Bubble Burst

I have been working on After the Dream for two years now.  I have had readers and more readers go through it.  Some have made little suggestions or even significant recommendations for entire scene changes.  I listened and shifted scenes and characters accordingly.

When I felt it was as good as I could get it, I sent it to a publisher and waited five months only to have it rejected.  I asked right away if they could give me some kind of idea about what didn't work for them.  Their response left me somewhat puzzled because it was so vague.  Then recently, I had a good author in my writer's group go over it.  Her feedback sounded like a much more specific and detailed version of what the publisher had sent me.  And it left me reeling.

I've received and given the feedback that a story started in the wrong place, that a whole section should simply be cut.  But to receive feedback that the entire first 100 pages were unnecessary and should be woven into flashbacks and such was something for which I was totally unprepared.  She also said she would cut it down to one point of view character and round out some of the characters.
I had multiple reactions to this.  One was, "Oh, that explains what the publisher meant."  Another was, "Well, that would turn it into the stereotypical romance story just like everyone else's." Yet a third was, "Well, that shows me how to get it down to the word count I'm seeking."  My emotions were all over the place because, although it's my story with which I can do as I like, I can't simply ignore feedback that so eerily echoes the publisher's.  I am waiting for a local editor to set an appointment to read through my manuscript.  If I do nothing, I will likely get the very same feedback all over again and learn nothing new.

On the other hand, I have a certain vision of what the heart of my romance novel is, and it's not just the standard once upon a time, boy meets girl. That is what would come of following this advice to the letter.  I see my novel as at least as much about healing from trauma as it is about romance.  If I cut the trauma entirely, it's not the same story.  If I cut the dream of pursuing a fairy tale/stereotypical romance only to find that both can go very wrong if not carefully considered, I cut out the heart of the story. On the other hand, it's true that most people would struggle with that first segment.  And if people don't get past that, they don't get to the part where the main character and the narrative come alive.  And to me, the man's point of view is as important as the woman's in this story, especially with the fact that my second novel also uses both points of view.

I give the advice all the time to help people care about the main character as step one.  Give them a reason to care, and they'll follow you to the ends of the world.  I thought I had but clearly not.  I have rewritten the first scene entirely to bring in the humor and the heart before launching the dream and nightmare.  I have included most of the dream but only a small fragment of the nightmare, the part that matters most. I have also included the part where she seeks comfort from a trusted confidante.  And now, alakazam, 80 pages of what was apparently drudgery becomes [I hope] 15-20 pages of meaningful backstory without extensive flashbacks.  My overly long manuscript becomes about the right length.  Now, to smooth it over and weave in the critical missing pieces.  Here's hoping the local editor and readers approve.

Character Change

So I started writing my current book, Pigs Fly, with a fairly clear idea of the main characters but only a vague idea of the side characters.  Now that I have most of the plotline written in disorganized bits and pieces, I've started to look for holes and places that could be fleshed out.  I realized I needed to truly develop some of the side characters, especially those that will star in the books to come.  The next book will be all about Connor's mentor in a community theater, Gayle.  When I started the book, I had a vague idea of a white older lady in a wheelchair, some matronly sort who was all put together and professional.

But Gayle runs a community theater, and I haven't been able to convince the character to get a real job.  She's only 61, and I keep trying to talk her into a profession.  Today, I sat down and spent some bonding time with her.  I realized everything about my prior vision was wrong.  Her voice sounded way too much like my other side characters.

First off, she's not white.  She's ethnically Japanese with no emotional connection to her culture, which frustrates her.  So many main characters, particularly in romance novels, are just white.  White is treated as normal even though more and more people have some minority blood in them or identify as other.

Second off, the wheelchair never really fit with my vision of her character.  No, Clark, the male main character, will be wheelchair-bound.  Gayle's going to be diabetic.  You see, a lot of people like to think that disabilities are rare.  To read fiction, you'd think they NEVER or almost never happened.  But in my experience, if you don't see a person's disabilities, it's probably because you don't know them as well as you think.  I rarely meet a person without at least a minor disability.  One of mine is insomnia.  That isn't an obvious disability like blindness or being wheelchair-bound, but it can make for some really bad days.  So many people I meet seem "normal" at first, but then they turn out to have dyslexia or OCD or auto-immune disorder or ADD or depression or anxiety or deafness in one ear or something.  Some of these issues are disabling while some are merely inconvenient.   It is, from my experience, a rare person that is TRULY free of ALL disabilities.  We are just culturally trained to avoid showing it, sometimes even to ourselves.  So many of us want to be seen as normal without realizing normal isn't the norm if it exists at all.

So as Gayle introduced herself, I realized her mom and grandparents had to become super Americans during WWII, thereby turning their backs on all things Japanese.  Here she is, several decades later with a rebellious hippie streak, a crazy fashion sense, and no idea what it even means to be Japanese.  She is culturally lost and in search of her roots as she tries to be a Japanese hippie artist, working through the symptoms of the same type of diabetes that took her father and expressing herself through art and community theater.  She zips around everywhere on her 70's bike, trying to brighten the world one play, one canvas at a time. I've read romances--not many but a few--centering on a middle-aged white matron.  But I haven't read this story.  And like all stories that intrigue me of late, it starts to get at the human condition.