What We're Writing Week: Julia takes stuff out and puts stuff in

My standing desk aka the kitchen counter

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: This month I've been grinding away towards finishing the manuscript for AT MIDNIGHT COMES THE CRY (Yes, Jenn and Rhys write three books in one year and I write one book in three years. It's called averaging, okay?!?) One of the issues with taking a long, roundabout route to the first draft, is starting out with certain locations, characters, or plot devices, only to realize once you've reached the 5/8th mark (which for me is between 65 and 70 thousand words) that you've forgotten, abandoned, or changed those things.

 

For instance, I made one character pregnant when we first meet her. (No, not Clare or Hadley.) I thought it would make her precarious position even more fraught. Then, I just sort of... forgot about it. I had to go back to check on something that occurred when we first meet her and surprise! She's six months pregnant.  There was only one problem (besides the fact I hadn't mentioned anything about her being in a family way in any scene after the first two.) Now she was in some action-adventure-y scenes, and being an expectant mom was just TOO much of a pain to write around. 

Fortunately, in Maine, it's legal to end a character's pregnancy at any time up to the last pass of the galley pages, so I went back, did a little rewriting, and taa-daa, she's no longer pregnant. 

 

In another place, I had a scene with a character who just... doesn't show up again. Which is a problem, because I've learned that if there seems to be enough weight on a character, if they're TOO vivid or TOO important, the reader will feel as if they've been left hanging when that person doesn't reappear. 

 

So I figured out what his essential business was, parceled it around to other characters, and got rid of him. (Writing is a ruthless business, don't let anyone every tell you otherwise.)

As Debs wrote about yesterday, I'm also dealing with weather constraints. I had characters picking up shells from the ground, only to remember that two days before, I had bedeviled everyone with a snowstorm. (Why was there a snowstorm? Because it's a Julia Spencer-Fleming novel. All my books have snowstorms. Even the ones set in summer.)

Well, I had made life harder for my characters, which was the point, but also harder for me. I had to go back and add in brooms, and sweeping, and snow removal. 

 

Don't even get me started on the way I had Clare and Russ's dog, Oscar, in the opening prologue and then haven't written a word about him since. And it's been almost a month in the story! Poor Oscar! He's been waiting a long time for a walk and some kibble. I'll have to correct that before turning it in, or someone's going to report Rev. Fergusson to the ASPCA.

 

Here's an excerpt with the newly NOT pregnant Tiny March (whose last name may also change, we'll see...) and Clare fleeing trouble:

 

She let out a breath she didn't know she was holding when they reached the broader, two-lane stretch to the state highway. “Okay, it'll take us a little over an hour to get to Millers Kill from here. How about we pick up a few things for you and Rose at the a Wal-Mart in Fort – oh, shit!”

She and the driver of the pickup heading past her recognized each other at the same moment. Tiny twisted around in her seat. “It's Cal! Oh my God, what are we gonna do? Oh, God, oh God...”

Clare had already hit the gas. Her Subaru was no sports car, but it was a goer, and Cal March had to make a three-point turn before he could follow her. She swung onto the state highway without slowing and immediately accelerated to seventy-five. She split her attention between the road and her rear-view mirror. Sure enough, in the distance, she could see the pick-up turning onto the highway after her.

Tiny leaned forward, looking from side to side. “Is there some place we can hide? Take another route?”

Clare focused on the road ahead, inching her speed up to eighty. “This is it. It's about fifteen miles to the first town, and that's not much more than a cluster of buildings along the highway. It's twice as far to the Northway.” She wrestled the Adirondack atlas out of her side pocket without taking her eyes off the road and handed it to Tiny. “See if there's any place likely.”

“What about a police station?”

“I know the Essex county sheriff is up in Lewis, but that's got to be an hour from here.” Up ahead, an oil delivery truck lumbered along at a sedate five miles below the speed limit. Clare shifted lanes and blew past him. “State police Troop G is south of here. Somewhere around Brant Lake.”

Tiny bent her head over the map. “That's, like, thirty miles.”

The oil truck dwindled in her rear view mirror. Maybe...? Then the truck popped out from behind it and continued after them. That was the problem with Route 28N – it was a thirty mile long gentle curve, with stretched-out sightlines that made it very safe for tourists traveling into the mountains and very inconvenient when you wanted to disappear. She slowed slightly to scan the area ahead of the SUV in front of her, then revved up to pass it. The good news was, it was Sunday, and there wasn't much traffic on the road. The bad news was, it was Sunday, and where in this corner of the Adirondacks could they find enough people and vehicles to get lost in?

Have you ever read a book where one of these little "Ooops!" moments has been left in, dear readers? Do you ever return to an earlier part of a novel, brows furrowed, trying to make sense of something? (P.S., Tropical Storm Lee will be hitting my area with torrential rain and high winds today, so keep your fingers crossed I keep my power and internet!)