My Friend Janet

Looks like I’m not going to be an every day blogger, though I have good intentions. I think about things, but I’m not sure the world in general needs to know them. Most of what I have to say will eventually find its way into my fiction through the mouths of my characters.

But today I’m mourning the death of my friend Janet Edgar. A fellow writer for Steeple Hill Love Inspired, her first book will release posthumously in December of 2006. She died of ovarian cancer yesterday morning after having “beaten” it once, and then being struck again. It makes my heart hurt that she didn’t get to see her book in print. But she’s in heaven enjoying much greater privileges. I have to believe that.

Janet was a lovely woman who encouraged other writers—admiring those who’d already published, ecstatically wearing the thrill of a first sale, and cheering on those still struggling to reach that milestone. She had a beautiful engaging smile and a contagious joy in lovely clothes and shoes—which seems silly when you write it down, but that kind of simple pleasure is fun to watch. She always wanted to do things right, a work ethic that challenged me personally.

I will miss her so much.

Road Books

Boy I was feeling so sassy about having finished a difficult book. Then my new editor calls to fill me in on the editing process. I have to be grateful that the publisher will be so careful to strengthen my first book with them. But I forget how much time the revision and line-editing process can take. A four- to twenty-page revision letter?! Yow. No rest for the weary. I started researching and outlining for the book due July 15, so I won’t be caught flat-footed by the edits on two others.

The current Work In Progress is set about half in central Mexico. Sounded like a good idea while I was writing the proposal, but it’s like a, um, foreign country to me. This will be a “road” book, a structure I love as a reader. There’s a Susan Elizabeth Phillips book called First Lady that sticks in my mind. The events and locations are fun, but it’s the characters that give the story life. The classic Clark Gable/Claudette Colbert movie It Happened One Night was the real inspiration for my story. I could watch that movie a hundred times and laugh every time. Memorable characters.

Typing "The End"

I’m back after a small absence. The book is finished (at least until my editor gets hold of it) and on its way to Grand Rapids or Oregon or wherever it winds up. I have to tell you, it feels really strange.

The characters I’ve lived with for months have achieved their happily-ever-after (I hope that won’t spoil the book if you decide to read it—but come on, I write romance) and I don’t have to think about them anymore. Oddly, I find that I do think about them, though. I wonder if I’ve made them smart enough and funny enough and deep enough to entertain a reader for a few days. I guess we’ll find out about next March.

Now I have a space of a few days to concentrate on family things. My son graduates from high school in a couple of weeks. I’m doing a memory book for him, so I’ve been looking through photo albums, combing through boxes of things I’ve saved since he was in kindergarten, and having a motherly meltdown. How did that beautiful little blond Dennis-the-Menace turn into this big deep-voiced young adult? I’m seeing traces of his humor and his sentimentality (well-hidden of course) and his way of looking at the world slowly emerge in Sunday school drawings, funny poems done for his own amusement (and mine), and essays forced upon him by longsuffering teachers. I can hardly wait to see what shape he takes as he launches into college and adulthood.

I pray he stumbles in as satisfying a career as I have. Writing is a killer, but it's worth it.

Revisions

Revisions suck. Did I just use that word? Yes, because I am surrounded by teenagers. I have two of them, a boy and a girl, and they’re getting ready for prom. Girl-child wants her two best buddies to get ready at our house so they can descend the stairs like three princesses going to the ball. Problem is, buddy number two is boy-child’s date, and he wanted to pick her up at her house in his cool car, not walk out of his own living room and haul her out to the garage. Thus we have war.

But I digress. Revisions come at every stage of writing. I’m currently in the first-draft, “why did I ever think this idea was going to work” stage. The one where you hit dead-ends in the middle of a scene, start over, stare into space for an hour, write a sentence and delete it, have a brain storm and write ten pages straight, move that scene into an earlier chapter, rewrite it because it has screwed up the timeline, and on and on.

Eventually I’m going to get to the end of this manuscript. Then my husband (brilliant analytical soul that he is) will read it and point out every illogical plot swerve, lame piece of dialogue and boring report (he says I do this occasionally, though I deny it vigorously). Then I will struggle to repair all those things.

At that point I give it to my critique partner who is an attorney and organizes her day with colored dots. You know those kinds of people. She will proceed to find more illogical character motivations, “ly” adverbs (how do those wretched things sneak in there when I’m not looking?) and awkward metaphors. Rats. I’m supposed to be beyond all that.

But I revise for the last time (yeah right) and ship it off to highly educated editor who will undoubtedly find other problems and ask me to revise again. And that’s not even taking into consideration line edits and copy edits.

Eventually, of course, the book will be printed and I will run out of opportunities to revise. Yep, that’s what it is. I don’t have to revise, I get to revise. I’m allowed to correct mistakes, say things a little more clearly, trade a boring adverb for a fresh strong verb.

I think that’s what the discipline of Christ is like. He allows my mistakes to be corrected, clarified, freshened. I get to be strengthened to be more like Him, more fit for heaven every day. He will not quit on me until it’s time for me to join Him. No point being discouraged; the revisions are part of the process, as inevitable as breathing.

There may be some other analogies here that I don’t have time for now. Maybe somebody else can come up with them.

Clay Pots

I have been bludgeoned by my friend Brenda Coulter--whom I would link with one of those fancy hyperlinks if I only knew how--into trying a blog. I don't have time to do this, but I always journal anyway, so I figured why not try to make myself articulate enough for public consumption.

So here goes. I am a writer. I am a published writer. I am a published writer in the throes of deadline. I am about to drive myself off a bridge. Just kidding. Sort of.

I write fiction with a Christian worldview, which sort of makes it imperative that I live what I write. Have to confess loudly and often that I am not smart enough, educated enough, funny enough, whatever enough to write a novel and turn it in on time. I am wildly undisciplined, often inarticulate, and highly insecure.

Interesting thing is, that is generally exactly the kind of person God picks for sticky tasks. Just this morning I read--quite by accident, I'm sure (NOT)--the story of Gideon and his 100 warriors conquering the hordes of the Midianites with ram's horns and torches in clay jars. Then I read somewhere else that men are but clay vessels in the hands of the Potter. Okay, I getcha loud and clear. The light don't shine unless the clay pot breaks.

I'm broke. I have 5 days to write 100 words. That's pretty stinkin scary. So let's see what the Lord of Hosts does with this clay pot.