy (he doesn't do the laundry), and quits only when he gets it done. He's also able to think about the writing life, as well as live it. I like that.

Reading note. The biggest aid to regular (Trollopian?) production is working in a serene atmosphere. It's difficult for even the most naturally productive writer to work in an environment where alarms and excursions are the rule rather than the exception. When I'm asked for 'the secret of my success' (an absurd idea, that, but impossible to get away from), I sometimes say there are two: I stayed physically healthy (at least until a van knocked me down by the side of the road in the summer of 1999), and I stayed married... The combination of a healthy body and a stable relationship with a self-reliant woman who takes zero shit from me or anyone else has made the continuity of my working life possible. And I believe the converse is also true: that  my writing and the pleasure I take in it has contributed to the stability of my health and my home life.--Stephen King, On Writing

A two-story novel

Actually, all novels have more than one story--in the sense that every character has a story. The more complex the character's story, the more complex the character. For the novelist, the trick is to pick out the most compelling of the stories, foreground it, and weave all the other stories together around it, behind it, in the background. In a mystery series, we usually assume that the most compelling story belongs to the detective, whose job it is to solve the mystery and create a more or less appropriate ending for the story of the bad guy. That's how it almost always works in first-person mystery novels. China's story is foregrounded, the other stories (Ruby's, Sheila's, McQuaid's, Brian's, etc) play out in the background.

But Nightshade, which will come out in April, is different. In that novel, two detectives are at work--China and McQuaid, so both their stories are foregrounded, China's story told in her usual first-person voice, McQuaid's story in third person, present tense.

And now Wormwood, which is different still. I wanted to set China's story in a Shaker village--a reconstructed village, a living museum called Zion's Spring. The mystery in China's story (a murder, covering up an embezzlement) takes place in present time. But I also wanted to tell a story set in the past, about the lives of the Shakers who once lived in Zion's Spring. So I'm crafting a two-story novel: China's story is told in her usual crisp, authoritative first-person voice; the Shaker story, set in 1912, is told in a variety of voices and media (narration, dreams, letters, journals, newspaper articles, even drawings). These multiple stories alternate, overlap, and intersect in what I hope will be interesting and thought-provoking ways, so that we see both the present and the past from multiple and often contradictory points of view. I haven't got all this worked out yet, of course. But the process has been challenging. For me, and I hope for you, when you sit down to read the book.

And maybe you'll come back to this blog to see what I've written about the process (and to read the comments)--which might extend the reading experience in some new ways. More about that in another post.

Writing log. I was gone for a few days at the beginning of November (book talks, etc) and the blog tour took more time than I expected. And there was the pecan harvest to deal with (200 pounds, when we weighed it all out!) and a sick dog, and so on and so forth. Life happens.

Here's an update. I've been working more or less steadily for two calendar months. (I know: it seems MUCH longer to me, too!) So far, I've managed to corral 44 writing days out of 60 (this includes 5 days for revision of the first half of the book). I'm up to just over 60,000 words (about 3/4 done). I have about 25,000 words to go, or some 16-17 writing days. I won't quite finish in early December, as I expected, because my daughter is coming next week for a visit (yay!), and then I'm heading out to NM to join Bill for Christmas. But what the heck. Fiction can wait. China will just have to twiddle her thumbs until I can get back to her.

Reading note. I tell a story the way some people eat an Oreo cookie.--B.E. Zalman, quoted in Room to Write, by Bonni Goldberg

Point of view

One of the first things a fiction writer has to do is to choose a point of view: the character from whose perspective the story will be told. Sometimes the point of view is anchored in one character or another. Sometimes it floats from one character to another, either tightly or loosely. The author needs to decide how much control she wants to exercise over the point of view. For much more on this technical subject, go here.

When I started the China series, I chose first-person POV. Mostly, this was because I wanted to create a distinctive voice (both internal speech and speech) for China, but I have to confess that I was also operating under the influence of Nancy Pickard (the Jenny Cain series) and Sue Grafton, who was up to "F" when I began to think about China. And to tell the truth, FP POV is somewhat easier for a novice novelist, because the novel (except for other characters' dialogue) takes place in one character's brain--so to speak. That is, when you read a China novel, you're getting all (and only) China's take on everything in the world, except when another character speaks.

You can see the advantages, especially in a series of books. Once I got to know China, it was really easy to slip into her character and let her tell the story. And readers enjoy it, too because once they get to know China, they find it easy to slip into her character. If the POV character is friendly and inviting, FP POV can have a "friendly" feel to it that readers enjoy and look forward to. (Conversely, if the POV character is angry, ugly, bitter, readers are likely to be put off.)

On the other hand, FP POV is devilishly hard to work with when you're writing a mystery. To be fair, I have to put out all the clues, not hold anything back. The readers know everything that China knows, and if I'm not careful, they will solve the mystery before she does. (I handled a clue clumsily in Rosemary Remembered and got lots of mail from people who thought China was totally dumb for not spotting the give-away clue when they did.)This is a real problem because I have a mix of readers (don't we all?): people who work hard at solving the mystery, read a lot of mysteries, and are very good sleuths; and people who read for the characters and don't give a flip for the mystery. I have to write for both.

And it's also a problem over a long series, like China's, when readers (and/or this author!) get a little . . . well, bored with the China-only books. In Nightshade (comes out next April), I told part of the story from McQuaid's point of view. He and China are working to solve the same case, but from different angles. He knows things she doesn't know, and vice versa, and the readers get to know it all (but are still, I hope, surprised by who-dunnit). To easily distinguish between the two voices, I chose to tell McQuaid's story in third-person POV, present tense. I'll talk more about that when you've had a chance to read that book.

I've set it up differently in Wormwood (the book I'm working on now), where there is the present story (told from China's familiar FP POV) and the past story, told from several points of view. The two stories intersect much more loosely than do the China/McQuaid stories in Nightshade. I'm eager to know how you'll respond to both of these experiments. Some readers will probably prefer the simpler FP POV. I'll hear wails of "not enough China!" Others will welcome the experiment. So we'll see.

Writing log. I had to spend several writing days this week paying attention to my upcoming blog tour (scheduling, writing posts, setting up web pages, etc.). The announcement goes out tomorrow, but you can have a preview peek at the schedule here. And since the announcement of the new book review website went out on Monday, Paula, Linda, and I have been deluged with queries that had to be handled. As a result, I've only logged three writing days in the past six, with a total of 3k words--not much forward progress. But I straightened out some plot snarls, added some in-depth characterization, and thought of another twist. So I'm feeling okay about it. I'm up to 43k words, about 50% done, and pretty much on schedule, aiming to complete the book by the first or second week of December. I'm out Tuesday-Thursday in the coming week, too (Lubbock and Dallas). Friday will be catch-up, and Sunday is the Texas Book Festival. I'll be glad when I can arrange more consecutive writing days!

Reading note. And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.--Sylvia Plath

Book review site relaunched

The big "secret" project I've been telling you about just went public!

We (Paula, Peggy, Linda, and I) have relaunched the Story Circle Book Review site, with a fresh new look and lots of new features. This is a site that Peggy and I put together for Story Circle five or six years ago. Paula took it over and expanded it to over 400 reviews, making it the largest women's book review site on the Internet. Now, we're expanding even further, with added categories for women's non-fiction and fiction (including mysteries, historical and mainstream novels, and Christian fiction), a new look, and lots of new features--and more on the way!

To handle this expansion, we're looking for reviewers to supplement our existing team of 20-plus reviewers. Reviewers may receive free advance reading copies and new books--and of course writing reviews is a great way to add to your portfolio of publications. We're featuring our most active reviewers by giving each one a webpage of her own, and will soon be launching an eletter with more opportunities to showcase our reviewers. Interested? You'll find all the info here. If you've just read a book that you've enjoyed and want to share, we'd like to read your review.

Writing log. The launch has kept me pretty busy, but I'm making forward progress on China's mystery. I'm up to nearly 40,000 words (28 writing days), and have a pretty good handle on the story--on all the stories, that is, for this is a "duplex" book, with present-time and past-time mysteries. I'm playing with point of view again, so the next post will be on that topic.

Reading note. A story told in another character's voice creates a new story.--Bonnie Goldbert