I’m feeling pretty momentous about this year coming to an end and starting a new one.  Maybe it’s getting older, or having a fifteen-month-old child coming to the end of his second year with us, and on the planet.  Whatever it is, I’m having some thoughts and feelings about it and looking for meaning and a sort of summation.  Writitng-wise it has not been the best year.  Clocked less hours than other recent years.  It wasn’t a publishing year.  Not a ton of PR, media, readings, etc. in 2011 either.  But I did make quite a lot of progress on my new novel this year.  I attended Words and Music in New Orleans.  I had my first foreign sale.  I started a new novel (15 pages), that I’m excited to work on when I get this current one off my plate.  I also read some very good books this year and some mediocre, but entertaining ones.  I went to Cape Cod- a place I’d like to go every year.  I’ve managed my job well, and gotten closer to my co-workers.  I’ve seen a lot of my friends and even more of my family.  Since this blog is about words and I happen to know a little boy who actually learned his very first words in the last few months, I’ll sign off for 2011 with Enrico’s Words. Dog, Bye, Dada, Mama, Hi, More, No, Yah, Cookie, and Alright!

Wishing you all a year of joy and peace.  

I began the novel I’m currently working on in 2006.  No other piece of wtiting has taught me more about revision than this novel.  Each draft, and there have been about 7, changed the novel dramatically, new incarnations each time- not at all a matter of line-editing or polishing.  But rather, massive changes in plot, a tonal shift, moving the story an entire decade, a timeline spanning 25 years to spanning about 6 months with an epilogue two years later, structure overturned, characters obliterated, and a major historical event excised.  As always, I’ve had the input of my writing group- on multiple drafts.  My husband read it and gave extensive editorial notes on the two-draft ago version, and finally this past September, my agent read it and gave the latest revision’s major notes- excising historical event, among others. 

Since September I’ve been doing this final rewrite.  By the way, in the last 2 drafts, the novel lost a hundred pages.  I don’t miss even one of them.  But I’m ready for this to be the end of a six year lesson in revision.  I’m ready to see the finish line.  I’m ready to read the thing myself, like a reader.  And then, do that last “revision” that’s really a polish, a line-edit, deleting the last adverb standing.  And I’m ready to give it back to my agent in a new shining form.  Something like done.

A few months ago, I received news from my agent that The Sign for Drowning has had its first foreign sale.  It’s going to be published in Poland.  I beamed for weeks and told my close friends and family, and I translated the title for myself which I found via google to be Zarejestruj dla Drowning.  Although I won’t be surprised to see something else.

And I eagerly imagined sharing the news here, but decided to wait until I signed the contract.  Perhaps a bit of fear of the jinx in me.  Well, I’ve seen no contract.  My agent has assured me that these things just take time.  And my friends who have had foreign sales have assured me that these things take A LOT of time, even infinity in their experience.  So I guess I’ll share the thrilling news now and we can wait together for Poland.

As the end of the year creeps closer, I also realize how much I wanted to tell my accountant I had a sale this year.  Ah well, I’ll welcome good news in 2012 instead.

I suspect silence reads as a lack of activity.  And I’ll confess, that’s what’s bothering me.  In the last few months there’s been a ton going on, and over busy-ness renders me less talkative here.  So I guess it’s not just fear of looking idle, it’s that I miss talking here- with the hypothetical you, there.

Here’s what I’ll attempt- a post a day for ten days- to see if it greases the wheels and makes it easier to pop in and talk, even when I’m trying to do and write a lot elsewhere.

The glitch will be that the posts are gonna be singular and short.

Like: Last month I was in New Orleans for the Faulkner House annual Words and Music conference.  It was very worthwhile.  It was a great time.  My new book (yet unpublished) placed on the short list this year.  2 editors (Random House and Orr Books) read 50 pages of the new novel and said they’d like to see the whole thing.  I had lunch with the editor of the Times-Picayune and exchanged birth stories with him.  I saw old friends.  My husband bicycled all over the city with our kid on a handlebar baby seat.

See you all tomorrrow.