Musings Of A New Southern Man

I have had an enlightening past several days. I did a line-by-line edit on my 375-page manuscript, looking to tighten here, add a little there, take out extraneous words, add personality clues -- you know, all those items that make a work more complete. What did I learn? Oh, let me tell you. I learned I use two words far too often. They are "just" and "very," and they are just very unnecessary in almost every case. I left a couple cases of "just" in because they add the immediacy factor to events. "Very" disappeared entirely. I learned the little asides I inserted in an earlier edit weren't needed. It was a needed nip-and-tuck. I learned I needed to ramp up the tension in some chapters. I added more peril where peril was needed. I learned my final chapter is pretty good. It gives an intimate look at my protagonist, and he is an interesting man to get to know. What can I tell you? He is retired military. He has a distinguished record. ...

It's still not right. No, not my novel but my blog picture. Have ... to ... get ... it ... right ... soon. This one isn't bad. Neither was the previous one. I simply hasn't hit the perfect tone yet. It's like having a paragraph in a novel that needs work. I tweak here. I tweak there. Finally it all comes together. I'm sure it will happen one of these days. WHAT I'M READING NOW: "The Art of Racing in the Rain" by Garth Stein. He's a Pacific Northwest writer, and that's my geographical background. He also works with one of my favorite agents, Jeff Kleinman, and Stein is creative and daring enough to make a dog the narrator and protagonist. I'm not sold on Stein's pacing, but I'm only a third of the way through the book. I eagerly await the later chapters. Of course, I keep Donald Maass' how-to guide about writing the breakout novel near me at all times. I also finished Jeffery Deaver's "The Cold Moon" and enjoye...

I have to do this again because the song fits my writing life so well. I think almost every novelist feels the same way. Thank you, as always, Paul Simon.

I started talking about the need for a powerful query letter when I started this blog. I said I could not tell you exactly what a perfect query letter is. What can I tell you several months later? Same thing. Writing query letters is an inexact science. It becomes exact science only when you hit the right agent with the right words at the right time. Do you want evidence to show just how important that query letter is? It is the method by which most writers get to enter the kingdom of the publishing houses. It is a very exclusive kingdom, by the way. Forget the scores of books you see on the shelves of a Barnes and Noble or any other bookstore you enter. Those scores of books hide millions of queries that authors fastidiously crafted but ended up being kicked to the curb. What main things have I learned? Let's try these: Know your material. Be so in tune with what you have written that you can detail it and give a glimpse at the reasons you wrote it. That in turn casts ligh...

I have not been bad about writing lately. I have been absolutely terrible about blogging. So, here goes a quick update. I have stepped back from sending out queries about my second novel, at least for a couple of weeks. I saw two agents post items on Twitter or their blogs that changed my thinking. One agent, Evan Gregory, said the number of agents who actually work in August is usually down. It's a big vacation period, and even agents need vacations. Fancy that!!! Agent Kristin Nelson in Denver gave a short note in a recent blog about loving to tackle that big workload in the winter. Summer brings thoughts of good things to do -- other than dive through queries, read manuscripts, etc. Heck, I understand that. Give me swimming pools and barbecue grills over streams of unedited copy every day of the week. So, take those two agents' comments together and I made a decision to wait. My writing has been going great. I am tweaking former works here and there. I am...

I am among the Coloradans who woke up Friday morning and faced the news of the shootings at the Aurora theater. We sat there stunned as we heard radio reports, or saw the first videos, or scanned the Internet accounts on DenverPost.com and other venues. We ached. We wondered why. We hurt. We wondered why some more. We worried about those still in critical condition. We prayed for families who lost someone in the shootings. We prayed for ... what? ... a hand of guidance so things like this won't happen again, knowing fully that they will. Why does it take something like this to shake us awake? Why do we need multiple deaths to make us feel the heartbreak of loss? I don't want to sound like some morose thinker, but I have wondered about these questions. I put some of those into a small part of my first novel. My protagonist, Sean McNabb, is dogged by those questions. He says we see evidence of death every day, from obituaries to stories about murders, suicides and fatal accid...

I am on a roll with the third novel. Maybe it's because this writing process is kicking into gear, or I'm simply learning HOW to write better. Maybe those are the same thing. Anyway, I am having a blast right now. I just can't tell you much about it. Here's one thing: I have made a tweak on my story line. Remember my post about selecting Moonlight Beach in Encinitas as the setting for my first chapter? I decided to move farther down the road to Swami's Beach. There are reasons I can't go into here. I want to get back to that area for a visit soon. It is such a beautiful part of the country, and it's been too long since I've been there. Walking through a neighborhood on The Strand south of Coronado or serving as part of the crew for a yacht race on San Diego Bay are among some of my greatest memories ever. What I am reading: The Reversal by Michael Connolly. I love the fact he's a former journalist. I also love the fact he can write a crime/cour...