What a Writer Does Besides Write

Sure, there's the usual brush-your-teeth, go-to-the-supermarket kind of stuff we all do. There's the actual writing, and I am feeling pretty smug about having done about 10 pages over the long weekend. I also got an entry ready for a contest and sent off the CD (used my new CD burner) with a letter, a bio, a check and an SASE. I had never put the book World of Mirrors, into one document. Messed around a little with master and sub-documents in Word, an arcane topic to be sure, and decided to just wham everything together in one long doc. Seemed to work. This is the novel, my East German book, that now has about 40 rejections, if you count no response as a rejection, and I sure as hell do.

Got going on another contest for the Wisconsin book, Promiscuous Mode. The contest is in England and this is a very American book, so I really have no hope but they seem like nice people which is something I haven't run across much in the publishing industry of late. So contests and competitions are writerly activities where the only writing is a cover letter.

Yesterday, I came to the computer determined to write the scene I've been futzing around with for a long time. Now where did I put that crucial document that tells me all about the airport? Paw thru a file drawer crammed with paper and my big "in" box that will hold half of Cincinatti. Time to organize the research. I take all of the research for the German book out of the hanging folder and schlep it into a file drawer in the store room. Probably I could put it out with the trash, but since the book has no agent and hasn't been sold, it seems wise to keep all the research for a little while longer, should the need to do revision rear its ugly head. Then I dig the manilla folders out of the crowded file and give the new book, Festival Madness, its own hanging file with spiffy new bold labels. A casual visitor to the office would wonder, because the folders are labeled "meth house," "transsexuals," "Airport and Flying," "Reno and Burning Man," and so on.

I end up doing a lot of research no matter where the book is set or how much I think I know about what's going to happen. That's why I am doing all sorts of aviation research of things I know less than nothing about. And transexuals. And meth houses. I've been collecting clippings about meth houses for years. Not sure if the meth house belongs in this book. Screw 120,000 words, let's do 85 or 90k. Much more manageable. I have almost 25,000 words which is a really good start. The novel is by turns funny and dramatic. Dramedy is the Hollywood word for such a concoction. Dramedy, I like that.

So I found my airport research and wrote the scene and the one after that and I'm just about ready to hook of some last pieces and then move forward again. have to finish the sex scene next. That stopped me for a while, because I didn't really know the male character well enough. Now I think I do. Writing is weird. Half the time you're not even writing. You're driving by the lake asking yourself, "what is Jean Claude really like?" He only exists in your head and the words on the page.

Maybe, just maybe, the world's second best query letter will have more responses this week. In the meantime,

Aloha,


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