27. Please Revise.
Why I'm pressing pause on querying
Here’s the truth: I went to a writing workshop last month intending to make progress on a new project. (If you’re curious about the Orion workshop, I wrote an entire post you can read here!) However, many of the conversations I had there led me back to Exit Strategy, the novel I [supposedly] finished and am currently querying.
Learning about narrative engines, how to render place, and the all-important “forward lean” of a text (thanks to Rob Spillman, btw, for this phrase, which now pops into my head almost daily) got me wondering if my novel could more effectively accomplish its aims. By the end of the week, I was re-evaluating those aims altogether.
The clincher, as I remember it, was a kernel of wisdom Isle McElroy dropped in passing one day during workshop. It was something to the effect of, We as writers have to set aside what we want our book (or story, or essay, etc.) to be and instead recognize what it is. That’s where the real story lives. That’s how we identify the best way to tell it.
They said it more eloquently, of course, and I understood immediately—I’m talking instantaneous, here—that the wisdom applied to me. I wanted my book to be and have been acting as if it’s about a murder that causes a friendship to unravel. A literary thriller. Sounds pretty good, right? Hell yeah. I thought so, too.
…but that’s not the book I wrote.
The real story in my book isn’t the murder. The murder is just a catalyst, adding pressure at the right moment. The real story is about an isolated girl coming of age in Southern Idaho. It’s about that girl learning to trust herself and separate from her closest friend. (“Friend” is an insufficient word. “Romantic partner” isn’t correct either. Their relationship lives in the grey in-between endemic to a particular experience of teenage girlhood.)
What would happen if I centered that story?
I’m finding out in revision.
Will this change make Exit Strategy less likely to get published? Less marketable? Eh. Maybe by someone’s measure, but not mine. Honestly, the book will be so much better, and better means easier to publish and market.
It will delay the process, and that’s been the hardest pill to swallow. I’ve already spent years and years on this project, and much of that time has been full of self-doubt. How do I know I’m not just second-guessing myself yet again? Well, because I’ve learned a few things along the way:
The writing feels easier when I center the real story. It might sound paradoxical, but this particular revision feels more like a relief than a slog. (Though it is, of course, still hard work.)
I am capable of writing a full-length book. I have proof.
Being proud of my work matters more to me than adhering to a specific vision for how and when that work reaches people. This one took me a while to learn, if I’m honest.
I’m hoping this will be my last major revision, but I know enough by now not to make definitive claims! The process is the process. Because of the revision, I’m momentarily pressing pause on my agent search. I hope to have it done by the end of the summer, and I’ll pick up querying again at that time.
The path forward feels like work, but good work, exciting and productive work. Work I can stand behind. I can feel myself becoming better at not just writing, but being a writer.
Mix-Ins
I’m trying something new! In each post, I’ll share a short list of my current “mix-ins,” meaning experiences, events, publications, fun facts, etc., that are currently flavoring my experience.
A few of us drove to the coast last weekend to see Tufted Puffins nesting at Haystack Rock. These birds spend most of their lives in the open ocean, but come ashore to raise one single offspring every year. Tufted puffin numbers have declined significantly since the 1980s. According to the Haystack Rock Awareness Program, there used to be close to 600 nesting each year at Haystack; now there are only about 100. We were lucky enough to see them. We also got to see a pair of Bald Eagles launch an attack on the rock and fly away through the rising swirl of hundreds of seabirds clutching a chick. Harrowing natural drama!! Then we went to lunch. Bonus fact: a baby puffin is called a puffling.
I recently emerged from my post-workshop social hibernation to experience the Portland Indie Book & Art Fair. Thank you team Buckman for making this event free and awesome. Though fairs are a big push for me and my anxious-introvert tendencies, I’m glad I went. I met some very cool indie publishers and came away with a trove of exciting reading, including the latest issue of Buckman, a food writing journal designed with an eye for comic books, and a broadside by Pile Press, a local alt publishing collective.
Below Deck. This is a reality show about working on a superyacht that’s been around for years, apparently, but I just got the net. The adventurousness of youth! The in-fighting! The hookups! The abhorrent behavior of the wealthy! The stress of docking! The remarkable number of crew with weird laughs! It has it all. Plus a certain 2010s patina that isn’t always flattering, but my husband and I are absolutely riveted. How accurate is it?? If anyone knows, please weigh in.
Suggested donation is the average price of my preferred coffee (black decaf Americano, like a serial killer), which is currently $4.08 according to the first link I clicked in Google.
Every time I read one of your posts I wish we lived nearer to one another so we could just sit and chat for an hour or three. I love the way you think.
In writing my memoir it became clear, thankfully fairly early on, that, since I'm not a public or newsworthy figure, the only point in writing it was not to tell my story, which is what I originally thought I was doing, but to tell a story others could find themselves in. I thought it was about my life; it was really about how and why someone might run amok, and recover. Maybe a cousin to the awakening you had, no? Ten years in and I'm still at it.
What is the forward lean? And puffling...is there a cuter name for anything?
I love this post! And it is making think about what the "real" story is in my own book! Thank you for posting this...I will revisit your wisdom as I edit.....