I’m editing 125,000 word manuscript and need to organize it. Yes, most of my notes are in OneNote, my most favorite Microsoft Product ever. But 500 pages still need some in-manuscript management. I’m using comments, index marks, and headings to keep track of work left to do, references, and loose outlining.

However, in the ribbon bar for the styles, only Heading 1 and Heading 3 are available. Where did the rest of the Headings go? Since this took me a few minutes to figure out, I’m writing instructions to myself (and anyone else) to find the rest of the headings.

Step 1. Move to the Home tab of the ribbon bar.

Step 2. Click the arrow just underneath Change Styles. This should bring up a list of styles. Notice Heading 2 is probably not there. Don’t worry, we’re not done yet.

Step 3. Click on Options link. This will bring up the Style Pane Options box.

Step 4. Check the Show next heading when previous level is used option.

Step 5. Close your way out of this dialog back to where you were.

Step 6. Make sure something in your document is using either Heading 1 or Heading 3 (or whatever heading is available in the ribbon bar).

Now you should be able to use all the headings you are accustomed to and have them work in the Outline view.

So I decided to put everything on hold during my personal me time except two things: my book and any other book.

My book, last time I thought about it, was somewhere toward the end of Act 2. Getting to Act 3 was a monumental effort that I was not fit for. Daily conversations with Hubster went something like this:

Him: Are you done with Act 2?

Me: Nope.

Him: How much more to go?

Me: *Sigh* I wish I knew.

And then, without realizing it, I was in the middle of Act 3. It took me a whole day to realize it, and I glowed and had a little aw-shucks moment. So short-term goal one? Completed!

Now for the other book, which was really any of the 50 books in my TBR (to be read) stack. Each one has won an award of note: National Book Award, Pulitzer, NYTBSL. But my mind was so scattered with the rorschach cleaning that I couldn’t get beyond a couple of pages. I decided on Educating Waverley by Laura Kalpakian. I picked this book because I considered taking a year-long class with her so I needed to read something she wrote. The book is amazing and I have a few posts coming about various writerly things I learned. However, while reading this, I found out the content of the year-long class and decided it wasn’t a good fit for me. So goal two? Completed!

There was also another short-term goal in there. What to do? Year-long class, SIWC.ca conference, or just keep writing. I decided on SIWC. Goal three? Completed!

I hope your spring rorschach cleaning is going super too.

The handouts included an author questionnaire that the publisher will ask for not long after the book contract is signed. She didn’t go through each item on the questionnaire but she did highlight the important ones. My favorites are: [1] did this book involve special research (oh, the answers I would have for that one) and [2] list ten questions an interviewer could ask that would allow you the best opportunity to discuss your book — in order of priority.

Random notes:

• She was a lively speaker with oodles of information, family friend language, and great stories about famous authors.
• She teaches at Richard Hugo House in Seattle.
• Mentioned she liked Betsy Lerner‘s blog.
• Suggested negotiating the number of Gallys/ARCs/AREs up in the publisher’s contract.
• Suggested joining and supporting http://www.indiebound.org/
• Suggested starting a marketing folder for each novel at the beginning of the book project.
• Use Encyclopedia of Associations at the library to find possible organizations to speak to about book.
• Suggested reading Publisher’s Weekly at the library every week.
• She could edit her own talk as she was talking. Great grammarian!

Any errors or omissions are mine and mine alone. I sat at the back of the room so I may have gotten a few details wrong. So me bad, not her.

After the Writing — Paths to Success by Alice B. Acheson, Marketing Specialist and Publishing Consultant

Wednesday, May 19, 6 PM (5:30 sign-in recommended) at Bellingham Golf and Country Club

Speaker Summary from WWP site:

You’ve enjoyed the process of writing a book but need winning strategies for finding — and impressing — an agent or publisher.  Aided with copious handouts, Alice Acheson’s experience will guide you through industry procedures (from today through post-publication), help you gain realistic control over the marketing process, and show what you need to do (and when) in order to gain publisher support.

Alice will allow plenty of time for specific questions: about the topic as stated, the state of traditional publishing today, how does one get published by one of them, or if it is even possible in this day and age to have a publisher pick your manuscript, etc.

Alice has decades of experience as a marketing specialist and publishing consultant. Working with authors (all genres), illustrators, and photographers, as well as large and small publishers, she has negotiated book contracts, sold subsidiary rights, and edited and publicized books.

Four recipients of her publicity prowess have appeared simultaneously on The New York Times bestseller list, and she is the recipient of the Literary Market Place Outside Services Award for Advertising, Promotion, and Publicity.

Show vs Tell

Cormac McCarthy has a great ability to write in action without needing interior thought. If you are accustomed to reading with a lot of interior thought, this might seem odd but after a few pages, you know you don’t need it. So if you need a book that is almost exclusively show, and no tell — this is the book. It will stay on my book shelf forever due to this first point.

Theme

I don’t want to state the theme of the book for fear of being wrong but there are a lot of different aspects of the book that have to do with less is more. Internal thought above is one example. The stark landscape of Texas and Mexico is another. The author’s use of women is a third. The book is almost exclusively about men. So when the author does bring a woman onto the page, I took notice. “Oh, it’s a woman. Cool!” He didn’t do this by accident. His way of not using something, then dropping it fully onto the page is used throughout the book. Another example is when he finally gets a look a the Rancher’s daughter, the author lets the main character spend a whole paragraph on that one look. The author has yet to slow a moment down in such a way so the reader can’t help but take notice. The last example is when the author finally allows the main character to reflect on his emotions, he is allowed a whole page of internal thought.

The End

The end is the reason I have the movie on my Netflix queue. The author appeared to struggle with where the end of the book should be — when are all the elements resolved. In my opinion, the author goes on a bit long. The ending isn’t tight. I would have edited it differently. The issue of Blevins’ horse and why Blevins was such a great shot with a gun were never resolved. But that was sort of how the whole adventure took it’s turn into darker territory. I can see an argument for the idea that the answers are irrelevant but I want to see how the film deals with it.

But I could have missed the answers. McCarthy is not a repetitive writer. He could have written one line with a vague allusion to what happened (he does this in a couple of crucial spots), and I would have missed it.

I’ve already decided not to attend any conference unless my novel is ready to pimp pitch. So no writers conference this year. But there are still several areas I need help with for my novel.

Should I put off any other writing-related commitments (such as a 30-week class) until the novel is done? Or should I put the end goal on hold and take the class?

Sort of feel like the question is the clue to the answer. I really want to take the class but I don’t have the time to commit to it.

Thoughts?

KickAss

My husband and I saw this over the weekend and we both were left feeling something wasn’t right here story-wise. We went in expecting one story, and we came out after seeing another. It wasn’t entirely the trailer’s fault. My husband summed it up by saying he felt he wasn’t allowed to bond or root for the protagonist on purpose so that he (the audience) wouldn’t feel like going out and being a superhero in today’s society. I agree with him. That and seeing an eleven-year old girl beat near to death is a gut-wrenching viewing.

However, from a story perspective, I think I have a different issue with the film. The story isn’t about Kick-Ass, aka Dave, the protagonist. Nor is he a hero of any kind in the story until the end. It’s someone else’s story (Big Daddy and Hit Girl). Kick-ass just happens on to their story and gets dragged along. So here’s the issue. I don’t care about Kick-ass. He lost me back at the tissues in the garbage can. I do care about the little girl who is shot in the chest by her own father. So every time Dave comes on screen, I wonder why I have to watch his story and follow him around. What does Dave add to the film? Do we really need an average teenager to tell us what a superhero is and isn’t?

The only thing Dave adds to the story is realism. He goes into an apartment, planning to tell the ex-boyfriend of the girl he wants, to back off. He brings a crappy taser. He gets his ass kicked and then Hit Girl shows up. Dave is thinking a little pummeling for his girl – no big deal. Hit Girl shows up and kills everyone. Yes, an eleven-year old girl kills the entire bad guy force. This isn’t some glamorized version – Dave watches the scene in true horror. It knocked the tensity of the scene way up and that element of Dave as realism didn’t let the audience enjoy the scene as much as if the movie was pure fantasy and no one really got hurt (wink, wink).

So my question is, was Dave as a protagonist necessary? I understand what he added to the film. He grounded it but that’s just about all he did. Could the story have been written without Dave yet walk that realism line?

What do you think?

Fiction Is Folks

The Book

I don’t like to give bad reviews so this is going to be tough. I read Fiction is Folks: How to Create Unforgettable Characters by Robert Newton Peck.

The Good

Let me cover the good stuff first because there is plenty here that is good. First off Peck, as he refers to himself, is a funny light-hearted guy for the most part. He uses plenty of examples from his own books so you can always go back to source material. The chapters are quick and generally he gets to the point. If I had to pick a chapter I like best, if would be on converting a short story to a novel. I’ve thought of this as well so I was grateful he had some insight into since he has done it himself. He has a checklist starting on page 175 that I marked and will go back to.

The Not So Good

I expect to have a hint of any religion or politics up front. I don’t mind it, I just don’t want the sneak attack.

Perhaps if I had read the book in 1987 or was familiar with Peck, I would know his stand on issues. After I reached the middle, I was worried this was an issues book hiding as a craft book. I suppose as long as you agree with his point of view or the issues he brings up, no harm done. You might say his use of the issues was only as an illustration of his points. Um, no.

Peck is the Character

He ends the book with a chapter he titled the Last Gasp. Here is a quote to give you an idea of its contents.

This final note is to poke you in the ribs, tell you stuff you might not like, and agitate you enough to yank the dustcover off your Underwood…Thus, I will now jot a few things I’ve learned by reason: plus a few more that my emotions spew out, like venom, for your ire to handle.

My own story is told entirely in scene. That’s just the way I write. So I looked for a book dedicated to helping with scenes. This was the best one I found in terms of on-topic. I like to look at a book’s table of contents on Amazon but this book didn’t have one so I scrolled down the page to the reviews. The reviews gave enough information about the contents that I knew this was something I needed to read. Yeah Amazon!

A small note about cover design. If you don’t think your cover artwork is important, think again. This book’s artwork is wonderful. It tells me, right off the bat, that the information is going to seem like notes from a college class. Love it! It was also easy to find among my stacks of books because I’m not in college anymore.

The Scene Book

Scene Breakdown

The basic and advanced issues of a scene are covered in several ways, including example text from books, and the exercises at the end of each chapter are amazing. Usually the exercises are the part I skip because they seem juvenile compared to the text. In terms of writing exercises, this book is second only to Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook by Donald Maass.

References

Each chapter has so many writers, stories, and writing teachers that I had to make a list. The references seem much more literary than my usual material so each name was new to me. If you aren’t into literary writing, don’t worry, the readings are short. Annette Sanford’s Housekeeping was my favorite. It might be a shorter version of Eleanor and Abel.

Scene Openings

Most writingbooks discuss the beginning as the first sentence. After ten or twenty books cover this, I wonder if the authors really think they have something new to add there. This book doesn’t care about the opening sentence but instead focuses on the opening of the scene. There are many examples so you can get some ideas for your own work in progress.

How about you?

What are your favorite stories for scene or favorite writing books for scene?

1. The turnaround time was quick: two weeks. I’ve heard results take much longer so I’m thrilled with that little snippet of time.
2. The response didn’t look like form rejection. I’m sure it was but still someone had to type it at some point, right?
3. I’m not dead yet — I’ll keep writing.