Mechanical Owls and Literary Pursuits

Rewind to the early 1960's to the suburb of Boston where I grew up. The local theater, to which we could walk from home, showed double features about the "East" after school and on weekends - matinees for children. In my memory, they were black and white films. They usually involved choosing three wishes from a genie. They had elaborate, fanciful 1,001 Nights plots, exotic settings, and fabulous costumes. At home afterward, my mother listened patiently as I would try to tell her the entire plot, getting overly enthusiastic about the wonders of the story in the process. In my memory there were a lot of talking animals in these films. One had a fascinating mechanical owl. The term 'mechanical owl' is now a family joke - for when I get excited about a complicated story or plot.

If someone asks me when I first become a writer, what should I say? Should I confess that I was a storyteller at a young age, relating these unlikely plots to my mother at the kitchen table? Or that I loved to listen to ghost stories told around a campfire? I wasn't one to spend afternoons at the library reading. I'd more likely be outside playing in a massive game of Capture the Flag, catching turtles with a net, barefooted, or hosting a dress-up 'tea party' with the neighborhood girls, all of us bedecked in second hand prom dresses mailed from my older cousins in Iowa.

Once my novel finds a life in print, I wonder if I'll need to polish the story of my childhood so it sounds more literary. But how do you trick out a mechanical owl? Any ideas, let me know.

Early April Update and Musings

It's truly spring now - the spring peepers are singing in our local wetlands. The Daffodils and Christmas Roses are blooming, and the lawns are greening up. Such a miracle to watch the world renew itself in just a few weeks each spring.

As I'm polishing DRIVING DREAMS and sending out query letters to agents, I'm stirring up ideas for another novel. I have several in mind, but some part of me wants to take on a very focused, smaller story and theme, you know a nice thin book that someone can finish off during a trans-Atlantic flight. An author recently told me we each have a 'set point' in terms of word length and manuscript scope. DD is about 155,000 words now, and while I'll keep whittling away at it, this length isn't completely outrageous since it's a multi-generational saga. I'm also writing short stories, to practice telling stories in about 2,000 words. It's fun to be limited by size. I've sent three of them out...none of these are about the Middle East.

In the meantime, I came across THE WRITING ON MY FOREHEAD by Nafisa Haji. It deals with many of the same themes in DRIVING DREAMS, in the context of an Indian family. The author's website is one of my favorites.

Query Letters

I'm in the process of querying agents - looking for a literary agent to represent the book. Query letters have to be one page long, in three or four paragraphs at most. One has to summarize one's book in one paragraph, then pitch to the agent about one's background as a writer, one's 'platform'. I've been querying agents for the last six months, following advice to send batches of queries, say a dozen or so at a time, every couple of weeks. My letters improve with each batch. Now I'm wrestling with the platform part of my query. Should I include the fact that I teach Saudi and Gulf women's dance, that I lecture at schools and colleges on Saudi women and Arab music? Should I mention my work at the Arabic Music Retreat, or my `ud playing? I do have publishing credits, which I include. But the other activities...do they help or hurt? Until today I haven't mentioned anything but publishing credits. Today, I sent off a query with more information, so it will be interesting to see if it makes any difference. There's a wonderful FREE book available for downloading from amazon.com. It's called How to Write a Great Query Letter, by Noah Lukeman. Highly recommended.

Delia Reads the Riot Act

In the early 1990's, I met author/radio host Ellen Kushner who had a radio show on WGBH-FM entitled "Caravan". She invited me on to share some recordings of Saudi women's traditional folk music. Ellen is loads of fun, so doing the show was a great adventure. At some point I mentioned that I had a novel in process. She volunteered to read it, and later said her partner, author and editor Delia Sherman, would be happy to read it. One late summer day in 1995, Delia and I sat down to a sushi lunch and she basically tore my manuscript apart. My reaction was despair. It was so disheartening. I was doing my MBA at night while working as a commercial banker by day, and she was telling me I had a lot of work to do. Yet I knew she was right. Fortunately I taped the whole thing, listened to it a couple of times, took notes, then started on the long road she told me to travel. I started to read a lot more. I took a fiction class at the Boston Center for Adult Ed. And gradually, a whole new draft of the book took shape. She wisely predicted that every word of the draft would be touched and reworked. That version was 66,000 words long. Now it's more than twice that long. Only two or three scenes have survived the process. Many original characters are gone, replaced by much more interesting ones. Last weekend I listened to the tape again, to make sure I'd done what she said. The very next day, Delia e-mailed me wondering what I was up to! She has a new young adult book coming out in June, THE MAGIC MIRROR OF THE MERMAID QUEEN. You can read about it on her LiveJournal Blog. I've always felt apologetic about her having done me the favor of reading that very creaky, problematic first draft. But she says she loves to read those, to help direct people on their way. She was one of my really important guides, a true Fairy Godmother. Visit her blog and you'll see what I mean. Thank you, Delia, for reading me the riot act!

Listening to Our Guides

My book, whose working title is DRIVING DREAMS, is now complete, at least it's as complete as it will be before an editor gets his/her hands on it. It's been torn to shreds, reshaped, cut in half, pasted back together, and polished. Now it's in its third incarnation. None of this would have been possible without wise guides, patient readers and insightful helpers who have been willing to sit down and read all or parts of it over the years. Then there are those who have said a kind word when I most needed it, or passed along some wisdom that directly applied to the issue was wrestling with in the book.

No matter what we're working toward in our lives, we all have guides and helpers. But do we always recognize them? I've found that a lot of insight comes from least-expected places. But if you're listening for it, you'll find it.

Unusual Opportunities Knock

Cleaning my desk a couple of days ago, I came across three e-mails that I'd printed out and put on the rising tide of papers on my desk. Each e-mail held the possibility of more writing work, but each was unusual in some way. At first I dismissed them, assuming that since they came over the transom, they must be bogus. Who would want to hire me anyway! In the process of the desk-sweep they came to my attention, and I've followed up on each one. And that is in no small part due to Tahir Shah's blog. He wrote that writers need to keep open to new opportunities and to have many projects going at once. One never knows what is going to grow into something worthwhile.

My Writers Group

I'm lucky to be in a wonderful writers group (also known as a critique group), formed a few years ago within the local branch of AAUW - the American Association of University Women. Five of us meet regularly at a coffee shop - currently twice a month - to read, critique and encourage each other in our writing. Each of us is on a unique writing journey. Beatrice is a poet/columnist who's completing her first novel. Gwen is a natural-born columnist who's also doing features and has a children's book in process. Susan is a poet/editor who is working on a memoir. Patricia is a gifted fiction writer who creates fabulous characters in her short stories. It's a gentle critique group, but not too gentle to be useful. In our first sessions, we did short writing exercises on a given topic. Within a few months, we were bringing our own projects for feedback. We read each other's poems, humorous essays and novel chapters. We often discuss the business of writing, things like how to contact/communicate with editors and agents. We attend workshops together, and share ideas and information. The group is reading several key chapters from my novel - set in Mecca - and their feedback is incredibly useful. We're reading Beatrice's chapters - and we feel like we're in the creative process with her. It's exciting to share one's work and to be an early reader for others. I am grateful for this special ensemble of interesting women and recommend writer's groups wholeheartedly. Here's a good article on finding or forming a writer's group.