5 Things Revision Has Taught Me About Myself

By Lisa Alber

I'm having a fantastic time revising WHISPERS IN THE MIST. Aspects of the story that had been bothering me have finally achieved clarity. Yay! I got to thinking about how the revision process illuminates some aspects of my own character.

1. It's funny how sometimes our characters' lives parallel our own. Merrit Chase, one of my  protagonists, is an American living in rural Ireland. As I worked through her plot line in an attempt to get to the heart of her, I started thinking about the concept of "home." This year, for the first time, I bought a house. My very own sanctuary with no shared walls, a blank canvas that I could make all my own. It took me no time at all to feel like I was home. It's a soul thing--for me and for Merrit. As soon as I realized that Merrit was missing a little soul, I knew exactly how to revise her scenes to better bring out her story.

2. I may be having a fantastic time revising now, but you should have seen me a month ago. I might have written a different blog post entirely. At times, I got to wondering: WHY am I putting myself through the ringer like this? What's the point? After all, I'm not motivated by some of the usual things like money, power, and vanity. I mean, I'm a poor and lowly, not to mention disheveled, novelist. I'm joshing, but it's sorta true. So what does motivate me to work through the doldrums and frustrations? Authenticity, connection, and personal achievement. It helped to clarify these for myself. When I do my character development, I call these "core needs."

3. I'm an introvert, to be sure, but I'm less of a lone wolf than I like to think I am. Self-sufficiency is a sham game I play with myself. The truth is, when it comes to my life and also my stories, I can't figure everything out on my own. I've learned this over and over during revisions as I turn to others to provide feedback on my drafts. Sharing is a good thing, risking vulnerability is another good thing. Sometimes it's difficult to cop to my flaws or to my story's flaws, but once I do, the flaws lose their power. Come to find out that I like the communal aspect of the revision process.

4. I hang on to my little darlings for too long. This includes darling notions that I carry around with me that I don't need anymore, like outmoded emotional crutches and avoidance tactics. A writer friend recently said (related to writing), "If you're not sure you should hang on to your little darling, it probably means you should let it go." In my revision, I've been doing quite a lot of darling deletion lately. And you know what? It feels great! Time to take some of that and apply it to my life.

5. I do have pretty good instincts -- I need to trust them more. When it comes to fiction, I sometimes don't know what the exact problem is, only that something's not quite right. I can't let the manuscript be finished because in my heart it's not. The niggling feeling may be related to a plot point or character, anything really. And then, lo and behold, I engage with my community (#3) and receive feedback that gets the A-HA going. I'm vindicated! I wasn't just being a crazy perfectionist or an Eeyore. In my life, the same thing goes: listen to the niggle and trust it.

Recently, I felt the "fill the well" niggle, so next week I'm going to the Oregon coast to relax for a few days before Christmas. Will I work? Oh probably, but only after sleeping (lots of catching up to do!), reading, walking the beach, staring at the waves, and sleeping some more.

Wishing you all the best for a wondrous holiday and happy new year, cheers, Lisa

What do you do to fill the well? How can you tell when you need well-filling?

WHISPERS IN THE MIST is available for preorder here.

Details, Details

by Sheila Webster Boneham

 



Years ago (at least fifteen), I passed a novel I had enjoyed along to my husband. Roger is a geologist, and the "love interest" in the book is a geologist, and I thought he might enjoy the story and relish meeting one of his own in a romantic lead of sorts. And he did, for the first chapter or so. Then he put it down in disgust.

"Some geologist!" he said.

Turns out the guy in the book had waxed eloquent about the cleavage in a piece of quartz. Problem is, quartz has no cleavage (which means that when it breaks, it has no parallel surfaces). That booboo clattered right by me, but for the reader in the know, it was a book-stopper.

I run into this all the time in books with animals, especially dogs. (I've shown, bred, rescued, written about, trained, and judged dogs for more than two decades, so, yeah, I care that "dog things" are accurate.") I recently read a novel in which the protagonist's dog is identified as a specific rare breed. Exciting! Then the dog is described. She's a color combination that doesn't occur in the breed and she weighs about half what she should. I had enjoyed the first pages of the book, but found it hard to keep reading past such glaring errors.

And then there was the best-selling memoir a few years ago about growing up in southern Indiana, a place of forests, deep ravines, and rolling country that I know well. I perused the book at a conference in Indianapolis, thinking I would buy a copy, but when I read that Indiana is "flat as a pancake," I was finished. Well, almost finished - I did point out the passage to a friend and the two of us snorted and laughed and snarked about pandering to East-Coaster sterotypes about the Midwest. The author's mother was standing right behind us. Ah, well.

I'm sure we've all read things in which some error in our own field of knowledge damaged or destroyed our faith in the author. In fact, almost everyone I've asked about this has produced an example from personal experience. Many of them also express similar reactions. Disappointment ("I was looking forward to this book, and then..."). Loss of trust ("If the author is wrong about the things I know, how can I trust the rest of the information?). Disgust ("It's not that hard to check the facts!").

And really, it's not hard at all. First, of course, we have the Internet. Granted, we have to be judicious about our sources, but as long as we use credible websites, blogs, forums, and other online resources, we can check out almost anything. Or at least get a leg up.

We can also go old school - libraries, books, reference librarians. All good.

We can find people who know. I saved myself from a serious error in Drop Dead on Recall by asking a physician friend read a passage in which a character uses an epinephrin pen on his wife, who seems to be having an allergic reaction. Myfriend's terse response? "Well, he just killed her." Seems my character's technique left a little to be desired. I learned, and he does it properly in the book. In that case, I called on a friend, but it isn't hard to find people in the know, and most people are generous about helping us get things right.

Need the skinny on a location? As my husband, Roger, likes to say, there's nothing like a site visit. Whether its a place or a kind of event or an institutional setting, we can do lots of reading, watch videos and films, peruse photographs, but nothing beats being there. How does the quality of light shift by the minute on the Carolina coast at sunrise? How does the heat dissipate in the high desert as the sun drops behind the Sierras? How does the grooming area at a dog show smell, or the waiting room in a hospital sound? If we can't get there, then once again, finding someone who has been there to read what we write can save us from grievous goofs, and may even give us some telling detail to add.

I'm working on the third Animals in Focus mystery right now, and am planning a couple of site visits of my own. I've already lined up some experts to keep me honest, and I have files upon files of background info. Luckily for me, the research I'm doing for this book isn't tedious at all. I get to interview lots of lovely cats and dogs.

Character or Caricature?

by Cricket McRae





The other night my guy and I went to a birthday party. A few minutes after we got there, a man I will call TJ walked up to us.

“Hey there.” Points to himself. “TJ. I’m here as R’s date. Not that we’re you know, dating. We’re just ----ing. Hahahahaha. I don’t know you. I’d remember if I knew you because I always remember good lookin’ women.” Peers around. “Where’s my friend Jack?”

And off he went to find his fifth of Jack Daniels, which he carried with him all evening, swigging directly from the bottle until it was gone. I kid you not. Why, after all, dirty a glass?

Then he passed out in the backyard.

Between his delightful greeting (we had, in fact, met before, and it was just as unpleasant the first time) and his blessed unconsciousness, he yammered loudly to anyone within listening range, insulted several of the other party goers, made out with some woman who was not his “date” for the evening, and had his face slapped.

Now: this was a large party with lots of people. Most of us were well over the age of forty, with a few thirty-somethings tossed in. There were martinis and mojitos, chatting and catching up, lots of laughter and a little dancing later on. It was, in short, a fun time.

Except, of course, for TJ. He was obnoxious, loud, and rude when sober, and then he and Jack managed to exacerbate those marvelous qualities as the evening progressed. And to make it worse, the woman who was supposed to be his date was the birthday girl.

At one point my S.O. breathed into my ear, “Oh, man. You have to put that guy in a book. He’s a perfect asshole.”

Ruefully, I told my dear one that however much I’d love to mine such an extreme character, he was, unfortunately, too perfect. TJ was simply too much that guy: a caricature of himself. A real person who could only be a cliché in fiction.

At a recent reading, a woman asked whether the people I base my characters on recognized themselves in my writing. Her question presupposed that I use friends and family as characters, and I had to explain that I really don’t do that.

She insisted that you have to write what you know, so my fiction must reflect actual people. I pointed out that I also know all the other folks I’ve met in a lifetime of reading fiction and non-fiction, as well as watching movies and television. So if you take that into consideration, the questioner was probably right.

Last week my aunt called. She said she’d read Lye in Wait, and she’d finally figured out who everyone in the book was.

I made inquisitive noises, though I suspected where the conversation was headed.

“Tootie is your great grandmother McCoy, isn’t she? But are you Sophie Mae or Meghan?”

Neither one. Both. In fact, I’m everyone in my books, to a degree, because I can’t help but write from aspects of myself. Sophie Mae isn’t me, though we share some of the same interests. And Meghan isn’t me, though I’m short and have brown hair. Barr Ambrose isn’t me, though I’m originally from Wyoming. And Erin isn’t me, even if I was a smart ass ten-year-old.


Maybe I can't put TJ into a book until I get better at being a jerk. I'll try and work on that.

So where do your characters come from? Are they alter egos? Have you ever put someone you know directly on the page? Do you get to know your characters as you write, or do they come to you fully formed?

Fiction or Fact?

by Chuck Zito

(Actual conversation:)

"So, do you have to pay this guy when you publish one of your stories?"

"What guy?" I respond, knowing in my heart just how baffling the answer was going to be.

"The Nicky guy. The one in your book. Do you have to pay him?"

My friends read fiction. You don't know them, so you'll have to take my word for it, but they do. They read mysteries, science fiction, literary fiction, thrillers. They read a lot of fiction. I don't think any of them actually believes there is a magical castle somewhere north of London where young wizards train. And, while there may be just a little confusion here and there about the Da Vinci Code, for the most part they don't have any issues when it comes to what is and isn't fiction.

That is, until they read my books. Then a very strange thing happens.

(Composite conversation: )

"That character, the music conductor – that's Alice isn't it?"

"No."

"Oh. But the guy – the best friend – that's me, right?"

"No."

And so it goes. There is an entire group of people on the West Coast who think one of the characters in my first book is based on a theater director we all worked with, even though the book was written before I met any of them. On the East Coast, an entirely different group of people are certain the character is based on a director they and I knew years ago. I've explained carefully that this is not so. They nod their heads as if they believe me, but I can see it in their eyes: "How come I'm not in a book?"

Fine. So I take some joyously idiosyncratic tick from a friend and weave it into a character. What happens? The friend in question never mentions the character who happens to love the exact same type of pickle, squash, and peanut butter sandwich as they. Nope. Instead he zeros in on a character to whom he bears absolutely no resemblance and ask why, after knowing him for twenty-five year, I would be so mean as to describe him as only five-feet four inches tall when he is obviously a prime example of manhood at six-feet one. That's right, my friends who aren't seeing other people in my writing, are busy seeing themselves in all the wrong characters.

Am I upset with people who think I couldn't be making up what I write? Not at all. I'm delighted it's so real to some readers. I'm happy to blur the line as best I can. And I always thank them for reading. It's just that I haven't found the next comfortable response after 'thank you.' What can I say to people who insist that I'm recounting my past and not, in fact, spinning daydreams from everyday life? I cannot possibly be alone in this strange place. What do other writers say?