other ways to write

I'm nearly done with the current round of edits for September Story.  When I started that novel in September 2008, I wanted to write more slowly; I was firmly in the NaNoWriMo school of dump all as quickly as possible.  But I wanted to try something new.  That feeling lasted about... three days.  Then like usual, like I do to this day, the words streamed and by the end of the month there was another novel.  But September Story wasn't just any novel; that manuscript opened the floodgates, hit the semis of a contest, told me I had something here.  There Is Something Here is the title of Hannah Adams' novel, of Jeremy Stewart's movie (based on Hannah's book); there is something here said far more than that; it said I knew a little of what was going on.

Today I revised one of my all-time favorite chapters; written nearly all in emails, then one letter from Alta McIntyre, Hannah's mother, to Jeremy, a Christmas letter-thank you note.  This novel is full of correspondence, an earlier chapter all letters between Jeremy and Hannah's daughter Jo, with various emails and more letters scattered throughout the manuscript.  I can't recall if that was planned from the beginning, but it certainly evolved during the writing, the first time I had more than narrative prose.  I don't know if that mattered in the contest, or was it the theme of racial prejudice.  The feedback I gained during that experience was what pushed me over the edge; from summer 2009 to just last November, I wrote a spate of manuscripts.  Now I'm sitting on those novels, taking one at a time, sort of.  But September Story, the eighth novel I've written, was a watershed.  And now, looking back, maybe it was the letters and emails that broke the ice.

I don't often write in first person; mostly I'm a third POV sort of gal.  Emails and letters weren't a challenge, they were an intriguing manner of moving the story forward.  The difficulty in this chapter, number twenty-three, was in the detail.  From California Jo writes to her mother and grandmother, those women in New York, and Jeremy's in Yorkshire, England.  I carefully corresponded the dates and times of emails, then allowed for the week or so it took for Alta's letter to reach Jeremy.  That letter says more than thanks for poinsettias.  Alta gives it to Jeremy with both barrels in the kindest, softest way.

I often take the usual route; prose and dialogue, but sometimes other elements enhance the tale.  I've used these sorts of devices in other books; Captured Words And Deeds employs answering machine messages, A Cornflower Snow goes from first person to letters, then ends with third person, and This Blog Has No Title is as it says, partially in blog form.  But September Story was a first, in many ways.  The first novel that I attempted to write in a non-NaNo style, my first contest entry, and of course, all those emails and letters.

I'll be publishing September Story sometime in spring; I don't publish my novels to when I wrote them, but just when they're ready, and I'm ready too.  After all this one book introduced, time for it to fly, but not by air mail.  Just like all those emails from Jo, Jeremy, Hannah, Alta, even Marco (oh the ones from Marco make me giggle!), again this novel will slip through via cyberspace.  However, I received two novels in the post on Saturday, which always revs my print engines.  More about those in a couple of days, but for all my ebook publishing, I still say I love holding a novel in my hands.

Probably how Alta feels about letters compared to emails; her note is the straw on poor Jeremy's back.