Shawn L. Bird

Original poetry, commentary, and fiction. All copyrights reserved.

Write this and that, but skip the crap! October 27, 2010

Filed under: Commentary,Writing — Shawn L. Bird @ 12:44 am
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Yahoo Canada News reports on a 19 page manuscript for an unfinished work by Theodore Geisl aka Dr. Seuss going up for auction. 

An included letter from Dr. Seuss to his assistant makes for interesting reading. Seuss was displeased with the work, and especially the main character, Pete. In the letter, he explains why ne never seriously pursued its publication. “What, in my opinion, is wrong with this story is that…despite the greatness of Pete as a stellar athlete hero…the negative image of him flubbing and unable to catch any ball at all will make him schnook… And I think the reader’s reaction will be, ‘What’s the matter with this dope?'”

The L.A. Times points out that it may have been this bit of self-editing on the part of Seuss that set him apart. Clearly, he was good enough to know that not everything he wrote was worthy of his name

And that is the mark of a quality writer, isn’t it?  Not everything is worth disseminating to the world!  The ability to filter and to edit is crucial to ensure excellence.  For the beginning writer, each word is like gold.  It is so much work to get them on the page that you become attached to them.  To be asked to edit, that is, to re-think, to re-vision, to re-word, to re-phrase, or to just cut something right out– well, it is like cutting off a piece of your body.  (A piece you like and want, not something like a gangrenous foot, but something like your nose).  In time however, we may see that the thing we like IS eating away at our manuscript, making it less than it should be, and like gangrene or a cancer, it must be cut out.

On the other hand, sometimes pain is good for us.  It may cause us a sense of loss to see our perfect prose slashed through with blue pencil, but a re-read a safe distance away in time, and the improvements are undeniable.  Sometimes we must let go to find the stronger writer within us. 

Meg Tilley told me once during a blue pencil session that she saves the words by putting them at the back of the manuscript.  She finds it comforting to know they’re still around until she’s completely secure that it’s right to let them go.  I don’t do that.  I have complete copies of the manuscript saved, so a session of cutting and  slicing doesn’t bother me.  After a rest to let the words lose their holy status, I approach the edit with verve.  When I’m sure it’s time for the words to go, I am free slice them off with impunity.  I find it cathartic, actually.  I like the 10% per edit rule, and it works.  Subsequent readings move more and more smoothly.

But before there are the fine word by word edits, there are the concept edits.  There are those stories that seem like good ideas at the time.  We get started, have a few hundred pages invested and then it is obvious that this just isn’t going to be what it needs to be.   Like Seuss did with Pete the Athlete, sometimes we have to bid farewell to characters that don’t have what it takes to bring readers to care about their problem, if indeed they have one.  Every story needs a conflict or there is no point in reading.   Jocks like Pete  are only legends in their own minds.  Good call Dr.  Sorry Pete.

 

the longest month September 12, 2010

Filed under: Writing — Shawn L. Bird @ 12:06 am
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I’m starting to feel like I’m nine months pregnant.  The ninth month of pregnancy is the longest month.  You mothers out there will know what I mean.  When you get to a few weeks from your due date, people start calling you up to see if you’re still pregnant or whether you’ve got a baby in the cradle yet.   As you pass your due date (as I did every time) you get even more concerned calls.  All the affectionate interest begins to get a little wearing.  You want that baby out more than anyone else, and every well intentioned question emphasizes the delay.  You watch the days pass on the calendar and when the next person asks if you’re still baby-less, you want to scream, “I will ensure the whole planet knows once junior has arrived, please leave me alone to agonize in peace over this miserable delay!”

Welcome to my experience with publishing!  I hear I am not the only one who has discovered that those in the publishing industry have their own time vortex.  They say ‘2 weeks’ but that really means ‘2 months.’   They say  ‘soon’ when they really mean ‘later.’  I hope having named a month, they don’t mean the one NEXT year, since the one named has already passed.  

I once heard of a writer who was waiting to hear back from his agent.  Being used to long delays and poor communication, he just waited patiently.  He didn’t want to be an irritating pest, after all.  Eventually he wrote, and discovered his agent had been dead for a year already!  Oh dear.

It’s a waiting game, and I’m in the longest month.  Pretty soon I’m going to have those contracts in my hands and the adventure will be undeniable.

Or maybe I’ll be sending flowers to a  funeral.

 

editing September 1, 2010

Filed under: Writing — Shawn L. Bird @ 7:11 am
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I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve edited the work I’m gathering in my  MFA application portfolio. It is quite amazing how many times one can read something and still find things to adjust. You think it’s perfect, and then you read again and find another typo, another sentence to re-phrase, another word to tighten up meaning.

It makes me laugh when I ask my students to edit something they’ve written and they refuse, because they are sure it’s perfect as it is. First draft perfection. The Mozart Effect perhaps?  Do you remember the scene in the movie when Salieri realized that the perfect music score he’s looking at is a first draft- that Mozart took entire scores out of his head and just put them on paper without a single erasure?  It was traumatizing for him that the irritating, immature Mozart had such a glorious genius to craft heavenly music apparently without effort.

While my students are amazing, I don’t teach that many geniuses.  Trust me, even the geniuses have no excuse not to edit.

There is a strange power in understanding that while perfection may be an impossible goal, the process of editing is a journey toward finding the best in our ideas.  Getting the ideas out initially is one process, but trimming those ideas to bring them to a polished brevity that catches the reader with its brilliance is something else.  Editing never ends.  Improvement is always possible.  Perfection is a journey to understanding.

Edits of this post: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

 

The publishing process August 26, 2010

Filed under: Writing — Shawn L. Bird @ 3:37 am
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I was just asked by a budding novelist to tell something about the publishing process. Here was my rather abbreviated response:

The best suggestion I can give you is to spend a lot of time on www.writersdigest.com reading articles and chatting on the forums. A subscription to the magazine is also very worthwhile. It’s an excellent manual to the process of getting published in a variety of genres.

In my About Me section there are links to some writerly organizations you may want to check out.

My own personal experience with the process is given at https://shawnbird.com/grace   See the article (link at the bottom of the page) called The Story of Grace.

The simplified version of the process goes something like this:
1. write your novel
2. edit your novel 20 times, cutting 10% each time
3. leave the novel for a year
4. read it again, re-write all the parts you now realise are crap
5. send out query packages to agents and/or publishers (cover letter identifying your credentials and a bit about the novel, a one page synopsis of the novel, a 10 page sample of the novel)
6. get a lot of rejection notices in the mail- make particular note of any suggestions given by professionals about your manuscript, fix them
7. get an offer to publish
8. negotiate a contract, get a cheque for your advance
9 (at this point, the publisher may leave your ms in limbo for years. It might never actually be published, even though they paid you for it)
10. edit with the publishers’ editors. They will force you to make painful cuts
11. see a published copy!!!
12. work with the publishing house marketing team to publicize your novel
13. wait for royalty cheques to roll in! 😉 (One friend tells me he sometimes gets royalty cheques for amounts like $1.32)

 

time travelling July 25, 2010

Filed under: Commentary,Grace Awakening,Writing — Shawn L. Bird @ 12:02 am
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Writing is a way of communicating across time and space. As a teen, I remember a friend ruminating about how his letter was going to time travel to me, and that when I read it, a week or so hence, I’d be in his past. When I read my teen diaries, I’m conscious that I am time travelling back to visit with another self, and I wish I had a little more of value to say about the times and experiences I was having! I was, sadly, a very boring diarist, as I explored my particular obsession ad nauseum. Nonetheless, the power of that time travel is still with me. My diaries are messages to the future that are still there, waiting for an even further flung future. My thoughts, my worries, my dreams are all congealing on those pages, just waiting for a future someone to read the message. Unfortunately, the communication is one way. How I wish I could send a message back to that young diarist and tell her that it would all work out: every last bit of it, as perfectly as could be wished, and assure her that she would find the meaning of the life story she was struggling to understand.

These days, I am spending a lot of time with Francesco Petrarca, a man who loved to write as much as he loved to read. Letters, poetry, essays were left behind him in a tidal wave of very well edited paper. He left us so many messages to the future that are still quoted by philosophers, theologians, historians, and poets. He was a fascinating guy, and it is amusing to read some of the commentators who evaluate Petrarca’s own perception of himself. He was apparently a blatantly proud self-promoter, using his celebrity with aplomb and thoroughly satisfied with his own worth. Although he wrote of his frailties of faith, his words suggest that he was humbly proud. He would be blissful that we are still pouring over his words today, and yet not particularly surprised about it. He believed his words were worth something significant; after all, his master work was his “Letter to Posterity” which he fully intended for people to be reading long after his death.

I am absolutely adoring the ‘Franco’ who is being revealed to me as I read his writings, and those of the philosophers, historians and such who have analyzed his life. I think I’m falling head over heels in love with him, actually. Funny how his intellectual charisma reaches across time through his words, and draws us to him. I can see him at a cocktail party, gathering an audience as he asks tricky questions, delights in argument and good conversation, and has everyone enchanted. Thanks for your words, Franco. I wish I could travel back to 1370 and tell you myself.

 

celebrating Petrarca July 23, 2010

Filed under: Commentary,Grace Awakening,Reading,Writing — Shawn L. Bird @ 12:22 am
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On July 20 & 19, 2010 it was the 306th anniversary of the birth of Francesco Petrarch in Arezzo, Italy and the 236th anniversary of his death in Arqua near Padua Italy 70 years later.

Petrarca will feature prominently in my life over the next few years, and I am finding him a fascinating man to get to know. Aside from his romantic tale of woe, as re-told briefly in Grace Awakening, he was a significant intellect of his time. It was his interest in Classical studies that ushered in the Renaissance. He was the one that coined the term, “The Dark Ages” for the Medieval period when men of intellect stopped studying the classics and lost themselves in church pronouncements and reinterpretations of history.  His writings were used to establish the  language rules for modern Italian.  He was declared the Poet Laureate of Rome in 1341 when he was only 35 years old.  His name is attached to the sonnet form he developed: the Italian or Petrarchan sonnet.

As Petrarca travelled around Italy and France, he collected the finest library in Christendom, one fought over after his death.  Here is a man who loved learning, celebrated travelling for new experiences, delved into history to better understand himself, climbed mountains for the aestetic of seeing the view at the top, struggled with faith, and loved purely with a devotion that was stronger than death.

One of the most wonderful (and challenging) things about Petrarca is that he was a prolific writer.  He wrote volumes and volumes about his life, his thoughts, and his beliefs. He wrote poetry about his love. He wrote biographies of those he admired. He wrote letters to his friends. Most of his writings survive, because his genius was well-recognised at the time. There is a lot of material to go through!

As I unfold the layers of his life, I hope that I can do justice to the story and that the embellishments I bring will be worthy of him.  He is surprising and amazing me at every turn.    It’s not going to be a quick book to write.  I have 70 years of writings to work through and tons of things to learn about the time and place.  I just hope this amazing man will captivate you when I am finally able to introduce you to him in a few years.

 

coulda-shoulda-woulda July 20, 2010

Filed under: Poetry,Writing — Shawn L. Bird @ 8:19 pm
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I wished I could.
I thought I should.
then knew I would.

Though doubts amid,

I slipped and slid
fought could, should, would,
and then I DID.

.

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This is the story of the birth of my writing career, synthesized.  Years of wishing and dreaming, slowly coming to believe that I could, and then finally actually writing the novel I’d wanted to write for thirty years.  The story was desperate to see the light, and when  I got down to it, it poured out at 25 pages a week.  Six months later I had a 150,000 word novel.  Astonishing.  When Grace Awakening hits the bookstore shelves September 2011, it will have been less than 3 years from the time I wrote the first words.  Wow.

If you dream of being a writer.  Quit dreaming.  Get writing.

.End of rant.       

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Now to a poetry lecture:

The ‘eye rhyme’ is interesting here. 

Dipthong ‘ou’ makes 5 different sounds in this short 28 syllable poem, and ‘ough’ appears in every second line, teasing the eye into perceiving rhyme where there isn’t.

 

prequel preparation July 8, 2010

Filed under: Commentary,Grace Awakening,Writing — Shawn L. Bird @ 12:52 am
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When one begins an enterprise, it is not uncommon that the effort required to reach the goal is under-estimated. I’m sure there are many ventures that are begun and soon abandoned when the scope of the effort begins to unfold. The other option is to dig deeply and find the resources to plow ahead. The harvest will be worth the effort, no matter how many stones appear in the field during the seeding time.

Here I find myself, as I develop the Grace Awakening prequel. I had not expected to have quite so much research ahead of me, and yet as I realise I need to know this or that thing, I find my natural curiosity making the task that much sweeter. It definitely slows down the progress, but the vision is slowly revealing itself. I’m excited to be at the beginning of this journey.

I’m lucky that I am one who enjoys process as much as product. I am able to enjoy the journey as well as the destination. I suppose if I could not, that I wouldn’t be able to take the beginning steps. But here I am, glowing with anticipation at the difficulties ahead. This is going to be a wonderful trip!

 

birthing a world July 4, 2010

Filed under: Grace Awakening,Writing — Shawn L. Bird @ 12:58 am
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How ironic that my last entry was about fantasy and reality, because without warning I’m falling into fantasy. It’s an interesting sensation. A new world is opening like a chasm and I am tumbling into it. It’s tugging on an arm and a leg, and it’s filling my head. I will lose touch with my reality as it grows.  I can feel the new place pulling me away.

Last year when readers were begging for a continuation of Grace Awakening, I didn’t know what to offer them. I asked what they wanted to know and they were vague. They just wanted more. I let the idea simmer for a few days before a glimmer came to me. “What about a prequel?” I finally suggested. “Yes!” they shouted. I could tell of some of those past lives Grace sees images of.  I could tell about Bright’s past experiences.  They were thrilled with whatever came.  The readers wanted to know about it all, if only I would write it.

After a year of simmering, the story is beginning to unfold itself. I find myself moving about my day with only half my consciousness attentive to my activities. Scenes are revealing themselves, characters are asking to be born, and a world is stretching into being. My fingers are twitching, and the words are about to appear on the screen.

Come along for the ride.

 

after the Eclipse July 2, 2010

Filed under: Grace Awakening,Literature,Reading,Writing — Shawn L. Bird @ 2:22 am
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The problem with spending time in a fantasy world is that sometimes it’s very hard to leave and return to the world of reality.

I have a friend who was raised in a huge Catholic family. Her dad was an illiterate farmer. He valued farm chores. He did not value education, and he especially did not value reading. Being discovered shirking one’s chores with a book was asking for a beating. I can kind of appreciate the anger. When your children have escaped into a book or movie, they are out of your control. They are being exposed to ideas that may differ from your own. A lot of people fear ideas that are different from their own, and that is why we have censorship. Ideas are free. Control is not.

I came out of the Eclipse matinee today, lost in the world of love, hard decisions, glorious Pacific scenery (the very roads of the Fraser Valley that we were driving last spring break), and the passions of youth. I have felt a little bittersweet all day, as I fight not to go back and read through the series again. (I just read them all last weekend for about the twentieth time, afterall, and I watched the movies 3X this week already).  My emotions have been highjacked by Twilight again.  It doesn’t matter that it has been a long time since I was engulfed in those passions of new love and the difficult decisions that last a lifetime, but it doesn’t seem like it. Whether those feelings were thirty years ago or three years ago, the intensity of them doesn’t change. Auntie Bright and Grace discuss this at the end of Grace Awakening,

. “Have you heard how the archaeologists have excavated three thousand year old honey from within the pyramids?”
(Grace) nodded and whispered, “Yes, they discovered it was still perfect, because bacteria don’t grow on honey.”
“Exactly. Like ancient honey, a first love remains ever incorruptible despite the passage of time. Though the boy may no longer exist, the memory of him is always pure and sweet.”

Like Bright, I’m feeling somewhat lost at the moment in the ache and joy of nostalgia. Those intense feelings are always just below the surface, and the Twilight Saga has woken them for many women, of all ages. Whether our heads remember all the details, our hearts recall each nuance of confusion, joy and adoration.   Stephenie Meyer’s created world pushes us back to that place.  It can be a wonderful place to revisit.  Being in love has a narcotic effect on the system.  It does us good to re-awaken those passions by escaping from our dreary every day.

Perhaps someone watching my vacant stares and unexplained flashes of smiles might be distressed.  Perhaps that fact that my thoughts are unknown would pain some people.  Not being quite in control of your head can be a problem.  On the other hand, it is amazing as a writer to know that words have that kind of power!   I bow to the brilliance that can take control of my emotions away from me, and remind me of  love’s power.

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I am so glad to have spent the last twenty-five years with the amazing and brilliant man who happily attends Twilight movies with me, discusses books, gives me valuable  writing critiques, tolerates my foibles, loves me beyond reason, and yes, does laundry. What a blessing I’ve been given.  I am reminded of this whenever I float out of the cloud of love and adoration rekindled by Twilight.

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I hope Grace Awakening leaves readers in a haze, wishing they were still lost in the story, spending time with Grace, Ben, Bright, Jim and the others. I hope they find themselves in the realm of memory, remembering the boys and men who first touched their hearts and awakened them to the grace of love.  I hope the fantasy rekindles their hearts to their reality.