Category Archive

Post-prison means post-traumatic stress syndrome — the subject of my last few chapters of the book as my leading man comes home to his family after almost a year in an African prison. I’m so close and yet so far — close to finishing the complete draft — so far from final product once a publisher gets their critical eye on it. All that matters is the story gets out and this family heals.

Getting this close to the end only means you are also close to the next new beginning. When I finish these two chapters I’m working on, I get ready for revisions on the whole thing all over again. Writing is full of cycles; there are no true beginnings or endings. It’s one ongoing journey with all kinds of phases. A philosopher might say phases have beginnings and endings and they do but they all gel together in a whole bunch of greys.
I have a bunch of edits I should input before I move on to the chapter writing — or should it be the other way around?

Months and months are clogging up my message. My footprint has been quiet, guilty, distracted, writing, job hunting, working, plodding, procrastinating, knitting, moving, dreading…and now after five months of silence, I confess: I handed in my complete draft. Two hundred and ninety-nine pages of someone else’s horrible experience turned to prose in an effort to tell the world and expose the injustice. Any idea how thick 300 minus one pages can be? It’s thick. It’s got weight. Two hundred and ninety-nine pages telling about his three hundred and forty-seven days in an African prison. Now, I need to write about his first six months…after he got out of prison and came home to Canada…where to begin…his first six months…the last six months of the book. Due date: Jan.28/08
God help me.

I can hardly believe it myself. I’m at almost 62,000 words now. About 37,000 or so are what I call crafted. I start by translating from French to English, then I flesh out the sentences with new material and make sure the ‘old’ or translated material sounds like English. At least I’m still in the game. Progress is definitive.

How is it that to be a writer, you need to disappear sometimes? When it comes to being creative, I need to disappear inside and recharge. That’s where I’ve been. Now I’m back. I hope to report more regularly now, even if I feel like disappearing inside. Can you accept that? I understand if you can’t. But it’s going to get rather exciting rather soon. I’m at 59,402 words: 32,489 words are part of the draft, whereas 26,913 words are merely a direct translation from French to English and need to be finessed — the way I’ve done with the first 32,000. My aim was to reach about 100,000. By the time the finessing is done, I think I’ll be darn close to that.

Stay tuned as the light gets brighter from here…

While I’m much improved in Week 5, I’m faltering, slowing inching my way back to a regular pattern of writing and producing. The written word waits while I make my excuses and hide under the covers. Soon enough, my gig will be up and I’ll have to face it: I must write on….on….to Week 6.

Last week I only managed a few words on the Monday. Have been struggling with my own personal demons. Head space is sought-after real estate, and yet I don’t feel like I’m off track. Also my day job was so so busy.

I’m well ahead of the game since the word counting I’m doing for this book is as if I started from scratch five weeks ago. Not so. I started out with about 16-20K words already written. But this self-imposed context I’ve masterminded forces me to keep writing.

Hopefully, my rest in week 4 will inspire productivity over the next while.

Still writing my daily word counts. I just feel some nights and some mornings, for that matter that it’s all crap what I’m writing. I know cognitively that this is the writer’s curse: sometimes nothing you write feels worthwhile but emotionally it’s a hard elephant to walk around. And sometimes the stuff is crap — you need to force yourself to make it better and turn it into something people will not just want to read but crave to finish and yet savour every moment. That’s what we all really want to write.

Someone on this blog asked me how long I’ve been writing. It’s taken me quite a few days to respond. I think it’s a tricky question. It’s like asking someone how long have they been eating: you mean, today? right now? eating what exactly? do mean eating stuff I’ve cooked or organic or do you mean baby food?

How long have I been writing? I got my first journal when I was 12. Does that count as the beginning? I got it for Christmas. It was a Holly Hobby recipe book that I wanted to write in. The book has long ago disappeared but my memory of it has always stayed. I may have written before that, but probably only stories in school.

I didn’t start publishing articles until I was 31 or 32 as a reporter after going to college for journalism. I published my first novel: Sing, Girls, Sing! in 2005. So if I do the math, I guess I can say I’ve been ‘writing’ for 26 years. I hope I’ve learned a thing or two because that’s an awfully long time to be doing something and not have learned anything.

Still counting years of writing, weeks of writing, words, words, words…

The subject of my book, the man who’s story I’m writing is “utterly impressed” with the first 10,000 pages and says it’s “exactly” what he was looking for. (Relief!) Well, how many times have I heard him say:
The French book didn’t do this.
The French book didn’t do that.
That’s what was missing from the French book.
That’s what I didn’t like about the French book.

While in fairness to the author of ‘the French book’ hindsight is 20-20, it wasn’t well written at all. Just awful, in fact. So it’s my job to make the English a whole new world. I’m adapting it quite a bit, though. I don’t know if you could call it the same story!
Anyway, I hit the mark the first week. Week 2 will be weaker but that’s okay. I’ll work through it.

So, the parcel I got was three of my Sing, Girls, Sing! books returned from an Ottawa bookstore and a cheque! Two of them sold. Great news. In other news, I had a school board lady tell me (indirectly through a grade 5 teacher) that my book SGS is “inappropriate for this age level” which is 10 years old. She claims some of the lingo isn’t suitable for this age group. Hmmmm… that makes me think it’s edgy and the kids would definitely want to read it now! ha.

Wrote 400 words this morning, or I should say I worked through 400 words. I had some to start with. Progress is progress. I’m a little concerned that I haven’t had any response about the deadline but it’s also possible that he took an extra long weekend and won’t check his email until tomorrow. I will wait and see.

I’m planning on working from home tonight instead of staying later at work. I’ve GOT to pick up a parcel at the post office or they’ll send it back! Tacking the writing onto the end of my day job (and the beginning) seems to be a productive way to get through the material. I’ll see how I do tonight at home. If I could get through another 700 words that would be just lovely.

So initially, I had hoped I could pull together a complete draft for this book by end of May which meant 8 weeks. I took this week to seriously examine that ambitious deadline and realized I don’t think it’s feasible. Instead, I believe my realistic deadline to be Sept14, which is in 24 weeks. I’m not sure all will be happy with this realization but I’d rather establish reality now than fling it at people mid-May saying, I don’t think I’ll make the deadline.

Plus, I’ve now established that every Sunday night, I send out a status report to my main subject letting him know how much I’ve written, what progress I’ve made, etc… and I’ll be attaching the work done for the week.

I think that’s a fair approach. He gets to see where I am on a weekly basis and I feel we then share that onus of reaching the deadline together. I think he’ll be disappointed that I’m suggesting Sept.14 (though I suspect it may be done sooner than that….just erring on the side of caution) but there’s not much I can do.

I don’t think May is realistic — I know it’s not possible.

So it looks like this week I wrote 4,748 words, yet I was able to send him 10,189. I think it’s because some stuff was already written and I just fleshed some of it out. Anyway, week 1 down, 23 to go.

Every writer seems to have a writing threshold: daily word count. Maybe for some writers it’s a weekly or monthly or worse than that. For me, when I’m in the middle of developing a book draft, my daily word count eventually emerges and remains somewhat consistent, as long as I have my research mostly done.

I’m not sure how it compares to other writers and frankly that doesn’t matter — or rather, that’s not the point.

For one book draft (on communications strategy) I was developing back in 2003-2004, my daily word count was high. It was about 1200 to 1800 words a day. The iron was hot and I struck it every morning at 5:30am before going to work.
ps-you’ll see some of that communications strategy material show up on my communications blog called Communications, dot, dot, dot

This book project’s daily word count is resonating at just over 1100 words:
Monday it was 1120 and Tuesday it was 1160. It’s uncanny, really. I say uncanny because every day is a new day and to be able to consistently end up at an average amount is neat.

This morning I slept in so instead of writing just over 500 words before work, I wrote 236. And, tonight I’ve got rehearsal (I sing with 7 other women in a group called Vespera) so today’s count will be low, but the weekend is coming and with Friday being a holiday, I’ve got an opportunity to recuperate. I also have the opportunity to have a life on the weekend except if I do that, I won’t get through the writing.

It’ll be like this for the next 8-12 weeks. That’s part of the deal. Feeling this focused feels great! I’m tired, but a good tired. It’s intense and creatively satisfying, even though it’s non-fiction. The thing is, my approach is making it creative non-fiction — have it unfold as a novel, the way Truman Capote did In Cold Blood.

I’m pleased to see that people are both paying attention and responding.

2006-07 was a big year for me and now 2007-08 will be big, too, in a different way.
This past year was wrought with life-event changes: the kind that those stress tests tell you are high-stress situations, though it’s really just life. I know this year will be smoother: I’m not planning to move or separate; although I will need to finalize a divorce. Hmmmm….ok, so there could be some life-event changes.

But this coming year will provide a whole new sideshow of changes: I will be giving birth…to a book…at least a draft of a book that will be published…somewhere, somehow. I chose not to have children for this very reason: to write and publish books. Now the opportunity is here and I’m scared. It’s scary. But it’s only scary because of the deadlines. I think if I had 10 years, it wouldn’t be scary. And if I had 10 years, it might never get done. So I have decided to dig in and write the thing. Believe it or not, the deadline of end of May for 1st draft helps me feel reconnected; it forces me closer to my purpose in life. All the writers who read this will know exactly what I mean.

One of the reasons there are deadlines now is because the subject of my book has just signed a film deal. Ack. Yes! Crazy.

The book was first published in French in Canada; I got my hands on it as I offered to translate it; now because new information has come to light, the English book is taking on a life of its own. I can’t say just yet who is starring in the movie but suffice to say that you’ve at least heard of one of them…maybe even the director, too. That knowledge in and of itself is enough to panic me. However, after 48 hours of panic, I’ve now grounded myself into a strict regimen of writing: an hour before work and 4 hours after work everyday with the nearly impossible goal of reaching 1950 words a day in order to finish the first draft by end of May.

Stay tuned here to see how I do. I started yesterday: Mon. Apr. 2 after work and wrote 1120 words.
This morning I wrote just over 500. I still have time tonight to edge towards 1950. I must be crazy. Ok, if I’m not now, I will be.