Given Where I Started From
Kind folks keep congratulating me on the release of my novel TRACKING HAPPINESS: A SOUTHERN CHICKEN ADVENTURE and inside myself I think, I self-published it—where is the congratulations in that? I did successfully get an agent for the novel (a long time ago), but he wasn’t able to sell that half-baked version. Later I had another agent extremely interested in it (“you have the makings of a literary star”), but I wasn’t able to revise it the way she wanted. Finally, I gave up and revised it myself and published it myself. The novel is the making of lemonade out of multiple failed lemons.
Then I remember.
I remember the first time I was able to add a second sentence after the first, and it made sense.
And I remember the first time I strung two paragraphs together, rather than writing a series of images bumped up against each other that asked the reader to narrate the white space between.
And the first time I wrote a whole page that flowed—a whole page!
And the first time someone (my sister—I’m telling you, I vividly recall these moments) referred to my work as a “story” rather than a “piece,” because I —finally—had learned to write a narrative arc. Which means “this happened, which caused this to happen, then this happened.” A beginning, middle, and end. A plot.
From my earliest scratchings, I had description out the wazoo; my characters were unique; dialogue was a breeze. But plot? Message? The “why are we here?” of it seemed so self-evident to me, I couldn’t understand why the reader didn’t see it too. But I came to accept they didn’t; I had to write it. So I sloooooooowly learned how.
This was the trajectory for me, a college-educated, well-read lawyer who wrote big, fat applications for a living. But my creative writing began with the creation of descriptive images that had to grow tendons of narration before they accomplished more than leaving folks scratching their heads (which I must admit, they sometimes still do: people ask, where do you come up with these things? The only answer I can give you is, that’s my brain.)
And now I’ve published a 300-page novel, which is the word we use for a long story that starts and moves forward and ends (I hope) satisfactorily. So, okay. Given where I started from, I’ve come a long way. Truth is, my having published a cohesive, entertaining novel is sort of a minor miracle.
So thank you for your congratulations. I much appreciate it.
#forthechickens, #TrackingHappiness, 2018 Summer Reads, best beach books 2018, Best beach reads 2018, novel-writing, Tracking Happiness: A Southern Chicken Adventure, Writing
Donna Weidner
CONGRATULATIONS!
Ellen Morris Prewitt
TY!! 🙂
Susanne
Man. I a walking the same path (except for the lawyer part), trying to figure out how to plot. So far its short stories. Thanks for telling your story of learning how to tell stories. I don’t feel so alone in my slow crawl lane.
Ellen Morris Prewitt
I have such memories of different mentors/teachers patiently trying to explain to me why someone wouldn’t understand what I’d written. I finally got it when Margot Livsey said I needed to leave more steppingstones for the reader to follow me through the story. Not that more cogent stories miraculously followed, but at least I had a better idea of what was missing. Your writing is wonderful. As they say, I’m not worried about you. 🙂
Tracking Happiness: A Southern Chicken Adventure @ SusanCushman.com
[…] If you’ve enjoyed these character cameos in lieu of a plot summary, I hope you’ll read the book. You can find a plot summary on Ellen’s web site, here. And you can read what Ellen says about her journey to write and publish this book in her recent blog post, “Given Where I Started From.” […]