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You've been hanging out for this one haven't you? Sadly, I think all my gems were handed out in Part A. As you know, at the beginning of last week I ran away - not because I couldn't stand my family but because when I'm this close to handing in a manuscript I need to devote huge chunks of time to it...like sixteen hours a day. Not sixteen writing hours, just sixteen thinking, mulling, scratching hours. Thankfully, I have an accommodating husband. To set the scene, here's a pseudo back cover blurb bit: - three main characters - all women, are off to Santorini for a two week sojourn, as you do ... they all have issues, major issues and, come hell or high water, these issues have to be resolved during their holiday. Won't spoil the story by telling you what these issues are, however the story is told through the main character, Claudia's eyes. Suffice to say there's lust, betrayal, marriage, hate, love and dead dogs in the mix. Away from the family, day one, I'm reading through the manuscript and thinking it's not quite coming together. Not a great start. Having written and revised the 85,000 words, I thought something was still missing but couldn't pinpoint it no matter how many times I mulled over the chapters. So assuming each character's identity, I wrote a letter to a dear imaginary friend I hadn't seen for ten years telling them what had been going on in my life for the last 3,650 days. (Great friends hey, given that I hadn't seen them for ten years!) My God! These women have problems, I just didn't realise how many! Using this device, I was able to stretch my narrative further and really think about the lives these women had been living up to this point. I know what you're thinking - do you really need a back story that stretches all these years? Especially one that you're not going to include in the manuscript? - Well, frankly, YES! And a damn good one too, if you're going to create believable characters...a lot of the writing and thinking you do for your story won't appear in the final draft but you need a realistic and compelling back story for each of your characters. Armed with the new information I had about each of the women's lives, I fleshed out their characters a tiny bit more, and by the end of the week, after checking spelling, and other incidentals (time difference between Santorini and Brisbane, for example), I hit send. Ah, sweet relief for a good five minutes...until the panic set in. I felt decidedly uneasy ...sure I had the dead dog in there, But what else could I have done to improve the plot, characters, voice? To distract myself, I went for a run (I am capable, just not inclined), ate an excellent dinner and put myself to bed. I was exhausted and it was late - 8.30pm. I fell asleep thinking good thoughts: all is okay. I made deadline! Yippee for me. Well, I had this dream all about emotional depth. I sat bolt upright at two in the morning - I'm normally awake then, anyway. Epiphany! My main character lacked emotional depth. Garr! Thanks. Why couldn't I have shown this brilliant profundity of insight six months ago? Bloody dream is right. That's exactly what main character is lacking! Over the weekend, I debated whether to pull the manuscript back from the publisher's paws...and decided against it. The manuscript, tentatively titled Claudia Changes Course is in the hands (we hope) of a brilliantly skilled editor who has taken leave of Elizabeth Gilbert's latest and all the other best sellers she (could be male. I doubt it though) is working on to concentrate on my prose. When the 85,000 words comes back to me at the end of the month, I'll sagely nod to the editor and nonchalantly say, ‘Emotional depth?' And she'll say, ‘Yep! Add some!' She might also say to me, if you knew your character lacked depth, why didn't you bloody well do something about it before we're just about to go to print? Good question. I can hardly answer, ‘It came to me in a dream, eight hours after I pressed send', or she might dob on me and tell the publisher I'm unstable! ‘And one more thing,' she'll say, as she's sauntering out of the room. ‘Get rid of that damn dead dog.'
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Dreams are wonderful things - amazing what wee can learn through them, like the one I had a couple of weeks ago (what it would feel like to die! Hopefully I won't experience that soon!) Emotional depth... well on the upside, you've four weeks to think about where and how to add it! Bet it doesn't need much though.
Congratulations of hitting that send button for the third time in a row - I think you're wonderful!