Time to Say Goodbye ... (to an old manuscript)

by Sarah

This year, I said goodbye to a manuscript. 

I worked on The Looking Glass for years. That manuscript taught me how to write. When I wrapped my mind around a new aspect of writing, I applied to it to the whole novel. I rewrote it many times, and every rewrite tackled a specific issue:  made my main character more active, fixed a sagging middle, or built a believable world. 

The Looking Glass was the manuscript I rewrote (again)  while I was in the Nevada SCBWI Mentor Program. I met my Monkeys because of it! My mentor, Harold Underdown, taught me so much as I worked on it.

All the rewrites changed it for the better.

Until they didn't.

By the end of last August, I had a feeling that things still weren’t right. Consultations with agents at two SCBWI conferences confirmed my fears. The worst part was that I didn’t know how to fix my story. The portions I did try to revise didn't show any real improvement. 

Amy wrote a great post about when it’s time to stop revising and send a manuscript out. My manuscript met all those criteria. Except it wasn't time to send it out. It was time to put it away. 

While I dithered about whether to set The Looking Glass aside, I remembered a conversation I had with one of my sisters, a classically trained singer.

During the last year of her degree for vocal performance, she gave a senior recital, singing several difficult arias. After she graduated, she continued to improve, but she told me later that all her growth disappeared when she revisited some of those first arias. Her breathing would change. She’d loose her range. She’d carry more tension in her voice.

She couldn't return to those songs without reverting to the skill she had when she first sang them.

I was doing the same thing with my writing. 

Continuing to work on The Looking Glass limited me to the skill I had when I first began crafting it. I’d built weaknesses into the characters and the plot. All my newbie decisions were so intrinsic to the story that I couldn’t see them, let alone undo them.

I needed a new start. A partial scholarship* to a Highlights Foundation workshop gave me the impetus I needed to dive into a new manuscript. The three-month deadline for a rough draft kept me from looking back.

I was surprised at how much easier the first draft of Valiant was to write.  I knew what needed to be done. I knew the questions I needed to ask about the plot and characters. I knew the mistakes I tended to make and worked to avoid them.

Don’t get me wrong: what I had at the end of three months was rough– really rough. But the bones were good. I used every bit of craft I'd learned over the years ... instead of working around all the mistakes I'd made over the years.

Isaac Newton, speaking of his accomplishments, said, "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." 

Granted, the giants he referred to were the intellectual greats that came before him. But the metaphor holds: I am convinced that a new manuscript stand on the shoulders of all the other stories we've spun. Those old stories give the new one height and depth and wisdom. 

So... if it's time, wave goodbye to your old manuscript. Give yourself permission to write the story all your earlier stories prepared you for. 

And in the meantime, have a Merry Christmas! I pray it brings you warmth and friendship and joy. 



*If you've been considering a Highlights workshop, but can't afford it,  apply for a scholarship! Now is the time of year to do so.

***Next week, the Turbo Monkeys will be on holiday with their tribes, but we've prepared some newsy little posts for you, so be sure to stop by, between the presents and the turkey. Love to you all!

Stay on the Dance Floor

I have been teaching Creative Writing at my high school this year. It's the first time the class has been offered in nearly a decade. I have awesome, dedicated, creative kids. It's been an amazing experience. 

And I've been scared out of my mind. 

What if I screw this up? What if I look like an idiot? What sort of math teacher teaches Creative Writing? What if a critique crushes someone's soul and they never write again? What if I have the writer of the next great American novel in my class and she sees how pitiful my writing is? 

It all boils down to: What if I'm not good enough?

Of course, I deal with that often enough in writing itself. Maybe these harpies sound familiar to you: 

What if I write the best I can, put everything I have on the page and it isn't good enough? 

Or, worse yet…

No one knows anything - from Hazel Mitchell

Last time we met here on Turbo Monkey Tales I talked about style and how to get it. I was going to do something similar and talk about the elements of the picture book, or story arc, or layout or some such. But when I opened the clean, white page of the 'new post' I found I didn't want to talk about that stuff at all.

A phrase has been tootling around the small space between my ears and that phrase is 'no one knows anything'. The more I think about it, the more convinced I am it is so.

This philosophizing was brought on by a Q&A with 'Roaring Brook Press' editor Neal Porter at a Highlight's Foundation workshop a couple of weeks back. Pretty much at the start of the discussion Neal quoted Hollywood screenwriter William Goldman - 'no one knows anything'. (Goldman was talking about the movie industry, but applying it to the industry of children's books makes a lot of sense).

I sat attentively, pen poised, ready to take notes like billy-o, absorbing pearls of wisdom. (I hasten to add there were MANY such pearls). But then I stopped writing and just listened. (see below).