Author: Emma

Emma Barry is a teacher, novelist, recovering academic, and former political staffer. She lives with her high school sweetheart and a menagerie of pets and children in Virginia, and she occasionally finds time to read and write.

Giving Away the Store

As I continue to work on revisions, one of the problems with Together is Enough — and there are many, oh so many problems — is that in the first 50 pages, I pass up entirely too many opportunities to build tension that’s internal and character-based. Instead, the text currently relies on external conflict.

The result is that there’s no suspense. He likes her, she likes him: so what’s the problem? It feels like I’m jerking the characters around rather than that they have a gulf to overcome.

I’ve been doing a lot of “killing my darlings” — eliminating pages of description and exposition, cutting scenes, moving things around, condensing — and while the product will actually be longer, it feels tighter.

Now, the hero and heroine don’t kiss in the third chapter and start dating in the fifth. That would deny too much potentiality.

Still More Contest Updates

I didn’t final in the 2012 Indiana Golden Opportunity but the comments I received on Together is Enough are so ridiculously helpful that I can’t find it in myself to feel anything other than excited. One of the judges actually liked it quite a bit. The other thought it was promising but very rough. Both provided incredibly constructive notes on both the manuscript — the first 50 pages of it! — and on the scoresheets.

As I’ve said before, it’s difficult to feel anything other than happy about the feedback I’ve received: I haven’t been writing for very long, I sent the manuscript out for contests before it was ready for primetime, and I entered contests without any real hope of finaling. I was primarily interested in (anonymous) feedback and thus I achieved my objective.

Between the judges’ comments and the feedback I’ve received from friends, I actually know what to do now to make Together is Enough better. Yay! Now I have to find the time to do it, which will be difficult because I haven’t done any real writing on my in-progress manuscripts in about a month because of dissertation work and family commitments. (Yikes.)

The only real question is what to do with with Together is Enough once I’ve revised it. I do want to resubmit to the editor from the Golden Claddagh. Beyond that, to Golden Heart or not to Golden Heart, that is the question.

Because you don’t get in-depth feedback from the Golden Heart, just numbers, there’s no real upside if you don’t final. On the incredibly off chance that you do final, however, it’s the sort of thing that can have a real impact on your career. Much more so than any other contest.

On the flip side, it’s an expensive contest and I would have to join RWA. (I’d been planning to do so, but had thought I might put it off until next year, when I hope to have three manuscripts completed and plan to begin querying agents.)

While I have a better idea about how to revise Together is Enough, part of me still feels like it’s a very personal, very limited project. Brave in Heart and The Easy Part have benefited from what I’ve learned from the process of completing a manuscript, they’re more commercial, and I think they may be better. They’re also unfinished and no one else has seen them at all. They’re definitely not Golden Heart-ready.

Decisions, decisions, decisions.

Working from Areas of Strength

I’m currently working on revising Together is Enough. And as much as you try to fix problems during revision, you also have to work from areas of strength.

The middle of the manuscript is a mess. The hero doesn’t have a subplot (or flaws, really) and much of the middle of the book exists because I wasn’t ready to get the events in the last third. But rather than fixing lackluster scenes or expanding on minor characters that I don’t really like, the solution may be to take the things that I like about the first third of the book and expand on them.

Build more tension and drama into the first part of the book. Take it and turn it, in other words, into the first two-thirds rather than trying to fix what’s probably unfixable.

Contest Updates

It was a good news/not-so-good news kind of a day. First, Together is Enough placed second in the contemporary category of the 2012 Golden Claddagh. While I didn’t get a request for a full manuscript, I did get some very helpful feedback from an industry insider. I have some concerns about how likeable — or more specifically, how relatable — the heroine is. Also, the hero needs a better secondary story-line. Finally, the middle of the manuscript is a mess. (Not that the editor mentioned that, because she didn’t see the full thing; I just know it is.)

The not-so-good news is that I didn’t final in The Rebecca. I don’t have the commentary back yet, but I’m hopeful that there will be good notes. I’m not devastated or surprised in the least.

Overall, I feel very happy about both results. I’ve been writing fiction for about 10 months now. I have one project drafted and two substantially drafted. While I have a long way to go, there are things about my writing to which readers respond positively. I have so much to learn, but I feel good about my progress.

I’m not sure how to move forward, however. I still need to finish my two works in progress, but in terms of revision, I don’t know what to do next with Together is Enough. While there are identifiable problems with it (see above), I think the biggest issue may be that it’s too insider-y. Even if it was written perfectly, which it obviously isn’t, I don’t know if it has much commercial appeal. Whereas my current projects seem more universal. I need to think about it some more, but given the constraints on my fiction writing time, there may be other, better uses of my time.

In other news, I desperately need to find critique partners and I haven’t the slightest idea how to do so.

Title, Part Deux

The contemporary work-in-progress also has a title, The Easy Part. The phrase comes from an essay from Marjorie Williams’ collection The Woman at the Washington Zoo, which is one of my favorite books about DC.

But some day, when she’s old enough, you must also tell her that compared to the complexity of doing right by those you love, being a brain surgeon is the easy part.

I haven’t been doing a lot of writing lately, but I have been doing planning. Thoughts on my “boom and bust” writing process will be forthcoming.

Five Favorite Books

There’s a five-favorite books meme making the rounds on the interwebs. I couldn’t limit myself to five, but here’s mine:

Non-romance fiction

Romance

Non-fiction

Someday

I have a list of words that I hope someday to be able to spell without assistance. Synopsis. Rhythm. Embarrass. Harass.

I would say, “It’s bound to happen one of these days,” but frankly, all evidence to the contrary.

Title

The novella has a title now: Brave in Heart. It’s a phrase from the poem “From Newport to Rome,” which first appeared in Julia Ward Howe’s collection Passion-flowers (1854). I need one more good week of writing to get it done. With dissertation demands, and a number of contest announcements approaching, I’m jittery and distracted and not at all productive. Nailing down a title felt good, however, so here’s hoping that the third act follows soon.

Gone Feral

In Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott talks about the inner voices that plague her as she works on first drafts:

What I’ve learned to do when I sit down to work on a shitty first draft is to quiet the voices in my head. First there’s the vinegar-lipped Reader Lady, who says primly, “Well, that’s not very interesting, is it?” And there’s the emaciated German male who writes these Orwellian memos detailing your thought crimes. And there are your parents, agonizing over your lack of loyalty and discretion; and there’s William Burroughs, dozing off or shooting up because he finds you as bold and articulate as a houseplant; and so on. And there are also the dogs: let’s not forget the dogs, the dogs in their pen who will surely hurtle and snarl their way out if you ever stop writing, because writing is, for some of us, the latch that keeps the door of the pen closed, keeps those crazy ravenous dogs contained. (26)

Right now, I’m struggling with two works-in-progress that have gone feral. I haven’t written in a serious or sustain way in nearly two weeks and the dogs have escaped.

One draft — the historical novella — is a mess. I’m working on the third act. The end is in sight. But I have plotting problems. Somehow, the opening is both too fast and too slow and at the end, I’m having trouble giving the resolution time to breathe because I’m really not good at writing subplots, which is what I need to fix my problems.

The other manuscript — a contemporary single title — is progressing nicely but I’m afraid of screwing it up. There are no major plotting problems. The male protagonist has a nice, complicated backstory. (If anything, the heroine is too perfect.) They don’t get together too quickly. And as I move into the second act, I’m afraid I’m going to destroy everything I like about the manuscript so far.

So I’m procrastinating by blogging, which is logical and reasonable, right?

Mood Music, Part 2

This is for the Washington contemporary which is at 25,000 words and now has a complete outline. A victory plan if you will.

I have realized that I have a tendency to write complex heroines and too perfect heroes. I’m annoyed that my heroines always have these “issues” that need to be fixed and that the conflict in the hero’s trajectory is always external. I need to fix that.

Continue reading “Mood Music, Part 2” →