Casting a Line for Reangling

Question of the day: I have what I think is a great idea that's been (tentatively) picked up by a national mag for a short FOB piece. I'm thrilled, but I'd also really like to write a longer version of the piece for a regional magazine -- a totally noncompetitive market. The story would be different enough that I'm not just re-pitching the same thing. What's the etiquette here? Am I OK to pitch to the regional mag if it's a totally different take on the story, or should I wait to see what happens with the national mag?

The answer, in my opinion, is a very affirmative yes. In fact, this is how a lot of writers earn their bread and butter: you can't always sit around waiting to be handed the big feature op, so many of them re-angle and refashion their previous sold ideas (and thus likely GOOD ideas) for different markets.

The key, as you already seem to know, is to ensure that they are indeed non-competitive (i.e, don't pitch both Self and Shape), and to tweak the story somewhat so it's not just a rehash. I used to do this fairly often with men's magazines: if I sold a cool idea to a women's mag, I found a way to re-angle a similar idea for the men's, and often times, I hit pay dirt. Regional magazines are also a great way to reuse pitches, again, as you've already discovered, because they really aren't competitors with the larger national ones (for the most part), yet still use general subject-matter pieces.

So I say go for it! Of course, I'm not the expert in reselling ideas (to be honest, I sometimes just got too lazy to do so), so if there are any other wiser souls out there, please feel free to chime in. Or I'd also welcome thoughts on how YOU resell ideas, it's a really interesting (and occasionally tricky) subject.

The Big Cut is the Deepest

So I'm nearly done revising the first 150 pages of The Happiest Days of My Life. Or at least done the very first revision. No doubt there will be many more to come. But as I mentioned a while ago, I knew that something was slightly not right about the book, so I asked for editorial input, and got some fabulous ways to tweak the story.

So I'm nearly there, and I'm totally psyched about the improvements I've made. But I have to say...ugh...it is so, so, so painful to hit that delete key on entire scenes and see my word count dip so dramatically. Anyone else feel this grief?

I know, I know, that it is for the best. Trust me, the book is so much stronger for it, but still, part of me dies a little every time I have to do this. That said, the reason I'm actually blogging about this is because I think that sometimes, writers get too attached to scenes/ideas/characters that just aren't working, and for the love of God, while we don't want to cut them, we must! Whenever I hit that delete key, I remind myself that this book is a compilation of scenes and stories that all add up to one big package...and if any of the elements are off, well, the package can be a doozy. It CAN'T be about keeping one specific scene, regardless of how much it depletes my word count, because it just isn't fair to the rest of the book, not if that scene sucks the big one.

And so, with a heavy heart, I have axed, and axed, and axed, BUT, honestly, by cutting an entire subplot that I really wasn't thrilled about writing AND really wasn't popping off the page, AND finding a new subplot that infused the ms with a lot more energy, I really have done the book (and myself) a favor. And when it hits bookstores, I know that I won't regret it. Even when it breaks my heart (if only for that dang word count) right now.

Making It Personal

Question of the day: I am currently working on my second MS (the first one I should have thrown in the garbage and never sent out) and it's not an autobiographical story, but that being said, there are many behaviors and characteristics that come up that I put into my characters (positive and negative) that may be recognizable to friends or family in my life, as I collectively draw upon all the people I’ve encountered throughout my life to come up with each character. I was wondering how you deal with this as an author. While you don't write stories that are autobiographical, I'm assuming that you draw upon people you have met or even know intimately. (or maybe you don't and in that case, what is your process for character-building?) Do you fret over offending anyone in your life, or worry that they may read more into a character than you intended? I struggle with letting go as an artist and being completely authentic and sometimes find myself toning a character down to not offend someone in my life – present or past.

This is a great, great, great question, and I hope that I can answer it adequately, because truthfully, I'm not sure if I have the correct answer to this. If not, I hope that others will chime in with their own thoughts.

To begin with, do I base characters on people I know? Not really. (Which is part of why answering this is a little tricky.) I've said this before, but for me, to really delve into a fictional world, I need to have entirely made-up characters, so if I'm thinking of someone from my real life, it sort of muddies my creative waters. I do sort of get a kick out of the fact that I'm certain that there are some exes out there who think that Time of My Life is probably a lamenting love letter to them or something (sort of like Carly Simon's You're So Vain), but I'd just never do that. Like in The Department, how everyone assumed that the exes she tracked down were MY exes. Ahem. No.

But have I cribbed behaviors for characters? Well, sure, because part of what we do as authors is observe human behavior and find a way to translate that onto a page. I've found that for the most part, if it's a positive behavior that you're mimicking, the person in question is sort of tickled to have made it into the book (and to have left such a positive impression that they DID make it into the book). And if it's a negative behavior? Well, a few things. One, if possible, handle it with a bit of humor. While I've often said that Henry in Time of My Life isn't based on my husband (at all), sure, does my husband leave his glasses in the sink instead of the dishwasher (one of Henry's habits)? Absolutely. But he knows that this habit drives me bananas, and it's almost sort of funny (you know, if it didn't drive me crazy), and no one was harmed in the writing.

If it's a more negative attribute than that? Well, what I'd likely do is ascribe the nasty behavior to a different character than the one from your real life. So, if your mother has very specific passive aggressive tendencies, well, then I wouldn't write a fictitious mother with these same tendencies. Give them to someone else in the book, if possible. OR, make her passive-aggressive but in a very different way than your own mother is. Maybe yours operates by preying on guilt, but your fictional one could operate by fear of having her children leave her behind. I don't know, I'm just ruminating.

Do I let this hamper my writing? Well, again, it's a lot easier for me to spin characters from thin air than modify a real-life person to make him/her fictitious, but if I truly thought something might be offensive to someone who was important to me, then I probably wouldn't do it. I don't kid myself that I'm writing Pulitzer Prize winning stuff, and while yeah, I do like to "honor the writing process," (in quotes because it sounds so pretentious), I also believe that there are usually several ways of writing something (at least for me and in my genre). If the mother in your book needs to be reprehensible, find a different way to make her so than your own mother or consider another tactic, another ploy to get your character where she needs to go. Once it's on the page (and published), you can't take it back, and in my opinion, you don't want any lingering doubts about what is going to be read by thousands of people. So if you're unsure, try writing it a different way, and you might be surprised by what you find.

But I'm curious to hear what others say on this...how do you handle personal touches from your real life?