Saturday, June 16, 2018

Annie Hogsett--Moving the 1000 Pound Buddha

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I'm going to save author Annie Hogsett's advice on manuscript revisions to use every time I have to tackle a knotty problem And if her books are half as much fun as this piece, I've discovered a new series to read! 

Here's ANNIE HOGSETT on how to deal with a seemingly insurmountable problem. (Maybe we could apply this to life as well as writing...)
Moving the 1,000 pound Buddha

For anyone who ever wrote a sentence and dreamed it would be carved in stone, “revision” has to be the hardest word. I’m mostly okay with revision. Once my plot is in place and I’ve got someone who looks like he did it but didn’t, and someone else who looks like she didn’t, but did—the gerbils in my chest can settle down. Fact: there are always gerbils, but I can relax a bit, and get down to revising.

For me, revision is the easier part. Sort of. It can never be all smooth sledding because it involves “input from others.” Agents. Editors. Beta readers. Passersby. Whatever. Often even a little voice from the back of your very own head will point you to a line—or a storyline—that you adored and admired, and which is maybe a little…off. Like, for example, you’ve got a big, lovely Buddha in his gallery at the museum. You’ve figured out the halls to and from that gallery, through which you’ve now got characters running round and round— And all, all, all of that, is on the wrong floor. 

Yep. I did that. A  couple of weeks ago. I can use it as an example because I’m over it. Somewhat. Discovering you’ve got your Buddha on the wrong floor, in full view of readers who are bound to notice, is the first moment of the rest of your little nervous breakdown.

For me, there are Five Stages of Revision:

1)    Realization

This one is short and not sweet. It’s that ice block in your soul, when you murmur, “Wait. Gallery 241 is on the second floor?  But I had a map. I had three. Let me look at my maps.”

This leads to… 

2)    Exclamation

This one is easy. Say the first couple of words that spring to mind. Go ahead. Have fun. Be creative. Punctuate them by pounding on your desk. Or your head. Repeat this mantra for as long as it feels helpful. Get up and walk around. Breathe. Sooner or later, you’ll arrive at…

3)    Reexamination

Continue breathing as you gently, but thoroughly, assess the damage. How wide-reaching is this Buddha-On-The-Wrong-Floor problem? Where does it show up? How far into the plot has it reached? What has to be fixed? This phase can also be referred to as Excavation. Maybe you need to call in the heavy equipment. I’ve had a recent occasion to do research on the Komatsu PC300LC. It’s a 77,000-thousand-pound-yellow-toothy-shovel-y-thing. If you’ve got a big problem, I’d recommend the PC300LC. Dig deep.

 4)    Revelation 

Moment of truth. Let’s assume you’ve dug up every bit of fallout from your beautiful, wayward 1,000 pound work of art. You’ve looked at it unflinchingly. You know what you have to do. “Dang!” I said. [Insert  your exclamation of choice. Mine wasn’t “Dang.”] I really do have to move a 1,000 pound Buddha from the first floor to the second floor.” And then I said, “Don’t be a dope, Annie. You only have to move three sentences. Ten, tops.” NOTE: I confess I did not say this next bit in the heat of that moment, but I swear it just now fell out of the sky onto my laptop. I’m going with it. 

“He ain’t heavy, he’s my Buddha.”

5)    Exhalation

You begin to feel okay. Your excavations have actually made some space. Once I get a grip, I usually find that the change is not a big deal. Often it’s for the better. And if it’s a big deal, it’s digital, and I like to write. We look for the joy. We exhale. We move on.

Writers and readers:  I’m sharing a minor glitch, now repaired, from Murder To The Metal, the second of my Somebody’s Bound to Wind Up Dead Mysteries. At a secret meeting of the T&A Detectives (Tom &  Allie, people. Be good.) the detectives are seated at a round table. I had Otis located at both 6 o’clock and 3 o’clock, right up until the final, final, final draft. You?



Mondo Money is a murder magnet. Ten months ago, Allie Harper—smart, feisty, and broke—rescued Tom Bennington—smart, hot, and blind—and his winning $550 million lottery ticket out of a Cleveland crosswalk and into three wild weeks of mayhem, romance…and seven murders. Nothing much has changed. Except. The T&A Detectives—Allie, Tom & Otis—now have their first case. And? The threats are bigger. The adversaries deadlier. The stakes higher. And the pace?  It’s Murder to the Metal.
Here's more about Annie--

“Murder. Mayhem. Romance. Cleveland.” Annie Hogsett has a master’s degree in English literature and spent her first career writing advertising copy—a combination which, in Annie’s opinion, qualifies her for making a bunch of stuff up. Her first published novel, Too Lucky to Live, #1 of her “Somebody’s Bound to Wind Up Dead Mysteries,” was released by Poisoned Pen Press in May 2017. Second in her series, Murder to the Metal, is out now! Annie lives ten yards from Lake Erie in the City of Cleveland with her husband, Bill, and their delinquent cat, Cujo. She has never won a 550-million-dollar lottery jackpot.

DEBS: This was hysterical! Thank you, Annie, for sharing.

REDS and other writers out there, share your revision nightmares! We all have them, right? 

And a REDS winner alert--

Susan is the winner of Marian Stanley's Buried Treasures. Susan , send me your email address at deb at deborahcrombie dot com and I'll pass it on to Marian.


 

57 comments:

  1. Congratulations on your newest book, Annie. I found your piece on revision to be quite delightful and now I’m looking forward to meeting Allie and Tom and Otis . . . .

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    1. Hi, Joan. Thanks! And, no kidding, I had to move that same Buddha again yesterday. But not to a different floor... The fun never stops!

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  2. I love it, Annie! I've certainly made the little ones, like Abe has green eyes on page 56 and hazel eyes on page 194. As long as somebody catches it, it's an easy fix. But I had to move a Buddha once - figuratively - and my first solution involved way too many changes. But sitting with it made me realize if I fixed it in the other direction, it was much easier. And as long as I haven't sited a historical building on the wrong street or made a real historic figure live longer than he actually did, it's fiction! I can change anything. Best of luck with the new book - it sounds fabulous. And you have a blind character? Very cool. I'm writing one in my WIP, and she's blind in 1889, which adds a whole layer of being able to hear secrets, because attitudes toward the blind were that they were mentally defective and probably deaf, too. She helps my sleuth on several occasions. ;^)

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    1. Thanks, Edith! Eye color and names are my nemesises. Is that a word? Or a violation of logic? Can't help it. Anyway, they get me into trouble. The search function on a word processor is a lifesaver, but it can't save me every time. Your blind character in 1889 is so interesting.It makes me think how quiet the environment would have been. But I don't know that for sure. No boom boxes and jet skis, though.

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    2. On the other hand, horse hooves on paving stones!

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    3. Oh Edith, I can't wait for that one!

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    4. Hey, Judi. Writing Tom Bennington has opened my ears to how rich and evocative sounds can be. Horses hooves on paving stones! I want those. Also the smell of horses. So uniquely horsey! He's helping me open up my non-sight senses.

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    5. Judi, April 8 2020! And thanks, Annie for the reminder to deepen those for this character.

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  3. Welcome Annie! I very much enjoyed this post. But I can't think of one single example in 16 books. Which goes to show how well my suppression instincts are working!

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    1. I understand, Lucy. Some memories are just too painful. Or plentiful. Every once in a while I'll wake up in the night and think, "Did I do that? Did I FIX that?"

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  4. What a great way to describe the act of rearranging words -- moving a 1,000 pound Buddha. I enjoyed this post (and love your Five Stages of Revision) and now I'm off to find the books, so I can enjoy them. Thank you!

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    1. Thanks, Amanda! And dragging him about has also made me more aware of how he looks and how Allie feels about sitting with him. On the correct floor of the museum.

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  5. Hello from Cincinnati! Just started Murder to the Metal. I've learned to fact-check everything, from eye and hair color to the weather. If it's Ohio and not during a drought, it has to rain or snow at least once every two weeks.

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    1. Hello, Cincinnati! You are so right. If the weather is not notably crappy, it's not Cleveland.

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  6. That was such fun! And you've really shown us how tricky writing can be!

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    1. Tricky. So tricky, Judi. I wasn't kidding about that block of ice.

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  7. Revision, sigh. It's my FAVORITE part of writing... except when it isn't. Putting this on a yellow sticky and attaching it to my wall: “He ain’t heavy, he’s my Buddha.”

    Congratulations, Annie, on Murder to the Metal (love your tag line: Somebody's bound to end up dead)

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    1. Thank you Hallie! I do notice that I start thinking something is sacred "because I wrote it down." It's helpful for me to say, "Chill out, Annie. Set that sentence, paragraph, Buddha, whatever...aside for a minute and just see what happens. Often I'm delighted. That is the fun part.

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  8. Fun essay, Annie!

    Still chuckling at “He ain’t heavy, he’s my Buddha.”

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  9. Hey, Karen in Ohio! Glad you like him.

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  10. Annie! As one of the lucky ones who got to read this fabulous book early on, I can attest that all Buddhas are properly placed. Congratulations. I'm still at the "Should it be a Buddha?" stage at the moment....

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  11. Thanks, Wendall. That was above and beyond. And I know that stage. Breathe more.

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  12. Welcome Annie, and thanks for my new favorite aphorism: He ain't heavy, he's my Buddha!

    This business of keeping track of things is the reason I don't write. Along with my inability to compose, my lack of talent, my laziness, and my time being devoted to what other people write FOR me. It's a no brainer.

    Presently I am, for the third time, rereading DREAMING OF THE BONES. And as I picked up my Kindle last night, I made a note to ask Deb just how she keeps track of all these flipping details, down to the color of the walls in Gemma's kitchenette. What fabulous minds all of you have who write these complicated things.

    Have I thanked the Reds this week for keeping me happy, entertained, and with more and more and more to read in this lifetime? I don't think so.

    Thank you my darlings

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    1. Ann, have we thanked you for reading???

      And, really, keeping track of all these things is a major 1000 pound Buddha pain in the arse. Good copy editors, bless their nit-picky souls, help.

      By the way, what were the color of Gemma's kitchen wall in that first house? Yellow?

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    2. All right, Ann. You've got me! DREAMING OF THE BONES. The tangled web of so many stories...

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    3. Made you look didn't I Deb!

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    4. I second Deb's thank you, Ann. I always thought the biggest thrill would be holding my own book in my hands. (And it's not too shabby.) But for me the biggest reward is having someone say, "I loved your story." Readers rock. I know this, of course, because I am one.

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    5. Oops. Hazel’s kitchen. Sponged peach.

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    1. Annie,I'm fascinated by the challenge you've taken in writing a blind character. You must be living with another layer in your brain now, always thinking what it would be like, what he would smell and hear and perceive. I'm also always interested in what happens to people who win a lot of money--it comes with such complications. I think I have to start with the first book!

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    2. I have made some great—and very forgiving—friends at the Cleveland Sight Center, Deborah. They invited me to their book group when they discussed TOO LUCKY TO LIVE and it was rowdy! My husband thought I'd been kidnapped because I was gone for hours. They confirmed that the raised Braille on my first cover really does say, "TOO LUCKY TO LIVE." The Braille title is a "theme" on my covers that I love. I have walked with a white cane now. My life is richer in so many ways since I met Tom. And a lottery-inspired murder was all over the news in Cleveland the past couple of weeks. As was an devastating explosion that almost exactly mirrors a scene in MURDER TO THE METAL. Sometimes fact is scary-close to fiction.

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  14. This is so great! And so incredibly wise. Sometimes the spiral of craziness just intensifies during editing, you know? And I just have to say to myself… It’s all fine, right? All fine…

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  15. Oh, and in my new book? I just found, after a year of writing, that I had explained how someone hired someone for a job… When the employer did not work there at the time! Oops, ! The good news is I found it, right? And fixed it

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  16. And the funniest example: Barbara Ross always tells the story about how she had her character have a physical therapy appointment at 11 every Wednesday. And then, turned out, something had to happen at that time. Oh no Barbara thought, she has physical therapy at that time.
    And then she burst out laughing…when she realized, she was the writer! That Appointment could be any day, any time!

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    1. Thanks, Hank! And I love that appointment thing. I get so caught up in the story, I forget I'm more or less in charge. It's a shock to realize I can undo a big deal with a word or two. And then something happens to suggest I'm really not in charge at all... That's fun.

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  17. Thanks for this entertaining behind-the-scenes look at your writing, Annie! I'm looking forward to reading your books.

    DebRo

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    1. It gets ugly behind-the-scenes sometimes, Deb. But it's almost always the best kind of fun.

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  18. Glitches or no, I don't care! I loved Too Lucky to Live and can't wait to read the new book! We lived in NE Ohio for 18 years. My husband's job put him in close contact with a number of police detectives in Cleveland and the surrounding areas. Some of our best friends are now retired cops and I love them dearly. Cleveland is its own world, eastside v westside notwithstanding, and I loved all the different ethnic influences.

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    1. I'm with you, Pat! I love Cleveland and it is its own world. Quirky. Lively. Exuberant. Scary sometimes. Great for stories every day.

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  19. My best technique for revisions? Lying to myself. I have to eliminate one POV character and give all his "business" to other characters? It'll take me a day. Completely re-write a chapter? Done in an afternoon. Go through and upgrade all the lazy metaphors and tired similes? I'll knock it off in a couple hours.

    Self-delusion is what enables me to keep going.

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    1. Yep. I say exactly that, Julia. However, in the dark of night the voice of doom comes creeping. "You're kidding, right? Even if it were possible—which it is not—there's no time." Luckily, it seems to work out with a little of both voices. Besides if you could do all of it that fast, we could never be friends...

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  20. What Hallie said: Revision is my favorite part, until it isn't! The part where you work to make it read better, improve the flow, choose better words is great, but the timeline stuff can drive you nuts. I always think of it like a game of Jenga. You pull out one block, and the whole thing can come tumbling down. Thanks for sharing your take on revising with us, Annie! I'm going to keep that Buddha in mind as I sit down to revise today!

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  21. I love the finding a better word part. It's like playing. And Jenga is the perfect analogy for the "it all falls down" part. I'm terrible at Jenga. It all falls down and usually doesn't have very far to fall.

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  22. So much to love about this post today, and all of it centers around your witty voice, Annie. If your post here on Jungle Reds is this entertaining, your books must be a full throttle ride (had to say that) to enjoyment. Murder to the Metal was already on my radar, but it's going to move up to the top tier of my TBR list.

    I'm also delighted that you live on Lake Erie. That brings back childhood memories of family vacations to Lake Erie, when we stayed in the grand old hotel there. There were still big bands that played at the hotel then, and I remember one night walking back to our hotel room and the band playing Stormy Weather, which was a favorite of my mother's.

    I love the name of your series, "Somebody's Bound to Wind Up Dead," and the titles of the two books out thus far. Also, I seem to really enjoy the Poison Pen published books. Thanks for visiting the Jungle Reds today, Annie, and congratulations on the new book.

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  23. It's been a joy for me, Kathy Reed. Thank you so much for the kind words and your reminiscences about the lake. Wow. That hotel would have been an amazing setting for a mystery. I wonder where it was. We're about a mile down the shore from the Euclid Beach Amusement Park. Long gone but alive and scary in the memories of folks who lived here then. Home of "Laughing Sal." Kids ran screaming. Had nightmares.

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    1. Maybe I should have called the book Full Throttle Ride.

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  24. Waving from about an hour further west along the lake, Annie. Enjoyed your post and your 1,000 lb. Buddha. This happens to me when I've got a mountain range to wrestle back where it belongs. I'll be looking out for your series--it's Cleveland, yep, somebody's bound to wind up dead sooner or later.

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    1. Waving back towards the sunset, Flora. Sooner, rather than later, is usually the case on winding up dead in CLE—or at least in mysteries set here. And in my opinion a mountain range beats a Buddha. I'm impressed.

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  25. 1,000 pound Buddha - I love it. Revision to me is the best part. It's the polish the silverware because the guests are almost here part. Thank you, Annie, for sharing your process. That was hilarious!

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    1. Thanks, Jen. I'm with you. Even completely "tearing up the pea patch" which is what I'm doing now is kind of exhilarating. It's a chance to put right all those sentences (and chapters) that were making critical comments over my shoulder.

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    1. Hey, Dru. This has been so much fun. Glad you like it.

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  27. Hey, my comment disappeared! Boo.

    Anyway, it was great fun meeting you in Cleveland. I once had two Thursdays make it through an astonishing number of revisions.

    Mary/Liz

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  28. Hey, Mary from Pittsburgh! That disappearing comment thing happened to me after I'd written a War & Peace-length comment yesterday. I think you really have to stand on the "Publish" button. It was great meeting you, too. That was a great weekend that feels like it was a month ago.

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  29. One last comment into the Worldwide Writer/Reader Web! Yesterday was a blast for me. Those were the sorts of conversations I've been waiting for. We do love to read and write and revise and it's wonderful to have a place to share those experiences. Thanks everyone. And you Jungle Red Wonders, thanks so much for yesterday. xo, Annie

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    1. Missed you yesterday, Annie, but happy to catch up with you today. I'm loving MURDER TO THE METAL! Seconding your applause for everywhere here at Jungle Red, who make writers and readers most welcome.

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