Editing as an Olympic Sport

So you work a full time day job. Who doesn't? I won't get any sympathy there, will I?

But then you come home, and you really want to get the final draft done on your book and get it to your agent, so she can sell it and you can become the next best-seller (I mean hasn't Dan Brown already had his day in the sun?).

So you get home at 5:00, you dust, vacuum, water, or wash anything that absolutely will not live another day without being attended to - maximum time allotment five minutes. Then you make supper. It usually involves opening a bag containing salad and perhaps some sandwich meat. Maximum allotment five minutes including ingestion. Then you tell your cats you love them and you trudge upstairs to the office and you spend the next four or five hours editing/rewriting/proofing/pulling out your hair. Luckily, the bedroom is very close to the office, because then you can manage the few steps to the bed where you fall in (see above) and sleep for up to six whole hours if you're lucky.

Now allotting six whole hours to sleeping is a little indulgent, I realize, when you are portioning out the rest of your day in five minute segments, but the problem I have is at less than six hours, nothing I write the next day actually makes sense.


Try doing this for four or five days in a row. It's harsh. I find I get cabin fever by the end of it. And that's at best. At worst, when I was writing the end of Liar, Liar (about arson) I was having nightmares about my office Christmas tree burning to the ground and I was being arrested by the fire Marshall but I was happy because I was going to get all this free publicity.

So then sometimes I feel a little psychotic.

Which makes me totally understand why so many authors become alcoholics!

(my friend Ramona is not an alcoholic or an author - just a willing model!)


So the edits are done. Are they good? I don't really know, I think so. But after a week of doing this, I tend to see forest only, no trees. Honestly, I lose a bit of objectivity anyway, because it's my work, and because I know everything in my head and therefore cannot always tell if I have forgotten to tell the audience something.

Luckily my agent is heavily into honesty. But in an incredibly creativity-boosting way. I totally attribute any success my book Mind Games has to her comments on an early draft.

Now I'm going to bed (or may already be there - gotta love laptops) and I am going to pull the covers over my head and not think about writing or books for at least 48 hours. I may not even get out of bed for the next 18 hours and I'm pretty sure I won't get out of my pajamas for at least 24 hours.

Do you believe me? Yeah, us writers don't write for the glory, we write because we have to. I'll be sitting at my computer by tomorrow evening at the latest, because The Full Moon People and We'll Always Have Paris both await me.

And PS - love ya mom, thanks for your amazing dedication to the books.

Ideas & Inspiration

Do you remember this song?

Missed the Saturday Dance
Heard they crowded the floor
Couldn't bear it without you
Don't get around much anymore

Okay, I'm not really dating myself - I have to say I know a lot of music that is not of my generation because my dad was an amazing musician and we had the joy of listening to some of these great old standards. This one is Duke Ellington if you're curious to hear the tune.

I like it though, because don't get around much anymore is a really good description of me over the last two years. Now don't go feeling sorry for me, it's not like the pity post - I see my friends, we go to dinner and movies and stuff. But a whole lot of my life involves coming home to write. Oh yeah, I have a nice house too, so again I can't really complain.

The other song I really like is "Piano Player" by Richard Carpenter (and he actually sang it on the record with Karen singing back-up - oh yeah and Karen Carpenter will be a whole other post).

After years and years practice,
And a case of real bad knees,
While the other guys are out a playing with their girlfriends,
I was home banging on the keys.

It's what we writers do. Now laptops help, but I don't always want to be sitting in Starbucks writing. Sometime I need my own place and sometimes I just don't want to get out of my pajamas.

But after three years of not going anywhere (I swear the last time I left town was to go to my Uncle Brian's house and clean it out after he died - by the way - we still miss you like crazy Uncle B) - so this year my friend and I actually decided to take a holiday. I was a little stressed until I found a cat sitter - but once that was taken care of, it was all good.



So we got in the car - which brings up an interesting question - how many people antropomorphize their cars? One of the first things my friend asked was if my car was a boy or a girl? I said it was a car. Though I have been known to thank my car for getting me home alive through a blizzard or something similar, I still say "thank you car" not thank you girl. So who's weird, me or her?

Anyway, we got in the car and drove west. Or perhaps more accurately south and then west and then south and then west and then south and then north and then west until we finally hit the Pacific Coast Highway in Washington State. One of our big failings, however, is that we always want to be spontaneous. If you look it up in the dictionary, you will find spontaneous means "you will NEVER get a hotel room". Honest!

So is that bad? Well sometimes it is. It was once at when we were driving through the Okanagan on the August long weekend looking for a spontaneous adventure after driving all night from Calgary. We were both very grumpy, as was the RCMP officer we met at a speed trap. On the plus side, we got to my dad's place on Vancouver Island two days earlier than planned.



This time, spontaneous had some benefits. Don't get me wrong, it still means no hotel room for you. But it also meant exploring some really cool places. Okay, so my friend the not-writer might not have thought they were as cool as I did. But I was inventing entire novels from the look of these towns. There was one place that reminded me of a creepy Stephen King novel. It was dark when we got there and a the streets were deserted. We checked into a Bates-like motel and we were the only guests there that night...Remember that in space no one can hear you scream? Well what about if something happened to us in thate town with no one there? It would have been a great mystery for everyone but us. But since I made it out alive, look for it on your book shelves some day.

Then there was the wheat field we drove through - miles and miles and miles of single lane road, as we were trying to take a shortcut to another town. At twilight. You expected to see a bunch of very blond children with very blue eyes popping up from the wheat/corn.

And dust off your copies of Dune. Next post I'll show you picture of where the author lived... And then you'll see how these locales really can provide inspiration.

Have you every gotten inspiration from a trip or visit or even a photograph?

As an aside, I hope you enjoy the picture of my holiday. I have never been to Oregon before and I thought it was breathtakingly beautiful and filled with wonderful people. We have never been treated so well!

Another Avid Reader

Jorge in Chapala with Evening the Score!

He looks very involved - must be a great book! : )