The goat died of cirrhosis

I've been writing brief prompts since 2002. Some of my writer friends also do prompts and if you spend any amount of time with me, you know that I'm always looking for great prompts to write from. Today at Writing Friday lunch, my friend Eileen announced that she was going to be reading her poems at a goat roast. After the inevitable jokes about saying deprecating remarks about goats, Sue told a story about an alcoholic goat from her past, a goat who loved beer and who died of cirrhosis of the liver. A prompt if I ever heard one.

I'm closing in on completing the 100-prompt challenge I set for myself. Such challenges are usually a do-one-a-day idea to keep us writing. Write a poem a day. Write a chapter a day. Write a prompt a day. But as I have said before, in spite of my rather overdeveloped sense of personal responsibility and discipline, I rebel at the tyranny of once-a-day practices (except brushing my teeth and journaling) so I tend to follow through on these writing ideas in my own fashion. This morning I wrote 6 prompts. Three of them revolved around an interesting new character named Muriel, who was last seen at the bowling alley Friday night (prompt was "last seen"). Then I wrote a personal story about the one night I spent in Montreal and two other fictional bits with new characters. I'm pretty restless today and if it hadn't been Writing Friday and if Pam hadn't wanted to use my computer for a while, I might have been in my office working and pretending to write. As it was, I sat out on terrace in the cool summer quiet and kept asking myself to sit still and I wrote those prompts. I stayed at it long enough to get past the obligation and into the stream of things. So glad I did.

Making revisions

At Writing Friday this past week, I spent the day on my mystery novel, making deeper revisions and considering the suggestions of my early readers. Some of the ideas didn't resonate with me. One reader thought I made too many references to food but when I read all those passages, they seemed okay to me. I hadn't fallen into the amateur's need to describe food in detail and I noticed that most of my food references had to do with smell. "Ellie woke to the sounds of Danny fixing dinner, to the smell of meat and garlic." And I rather like that way of putting readers in touch with the senses.

A second suggestion had to do with using people's names in dialog. In one embarrassingly long interchange, I had my two policemen using each other's names over and over and I could see how stilted it sounded. And I found other places where I had included the name. But even though Story Engineer Larry Brooks, in a recent post, advised against ever using a name in dialog, there were a few places where I decided to leave them. In each case, there was something serious going on and something emphatic. "Listen, Ellie, it's just not going to work." And I realized I would do that naturally in my own speech patterns and so I left them in.

Next, I increased the creepiness factor by inserting my psychopath in two small ways earlier in the book. I'm very pleased with how I resolved this suggestion and think it works well.

That left two more substantial considerations to deal with. First was rewriting the climax so that my tired hero had a bigger place in the rescue of his beloved. No solution immediately came to mind but I have let myself mull it over (I'm a great believer in the work of the unconscious mind to solve problems), and I came up with something that I think is going to work without a complete rearrangement.

Second is rethinking my heroine's relationship with her husband, whom she does not yet love. Can she? Will she? In four or five places in the novel, she has interior dialog about this but for some reason, my readers did not find that enough. Now I need to go back, print out those pages, read them through, and delve deeper into her motivation, her longing, and her reluctance.

Revisions and readers' comments

This week I'm sitting with which revisions to attend to that have arisen out of the comments of my five early readers. Last Friday at Writer's retreat day, I made all the small changes: typos, missing letters, double punctuation, and a few sentences that my wise writer friend Jan pointed out were superfluous. Now comes the bigger task. Does Danny's death go by too fast? Do I need to explain how Hansen's daughter has computer hacking skills? Did I make too many references to food? (Can there even be too many references to food? :) Are there enough physical beats in some of the dialogs? Does the climax of the plot need to be slowed down?

The easiest ones are those glitches perceived by more than one reader. Those most likely need my attention. But there are some thoughtful ideas from only one reader and she's an excellent writer and a discerning reader. Do I take her advice? Can I listen to my own intuition and creative self and see if that resonates with me first?

I guess the real question is if I can slow down enough to be thoughtful about this when I want to be done with this book and move back into the novel I started last month on the big retreat.

Using prompts to serve your fiction

I've been writing 100 prompts just to keep my creative mind loose and active and also to give myself some story starts for the third novel. I had written a prompt in January on retreat that has stuck with me and I suspected it would be part of the novel, maybe even the beginning. But the very first one of the 100, called "Road Trip," turned into the beginning, and on retreat I started from it and wrote chapters. However, others of these prompts are seeming relevant. While I was on retreat this past month, I found myself writing more prompts around some of the characters and using those in chapters.

And I saw for the first time how this prompt exercise can more directly serve my novels by letting me explore issues for 10-15 minutes around the characters, their back story, their hopes and dreams, their obstacles and challenges, their families. I have about 20 more prompts to write of the 100 and I don't expect they will all serve the novel but I am open to that if it happens.

I've written before about Judy Reeves' marvelous Writer's Book of Days, which really got me started with prompts. Judy has put out a second edition with revisions and new prompts, so if this idea of short daily fiction appeals to you, either as a genre of its own or as a skill-building tool, I highly recommend it.

Rejuvenated from the writing retreat

I returned home from the 9-day writing retreat on Thursday afternoon and plunged back into the paid-work life yesterday. I've a lot of work ahead and I'm very grateful as there have been some quite lean times this year so far. At the same time, I've come back quite rejuvenated about my creative life. I'm winding up the 100 fictional prompts (wrote #77 and 78 today). I wrote 7 chapters on novel #3. I got some excellent feedback on novel #2 and am ready to do the third draft. I also feel the tug of poetry. So my challenge over the next couple of months is to figure out how to balance hours needed for paid work and hours wanted for creative work.

After retreats in the past, I've often come home to a lull in paid work as I've finished up projects before I left. But not this time. And after retreats in the past, I've come home with one creative project to work on. And the enthusiasm to carry me through. This time I have lots of work and lots of projects, so it will be an interesting experiment to see if I can keep my goal of spacious living, work a fair amount, and write a fair amount. May need to redefine "spacious."

Clarity arrives with feedback

Two long-time writing friends have read my novel during this retreat and last night I sat down with them to get feedback. It was exactly what I needed to hear at this stage. I'd gotten enthusiastic feedback from two other friends (not writers) and from my sister, who posed some interesting questions about directions that the book could go in. Now with information from Jan and Tamara, I feel clear about making it the best mystery I can at this point and letting the idea of literary fiction go for the moment, at least with this story.

They were very clear about the clues and scenes that needed clarifying and willing to talk over tiny details without being critical of style. Sometimes, when we are tempted to give feedback, we focus on things that the author uses that we would never use. That's all well and good, but each author has a right to her own style of expression and suggesting different word choices is an editor's job, not a reader's.

They had many margin notes of what was working and the places that didn't. I feel very empowered by all 5 readers now to move forward. I'm hoping this next draft will be the work of July and that when the Willamette Writers Conference rolls around and I pitch it to three agents, I'll get a nibble and be able to send it right off.

Writing retreat day #5

I'd had a brief impulse before I got to the retreat to track my progress on either the retreat or my new writing project in this blog but I find the time has gone elsewhere. Today is Sunday and we're coming to the end of Day 5. It's been a wonderful time so far. I've written a couple of new prompts every day. I've read a bit in several writing books I brought with me. Some new information about character development to ponder and a nice confirmation that many of the suggestions of these seasoned writers are things I am already doing. I've had some quiet time for meditation and reflection. Long, lovely periods of journal writing and some good long walks.

And I've drafted four chapters on the new novel. The first two came easily. The third a little slower and today I had to wait almost all day for information or inspiration. The planners of novels, who outline it all, do all this invention in one big effort. Pantsers like me, who invent as we go along, have less control. I like the discovery process of this and it's good for me as well because I am by nature an impatient person and I was forced to rest and enjoy myself rather than be gungho productive today.

I've also spent time looking at some of the very interesting stories and characters and events that are showing up in these prompts that I'm writing and some of them seem to want to be in this novel as well. So I'm going to have to give that some thought.