SSS: A New Fiancé

The cover of the program of an academic congress about the medieval epic poem upon which The Seven Noble Knights of Lara is based.

For today's excerpt of my revisions of The Seven Noble Knights of Lara, I thought I'd do something new and give you a dialogue-heavy snippet. It's still the first chapter, and the Count of Castile, Doña Lambra's cousin, has come to tell her he's going to marry her off to his most valuable vassal. She is none too pleased.

* * *

“He’s completed his thirty-fifth year.”

She couldn’t help but wring her hands at the thought of a grey beard and broken teeth, worms sprouting out of every orifice. Maybe he wouldn’t live that long, then she would administer all the territory they had between them.

“Is he landed?”

“He has a few parcels in the region of Lara, called Vilviestre.”

“A few parcels?”

* * *

That's not the last piece of her mind she's going to give him!

Thanks so much stopping by! I trade comments for comments! Get a lot more wonderful excerpts today at SixSunday.com.

How Do You Get to Carnegie Hall?

Target practice by WAVES at Treasure Island, California, Feb. 1943. Note that while four  are practice aiming, one has a different target!

With the amazing new opportunities for writers to reach their audiences faster than ever, more and more  sage advice is being shelled out about how to write well. I recently came across A. M. Schultz's thoughts on the subject, and appreciated his candor.

There really is no other way to become a good writer. Whatever method works best for you, you have to put in the hours.

Luckily for me, I put in most of my training while still a youngling, so I've banked much more than 10,000 hours. I wrote picture books in the third grade and started keeping a diary, probably long before that. In my senior year of high school, my English teacher asked me if I wrote every day. I replied, "Of course!" I was a writer already, and that's that writers do: they write.

"It shows," he told me, beaming.

That wasn't the first compliment I'd received on my writing. All those hours of scribbling began to pay off (in the praise department, which is the most important coin for a beginning writer) fairly quickly. There will always be more to learn, but the world is thankful I got a lot of sketchy writing out of the way when I did.

It's never too late to start, but the bad news is that no one starts out writing Shakespeare-caliber poetry. Good writing must be cultivated, and to do that, you have to write badly for a while. So if your writing leaves something to be desired, the best advice is not to follow some formula or to write at a specific time of day. It's just to keep writing.

And then after you write, rewrite. That's what I'm up to these days.

Eligibly Illegible (A Pair of Near Homophones)

"The X Book Contest is open to voting between December 31 and February 27. Both of my books are illegible."

--Author Unattributed for His/Her Protection

I was surprised (and, I admit, I laughed and laughed) by the error here caused by trouble with spelling similar-sounding words. The writer meant to indicate that the books were eligible.

Both of these words are Latinate, and perhaps therefore inherently confusing. 

Eligible is an adjective meaning that the noun is able to be elected or selected.

Illegible is an adjective meaning that the text in question cannot be read for any number of reasons.

It's important to distinguish between e and i sounds, and to intervene with a critical eye when SpellCheck messes with them, or else a book that readers can choose may become unreadable. There is no worse fate for any book!

Six Sentence Sunday: Beginnings

For my little contribution to the farewell of Six Sentence Sunday (click on that for a lot of other great excerpts!), I thought I'd share some of the revisions I'm working on for The Seven Noble Knights of Lara. It can still be improved, I'm sure!

These are now the first six sentences of the novel. Do they grab your attention, or are they too calm?

* * *

           The sun began to relent from its long day's punishment of Busto de Bureba. The fish in the river sought out the barely forming shadows cast by rocks and branches. Inside a stone house, under a thatched roof, twenty maidservants and their lady planned a cool evening meal, brought in the washing, and put away the day's sewing without bumping into each other.
           Doña Lambra looked out the open door at the fields where her vassals were setting down their scythes and pitchforks for the day. Most of the serfs would return to their tiny homes in town, but some of the overseers lived on the estate, and would come to the main hall for supper. If nothing went wrong, in another seven mornings or so, Lambra would have to provide some kind of reward for successful haying, and the laborers would all expect meals at the haystacks in the meantime. 

* * *

Thanks so much for stopping by! I return comments for comments!

Revisions

Slice and hack! That's what revisions are for!

Now that I've finished the first draft of The Seven Noble Knights of Lara, it looks as if 2013 is all about revisions for the foreseeable future. Last week, I started sharing the book with my husband. With his help, I've come to the wrenching decision to cut -- absolutely get rid of every last word -- the first chapter.

The first chapter preoccupied me inordinately form the beginning. I started with Chapter II because I was so worried about how to start the book and draw the reader in. A previous consultant had commented that since it's going to be a violent book, it should start with a violent scene. In the first version of Chapter I, a small boy gets murdered on the first page.

But the chapter had too many problems compared to what it brought to the story. I tried to untangle the political mess I'd made for myself by writing without researching first, got rid of the poor murdered boy in order to introduce actual important characters, and shared that new version with my husband. It was the first time he's had any notion of what I've been agonizing over for two years. He's far too kind to have said it, but I imagine he was thinking, "Dear God, she's wasted two years of her life on that drivel?" Luckily, he was able to honestly enthuse about Chapter II, and lopping off Chapter I has put the breath of inspiration into the revisions.

Chapter II begins slowly and the only violence is off-screen, when they have to catch and skin rabbits for supper. So of course, the old anxiety resurfaces: that it will not be exciting enough to draw readers in and to set up their expectations for the backstabbing and bloodletting that is to come.

Normally, beginnings aren't such a problem for me, while endings make me run for cover. With The Seven Noble Knights of Lara, I'm pretty thrilled about  the ending, so perhaps it's only right that I should have trouble with the start.

I'll try to stick with that breath of inspiration as I go through the first revisions. When I finish with that, an editor gets the masterpiece. I'll leave the decision about how to start the darn thing with the professional.

Just Toss the Ashes / Gracias por la muerte by Marta Merajver-Kurlat

This author has a gift for storytelling that draws the reader in, despite the main character being dead on the first page. Sylvia is definitely the main character, and has a strong presence in her absence. It becomes clear that Sylvia felt alone in the world, unable to connect with anyone in a way that meaningful for her. The reader learns all about her through the people she left behind. She writes a suicide note and addresses it to her ex-husband and son, from who she also feels fundamentally distant. These two men have to piece together some meaning for their relationships with Sylvia, but as they go about the business of disposing of the body and having a funeral service despite her wishes (hence the title in English, Just Toss the Ashes), and finally moving on with their lives, they include more and more people who were touched by Sylvia's life in lasting ways. She was alone only in her mind.

With uncanny psychological realism, the author introduces one character after another, all well developed and with surprising new perspectives on Sylvia and life in general. Each point of view adds a piece to the fascinating puzzle that is this book and was Sylvia. It asks questions about the meaning of life and death and doesn't wrap everything up neatly. This is a book for readers who want to spend time with these questions and come up with their own responses.

See an illuminating interview with the author here.

The Second Annual Knauss Awards for Excellence in Publishing

There was a lot of excellent writing published in 2012. Competition in every category was ferocious! After much pondering and even more reading, here are the finest books I encountered in 2012.

Best Fiction

I don't think this book is for everyone, but in the end, nothing swept me away like this one, or made me so much want to start translating seriously again. Go, Spanish authors! Original review

Best Non-Fiction

This category was especially tricky because I read two truly great non-fiction books that are excellent for completely different reasons. The Last Rhinos brings a little-known, preventable tragedy to the public in a compelling, detail-rich narrative. Original review Turtle is astonishing in every conceivable way and stretches the boundaries of fiction and non-fiction. Original review So they both get an honor.

Best Book I Edited

I edited many great novels this year. In the end, The Cross and the Dragon gets the prize because I "got it" the most. It's the most like my own novel, and the author made the job easy both because she had already done a lot of polishing and because she wanted as much as I did for it to be right. And it is, so right! Original review

Did the pink-to-orange tint of the covers of all these books sway me at all? Coincidences happen!