Jim Tomlinson's Online Writing Journal

Jim Tomlinson

a writer's journal

Monday, January 6, 2003

At 9:15 this evening, I wrote "THE END" on the first draft of Being Jericha Mize. The baby, begun on May 17, 2002, weighs in at just over 47,000 words, which is a nice size for a young readers novel, which this just so happens to be. There's a ton of small things to change and insert. There's tightening to do, work on a consistent character voice, improved story pacing, etc. And old Uncle Whit, as he first appears, is due for significant alterations. But it's a draft, something to work with, something to make better.

Tomorrow, I catch up on neglected emails. Then the fun stuff....the revisions...begin.

Wednesday, January 8, 2003

Dennis Palumbo writes in his book, Writing From The Inside Out, that procrastination is part of the whole process, that it should be embraced as such. Today I monkeyed around in the office, rearranging stuff, trying to make a different place to attack that next novel. In other words, I didn't open the file of that manuscript that is begging for a quick revision. No guilt, though. It's all part of the process. Right?

Friday, January 10, 2003

Tonight I completed a spreadsheet that details the scenes is my young readers manuscript--the who, what, when, where, and why of each scene in order. It is impossible for me to hold a novel in my head and view its proportions. But on a three page spreadsheet, I have a sense of how the parts fit together--or don't. As I start revisions, it should be a big help. But it was a bear to produce, a no-fun effort that I had to slog through, for the good of the rewriting, which is what I'd much rather do.

Friday, January 17, 2003

Had me one eventful and productive week. Revisions have progressed smoothly. I've been putting in six to eight hours a day. Tomorrow I should complete draft two, which is essentially what I'll send to the editor. Most changes from draft one amount to inserting details earlier to serve later purposes, so things needed will appear and not reek of author convenience. Also added more internalization by the first person narrator, and moved some descriptive material from a later, action scene to an earlier, more leisurely one. And I found a real boat online to replace the imagined (unreasonable) one that existed in the first draft.

Third draft begins Sunday. This should simply amount to smoothing over the patches, smoothing and evening out the voice, and adding more emotional queues. Thirty pages a day should get Being Jericha Mize in the mail by Jan 25.

Oh yes, the eventful part-- I learned this week that Kentucky Arts Council is giving me a 2003 Professional Assistance Award, cash money to spend on professional development. Blind jurying was by out-of-state judges. Heaviest weighting was on the fiction submitted, a short story, 'Things Kept,' in my case. I workshopped this story online, in my face-to-face critique group, and then with Lee Smith at the Appalachian Writers Workshop this past summer. Lee gave me loads of encouragement and a couple hints on how to improve the story. Apparently, they worked.

Tuesday, January 21, 2003

Work continues apace on BJM, with the target date of Jan 25 still a possibility. My main problem has been chapter one, getting the right information first, setting the voice, establishing the voice of Lake in the reader's mind, as the story is launched. I must have rewritten this chapter twenty times so far, and I'll probably be rewriting it right up until I seal the manuscript envelope on Saturday.

Otherwise, the thing seems to be rounding into decent shape. I'm way too close to it to know how it reads. When I look again in a couple of months, I'll know better. Unfortunately, I do not have the luxury of letting the manuscript sit before polishing this time. So we'll send it as a best effort and hope it's not dreck.

Sunday, January 26, 2003

I completed the final run-through of the novel on schedule, printed out a crisp copy, and sent it to the editor yesterday. Over the next few weeks, I hope I can pull away from it, get some distance. Living with it as I have, distance has been completely impossible.

'Completely impossible'-- see, there's another problem. After several months of writing in the voice of twelve-year-old Lake Malone, I now find myself qualifying my absolutes with adverbs. It's characteristic of youth-speak. Only now it has infected my other writing. I rarely used adverbs before, and I never glued qualifiers onto absolutes. And 'get' rarely insinuated itself into my writing--until writing as Lake, that is. And hyperbole, the girl lives at the extremes of exaggeration. I'll have to do some serious work to regain my former untainted, slightly pompous writing style.

Friday, January 31, 2003

Even without writing, it's been a full week--planning for a reading at ArtSpace here in Berea, Silas House, Barbara Fischer, Steve Lyon, and me. Working on fliers to get the word out. Reading short stories (Best of American 2002, also New South), critiquing one for Barb Fischer. Maybe I'm missing the regular writing. I'm feeling downright irritable, that's for sure. I'm thinking about writing, thinking about the character who will pick up the storyline in "Things Kept." That's not really writing, though. My mood seems to know the difference.

Sunday, February 9, 2003

I'm back from the Florida Suncoast Writers Conference, three days of sessions on the craft and the business of writing. The worst part was choosing which of five or six concurrent sessions to miss. The best part was that there was always at least one great session going on. Four hundred people, all writers, in one place--what an amazing atmosphere!

Meanwhile, back in Berea, the reading at ArtSpace has come together--Berea Arts Council, Berea College Bookstore, and Silas House all on board for Feb. 27. I'll promote it to the hilt, and we'll hopefully draw more than ten people.

How to resume and expand "Things Kept," how to find Dexter Chalk's voice, that's the current big writing problem. And how Being Jericha Mize is (or isn't) being received in California is the big mental distraction, one that flashes through my brain 1759 times a day.

Monday, February 17, 2003

Another change-of-pace week. Made up fliers and posters for the reading at ArtSpace on the 27th. Read quite a bit, trying to get an adult writer's voice in my head after living with 12-year-old Lake's for the past several months. Especially enjoyed the collection edited by Shannon Ravenel, New Stories from the South 2002. Also started reading Atonement by Ian McEwan. And I applied for Indiana University Writers Conference and Workshop, primarily because of the fiction section being taught by Robert Olen Butler. And I applied for a KAC grant to help pay for it.

I did critiqued a couple stories for House Writers. And I wrote a second and third page of two fun round-robin stories, the first fiction writing since I put the novel to bed.

Other than that, it's Presidents Day today, so there is no mail. Which means, no word on Being Jericha Mize. Maybe tomorrow.

Friday, February 21, 2003

The good news is that I've been accepted at the Indiana University Writers Conference in June. Still don't know if I'll be assigned to Robert Olen Butler's workshop sessions, but the director says my early application 'bodes well for your chances.' Here's hoping.

The less good news (okay, it's bad news) is that the editor who read my young readers novel decided against taking it on. He did refer me to an editor at another house who he thought might be better suited to help with guidance and advice. She's an editor I've admired for several years, so I'm really delighted by the way what seemed at first a negative development became something quite positive.

Meanwhile, ideas for the novel growing out of "Things Kept" are percolating. I am eager to get back to writing again.

Friday, February 28, 2003

But I didn't get back to writing all week. Instead I worked at publicizing the reading at Berea's ArtSpace and preparing for my part in the evening--combination local host and opening reader. The second and third readers (Barb Fischer and Steve Lyon) were tangled in Lexington traffic, arriving after I started to my great relief. My reading (from 'Prologue') seemed to go well. I had to edit the section I read, take out some of the intended awkwardness in Davis' letter and much of his stilted writing. It simply didn't work read aloud and without context.

Steve and Barb did superb jobs. Everyone stayed more or less on the agreed schedule, and Silas House took the floor with the audience not worn down. With Donavan Cain strumming banjo and singing, and Silas reading from A Parchment of Leaves and, for the first time, from his new ms, The Coal Tattoo, the two capped off the evening beautifully. There was a brief Q&A afterwards, and most of the forty or so people who came stayed to talk afterwards, slowly trickling away over the next hour. It felt like a successful evening all around. (Group shot made afterward.)

And now that that is over, I really need to get back to writing real fiction. It's been a full month!

Saturday, March 8, 2003

The hardest part of getting started with the writing again is just getting that first sentence down. With Dexter Chalk, I find that I'm having to simply write my way into him. I have some ideas about who he is, what his circumstances are. But he hasn't felt like a breathing being for all my thinking, contemplating, and note-taking. So I've started writing what may be text in his story (as always, editable first draft crap with revise-or-discard options kept wide open), and in doing so, Dex is becoming more palpable.

His story will interlace with LeAnn's story, "Things Kept." That part should be fun, seeing the same or closely related events from two points-of-view. If I control my 'urge to cuteness,' it could actually work out quite well.

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Last updated 04/22/2010

Jim Tomlinson has been awarded an Al Smith Fellowship in recognition of artistic excellence for professional artists in Kentucky through the Kentucky Arts council, a state agency in the Commerce Cabinet, supported by state tax dollars and federal funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, which believes that a great nation deserves great art.

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