When Do I Get to Write Again?

I'm beginning to come out of the publishing tunnel. I've learned so much, getting Until Proven: A Mystery in 2 Parts out for the world to read (and in time for Christmas, too!) but it has been all-consuming for months.

Now I know what to expect when I do it again. Now I know what none of the numerous guides to self-publishing bother to tell you. Hence the tunnel.

Two nights in a row, I dreamed that I was running around in public places without much in the way of clothing on. You know, a good old anxiety dream. And I developed a twitch in my upper lip. I had to fight off a head cold. Could these things be related to the last details of publishing? You think?

I worked on Until Proven for more than three years before I declared it "ready" and shipped it off to the book designer at the end of June 2012. I never doubted that I had a good story and I am confident that I told it well. So why the nerves? Because now the book is in the hands of the judges--my readers. You.

The responses have been gratifying. The cold didn't develop. The questionable dreams have stopped. The lip doesn't twitch when I smile.

And my imagination is bugging me. It won't take three years for the next piece of work into the light. I have two things, one short and one long, waiting for reworking, reimagining and polishing. All for you. Watch this space.

In the Act of Yikes! It's a Book! (Almost)

October 1 was my target date for publication. Yesterday, October 1, Kelly the book designer sent me the edited and reedited version of the text ready for uploading. Right on time.

My last task was to give her the information for the copyright page. Done this morning before 8:00. Okay, I was a day late.

Still need the final version of the book jacket. Then I get to learn how to shove a novel up the pipeline to become a printed book and up a different pipeline to become an ebook. I'm excited about doing those things. There may be a little cussing, but I promise not to throw any computers or scare the dogs.

I lay in bed this morning, just enjoying the sense of being so very, very close to this goal of a lifetime.

But I can't get too cozy with it. I have a non-fiction piece to get out into the world asap, two novels to rewrite and publish, and the characters from a story I don't know yet knocking around in my head wanting to get out. That's what really excites me.

So how many copies of Until Proven will you be buying for Christmas gifts? It'll be the hot new thing.

In the Act of Catching Up

For me, when Steve starts back to school, summer's over, and he'll be getting out of the house at 6:00 a.m. starting next Monday. I'll miss him, but I get in the back-to-school mode, too, and get a burst of energy for getting things done.

Often summers aren't especially productive for my writing but this one was a bit different. I found a copy editor and book designer who inhabit the same body. Yay! I sent her my "finished" manuscript (rewritten from January through mid-June, based on my wonderful writing group's edits and suggestions) by June 24. Then I took off for 10 days at the beach. Yay some more!

The copy editor persona sent the first half of the book back to me right around August 1; I made corrections and tinkered with the text and sent it back to her in less than a week. I'm awaiting the second half, and also awaiting the emergence of the book designer persona. I am eager to see what she comes up with for a cover design.

Did I mention, the target date for Until Proven, to be in the world is October 1?

You might think I'd be feeling the glow of accomplishment, the satisfaction of bringing all the characters into being, the wonderment that a story like this one could come out of my head. It's actually been a little difficult to find the glow etc. Perhaps because there is still so much to do. Perhaps because it's just one of those things that has to be anticlimactic. I kinda hope that moment is still out there for me. If not, no biggie.

Meanwhile, here's what I need to do:

• Hours more research on how to market a book
• Translate that research into a plan
• Execute the plan so that everyone on the planet wants to buy and read Until Proven

That's where you come in. If each of you will tell 10 people and each of them will tell 10 people and each of them ... Heck, nothing to it. So now that we're caught up, will you please get busy?

IN THE ACT OF DREAMING UP A CHARACTER

I know, hearing about other people's dreams tends to be boring and yeah, whatever. Nonetheless, I have one to tell about. I dreamed up a character. I haven't been looking for a character. He has no business distracting me from working over the current manuscript, but there his is. A writer can't ignore this kind of thing. I was having lunch with a gentleman some twenty years old than I am, making his eighty-something. His face was that of someone I used to work with years ago but I don't identify the character with that person. We met at a restaurant and he said "well, you could give me a kiss" so I kissed him on the cheek. His skin was dry. Then he ordered a double martini and we sat down at a table. The restaurant staff hovered over him, anxious to please. He grumbled. I wanted a glass of water but nobody noticed. When the staff disappeared, he proceeded to talk. What I remember is he said, "in the old days, you could order a customized car so everybody got his own car. Now they're all gray." Okay, followers and readers, tell me about this guy's life. Let's write him a story.

Pay Attention!

I'm working on my manuscript a lot these days. And when I don't have it in front of me, I've got it going in some part of my brain. Good things come from that: the right title, the better word, the easy solution to a plot problem. I don't think I've discovered the true names of some important characters and I'm hoping that they will come to me in the shower, in Weaver Street, on a walk. Somewhere, anywhere. Layered with that, I'm thinking about "my" non-profit, EmPOWERment. I ran the Finance Committee meeting on Friday, must make the monthly Treasurer's Report next Thursday at the Board meeting. And I've just been elected to the Chatham County Affordable Housing Advisory Committee. I've been busy with email about that, trying to catch onto the ways and means. So I scraped the rear fender of my car against the garage door. Sheesh. No damage other than the streak of beige paint on gray metal. It's embarrassing. I'll get it fixed. And I'll do my best to declare the driveway a no-thinking, time out, live-in-the-moment zone. I've been warned.

In the Act of Being Led from One Thing to Another

I love storytelling. First, in books. Second, on a screen, small or large.

Last night, I watched a movie, Housewife 49. It's the story of a family in England during World War II. I could make one picky little negative comment (why bother with the people from the MO? They were a distraction) so I'll have to give a grade of A+ rather than A++. It's well-written, well-acted, and drew me deeply into its quiet sufferings and joys.

Nella Last is the main character and she was a real person. I had to look her up, of course. She was a housewife and at age 49 she began to keep a diary and send entries to the MO. The war was just beginning. She had two sons of age to fight. Her town was bombed by the Germans.

As portrayed in the movie, Nella found her voice when she began to write, and she continued to write all of her life. The war changed Nella--and I must think that writing changed her, too. The movie used quotes from her diaries and if the sampling is representative, I must now find a way to get hold of the her diaries. Lovely, lovely natural talent.

I mentioned the MO. That stands for Mass Observation. According to Wikipedia, the MO was a social research program in Britain. People were encourged to send in information about their lives and their day-to-day observations.

Can you say blog? Can you say Facebook? Can you say storytelling?

Must go. I need to be led to another thing now.

In the Act of Overlapping

When we went to Somerset Place near Creswell, NC, I bought Dorothy Spruill Redford's book, Somerset Homecoming.

We went to Stagville Plantation in northern Durham County and I bought Piedmont Plantation by Jean Bradley Anderson.

I have a friend, Nancy Milio, and I bought her book, 9226 Kercheval: the Storefront That Did Not Burn.

Because she loved it and was rightly sure I would, my friend, Shirley Drechsel gave me Undaunted Heart, by Suzy Barile.

All four of these books tell narratives, stories, histories at a very personal level.

Dorothy Spruill Redford set out to trace the roots of her family on Somerset Place. Hers was one of the hundreds of enslaved families. The roots were torn from Africa, reknit in the New World, then spread like a web all over America. Dorothy pulled them "home" to Somerset again.

Jean Bradley Anderson tells the story of the largest plantation in antebellum North Carolina--largest in acreage and in slaveholding--a planation that once blended it's white family with the white family from Somerset by marriage--with all of usual official sources. Census records, bills of sale, contracts and such. What makes it personal, though, and wonderful to read, is her use of diaries and letters. She brings the Bennehans and Camerons very much to life. I feel sure she dreamed of them.

Nancy Milio was a young white nurse when she became involved in starting a storefront community and health center, Mom and Tots, in a black neighborhood in Detroit. She uses her own diaries as well as memories to recall those fraught days in 1968's when cities all over America burned, but that storefront did not.

Undaunted Heart is written by its subjects' great-granddaughter. Suzy Barile tells that she is descended from two North Carolina governors and her book--like Jean Anderson's--is full of families and names that are carved on buildings and printed on street signs all over North Carolina. I grew up in Chapel Hill so this was a story I know: David Swain was President of the University when his daughter, Ella, met and married a Union general. General Atkins oversaw the fairly brief Union presence in Chapel Hill at the end of the Civil War. Suzy Barile has family diaries and letters and passed-down oral history. She makes great use of them to give her ancestors' life. I've always suspected that Mrs. Spencer (another Chapel Hill name of the era) was a busy-body and now I know it's true. Of all the sympathetic people, I felt most deeply for Mrs. Swain who was widowed and saw all of her children die.

Is the overlapping obvious from what I've said so far?

War and riot--much the same in their destruction of property and trust, taking decades to repair.

Race, black and white, from slave days to the '60's and since we are now in the age of Trayvon Martin's murder, to today and tomorrow. Family, whether rich or poor, subject equally to grief and joy.

All the nuance that may be kindness, or may be cruelty, and is constantly in flow.

Willpower--this must happen--be it an unsuitable marriage or a place where the power of community can be flexed for its own survival.

All the tender complexities of human nature.

Humans together in their best and worst ways. Out of the overlapping, comes story-telling. That is our necessity.