Bibliographic 3.0: Skeletons
Hello!
I mentioned in my last newsletter that I’m going to send out more frequent newsletters about writing. This is the first one. Bibliographic 3.0.
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I firmly believe that writers have a “magic book” in them: the book that pours out of you in a fevered few months of writing, the book that feels easy, the book that feels fated. I believe it because I’ve witnessed it with friends of mine, talked to them in the throes of that magic book phase. It’s a glorious thing to behold. (NB: Writing a magic book doesn’t preclude months or years of editing! But for that first messy draft, all is well, all is exactly where it’s supposed to be.)
I haven’t encountered my magic book yet. I would like to think it’s owed to me at some point (Maybe my next book?!) Living Expenses was decidedly not a magic book. It started off on vibes, and took many different turns before it settled into the version it’s at now. I truly had to write my way into it, think about plot and then think about it again, take everything apart and put it back together. This took years.
Because of all that time, I thought that the formal edit stage would be… easy? My magic book edit? After my first meeting with my editor, Bryan Ibeas (who’s the editor of many books I admire deeply, like The Quiet is Loud by Samantha Garner, and books I’m eagerly awaiting, like Avalanche by Jessica Westhead), my homework was to reread my manuscript. No editing or rewriting, just reading. I hadn’t looked at it in months.
After reading it, I still like the book, but this will not be my magic edit either. There are parts that feel skeletal. The bones of the book I wanted to write are there but they need to be fleshed out so that they can eventually be trimmed down to the right size. I’m glad I have the structure, but I’ve realized that it’s time to write my way back into this book again.
Writing a novel takes so much stamina. You have to stick with it for so long. I’ve lost some of that stamina, writing taking a back seat to everything else. Responsible things like working, parenting, moving, but also just due to having lost the habit. Maybe some laziness? I say that because as I write this I’m cocooned in a kind of laziness. It’s the early days of August and I’m in Greece on vacation where the days are hot and slow, but full. I had a plan to do some book stuff here, but a week in and I haven’t been able to find the time.
Why no time? After waking up there’s breakfast to prepare and decisions to be made on which beach to go to first. We have to get dressed, apply sunscreen, pack a bag, pick up some supplies along the way— cold Cokes or Sprite, a bag of chips. Then we do the beach thing for awhile. Then we walk back in the heat, rinse the sand off our feet with the hose, drink some cold water, maybe rinse off the rest of the saltwater in the shower. A meal of some sort needs to be fit in, and then likely another beach visit, and some playing around with devices or reading. By night fall we’ve gone swimming once, twice, three times, eaten meals at times unfathomable back home, schemed the next day’s plans. Obviously I’m not working on book edits. (It feels magic too, though.)
The marked up manuscript that I printed and bound at Staples is sitting on my bedside table. Maybe I shouldn’t have brought its unnecessary weight all the way from Toronto to Greece, but I like seeing it. After a long time of not knowing if the book would be finished or published, it’s reassuring knowing that it won’t disappear. The bones are right there.
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More soon,
Teri