Diagnostics

When I go back through comments over the last couple of years on the blog, and I go back through emails I've gotten with questions from lurkers and a regular or two over the years . . . I see a recurring theme of "How do I know when to abandon a book that just isn't working and start something new? How do I know I don't have Shiny New Idea Syndrome? Can I fix a meh?"

So I thought it might be interesting to run through a few diagnostic questions when you come to that Manuscript Fork in the Road.

1. Is the book original? When you talk about it aloud or write it in a pitch, does it sound different?

2. What are you hinging the sale on? Uniqueness? Amazing character? High concept? [Unless you are Salinger, I would never hinge a sale on pure writing alone.]

3. What are you struggling with most? Voice? Plot? Pacing? [I tend to think plot is fixable with a brainstorming session, versus voice being less fixable]

4. If you are seriouslt considering abandoning it, is it the manuscript's FLAWS or your own boredom? Whatever the answer, is that a recurring theme in abandoning projects?

5. If you have shown it to friends, agents, editors, is there a chorus on one or two issues? Are those issues fixable?

6. How many Band-aids have you applied? [NOTE: I think THIS is the most important question on the list.] Do you have a concept/character that can't sell or isn't winning kudos from others and you keep applying "fixes"--let me set it in another city, let me add a sidekick, let me change his love interest, let me change her career, let me insert the same character in a different plotline, let me [big one] add quirks. We all apply fixes, but if you are relentlessly bandaging a manuscript in large and small ways, it may be time to bury the corpse.


Do you have any diagnostic questions you would add? Thoughts?

Happy Monday!

Shake It Loose

I don't know what people's impressions are of what happens once you've published a novel or two. Whether all sales are easy, whether I flip my grocery list at my agent and say, "Sell this," or what. I've had proposals rejected. I've written some things, gotten to page 200 and abandoned them. I've started 30 novels, gotten to page 10 and thought, "This sucks," and there they sit in my Word files.

I have at least three novels very nearly complete, which I decided aren't "there" yet and am workshopping them one by one to get them "there." I shake things loose from time to time. By that, I write a short story. I play with a genre I know nothing about. I try different POVs or narrative devices. When my experiments work, at that point, they might see the light of day.

What I don't do is write everything solely with a sale in mind.

I mean, the sale is there, in the distance, but it's generally a "let's not go there yet" thing. Not yet. Not until I swim around in my words for a while.

When you worry too much about the sale, reading market conditions like mad, licking the tip of your finger, pointing it in the air, and trying to determine the direction of the wind, I often feel what ends up happening is kitchen sink writing. What started out as a thriller, ends up also tossing in apocalypse theory, nuclear bombs, and a French sidekick who is a vampire because that's what's selling. I've seen writers stagnate in a pool of sellable ideas, stuck like quicksand. Their writing is hampered by not shaking loose and trying something that might NOT sell but man, has some heart to it.

I have sent poor Lurker Monkey dozens of ideas over the years. Sometimes three or more ideas in a single email. "What do you think of this?"

And God, that Monkey is awesome, because he will sometimes write back, "Idea 3 is a no-brainer, you could write that in your sleep." And "Idea 2 . . . wow, that would be hard to pull off, and I'm not even sure if you could sell it, but IF you could pull it off, it would be something."

And that . . . that's when you know you are shaking things loose.

And sometimes . . . sometimes THAT is when you do your best writing. Starbucks dropped by the other day to say her first draft is for her alone. I thought ... she's onto something.

So how do YOU shake it loose?

Standing in Water

I'm alive. After some SERIOUSLY wacky dreams (always with dead bodies popping up--must be the writer-thing, envisioning potential plots) and fevers hovering in the 105 range, I am semi-lucid. Of course, now Baby Girl has strep, and Demon Baby has strep AND the Type B resistant flu (which is what I had). And it appears they have now given ME strep. I am wiping everything down with bleach. But basically, I have lived the last six days of my life in my king-sized bed with sick children and sick me. My son holds his breath when he pokes his head in occasionally to see if we're all still alive. Um . . . in the fine print of "things they don't tell you in writers' school"--no sick days. It's very tough . . . you don't write/work, you don't get paid. The one thing I miss about having a real job.

In the mdist of this, my hot water heater blew, leaving me with no water and me standing in two inches of water in my garage trying to rig something up until a plumber could get there. No water. Me. Three kids. Sick. No water. To the rescue comes my friend's boyfriend, who, with a four-dollar part FIXES my water heater. I could kiss the ground he and my friend walk on. She cooked dinner for my kids while I rested, he fixed the water heater.

Which brings me to writing.

Sometimes a work in progress will seem like it is leaking water all over the place. It's a god awful mess, flooding your brain and your life, and the first inclination might be to get a whole new work in progress. A new water heater.

But sometimes it's a four-dollar part.

I've noticed lately, that a lot of my critiques are really structured that way. All of THIS is working, but this VERY OBVIOUS flood over here isn't. But there's a simple fix . . . and it just costs four dollars.

The trick is discerning when it's a four-dollar part and when it's the water heater. Which is where I am right now. I have a couple of things I'm working on. I know they're not working as is. Something's not right. And now I'm assessing. Four-dollar part? Or the water heater. My assessment is based on:

• Do I love the characters (if, yes, then $4)
• Is there a complete story to their character arcs or are these just character sketches (if it's just a sketch then it's the water heater)
• Is there a beginning, middle, and end (if the answer is no, it's the water heater)
• Is there something really different here, something for readers to remember (if yes, then $4)

And so on. Right now, I guess you could say that in all my manuscripts, I am standing in water, with the flu, trying to decide what to do about the flood.

Thoughts? How do YOU know when it's a $4 part and when it's time to get a new water heater?

You Look Fat in That Dress

I should subtitle this post: When it's time to move on.

I never--and I mean never, ever, ever--wear dresses. I could go through my reasoning, which perhaps only the women reading this would understand. I'm almost 5 foot 11, and the way I am . . . um . . . built on top, shall we say, means most dresses really just don't "hang right" on me. They just aren't made for chesty women, which means pants and sweaters--or preferably jeans . . . and sweaters . . . suits me just fine.

I'm not sure when I reached this conclusion. I am assuming at some point, I put on a dress and added a scarf. Took off the scarf and added a shawl. Took off the shawl and added a blazer. Took off the blazer and added a necklace. Took off the necklace AND the dress and said . . . "It's the damn dress." It just cannot be fixed. And unless I went through some sort of radical body change, neither can I.

So it is with writing. Sometimes, in the rejection process, or the rewriting process, you just reach a point when you know it's the damn dress to begin with.

What do I mean?

I knew a writer once about eight years ago. I'll say he lives in L.A. in order that if he's reading, he won't guess I am talking about him. He had a cop (decorated detective). The cop was funny. Smart-mouthed. BRILLIANT. But not much different from most cops in most detective books. So he gave the cop a wife. He made the marriage fairly fleshed out and interesting. he gave the cop twin sons. He sent off the book. The book was rejected. The editors all said he was a decent writer but really? The cop just wasn't different enough.

So he made the cop a widower, no kids. All the cop's lines stayed the same, his partner stayed the same, only the cop now had this aura of sadness. Book went out. But really? How many windower cops and detectives are there in fiction? Zillions?

So he made the cop have an addiction. It wasn't alcoholism, so at least THAT was different. Once again, not much of the dialogue changed. The CASE was still very interesting. It went out. Same result.

So then he started combining quirks, storylines, relationships, and addictions. The partner morphed to a female. You can see where this is going.

At that point, it's time to stop and say "It's the damn dress."

Lest anyone think I myself have not fallen victim to this . . . I will say I once had a book that I intended to structure around a blog (nothing like this blog--the blog in the book was very specific to the characters). But really, the hook was the blog. I tried three different characters (the friends with the blog): gay guy, bitchy woman, shy woman. Gay hairdresser, driven woman, party girl. Gay writer, college professor, woman marrying not for love. You name it. It came down to the dress. The hook just wasn't strong enough to build the book around. And I could put on all the scarves and shawls I wanted. It was the damn dress.

Time to write something else.

Thoughts?