Multitasking Manuscripts

June has been a funky month. Aside from the usual torrent of busy-ness at work and at home, my modicum of a writing life has been tossed about on a crazy train.

In one of those "fish or cut bait" moments, I decided to quit whining about how I don't have any time to get my first novel out the door. But I'm too much of a perfectionist to not give it one last massaging, taking into account the many prescient comments my early readers have offered. If you're a writer, you know what I mean: "I liked it, but I'm not sure I know what value [insert name of character] provides." Or "I can almost taste that room, but I think I'm getting lost there. Too descriptive!"

Masked in compliments, remarks like those are vital to getting a manuscript in shape, because they cut to the heart of the matter: It's not ready yet. However, while I've appreciated the support of my carefully selected early readers, I didn't always hear what they said. As writers, we're trained to put a finished draft aside for several weeks and work on something else before going back to revise. In a sense, I've found that I needed a similar bit of time to let my readers' comments simmer too. Finally, the remarks have sunk in and I'm eager to get this puppy out into the field to run.

So, I've reopened the manuscript, stripped out some of the detail, added more character development to those people who needed it, and even happened upon a couple typos that somehow escaped the typo-spray I'd shot at the manuscript months if not years ago. Damn insects!

But I don't want to lose the momentum on my current work in progress. I've made great progress in a short amount of time, and I intend to finish the first draft by the end of the year. Hence, the challenge: How do you get a manuscript in shape for agents when you're also writing something new?

For me, the biggest challenge is time. (I know, I know. Not only have I joined that club, I serve on the board, which hasn't helped at all.) So trying to manage multiple manuscripts is like keeping two toddlers safe when they're exploring the house in different directions. I know whereof I speak.

What advice do you have for your fellow writers? Do you focus on one manuscript at a time? Do you move back and forth each week or each day? Do you have other suggestions? Feel free to share.

In the Beginning

A few of you have heard or read my descriptions of the inspiration of my current work in progress, which is set "in part" in Antarctica. For those who don't know, the idea came from a press release that crossed my desk. I read about a strange salt deposit that doesn't happen anywhere else in the world. From what they've learned there, scientists and researchers are exploring all sorts of things such as whether the existence of life in that environment might suggest how life might exist in extreme cold on other planets and moons.

At least so far, my story doesn't explore the questions of life on other planets. Rather, it explores whether there might be love for one scientist in particular. Or is she locked in a cold, barren wasteland in which an occasional, potentially devastating warm wind blows? I've never been a love story writer, so in some ways this is uncharted territory for me, too.

Still, when I first saw that press release lo these many years ago, I had an almost immediate image of characters and how the novel would start. But this past weekend, in between cooking scrambled eggs and driving to Home Depot, I pondered a change. What if the story doesn't begin where I thought it did? Or, another way of looking at it: Why do I start a novel that I always describe as "taking place in Antarctica" on a road in California, where the scene culminates in a fatal car accident? Why does a reader care? And at 40,000 words written, is it too late to change?

A fellow writer who helped me think about my previous novel called on Friday. He writes science fiction — a genre I like very much though I've not written much of it lately — and we chatted about our current WIPs. He remarked about how our pieces had one fundamental similarity: world building. That phrase and all it implies lingered with me even as I worked on the novel as I had before we spoke.

Recently, I returned to some research notes and rediscovered the incredible variety in the landscape surrounding my setting in Antarctica. And I realized my friend was right: readers need to know what this place looks like. Of course, I don't want to load my first pages up with icebergs of backstory, but I've begun rewriting my opening chapter — and probably several early chapters will need to be changed.

What I've written previously remains viable. After all, those people must die. But I think I've made a significant shift. I hope it will be a fruitful change. If nothing else, I will get to use more of what I've learned researching Antarctica. California simply is nowhere near as fascinating to me.

How about you? Have you realized in the midst of writing a novel that you've got some fundamental flaws? What did you do about it?