What I’ve been up to

It was the Summer of Lockdown here at Chez Greenfield. And it looks like it’s going to be the Autumn of Lockdown, too. Technically, we’re still allowed to gather in groups of up to six, but if you have a wonky immune system, as I do, it seems wiser to stick close to home.

Here’s what I’ve been doing to keep myself from climbing the walls:

Walks.  Lots of them. Mostly through local fields. I thought I knew this area pretty well before, but I truly had a lot to learn. Now I know where the skylarks sing, and where to find the best damsons and sloes, and where the wild orchids grow. I’ve even learned where the rabbits play tag at dawn.

Reading.  War & Peace is one of those books I always said I’d read when I had more time. And then lockdown rolled around, and it was time to put up or shut up. So I buckled down and read at least 15 pages a day, and I’m glad I did, because it was terrific. I even liked the parts where Tolstoy bangs on about the nature of history. I know they bore lots of other readers, but I’m always up for a good discussion about history and how we tell it.

Now I’m reading Kelly McCaughrain’s Flying Lessons for Flightless Birds. Also terrific, in a completely different way. It’s graceful and raw and funny, with impeccable timing. (And there’s even some history in it, too—about trapeze artists and circuses and the Flying Wallendas.)

Writing. Early on, I went over proofs for RA #3, The Crocodile Caper, which comes out in November. But otherwise it was all Elizebeth, all the time. Elizebeth being the subject of my next book, The Woman All Spies Fear. Elizebeth Smith Friedman was a brilliant code breaker who solved mysteries, fought gangsters, and helped win two world wars—while also raising a family, fighting for women’s rights, and dealing with the duplicity of J. Edgar Hoover. Talk about a trail blazer! Writing about her life been a wonderful ride, and I’m glad it’s not quite over yet. I’m now doing photo research for the book and waiting for copyedits to come through.

Going gray: It’s been nearly a year since I last saw a hairdresser, and it dawned on me a while ago that it could be another year till I see one again. So I’ve been letting my hair do whatever it wants to do. And that’s meant letting it go gray.

Years ago, when those silver threads started showing up, people told me that I should do something about it. You don’t want to go gray at your age, they said. I took their advice, and I know they meant it well. But lockdown gave me the time and space to rethink this. And you know what? I like those silver streaks. So I cut everything back, and this is me now:

Chalk it up as another lockdown discovery.

 

Double Vision – and a Sneak Preview

My Septembers are almost always busy, but this one has me seeing double.

The impossibly beautiful Tarn Hows, where I went for a walk ten days ago

Why double? Because I have two big writing milestones coming up.

• Later this week, I need to turn in the revised draft of RA #2 to my editor.
• Next week RA THE MIGHTY debuts on September 18^th… just nine days away!

One of these milestones would be enough to keep me busy. Taken together, they’ve made my life  a blur of revisions and website updates and long to-do lists. Even the lists themselves are higgledy-piggledy, with arrows and crosses and jottings squeezed in on the side – all too representative of my state of mind.

All is not lost, though. I’m still making time for snacks. And even the occasional nap.  (Ra the Mighty would approve.)

And I do have something fun to share today:  a sneak preview of RA THE MIGHTY! My publisher has released the first two chapters, so they’re now available for FREE online – and you can see Sarah Horne’s hilarious illustrations, too. If you like what you see, I’d be thrilled if you pre-ordered the book, or asked your local library to order it.

I’m wishing you all luck with your own to-do lists. And if you’re having double vision, too — here’s to a clear-sighted September!

Another Pair of Eyes

I am deep in the revision trenches right now. Which may sound like a grim place to be, but it’s not, because I love to revise.

I never send off a piece of writing until it’s the best I can make it — but that doesn’t mean it can’t get better, especially with another pair of eyes. I’m lucky to have had several readers for the next Ra book, and every one of them has made some good suggestions. My editor is the latest person to have sent some wonderful notes, which have helped me to see the book from a different angle.

If you take its Latin roots literally, to “revise” means to “see again,” and that’s what I’m trying to do now: to truly re-envision parts of the book. It’s challenging work, but very satisfying.

I’m also cheered because the first Ra the Mighty book continues to get great reviews, including this one from lovely blogger Melissa at Melissa’s Mochas, Mysteries, and Meows. I’m also hugely grateful to Paula Harrison and Mo O’Hara, who wrote some wonderful words of praise for the cover.

And look at what came through my letterbox this week — my first author copy of Ra the Mighty!

The whole book is beautifully crafted. It’s hard to see from the photo, but Ra and Khepri are done in a shiny finish, so they catch the light, while the brilliant background is matte. My thanks to Sarah Horne and the design team at Holiday House Books for the fantastic art and design!

I also got my first look at the spine of the book, with Ra’s eye looming large. That means I now have TWO books with a single eye featured on the spine.

Another pair of eyes…

How many authors can say that?!

 

Cherry wine and lardy cake

Tags

farmers' market

I’m still here! Up to my neck in revisions, but here. And I’m pleased with how the book is shaping up. Thankfully much of the work now is a matter of fine-tuning. It never fails to amaze me how a single sentence can change the balance of a scene.

What other news do I have? There’s a Goodreads giveaway of an advance copy of CHANTRESS (you can check that out here). A big blog tour for the book is coming up in May.

But it’s not all-book-all-the-time here (even if it sometimes feels that way). As proof, I’m sharing some photos I took on last month of our local farmers’ market, inspired by Lorrainemt’s great post over at A Fork in the Road about her farmers’ market in Oregon:

Goodies from The Old Farmhouse Bakery

Lardy Cake – an Oxfordshire specialty that is melt-in-your mouth delicious. As the sign in a local bakery once said, “Yes, it IS” (meaning that yes, it really is made with lard!).

Our local drinks man, who supplies us with homemade cherry wine and pear juice.

One of several farm shops at the market. You can also buy locally raised trout and venison.

Winter crops

One of the lovely people who runs Sufi Spice. They make superb Indian food with as many local ingredients as possible

Cotswold honey and beeswax

British eggs

The flower stand is always a favorite stop.

Our market has bit of everything, including goose eggs!

Why a book is like a garden

Tags

Hidcote

Last month I went to Hidcote, one of the most famous gardens in England. High up in the Cotswolds, it’s not easy to find — especially if your GPS goes wild as mine did, and sends you hurtling down precipitous one-lane country roads, where one moment you’re gaping at a dizzying panorama of rolling green hills, and the next you’re slamming on the brakes because a tractor’s coming out of the hedgerows.

The nerve-wracking journey is worth it, though, because at the end you find something spectacular:

These beauties are worth appreciating for themselves, as are the other pleasures of Hidcote: the play of sunlight and shadow, the drowsy hum of bees, the raisin-dappled apple cake from the kitchen.

But as I plunge back into my WIP, I’m thinking about that journey to Hidcote and seeing writing metaphors everywhere: The tortuous climb. The maps that lead the wrong way. The sinking sensation that I am hopelessly lost. And, now and then, the glorious views of where I’ve been and where I’m going.

As I work, I’m also reminded of something else about Hidcote: Beautiful as each flower was, what made the garden work — what made it shine — was the way those plants were put together.

Hidcote’s designer, a reclusive American, didn’t just plonk one stunning flower next to another. He thought about contrast and form and perspective and pacing and balance. And he and his gardeners kept planting and replanting and culling and pruning until they got it right.

And that’s what I’m trying to do with my manuscript, too.

Revision: Two views

How much should you revise?

I’m always curious how other authors answer this question. And this spring, at a Bodleian Library’s exhibition on the Shelleys, I had a chance to study how two authors revised in the days before typewriters (to say nothing of computers).*** Mary and Percy Bysshe Shelley were a star-crossed pair if there ever was one, and it turns out they had entirely different approaches to revision.

Here is a page from Mary Shelley’s draft of Frankenstein:

Look at those neat lines flowing across the page! And note the minimal changes to the manuscript. A word here, a sentence there — and this was one of the messier pages I saw.

What’s most interesting is that the edits were generally written in her husband’s hand.

But if Percy Bysshe Shelley was tough on Mary’s work, he was far harder on his own. He won my heart with this heavily lined and be-scribbled draft of his sonnet Ozymandias:

Wholesale “re-visioning” here! And some great doodling, too. (If you don’t know the sonnet, it’s wonderful, and well worth the short time it takes to read. You can find it here.)

Here’s another one of his drafts:

Doodling seems to have been part of his method. I’m thinking I might try giving it a try, too.

I rarely write anything as clean as Mary Shelley’s first draft of Frankenstein. So it’s reassuring to see that Percy Bysshe was willing to cut his first drafts to shreds, too.

***I caught the Bodleian exhibit on one of its last days, but a version of it will travel to the New York Public Library in February 2012. And you can visit the online version of the show here, complete with Percy’s raisin plate and Mary’s hair. How can you resist?!

#

Thankful to be DONE

Glory be! I am done with this revision. Must go bake myself a pie, and say a few prayers of thankfulness over it.

My but it’s been a long, long haul. I’ve done more drafts of this book than I care to think about. But this is the one where voice and plot and character finally came together, and I came out with something that truly lived and breathed for me. The ending even makes me cry. (Though that could have something to do with all the cough syrup and sudafed I’m on…)

I have some odds and ends to tend to before I send the manuscript out to readers. And no doubt I’ll have lots more to do after I get their comments. But this is a big day. A good day. And a grateful one.

Any other November scribblers getting close to end (or the brink)? Let me know, so I can cheer you on!

Why revising a novel is like taming a garden

(1) Because there’s undergrowth everywhere I look.

(2) Because those shrubs I thought were perfect now strike me as in desperate need of a clipping.

(3) Because I have 180 spring bulbs that need to be put in just the right place, so they flower just when I need them.

(180 bulbs! What was I thinking?)

(4) Because the only way to do the work is to wade straight into the mud with my boots on.

(5) Because among the mud and the muck and the weeds, I find unexpected delights.

Loving your work

When it comes to loving my work, I could take a few lessons from Sweetpea, my 3-year-old daughter.

Sweetpea loves to draw. Crayons, markers, sparkle pens, colored pencils, even a plain black pen from my bag — they’re good for hours of entertainment. And what she draws is wonderful. Her flowers and frogs and families are charming, and her curly-tailed pigs practically oink right off the page.

“Which one is your favorite?” I ask her at the end of one drawing session.

She spreads out half a dozen drawings — some recognizable to me, others not — and studies them.

“I love them ALL,” she says, her face aglow with happiness.

I wish I could say the same about my own work, but as I revise this novel, my critical eye is in the ascendant. And that’s necessary, even good — at least to a point. But on days when my blasted internal editor starts stomping over everything, I think about Sweetpea, and her delight in ALL her work. And I remind myself that while it’s important to see ways of making this novel better, it’s also important to take pride and pleasure in what I’ve done so far.

Do you find it hard to love your own work, or does that come easily to you? What aspects of your own WIP make you happy? Whatever you’re proud of — a character you love, an enticing prologue, a wonderful bit of dialogue, a devilish plot twist — I’d love to hear about it!

Listening

If I’m quiet right now, it’s because I’m listening. Listening to how this story wants to be, listening to what it wants to say.

Before this book (which is to say, before Sweetpea), I was a fairly quick writer. If a story or book was going to work, it usually came together within two drafts. After that it was just tinkering. Lots of tinkering sometimes, reworking a scene or a paragraph or a sentence. But no wholesale rewriting of entire sections of the book.

But with this story, it’s different. I’ve lost track of how many versions I have.

Is it because I have so much less time to write? Or because some stories are just that way? I don’t know. But it wasn’t until halfway through the last draft that the true voice of the book finally turned up.

It’s like a candle, that voice. Or maybe a lifeline. But to follow it, I have to chuck out the entire beginning of the book.

So that’s what I’m doing this week. Starting again, from scratch.

Sometimes I wonder if I’m doing the right thing. I think about how the old beginning used to make me happy. I think how it earned me an honorable mention from the SCBWI WIP Grant committee, at a time when I desperately needed the encouragement.

But then I hear that voice in my head. That true voice. And I’m ready to trust that this is where I need to go.