So, what is this blog about? I admit that if I look at my list of recent posts, it’s all over the place. I see posts about writing, memoir, flash fiction, personal challenges, social justice themes, politics. In short, I see a recipe for mental fragmentation and confusion. I am grateful for those readers who have stuck with me through my faltering steps on the blogging pathway, but as the time approaches for New Year’s resolutions, it’s clear I need to bring some focus to this site.
As with any endeavor, it is important to learn from the masters. One go-to resource I use is Jane Friedman, whose blog and newsletter helps “authors and publishers make smart decisions in the digital age.” Jane, a Great Courses professor and contributor to Publishers Weekly and other outlets, has created a blog and website brimming with resources for writers, with links to her publications, classes, and related services. It was Jane’s webinar on WordPress that gave me the confidence to move beyond my first Google Blogspot blog, Memoir Crafter.
Through Jane, I have found other outstanding websites. Most recently, I followed a link in her post from October, “What Should Authors Blog About” that took me to writer, traveler, and unconventional living guru Chris Gillebeau’s blogging guide and manifesto, “279 Days to Overnight Success.” According to the statement on the manifesto page, Gillebeau’s blog is for “Bloggers, writers, online artists, and anyone otherwise interested in creating a new career or expanding their influence using social media.” What the manifesto immediately did for me is get me thinking about the purpose of my blog and the possibility of threading the topics that are important to me into one cohesive theme. And if you are just starting out with a blog, his post on how to start one is one of the most succinct I’ve seen.
Another useful resource comes in the way of the bloggers and writers I follow regularly, those, for example, whose blogs support writers through the Literary Citizenship Model that Jane discusses in one of her posts. I follow several that are true to the goal of “celebrating and bringing attention to authors, writing, and books—the things you presumably love and want to support”:
Writer Unboxed, a superb multi-contributor site of top writers, agents, and editors;
Anne Goodwin’s writing website Annethology, and her blog, Annecdotal, where she offers trenchant book reviews of recent fiction incorporating psychological themes; and
For those newer to writing professionally, Joe Bunting’s TheWritePractice.
These are just a handful of course, and I’m sure you all follow well-written blogs on topics other than writing that, despite their unique angles, convey a clearly recognizable theme and fulfill their purpose in giving readers useful and timely information. One blogger I follow that participates in the Carrot Ranch flash fiction challenges is early-childhood-educator Norah Colvin. Norah stays true to her purpose of inviting early childhood educators to support children’s learning through the use of her original teaching materials. Most recently, she is using her blog to launch Readilearn, a website that offers early childhood teaching resources.
So, it’s back to the drawing board for me. With today’s post, I plan to return to my original purpose and themes in blogging here. Those include topics related to memory and memoir writing; the craft of writing; and Word of the Week, exploring arcane and beautiful words. I’ll explore flash memoir through Charli Mills’s flash fiction challenges. And I’ll weave in two values in my philosophy of life—the pursuit of EXCELLENCE and the importance of HABIT—as they relate to the craft of writing.
If you blog, what have been your experiences in developing your online identity and themes? Have you found ways to incorporate seemingly unrelated topics into your posts without sacrificing focus?
Book proposals are usually submitted in lieu of an entire manuscript for non-fiction books rather than novels or memoirs. But they can also be used effectively in restructuring an original manuscript or directing a disorganized first attempt at a narrative.
In my last post, From Life Story to Memoir, I described the first steps of transforming a life story/autobiography into a focused memoir. These steps—preliminary to the book proposal— included: identification (and if necessary a complete rethinking) of the major themes of the narrative; identification of the bedrock scenes—in my client’s book, both medical and personal—that would carry the revised story; alternating those scenes/chapters to create tension between high points and low; and repeated tinkering with the table of contents (TOC) of the original manuscript. The final step at that point was to identify a new starting point, one that would show the main character in the middle of an important (but not the most important) event.
Now, what to do with the new starting point and the evolving TOC? Our agent Claire was already moving towards the idea of doing the book proposal, but I still struggled (with little success) to wrest the original manuscript into a significantly different book. The new plan added two elements of the book proposal:
Do a knock-out sample chapter (preferably chapter one) that shows the main character at a critical moment, revealing a major conflict or theme (in our case, this meant showing the doctor at the top of his game and confronting an adversary in the OR);
Create an overview of the book, snagging the editor with a description of a dramatic scene and summarizing the main events and themes.
One last last point Claire emphasized was to focus on the editor not the imagined reader. Make each sentence crystal clear. Use powerful language that reflects the book’s uniqueness and appeal (in our case, “high-stakes”; “groundbreaking”; “game changer”; “pioneering”) and which in turn signals the main theme(s).
That new starting point, coupled with a new Chapter 1, was an important breakthrough, because, again, throughout the early process it had been very difficult to break away from the original chronology and structure of the work. See below two different versions of the book’s TOC and opening chapter. Note how chapter one in the restructured version starts in the middle of an important event.
Original TOC in Scrivener, starting at the beginning in a straightforward chronological account of a life.
The revised TOC; the new first chapter opens with a dramatic moment near the height of the author/protagonist’s career.
The Book Proposal as Guide to a Rewrite
With those steps out of the way and a rough idea of the new direction, Claire now suggested we carry on with a formal book proposal that she could submit to publishers.
Overview: Grab the editor’s attention with 3-4 succinct pages of your story/concept.
Author Bio: Why are you ideal to write this book?
Marketing Section: Who will buy this book?
Competition Section: Half a dozen titles of books similar to yours and why yours is unique.
Promotion Section: Which outlets/platforms will be appropriate to publicize this book?
Chapter Outline: The meat of the proposal, tentatively titled and clearly abstracted.
Sample Chapter(s): Yes, the editor will see that you can really write and tell a story.
The book proposal turned out to be the key to restructuring the book. It forced me to know— and hew to—the genre of the book much more strictly; to hone the message and theme of the book and carry them through the entire story; and to identify and then write for a much more defined readership. Not that it all came together like clockwork. It was sometimes a scattershot process, moving back and forth between sections.
Whether you want to attempt a formal book proposal or not, working through the points below as you revise (or write) your book will help you know where you are going with it.
The First Chapter
The new first chapter set the process in motion. Following Claire’s advice to start with a major event, I tackled a scene over halfway through the original manuscript, one that had originally been a paragraph long. It was a surgery during which another surgeon walked out. The scene represented a major turning point for my client. I had interviewed the doctor extensively the first time around; now I interviewed him again. I interviewed the fellow (as in fellowship) who had assisted him. I researched the pioneering spinal surgery technique they had used and made sure I understood it. I delved into the details of the surgery and OR environment—my genre was now the medical memoir, mind you, and I needed to really beef up the specifics.
Just as importantly, I changed exposition to dialogue (a separate post coming on this! Hugely important.) This new chapter was significantly different in tone, style, and pace from the original manuscript. This chapter firmly belonged to a medical memoir. I began to see the enormity of my task.
The Overview
With a sample chapter under my belt and progress made on the TOC, I tackled the overview. This was not to be a straightforward task. My starting point was the event in the sample chapter I had written. When Claire decided the overview (and thus the book) should start with another surgery—the one that had catapulted my client to superstar status—I wrote out that chapter as well. At times Claire would like one aspect of the original manuscript and ask me to bring it forward. At other times, she would decide it was not very important and suggest I drop it. After three or four months, she deemed the overview still “a little dry.” We needed more drama. We needed “to build excitement.” The first two pages had to be “seamless” and “dramatic.” Through my exasperation, I came to realize that this was all part of the process. All part of a deep fashioning of the story through thinking and rethinking its most dramatic and meaningful themes, scenes, and total arc.
The Competition
All during this time I was working on other sections, among the most important the competition section. There is no way around knowing what other books like yours have been published. There is no way around reading some of them. I read five or six medical memoirs (taking note of how and to what extent the authors worked in their backstories). I read reviews of these books and others. Claire thought some of the books I had chosen to summarize were too old and had me research newer titles—it’s best to see what is current in your genre. For each title I had to determine what set it apart and more importantly how my client’s book was unique. By the time Claire gave me the thumbs up on it, I had a much stronger idea of the genre and the readership we were trying to attract.
The Chapter Outline
At last, the most daunting task of all. Above, I wrote about using Scrivener to begin the restructuring process. I had created tentative chapter folders for the new version based on the revised TOC. I had two new chapters for the new beginning of the book—these formed the new “present” of the narrative, from which I could move the main narrative forward in time and flash back to earlier important scenes. I had an idea of the scenes I wanted to keep from the original manuscript and scenes I needed to build from existing anecdotes, and I began to populate my chapter folders with these scenes.
Populating the chapter folders with scenes. This allowed me to create chapter outlines for the book proposal, a task very difficult to do without a finished manuscript.
Creating the chapter outline without an existing manuscript was messy. The order and content of the chapters would change once the rewriting began in earnest. But through this process the narrative arc emerged. So did capsules of the main events. All that remained was to write two to three succinct paragraphs about each chapter—no mean feat. (My first drafts had whole pages or more for each chapter. Happily, what I cut from the chapter summaries in the book proposal came in handy in helping me build the scenes for the rewrite in Scrivener.)
The Rewrite
The rewrite was certainly not the simple reshuffling of chapters and scenes that I had originally imagined. The rewrite was indeed a REWRITE. But the process of preparing for and writing the book proposal, which took the better part of 2015, had laid all the groundwork. In January, 2016 I began writing out the next chapters. Mid February Claire submitted the proposal to an Indie publisher. Mid March my client had a contract—and I had a deadline of August. I wrote chapters. I axed chapters. I moved chapters around. I anguished over integrating flashbacks. I went down multiple wrong paths. But I had to stick to the TOC and the chapter outline we had sent in. In the end, I finished writing roughly twenty chapters of an essentially different book between March and August.
What about you? Have you been stuck with the direction your story is taking? With where to start or what to include? Are you rewriting your story? How have you approached this task? I would love to hear!
A year and a half ago, I had completed my client’s story. It had started out with aspirations to being a memoir, turned down the highway toward autobiography, and ended up as life story. He was satisfied. We had a publisher. Soon, I thought, the project would be over. Ha!
I’ve relayed this story several times. Here I reference it to address the topic of rewriting a book. Not just revising. Rewriting. And it occurred to me this morning that what I had spent these last 16 months doing to my manuscript bore much resemblance to grappling with an unfinished manuscript, or even with a work in the germination phase. You’ve got dozens of gripping anecdotes. You’ve got a unique and workable angle and a clear theme(s). You might even have whole scenes and chapters written out. But how to organize it all? How to get at the point of it all? How to set the story soaring?
A recent post on fellow blogger Lisa Reiter’s Sharing the Story provided the impetus for me to finally write this post. Close to having a completed manuscript, she still struggles with key questions:
. . . ‘purpose’ is the biggest issue I feel I am grappling with. What is the purpose of my book? Who is my intended reader? And therefore where am I trying to end up? Answering these questions would help me jettison anything that is just background noise because writing this sort of memoir – one where the story is never quite over so long as I’m still living – could mean the writer makes the mistake of including everything that happened since survival.
This point in the road is precisely the juncture at which I found myself in February 2015. Like Lisa, I had a big theme; where her story is one of surviving cancer, my client’s is one of surviving early adversities to make it in the high-stakes world of neurosurgery. The problem was—as Lisa suggests in that last sentence above—that in the original manuscript I had included everything that had happened to my client over more than sixty years. Sure it was a hell of a story, but one that appealed at best to a handful of readers who knew or knew of my client. The key events were there, but they commanded no more page space than much smaller events. And what was the purpose? Indeed, what was the genre? Immigrant story? A tale of rags to riches? A life in medicine?
From Life Story to Memoir
I had had an inkling of the problem at the outset when my good friend, author, and grammarian Kathy Papajohn posed the question to me: Who is going to read this book? There are circles she explained to me, from intimate friends and family to readers interested in autobiography and memoir to those who look for a good story across genres. What is this book? WHY is this book? Who is your target market?
I was ill equipped to answer those questions in the beginning. I thought they would take care of themselves once I had 80,000 words. Indeed, I thought I could worry about overall structure during the revision phase. I didn’t know how else to tell the story but to get it all down. Such an encompassing process proved to be invaluable, but it also greatly extended the time it has taken for my client to get his story told.
Which brings me to late 2014. I was doing last revisions on the existing manuscript, and working towards eliminating unnecessary scenes and lines—what Lisa referred to as “background noise.” (I blogged about this process on my old site, Memoir Crafter.) Soon after, everything changed when my client and I began working with an established agent/editor named Claire Gerus. After encouraging us to “stop the presses” with the first publisher, Claire immediately honed in on certain elements of the manuscript. Great medical anecdotes, she said. Engaging formative episodes in his youth. Fascinating stuff on his German roots. But his time coaching his kids in soccer? Boring. His first day of high school? Who cares? Then she told me the kind of book she saw in the manuscript, one that she felt she could represent: a medical memoir with brief but telling flashbacks to those important formative events.
How to Attack a Rewrite
It was almost harder to rewrite the manuscript than it would have been to start afresh. For starters, how to identify the key scenes? How to decide on a new starting point? Claire provided me with a couple of helpful exercises.
THE FIRST was to review the story and identify the important events:
What were the turning points?
Where did the protagonist experience a revelation or epiphany?
What dramatic moments moved the story forward?
What scenes showed the protagonist working through the important themes?
Which ones included key characters that served as friends or adversaries?
Then, Claire told me to break this list down into two columns: one showing the positive events that had supported my client’s journey toward self realization, and one listing the negative events or moments that had blocked the attainment of his goals or wishes.
Equipped with this list, I was now to block out a timeline where I interspersed these high/low events. This would create drama and tension in the narrative.
THE SECOND EXERCISE took my existing table of contents as a starting point. Using the list of positive and negative events, rethink the table of contents. Build the TOC from the combined list of high/supporting events and low/obstructing events.
Finally, identify a new starting point, not at “the beginning” but with a significant event, a major surgery for example.
Move forward from that point, using flashback as needed to fill in the narrative gaps and reveal and/or reflect on the formative experiences.
The high/low exercise encouraged me. I can do this, I thought. Just identify the events, slot them into roughly chronological order, and insert sections of the original manuscript. Bingo. The rewrite.
Then I attempted the second TOC exercise. My efforts fell flat. I could not get away from my original chronological sequence. I ended up at least five or six chapter titles in before I got to a medical event, and that was only med school.
At the same time I was using Scrivener to rethink the structure and order of chapters. I moved the entire manuscript back into Scrivener, divided by chapter and scene. I experimented with moving the chapters around. I axed scenes I judged to be irrelevant. Most times I felt more muddled than ever. What I was doing was avoiding the real REWRITE. I hoped to slide by with a little shuffling and sleight of hand.
Using Mary Carroll Moore’s “W” structure with the high low points of the story. The bottom diagram shows the chapters inserted into the “W.”
Book Proposal as Guide to the Rewrite
In February Claire suggested a new approach. I didn’t have to have a completed manuscript, she said. The story was solid. Hold off on rewriting the manuscript. We could sell the idea to a publisher with a book proposal. Focus on a few crucial things, Claire said:
Rework, yet again, that new TOC with compelling chapter titles;
Do a knock-out sample chapter that shows the doctor at the top of his game;
Create an overview of the book, snagging the editor with a description of a dramatic scene and summarizing the main events and themes;
Throughout, focus on the editor not the imagined reader. Make each sentence crystal clear. Use powerful language that reflects the book’s uniqueness and appeal (“high-stakes”; “groundbreaking”; “game changer”; “pioneering”) and which in turn signals the main theme(s).
Remember, Claire said, editors want to see hard-hitting specific content that readers can get excited about.
So, that was the beginning. Those first sections of a traditional book proposal—overview, TOC, and sample chapter—set me on a track that over an entire year led me to the skeleton of my rewrite.
I will expand on this topic in my next post: The Book Proposal: Pinpointing Purpose and Readership, and show how for me, the proposal pulled me up from pantsing mode to outline mode—and gave me the structure I needed to make real headway.
What about you? How have you dealt with the task of organizing your manuscript? Of deciding which elements to include and which to leave out? What tools have you used to gain more control over the process?
