Muse Gone AWOL

I have a problem – my Muse seems to have decided to go on vacation without asking my permission. This might seem reasonable, seeing as it’s summer and everything, but I’m afraid that’s not how it works. If I’m not on holiday, my Muse can’t be either. Guess I forgot to tell him that though and now he’s probably in the park, eating ice cream ...

I’ve been trying to work on a rewrite. A big job, kind of like the one Liz mentioned the other week. We’re talking major surgery, at least on the latter half of the novel, and it just isn’t happening. Perhaps the Muse thought that because he’d helped me write the story once, his job was finished? Well, he’s wrong. I need him now, more than ever, because he messed up first time round. The hero was boring, he did some really stupid things and quite frankly, I wouldn’t have wanted to marry him myself, so why would my heroine?

So, what to do? How do you tempt a Muse to come back from wherever it is they go when they’re not around? I didn’t know, because I’ve never had to do it before. He’s misbehaved occasionally, but he’s never left the house completely, just sort of skulked in a corner for a while. I tried the usual things – going to the cinema, people-watching, doing boring housework, DIY, going for long walks ... nothing happened. I decided this called for drastic measures, ie. the dreaded outline.

I might have mentioned before that I’m a “pantser” – I don’t plot much, I just sit down and write. Usually the Muse is happy with that and chips in with ideas from time to time. I only ever do an outline when I get stuck, and then it’s mostly very vague. This time I’ve had to get tough and try to do a really detailed one. Gosh, that’s hard!

I can see that it would work really well for an organised person, the type of author who thinks deeply about character motivation/conflict in the right place/major crises/highs and lows in their plot. I don’t. It sort of just happens by itself. Having to write a detailed outline for me is like when I was asked by an English teacher back at school to explain why I’d used certain grammatical structures – I had no idea, I just knew it sounded right. What’s more, I wasn’t interested in explaining it and reading a book on grammar was akin to torture.

But needs must, and right now I’m forcing myself to write down what’s going to happen, section by section. And as I write, I think I detect movement somewhere near my right shoulder when I get to some new and possibly interesting parts of the (hopefully) reinvigorated novel. Could it be the Muse has been tempted to come back by the thought of a really juicy scene? I sure hope so or it’s going to be a very long summer ...

Please come back on Sunday to hear from Liz!

Two Heads Are Better Than One

... or maybe in this case, four eyes are better than two?

You’re probably wondering what I’m on about, although if you’re an author perhaps you can guess? Yep, I’m in the middle of doing rewrites/edits on my forthcoming novel, which means I’ve got someone else scrutinising my work – an extra pair of eyes checking it over. It’s a bit scary, to be honest. I mean, before getting to this point, the story is just that – a story I’ve written and sent to a publisher for possible publication. Once the edits arrive, that’s when it really hits you – this is going to be a proper book and people are going to be reading this! Yikes! It had better be good, or as good as I can make it.

Which is where the copy editor comes in ...

She/he can look at the story objectively, and at a distance I don’t think an author could ever achieve with their own work. I always find it amazing how people can have such different “takes” on things, but I know that if the meaning isn’t clear to the copy editor, I haven’t done my job properly and it needs to be rewritten.

I have to say this is my least favourite part of the writing process. It’s a bit like when we had to dissect some poor unsuspecting (hopefully very dead) frog back in high school biology. I just felt sorry for him, I didn’t particularly want to know how his organs fitted together or why some of them worked in a particular way! By the time I send my manuscript to the publisher, I’ve read it so many times I never want to see it again. Ever. So the last thing I want to do is tinker with it or try to analyse why a particular scene isn’t working.

However, I know my writing is far from perfect and that other people can see the mistakes more clearly than I ever will. Not just typos, but glaring plot holes and inconsistencies in the way characters act and so on. For each book I write, I think I’ll learn to catch these myself, but still they appear. So the editing is vital and there’s nothing for it but to knuckle down and try and see the story from the other person’s eyes, then hopefully improve it.

It’s very easy at this stage to start thinking “OMG, I’m a crap writer, why am I doing this and how could I have missed these things myself?” But that’s when you have to take a deep breath and trust your publisher/editor/copy editor – if it was really that bad, they wouldn’t have taken it on in the first place (would they?). Well, I hope not! So now all we have to do is make sure it’s as perfect as we can make it. I say we because it IS a team effort - we’re working towards the same goal.

Would the end product be as good without a copy editor? No way. So I’m very grateful and would like to send a big thank you to all copy editors out there – you probably deserve champagne and chocolates at the very least for putting up with neurotic authors like me!

Please come back on Sunday to hear from Liz!