The Real Revision Process

I must give author Meg Gardiner of Lying for a Living, props for leading me to an excellent article on what it took author Jeff Vandermeer to complete the first draft of his book. A must read for novice writer’s who think revising merely means running your manuscript through Spell Check.

Link: High-level Notes After Completing First Draft

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On A Hemingway Kick

A couple of weeks ago, I posted an article about Cuba opening their Hemingway archives to scholars on my Writer’s Report blog. Ever since, I’ve had the urge to start reading ‘Papa’ Hemingway again.

The first book was Ernest Hemingway On Writing, by Larry Phillips. It’s not so much an instructional guide as it is a collection of snippets from letters throughout his life talking about the craft of writing and the writing life. I was able to glean some real insights and good advice from the book and enjoyed it.

Reading the Phillips book prompted me to look for A Moveable Feast. I was fortunate to find my library actually has a hardcover first print copy from 1964. I began reading it as soon as I got home. I’m totally hooked. A Moveable Feast is Hemingway’s memoir of when he was a struggling young writer living in Paris in the 1920’s. He takes you to a Paris where the horror of World War I is a memory and the coming horror of World War II is an unheard of concept. It is a time of peace and hope and artistry.

Young Hemingway describes in rich detail the sights, sounds, smells and tastes of the food and drink, the café’s, the homes, the streets, the people and the atmosphere of 1920’s Paris.

It reminded of what Stephen King said in his own book, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, that writing is magic, a form of telepathy – referencing how the writer makes a mental connection to the reader. I’d take it one step further and suggest writing is actually a form of telepathic-time-travel, where the writer connects with the reader across time-and-space.

This is how A Moveable Feastfeels to me. I can see the sparsity of Hemingway’s own apartment, or the beauty of the young French women with serious expressions; feel the warmth and spaciousness of Gertrude Stein’s home, or the cold wet rain of a late spring; taste the oysters and dry white wine, and the smell the sourness and dried urine of the drunks in the Café des Amateurs on the rue Mouffetard.

After this, I will revisit his classics, which I have not read in a glacially long time. I hope they read the same or better than they did then…

Hopeful New Year?

Besides an ice storm knocking out power and putting us in the dark and cold for a week, and the larger problems in the world at large posing all sorts of challenges for everyone right now, there are issues closer to home that are of a deeper, more immediate concern that have side-tracked my creative writing.

First, a day after my Mom’ birthday, my Dad had a stroke on the morning of December 17th. It’s maddening this happened to him as he takes care of himself really well. He walks 3 miles a day – every day – and does weight training with dumbbells three times a week. He listens to his doctors, takes his meds regularly as well as a regimen of vitamins. Yet, he had a stroke that left him paralyzed on his left side.

It turns out it was his meds that led to the stroke. Dad has an inherited heart condition (his mom died from it) where his heart beats too fast and the meds are supposed to keep his heart rate in the 60-70/bpm range. On the day of his stroke his heart rate was down to the high 30’s – low 40’s – not good at all. What happened is his heart rate was so low for a long enough time to where the blood pooled in his heart and formed a clot. When the clot traveled to his brain, he blew a small embolism and had a stroke.

When I was finally able to speak to him a few days later on my birthday, he was not in a good mood. It was the most depressed and despondent I have ever heard him. In fact, throughout my entire life, I don’t recall my father being depressed – ever. He was on the phone with me only for a minute – long enough to say (in an unaccustomed, slurred voice), “Happy birthday. They tell me I’m going to get better…I think they’re full of shit…here, talk to your mother.”

Dad was in a grand funk and didn’t even want to live. To tell the truth, I empathize with that mind set. I’d be much the same way if I took care of my health the way he has, walked three miles and lifted weights one day and the very next you can’t do that any more. I’d be pissed and depressed and not want to live if I couldn’t do things for myself any longer. Some birthday. Over the long run though, I know he will get through this – Dad’s no quitter.

On Christmas, Mom said his temperament wasn’t much better. I gave him a call. I wasn’t going to give him pity or sympathy – Dad doesn’t like that – neither do I. Instead I gave him support and encouragement. I asked about his therapy and he perked up when he talked about how tough it was and how tired he’d get afterward. It made him feel like he was doing something, making progress.

I didn’t want to tell him to fight – I was afraid he’d say he didn’t want to fight and struggle. Instead, I told Dad he’s always been a hard worker and this is just another job, another project to work on. That he’s always had great self-discipline to get things done and to work with what he had available to him. I told him he’s still the same guy that made an engine gasket out of cardboard, and a great kid’s sled out of scrap aircraft aluminum. He always finds a way over, around or through a problem or obstacle. I told him I have complete confidence that he is going to approach his therapy and recovery with the same discipline, creativity and work ethic that he does everything else.

Mom said later that the calls my sisters and I made to him on Christmas gave him a lift and turned his attitude around. He was motivated and determined to do the best he can…and I know he will.

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The second issue has to do with my older brother. He has contracted Hepatitis-C and is very ill. He moved back east from California, and is living with a friend in Connecticut. He is in a program through Yale University Hospital, waiting for a liver transplant. Without it he will die. He told me the way the list works is not ‘first-come-first-served’, but whoever is sickest is highest on the list, and I guess he’s pretty high up on the list. I heard from him a couple of times in early December, but Mom said he’s been going through a bad stretch at the moment and is too ill to communicate with anyone right now.

Last Friday, I went back to work on revisions of my latest novel from this year’s NaNo efforts, but stalled out again over the weekend. I will get back to it because I am my father’s son and will use his same determination to finish it.

All I can do for now is hope and intend that Dad and my brother’s health improves markedly and that everyone else in the extended family find their ways to better health and living in 2009.