GREAT MOMENTS IN WRITING

Last week I expressed a desire for snow. Someone, apparently, was listening, because we got over seven inches of the cold, wet stuff on Friday and Saturday. But I was right about my ragweed allergies; they have almost entirely vanished, thanks to the snowfall.

I’m coming down the home stretch and I can see the finish line right ahead – Go, Threadbare! I feels great to watch the end of a novel approach, almost as good as actually finishing it. There are, actually, a lot of great moments in writing. First, there’s getting the idea. It’s like picking up a pretty stone, one that, the more you look at it, the better it looks. Then there’s writing that opening scene. You write it and leave it alone for a day or two. When you come back and see it’s good, that’s another great moment. Then there’s the actual writing. There’s no great moment here, but there can be a whole lot of excitement and/or satisfaction. Watching a character come to life, showing some unexpected traits and sometimes taking the story in a new direction is interesting and exciting – although it can be not so good, if it really upsets the direction of the story as you plotted it. I won’t say you fall in love with the characters, but it’s kind of like that. You care about them, wish them well, think about them even when you’re not writing about them. If you’re writing a mystery, there may come a moment or two when you’re working on a plot twist, that you think about your reader, and how they’ll never see this one coming! Then there comes the moment when you realize that story is actually going to happen, that it’s a coherent, interesting, even exciting story and you are writing it very well. That’s a great moment. And then it’s done. The End. The great heaping, smoking pile of words is complete. You almost wish you smoked cigars, so you could sit back and look like a proud father. Instead you cook something special for dinner that night – or maybe even go out to dine, have a glass of wine, and smile, smile, smile. Of course, you let it sit for a week or longer, then go back in to read it and find it needs tweaking. But I’m not the only author who will tell you that tweaking is probably the most fun part of writing a novel. The story is there, all you’re doing is making it perfect.

I got an advance copy of Buttons and Bones the other day, and had another Great Moment: seeing the book as it will look in the bookstores and, if you’re prayers are answered, on people’s bookshelves. In this day of electronic writing, it may be the first time you’ve seen the book in print. There it is, your name, your title, your words. If you’re lucky, it’s got a great cover. (Buttons and Bones has a great cover. Look for it in your favorite bookstore December 7.)

Now all you have to do is, do it again.