THE WRITING OF HONEST HEARTS
By Frank Parker
Copyright 2012 Frank Parker
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THE WRITING OF HONEST HEARTS
Frank Parker
© Frank Parker, January 2012.
1. Conception:
Sometime in the late spring or early summer of 2010 I picked up a slim volume in my local library. It was called Haslam's Gold and told of the author's ancestor, Pete Haslam, who had emigrated from Ireland to America in 1895 aged 19. After spending time in Brooklyn he became a merchant seaman then joined the gold rush to the Klondike. It struck me that there was material here for a potential blockbuster of a novel about the many Irish men and women who followed a similar route, the hardships they faced and the fortunes they made and lost.
I began thinking about the idea and wrote a few early episodes. The author of Haslam's Gold had been unable to find evidence of his ancestor having formed any romantic attachment but I could not imagine a young man of nineteen alone in a strange city not seeking female companionship. I remembered my nineteen year old self and my first kiss. I decided to draw on that experience and wrote about my version of Pete Haslam, who I eventually decided to call Paul Horan, being enchanted by an attractive young woman.
At this stage I had only the vaguest idea of how my version of the story would develop. What would destroy the relationship and cause Pete/Paul to leave Brooklyn and take up employment as a seaman? How might he have heard about the Klondike? These were the first of many questions that I tried to answer as the story developed in my mind's eye. To answer the first I would have to create some circumstance in which Paul discovered some shocking secret about the girl. Perhaps he would discover that she was a performer in a burlesque or, worse, a common prostitute. I decided on an alternative possibility. To find out what, read the opening chapters of the book which are available to download free of charge via my profile on Smashwords
2. Early Development
Having created the character of Maeve in order to provide a romantic interlude for Paul I wanted to know more about her. What or who made her behave in that way? Who were her parents and what happened to them? My answers to these questions make up chapter 2 of the book and if you took my advice at the end of the previous post you will know what they are.
Meanwhile Paul needed to make his way to Dawson City. What was the journey like? What did he see along the way? Who did he meet? How did he find work on arrival? All these questions are answered in Chapter 3, the final part of the free download.
By the end of chapter two Maeve was en-route to Chicago and pregnant. What would happen to her once arrived? Would she be able to fulfil her ambition to become a painter? How would she cope with the trauma of giving up her daughter for adoption? How could I contrive a meeting between Maeve and Paul - something that I felt was essential if I was to maintain a connection between the two separate threads of the story?
What about the daughter? What were the couple who had adopted her like? What kind of person did she grow up to become? Would she and Maeve ever meet or, rather, how could I contrive circumstances in which such a meeting might take place? And the most burning question of all: who was the father? I have to admit that question bugged me for a long time until I finally came up with what I thought was a plausible scenario. It meant that I had some re-working to do on the earlier episodes in Maeve's life to ensure that her behaviour was consistent with the secret and to drop a few hints to tease the reader.
3. Research
The author of the original book had obviously carried out a lot of research and was able to include a flavour of what the early pioneers endured en-route to the Klondike. He had also been able to find, and reproduced in his book, a great deal of information about his relative's various mining activities after he moved from Dawson to Alaska.
I needed to find out about life in Brooklyn, Chicago and Dawson City in the 1890s and the early part of the twentieth century. Fortunately there are excellent resources available on the internet and I was able to discover many details that I could incorporate in the hope of adding some authentic colour to my version of the story. I made a point of acknowledging all these many sources at the end of the book.
One of the things I discovered was that by the time of Pete's arrival in Dawson the main rush was over and that travel had been made easier by the construction of a railway by a team headed by an Irishman. Maeve's first days in Chicago take place in the summer and autumn of 1896 - a presidential election year. I wondered what the main issues of that campaign were. It was whilst I was looking at this material I came across the poem that gave me my title and which I quote at the start of the book.
I am constantly plagued by the thought that I have never visited any of the main locales in which my novel's action takes place and that the way I have interpreted my internet research in descriptions of places and real events could be very wrong. But then I think of all those Science Fiction writers from the days of Verne and Wells to the present, all writing about places they could never have visited.
And then there are all those people writing books set much further in the past than is Honest Hearts. How certain can anyone be of conditions in Tudor England, for example? Such volumes as Pepys Diary can tell us much but first hand accounts of life at that time are much fewer in number than are those of life in Chicago in the 1890s.
I would really like readers who have studied the history of these places to read my book and tell me how much I have got wrong!
4. Progress
I began writing in the autumn and winter of 2010. From quite early in the process I kept a record in a spreadsheet of what I had written in each session; a summary of the content and the number of words. Progress was slow but steady. I was spending a lot of time on the research outlined above. We were in the process of selling our house and moving into rented accommodation whilst awaiting the completion of our new home. By the time we moved into that new home at the end of April 2011 I had amassed just under 24k words and I decided to set myself a target of 2k words a week. I figured that this would get me to 75k words by my birthday at the beginning of November.
Having moved into the new house there was much work to be done inside and even more in the garden so nothing was written at all during May. Prior to the move I had got into the habit of spending a lot of time each day with the daily newspaper, reading and then doing the puzzles. After the move there was no time for that and once the greater part of the work in the garden was complete I recognised that, if I was to meet my writing target, I must not resume spending time with the newspaper.
By 1st July the total number of words written was nudging 33k and I was starting to erode some of the backlog. I had a 51k word first draft completed by the end of July, having produced 18k words in a highly productive 4 weeks. I had, I thought, told the whole story and answered all of the questions that had arisen along the way. But it was too short. What now?
5. Polishing and Editing
At this stage I was not sure how the 2 dozen or so separate episodes I had written would fit together into chapters. Should I tell Paul's story uninterrupted as a single part with part 2 devoted to Maeve's progress and a third part dealing with the finale told from Grace's point of view? That would require substantial re-working of the final episodes some of which took place in her absence. The tension I was trying to build depended on the reader being aware of things that one or more of the other characters was ignorant of. These episodes switch quite rapidly between the three points of view as the climax unfolds.
In the end I hit on the idea of chapters alternating between Paul and Maeve to begin with, then Grace's war experiences and the concluding chapters switching between each of them. Meanwhile I came to recognise that many of the conversations that took place between the characters were recorded with very little reference to the expressions on the participants' faces or any indication of what the person from whose point of view the conversation was being recorded was thinking. Adding such reaction to several sections of dialogue increased the length of some of the early chapters.
Around about this time, I read a book about novel writing which showed me how to analyse each episode, each chapter and the whole project against the elements of the eight point arc and make sure that there were sufficient of the essential elements within each. For the benefit of those unfamiliar with them these elements are: stasis; trigger; quest; surprise; critical choice; climax; reversal and resolution.
I added some new episodes such as the one that tells something about Maeve's period as an art student. Her relationship with Duncan needed to be given more attention in the light of the events surrounding Grace's conception. I spent most of August putting it all together into a single file containing fourteen chapters and something like 58k words. Finally I decided it needed a concluding short chapter not so much to tie up loose ends as to outline what later became of the principle protagonists. I did this despite the fact that I generally dislike such things; it seemed to round out the story. By 11th September I was satisfied that it was as good as I could make it.
6. Support
It is impossible to overstate the importance to a new writer of belonging to a support group, either flesh and blood or on-line, preferably both. I joined the Laois Writers' Group soon after having thought I might try to write the novel that was to become Honest Hearts. Week by week I reported progress and read out episodes as they were completed. My only complaint is that the other members were too generous with their acclaim for what they heard. But without that encouragement I am certain that I would have given up long before I got very far.
The Group meets weekly and spent much of 2011 planning an anthology of members' work to be published in time for Christmas with all proceeds going to support a local cancer charity. The result was that a number of my creations, including the opening Ireland based passages of Honest Hearts appeared in print at the end of November 2011 in Pulse of Life.
I also joined Writing4All, a website to which several members of the group contribute regularly and WeBook another on-line writing community where it is possible to publish extracts as a "project" for other members to critique. On this site it is also possible to submit a first page for evaluation. Get enough recommendations for your first page and you are invited to submit 5 pages. If those gain enough support from members you can go on to post fifty pages.
It is claimed that a number of agents are members of this community and that this could lead to offers. My first page is doing modestly well but the whole process seems very slow. I get the impression that there are not many active participants.
Another site offering a similar process is YouWriteOn. On this site you have to review another member's work before you earn the right to have your own work receive a single review. The problem with both sites is that they seem to attract a lot of fiction aimed at the teen market which makes the business of reviewing rather tedious for an old timer like me. In my view, nothing can beat the support of people you meet face to face on a regular basis and whose judgement you trust implicitly.
7. Publication
I was wary of self publication, not least because of the costs involved in print publication. I searched the web for agents and publishers that were prepared to accept e-mail submissions and seemed sympathetic to new authors. One such was Book Republic. I contacted them on 11th September and waited patiently for a reply. And waited. And waited. Their website says they will reply within 6 to 8 weeks. By the end of November I had heard nothing and was becoming impatient.
I had read about e-publishing, how easy it is and how it can be done free of charge with companies like Smashwords. I decided to take the plunge. On 29th November 2011 my book went on sale on the Smashwords site and within a few weeks was available in the Apple iStore, on Barnes & Noble's Nook, the Sony Reader and through Diesel.
I had this over-optimistic notion that if I could sell enough digital copies I could use the proceeds to fund a print version. Sales so far (end December) have been slow. When my latest project is complete I may revisit Honest Hearts and see how I can improve the quality of the writing.
8. Promotion
Wherever and however you publish your book promotion is the all important final step to making sure your potential readers know about it. For a print edition produced with the support of a mainstream publisher there will be launches, book tours and signings all arranged for you. The publisher will issue press releases and review copies. If you have already contributed to the cost of publication then you will be expected to make your own publicity arrangements, issuing your own press releases, supplying review copies at your expense and organising your own launch event. Some of the smaller publishers write such commitments into the contracts they issue.
People attending launches and signings expect to have something to hold. You can't sign a digital book - although I suppose it would be possible to add a personal touch to someone's Kindle edition. But book tours and launches without a physical book are not very practical. So what is the digital equivalent of all this PR activity that is essential for print editions? Make no mistake, with hundreds of e-books being uploaded daily your book, however good, will soon be buried under a torrent of other works. So you need to do something to direct the attention of readers to your masterpiece.
This is where social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter come in. Post when your book is first available and again when it has been distributed to major on-line stores. Let your on-line friends know when it passes an important milestone, say 100 downloads. When someone posts a review in one of the on-line stores post a link on Facebook and Twitter, quoting the most flattering passage. If you haven't already done so, start a blog and keep talking about your writing experience there with links to your book. Create a Facebook page about your book and get friends to "like" it and post their comments about the book.
You might think all this will alienate some of your friends: "here he goes again, on about his b***** book." Real friends will be pleased at your success and will willingly help with the promotion effort. If you want to get your book noticed you can not afford to be shy about it!
9. Summarising what I have learned from the experience
Characters drive plot. The questions that I posed in the early parts of this guide are typical of the questions I suppose every author must ask. How would this character behave in that situation? Or, alternatively, what situation can I set up to demonstrate this strength or weakness in the character's make up? The eight point arc is fundamental in setting up your plot and sub-plots and exposing your characters. Each episode develops from a given set of circumstances (stasis and trigger) and moves to a changed set (quest) via a critical choice, perhaps meeting one or more surprises along the way. The choice leads inevitably to a climax which creates the circumstances for resolution, perhaps preceded by a set back (reversal) of some kind.
String together enough of these episodes, following a similar arc on a much grander scale, and you have the outline of a novel. I did it. So can you!
About the author:
Frank is a retired Engineer. He spent most of his working life in England where he was employed by UK based multi-national companies. He always wanted to write but has only found the freedom to do so since retiring to Ireland in October 2006. Formerly resident in Portlaoise, he now lives with Freda, his wife of 48 years, in Stradbally, Co. Laois, Ireland.
Honest Hearts is his first novel. He is currently working on his second which explores themes of loneliness and isolation as experienced by a child growing up in a remote part of rural England. He hopes to have it ready for publication in spring 2012.
Connect with Frank on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001741971356
Frank blogs as Cassandra 2012: http://cassandra2012.blogspot.com/