Polishing a Manuscript

Continued from last Sunday . . .

I delete fewer and fewer words as I go through draft after draft. For the novel I now have ready, I first wrote 212,000 words; then cut 86,000 in nineteen drafts.

            Much deleting occurred between 1999 and 2005 when I completed Draft 13. However, earlier drafts were on “floppy” disks that aren’t compatible with this computer. Thus, the two samples presented here are much closer in form than I’d like to show you. Still, if you compare them sentence by sentence you’ll see the refining I did.

2005—Draft 13—245 Words

Early the next morning, I trekked down to the Jordan to spy on John. As the sun began to climb the vault of the heavens, I came to Elisha’s spring. There I knelt to dip my hand into the fresh water welling up from the red clay and drank deeply. It was now warm enough to remove my cloak.

Rising, I headed southeast, descending steep ravines and fording wadis swollen with water, which rumbled through the steep gorges seeking the Jordan. When the dry season began, only a trickle would reach the winding river.

          As the sun drew the early morning rain back into the heavens, the day grew muggy. Heat shimmered like a spider’s dream as chirring locusts scoured the muddy path to the river. Beneath my tunic, rivulets of sweat trickled down my back and soaked the hair massed in the hollows of my armpits. Thistle from low-growing brambles and sweet-smelling acacias snared my tunic. Thus it was that I arrived at the ford of Bethabara stinking of sweat, with burrs puckering my clothes.

Pushing aside the plumed reeds, I joined the chattering pilgrims sitting on the embankment—chewing figs, spitting out pomegranate seeds, telling overblown tales. Besides subtle phrases spoken in Hebrew, I could hear the musical cadence of Greek and the more familiar Aramaic, spoken with a deep twang by peasants from the Galilee. Amidst this dissonance, I longed for the quiet of my courtyard and the tools of my trade.

Wikipedia photograph of the Jordan River

2012—Draft 19—180 words

Elisha’ spring gurgled forth from red clay. I splashed its sun-dappled water on my sweaty face, then refreshed my parched throat. Removing my cloak, I headed southeast, descending steep ravines and fording wadis swollen with water rumbling through the steep gorges toward the Jordan. Only a trickle would reach the winding river when the dry season began.

           Heat shimmered like a spider’s dream as chirring locusts scoured the rutted path to the river. Rivulets of sweat soaked the back of my tunic. Thistle from low-growing brambles tangled my dusty tunic. Thus it was that I arrived at the ford of Bethabara stinking of sweat, with burrs puckering my clothes.

I pushed aside the plumed reeds, draping my cloak over a shrub. Chattering pilgrims thronged the embankment, chewing figs, spitting pomegranate seeds, telling overblown tales. Some spoke subtle phrases in Hebrew; others, the musical cadence of Greek. The multitude used the more familiar Aramaic, spoken with a deep twang by peasants from the Galilee. Amidst this dissonance, I longed for the quiet of my courtyard and the tools of my trade.

Now what can happen with that kind of writing—that is, going over and over a manuscript to delete words—is that the writer can suck the juices out of the words. They become stale. Not only to the writer, but also the reader. And that may be what has happened with this manuscript. Attempting to tighten, I may have removed the story’s savor. I’m interested in what you think.  

Next Sunday I hope to explain how I arrived at the final draft after reading many contemporary novelists and studying how they craft their sentences.

Writing, Cutting, Polishing a Manuscript

Effective writing takes both time and effort. It can, however, be a labor of love. At least that’s what it is for me. When I write, I feel centered and aware of Presence. For me, writing is a form of prayer. So today I’d like to share with you my method of writing/praying a story or an extended manuscript.

            In 1989, I channeled the manuscript that was later published as A Cat’s Life: Dulcy’s Story. Originally, Dulcy gave me 42,000 words. In 1991, Jane Meara, an exceptional Crown editor, asked me to cut the manuscript in half by concentrating only on the relationship between Dulcy and me. The result was Dulcy’s first book. The words I deleted became the main part of Dulcy’s second book: A Cat’s Legacy: Dulcy’s Story.

 The scene reflects what the first draft of anything I write looks like.

            The key to cutting was the word relationship. With that word I was able to ruthlessly delete extraneous words and incidents from the original draft. We writers need something to keep us grounded in the thrust of what we are writing. That something may be a keyword or it may be a question, such as “What did the character do that led to this or that effect?” Or “What do I need here so as to build suspense?”

            In an earlier posting, I explained that for thirteen years I’ve worked on a novel that takes place in first-century Palestine. The first draft of that novel boasted 212,000 words. Ultimately, I deleted 86,000 of them. How did I cut so many? By repeatedly asking myself, “Is this word, incident, character necessary to telling the story?” “Does it advance the plot?” “Does it build suspense?” “Does it show the reader something necessary?”

            I simply kept chipping around at the rock formation of the manuscript until I arrived at the “sculpture” that revealed scene, plot, character. Something like the photograph below.

A sculptured face that illustrates the classic Veracruz culture of 600 to 900 CE.

(From Wikipedia)

            As with Dulcy, I tend to be wordy. My writing style is to simply sit at the computer and let the words come—willy-nilly. I write until I’m written out. Word after word. Scene after scene. Lines of dialogue followed by more dialogue.

            I do that in writing my on-line memoir. Often, I’ll write 1,200 words on a Wednesday morning. Then I’ll assiduously cut to fewer than 600 words. Thus, I need two and a half hours to write, polish, and edit a story and then a half hour to select photographs and post. Three hours in all.

            And yet Friko, a blogger whom I read faithfully because I enjoy her attitude toward life, once shared that she needed only twenty minutes to write a posting. My first attempts simply aren’t that good. I must decide what is the essence of the story from my life: what do I hope to communicate? Then I must delete every superfluous word no matter how clever or revealing it is. Anything that does not advance the story to its ending has to go.

            I try to do the same with this blog. I ask myself, “Does this word, phrase, sentence help explain my topic?” If it doesn’t, it’s deleted.

            Now, how about you? Do you write everything down and then judiciously delete? What’s your secret of success?

Postscript:

I hope you’ll share the crafting of this blog with me. Let me know with your comments what you’d like me to write about. One of you has already requested that I write about the use of which instead of that as well as the use of commas. I hope to write that post soon, perhaps as early as next Sunday.

“Landscape with Trees” by adamr from freedigitalphotos.com

Sentence Structure for Paragraph Writing

At Saint Mary’s Grade School in September 1946, words and I became friends. An earlier posting explained how Sister Mary McCauley invited our fifth-grade class to learn forty-five prepositions. With these prepositions + a noun and a verb we learned to construct and claim sentences. 

            A second posting detailed how she then introduced us to the other parts of speech. Ultimately, she explained their use in sentences, such as subject, predicate, object of a preposition, direct object, indirect object, predicate nominative. With this information, we built more sentences.

            Here’s a sentence describing what I see right now: On her fleece-lined cat bed Maggie snores genteelly. Sister Mary McCauley would explain that this was a simple sentence with one subject—Maggie—and one predicate—snores.

            Today I’ll pick up the thread of those two earlier postings by describing how, in sixth grade, I learned about the three types of sentences and their variations. Once again, Sister Mary McCauley used magazine pictures to encourage us to build sentences that later appeared on bulletin boards.

            For our picture, we built a web of simple sentences of subject + predicate. Next came compound subjects—Maggie and Ellie snored. Next, compound predicates. Maggie snored and stretched. Finally, compound subjects + compound predicates. We then wrote paragraphs that used the four types of simple sentences we’d learned:

A) one subject + one predicate

B) compound subject + predicate

C) subject + compound predicate

D) compound subject + compound predicate.

Using these letters, Sister Mary McCauley gave us a roadmap for a paragraph. For example: A, B, D, B, A, C, A. Each day she presented us with different magazine photos and a different roadmap.

           

            We then explored compound sentences. Maggie snored and Ellie stretched. Now Sister Mary McCauley began to use the word clause to describe any group of words with a subject and a predicate. Then came roadmaps for paragraph building with the four types of simple sentences + compound sentences and their variations.       

    

            In seventh grade, she introduced us to complex sentences and their independent and subordinate clauses: As Maggie snored, her human composed a blog posting. Once again, roadmaps such as S, C, CX, C, S, S, CX. Using that roadmap, let’s write Maggie’s story today.

(S) Maggie sleeps contentedly on my computer desk. (C) Sometimes she snores, but often she settles deeper into the fleece-lined pillow and purrs. (CX) As she snoozes, I soundlessly leave the desk. (C) She’s weary from her dreams and my absence does not disturb her. (S) Then the sound of the can opener reaches Maggie’s finely tuned ears. (S) She leaps from the computer desk and races down the hall. (CX) When she spies the bowl of tangy tuna sitting on the floor, she hunkers down to the business of the day: eating.

Maggie 

By seventh grade, the roadmaps had gotten more complicated and detailed with various kinds of simple, compound, and complex sentences. Thus, did I learn to vary my sentences so as to move a reader quickly or slowly through a story.                  

Just think of all we know and take for granted as we write. Daily, we sit at our computers and type our postings and comments. The nouns and verbs present themselves to us as subjects and predicates, direct objects, objects of prepositions.             

We don’t think about parts of speech or sentence elements; we simply communicate our thoughts in the English syntax. We don’t need to know these names or terms and yet I admit to taking delight in those roadmaps—both in the 1940s and now!

How about you? How did you learn to write so well?

The first three photographs from Wikipedia.

A Guest Posting by Dulcy and Me

In late September, Karen Jones Gowen asked me to guest post on her blog "Coming down the Mountain: A Writer's Blog." Given that her blog is about writing and being published, I wrote about how A Cat's Life: Dulcy's Story came to be.

        So in the guest posting you'll read about traditional publishing of twenty years ago and how a aspiring writer needed to proceed then to get published.

        You might enjoy reading that—or you might feel you know enough about Dulcy! But if you're game for more then please click here to read Dulcy's guest post.

Promotion and Self-Publishing

Today’s posting updates last Sunday’s account of how the manuscript The Reluctant Spy went through nineteen drafts. I told you then that a friend—Judy—had offered to read it.  However, the demands of the publishing world have intervened on her plans. 
            For the past two years she’s researched, written, polished, and found a publisher—the University of Minnesota Press—for her biography of an important lumberman of the nineteenth century. Unexpectedly, the deadline for responding to the editor’s work has became October 15. Two days later, Judy leaves for France to continue researching the third novel of her historical trilogy, published by HarperCollins. On her return, she will read The Reluctant Spy. I eagerly await her response.

Photo from Wikipedia: Limestone cliffs of Normandy, France.

            To conclude today’s posting, I want to share a comment and response with you. Rita, whose blog Soul Comfort's Corner has taught me about living with fibromyalgia and remaining creative, commented last week:

IF you cannot get it published the traditional way (that’s gotten a lot harder, but not impossible if you do your homework and find a good fit), please don't forget about self-publishing. You’ve put so much time, effort, and heart into this so don't give up. I heard that the guy who wrote Chicken Soup for The Soul was turned down over 140 times! And these days I have heard that you can self-publish on Amazon for free—no money up front. ?? Where there's a will there's a way, right? Best of luck to you. :)

Today I’ll expand on my original response to her comment.

Dear Rita,

The advantage of being published the traditional way, which as you've said is really hard today, is that big publishers have sale reps who visit bookstores and get the books into those stores. These stores will then welcome a writer for a reading/signing event.

Moreover, I think—but I'm not absolutely sure—that newspaper reviewers are more willing to review a book published by a traditional publisher. I talked to the local librarians, but they do not shelve self-published books so that doesn’t work for reaching potential readers.

Self-published writers have to publicize their own books. They must spread the word that their book actually exists. And I wonder how many people will Goggle or go to Amazon to hunt for a novel about first-century Palestine.

Getting out the word requires a mastery of social media that eludes me. The number of followers for my two blogs is relatively small. Nor do I have a Facebook account, much less any working knowledge of Twitter.

The big question for me is “How do readers learn about a book on first-century Palestine?” 

Twenty years ago Crown published A Cat’s Life: Dulcy’s Story. I was fifty-six and had the energy to do a great deal of promoting. You can read about that in these two postings on my other blog: Promoting Dulcy’s Hardcover and Entering the World of Promotion.

Somehow today I lack that same resilience.

You’re right that Amazon has a subsidiary called "CreateSpace." It allows a writer to publish with little money up front. But a writer needs to be able to design a cover and format the book for both paper publishing and e-books. If one can't do that, the writer must hire someone(s) to do these tasks. So self-publishing can end up costing a modest amount.

But if somehow the news gets out there about the book and there's some "buzz" about it, the writer makes more royalty than with traditional publishing. So pros and cons! 
Peace.

I want to thank Rita and all of you for encouraging me to keep trying to get A Reluctant Spy published. You’ve offered to cross your fingers for me with regard to Judy’s reading of the manuscript. Thank you both for your enthusiasm and your support.