I went, reluctantly, to Walmart this morning. It’s possibly my most un-favorite place on Earth, but there are some things I’ve just got to get there.
One of those things is sunflower seeds for the birdfeeders in our back yard. I can get one huge bag there and it’ll last for nearly a season.
Usually I get a 30ish pound bag but today I got greedy and pulled out—with some difficulty—a 50 pound bag. I could barely move it off the shelf! Finally I just shoved it onto the bottom of the shopping buggy and proceeded to checkout.
I noticed there was a sort of dragging sound going on as I pushed the cart. I figured this meant the bag was dragging on the floor, but I chose to ignore that fact—I really wasn’t sure if I could move the bag into a better position and I sure couldn’t put it inside the cart. Maybe at the registers, someone could give me a hand with it.
Finally a man stopped me. “Ma’am. The bag is going to break open and that seed is going to fly all over creation.” I looked over at checkout—just 25 yards away. He repeated sternly, “Ma’am, it’s going to break. And they’re going to make you pay for it and it’s going to be all over the store.”
Oh. Well there was that. He helped me move the bag a little.
I bring this up because this same sort of thing happened last week to me with my manuscript. I’m a fan of just bolting through the first draft and fix the mess later.
But something was wrong. I couldn’t put my finger on it and didn’t really want to analyze the dragging sound coming from the text because I was in a hurry to get the draft done.
Then I stopped myself and thought about the manuscript as a whole—the individual characters and the plot itself (without flipping through the story, which makes me want to do a major edit.)
Finally I figured it out. The murder victim was a problem. Something wasn’t right. And after I shoved some things around in the story for a few minutes, she was much better. For one thing, I realized she wasn’t the right age. She needed to be younger. For another, I realized that there was an angle with her relationship with her daughter that needed to be played up more—the motivation for her actions didn’t ring true and it was trickling through the plot.
Figuring out the problem? Ten minutes. Fixing the age of the character and creating some motivation for a relationship issue? Ten minutes. And now I don’t have to worry about the problem getting worse as I head out to checkout with my manuscript.
Have you done a manuscript check-up lately?
Please come back by Hart Johnson’s Confessions of a Watery Tart for a review of Delicious and Suspicious. Thanks Hart!
I also wanted to give a shout-out to Michele Emrath who so kindly featured my book on her blog, Southern City Mysteries today. Thanks!
This is such a wonderful illustration of not sticking our heads in the sand when something isn’t right. Only ten minutes to fix those manuscript issues. Really? Wow.
Karen
I couldn’t help but comment since you mentioned getting bird seed. As I recall a few months ago when it was cold outside the birds were getting a little ‘upset’ that you didn’t have feed for them. Seems there was even music from THE BIRDS playing in the background. Don’t want to bust that bag of seed before you get home. LOL.
Mason
Thoughts in Progress
Yikes, this is really hitting close to home for me. I have a mess with some plotting in my current WIP. My mistake was going past the tangle, thinking it would work itself out as the story progressed, but it hasn’t. Now I have this huge knot about two-thirds of the way along. You are right, I need to go back to the tangle and get that sorted out before doing anything else.
Elizabeth – I can totally relate to what you’re saying. As a matter of fact, that kind of “something is wrong” feeling is exactly what’s held my WIP up for so long. I was going great guns on it, but something was just…wrong. When I went back and checked it, I made some wholesale changes. I’m delayed now, but it’s a better creation.
Shopping at Walmart – never.
Feeding the birds – always.
Listening to the ‘drag’ in your story – excellent advice. Thank you.
I need, so badly, to heed your advice. I suffer terribly from stop-and-go drafting. I would like to run through and then fix things later but I often go back and read through previous material in order to get my juices flowing for the day’s writing. the next you know, I’m editing a previous chapter or scene and more precious writing time is spent re-writing an unfinished manuscript. Of course, you’ve probably guessed by now, this sometimes goes on until the entire story is deemed unworthy and scrapped for a new idea.
I can only hope that my issue will fade with time and experience. Great post and great advice.
This is a really good illustration of why it’s sometimes better to take care of a problem as soon as it crops up rather than pretending it’s really not a problem. Solving the glitch gets it out of the way and lets the author focus on telling the story.
Elizabeth you read my mind:) I’m doing a manuscript check up this weekend. I plan to load my MS in my Kindle and give it a read aloud. I’m excited to nervous all at once!
Elizabeth, I love the way your mind works. I need to go through my manuscript and check for drag. I know it’s there. I just need to identify it and make changes.
Straight From Hel
I saw both posts this morning.
And a trail of birdseed all over Walmart would’ve been great!
What if that small tear had broken open in your trunk? Dear Lord!!
Ah Walmart. Source of so many metaphors.
Karen–For something like a motivation problem, it’s a pretty easy fix. Say you have an amateur sleuth who doesn’t have a good reason to investigate the crime. Why not just let the police handle it? So then I make a list: sleuth is a suspect. Sleuth’s friend is a suspect. Sleuth knows the victim and wants to avenge the death. Then I’d choose the best motivation, create some dialogue or narrative to explain this motivation, and weave it into the story. :)
Mason–Those birds rule the roost! They may possibly arm themselves and come after me if I don’t fill their feeders. :)
Maryann–Well, and sometimes we CAN write ourselves out of a hole, but then, like you mentioned, we end up with all this excess and knotty stuff. I tend to blather on and on when there’s a problem area.
Linda–I’m with you on that one! I’m hoping now that I can put off another trip to Walmart for at least a month or more. :)
J.L.–Believe me, I’ve been there. And it took my brain out of creative mode and into clinical, revision mode. So now I write a paragraph when I end a writing session–summing up what I’ve written and what I *need* to write the next time I pick it back up again. This keeps me from reading the document and messing myself up.
Jane–And honestly, I think subconsciously we KNOW what’s wrong with the story–and then we mask the problem by overwriting whenever the problem area is there. Which makes it so much worse!
Helen–Just a little analysis can go a long way. :)
Alex–I wouldn’t have been invited back to Walmart. But I think that would be fine with me!
Diane–See *that’s* the kind of thing that impatient people like me just don’t even think about! Then I’d have had to vaccum out the trunk with the hose and attachment. Bleh.
Toby–And so few that don’t involve me cussing. :)
Thank you! – I’m looking at the birdseed of my novel right now.
What a useful post. I find sometimes I have to step away from “turning out my pages” to get the distance. That’s so hard to do, because I’m a writer, I write!
Yes, I have done. I realized as I was starting to become bored with the manuscript it was because I was adding too much to it. Instead of keeping it simple and focusing on the characters, I was adding too much to my plot like I do in my plot-based mysteries. Well, once I realized what the book was, my focus became clear and I re-energized my excitement for my novel.
CD
I definitely need to pay more attention to my surroundings. As to writing, I tend to notice that something isn’t right and can usually figure out what it is, whether I do anything about it or move on is another story.
Thanks for sharing this.
I’m on my way ofver to Michele’s blog now to check it out. And I don’t care for Walmart. I’m more of a snooty Target kinda guy.
Stephen Tremp
No, but I like this. Sometimes we have to stop just listening to the squeeky wheel and take action.
What a hilarious analogy!
And I try to learn to fix the problems at once (because I have experimented with the hard way :D)
Margot–It’s no fun to feel behind, but at least you’ve fixed the problem!
Robert–Good luck with it!
Conda–It’s VERY hard to do. I really don’t like tinkering with the manuscript while I’m on the first draft. But sometimes it has to be done.
Clarissa–And even if the material is *great*, if it’s extraneous then we might as well cut it out.
Tamika–It sounds like a great plan!
Cassandra–You’re so welcome!
Stephen–Target is sooo much better. But they don’t ever seem to have humongous birdseed bags. :)
Mary–And give it some grease! :)
Dorte–The easy way sounds good to me!