Love Tour

by Karen Keltz, author of Sally Jo Survives Sixth Grade, and an award winning poet. Read more about her at Karen Keltz’s website and blog

THE LOVE TOUR

January is a most depressing month, and February follows right on its heels. Here on the coast everything is dripping wet, soggy and marshlike. The prominent color of the sky is some variation of Payne’s gray, from “dark ominous” to “continual dusk” to “shiny steel.”

Lest you think growing things are all dead, though, when you see brown, slime, and mold, I’m here to tell you plenty is going on underneath the leaves, twigs, branches and mulch.

The same is true if you are also a writer. You sit at your desk, uninspired, staring at the rain pouring past your window, pummeling your roof. You rail at the Muse for playing hide and seek. Your story refuses to go forward. And yet, things are also happening there, down in your subconscious, which will begin to make connections.

Even if it’s spitting rain, I suggest you take a hopeful walk around your garden. What you see will rev up your creative brain. Make what I call the Love Tour.

Today, I asked myself, “What can I see that I love?” I started out from the front door, where our porch is decorated with primroses my husband bought at the store, with the joy of their color in mind. We love seeing them every time we go in or out of our home. We didn’t grow them, but I think they count anyway.

–I thought about how others choose to do good deeds with our happiness in mind or how we choose to do the same. The why of that decision-making and subsequent action makes an excellent essay topic Why do the characters in your story do what they do?

Next, I noticed all the nubbins—bulbs arising in either sidewalk bed. Some early daffodils are ready to bloom, but the later bulbs are slowly undressing. Besides daffodils, I saw the arms of narcissus, crocus, snowbells, hyacinth, muscari, tulips and Scilla siberica, all reaching for the light.

–We humans know what is worth reaching for, what really matters in our lives, if we are in touch with our souls. What does your character truly desire or does that change from beginning to end of your story?

Around the corner, two clumps of heather are in bloom. I love the happy pinks. If I clip some stems, they fit perfectly in a teeny blue glass vase and will dry and retain their color for a couple of months on a counter or table.

Some yarrow is greening, promising its work as a bouquet filler and a medicinal in herbal concoctions. The rose campion and foxglove rosettes haven’t frozen and neither has the hollyhock, which means we may have their colorful blooms earlier than usual. I love that!

The rosemary is green and blooming. I squeeze and rub the leaves and smell my hand. Heavenly!

Green ferns are out of the ground. So is the German chamomile. More green.

–There are moments for all of us where right and beautiful things are present to fill our hearts and make us glad to be alive. Often they stand out starkly in the ugliest of times. What are those moments for your characters?

The red-twigged dogwood pops color where there are no blooms. I saw buds on the lilacs, forsythia, flowering quince, and pussy willow. I love seeing their promise!

–What gives your characters hope during their bleakest hours?

Without leaves blocking the view, I noticed the structural elements I put in place last summer, such as the graveled patio space I dug and laid for the red table and chairs, and the paving stone foundation for the red bench. I love that it’s all ready when the time comes. I also made a list of the places that need work and the pruning that needs done as soon as the weather is more forgiving, because right now they are more noticeable.

–Same with writing. You’ve made your storyboard or outline, the structure that keeps a reader turning the page. When you’ve finished filling it with specific details, then you begin anew to prune what doesn’t work and enhance what does.

After my circuit of our house through the flower beds, looking for things I love, I reached my front porch in a much happier frame of mind, grateful for nature and my connection to it.

Something special for my eyes translates by comparison into new story ideas or character motivations, or whatever I need to make my work move forward. I’ve given my brain a treat, and if I’ve paid attention and asked myself the right questions, my brain will reciprocate.

We can’t always get away to sunnier climes, but we can always take ten minutes out of our day to make the Love Tour. I recommend it.

Getting My Book Out to the World

I’m letting it go, letting my book go out in the world, and be born. It is almost time for it to fly.

About ten weeks ago, I decided it was done. I was finished. The book was, dare I say it, complete. It had started out as a blog post, and then more blog posts, an essay, an op ed piece in the local paper. I even set up a folder in my computer and called it “mentoring”.

One day, my wife said that I had so many of these writings, I should make a book out of them.

Me? A book?

Well, yes. I was on my way, I told myself. And, there were very few books I’d found on the subject, and none on what I was saying, and doing with the young men I had been working with, as a judge and as a volunteer at the local youth prison.

And, I do have some things to say; I’m opinionated.

Last spring, we took a trip and I printed off all of my “chapters” at a copy center, and put them in a binder. My task was to do some editing and rewriting, and organize the whole thing into something that people might want to pick up and read. I had the time. Now, I needed to get to work.

That process was slow going, and the Muse would call me to write a new chapter every three or four weeks. And, some chapters fell by the wayside. But, I had something. I had something to say, and what I had written was important. People needed to read it. I needed to get it out there.

Several friends and family members kept up the pressure.

“You need to get that book out, you know,” they would say, asking where I was at on the project.

This fall, I thought it was about ready, as ready as it might ever be. It was time to push it off the cliff and see if it would fly. Mentoring Boys to Men: Climbing Their Own Mountains needed to come to life.

I had been researching self publishing and the whole book industry for a while, and I ended up picking CreateSpace at Amazon for this adventure. They offered all the services I needed: content editing, copy editing, book cover design and copy, marketing copy, interior design, and formatting for e books and print on demand. I’d have my author page and book page on Amazon and readers could easily buy the book. I read all their articles and FAQs, and screwed up my courage to make the contact. A few days later, a nice guy called, and walked me through the process, explaining all the options. What I needed wasn’t cheap, but then, it was time to move ahead and be bold. I had to accept that I couldn’t do all of this by myself; I needed fresh eyes and professional expertise.

My hard work needed to come to fruition. It was time for harvest.

My book deserved the best.

I answered detailed questionnaires, and submitted my manuscript. Soon, an editor was at work on my precious baby, and I was making decisions on book cover designs and polishing up the content of my back cover. “Marketing copy” arrived and I toyed with that, asking some friends to read my draft manuscript and write some reader comments for the back cover.

Wow, my book being seen as a “product”, to be marketed and sold. How to attract readers? This is not the normal worry of the writer, the guy who is off in his corner of the living room, coffee cup in hand, writing in solitude, with only my cat for moral support and commentary for my “morning write”.

But, now I had my own ISBN, the international book identification number, for both an e book and a “trade” paperback. I had my own Library of Congress number, so that book stores and libraries could find it in their catalogs. There was my copyright page, and my own Amazon author number and account. And, when I access my account page, there is that report of books sold this month. Still zeroes, but that will change. There is a place there, to account for all the folks that will buy my book.

The first edit came back, and it was thorough. The changes suggested were good ones, and I felt I had an ally in the writing and book publishing experience. The book was taking shape and becoming better.

And then, the manuscript went off to a second editor, for “copy editing”. I waited nervously, wanting to see how another set of fresh eyes would see my baby.

That editor suggested more changes, more polishing of sentence structure, some clarifications. I found myself checking nuances of editing in the latest edition of the Chicago Manual of Style. It was all good, and made my book even better, more professional. Both editors wrote me nice “editorial letters”, mentioning that they found the book interesting and informative.

The next step was sending the latest, twice edited, manuscript off to the interior design folks. This morning, that product arrived on my computer. My book was now in “book form”, looking like pages in a book, with the font I had selected. There it was, in double columns, with page numbers and chapter headings, my dedication, acknowledgements and author page, just like I had envisioned it.

This was becoming a book.

I hit the “accept” button and back it went to Amazon.
Now, the text and the book cover are going to be combined, and then turned into an actual book, an “author’s copy”, for me to review. My real book will come in the mail, a physical thing I can hold. It will be the last chance for changes, for finding those reclusive typos and other flaws that have escaped my eyes, the eyes of several friends, and two professional editors.

At that point, I say “yes”, and the formatters will wave their magic wands and it will be published. My prospective author and book pages on Amazon will take shape, and I will make decisions on pricing.

People I’ve talked to about my book seem interested and they want to buy it. So, copies will be sold and people will read it. I even talked to a stranger in a restaurant yesterday, who heard me talking about my book with a friend. He seemed interested and wished me well.

Within a month, I think, maybe six weeks, there will be a day when a big Amazon box will arrive on my doorstep, and I will have my book. There will be copies for family, and my friends who have read my manuscript and given me my back cover blurbs, and friends who have been my persistent cheerleaders, urging me to get this out there. And there will be copies for me to sell. I will cry. My wife and I will dance around the house and open some Champagne.

I’ll send out post cards, with the cover design and title of my book, announcing that my baby is out there. Go buy it and read it. Talk about it. Tell your friends. Tell the world. I’ll do my posts on Facebook and Twitter, LinkedIn and Goodreads, like a a good marketer.

Next month, local authors are selling their books at the local Saturday market, and I will sit with them, with my own stack of books to sell, my Sharpie pen to sign them, and my iPad all set up to take credit cards.

And, I will still write. I jumped in to the National Novel Writing Month furor in November, and banged out a first draft of a novel, about a guy in prison, and his life of craziness and penal bureaucracy. I need to dig into that, and rewrite and polish and organize. But, someday, it too will tell me it is ready for the world to see, and I’ll start this process again.

One Month, and a Novel Comes

What is it like to write a novel, and accomplish that task in a month?

I’d never thought I’d experience this, to tell a very long story, and get it down, in some fashion and in some sort of order. All within a month.

I’m much more of a non fiction kind of writer—essays, poems, op ed pieces for the local paper. In my legal career, I kept in the non-fiction category, though the cynics among us might disagree about how to label what those lawyers write.

My creative non-fiction book, Mentoring Boys to Men: Climbing Their Own Mountains, is in copy editing at CreateSpace, and is going to be published in several weeks. That work took more than two years, though the times I was writing had a lot of interruptions. No real deadlines and pressure, unlike the idea of writing a complete book in a month. So, why put myself under this kind of pressure?

November is National Novel Writing Month, and there is an organization out there (http://nanowrimo.org ) that gathers people together, at least in cyberspace, to hunker down over their computers, or their papyrus and quill pens, and put together a rough draft in four short weeks.

I joined over 300,000 other writers, including 80,000 students and educators, all with the goal of putting down 50,000 words, creating a book. Well, at least a rough draft.

That’s 1,600 plus words a day, on average, assuming you don’t take a day or two off, and that you write a couple of hours every day, plodding along, headed to 50,000 words.

The idea of writing a book, along with 300,000 other similarly obsessed writers, intrigued me.

I joined a regional group, over 50 people strong, for moral support. Our leader sent out regular e-mails, and even scheduled a weekly collective writing session at a coffee shop, hoping to inspire us and perhaps, guilt us into meeting our goal. I never made it to the coffee shop, seventy miles away, but I felt their collective spirit, their angst, and their drive. We were family, fellow missionaries.

After a day’s writing, you can post your word count to the website, getting feedback on where you are at, as far as the number of words go, and how much closer you are to the 50,000 word goal. The 50,000 words was formidable, and I preferred to concentrate on the daily goal, of 1,600 words.

I started with a character, a setting, and a general idea of the journey that I wanted my character to travel. I had a good list of the supporting cast, and a number of stories to tell, stories that would move my character along in his life, and his journey for self understanding and real change.

I even wrote out a page of sentence fragments and words, which sort of plotted out the journey. It was less than an outline, and more than a short description of the book. Authorities in the know would label it a synopsis, which sounds impressive, like I really knew what I was doing.

When November 1 dawned, I sat down in front of my laptop, and invited the Muse to sit with me, as I started out. Like a weaver, it took a while to set up the framework, and fill up the shuttles, beginning the weaving process, and actually making some whole cloth. At the end of a few hours, there was actually something there, a bit of a story, and more than the bare skeleton of my character. I felt good, even satisfied.

“I’ve started,” I bragged to myself, and to my wife, who was an early cheerleader to my efforts.

But, then there was that next day, and the next, thirty in all. The trail looked long and lonely. So, I only worried about this day, and getting something done every day.

The daily word count wasn’t impossible, and it was large enough that I had to do some serious writing and move the plot along, every day.

When my wife had surgery, I lost a few days. Waiting in hospitals is not conducive to the Muse, even though you have plenty of time to do nothing, nothing but wait. My attention span withered.

Yet, the first full day my patient and I were back home, the Muse awakened, and I churned out 5,000 words in a day. I guess I had been thinking about the character, and the plot, and had some ideas of where it was all going. The Muse is persistent.

It has helped that my character is probably certifiably crazy, and so is the antagonist. And, over thirty years of experience dealing with folks who are mentally ill, emotionally abused, and incarcerated gave me a large cast of characters and a plush library of stories to tell.

The day before Thanksgiving, it was time to write the climactic chapter, and to bring a lot of the things I’d been developing to a rich froth. It was time to let my character find his freedom and achieve his destiny. My scratched out laundry list of the chapter’s frenzy laid there, next to my coffee mug, and I wrote, and then wrote some more.

The final product went a slightly different route, but then, the good chapters do that. My character has a will of his own, and I needed to listen to where he wanted to go in the telling of his story.

My fingers smoked, or so it seemed, and at last, I was drained. The coffee was long gone, and I needed a martini.

The next day was Thanksgiving, and giving thanks for being at 46,000 words and having the end in sight was my offering at the family table for our annual tradition of giving thanks.

I needed a day off, a day of family and eating and being lazy, to recover from all of that angst, and then, on to the last chapter.

My writing is chronological, orderly. But, that last chapter, I wrote it backwards. I had awakened with the final paragraph already drafted by my subconscious.

Fortified by coffee, I typed that last paragraph, starting with the last sentence. Then, the paragraph before it, and then the one before that. After an hour, the last chapter was written. My lawyer mind screamed in agony.

This is not the right way.

But, it was. It worked. It flowed. It made sense. The last chapter wrapped up all the loose ends, well, except for one or two, but then, that’s the fun of writing. You need to not answer all the readers’ questions, though you can figure out that the remaining questions will get resolved, and in a good way.

There was another chapter that needed writing, and that came out onto the computer screen, too. It would fit in nicely just before the climactic chapter.

And, it was done. The first draft. It is a draft, a work in progress. But, the meat and bones are there.

Then, time for some computer work, putting all of my chapters, my daily writes, into a giant file. I’d been keeping track of the word count all month, but when I had everything all in one place, I realized my count was wrong, by about 10,000 words. 10,000 in my favor, though. I’d actually written 60,000 words! Yikes!

With excitement, I went to the NaNoWriMo website, and updated my word count. And, then, I pasted and copied all of my month’s writing into the “word count validator”. Its job is to count all the words, again, and give me an official word count.

Yes, 60,000. Well, 60,650 to be exact. I wanted to be exact. Every word counts, and every word took a bit of my energies this month.

The screen flashed that I’m a winner. I can order the winner’s T shirt, and put the “winner” NaNoWriMo logo on my blog.

I’d also been eying some rather cool writing software, that several writers had recommended. I’d checked it out and it looked very useful. The price was very reasonable, and, if I became a NaNoWriMo winner, I’d get it for fifty percent off.

Now, I have my new software, my new “winner” logo and I think I’ll order that T shirt, too.

But, most importantly, I have a new piece of work to reflect on, revise, and rewrite. It’s a good first draft, and I think it will evolve into a respectable story that needs to be told, out in the world. I’m going to publish it, and get it out there.

My second book. My first novel. All that sounds good. It’s been a good month.

—Neal Lemery 12/2/2014

A Month of Writing

National Novel Writing Month participant

Whew, it is quite the month, writing wise. Going over the first edit from my editor, for my upcoming book, Mentoring Boys to Men.

And, then, I jumped into the National Novel Writing Month project. The goal: bang out a rough draft of a book, at least 50,000 words, in the month of November.

That seemed, at first, formidable. It still does, but it is becoming doable. It has taken some organization, and the guts to just start out, getting some words down, and moving ahead. I follow my rough outline, but then, as the Muse inspires me, I start to really tell the story of my young man in prison, and his adventures, trying to find some sanity in his life.

It is going well. I remind myself that it is a draft, that I will revise it and probably rewrite a great deal of it. But, it is started, and it is moving ahead. Eight more days, and only 11,000 words to go. That means I’ve written 39,000.

I’m OK with that!