All posts by Rene Gutteridge

05/182020

Writing Amidst Changing Times

It was an extraordinary statement among all the startling statements I’d been listening to over the last few weeks. You’d heard the news cycle: Infection rates. Projected deaths in the United States. Government cover-ups in foreign lands. The television drenched us with one horrific piece of news after another.

But as I stood in my kitchen watching the now famous infectious disease expert from the NIH, Anthony Fauci, talk about Covid-19, there was one statement that stood out from the rest.

“We may never shake hands again.”

Being the writer I am, my imagination fast-forwarded to a world with no hand shaking. I imagined myself greeting someone new or an acquaintance I hadn’t seen in a long time. I normally offer my hand. It’s a gesture that speaks so much without any words.

Throughout history, a handshake was used to signal a person didn’t have a weapon.

In modern times, it serves as a warm greeting, or a show of equality (rather than a bow or curtsey). It’s especially helpful in the professional world.

Personally, I use it to set boundaries. Because I’m short and friendly, strangers I’ve just met sometimes have the urge to hug me out of nowhere. I’ve gotten used to it over the years, but if I can get a handshake in before an attempted hug, it helps avoid being squeezed by someone I don’t know. (I’m a fan of hugging otherwise!)

My mind reeled: what would take the place of handshakes? An elbow bump? Hardly seems professional. A fist bump? I mean…can you picture it? “Mr. Jones, so nice to finally meet you in person!” Fist bump. Ugh. Couldn’t fathom it.

Round and round my mind went, trying to imagine a world without handshakes.

And then my mind drifted toward my creative projects.

Like fingers flipping through a rolodex, I inventoried the scenes in my current projects where my characters shook hands. If the project were to come out in 2021, 2022, 2023 or beyond, and someone shook hands after the gesture disappeared from our society, it would instantly look dated.

I’d been through this before, and it’s an important part of writing in modern times.

You’ve seen movies where the character pulls out a flip phone. It instantly dates it now, doesn’t it?

Back in the early 2000s, I had a bad stroke of luck with Martha Stewart. I’d created a series of books in which my main character, Ainsley, looked up to Martha Stewart and patterned her whole life after her.

Seemed harmless enough.

Until Breaking News! Martha Stewart goes to jail!

In the middle of editing the book, I had to go back into the project and address the fact that Martha Stewart now had a felony. I mean, who could’ve predicted that?

Things can change. And fast.

From the time my book Skid was published to the time it was made into a movie, SkyMall magazine ceased to exist on airplanes. Several scenes in the screenplay and book included a character who is taking her stress out by impulse shopping at 30,000 feet.

In the end, we decided to leave it in because of the massive rewrites that would’ve had to take place, and most people were familiar with SkyMall but not everyone knew it was out of print.

9/11. That affected all kinds of literature. Remember when people could greet you at the gate? No longer a thing. Had to change a scene in the book I was writing.

With every current piece of creative work, it’s difficult to figure out what our world will look like after this pandemic, isn’t it? And because books often take one to three years before they go to print (at least with traditional publishing) it’s nearly impossible to look ahead when there’s an earth rattling crisis.

So. What to do?

My first piece of advice is: don’t sweat it. But while you’re playing it cool, here are some thoughts about maneuvering through your Work in Progress (WIP).

No matter what the world looks like in the aftermath, there is no way that the pandemic won’t be a part of our culture, our vocabulary and the way we live our lives. There’s no use ignoring it and pretending it didn’t happen. It will go down in the history books and be studied for years, so wherever it’s appropriate, reference it.

That said, if you can, avoid it. Unless the book has to do with the actual pandemic, be subtle about how you reference it (like your character might squirt hand sanitizer while before the pandemic you would never dream of mentioning it) but refrain from overtly referencing it (like everyone everywhere is wearing masks).

In traditional publishing, your editors will be able to guide you on how to adjust your manuscript to fit their publishing house policies regarding fiction and the pandemic. Believe me, there will be some in-house meetings about it.

If you are self-publishing, keep in mind that you have the option to go in and change a few things if you need to, even once it’s published. That’s the handy thing about electronic publishing.

I believe for the most part that readers will ignore whether or not you’ve hit the bullseye on how you’re depicting the pandemic. They’re more interested in the story you’re telling and many fiction readers use books to escape reality—even the reality of the pandemic. They might be grateful that it’s not mentioned at all.

By the way, if news that SkyMall went bankrupt triggered a sudden urge to impulse buy weird stuff, you can still find them at SkyMall.com.

Rene Gutteridge

Rene Gutteridge is the author of 24 novels, in the genres of suspense, comedy, and contemporary. She has also novelized the motion pictures Old Fashioned, Heart of the Country and The Ultimate Gift. Her novel My Life as a Doormat was adapted into a movie for Hallmark called Love’s Complicated. She is screenwriter on the movie Skid, now available on Amazon Prime. She is currently head writer at Skit Guys Studios.

www.renegutteridge.com/

02/102020

How to Hit Your Word Count Without Losing Your Mind

For many writers, the thought of writing a full-length novel seems amazing. They’ve had the story in their mind for years, and now it’s time to finally put it on paper. They have backstory ready to go. Character arc is fully developed–sorta. Plot points are in place. The ending is in limbo but they’ll figure that out.

The time is now.

That is, until they think about the numbers.

Writers aren’t by nature numbers people, but whether you can reconcile your checking account or not, when you begin to think of all those thousands…tens of thousands…of words you’re going to be putting down on paper, it can feel very daunting.

In fact, “how long does it take you to write a book” is one of the most common questions I get asked, from writers and non-writers alike.

Unfortunately, if you’re going to make it as a professional novelist, you’re going to need to learn to juggle these numbers. Eventually, you’re going to end up being hyper-focused on them because page by page, number by number, is how you end up building a novel.

When I sold my first book, word count wasn’t even on my mind. My first child was five weeks old when I got the call that I’d sold my novel. It was off a proposal so I hadn’t even written the book yet. I looked up the deadline on the contract and off I went, a mad scramble to finish the book in 9 months. I wrote like a crazy person—I mean that literally.

Since my son was so young, I’d work until 2 a.m., in between feedings, when, you know, your mind is at its sharpest…? At the time I was employed by a church, so I had a day job, an infant and a novel to finish. It was something I could’ve only pulled off in my twenties.

By my fifth novel and my second kid I had pretty much learned no lessons whatsoever on disciplining myself with word count. I had no system other than to finish the book at all costs. Two weeks after my daughter was born I was back at the desk, hammering away. I stole pockets of time wherever I could—writing hours on end on one day and five to ten minutes the next, obsessed with the word count number at the bottom of the document, praying I’d make it on time.

It was about seven or so books into my career when I realized that this was not a healthy way to approach the creative process. It felt frantic. I was constantly unsure when I could take time off—had I done enough? What if something happened and I didn’t have enough time? I knew I had to find a different way.

So I polled a few of my writer friends to see how they handled it. Some people had good systems…systems I thought sounded absolutely lovely and peaceful…but they didn’t fit the lifestyle of a harried mom of young children.

The problem was that every week had its own set of challenges. Every day, for that matter. Sheesh, every hour.

I’d tell myself, okay, today I’m going to get the chapter written but then my son would wake up with a fever and there it would go. Even when they got into school, there were activities that I wanted to be at, cupcakes to bake, neon yellow t-shirts to hunt down for the school play. Having a set schedule every day was impossible.

But I ultimately found a solution—a way that fit all the unpredictability of being a mom—and it carried me for the rest of my writing career.

It was very simple, once I thought about it.

Most of my books were sold off of proposals, so the most I’d written on the book was about three chapters, or none at all. So here is how it worked:

I marked the deadline on my calendar and counted backward to the current date, calculating how many weeks were between the two.
I took that and divided it into the estimated word count. I would get a baseline number. Let’s say 4,000 words a week. Not bad!
BUT….there were things to consider.
The flu. It would hit, no doubt. Or something like it. I had kids. They break arms. They get pink eye. They decide they’re never going back to school and “you can’t make me.” Things of that nature. So, I took two weeks out for “kid problems.”
Again, the flu. If the kids got it, good chance I would get it. However, I know how to work through illness with enough Dayquil. I didn’t need a week. Probably two days max. So I took away two more days.
Vacation. Haha. I’m a writer. Never mind.
Christmas. All that comes with it.
Editing time. Two weeks minimum. Three weeks preferably.

You get the picture. I’d scrutinize the thirty weeks I had, or whatever it was (usually between 6 and 9 months) and figure out the realistic picture of how much time I needed to write.

And from there I came up with a weekly word count. THAT was key for me. Daily was not. But weekly, yes, that was better. If I came to the end of the week and I was three thousand words short, I got up at the crack of dawn on Saturday and knocked those words out. Or I paid a young teen top dollar to play with my kids for three hours while I hid away in my bedroom. If I finished my word count early that week, I had the choice of taking a breather or getting a head start on the next week.

This method was the way I continued on for all my projects, even to this day.

While I coach writers that you shouldn’t be intimidated by the word count—you can do it!—I also advise that it’s something each writer should take very seriously. It’s a good thing to begin practicing long before you get a contract.

Deadlines, you’ll find out, are of utmost importance in the publishing world. Missing a deadline affects a lot of other people and their own deadlines. Turning your book in “whenever you finally finish it” will not get you invited back to a publisher. Although it’s hard to imagine how far in advance publishers work on behalf of your book, you must understand while you’re writing the book, sales associates may already be taking the catalog that showcases it to conventions, pitching it to buyers from major booksellers. It causes everyone in the office, from the marketing department to the editorial department, to shuffle their projects around to accommodate a manuscript coming in late.

Many publishers build in a little wiggle room. Life happens and they know that. But do yourself a favor and become the writer that publishers know they can depend on. You’ll be cast as a professional, and that is a big win.

Of the 25 books I published over the years, I only missed two deadlines—both due to illness, including one hospitalization. But I did the thing a professional does. I called, made arrangements for a new deadline, and made sure that I hit that one.

Once you begin making money in this business, it becomes even easier to take seriously those deadlines and a healthy workflow. You’ve cashed the check. It’s in the bank. You’d like to keep it…so yeah, I’ll forgo that shopping trip with the girls and finish my word count for the week. Those were the kinds of choices I had to make sometimes. And I’m glad I did.

One last thing, a bonus tip for working when you have small children…

Working from home has a lot of challenges. Working at home with small children can feel impossible. One thing I came to discover very quickly was that the more time I needed to be uninterrupted, the harder the kids would try to interrupt me.

For instance, I would put on a video and tell them, “OK, Mom needs one hour alone to work, so it’s your quiet time.” And then the creativity would start—every excuse under the sun that they would come up with to interrupt. One time John said, “I thought I smelled smoke.”

Even when my husband was watching them and they had plenty of attention, it was too much of a temptation to them—somehow, someway, they’d figure out how to interrupt.

So one day I received this little sign from a writer’s conference. It said, “Writer at Work—do not disturb. Note: will make exceptions for those bearing contracts or chocolate.”

I decided to add: “Or John and Cate.” I stuck it to my bedroom door.

I wondered–if they had permission to come in, would it be less tantalizing?

So I took both of them to my office/bedroom and showed them the sign. “Do you know what this means?” I asked them. They shook their heads. “This means that only you two are allowed to interrupt me during work.”

Their eyes widened. “What about Dad?” they asked

“Not even Dad. But you two have permission.”

They looked astonished.

The next few times I worked, they came knocking. And I greeted them with enthusiasm every time. But I bet you can guess how it went…after a few knocks, the luster wore off and pretty soon, when I needed an hour, it didn’t even dawn on them to come interrupt.

Sometimes, you gotta be creative to get that word count in. But you’ll find those times, I promise. And before you know it, you will have birthed a new child—in the form of a book.

Rene Gutteridge

www.renegutteridge.com/

10/282019

Writing What We Don’t Know

Craft of Writing, Inspiration details 10 by Rene Gutteridge

While researching my book on the Moore tornado of 2013, I came across the story of a man who instantly intrigued me. His name is Ted “Mr. Tornado” Fujita. The tornado F-scale is named after him, and he is responsible for nearly all the information we have about the mysterious weather phenomenon known as the “tornado.”

An expert in severe weather research, his relentless pursuit for information helped the field of meteorology understand some of the most mystifying weather occurrences in existence…as well as discover the invisible and disastrous phenomenon known as the microburst, capable of taking down 90,000 pound airliners.

What fascinated me about Fujita, among other things, was how he studied tornadoes. He was known for taking hundreds of aerial pictures of tornado damage and then meticulously drawing the damage path in order to find patterns of destruction. These patterns gave him the data he needed to establish wind strength as well as it helped him discover multi-vortex tornadoes, which nobody knew even existed.

But what really captivated me was his insistence on also studying the aftermath from the ground. Dr. Fujita would walk the tornado path, get down on his hands and knees and study a single blade of grass, intrigued by the way it was bent, understanding that this small clue held the greatest meaning.

Ted Fujita was almost single-handedly responsible for unlocking the mysteries of weather phenomena that were hardly understood before and certainly feared by citizens and scientists alike. But he did this by observing it in a different way…by studying the details.

As I was considering how I approach writing about topics I don’t know, I think this is a good example of the method. Studying it at large is overwhelming, not to mention time consuming. The “aerial photo” gives a good view, but it’s too expansive to write about. I can see it, sure, but how can I understand all about it or even explain it to my reader?

When I begin the difficult task of writing on a topic I know nothing about, I have to try to sort through the enormity and find the details that tell the real story…the most interesting story. It’s not as hard as you think. You just have to “metaphorically” get down on your hands and knees.

For example, when I interviewed some pilots about their commercial airline experience, I wanted to know some of the gritty details. “What,” I asked, “are some things people just don’t know about your job?”

Oh boy! Did that get a response! I learned a ton, especially about the culture. Most agreed that pilots and flight attendants don’t get along very well. One guy complained that since the flight attendants who got assigned the international flights were older, they tended to “all be in menopause and grumpy and hot all the time.” Not my words, but fascinating to ponder, since I hadn’t considered that international flight attendants were more experienced, therefore would be older.

One guy told me of a way some pilots were cheating the system to try to make more money, since their pay was so drastically cut due to September 11^th. He described the financial disaster many pilots found themselves in. They’d bought a house expecting one lifestyle, and now had a hefty mortgage and half the pay.

The flight attendants had their own opinion of pilots, as you can imagine. One described her efforts to out a pilot’s affair to his wife by placing a lipstick stain on the collar of a shirt he had in his bag, with hopes that his wife might see it when he got home. (Yikes, right?)

I even got a chance to talk to the man who made the decision to ground all Delta flights on September 11^th, before the FAA made the call. I stood in the Command Center of Delta in awe of the room; it was everything you imagine that it would be. Dark. Large, glowing monitors. Men and women attentive to multiple screens, headsets commanding their attention.

I did my own research as well. I listened to dozens of hours of air traffic control tapes, including all of the 9/11 air traffic recordings. I was curious to hear their voices on that day. The cadence. It’s amazing the calm pilots always display, even in terrifying moments.

I did interview after interview, which painted less of a large picture, and more of a detailed picture, and one that provided very interesting insights into the life of airline personnel. It was less “destruction path” and more “bent grass.”

For another book I interviewed an undercover cop. When I asked him to describe some of the dangers, he stopped me and insisted I understand something. “I don’t have the most dangerous job. It’s patrol officers. I work in a controlled environment. They never know what they’re walking up to when they stop a car.” It made me understand something I would not have known before. And he was right. In the past few years, we’ve certainly seen that as true, haven’t we?

Another curious thing about Dr. Fujita was how he solved the mystery of downdrafts and microbursts. A microburst is a sinking column of air that can cause extensive damage, including crashing large aircraft. And downdrafts are powerful currents in a thunderstorm.

Before Dr. Fujita, nobody understood what they were or how they were causing such damage. Airliners were falling out of the sky but nobody could explain why. However, Dr. Fujita had a life experience that helped him solve the mystery.

After narrowly missing the nuclear bombing of Nagasaki, he was sent to study it. He had a mechanical engineering degree and training, and Fujita was captivated by the damage of the bomb and the circular pattern of destruction that came from it. The outward burst of the obliteration of trees, power poles and other objects created almost a starburst-like effect.

In his study of supercells and some of their damage, he noticed the same thing, and though microbursts are invisible, he could envision a column of air punching downward, like a bomb, and exploding outward, like the destruction of a nuclear detonation. That is how he discovered the microburst. Many scientists thought he was crazy until the Dallas crash of Delta Flight 191 in 1985. After studying the crash site, Fujita was proven right. An invisible and powerful column of air had caused the crash. And from that moment on, airline safety was changed forever to include training on microbursts.

Like Fujita, we can take our own life experiences and add them to what we’re studying. Let’s say you’re writing about law enforcement. What have you noticed in your own life that you can add to whatever scenario you’re writing about? For example, when I was involved in the Oklahoma City bombing, I ran squarely into a police officer minutes after the explosion. The scene was chaotic and I was trying to get to the building in which I worked.

He grabbed my shirt as I tried to run across the street toward the building. Our eyes locked. And you know what I saw? Not power. Fear. The scene was too big. The chaos was overwhelming. And here was one young woman running. He didn’t know to where. Or why. And then he let me go. He knew there were other things he would need to do. I wasn’t…and couldn’t be…his biggest concern.

Whenever I write about law enforcement, I take that with me. They’re human. They can be afraid. There are moments that overwhelm them. Like Fujita, I deconstruct my characters like he deconstructed his studies, using life experience.

Even though Ted “Mr. Tornado” Fujita is responsible for solving some of meteorology’s biggest mysteries, it wasn’t until almost the end of his career that he actually witnessed a tornado. He was a student of study but not a witness to the event. And that’s how we must understand our role. We should have a keen eye for the details that paint the picture. It won’t be in trying to explain the whole of it. It will be by absorbing the small details. Our readers will appreciate the nuances we provide, and will especially enjoy learning things they didn’t know.

And you will have a much more manageable way to write about something you knew nothing about when you started.

Rene Gutteridge

www.renegutteridge.com/

10/072019

How to Review a Review

Business of Writing, Inspiration reviews by Rene Gutteridge

When you first get published, peers will tell you, “Don’t read your reviews.” We nod, completely understanding how distracting and potentially damaging it could be to our artistic psyche.

And then we all ignore that advice and read them anyway.

How can we not? They’re everywhere these days and we’re curious, of course. Writing is such a solitary job, and aside from our family and maybe a close friend, we typically have no idea how well our book is received. Even if the sales numbers don’t look good, it might still be beloved.

So we take a little peek…

And before you know it, two hours have passed by and you’ve found yourself all over the Internet.

But besides literary reviews and Amazon reviews, there are also editorial reviews and, well, family and friend reviews.

So, how does one manage all these reviews and keep yourself halfway sane?

I’ve got some tips for you. It’s manageable, I promise, but the right mindset makes all the difference in the world. The right lens. Or as I always say, a good filter.

LITERARY JOURNAL REVIEWS

These have always been the most terrifying for me. Many of my books have had the honor of being reviewed in Publisher’s Weekly and I was glad I never knew ahead of time. My publishers always alerted me when they came out, and forwarded me a copy because I didn’t subscribe.

One reason I never subscribed was because I didn’t want to get into “comparison” mode. It can be easy to read great or bad reviews of other writers and start comparing yourself to them.

Publisher’s Weekly scared me the most because I knew one thing for sure: these people knew books. They breathed books. It was what they did All Day Long.

But because they know books, I had to come to terms with the fact that they knew what they were talking about. Not that they were always right. But they had reading chops, if that is a fair way to put it.

That meant I had to put at least some stock into what they were saying. I had to read with an eye toward their gift on sensing if a book was working or not.

The hard part of this is that of course all things are a matter of taste, and art of any kind of subjective. But what I started seeing as I read more and more literary journal reviews is that the reviewers seemed to be more specific in their praises and criticisms. They could put “their finger on it.”

And here’s what really won me over to really paying attention to them:

In one of my early books, I had an editor who I thought was really good, but in one instance, I noticed he’d added a line to a paragraph. I didn’t like it. It didn’t feel like it fit at all. It was also, in my opinion, poorly written. In short, it was a bad attempt at a metaphor.

But being new and green, I decided, “Who am I to question a seasoned editor?”

So I left it in.

Fast forward to the review of it in the literary journal. It was a very positive review of the book. But one thing totally blew me away. It was a simple observation: “Except for the occasional strange and displaced line (and they quoted THAT LINE!).

Holy cow! They spotted it! They knew it didn’t fit!

Well, that did a couple of things for me. It taught me to trust my instincts. And to speak up if I don’t think something is working, even if it’s an editor’s suggestion. I have found that 95% of the time, a good editor nails it. But this time, I should’ve said something.

It also showed me what an eye these professional critics have. So I pay attention. I don’t hang my whole career on them. But I value their opinion, even if their opinion causes me to take a harder look at what I’m doing.

ONLINE AND BLOG REVIEWS

These review sites are typically run by avid readers, librarians, bookstore owners, bloggers and others who love books and enjoy reviewing them. They are invaluable to getting your book into the hands of readers. Word-of-mouth will always be your best friend as a writer.

These are also great because there are so many genre-specific sites. Love Amish Fiction? There are whole blogs and websites dedicated to it. I used tons of these reviews to tweet and quote. For the most part, they were helpful in that way.

But occasionally, things can go sideways. I once had a very popular site dedicated to romance and romantic suspense criticize nearly every suspense book I released for not having any strong romance in it. It was bad review after bad review.

Well, it’s because my suspense books aren’t romantic suspense.

They never did catch on to it. And the reviews were beginning to feel personal, as if I was out to insult them with my lack of a strong romantic storyline.

Those are the ones that you have to just walk away from and hope that there are readers who see it and go, “Oh, that sounds like I’d love it since I don’t like romantic suspense.”

For the most part, though, these are reviews that you can use to help spread the word about your book. And if they reach out and ask you for an interview, do it! They’re telling you that they want to promote your book! They like you! I had many sites and blogs that supported me my entire fiction writing career. I couldn’t be more thankful.

CUSTOMER REVIEWS

Here’s where the rubber meets the road, so to speak. No matter what Publisher’s Weekly or The Suspense Zone or anyone else says about your books, what do consumers think? What do readers love or hate?

These are by far the trickiest reviews to navigate. Thankfully, long ago, one of my mentors told me this about reviews: “You’ll see one star and someone will say really horrible things about your writing. Even about you. Don’t believe them. You’ll also see five star reviews declaring you’re the best writer out there. Don’t believe them. The truth is somewhere in the middle.”

I always appreciated that. It’s easy to put too much stock in reviews, good and bad. But reader reviews are important. These are who you are targeting, after all, with your writing. These are the people you want to pick up your book.

It’s difficult terrain to manage your way over. Some writer friends never read them. Some read every single one. I fall somewhere in the middle. I don’t typically hop on Amazon or Barnes and Noble until I’ve got some distance between myself and the project. It’ll be a few months after the book is released, usually as I’m on to the next project, before I’ll go see if anyone is reviewing it and what they’re saying.

By then I have enough emotional distance to treat it more like data. I search for patterns. If I keep seeing, “The plot lags,” then I probably need to pay attention to that. And I even pay attention to patterns that are good. Those “samplings” give me the best indication of what I’m doing right and what I might be able to improve upon.

That’s, of course, after you have to wade through a lot of weirdness. You’ll see things like, “I hate reading and now I hate it more.” Okay… “I don’t like the font used in the title.” Right. “I thought this was erotica. I’m disappointed.” So good luck with all of that.

But at the end of the day, you can’t make everyone happy. And most people who read reviews before they buy know a legitimate review. Some people don’t care what others think and just read what they want to.

Years ago there used to be this amazing reviewer on Amazon. I think all she did was review books. I bet she read one or two a day. That’s how fast she was reviewing books. And she was good at it. You could tell she really read them, and her reviews were thoughtful and informative.

Too informative. Every single time, in every review, she gave away the plot twist and the ending.

It had the writing community in an uproar. A bunch of writers complained and went to Amazon. I never heard what happened, but her reviews stopped showing up. I hated that she gave away the ending. It made my stomach sick. But I do miss her reviews. It’s really interesting to read what someone else thinks of your book, especially when they’ve read it with a careful eye. That’s my favorite kind of review—minus the plot twist reveal at the end.

EDITORIAL REVIEWS

So you’ve written your book, made your deadline (Of course you did! That’s how professional you are!) and now you wait. And wait. And wait. Editorial reviews can take weeks. It’s a really hard waiting time. Partly it’s because you’re at your most vulnerable as a writer. And your work is too. These are the first people to see what you’ve done. How you’ve triumphed. And where you’ve failed.

Man, I hated those waits.

The longer they were, the more I began to think things were going south. Time was never a good indication of how close I’d hit my target, but it felt like it.

And then I’d get the email or phone call. Sometimes publishers wanted to talk to me by phone before they sent their notes. Sometimes they’d send notes and then want to talk. Every publisher was different.

I was so fortunate through the years to have the very best editors. Without exception, they each started their notes with everything they liked about the book. And then they would ease into what needed attention.

I’ll never forget on my third book, I had an editor named Erin Healy. The first page of notes was everything she liked and thought I was nailing. But the letter was four pages long. And pages 2-4 had suddenly dropped from 12-point type to 8-point.

I loved her for that. I loved that she was sensitive enough to try to keep the page count manageable for me. But her notes on that book made the book what it is today, and launched my most beloved comedy series that is still read all these years later. That book was Boo.

But let me share a little piece of advice on these editorial notes. They can be really hard to stomach when you first read them. So I do two things.

When I first see them come in, I don’t open them.

I always wait until first thing the next day. This gives my mind time to prepare itself. I have to get in the right mindset.

Second, after I read them, I give myself 24 hours before I do anything: before I call the editor, before I open the manuscript, before I even talk about them.

Some notes can feel so wrong. Some you want to automatically defend. Something rises up on you, like a bear defending her cub, and you can sort of feel this roar come over you and out of you. All you want to do is defend yourself, your work and your choices.

So you have to let it settle a little bit. You have to think it through.

Slowly, most if not all of the notes begin to make a little more sense. You can see it in a new light. You’re considering it with a different attitude.

It’s really amazing how it all absorbs into you. And those notes that you don’t agree with or would like clarification on can be discussed with a clear head and open mind.

Every editor has brought their own unique skill set to each project they’ve worked on with me. I cherish all of them. They’re still friends to this day. I miss working with them on a regular basis. And they made me the writer I am.

There’s no doubt about it. Writing takes a kind of emotional resilience that most of us aren’t born with. It takes practice to be able to fight your way through criticism, praise and constructive evaluation. A solid mindset going in will help, especially realizing no matter what, “It’s not the end of the world. You are not your review.” A group of friends and writing partners you can lean into will be invaluable—somehow you’ll come out laughing about it. And make a promise to yourself that you’ll keep going. You’ll keep getting better.

That’s what I love about writing. There’s never a moment where you can say, “I’ve learned it all.” There’s always room to grow and do more and that’s a challenge I’m always willing to accept.

Rene Gutteridge

www.renegutteridge.com/

09/302019

Broken Things: An Approach to First Drafts

Craft of Writing draft 11 by Rene Gutteridge

I have a bizarre relationship with new things. Maybe you can identify with it. I can’t seem to own them very long before they’re damaged. Many years ago my husband and I went out and bought our first really nice, new piece of furniture, a dining room table. We’d had it exactly three days before my 110-pound boxer, who’d never done this before to our knowledge, decided to go for a pizza box sitting in the middle of the table. His claw marks left the evidence.

I won’t lie. I cried.

Before that, the day we moved into our house, I was carrying some kind of metal sculpture across the nicest tile we’d ever owned, dropped it, and chipped the tile. For years afterward I would just stand there and look at that dang chip.

I come from a long line of relatives who do not have this problem. Especially my mother. She has owned pieces of furniture for 40 years that look brand new. Granted, she buffs and waxes and has some special tricks for small nicks, but it’s like there’s an invisible shield around what she owns. No one spills stuff. No one drops stuff.

No such luck for me. New cars get dings. New carpets get spills. Clothes get holes. Even trashcans get ruined. All the while I’m trying to live up to the high standards from which I was bred.

But I was freed from all of this a few years ago when I went to stay with my friend Torry Martin. Torry and I had teamed up on a few projects and I traveled to Georgia to stay with him while he, his writing partner Marshall, and I worked on our movie Heaven Bound.

Nothing could’ve prepared me for walking into his house. The outside looked simple enough, but when I walked through the door, I was greeted with what can only be described as a decorating marvel. I knew Torry to be a creative guy. He has a shoe collection that belongs in some kind of Guinness World Book of Records. But I had no idea it spilled into his everyday life. His entire house was beautifully and creatively decorated, the kind of eclectic taste that most of us appreciate but would fail at. His entire downstairs was a bed and breakfast, and I felt like I’d just walked into my ideal creative space.

I couldn’t stop talking about his decorating skills when he smiled and said, “Let me show you a little secret.” We were standing in his kitchen and he pulled back a kitchen towel to reveal a nice-sized dent in his refrigerator. He beckoned me to follow him and showed me a huge chunk out the back leg of a living room chair. On and on this went. Tables, scratched but cleverly disguised. Appliances that had seen better days but didn’t show it. Rugs that had holes but were covered with cleverly-placed baskets.

I couldn’t believe it.

He explained he purposefully buys damaged goods. “It reminds me,” he said, “of how beautiful broken things can be.”

I was set free right then and there of trying to buy and keep beautiful things. I adopted Torry’s approach to decorating and buying. It was astounding what it did for my mindset, and my pocketbook. Our entertainment system has a crushed corner in the back. Our high-end dishwasher cost me pennies on the dollar because it has a dent no one can see. My entire office is full of furniture that hides well its secret scars.

Not only does it remind me of the beauty of broken things, but it relieves me of the pressure of keeping a new thing from harm. Just last year, after my son wrecked one of our vehicles, I stood next to a car salesman as he and I looked at a used Ford Explorer. I loved how it drove, and it seemed well cared for. But as the harsh February weather beat down on us, we stood at its rear and both stared silently at its back end. There was a good-sized dent in the back. It was well-hidden by a bar that ran across it, but it was still obvious to someone looking for problems.

James looked at me, his lips pressed together. He seemed to know what was coming.

“I’ll take it,” I said.

Confusion swept over his expression. I could read his face. “Should I mention the dent? Maybe she didn’t see it. But maybe she didn’t see it and I should rush her into the finance office.”

But it was exactly what I needed. A well-cared-for car with a dent. It took all the pressure off.

So, how does this relate to writing and first drafts? Well, I think it has to do with mindset. We have two ways of looking at our first drafts.

I nailed it! That sets us up for some difficult truths that are about to come our way, either when we read it ourselves, or someone else does. It’s the chip on the nice tile. We thought it was shiny and new, but it quickly doesn’t stay that way.

This thing is broken. Arriving at the end of draft one, and approaching draft two with the mindset that what you have is beautiful, but nevertheless broken, will put you in a nice place to start getting it ready to be seen by the world.

My friend Torry’s astounding ability to hide the flaws through clever decorating techniques can be a fun approach to how we view our manuscripts. He told me that he has sometimes moved an entire living room around to accommodate the flaw of one newly acquired piece of furniture.

And I suppose that’s what we do with our manuscripts. If we go in knowing there are flaws, our eyes are better open to what we can move and how we can shape it so that it is ready to be appreciated for its beauty.

It may be a one-man show, or you may need the help of others to spot how to “rearrange the furniture,” so to speak. But either way, I will tell you that the “it’s broken but beautiful” approach to writing can really help make that second draft way less painful and a delight to jump into.

I’ve published twenty-five books in my life, and only one time did a manuscript pass through substantive edits without changes. And in a bizarre twist of fate, I was so terrified this book was no good that I told my husband we should prepare that they may release me from the contract. I really thought it was that bad. So when I got the call that they loved it and were sending it on the line editing, I can’t describe the shock.

Most of my writing requires rearranging the furniture plus an additional “friend with an eye for it” to spot where my weak spots are. I appreciate those eyes. I think many outside the business tend to think that we sit down, knock it out on our first try, and hover over some kind of superpower.

We know better.

But when I walked into Torry’s house, my first thought was, “Man, writing’s been good to Torry,” not having a clue that most of what was in his house was purchased at discounted rates and found at estate sales.

I wouldn’t have been the wiser had he not disclosed his secret.

But I have a feeling Torry has more in mind about his house than just a hobby of shopping for used furniture.

I think he enjoys reminding a lot of people that broken things can be beautiful.

And inside of our first drafts I think we’ll find the rawest, truest version of our story, the one that poured out of us, the cathartic beauty that flowed right out of our soul.

Now we have to dress it up and make it socially acceptable. That’s draft two.

But that first draft had to come out. It always does. And as broken as it is, it’ll always be beautiful.

Rene Gutteridge