A little more than two weeks into the New Year I reviewed my resolutions to determine whether I was moving towards a stated goal, away from it, or treading water.
To recap, the 2007 writing goals and progress notes:

1) Enter twenty(20) fiction writing contests that pay cash prizes in excess of $300 and publication in a respected periodical, annual or magazine.

As a result of mentioning this goal, three readers suggested a new competition sponsored by Simon and Schuster. The final deadline is March 15, 2007. I have decided to enter The Confession. It’s an Internet only contest, and everyone who has an opinion and access to a computer can weigh in and vote on the first chapter. Their votes, along with the panelist selections, decide who advances to round two and three.
2) Pitch the novel to 40 agents/editors.

Nothing concrete happened towards that end, as I’m still implementing feedback from the Final Three. Until the revisions are done, I won’t query. My drop dead date for revisions are February 13, 2007. That leaves 46 weeks for querying agents–sufficient time.

3) Launch guerrilla marketing campaign for the novel. The details of this plan must remain unde wraps because it’s the only truly original idea I’ve ever had about hawking fiction. If it works, I’ll gladly disclose the details.

Can’t say anything about this at present.

4) Finish a draft of The Confession before beginning another large writing project.

Besides the site and some light edits on The Last Track, I direct my writing efforts at The Confession. Entering First Chapters forces its completion, which logically keeps me on course with this goal.

Started an entry earlier this weekend, and though I liked the writing, it read preachy, so I filed the snippet away. Maybe similar ideas will assume a new form, and a warmer tone, should I revisit them again. Which led me to the question of what exactly happens to a discarded passage. For some reason, in the last four years I never considered alternatives to my approach, which I will explain further below. Having spent a few moments thinking, I recognize I could manage surgical extractions—the outright deletion of material—very differently.

When a sentence or paragraph falls short, I know of three choices. Fix by editing, relocate the tract to where it might work more effectively, or damn the lot to file thirteen. Generally speaking, I have done very well with the right sentence, wrong paragraph theory. Narrative drops out on the page like jigsaw pieces dumped upon the family room floor at Grandma’s house. The trick is snapping like pieces together in a good enough place until the puzzle takes shape, and accept that the most sound arrangement might not happen by accident or after the first, second or third pass. Fair enough. And most who have written fiction for fun or profit understand the importance of blunt force edits: working a page over and over and over, only to change a minor point of punctuation or a single word.

But what of file thirteen, this recycle bin in the sky? I have no compunctions tossing a bit to the wind once it becomes clear it does not benefit the story. Sometimes a sentence is stranded in a manuscript, a little island unto itself. It might be a great line, but to leave it in place weakens its neighbors. Therefore, in such circumstances, it has to die.

Or maybe not.

From the beginning, I have cut with impunity, and no regard of how a stricken line might just be the right sentence in the wrong manuscript. Whoa. Talk about a paradigm shift. Cut a lot of chaff in the last four years, trying to find some wheat. The deletions were done for the right reason, but maybe, just maybe I could have saved those offending lines in another file.

See, it’s the simplest lessons that hit me the hardest.

Met with reader two, covered about two-thirds of the novel, and scheduled a follow up session for Tuesday. Since the task remains open, it’s inappropriate to focus on specifics–don’t want to taint the discussions–other than to mention their razor sharp editing prowess. I can speak in more general terms, though.

Throughout the life of this project, the material attracted a great cadre of voices with very definite ideas for improving the story. And by and large, each individual concentrated on different elements: characters, plot, technical details, narrative flow–and that’s just a partial list of pieces a story needs to work.

Reader feedback has been invaluable in making the novel work. When a sentence lacks coherence or a scene falls flat and three people mention the same concern, it’s a problem that needs attention. I submit that a group focused on a common focal point generates synergy, even when members express their opinions completely unaware of other viewpoints. Synergy makes the manuscript better. The more I yield to forces greater than myself, the more solid the final results.

Hitting a similar place on my own with the manuscript would have taken two to three times longer, and meant a lot more frustration. Even if I did recognize the foibles and work through them, picking off one gremlin at a time, The Last Track would be very different right now.

And now I’m really itching to find it a home.

Copy protecting a manuscript the official way via the Copyright Office can take upwards of six months. Registering the Ridge Runner, the precursor to the novel, took five, for instance. Add in the cost, which is $45 USD, and usually I opt for the poor man route. It’s faster, cheaper, and less onerous to seal up a short story and mail the package to myself before showing it around. Given the amount of time invested in a novel and potential financial upside, a 45 dollar tag seems more reasonable.
Lo and behold my TX certificate for The Last Track arrived in the mail today–an end to end turnaround of 8 weeks. Pretty incredible considering it necessitated heavy governmental oversight in the midst of three major holidays.

So to the Register of Copyrights, Marybeth Peters, whatever you did to streamline the process, much thanks! I’d send cookies, but that would probably land me on the wrong kind of watch lists.