It's a good thing life is all about the journey, because the novel I'm currently rewriting has been part of my life's journey since 1995. It seems amazing to me that I knocked out the initial draft in three short months.
It was my first completed novel (I'd attempted another about seven years prior, which I was unable to complete, and I still haven't given up on that one, either). Because I lacked the craft to tell a story involving so many characters, I chose six of them and let each speak in his or her own voice. These were and are, I hope, authentic and fully fleshed characters, but there was no through-line that held them together and made the reader think, hope, or wonder what would happen next. Each of them experienced transformative events, yes, but that's not enough.
I submitted the poor darling in this early stage, being too stupid to know any better and too thrilled that I'd actually completed it, and while I got a number of responses to my queries asking to see more, no one bit. For this, we are most humbly grateful.
I rewrote it two or three times after that; I've lost count. And while I moved it out of the passive voice (a built-in problem when you're writing first-person narrative accounts) and into the active voice, this "improvement" still did not address the novel's inherent flaws. It's like having all the ingredients you need to make a wonderful cake, but not knowing how to properly combine them: your cake comes out flat.
I submitted it twice in this incarnation, and at least one agent said she loved my voice. Which is to say: I love the way you write; now, if only you knew how to tell a story.
Years go by. I attempt other novels, and I saddle them with similar problems. I read myriad books on writing, and it continues to amaze me that I, who love to read and love to write, can know so little about what constitutes good storytelling. And then Lisa Cron's book comes along, Wired for Story, and finally, finally, I see what I've been doing wrong.
It's time to try again. I take this novel I've written so many times, and I begin to write it all over again, fresh and new, from page one. And I think, I hope, I pray, I've got it this time. (I am nothing if not loyal to my characters and their stories, and nothing if not dogged in my determination to do them justice.) I'm only seventy pages in, but I'm encouraged. I plod on with a lighter heart this time.
