Next stop Vividville: Empty words depart here

Suddenly, I was very convicted.

While reading "Words that should never be written in a memoir or anywhere else" from Marilyn Mendoza's blog From Agoraphobia to Zen, I wondered how often I had used suddenly in my memoir.

I've attempted to strike very from my vocabulary, having learned it was an empty modifier from my days as a newspaper reporter, but Mendoza added a number of other empty words to her list, including suddenly.


Since I didn't want to be haunted by Stephen King, I searched my manuscript first for suddenly and found six instances:

1. Then suddenly, she waved the word “rape” to the school cop.
2. Suddenly, in this second interview with the detective, she had no problem discussing the sexual details of the night.
3. “If she laughs, she thinks I’m funny. If she thinks I’m funny, she thinks I’m good. If I’m good, she will want to be with me. If she wants to be with me, she’ll want to kiss me” and suddenly he was down a one-way alley with a blind intersection.
4. Then her brother died suddenly.
5. The music suddenly surged, and the bass drummers formed a line behind the pounding tenors who marched behind the snare drummers, who leaned back to project the sound of their cadence.
6. Suddenly, I had the same problem I had always had through 16 years of marriage: A depressed mate who wasn’t committed to me and couldn’t take action.

Six empty words in a manuscript of 81,271 isn't bad, but I can do better. I deleted suddenly from the first, second and fourth instances. No. 3 turned into "and before he could backtrack to check his logic, he was down a one-way alley with a blind intersection." In No. 5, "suddenly" became "swiftly." No. 6 was transformed into this: "As I coped with his sad clown demeanor, I realized I had the same problem I had always had through 16 years of marriage ... ."

In an effort to be thorough, I searched for very, thinking surely I had performed better on that count. I found, oh, about 20 instances -- so many I stopped counting. Oh, how very irritating. I deleted 80% of them while retaining the same meaning.

Net change: Two fewer words. Isn't it fascinating that eliminating empty words makes a story fuller.

It's not hard to take the polite put-off

"It's not you. It's me."

That's how the literary agent who rejected my manuscript categorized it, and I think she's brilliant. This is exactly why cowardly boyfriends use this line when dumping the boring girl/prude/clingy Glenn Close type: "It's not you, it's me" removes blame and all responsibility for explanation.

Honestly, I was sort of excited to open my first rejection letter today. In direct selling (my former profession), stellar sellers count the number of no's because it means they're getting closer to a yes. I can now cross Rejection Nos. 1 & 2 off the list. About an hour after the mail arrived, I got an email rejection, too, for which I'm grateful because I hate sending missives off into the internet and never hearing any response.

Here's who Rejecting Agent No. 1 broke the bad news:

Thank you so much for sending me the proposal for your manuscript THE DRUM LINE: A MEMOIR OF A SEX OFFENDER'S WIFE. The work is nicely done [you hear that? "nicely done"], but I don't have the passion that you need in an agent for their work to be done well. Fortunately, this is a subjective business and I expect that you'll find an agent who has no reservations. I wish you the best."

Rejecting Agent No. 2 said "this is not a project that is a good fit for our list."

Next!

I said lunch, not launch!

"You've got your agent list. You've
got your killer query. Now it's time to launch
yourself out into the world."

~ Arielle Eckstut and David Henry Sterry in "The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published"

"Far Out Space Nuts" be darned, now it's time! I sent five query letters in the mail to New York agents today, and I emailed eight more into the amorphous internet.

With a bit of coaching from Eckstut, I perfected my pitch for "The Drum Line: A Memoir of a Sex Offender's Wife" and tightened my manuscript. I haven't heard a word from the two agents I queried in July, but Eckstut predicted that if I query 15 to 20 agents, I should hear back from at least two of them. We'll see how good a forecaster she is.


“The Drum Line,” a memoir of adultery, sex crime and the demise of a 16-year marriage, is a modern parable on the nature of betrayal, forgiveness and atonement for those who have endured the shame and mystery of secrets in a family. If you were an agent, would you want to read more?

Finding common ground

On the advice of a published author who reviewed my book proposal, I am digging up memoirs written by journalists. I'm a former journalist, see, so my writing style is, well, journalistic. Theoretically, an agent attracted to straightforward, well-researched writing in another journalist's memoir might be attracted to mine.

I immediately thought of Mariane Pearl's memoir of her husband's abduction and execution, "A Mighty Heart: The Brave Life and Death of My Husband, Danny Pearl." Danny Pearl was kidnapped and murdered in Pakistan while reporting on terrorism for the Wall Street Journal. Heartbreakingly, Mariane Pearl was pregnant when her husband died. She effectively portrays her husband's humanity in the face of awful inhumanity, and the book is a real page turner, even though you know how it turns out.


And I recently read "Falling Apart in One Piece: One Optimist's Journey Through the Hell of Divorce" by Stacy Morrison, who was editor-in-chief of Redbook magazine when her husband of 10 years decided he was unhappy and wanted out. Morrison deftly and fairly handles the uncertainty of her milquetoast husband and her own feelings about her marriage and the child they shared. In the space of 239 pages, she makes it clear that nothing is clear. In my experience, divorce is murky like that. Pat answers -- it was his fault, it was her fault -- never really explain what really happened.


The published author with whom I consulted suggested I check out David Carr's "The Night of the Gun: A Reporter Investigates the Darkest Story of His Life -- His Own." Apparently, Carr was a hopeless drug addict, and he had to piece together his past by retracing his steps. I understand his story is "riveting" but I can tell you his acknowledgements (and website) are less than revealing, at least of his agent's name.

Then I googled "memoirs by journalists" and discovered Amazon has an entire category devoted to the genre: Nonfiction>Biographies & Memoirs>Professionals & Academics>Journalists. No. 1 is "Cheap Cabernet: A Friendship" byCathie Beck. "A Mighty Heart" is No. 90. Interestingly, many of these offerings are e-books. Hmm.

Manuscript optometry

Like an optometrist changing lenses and endlessly asking “better or worse?” I’m trying new word combinations and asking myself, “better or worse?”

Here’s one example:

Before:

Like I was unfolding a pile of laundry, I answered her questions about where I was in life, why I was there, how my work was, how I dealt with stress and my beliefs. I no longer had anything to lose, so I was as honest as I could be and, for her part, she was comforting and nonjudgmental.

After:

Like I was unfolding a pile of laundry, I answered her questions about my crossroads in life, my intentions, my work, my coping mechanisms and my beliefs. I no longer had anything to lose, so I was as honest as I would have been in the raw pages of a diary and, for her part, she was comforting and nonjudgmental.

The 6th draft is the hardest part

Maybe the first draft was the most difficult to write, given that it took me five years. But this editing is like removing one's teeth by oneself. With a pliers. And no pain-killer. Draft 6 is killing me softly.


Draft 1: Written in three parts. The first 15,000 words or so were written in 2006, begun at a memoir writing workshop. The second 15,000 words were written in November 2009 during National Novel Writing Month (you've got 57 days to give some thought to your NaNoWriMo effort this year). The final 45,000 words were written in May and June, when my job was disintegrating and my husband challenged me to finally finish the book I had been talking about for five years.


Draft 2: The first draft was a mess of tenses and unfinished thoughts. My husband was my first editor, pushing me to fill in blanks I was too uncomfortable to fill in.

Draft 3: I sent Draft 2 to my mother, my sister, my best friend since eighth grade, a friend with whom I worked for four years and my brother-in-law. Their suggestions and questions formed Draft 3.

Draft 4: My editor took a clinical unbiased view of my manuscript, and he suggested the removal of the words "a lot" and "things" and encouraged more active verbs. These nuances require deep thoughts. What did I really mean by "It was so much better, being real" in Chapter 26?And who knew an epilogue could be so fraught with telling too much and too little at the same time.

Draft 5: While the manuscript was with my editor, my mother-in-law, a friend of a friend and another friend reviewed Draft 3 and offered insightful suggestions not offered by those closest to me.

And here we are at Draft 6, a compilation of my editor's comments, the comments of the friends once removed and the advice from a former agent who suggested I needed more "beauty" in my writing. Like the Richter Scale, each draft number is 10 times harder than the last. I've been stuck in the quagmire of Draft 6 for six weeks, alternately impressed with my writing and appalled by it.

Let's not even discuss Draft 7 at this point. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair

Someone who should know told me today that my manuscript looks "very, very capably written but not with a tremendous amount of beauty." She encouraged me to scour my draft and mine for beauty.

My style is direct and journalistic. My personality style is direct, and I am, or was, a journalist. I appreciate aesthetic writing, but it does not come naturally to me.

Oh, woe, this work of writing is work indeed.

The analyst of my work suggested I look at a memoir like "Angela's Ashes" by Frank McCourt for beautiful writing. Here's a passage from McCourt's Chapter 1:

My father, Malachy McCourt, was born on a farm in Toome, County Antrim. Like his father before, he grew up wild, in trouble with the English, or the Irish, or both. He fought with the Old IRA and for some desperate act he wound up a fugitive with a price on his head.

When I was a child I would look at my father, the thinning hair, the collapsing teeth, and wonder why anyone would give money for a head like that. When I was thirteen my father's mother told me a secret: as a wee lad your poor father was dropped on his head. It was an accident, he was never the same after, and you must remember that people dropped on their heads can be a bit peculiar. 

Because of the price on the head he had been dropped on, he had to be spirited out of Ireland via cargo ship from Galway. In New York, with Prohibition in full swing, he thought he had died and gone to hell for his sins. Then he discovered speakeasies and he rejoiced.

One reviewer describes McCourt's voice as having "originality and immediacy" and another describes his memoir about his poverty-stricken childhood and alcoholic father as having "astounding humor and compassion." McCourt's writing is, of course, superlative; he got a Pulitzer Prize for his work. Pulitzer Prize winners are like that -- with a bit, or a lot, of clever language, they can turn a tale of sorrow into a humorous redemption story, a classic.

"Because of the price on the head he had been dropped on" is both beautiful and funny. McCourt deserves the kudos.

My story is a tale of sorrow -- and redemption -- and my editor said I write "fairly objectively about a highly emotional, subjective experience," which is perhaps compassionate, but I am not astoundingly humorous or even sort of funny. I am the straight man in any skit. Wry maybe. But funny is out. I must aspire to beauty.

"Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair,
offering us for a minute a glimpse of an eternity that
we should like to stretch out over the whole of time."

~ Albert Camas

Show, don't tell

As a journalist, I have a propensity for telling. But the gold standard advice in storytelling is "show, don't tell."

I found some notes taken while I was at Printer's Row Lit Fest earlier this summer which read, "Not 'my heart was so full I could burst' or 'I was so angry'; put description of my body, mind, jaw, hunger; avoid putting feeling on the page."

Thus, I attempted to follow this advice throughout my manuscript, including this passage:

The revelations in Detective Oxton’s investigation file seemed to go on and on. By now, I had spent a couple of days sifting through the interview transcripts. I curled up in the cushiony upholstered chair in the living room with the big stack of papers on the floor beside me; my shoulders hunched over whatever I was reading, and more than once the leg I tucked under me fell asleep. Colin was almost always nearby, either agreeing with my muttered analyses or scoffing at my accusatory inquiries. Sometimes he would sneak outside for a smoke, to alleviate his stress. I was vaguely aware of his escalating depression, but I was in no position to want to do anything meaningful about it. 

Errors of notorious proportions

Quick! What's wrong with this paragraph?

Colin Lloyd Skorupski. His whole name including middle. Like John Wilkes Booth, President Kennedy’s assassin. People sometimes marveled at how notorious criminals are always known by three names. It was no conspiracy. It was no uncanny coincidence. It was a function of a reporter’s accuracy. By using an accused criminal’s full name, a newspaper avoided accusations of libel from some poor John Booth or Colin Skorupski who had nothing whatsoever to do with assassinations or sexual misconduct.

If you spotted it right away, you're better than the seven people who read my manuscript before my editor. Find it? John Wilkes Booth assassinated President Lincoln, not Kennedy. I knew that, but it's not what I wrote. I edited my own work and didn't catch it. This is yet another reason why even great writers need good editors.

My editor changed the paragraph thusly:

Colin Lloyd Skorupski. His whole name including middle. Like John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald, the assassins of Presidents Lincoln and Kennedy. People sometimes marvel at how notorious criminals are always known by three names. It’s no conspiracy or uncanny coincidence. It’s a function of a reporter’s accuracy. By using an accused criminal’s full name, a newspaper avoids accusations of libel from some poor John Booth or Colin Skorupski who had nothing whatsoever to do with assassinations or sexual misconduct. 

You'll notice he changed the verb tense, too, which makes perfect sense. 

Well done.

What good editors do

A good editor sees through your hack jobs.

One of the stories in my book features seven characters -- a lot of voices to keep track of. When my husband read that chapter, he was confused. This is an early chapter in the book so I knew confusing the reader that early would be deadly. But rather than rewrite the chapter, as I should have, I just deleted two of the characters and changed a few plural verbs to singular.

But a good editor sees through short cuts like that.

My editor kindly suggested that chapter was one of my weaker chapters. "You kind of lose the reader," he said. "You need to get to the point quicker."

Other readers had mentioned other problems with the chapter, but my editor explained it in a way that convicted me. As he spoke, I knew he had a point because I knew how that chapter got there. And I realized why the other readers struggled with it.

My clumsy fix had been revealed for what it was: Lazy.

This is why even the best writers need good editors. Good editors look at writing the way readers do, but they are able to articulate clearly what's wrong. And very good editors gently point this out in ways that even the most territorial writers concede the point.

Book trailer in the works

In the end, or perhaps in "an" end, I sent the manuscript off to an editor with 77,442 words. The evolution will continue, I expect, to include numerous revisions and cuts and possibly additions, though I feel like I opened my soul with all the revelations in my memoir and I'm not sure how much is left to tell.

This morning, on Independence Day, I filmed a YouTube video to launch this memoir to the world. It combines the book pitch and footage of the author (me) explaining why she wrote it. I couldn't swing the pro videographer, but I have confidence my brother-in-law can put together something fabulous (and he worked for French toast and scrambled eggs). Apparently, book trailers are all the rage nowadays. We'll see.

Stay tuned.

'Happens Every Day" covers familiar territory in a fresh way

"When people describe a room spinning after something unthinkable happens, like the death of a parent or news you have lost your job, it's because you have lost the context of your life and your eyes literally are looking for things to ground you, to remind you that you are still in your life. The room started spinning, but my eyes found the side of the counter. ... I held on to the counter and felt the groove under my hand, reminding me that we had built this house. We had chosen colors and fixtures and a life and that was more, must more than this blip with Sylvia."

As author Isabel Gillies describes discovering her husband is having an affair with a professor colleague, she does a masterful job of turning clichés like "the room was spinning" into something new and descriptive and meaningful.

In her book "Happens Every Day: An All-Too-True" Story," Gillies recounts how the love of her life and father of her two toddlers fell out of love with her and left her. The story revolves primarily around four months in 2005 when her marriage literally slips through her fingers. One reviewer describes Gillies' breezy conversational style like the reader is her best friend, and she's answering the happy hour question, "So, tell me what happened." Lots of candid details here for the reader to soak in but like the title says, it happens every day. There's nothing too special about this infidelity or divorce.

I picked up her book because I'm powering through memoirs that are like mine. I already read Julie Metz's "Perfection" (and reviewed it in my other blog) but you might be surprised how many women have written accounts of marriages to cads. Perhaps most astonishing after reading Gillies' story is that she says in her epilogue that the other woman -- who eventually married her ex-husband -- is "a thoughtful and kind stepmother, and it's funny, I like her now very much, in the same way I did when we first met."

Wow. If that isn't being the bigger person, I don't know what is. On the other hand, the book was a New York Times bestseller so maybe she who laughs last, laughs loudest.

Writing groups provide valuable feedback

Writers, in general, are loners. We sit in front of a computer (or, rarely anymore, with a pencil and notebook) and think and type. Sometimes, I even have to turn my radio off in order to get a thought down on paper. But in order to get to our best work, we need feedback.

I've always said even the best writer needs a good editor, but before the editor, a writers group can be invaluable. 

"Get other people to evaluate your writing -- to tell you what's wrong with it, what's right with it and how to fix it," sayArielle Eckstut and David Henry Sterry in their book, "The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published."  "The more input you have, the more you'll know about how to make your book better."

I have been part of a couple of great writers groups in the past. Both were memoir writing groups; one was a weeklong workshop, another was a group of people who met weekly for a while. Both groups provided kind but valuable criticism to help me improve my writing.

In addition to the five people close to me who are reviewing my manuscript, I looked up a person I met about four years ago at a local book festival. The extent of her knowledge of me is a lunchtime conversation, but she was willing to take a look at my book if I'm willing to reciprocate, which of course I am.

But I am motivated to find myself an in-person writing group (or start one). I think a group will keep me writing, and I know they would help. I believe I shall begin where it seems everything begins these days: Google!

Putting it out there in the world

• 75,988 words
• 25 chapters
• 3 proposed titles

That's where I'm at with my memoir, my dream to get published. I wrote about 20% of it five years ago and another 20% during National Novel Writing Month in November 2009. The lion's share of it was written since May 15 when I started sensing my real job was going down the tubes and my Beloved challenged me to write 20,000 words in a week (I managed 23,016).

My Beloved has read it three times, and his comments have been illuminatingly helpful, but I took a big step today. I sent my manuscript off to five people I trust to give me candid feedback:

• My mother. Really, I think she'll be honest (but kind), and she majored in English in college. And she reads tons of books. And she's on the library board. Really, she's legit! (Even though she loves me more than anyone on the planet.)
• My sister. OK, she's not on the library board, but she's a reader. And she knows me.
• My best friend since seventh grade and the maid/matron of honor at both my weddings. She really knows me. And she's very honest.
• My friend and boss, a voracious reader. She's insightful.
• My brother-in-law. He doesn't know me so well, so I'm hoping he can provide an arm's length man's perspective.

It's kind of scary -- putting a piece of myself out there in the world. But, as I resolved at the beginning of the year, I'm boldly going.

Once I incorporate their feedback into the manuscript, I'm sending it off to an editor for the real arm's length perspective.