Just checking in.  Dream Child is at almost 29,000 words now (on chapter six out of 16).  I’m also going back over Dream doctor – I’ve been through four chapters so far.

Also, in writing yesterday’s post about the Mark Helprin book, I realized something.  I’m very much a plot-centric reader, and I think writer as well.  There’s nothing that ruins a story for me more than a plot that just doesn’t make sense.  Especially when it doesn’t make sense within the world that the author has set up.

For example: I watched the pilot episode of the new submarine drama “Last Resort.”  The premise is that an American missile submarine gets a questionable order to launch its nuclear missiles at Pakistan, coming in over the emergency channel that’s only supposed to be used if the chain of command has been completely wiped out. But the U.S. isn’t at war with Pakistan, and when the sub’s commander tries to get some news, he finds that America is still in one piece, and Washington hasn’t been destroyed.  So he radios in for confirmation of the order.

For his trouble he’s relieved of command.  When his XO also refuses the order, another American sub is sent in to kill them – and then that same sub carries out the illegal order and nukes Karachi and three other Pakistani cities.

But after that, and for the next three episodes, there’s seemingly no fallout (excuse the pun) from that act.  America has, apparently without provocation, used multiple nuclear weapons on another country, and killed several million people.  That’s a world-changing event.  There would not be business-as-usual in Washington, D.C. (or anywhere else in the world, probably) after such an act.  And yet, within the show, business in the nation’s capital is very usual.

That’s the kind of disbelief I can’t suspend.  No matter how compelling the characters are, or how cool the action is, or anything else, with a plot oversight that big, they’ve lost me.

Of course, I tend to overcompensate for this in my writing, and explain every little thing, leaving no dangling strings, even when maybe some of them ought to be allowed to dangle a bit.

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And I have to take back my previous coment about it – I can’t really recommend it. 

The writing is beautiful throughout, and (some of) the characters are wonderfully drawn.  But taken as a whole, the novel is a huge disappointment.  I stand by my initial reaction that the plot isn’t weighty enough to support the prose.  But in addition, the second half of the book has a couple of huge problems.

One is the pacing; the story is stopped dead in its tracks by four straight chapters of flashbacks, and even those flashbacks are interrupted by flashbacks-within-flashbacks.  And then, when the plot does get moving again, the ending is very rushed and terribly unsatisfying.  I’ll say more after the jump, so if you plan to read the book and avoid spoilers, skip the rest of this post.. …

Read More Read More

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Just over 26,000 words now, and five chapters finished (this is all still a first draft; it’s all going to have to be heavily edited later).  So far, young Lizzie Alderson, Sara’s almost-four-year-old daughter, has stolen the show.  I think/hope that I’m getting her voice right, as an extremely bright little girl whose parents don’t always quite know what to do with her.  Here’s a sample (to set this up, in the first chapter, Sara and Lizzie randomly meet the wife and young son of Congressman Pete Hanratty.  Later, outside their hotel they run into the Congressman himself and end up having dinner with him):

“I’m a Congressman.  Do you know what that is?”

Lizzie answers immediately.  “We saw it today!  That’s the big white building with the big round top and the statue at the very tippy-top.” 

“That’s where I work,” Pete agrees.  “But do you know what we do there?”

Lizzie shakes her head.  I’m sure she got a running commentary about it from her grandmother, even if it probably all went in one ear and straight out the other.  “Didn’t Grandma Helen tell you about it, when you were out today?”

“She said a lot of stuff,” Lizzie admits, then she concentrates, trying to remember anything that Helen told her.  Compared to ice-skating for the first time, I’m not surprised that nothing else really stuck with Lizzie.  But I’m wrong.  “She said – she said – that’s where they tell everybody in the whole country what to do.”  She fixes Pete with a very serious stare.  “Is that your job?  Do you tell everybody what to do?”

Pete grins.  “It’s a little bit more complicated than that.”

Lizzie has an immediate answer for him.  “Com – com – comlickpated is what Mommy says when I ask her and she doesn’t want to tell me something.”  I look at Pete apologetically.  I guess I’ve kind of raised a monster.  On the other hand, she is sort of right.  It’s my own fault – if I don’t want her asking difficult questions, I shouldn’t bring her with me to the hospital. 

Lizzie’s been a surprise to me.  The story was always going to be about her rather than Sara having the dreams, but I didn’t anticipate her growing into a larger role as she has.  I also didn’t have any idea that the plot to be uncovered was going to revolve around a corrupt Congressman, until after I began by putting Sara and Lizzie on the train to Washington D.C. to open the book.  I’m curious to find out what other surprises this book will have for me.

 

 

 

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I’ve finished my (fourth, fifth – I’ve lost track) pass over “Dream Student.”  Mostly it was small tweaks this time, and moving one short scene from page one to the end of the first chapter.  It did get a bit longer; it’s up to 93,700 words (not counting a dedication and acknowledgements, which I haven’t written yet).

I think (hope) it’s more or less in its final form now – I’m pretty happy with it.  The next step is to get some more feedback on it, and then to figure out what I want to do to get it published – do I just go the Kindle Direct route or try with a publisher first?

I haven’t quite figured that one out yet…

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Nothing much to report, but I want to get in the habit of posting at least every other day or so, if not more frequently.

So: another 1,000 or so words written on “Dream Child” (almost up to 25,000 now).  This one is going more slowly than either of the first two books.  I think the problem is that although I have a general idea of where the story will go, it’s not nearly as clear as either of the first two books were.  Both of them had more structure, for lack of a better word, to them.

I also tweaked another chapter of “Dream Student”; this is at least my fourth pass through the book, and I’m still finding the occasional typo or mismatched tense, and every time through I change the wording here and there on some things.  I think this is a good thing; it’s improving, even if only by small degrees, each time through.

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If you want to write, you must read – that’s probably the single most common piece of advice given to writers.  So as I work on my own writing, it’s worth looking at what I’m reading right now.

Currently, I’m about halfway through Mark Helprin’s latest novel, “In Sunlight and In Shadow.”  His first novel, “Winter’s Tale,” is not only one of my favorite novels, but without any question the best novel I’ve ever read.  Hands down.

Like “Winter’s Tale,” the new book is set in New York City.  Unlike the earlier book, which opened around the beginning of the 20th century and ended just as the 21st began, and which is filled with the fantastical, “In Sunlight” restricts itself to a mostly realistic portrayal of immediate postwar New York (with occasional flashback to the hero’s World War II service). 

The writing is beautiful; Helprin’s descriptions transport the reader to 1946 Manhattan with great skill.  But, unlike his earlier novel, in a way it’s all too much.  “Winter’s Tale” was epic in scope, but this new book, although it tries to be, simply is not.  The weight of the prose, beautiful as it is, isn’t supported by the story or the characters.  Helprin’s command of the language and the skill with which he uses it demands a more weighty and “important” (if that’s the right word) subject than whether our hero can overcome the fact that he’s Jewish and his beloved is both a Protestant and an heiress to a huge fortune; and if he can save his father’s business from bankruptcy at the hands of mafia extortionists.

I guess, at least halfway through, I still would recommend the book even if it doesn’t really work as well as it should; Helprin’s prose is worth reading anyway.  But I’d urge anyone reading this to go right out and pick up “Winter’s Tale” – I promise you won’t regret that.

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So where are these three books in terms of progress?

The first book, “Dream Student,” is finished (93,000 words), but I’m still editing, tweaking and rewriting here and there.

“Dream Doctor” is also finished (85,000 words), but it definitely needs more thorough editing and some rewriting.

“Dream Child” is still a work in progress, currently at 23,000 words.

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Welcome to my newest blog, where I’m going to write about (mostly my) writing.

So to get right into it, I’m working on a novel – actually three novels – at the moment, all following the same heroine

She is Dr. Sara Alderson, nee Barnes, and we meet her back in the winter of 1989 in (still a working title) “Dream Student” when she’s a junior at the fictional Crewe University (which isn’t really fictional at all; it’s my alma mater with the serial numbers filed off).

We’re introduced to her just as she discovers that she’s blessed, or maybe cursed, with the ability to see and share other people’s dreams:

As soon as she sees that, she knows: this is not her dream anymore.  It has nothing to do with her.  The Sara in the cheerleader outfit is a character in someone else’s dream.  She doesn’t know how she knows this, but she has no doubt whatsoever that it’s true.  It’s crazy and it’s impossible and it’s happening just the same. 

Sara doesn’t know what to do; this is so far out of her experience that she doesn’t even know where to begin.  All she knows is that she’s in someone else’s mind – or somebody else is in hers.  When the young man with the basketball looks up from the court and sees her, locks eyes with her, it’s suddenly all too much. 

This isn’t supposed to be happening, Sara thinks, but she doesn’t know how to get out of his dream, any more than she knows how she got into it in the first place.  And then panic sets in – what if she’s trapped here, what if she can’t ever get out of his mind, or throw him out of hers, whichever it is – and she begins screaming…

The dreams lead Sara towards a fellow student who just might be her true love, but they also give her a window into the mind of a madman who’s already abducted and killed two teenage girls and has his eye on a third.  With the help of her best friend, Sara will try to catch the killer without losing her new boyfriend, her chances of getting into medical school, her sanity or possibly her life…

When we meet Sara again a year and a half later in the second book, “Dream Doctor,” she’s married and just beginning her first year of medical school.  She hasn’t had any of the shared dreams since she helped to catch the serial killer who had been invading her dreams, but to her chagrin they start up again.  This time she has to figure out who’s trying to kill the most unpopular teacher in the medical school from several likely candidates:

Dr. Morris tries to speak, but he’s having great difficulty.  He finally manages to get out: “What do you want?” before he begins coughing violently.  The coughing continues, and Dr. Haynes makes no move to help him, or to do anything at all; she just watches.  Then the blood starts to come up as the coughing gets worse, and Dr. Morris thrashes about.  Finally, there’s one last terrible, inhuman sound from his throat, and he slumps forward, face-down, onto Dr. Haynes’ desk.

“That’s what I was waiting for, Abraham,” Dr. Haynes says, finally, with an air of satisfaction.  “Thank you very much.”

***

I wake up, and I want to call 911.  Someone’s sick, very sick.  But who?  I’m – I’m in my bedroom.  I’m not sick.  Brian’s still sleeping right here next to me and I can see he’s not sick, so who?

Oh, God.  Dr. Morris.  Again.  Does every single person he knows want him dead?  This is getting ridiculous. 

With her new husband beside her, Sara will have to solve the mystery before the would-be killer succeeds in finishing off her professor, while trying to survive the grueling first month of medical school herself.

For the third book, “Dream Child,” we rejoin Sara four years later, halfway into her residency at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.  While visiting Washington, D.C. with her daughter Lizzie, Sara discovers that Lizzie has inherited her talent for sharing dreams:

“Billy was really sad!  And he was scared!  I didn’t like that man in the black car.  He was bad!”  I let her cry, keeping her close to me, not letting go.  It takes a while for her to get it all out.

I would give anything to take this away from her.  I would gladly go back to having the nightmares myself – the very worst ones with Dr. Walters back in college, the ones that had me waking up screaming in a pool of my own vomit – rather than see Lizzie go through this.  She’s my beautiful, perfect baby and I have to protect her. 

But I know from experience that I can’t.  There’s no point protesting that it isn’t fair, or that she’s not equipped to handle it.  Obviously it’s not fair, but so what?  Where do I go to lodge a complaint?  Even if there was such a place, I’d be pretty far back in line, behind the parents of all the patients in my hospital.  And God knows none of those kids are equipped to handle what they’re facing, but they didn’t get a choice.  No matter how much I wish it were otherwise, neither does Lizzie.

This time Sara to save the day, Sara will have to interpert the dreams of the family of a corrupt Congressman, as retold by a four-year-old girl.

 

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