Anxiety Pancakes: Writing a Novel is like Building a House (Or Something)

“Wood-framed house” by Jaksmata – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Commons 

It’s back to the drawing board for me. My knowledgeable readers have spoken and said that the story in my novel doesn’t start moving early enough. I accept their views because I did what I said was necessary in my last post: I listened to them and I reread a good chunk of my manuscript myself.

Some writers have to complete each page perfectly before they move on to the next. But for me, writing a novel is like building a house. I do it in stages. First, the note making and research, and filling a large page with the names of some of the characters and a list of some of the scenes. Then I do the first draft on a tape recorder so I have something to work with–a blurt, as I call it. You get the gist. Down goes the floor but oops maybe I’ve forgotten to dig the foundations. And how about that missing roof?

A crucial stage is finding the voice. It took me almost a year to find the right voice for The Dead Celebrities Club. Now it seems I have been confusing the theme of my novel with the story and I need to go back, and streamline my prose so the story isn’t lost in my descriptions. That means throwing out some chapters and extraneous pages, something I find hard to do because I am the loyal type. If I’ve worked on passages until they glisten it breaks my heart to say good-bye although saying good-bye is what I must do.

I’ll put my discarded sections in a file so I can bring them out if I need them. That way these passages aren’t banished forever.

So I’m picking up my hammer and saw and possibly a wrecking ball. It’s time to get down to work.

Anxiety Pancakes: The Horror of Vulnerability

I’m waiting for reactions from two very knowledgeable readers to the latest draft of my new novel, The Dead Celebrities Club.

The experience of waiting is like floating free in a void, as if I’ve been set adrift in the galaxy without a space station in sight. Adrift? Really? Yes, adrift in the sense that my identity seems to be on the line. Do I rely too much on my work for my sense of who I am? I do, I admit it, and I hate waiting for reactions to my writing. It makes me feel vulnerable and edgy.

Waiting on others is especially hard for someone like me. In the personality chart of the enneagram, I’m number eight, the challenger. A prominent trait of this personality type is taking charge of their circumstances. The basic fear of the challenger is being controlled by others. Being vulnerable, in other words. And feeling vulnerable is horrifying.

Yet vulnerability is the link to creativity. Without it, I would understand nothing about myself or my fellow humans. So I’m going to hang there in space and stay open to the help that others can give me with my book. Aren’t I?

Riding through the Waves like Poseidon Scouting Out Film Locations

On Labour Day Sunday, I rode through the waves like Poseidon with my brother John and the young film makers who are making a film of my last novel, The Western Light. It is set in a tourist town on the Georgian Bay.

We scouted out the lighthouse on Hope Island, part of a trio of huge wooded islands off Cedar Point on the Georgian Bay. The blue watery realm is so isolated that the physical experience of being there feels like drifting into a metaphysical dimension. This atmosphere is partly created by the lack of cottages or homes since the islands belong to the band on Christian Island. The film makers Hannah Cheesman and Mackenzie Donaldson took pictures and tried to imagine filming in such a rugged location. Unfortunately, the original top of the 1881 lighthouse had been replaced by a steel structure and light. Hannah is wearing a captain’s hat; Mackenzie is smiling into the camera.

These are Mackenzie’s photos, a taste, she says, of our afternoon on the water. The trip ended with a visit to the Waypoint Health Centre in Penetang, the old psychiatric hospital that is also in my novel. An old Georgian Bay lighthouse is also in the story.

Hannah and Mackenzie were just named two of the 2015 top five people to watch in Canadian film. Their short Boxing is at TIFF this September. The other producer Lauren Grant was home looking after her month old baby. Her most recent feature Wet Bum, which debuted at TIFF last year, was featured in a recent Globe and Mail article.

Film Deal for The Western Light with Upcoming Canadian Women Producers

Three young creative Canadian women film makers have come together to make a feature film based on the prequel to my international bestseller, The Wives of Bath. The prequel is The Western Light about Mouse Bradford, a precocious girl who is pushed to the brink when she mistakenly places her trust in an institutionalized ex-hockey star and convicted murderer, only to flee her small town and discover that goodness is more mysterious than evil.

The three film producers are Mackenzie Donaldson, an associate producer of Orphan Black, the hit television series about a cabal of cloned women and Hannah Cheeseman, script coordinator and an executive assistant on the Orphan Black series who together form Aberrant Pictures; and Lauren Grant of Clique Films who produced Wet Bum, a feature film with rising TIFF star Julia Sarah Stone. The women from top down in the photos inserted in my blog are Hannah Cheeseman; Mackenzie Donaldson and Laurie Grant.

Hannah will write the screenplay for The Western Light and play the part of Little Louie, Mouse’s aunt. Hannah also wrote the script and acted in “Whatever, Linda”, her newly released web series made with Orphan Black producer Mackenzie Donaldson. “Whatever, Linda” is an Internet Odyssey about an alleged secretary who is the mastermind behind Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme. Lauren Grant was recently named one of 15 talents to watch by the Hollywood Reporter. I’m currently finishing my new novel, The Dead Celebrities Club.

The novel The Western Light was published by Cormorant Books in 2012 and The Wives of Bath (published in 1993) was made into the 2001 feature film “Lost and Delirious” shown in 32 countries and starring Jessica Pare, Mischa Barton and Piper Parabo.

Kim Witherspoon of Inkwell Management handled the deal in association with Samantha Haywood of Transatlantic Agency.

As Promised, Stories about Bad Decisions You Don’t Regret

A bad decision you don’t regret comes perilously close to a good decision although there is usually a lot more harrowing side effects than in a simple good decision, like helping the blind person pick up a dropped bag of groceries. And as promised, here are stories from my generous friends about bad decisions they don’t forget:

BAD DECISIONS YOU DON’T REGRET

Marrying the Wrong Guy:

Marrying my first husband at 24 was a bad decision because I wanted an interesting life in the arts and he wanted a conservative lifestyle and to hang out with the rich and cynical; yet it gave me my daughter Samantha. Now it’s impossible to imagine life without her. So I don’t regret my bad decision.

Choosing the Wrong Career:

Non-fiction author Bert Archer said choosing to be a writer was a spectacularly bad decision and yet he doesn’t regret it. Makes sense. The writing life is full of thrills and challenges even though the world seems to think that ‘content providers’ should work for nothing or next to nothing these days.

Marrying the Right Guy in the Wrong Career

Anita Dolman: I married another author although everyone said two writers together leads to rivalry and disaster. It’s tough being in a relationship with someone in your field. When that field is as competitive, as grant dependent, as tight for shelf space and spotlight space as writing is, it’s even harder. After lots of trial and error, my husband and I, struck a deal that we will never submit to the same magazine or grant for the same issue or grant cycle. We’ve been together 13 years, and I don’t regret it.

Picking the Wrong High School:

Thereza Dos Santos For me, choosing to leave all my friends behind to go to the more “reputable” high school was a bad decision I don’t regret. Years later I realized that going to high school with my childhood friends would have been more fun and just fine as far as my future was concerned. But going to a new school where I knew very few people probably helped give me the confidence I have now.