APPROACHING THE MANUSCRIPT REVISION

ByLee Ann

In Holly Lisle’s Boot Camp for Writers called “How to Think Sideways,” she teaches how to revise the first draft of a novel. You need to have a plan, she says, and you need to revise only once. Her process includes stepping back to ask yourself some big-picture questions before starting to edit.

While I won’t follow her approach exactly with Main Street – for one reason, my book is not a novel – I do see the value of asking Holly’s big-picture questions before I dive into the revision process.

So here goes:

1. Write one sentence that describes what you want this book to be.

This is the story of the Muskoka Colonization Road, told through the eyes of the people who designed, built and travelled it for the past 150 years.

2. Why did you write this book?

I wrote it because I was invited to by a publisher who read an article I wrote about the Muskoka Road. This opportunity is the stuff that writers dream of!

3. What do you want your readers to find in your story?

I want my readers to find a historical adventure story filled with courageous and creative characters… and a spectacularly beautiful region of Ontario that refused to be tamed.

4. How did writing this story change you and what do you hope to leave with your readers?

I learned so much more than I had expected – way beyond the boundaries of Muskoka-Parry Sound. I took on new challenges as a writer. I developed a much stronger pride in the rich history of my home province. I also no longer take roads for granted!

I hope to leave my readers with a rollicking good story, some new information and a better sense of what it took to build Ontario.

Now, somebody hand me a red pen – let the edits begin!

ANATOMY OF A FIRST DRAFT

ByLee Ann

Well, break out the bubbly – it’s done! The first draft, with all its holes and glory. Being the analytical type, I’m going to take a brief look back and see what the process so far has been all about.

So what have I done, and what have I learned?

  • I’ve written 25,999 words. This is a tad short of the 40,000 that I’ve told the publisher I will deliver – but I know the story will expand. I have not yet written Chapter 8, “Travelling the Muskoka Road Today,” because I haven’t done the complete trip myself yet, and which will be about 3,000 words. Plus there is more research to do and some expansion of what I’ve written so far. I expect to come in at about 35,000 words, which is respectable for a book of this type and for what I’ve promised.
  • I’ve followed the original Table of Contents pretty closely, except that I’ve turned Chapter 1 into a Preface. I fully expect to re-organize the structure somewhat for the final version. But as you’ve heard me say before, I love my outline and I love my Table of Contents – they have been the beacons that have guided my research and writing all along.
  • In writing the first two chapters I found my voice and my style, and learned to read my words out loud. This took a long time – probably 3 months elapsed – but was time well spent.
  • During the writing of Chapters 4 and 5  I learned that, even though this is a non-fiction book, the process of telling the story I want to tell is very organic. It’s not at all like the business reports I used to write. It sometimes seemed like I could not write one single sentence without stopping to research something for an hour or two. Very frustrating in terms of accumulating word count. But the nature of the beast.
  • By Chapter 6 I had figured out how to expand my outline down a level or two, defining more specifically the flow of the topics for that chapter… and the writing went faster as a result.
  • Chapter 7 was my biggest challenge; there are few people in it. Up until then, I had enough primary source material – diaries, memoirs and the like – to tell the story through the eyes of people who had actually lived it. My temptation was to rush through Chapter 7, but since the timeline is very long – from 1912 to today – that wasn’t really fair. I did the best I could to personalize the events in this chapter and to tie back to some of the people I wrote about earlier on. We’ll see if my critiquers think it works.

Speaking of critiquers, I want to acknowledge my two writer friends who have been with me every step of the way, reading every chapter as I’ve written it. Lynn and Jen are both excellent writers who have encouraged me and given me clear comments and suggestions. Neither of them have never been to Muskoka and they don’t usually read this kind of book. So if I can keep them interested – and I seem to have so far! – then I figure I’m telling the story the way I want to. Thank you, my friends – may all writers have the benefit of your kind of advice!

My next steps are:

1) Take  a week off to visit with my sister and brother-in-law who are here from Texas.

2) Review and make the recommended changes from my critiquers.

3) Go back to Muskoka to explore the original Muskoka Road further and take pictures.

ARE YOU MY READER? Defining the Audience For My Book

ByLee Ann

As a writer, it’s important for me to think about readers. Who is going to read this book? I mean specifically. What are the demographics, geographical locations, values and interests of the people who are going to care enough about this book to actually buy it?

Some writers write for one “Ideal Reader.” Stephen King’s Ideal Reader is his wife Tabitha. She is the one he wants to wow. She is the one he imagines laughing or crying or cringing when she reads one of his stories. Author and teacher Holly Lisle defines her readers in terms of the values they hold and the types of stories they like to read.

I don’t think there is one “Ideal Reader” for Muskoka’s Main Street. I think – I hope – a lot of different people will buy this book for a lot of different reasons. But I do think there are some specific characteristics that would draw people to my book.

You are my reader if:

  • You like a gripping story where real people overcome crushing hardship.
  • You are interested in learning about what changed the face of Muskoka-Parry Sound from raw wilderness and built the Ontario of today.
  • You are fascinated by entrepreneurs and enjoy learning about their lives, their motivations and innovations.
  • You like history but only when it reads like an adventure story.
  • You’ve noticed signs for “The Old Muskoka Road” and wondered what that’s all about.
  • You’ve ever wondered what it was really like to be a pioneer settler in Ontario’s 19th century.
  • You like to be shown facets of Ontario and its history that you might not know about.
  • You like to travel “off the beaten path” and see where the old road might lead.

Are you my reader?

WRITING FROM AN OUTLINE, PART 3: Expand to the Next Level

ByLee Ann

Canadian author and teacher Jack Hodgins says of fiction writing, “Write the first draft to find out what you’re writing about.” For non-fiction writing I would say, “Write the first draft to find out what other research you need to do.”

I’ve just finished the first draft of Chapter 6. I’ve drafted this chapter faster than any of the others and I think I know why. Instead of starting to write directly from my high-level outline, I:

  • reviewed the outline, Chapter 6 outline
  • did some research to understand the topics better and find good primary sources, then
  • expanded the outline to a lower level of detail, figuring out the best order for the topics in the chapter. Chapter 6 details

Then I wrote the chapter, topic by topic, making notes of the additional research I need to do.

This really worked for me! I knew what I needed to write each day, got a first draft done quickly and seemed to stay more focussed and less likely to stray too far into research that is interesting but not important to the story. I now know exactly what I need to research next to fill in the holes in the chapter.

Over the six days it took me to complete this process, I also made sure to balance each day. For me that means:

  1. Do work on the book, then
  2. Do something physical, then
  3. Do something else.

I lived a balanced day every day for six days – yay for me! Then I took the weekend off. Now I’m ready to tackle Chapter 7 in the same way I drafted Chapter 6, and then the first draft will be DONE!

I’ll let you know how it goes.

BOOK WRITING 101: You Get By With a Little Help From Your Friends – And Strangers

ByLee Ann

I’m always amazed at how willing people are to help me with my writing project. Friends and family (mostly my husband) will listen to me blather on about my latest discovery, or let me read a chapter out loud, or come with me to some little museum or historical site while I page through rare books or take pictures.

But the most amazing is when complete strangers go out of their way for me. I had two instances of that last week. Carol Stevens heads up the Perry Township Historical Society, a tiny group of genealogists who are planning to put together a book about the history of their township. I contacted her not – as her brochure requested – to give her information but rather to ask if her group had any information for me about the Muskoka Road, which came through Perry Township on its way to North Bay. The group met and then emailed me all the information they knew, and sent me the names of several books to look up, two of which were new resources to me. Carol even offered to drive 20 kilometres to the Huntsville library to meet me, in case there was more I might want to ask her.

I also called Heather Crewe, Director of Education and Training at the Ontario Good Roads Association. I’ve been trying to find out if the “Good Roads Train” – a travelling, hands-on training program for road-builders that ran in the summer of 1901 – made any stops in Muskoka. (This is the kind of thing I wonder about these days.) I simply hoped Heather could refer me to someone in the organization who knew where their archival material was. But she spent a good 15 minutes on the phone with me, then rooted through her office, scanned in some pages from a couple of publications the OGRS had produced, gave me an on-line reference and two contact names of people she thought might know more.

This kind of thing happens a lot to writers, I think, judging from the long list of “thank-yous” that appear at the back of most books.

I’ve already started to build my thank-you list.

BOOK WRITING 101: How To Make Progress Even When…

ByLee Ann

I arrived in Muskoka a week ago with a goal: to do what Charlotte Gray calls “walking around research” for the next two chapters I need to write. This means exploring resources that can only be found locally, interviewing local people who know the Muskoka Road and Muskoka history, combing through unpublished manuscripts in small-town libraries and driving parts of the road.

While travelling to Muskoka I lost my voice (and it stayed lost for five days.) I developed a deep, barking cough and felt my energy collapse like a snow-cone in this Ontario heat wave. I think I picked up a bug on an Air Canada flight just days before I left for Muskoka.

So much for interviewing people. So much for energy and focus. So much for working during the week and enjoying the weekend with friends and family at the cottage. Yesterday – the first day my energy felt normal, my voice was nearly recovered and, thanks to constantly drinking cough suppressant, I could allow myself to go out in public – I came up with a new plan. I’ve looked at my original goal, looked at my time remaining (five days) and divided the specific things I wanted to do into “Must Do” and “To Do Next Time” lists.

Must Do:

  • Get to Parry Sound District and at least visit two of the small communities that used to be on the road: Emsdale and Burk’s Falls. Find their local libraries and see if there is any primary source material there: family histories, memoirs, diaries that relate anyone’s direct experience with the road or homesteading on the road.
  • Arrange to meet the people in Muskoka who I’ve previously emailed or phoned and who have information to share that can help me.

To Do Next Time

  • Everything else that was on the list: all the other towns in Parry Sound District, all the other libraries and historical sites, all the driving of the road.

OK, maybe the original list was a bit ambitious for a two-week timeframe. That would be typical of me. Maybe I have to spend more of August in Muskoka than I planned. And maybe September too.

Well, I can think of worse consequences from a summer cold.

At least I had this to look at while recuperating:

View from the dock