48 days, day 7: a bit of inspiration and validation

 {{ I am chronicling 48 days of writing before my July 31 travel. If you are chronicling your summer writing/days and would like to share, please link or comment so we can all cheer one another through. Strength to your sword arm! }} 

My foot waving hello at 6am

 It's 11am and I am about to plunge into my Rachel revision and finish it. So say I. SO SAY I.

No backing down, now... just do it, Debbie. You've got enough, you've got what you need, and you can finish this revision. Today.

If I am really brave, I will send it to my agent by the end of business today. That is my goal. THAT IS MY GOAL. He lives in California. That gives me a few extra hours. hahahahahaha.

I am a watering fool right now, trying to keep new grass alive, as we near the end of this almost-year of a water management project which evolved into an edible yard and garden project along the way, and Other Stuff.

I can see, I'm falling into a routine, 7 days into this 48. Up early and either write or do correspondence while it's dark... read some, too. Once the sun is up, go outside while it's still bearable and water. This takes two hours. I have to visit everything, plump pillows, tell stories, check on the patients. Something ate my hosta last night. Who does that? Deer? I don't want to talk about it. Big, fat, beautiful hosta leaves, gone.

"The dingo ate your hosta."

What I read this morning provided me with great inspiration to get to the desk and write, which is what happens after the watering, and where I'm about to go right now. Here's what I read:

First, a piece by photographer Sally Mann in the New York Times Magazine. You must read it. It's so strong, so good, so true. Every time I read good writing, it teaches me something. This piece also taught me a little more about being human. I loved it. I have long admired Mann's work, and it was a pleasure to "hear" her talk about it in-depth; the highs, the lows, the scary bits and the calling-us-to-account bits. I read this in the 5am dark this morning. I thought, "I want to write like this." Inspiration.

Then there is this piece that I read as I came in from watering, the writer James Salter interviewed by the Paris Review -- must have been in the '90s -- about writing fiction. Here is the nugget that is sending me back to the page energized:

I find the most difficult part of writing is to get it down initially because what you have written is usually so terrible that it’s disheartening, you don’t want to go on. That’s what I think is hard—the discouragement that comes from seeing what you have done. This is all you could manage?

How many times have I felt like this! Also, on heroes:

There is everyday heroism. I think of Eudora Welty’s “A Worn Path,” about a black woman walking miles to town on the railroad track to get some medicine for her grandchild. I think real devotion is heroic.

That's a thought I can use as I write about Rachel Carson, but I will also use it for book 3 of the '60s trilogy. I would also attribute it to Sunny in REVOLUTION, and to most of my characters in my books. I write about everyday struggle and everyday acts of heroism. Uncle Otts in COUNTDOWN. Joe and John Henry in FREEDOM SUMMER. Comfort letting her dog go in order to save her cousin in EACH LITTLE BIRD THAT SINGS. House reading to Mr. Norwood Boyd in ALL-STARS. Even Ruby saving Melba Jane on stage in LOVE, RUBY LAVENDER.

So those words inspire me by validating my writing experience. Which makes me feel like a real writer. Validation and inspiration send me back to the page when I think, as I do almost every writing day: this is all you could manage?

I'm going to manage to finish my revision today. What are you up to, one week, 7 days in?

48 days, day 6: the proposal method -- what's enough?

{{ I am chronicling 48 days of writing before my July 31 travel. If you are chronicling your summer writing/days and would like to share, please link or comment so we can all cheer one another through. Strength to your sword arm! }}}

Mourning dove, through the screen door. I tried to get closer, to capture it without the screen between us, and to get the hummingbird and wasps, but they were not having it.

I wish you could have seen the party at the birdbath in my garden this morning: one mourning dove (very big), one hummingbird (very small), and three red wasps (tiny!), all vying for turns at fresh water. I tried to take a photo, but of course they wouldn't sit still for me to do that. Yesterday when I filled the bath, five red wasps were right there, waiting for me to finish, as well as a bee. (Yay, bee! Bring your friends!)

It makes me so happy to see the life in the garden, even when it's the birds that I have to shoo away from the blackberries each morning. I have planted enough berries for them and enough for me.

Enough for them and enough for me. That's what I'm thinking about today as I write. How much of a draft/revision is enough for those who will read it, and how much is enough for the one who writes it? And then there are the gatekeepers who make some of those final decisions, once we get a final draft and the book goes into production... editors, publishers, marketing people, book sellers, teachers, librarians, parents, but more about them another day. It's a miracle a book makes it into a young reader's hands at all!

I'm working on Rachel today, more focused than yesterday. A comment on yesterday's post really helped me with my feelings of not getting enough done: "I think summer just calls us away from our tasks... Gardening and just soaking up the long days are just part of summer. It isn't writing for me, but just the things I need to take care of around the house."

That's part of it, I'm sure. Thanks, Sandy. I want to remember glorious summer... something I write about quite a bit, actually... RUBY, ALL-STARS, FREEDOM SUMMER, REVOLUTION... the joys of summer.

I've been at it since early morning. It's coming along. Some days the tide sweeps you out to sea, and some days you're able to stay put against the undertow. Today seems to be a stay-put day. I'm working on what's good-enough to submit for a draft.

A good friend (who espouses writing every single day, even in summer, all day if possible (with breaks for exercise!) and who produces quite a bit more writing than I ever will) says to think of a picture book like a proposal. It can be revised and re-thought, and even re-worked completely, if you can get the attention of an editor who is intrigued enough to ask for a revision.

This goes counter to the "get it as perfect as possible" method writers cut our teeth on, eh? If we look at picture books as proposals -- offers? -- to write the entire book beautifully and sellably (:>), then what is it that will intrigue that editor and get him/her to ask for a revision?

I think it's a fresh approach, a new idea, a different structure, and above all -- voice. That elusive thing no one can seem to define.

More about voice in another post. This morning I'm working. Hope you are, too. I'm lucky to have these 48 days off, and I want to use them up, wear them out, make them count, all while enjoying these summer days that call me away from my tasks. A tall order. A cool drink is what's required now. Even the creatures at the birdbath know that.

Write on!

48 days, day 5: avoiding the draft

{{ I am chronicling 48 days of writing before my July 31 travel. If you are chronicling your summer writing/days and would like to share, please link or comment so we can all cheer one another through. Strength to your sword arm! }}

Day 5: Avoiding the Draft.

Not THAT draft. Although I'm avoiding book three of the sixties project right now, probably because I'm a little in shock that I would actually think to move the book from 1968 to 1969, after all the reading and research I've done on 1968. More on that later.

The draft I'm avoiding is the Rachel draft I finished yesterday that needs So Much Work. I have found eleven-hundred other things to do today that have kept me from sitting down to this draft until an hour ago when I knew I was going to have to be accountable here for my writing day. (See how this works? huh.)

I bought cat food.

I consulted four times outside in the 95-degree heat with Roger, who is truly finishing up this long, long project with our yard, helping us manage water flow and create an edible landscape.

I read. Now, reading is essential. I want to fit it into every day I live. When I'm on a tight deadline, the only reading I'm doing is the manuscript or research. When I'm not, like now, reading for pleasure and reading for work are necessary. Maybe two hours in the middle of the day isn't necessary, when I've got these precious 48 days in which to write like mad. Maybe I'm still finding my rhythm. I want to cut myself a break.

I did get up early and get right to it, sitting down with the manuscript. There is nothing stopping me from revising today except me. Am I afraid of the story? No. Am I afraid to be messy? Heavens no, I've been nothing BUT messy with this draft for 16 years. Am I avoiding work? Well... yes.

Writing. Is. Hard. Work. At least it is for me. It requires so much attention, energy, focus, stamina, structure, skills, and strength -- strength of mind and heart. Maybe I just didn't have all that today. Am I making excuses? Maybe. Am I for-real? Yeah. We never know what private stuff someone may be wrestling, and it turns out some news from a friend yesterday has me slightly off-balance today.

Not that I can't write through it. I can and I have in the past. Today I gave myself the luxury (or the punishment -- I guess it depends on how you look at it) of a partial day off. I'm going to work for an hour now. I promise. Then I'm going to work outside -- we've got so much going on out there, it's a sort of constant distraction, but I won't use that as an excuse... this outside work gives me a good chance to move and stretch and sweat -- it's so hot and sunny and humid it hurts. ATL in June.

So let's say I'm going to work from 4 to 5pm -- 5:30. And then work in the yard for an hour. And then get a shower and make a salad (if Jim doesn't beat me to it) to take it to pot luck with friends tonight. By the time I get home, my overly-full head will drift onto the pillow in sleep. Tomorrow will be better.

How about you? Did you work/write today? Will you?