Actually working on my rationale

For my dissertation, I have to hand in 20k of the novel, then write a 3000 word rationale about it. Why I did what, basically, with some reference to the learning curve that got me there, a commentary in OU speak. Easy, huh? Well, I can honestly say it's the hardest part of my MA for me, and I've held back from doing it. I think I may have written the whole of A Baby's Bones as a displacement activity to get out of writing the rationale. If I ask for another year's extension I may write two more books to get out of writing it.

It's not the words - I did two and a half thousand today. It's just that the words have to be academically literate, well referenced etc. I can write an academic essay in my sleep - anything about psychology, go on, test me. maybe not about computer modelling of cognitive processes, I've forgotten all that. I just didn't grow up in an arts subject, I don't do footnotes, I don't understand the idea of the rationale, at least not well enough to be secure about it. So I took a deep breath, read the last few chapters of Amanda Boulter's book Writing Fiction, which has a sort of checklist about what a rationale should be like, read a distinction level rationale, and then dived into it. I don't know if it's any good, and I'm sticking to Harvard referencing, but I'm going to need at least a day to do all the references. I've got about forty so far...

A Baby's Bones is off to my agent, and no. 1 son and I are reading it to find dodgy bits and repetitions. I do it by reading it out loud, Kez does it on the computer with track changes on. It's not bad but ouch, alliterations are everywhere, some of the dialogue is a bit stilted, and there are some confusing sentences. It makes me wince that anyone is reading it, but they will help me work on it later. I've also sent it to the lovely Nicola Vincent-Abnett, who kindly offered to give me some feedback. It's still fun to work on.   

News and no news

My agent sent my book to sixteen editors on the 14th June - that's seventy-six days ago. And seven hours and twenty-six minutes, but who's counting. Today, a ray of light from my agent, as she explained that five of them still have the book, it's not dead at all, but they still have people away on holiday. Also, reading between the lines, she's got a bit frustrated herself and sent it to two YA publishers (young adult for non-writers) and one was positive. 'Very good initial feedback' is nice to hear after...seventy-six days. You can see why I was losing heart.

Fortunately, I have resolved twenty-one post-it problems with the structure (I read it through and write post-its, very high tech) and went through the manuscript looking for words that I over-use. Like 'looked' and 'back', as revealed by the very useful 'Wordle'. Wow. It does make you step back from the story to work on the words. The idea is I send out the MS on Friday to my agent (oh, that still isn't getting old!) and then can write my rationale over the weekend ready for feedback from my tutor. It will be nice to get  back in contact with Secrets/Borrowed Time because it all seems very distant at the moment. If anything happens next week, at least I'll have read the book recently.

Meanwhile, the leaves are looking increasingly battered and brown, I have a mouse in the study somewhere, so autumn must be coming. My increasingly idle cats still bring things in from the garden, but tend to release them unharmed, so we do have a succession of bewildered rodents in the house. I just hope we don't have a rat, Harry Wooggo (tortoiseshell monster) has been know to tenderly relocate them from the compost heap to the house. Something to look forward to, then. I shall bait the live trap tonight - if we have one mouse we usually have a dozen.

Finishing drafts

There's something very satisfying about finishing a draft, I find. But anxiety starts to creep in as I come to the end. This was a structural/plot/pace redraft. Where did all those odd characters go? What happened to the radioactive Thorium? What did the olde French 'Dechausee' turn out to mean? Why did I name so many characters with such similar names? Again?

Meanwhile, the weather beats against the windows like bleeding winter, the house feels damp, the chickens are begging to be let out but don't have armbands, so it wouldn't be safe, we seem to have even more kids that we had last week, and I'm half way through reading a not very satisfying thriller. I did suddenly panic last week, when I realised I haven't got a next book incubating in my imagination, so I talked it over with my patient and ever-optimistic husband. The character that has been stalking me for five years immediately raised his sneaky, psychopathic head - that is to say, someone mysteriously died and he was nowhere to be found. That's caught my imagination, and I've gone back to writing his journal, a device I used when I first wrote about him some five years ago. I'm just waiting to see what happens with The Secrets of Life and Death next week, polishing up the last pages of A Baby's Bones and then I can start tentatively writing. I always like to have two projects on the go, and I love this character.  Writing his journal part time is great, because he's not a character I want to immerse myself in.

The new book - using Wordle

If you go to Wordle, you can paste your whole book in and see which words you use - and overuse. This is Baby's Bones:

I think it's pretty! The book is coming on well. Obviously, it's about Sage (did you guess?) but I will look at just how many times I use certain words like back, like, woman and voice.

I'm busy editing my book in the mornings, then working on my father-in-law's book in the afternoon. He's a cartoonist, and he worked for the kind of comics I enjoyed in the 1970s as a kid. Sadly, comics are dying out. The Dandy, for example, has just folded because it had a print run of less than 8000. It's hard to edit someone else's book but it does show me how much I have learned in the last few years. Making a manuscript into something that can be published as a book is a set of skills that I seem to have picked up over the last few years. The voice in the book is lovely, by the way, just like the man himself.

Meanwhile, A Baby's Bones is proving much easier to edit - I should have readable versions for my beta readers by the end of the month.

Dilemma - Past or Present Tense?

I've really never considered writing in present tense, because - well, we naturally tell stories in the past tense, don't we? But, when I started writing my historical narrator's snippets, I found I was writing them down as he said it. OK, he isn't actually speaking directly to me in my head, because hearing voices is scary and weird. But the words seem to fall into the keyboard as if I wasn't involved, I'm just hearing him relate events as they happen for him. The big advantage is he doesn't know what's going to happen, so the events aren't contaminated with the future plot. I could write third person more like that but somehow an overshadowing creeps in.

Anyway, Vincent narrates (mostly) in the present tense, in the 1580s:

The shutters have been left open for air, and I see why when the body is revealed.

The white, swollen thing surely died in the summer, when the waters were warmer, for there is little left of the face, or the hands and feet, perhaps eroded by the sea or eaten by crabs. The swollen flesh make it hard to see whether it is man or woman, as it is naked but for a few rags. It is probably tall enough to be Mistress Agness, and the hair is long, but I have no impression of it being the rector’s demented sister.

‘I know not this person,’ I say, backing away and covering my nose. The stench is vile, and I hack and spit in the air outside. ‘She has only gone into the sea a few weeks since.’

‘There is a widow coming over on the packet, thinks it might be her husband, fell off the quay at Portsmouth last year.’ He bars the door and takes a deep breath of sweet air. ‘Sooner in the ground, the better.’

 Now, I could easily rewrite this as past tense, but I think it loses something in the translation:

The shutters had been left open for air, and I saw why when the body was revealed.

The white, swollen thing had surely died in the summer, when the waters were warmer, for there was little left of the face or the hands and feet, perhaps eroded by the sea or eaten by crabs. The swollen flesh made it hard to see whether it is man or woman, as it was naked but for a few rags. It was probably tall enough to be Mistress Agness, and the hair was long, but I had no impression of it being the rector’s demented sister.

‘I know not this person,’ I said, backing away and covering my nose. The stench was vile, and I hacked and spat in the air outside. ‘She has only gone into the sea a few weeks since.’

‘There is a widow coming over on the packet, thinks it might be her husband, fell off the quay at Portsmouth last year.’ He barred the door and took a deep breath of sweet air. ‘Sooner in the ground, the better.’

Is this better? Worse? Does it matter, as long as I don't mix them up? I'm working on a few longer pieces and would be glad of your opinion! I am mindful of the Philip Pullman article on present tense... 

Oh, and no news. Except one of my poems was shortlisted for the Mslexia poetry prize but it wasn't placed. Still...good competition, and huge field.

I finished the draft - somewhat unexpectedly

I was cruising along, a chapter a day at about 1000 words or so each. Then I realised the pace was picking up, so I wrote 2000 a day, then it all got very tense - and I finished the book. Shorter than I expected at but I know I have about 8000 words of description, links, epigraphs and explanations still to add in the next draft. But there it is, a bit lumbery in places, a bit underwritten in others, but basically - a whole book! I didn't realise I had quite so much of the ending already written that could just be added. Wow. I just need a day to change my mindset from creator to editor and I can start smoothing out all the links and wrinkles. I'm really pleased, because at this stage the last book was in a bad way.

Now I'm going to go through with my agent's advice on a checklist along with my First Five Pages checklist. Is the emotion downplayed? If so, turn it up. Increase the drama, seed the backstory or information through carefully, make each chapter move the story on, and end with a hook.

I also have my checklist of shame - look for repetitions and cliches! Add descriptions of people and places - I never do in the first draft though I am getting better with people. Make sure it all makes sense. Pick up the Kate character and thread her through the later scenes. Write all the historical scenes in the same tense (they are all over the place!) and check for typo bungles. 'The' often comes out as 'they'. But I'm still very happy about the nice things the judges said about A Baby's Bones, it's given me a real lift.

Oh, The First Five Pages book is great if you want to really edit page by page, scene by scene. It's by Noah Lukeman, 2000. He thinks like an editor or agent, not a writer, so it's very helpful.

Coming second

Still no news. I'm now so tired and stressed I got a weird dizziness last night which made me feel sick. However...a house full of guests keeps me distracted and I got an email from the Yeovil prize about A Baby's Bones:

“Second Place: A Baby's Bones - an excellent, richly imagined and deftly plotted story that keeps revealing new layers as it progresses. The weaving together of present and past is expertly done, and the authorial voice is confident and sophisticated.  All the different elements are woven together perfectly here: story, character development, setting and atmosphere.” 

This from the judges, which included Sophie Hannah! And they are going to send me a cheque for £250...it seems to be my year for coming second but out of a thousand entries, I'm getting there! Now all I have to do is get on and write the remaining 12k of the book and take a breath. Hopefully I'll hear from my agent in the next week or so.

PS She will follow the editors up on Monday - I can stop worrying over the weekend. Not that I'm that worried now, more resigned, and excited about the new book!