A Novel Idea

Revising can be slow-going.  Prior to this sojourn in Santa Fe, I’d already tweaked the first chapter too many times to count.  I spent the first week here revising those first pages again and again.  I’ve been slashing what’s extraneous and deleting anything that smacks of duplication.  Transcribing hours of notes from interviews and adding layers to the narrative — especially related to info and insights about underground hip hop culture. Fleshing out characters and being more specific about setting.  Taking seriously every suggestion in readers’ notes from a prospective agent.

It’s the so-called coincidences that keep me going, through the nit-picking and noodling, not to mention periodic nagging doubt.   Every so often the band of guides and angels I’ve dubbed “Team Tunie” delivers experiences of synchronicity just when I need them.  This morning I scribbled a journal entry about what synchronicity means to me: Each incidence of it serves as a kind of signpost, like the road sign one encounters along an unfamiliar back road, not only showing the way but providing reassurance, as in “Yes!  You’re going in the ‘write’ direction… you’re on the right path!” I’m invariably surprised by these signs – my reaction akin to “Ha!  Well I never… look-a here!”

I finished Stephen King’s book, On Writing this morning, before my own work began and not ten pages from the end — these last pages an example of his own revision process – I read the phrase — his fedora with the PRESS tag stuck in the band.  What are the chances that this image, related to a bygone era, would be in my contemporary tween novel, too?  Precisely because it ‘s so unlikely, I’m inclined to view the fluke as a nudge, regarding my own revision, to keep at it.

NYC b-girl Ana Rockafella Garcia recently sent me an email (an afterthought) about a book I should see – the entire content in the words of b-girls themselves. The book arrived in this mailbox with the info I needed at exactly the juncture I needed it.

I’ve been playing with what the exposure to breaking has meant to my main character and two days ago “accidentally” came upon a TED lecture by Robert Gupta about music as medicine. He recounts a meeting with a homeless schizophrenic musician, raving about invisible demons when they met, who transformed before his eyes into an inspired listener once Gupta abandoned words for music that he played on his violin.  Passion for the music provides this paranoid man escape from his burdens.  Teacher, Amy Sackett has similarly described hip hop music’s empowering influence in students’ lives;  she’s spoken to me of the power of community, too.  Gupta also speaks of a community in this troubled man’s life that recognizes his talents and respects him…  a “crew,” if you will, that brings a man back into the fold.  Gupta underscored Amy’s points, the nudge I needed to incorporate the insights.

If that’s not coincidence enough, Gupta ends the presentation by playing a piece of music he loves – one the violinist confesses he shamelessly stole from cellists.  It’s Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1, that I play each and every A.M. during a new ritual based on Writing the Mind Alive, something like automatic writing that puts one in flow.  To me, it’s another signpost:  Keep doing what you’re doing.

Almost a year ago Michele Young-Stone and I became FB friends.  She shared info related to surviving a lightning strike as a child to add to research for my own novel.  Yesterday my pre-ordered copy of her debut novel, The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors, arrived and I’m loving it.  Today she posted this aside to friends who are celebrating its publication:

“Not-so-long ago in a galaxy far, far away, I was a writer doubting that my novel would ever see the light of day so I made my own book, with tiny printed pages and everything.  Attached to my miniature book was a long string, like a placeholder.  Whenever anyone asked, ‘What’s this supposed to be?’ I joked, ‘The rope I’m going to hang myself with since I‘m never going to be published.’  Like every other writer, I had my share of rejection.  I think it just goes to show:  Never give up.”

Perhaps something in this post is a sign for you to keep doing what you’re doing, to not give up.  A cause for wonder (if you’re paying attention) to prompt your very own “ Well, I never… look-a here!”  I hope so.

This entry was posted on April 22, 2010 at 12:15 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.