A while ago a lot of my single friends started getting married. Being the copycat that I was, before long I was married too. So I suppose it’s no surprise that when my friends started abandoning the short fling or rather the short story for the novel, I decided to do the same. Maybe that wasn’t the best reason for starting a novel, but it seemed like a good enough one at the time.
I used an unfinished short story about my childhood as my first chapter. It contained thinly disguised versions of myself and my two cousins. We were at the beach. One cousin was a mean red-head. The other was a lovely hippie. We frolicked in the cold waves. My neurotic mother made a cameo appearance. I had no idea what would happen next, but I brought it to class and Eliza said, “Keep going”. She was a firm believer that the chief obstacle to a novel’s success, above all others, was the failure to complete it. I took her advice to heart.
Every week I forced myself through another chapter. Even though I had no idea where I was going, I kept going. I thought it would be good for the plot to have a death. so I threw in a mystery over a drowned child. I knew my book would never be made into a movie if there wasn’t some sex in it, so I threw in a dark young man who took lots of LSD and swept me, I mean my main character, off her feet. There was a horseback riding incident. I had recently gone myself so I through threw that in too.
I kept throwing things in, hoping for the miraculous insight that would save me from the tangled mess I was creating, but it didn’t happen. And every time I brought a chapter in, Eliza would say, “Keep going.” I added a frantic drive across the country (not exactly a car-chase but close enough), and more LSD. The drowned child morphed into a drowned teenage girl. The ‘me’ character was still in love with the dark- drug-taking young man, but he was in love with the lovely hippie. There seemed no way to resolve it so I kept going.
After about two years I completed my 300 page novel mostly because (and I hate admit this) a lot of other people in class were finishing their novels. It ended with the dark-drug-taking young man, who had also turned out to be the killer, going right over the edge of a cliff. The ‘me’ character almost followed him over the edge but was saved at the last minute by the mean red-haired cousin; an apt metaphor for the whole experience.
Somehow I didn’t feel the satisfaction I expected, but the next step was revision so I dragged out that first chapter, polished it up a bit (even though it seemed nearly perfect) and brought it to class. I was expecting some gentle criticism, but Eliza didn’t waste any time. I can't remember exactly what she said, but the spirit of it is indelibly etched in my mind. It was something along the lines of, “What’s wrong with the mother? Is that hippie girl a moron? Why is other the cousin so mean? Why are you even writing this?” It was as if she’d never read or praised my novel before, but I didn’t say anything because I realized that all this time, I’d been waiting for permission not to keep going and now finally she was giving it to me.
And I'm not bitter. I don’t think “Keep going,” is bad advice. What I learned from all this is that it's very good advice for most but not for me, because I have a very bad sense of direction. A better directive for me would be, make sure you’re headed in the right direction and then keep going. Even better advice would be, it’s fine to be copycat if that’s what gets you going, but don’t turn into a lemming and blindly follow the whole damn thing right over the cliff, unless of course you have a mean red-haired cousin standing next to you.
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
The Call—Not THAT Call—But A Call All The Same
The timing of Eliza’s call was perfect. A few months before this, I’d handed over my completed novel, my masterpiece, to the two women in my local writer’s group for critique. It was a big deal for me to write a novel—something that spanned beyond the 800 word columns I wrote for the local paper—and I had gone over the thing many, many times—all 50,000 too short words of it.
I was sure they would find it practically flawless.
It was Judy who began her written commentary with the following:” For a first draft this is really well done…” and if I recall correctly, my face turned red and my hands went numb. First draft? WTF? This is not a First Fucking Draft!
And so I licked my wounds and did the only thing I could think to do— retreated into reading writing books. BEGINNINGS, MIDDLES & ENDS, SCENE & STRUCTURE, SELF-EDITING FOR FICTION WRITERS. I began what I considered a thoughtful revision. I particularly liked Noah Lukeman’s THE FIRST FIVE PAGES, so I worked on those suckers until they shined. At some point, I signed up for a writer’s conference to have my first 20 pages critiqued by an agent—a twenty minute, $120 investment. I needed to press ahead. I needed to know if I was kidding myself with this whole writing thing.
Of course, I was incredibly nervous. I sat in the waiting room chatting with the woman who had the appointment before me. I watched her go into her meeting and I watched her come out of her meeting. I watched her say, “I hope you have more luck than I did, Liz,” as the agent, my agent, trailed behind her. A perky young thing with blonde hair, she reached out her hand to me, smiling. “You must be Liz, come on in and have a seat.”
She held my future in her mind.
I sat across from her with a frozen smile on my face. This is all I remember:
“You’re funny. This had me in hysterics!”
“You get right into it.”
“If you could just keep this level of humor up—“
"Send me the first fifty pages.”
My writing had passed the straight face test. I left the meeting ecstatic.
It seemed I was good to go for querying. So I sent out those fifty pages and then got around to sending out some more queries, often including my shiny Noah Lukeman pages in the package. I got some requests for the manuscript. And things seemed good—I was optimistic—until that day I checked my mailbox on the way to the post office to send out a request, and found those fifty pages back from Ms. Writer's Conference Agent. Across the tops she had scrawled: “Don’t have time to comment.”
And I knew—I knew—I was done.
I think I sent out 20 queries, tops. And from the requests I granted, I was lucky to receive some suggestions, actual letters of critiques and encouragement. The fact that I hadn’t been completely ignored took the sting out of the rejections. The fact that these agents had bothered to respond to me at all meant that I must have the start of something.
And then I knew—I knew—I was not done.
What I had was a FIRST DRAFT** A 50,000 word skeleton that needed bones.
Which brings me to Eliza’s class—the next step in not being done—the next step in my quest to complete a novel—a legitimate novel—one that would hopefully, some day, pass the straight face test.
……to be continued.
**Yes, Judy, you were right.
Liz
Monday, May 12, 2008
My Weirdest Day in Writing Workshop, or I Take a Styrofoam Cup to the Head
So I was in this writing workshop once, with about twelve people and an instructor who’d published one or two novels. He’d been in the military and all his comments had that clipped brevity that sounds harsh. Starting off a round of feedback on someone’s manuscript, he’d say, “Not believable. I didn’t buy it. Anyone else?” Going around the room, each person had to say three good things and three bad things. Throughout this barrage, the author was not permitted to speak. There could be no rebuttal, no defense, no explanation.
That day, I was the first up to be critiqued and the group immediately went on the attack. They’d read a section of my novel where the main character, wrongfully convicted of murder and treason, waits in prison to be executed. They said I’d turned my character into a monster. He was miserable and mean; they used to like him but couldn’t stand him now. I couldn’t write it that way. It had to be changed. He would never be like that. He was a jerk. And on and on.
I protested, “But he’s going to be executed, that’s why he’s--”
The instructor barked a warning that sounded like, “Hup!”
But they needed to get it. “You’d be mean too if you were stuck in prison.”
“Shut it! I won’t warn you again.”
“I thought this wasn’t believable either,” the next person was saying, “You can’t have a nice guy turn bad so fast. That’s not good character development.”
Slouched in my chair, scowling, I thought: This bitch who’s writing a tedious mystery about two kids and a haunted house is going to tell me about character development? I would show her, not with irrational protests but through articulate argument. “He didn’t turn bad fast. In the last section--”
Something white hit my forehead with a thwick! and bounced on the table in front of me. I had just been struck in the head with a Styrofoam cup. Aghast, I looked at the instructor to see if he’d noticed that somebody was throwing cups. Then realized he’d thrown it.
“I said, enough from over there!” he said.
Wadding up the waxed paper from my bagel, I winged it at his head. He laughed and swatted it away, saying, “Now who’s next?”
My fellow writers gaped at me, no doubt thinking that this deranged instructor and I had something going on, a secret code that involved pitching garbage at each other. To their credit, they moved right on while I fumed for the rest of the session. My beloved character had been torn to pieces and I’d had trash thrown at me, by the instructor no less.
At any rate, I survived to write another day. And I can’t help feeling that that instructor was conferring special favor on me; I’m sure he didn’t throw his trash at just anybody. In fact, taking a cup to the head has made me stronger. If I can handle projectile garbage, I can handle anything. To my future critics and reviewers, I say, fire away!
That day, I was the first up to be critiqued and the group immediately went on the attack. They’d read a section of my novel where the main character, wrongfully convicted of murder and treason, waits in prison to be executed. They said I’d turned my character into a monster. He was miserable and mean; they used to like him but couldn’t stand him now. I couldn’t write it that way. It had to be changed. He would never be like that. He was a jerk. And on and on.
I protested, “But he’s going to be executed, that’s why he’s--”
The instructor barked a warning that sounded like, “Hup!”
But they needed to get it. “You’d be mean too if you were stuck in prison.”
“Shut it! I won’t warn you again.”
“I thought this wasn’t believable either,” the next person was saying, “You can’t have a nice guy turn bad so fast. That’s not good character development.”
Slouched in my chair, scowling, I thought: This bitch who’s writing a tedious mystery about two kids and a haunted house is going to tell me about character development? I would show her, not with irrational protests but through articulate argument. “He didn’t turn bad fast. In the last section--”
Something white hit my forehead with a thwick! and bounced on the table in front of me. I had just been struck in the head with a Styrofoam cup. Aghast, I looked at the instructor to see if he’d noticed that somebody was throwing cups. Then realized he’d thrown it.
“I said, enough from over there!” he said.
Wadding up the waxed paper from my bagel, I winged it at his head. He laughed and swatted it away, saying, “Now who’s next?”
My fellow writers gaped at me, no doubt thinking that this deranged instructor and I had something going on, a secret code that involved pitching garbage at each other. To their credit, they moved right on while I fumed for the rest of the session. My beloved character had been torn to pieces and I’d had trash thrown at me, by the instructor no less.
At any rate, I survived to write another day. And I can’t help feeling that that instructor was conferring special favor on me; I’m sure he didn’t throw his trash at just anybody. In fact, taking a cup to the head has made me stronger. If I can handle projectile garbage, I can handle anything. To my future critics and reviewers, I say, fire away!
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
First Writing or What the Waves Tell Me
By the time I was in first grade I knew I was destined to be a poet. Before I could write I was dictating my poems to my indulgent parents. I wrote about birds, butterflies and angels leaving their hair here and there. At Xmas I would throw in a reference to Santa. Is Santa jolly, Is Santa fat, Does Santa wear a big red hat, and so on… It was like I was channeling some Victorian poetess who wrote flowery, regular and vacuous rhymes.
My big breakthrough came in second grade when I wrote my first modernist piece. It came to me all at once and began with the lines:
The tears of the grandfathers
Fall on the shoulders of the morning
A wine dark heart beats
A drum march for the dawn
No one understood it, least of all me, but my Dad immediately declared me a genius. I became even more convinced of my poetic destiny. And then I got to third grade…
My third grade teacher was named Miss Gamrad. Behind her back everyone called her Miss Ramrod, because she was tall and thin, straight up and down. She had a triangular face, a wide unsmiling mouth, bulging eyes, and dark curls that seemed stuck to the sides of her head. Except for the curls, she resembled a praying mantis more than a ramrod and she was my first mean teacher. She was never mean to me, of course, because I was a perfect student, but other kids in the class weren’t so lucky. She especially liked to yell at Russell M. Russell had an edge, a wise mouth and a problem with subtraction. She would frequently subtract him from the room. He spent a lot of time standing in the hall.
Outside of math the other thing that made her yell was lunch. It was a six-room school house without its own cafeteria. Our subsidized lunches were brought in from another school five miles away. The food was cold, and unappetizing. They even ruined Jell-O. Quality notwithstanding, Miss Gamrad always made sure that we finished every last bite. Fortunately my nice parents wrote me a note saying that I didn’t have to eat anything I didn’t want to eat. Russell wasn’t so lucky. Everyone knew he was poor. His shirts were tattered and he wore shoes without his socks. On the rare occasions when he brought lunch, it was something weird like a cold fried-egg sandwich. Miss Gamrad made it her own personal mission to see to it that Russell got enough to eat.
One day she stood next to him, and said that none of us would be able to go out for recess until Russell finished his spinach. We all watched as he forced small bite after bite through his thin defiant lips. It took a while, but when the plastic tray was empty except for a pool of greenish water, Miss Gamrad smiled in triumph. At that exact moment Russell put his hand over his mouth, rushed past her and vomited all the spinach into the sink that was on one side of the room. We crowded around the sink to look at it. I’m surprised we didn’t all vomit, it was so awful. When Miss Gamrad was through cleaning it up, she announced that because of Russell we would miss recess, and instead have to write on a topic of our choice.
I suppose that by now you are thinking that on that afternoon I wrote my first story about Russell. I should have. I had a crush on him. I hoped that he had a crush on me. He was a hard scrabble, vomiting James Dean in a tiny classroom in the middle of nowhere, perfect fodder for a budding young writer. But I didn’t write about him. I hadn’t yet figured out that I could write about the world around me. Instead as I sat in that room that smelled of Lysol and vomit, I wrote something called, What the Waves Tell Me. It wasn’t a poem, but it wasn’t really a story either. It was just something that I wrote on yellow blue-lined paper, and I couldn’t stop writing it. I wrote about sitting on a beach and how the waves were speaking to me. They told me a story. I moved to another beach and they told me another story. Then I moved to yet another beach, and you guessed it, they told me another story. The words just kept just coming and there was no way I was going to stop them, because nothing had ever felt so right. When Miss Gamrad said to put our pencils down, I couldn't do it. I would like to say that she tried to tear the paper from my feverish hands, that I refused to give it to her and was defiant for the first time in my life, that Russell came to my rescue, read it and fell instantly in love with me, but that would be over-dramatizing. Eventually I ended things by simply making the tide go out. Today I can’t remember much of What the Waves Tell Me but I suspect there was a certain lack of plot, an absence of drama, too many multiplying existential beaches, but that doesn’t matter, because I still remember the feeling I got from writing it. It was a pretty cool feeling, like tapping into something I’d never dreamed was there. But it was there. It still is. And I keep coming back for more.
My big breakthrough came in second grade when I wrote my first modernist piece. It came to me all at once and began with the lines:
The tears of the grandfathers
Fall on the shoulders of the morning
A wine dark heart beats
A drum march for the dawn
No one understood it, least of all me, but my Dad immediately declared me a genius. I became even more convinced of my poetic destiny. And then I got to third grade…
My third grade teacher was named Miss Gamrad. Behind her back everyone called her Miss Ramrod, because she was tall and thin, straight up and down. She had a triangular face, a wide unsmiling mouth, bulging eyes, and dark curls that seemed stuck to the sides of her head. Except for the curls, she resembled a praying mantis more than a ramrod and she was my first mean teacher. She was never mean to me, of course, because I was a perfect student, but other kids in the class weren’t so lucky. She especially liked to yell at Russell M. Russell had an edge, a wise mouth and a problem with subtraction. She would frequently subtract him from the room. He spent a lot of time standing in the hall.
Outside of math the other thing that made her yell was lunch. It was a six-room school house without its own cafeteria. Our subsidized lunches were brought in from another school five miles away. The food was cold, and unappetizing. They even ruined Jell-O. Quality notwithstanding, Miss Gamrad always made sure that we finished every last bite. Fortunately my nice parents wrote me a note saying that I didn’t have to eat anything I didn’t want to eat. Russell wasn’t so lucky. Everyone knew he was poor. His shirts were tattered and he wore shoes without his socks. On the rare occasions when he brought lunch, it was something weird like a cold fried-egg sandwich. Miss Gamrad made it her own personal mission to see to it that Russell got enough to eat.
One day she stood next to him, and said that none of us would be able to go out for recess until Russell finished his spinach. We all watched as he forced small bite after bite through his thin defiant lips. It took a while, but when the plastic tray was empty except for a pool of greenish water, Miss Gamrad smiled in triumph. At that exact moment Russell put his hand over his mouth, rushed past her and vomited all the spinach into the sink that was on one side of the room. We crowded around the sink to look at it. I’m surprised we didn’t all vomit, it was so awful. When Miss Gamrad was through cleaning it up, she announced that because of Russell we would miss recess, and instead have to write on a topic of our choice.
I suppose that by now you are thinking that on that afternoon I wrote my first story about Russell. I should have. I had a crush on him. I hoped that he had a crush on me. He was a hard scrabble, vomiting James Dean in a tiny classroom in the middle of nowhere, perfect fodder for a budding young writer. But I didn’t write about him. I hadn’t yet figured out that I could write about the world around me. Instead as I sat in that room that smelled of Lysol and vomit, I wrote something called, What the Waves Tell Me. It wasn’t a poem, but it wasn’t really a story either. It was just something that I wrote on yellow blue-lined paper, and I couldn’t stop writing it. I wrote about sitting on a beach and how the waves were speaking to me. They told me a story. I moved to another beach and they told me another story. Then I moved to yet another beach, and you guessed it, they told me another story. The words just kept just coming and there was no way I was going to stop them, because nothing had ever felt so right. When Miss Gamrad said to put our pencils down, I couldn't do it. I would like to say that she tried to tear the paper from my feverish hands, that I refused to give it to her and was defiant for the first time in my life, that Russell came to my rescue, read it and fell instantly in love with me, but that would be over-dramatizing. Eventually I ended things by simply making the tide go out. Today I can’t remember much of What the Waves Tell Me but I suspect there was a certain lack of plot, an absence of drama, too many multiplying existential beaches, but that doesn’t matter, because I still remember the feeling I got from writing it. It was a pretty cool feeling, like tapping into something I’d never dreamed was there. But it was there. It still is. And I keep coming back for more.
To Be a Writer, You Must Shelter All Living Things
I had absolutely no creative ambitions until my fourth grade teacher told my class about a contest for poetry about the environment. Lured by the prospect of fame and recognition, and shamelessly pandering to the market, I wrote a poem called "Learn to Be an Environment." The first line was, "To be an environment, you must shelter all living things." It was genius, obviously, and I did win honorable mention in the contest. I was photographed for the local paper sitting in a tree (because I looooved the environment sooooo much) and I got to miss school to go with my parents to the Park Plaza Hotel for an awards ceremony at which both Ted Kennedy and Derek Sanderson (a former Bruin and also, I think I recall from his speech, a recovering addict) spoke. I didn't catch a lot of it because I was admiring my certificate and the gilt ceiling so much, but I assume that they both loved the environment, too.
My creative spark lay dormant for many years after my early success. There must not have been any incentives offered. Finally, my senior year of high school, I had to do a final project for my humanities class. So I put on my genius hat and wrote a story about a girl who can't sleep. She has never seen the ocean, and she thinks perhaps it will save her from the emptiness that she feels, so she drives and drives and drives to it in an insomniac haze. When she arrives, it is disappointing (I believe the last line is "More nothingness."). At no time does she interact with any other characters. This might seem like a bold, experimental, and even existential choice, and it absolutely was. I knew exactly what I was doing.
My friend Beth made a painting of the girl (she had no name -- another very deliberate artistic choice) contemplating the shadowy darkness on the other side of the canvas. It was reminiscent, if not directly imitative of, the work of Edvard Munch. I gave a reading of my work to the class, and Beth took questions about her painting. She was not able to answer them very articulately, and a couple of years later she admitted to having been drunk that whole day (It was the last week of school, and apparently some of the kids were doing this? I was not invited). We received an A- because the teacher said I could have read it more dramatically (no mention was made of Beth's slurred speech). I protested that I'd had a cold, and that anyway, the nameless girl has been rendered incapable of expressing emotion — that was the whole point! But he wouldn't budge. That was the day I caught my first glimpse of how misunderstood my work would be.
I did, in all seriousness, have a great creative writing teacher my first semester of college. She was a grad student in poetry, and she made me feel like I could be a writer. I remember she wrote on one exercise, a dialogue thing that was probably the first good scene I ever wrote (never mind that it was the true story of my unrequited love for a boy who had a girlfriend back home), "I wish I had written this." Still have that in my filing cabinet. I spent time polishing every exercise, and Polly steered me away from some of the more, um, melodramatic and widely misunderstood aspects of my prose style. By the end of the semester, I had switched my major from International Relations (read: Pre-law) to Writing Seminars (read: Pre-?)
The End.
Kate
My creative spark lay dormant for many years after my early success. There must not have been any incentives offered. Finally, my senior year of high school, I had to do a final project for my humanities class. So I put on my genius hat and wrote a story about a girl who can't sleep. She has never seen the ocean, and she thinks perhaps it will save her from the emptiness that she feels, so she drives and drives and drives to it in an insomniac haze. When she arrives, it is disappointing (I believe the last line is "More nothingness."). At no time does she interact with any other characters. This might seem like a bold, experimental, and even existential choice, and it absolutely was. I knew exactly what I was doing.
My friend Beth made a painting of the girl (she had no name -- another very deliberate artistic choice) contemplating the shadowy darkness on the other side of the canvas. It was reminiscent, if not directly imitative of, the work of Edvard Munch. I gave a reading of my work to the class, and Beth took questions about her painting. She was not able to answer them very articulately, and a couple of years later she admitted to having been drunk that whole day (It was the last week of school, and apparently some of the kids were doing this? I was not invited). We received an A- because the teacher said I could have read it more dramatically (no mention was made of Beth's slurred speech). I protested that I'd had a cold, and that anyway, the nameless girl has been rendered incapable of expressing emotion — that was the whole point! But he wouldn't budge. That was the day I caught my first glimpse of how misunderstood my work would be.
I did, in all seriousness, have a great creative writing teacher my first semester of college. She was a grad student in poetry, and she made me feel like I could be a writer. I remember she wrote on one exercise, a dialogue thing that was probably the first good scene I ever wrote (never mind that it was the true story of my unrequited love for a boy who had a girlfriend back home), "I wish I had written this." Still have that in my filing cabinet. I spent time polishing every exercise, and Polly steered me away from some of the more, um, melodramatic and widely misunderstood aspects of my prose style. By the end of the semester, I had switched my major from International Relations (read: Pre-law) to Writing Seminars (read: Pre-?)
The End.
Kate
Saturday, May 3, 2008
When Writing Stopped Being Boring
As a writer, or someone who after years of writing finally has the gall to call myself one, I should have a story about my burning desire to write at a young age. But I don’t. There were some earlier efforts, of course, accompanied by crayon drawings, but nothing any teacher raved about—nothing prodigy-like to set me on the path to eventual writerhood. Which brings me to high school where I wrote god awful boring essays about god awful boring books—go figure— or dry turn-the-question-around responses to reading comprehension passages. Writing, simply, was not fun.
It wasn’t until my senior year of high school that I recognized my love of writing. Mr. Rich Michalski (Thank you Rich!), my Modern American Fiction teacher, had us create lead sentences to a short story we had just read. Even though this was not a writing class, he was trying to make a point about how important that first sentence is, and I had a blast with it. As I sat there in the back row of the classroom conjuring up words in various combinations, I was practically manic from the experience. I felt a satisfaction that I’d never felt before.
But then college came and I was back to writing boring things. Words banged out on my electric Smith Corona, onion paper smudged from erasures. It wasn’t until I took a job as an auto insurance claims adjuster, of all things, that I re-discovered my love of writing. The job required lots of documentation—notes typed into the file, explaining the claim, explaining the actions taken on the claim. And then there were the letters I had to dictate. With the volume of claims I received every day, it became particularly important to be efficient—and in this way I believe I learned to write both effectively and efficiently. And I had fun with it, too—fun putting words together and adding detail, making things all flow together.
I left that job in 1993 when we moved back East. Free of my job, I planned to “become” a writer. So I signed up for an adult Ed class at a local college and got my first taste of creative writing. The instructor, Kate, used a book called Writing Down The Bones and she provided us with prompts to work on in and out of class. I’ll never forget when she pulled me aside and said, “Your story was the best.” There were only six of us in the class—but I took it to heart—that I wasn’t kidding myself, that maybe, I did have…not writing talent, but potential.
And here it is, 2008, and we, the Eliza Five, are in this writing group, pursuing our dreams together.
--Liz
It wasn’t until my senior year of high school that I recognized my love of writing. Mr. Rich Michalski (Thank you Rich!), my Modern American Fiction teacher, had us create lead sentences to a short story we had just read. Even though this was not a writing class, he was trying to make a point about how important that first sentence is, and I had a blast with it. As I sat there in the back row of the classroom conjuring up words in various combinations, I was practically manic from the experience. I felt a satisfaction that I’d never felt before.
But then college came and I was back to writing boring things. Words banged out on my electric Smith Corona, onion paper smudged from erasures. It wasn’t until I took a job as an auto insurance claims adjuster, of all things, that I re-discovered my love of writing. The job required lots of documentation—notes typed into the file, explaining the claim, explaining the actions taken on the claim. And then there were the letters I had to dictate. With the volume of claims I received every day, it became particularly important to be efficient—and in this way I believe I learned to write both effectively and efficiently. And I had fun with it, too—fun putting words together and adding detail, making things all flow together.
I left that job in 1993 when we moved back East. Free of my job, I planned to “become” a writer. So I signed up for an adult Ed class at a local college and got my first taste of creative writing. The instructor, Kate, used a book called Writing Down The Bones and she provided us with prompts to work on in and out of class. I’ll never forget when she pulled me aside and said, “Your story was the best.” There were only six of us in the class—but I took it to heart—that I wasn’t kidding myself, that maybe, I did have…not writing talent, but potential.
And here it is, 2008, and we, the Eliza Five, are in this writing group, pursuing our dreams together.
--Liz
Thursday, May 1, 2008
My First Novel, or Publication Envy
Starts Young
I go around telling people that this accumulation of sentences that I have been working on since the dawn of the millennium is my first novel. But I wrote my real first novel when I was in third grade. It is lost to the sands of time, and I don’t recall the title, but I’m pretty sure it started with The Mystery of… The heroine’s name was Valerie McCartney (I had a thing for Paul) and she had friends to help her solve the mystery, a la Nancy Drew’s Bess and George. The only scene I remember is where one of the characters is trying not to cough, but she can’t help it, so the bad guys find her. I was aware that a cough is generally not that difficult to control and that a sneeze would have worked better, but even then I was cautious about using too many clichés.
The book featured several full-page illustrations, because I liked to draw. In fact, I was primarily an artist. I hadn’t decided if I would draw the pictures on the front of the pattern packages or be a great painter when I grew up, but Art was my calling. I was an avid reader and loved writing sentences using vocabulary words, but writing was just a hobby.
Until my friend Lauren published her first novel, The Case of the Model T Ford. The cover was green, with a picture of the Model T, and inside the text was in a large, purplish font. She got to hand out copies to everyone in both third grade classes. She got a write-up in one of the local newspapers. I think she was even interviewed on TV—her father was a newscaster. Man, was I jealous. I wanted to be a published author, too! So I got a fresh spiral notebook and wrote my first novel. It took about a half a day to write, but even after all that work I didn’t really try to market it.
Because honestly? It was so blatantly “in the vein of” Lauren, who, let’s face it, was a much more polished writer than I. I hadn’t even begun to find my voice—I was just copying hers. My consolation was that Lauren, who also got all-around better grades than I did, couldn’t draw. My first novel sucked, but at least it had illustrations.
The book featured several full-page illustrations, because I liked to draw. In fact, I was primarily an artist. I hadn’t decided if I would draw the pictures on the front of the pattern packages or be a great painter when I grew up, but Art was my calling. I was an avid reader and loved writing sentences using vocabulary words, but writing was just a hobby.
Until my friend Lauren published her first novel, The Case of the Model T Ford. The cover was green, with a picture of the Model T, and inside the text was in a large, purplish font. She got to hand out copies to everyone in both third grade classes. She got a write-up in one of the local newspapers. I think she was even interviewed on TV—her father was a newscaster. Man, was I jealous. I wanted to be a published author, too! So I got a fresh spiral notebook and wrote my first novel. It took about a half a day to write, but even after all that work I didn’t really try to market it.
Because honestly? It was so blatantly “in the vein of” Lauren, who, let’s face it, was a much more polished writer than I. I hadn’t even begun to find my voice—I was just copying hers. My consolation was that Lauren, who also got all-around better grades than I did, couldn’t draw. My first novel sucked, but at least it had illustrations.
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