How much editing and rewriting is enough?

I'm coming into the final stages of work on my novel, The Color of Longing. I've read it multiple times, I let it rest for over a year, worked on it again. I had several beta readers and my agent give me feedback , and I worked on it some more. And then last summer, I declared it complete. Years ago, I read that we finish a piece of writing or artwork when we run out of time (if we're on a deadline) or we run out of juice for the project. I'm running out of juice on this one.

However, that doesn't mean I was done at that point, just done with rewriting. The next step was to send the book to a professional proofreader. She found a good number of small things and a few larger items to signal to me and I made all those changes. Then I sent it off to the designer.

Now, I'm proofreading the laid-out version. I'm restraining from making changes, just cleaning up errors, but it is amazing how many things I see each time I look at it. But after this round, I'm just going to let it go. There's a perfectionist part of me that wants it to be just so, and I also know that imperfection is part of the creative process.

Judging a book by its cover

My friend Jan is in the research process of figuring out how and with whom to publish a novel. She is a thoughtful and methodical person and I am benefiting from all her reading, as I don't have the patience to do that. "You've got to have a professional-looking cover," she says at our Friday writing day. "It makes all the difference."

I know she's right. CreateSpace, where I'm about to publish my first novel, lets you design your own cover. And it's a great option, especially if money is tight. You get to pick from a lot of images and a lot of fonts and do something that pleases you. And most of these covers look fine. But they don't all look great. Most people don't know about the legibility of fonts, or the emotional impact of colors, or the way that shifting everything a quarter-inch to the right will make all the difference in eye appeal.

Graphic designers are trained in eye appeal, as most of them make their money from marketing and advertising work. They've learned all the subtleties that encourage people to pick something up and examine it more closely. It's a combination of art and science that most of us don't have.

I'm blessed to have a designer who's a friend and a colleague. She has a great eye for color and shape and organization, and she's a pleasure to work with because it's a collaborative effort. I've been working with her to design the cover for the novel. I've asked for color changes, different fonts, moving things around a little. And she's been gracious and come up with great solutions. She has also designed an interior that carries the cover design so my book will be gorgeous inside and out.

I think many people do judge a book by its cover. Maybe not judge, but definitely pick up and buy. Something to consider when you get ready to self-publish.

Collaborating on a book

I'm in the later stages of completing a brief book called Sober Play: Using Creativity for More Joy and Meaning in Recovery. This is my fifth book and the first one I've done in collaboration. My friend Bridget Benton and I started talking about this book a couple of years ago when we were on a writing retreat. I was talking about it as a project I'd like to do and she expressed interest in working on it with me. At the time she was just finishing up her fabulous Creative Conversations: Art-Making as Playful Prayer. This had been a long process for her carved out of a busy life and I was reluctant to ask her to commit to yet another book right away. And I was working on a novel that I didn't want to drop, even for a while. So we let it sit.

Then last August I finished the draft of the novel and knew that I wanted to take on Sober Play as my next effort. But Bridget was still hard at work on other major projects, so we agreed that I would move forward on my own. I wrote a first and second draft that could stand alone or that could fold in some chapters of Bridget's experience and expertise. And once I saw the value of another voice of experience in the book, I also asked some other friends to share their experience, strength, and hope about using creativity in recovery in mini-essays.

It has been important and interesting for me to relinquish full control of the outcome of these contributions, to wait on someone else's schedule, to figure out how to mesh voices and formatting into a whole. Fortunately, Bridget and I both have a solid foundation in the 12 Steps so our negotiations have been easy and simplified by the use of those tools and our mutual commitment to generosity. And I can already see that the book is going to be richer and stronger for all these collaborations.

24 writing suggestions

I'm working on a book that encourages people in recovery to use forms of creative self-expression to support long-term sobriety. Today my task was to create 12 fun writing exercises. Here's what I came up with. Enjoy!

1. When Sally opened the door, a very tiny man stood there holding a very large duck. Write a short story that starts with this sentence. More: Make this the first chapter of a mystery novel.

2. Open a drawer in your bathroom and take out any three objects. Write a conversation between the objects in which they discuss you. More: Turn the conversation into a poem.

3. Spend a few minutes with a family photo album and choose a photo of a person whose face intrigues you. It may be of a relative you don’t know well or at all, it may be of an old friend, it may be of someone loved and lost. Write a letter from that person to you and a letter back from you (make up any details you need). More: Write a conversation (in dialog form) between you and this person.

4. Pick a simple common word (e.g., from, that, can, might) and write a 12-line poem where the end of each line rhymes with that word. More: Write one poem that makes sense and one that doesn’t.

5. Pull a novel off your shelf and open to a page that has dialog. Pick any line of dialog and write a 1-2 page story that ends with that question or statement. More: Write another 2 pages on the same story continuing from that statement or question.

6. Write 2 different paragraphs that start with same first five words. They can be variations on one idea or completely different from each other. More: Write 3 more with the same five words.

7. Write a love poem to your favorite food, favorite color, favorite scarf or pair of shoes, your favorite sports team, etc. More: Write a whole series of love poems to favorites.

8. Select a difficult moment from your past. Write it out as a scene in a novel or play just as it happened. Now rewrite the scene as you wish it had happened. More: Write a story or poem about someone who relived an event and changed the past.

9. Select an example of each of the following: a wild animal, a day of the week, a flower, a celebrity, an accident. Now write a story that includes them all. More: Write a poem that includes them all.

10. Make a short list of things that you hate. Choose one and write a letter describing in detail how you feel and what you want to have happen instead. More: Find the contact information for someone who might be able to do something about this problem and mail your letter.

11. Identify a problem of your own you would like to solve. Write a dialog between you and the problem. More: Turn your conversation into a skit and ask a friend to read your part and you read the part of the problem.

12. Begin to generate a huge list of ideas you could write about. In the spirit of fun, if you were going to write one of the following, what would the topic be? 

·        Broadway play

·        Broadway musical  

·        Novel

·        Book of essays on a theme

·        Historical romance

·        TV sitcom

·        Text for a coffee-table book of photos

·        Epic (book-length) poem

·        Biography of a famous person

·        Dramatic play

·        How-to book

·        Cookbook

More: Start one of the writing projects from this list of ideas. 

Letting meaning trump mood

This morning I woke up pretty down. No particular reason except maybe low barometer or the big letdown that comes when I've been working furiously and suddenly all the projects are complete and I haven't yet transitioned into off-time. I had planned to go to the studio to paint today but I didn't feel like hustling, I didn't feel like having any plans at all. I needed a whatever's next day, just moving through the day with whatever strikes my fancy to do.

So I hung out in my pajamas and worked on the novel I'm getting ready to self-publish and wrote in my journal and read some of Penny Marshall's memoir (interesting but not well written) and then I remembered a a conversation I had yesterday with my friend Pam. I was telling her about one of Eric Maisel's teachings: that meaning can trump mood. That we don't have to succumb to depression or anxiety or any of the feelings that can keep us from doing our creative work. That we can put meaningful creative work ahead of our mood; we can make creating a priority.

I wondered what it would feel like to let go of feeling obligated to go to the studio (keeping my integrity with myself) and just go as the next thing in whatever's next. So I put on my painting clothes and went to the studio for 90 minutes. I finished a painting I'd been working on, cleaned up a little, and left feeling very much better, realigned with my life and what's meaningful to me.

I could have gone to the studio anyway. I could have forced myself to go, disciplined myself to go, but I'm not sure it would have had the same impact. Instead, it was okay if I didn't go and even better that I did. Next time you're not in the mood to do your art or writing, see what happens if you can step into what's meaningful instead of into your mood.

Big projects

Nothing makes me feel more connected to my creativity than having a big project going on. Each morning when I sit down to the computer, I know exactly what to work on and I sit with the work in a different way. That deep sense of ongoing involvement in my creative life is a source of great meaningfulness and satisfaction to me. 

When I’m not working on the project, I think about it. At odd moments (in the shower, on the treadmill, driving to an appointment), I’ll get insights or ideas or solutions to problems on the project. Today when I was walking my daily mile in the neighborhood, I realized I needed to review the personality of a main character because I wrote about her in one part of the novel at one time and the second part many months later and I'm not sure that she's enough the same. Because I'm immersed in this big project, I'm with the characters often during the day. 

While you may want to play small in your creative writing at first, consider taking on a big project. Remember it isn’t the product that’s important, it’s the process, and a big process is way more fun than a little one.

Some ideas for big projects:

1.    Write a series of poems on a topic rather than just one. Determine the number of poems in advance. When you’ve written all the poems, see how they fit together into a whole. Consider creating a chapbook of them (a self-published collection).

2.    Write a novel from a prompt. All three of the novels I’ve written started out as 10-minute prompts about fictional characters. Each time I knew it was an intriguing start to something. I wanted to know what happened to these people. How they got to this moment and what happened after. Don’t know anything about writing a novel? Who cares? You can always learn. The apprenticeship continues.

3.    Hone your dialog skills by writing a play. Write a trilogy of them.

4.    Write the libretto for an opera or the script for a musical play. Team up with a song-writing friend and go for the whole production. 

5. Fascinated by a historical character. Start researching a biography or a historical novel.

6. Write a series of personal essays on a subject dear to your heart.

Routine, regularity, and ritual

One of the things I value most about writing and creativity retreats are their basis in what Eric Maisel calls the three “R’s” of creativity: routine, regularity, and ritual. When I write every day on a retreat, it becomes routine, and in a good way. My mind, spirit, and body expect it, and I have grown to need that form of satisfaction in the same way that I used to “need” a drink. When I do my art regularly, it creates a groove in me and in my day that makes me happy. And when I include a small ritual in opening and closing my creative session, I add a touch of the sacred and the spiritual and I have closer contact with my Higher Power.

Some small creative rituals

 1.    Light a candle to begin your writing session and blow it out when you are finished.

2.    Ring a small bell or chime to begin your session and ring it again when you have finished. When you ring the beginning bell, sit for a few seconds and honor the creative impulse in yourself that has brought you to the session. When you ring the closing bell, sit for a few seconds and honor the perseverance that has kept you creating even through disappointment or frustration.

3.    Create a small altar in your creative area. Your altar can be as simple as a piece of colored construction paper that a votive candle sits on or you can lay down a small cloth for your candle, your bell, and several inspirational objects. You can also build or keep your altar in a shoe box or other container when you aren’t creating. 

4.    You may wish to pick a talisman for a creative project. Maybe there’s a photo that represents the writing you are doing or a postcard of a painting by an artist who inspires you. Maybe it’s a stone or a rock or a feather. A writer of my acquaintance always drapes a shawl made by her grandmother over her chair when she sits down to write.

5.    You may wish to listen to sacred music while you create. I like Gregorian chants for painting and Japanese flute for writing.

6.    Some artists meditate before beginning a creative session; some say a prayer of thanks or dedication.

How we make the space and activity sacred is as individual as we are. But taking that extra moment to connect with something deeper can go a long way in making our writing or creative practice a bigger part of our lives.