INTERVIEWS
With Martin Chovanec, From Print to Digital Worlds, Get Ready to Fumble
With Martin Chovanec, From Print to Digital Worlds, Get Ready to Fumble
INTERVIEWS
An Interview by Martin Chovanec of Slovensky
7/2011
The following questions and answers are from an interview with Martin Chovanec of Slovensky Spisovatel publishers in Slovakia. The interview was published in Slovenka magazine in July 2011.
The plots of BARBARA BICKMORE novels are situated in various continents and in very different historical periods. Was your own life also so adventurous? Did you travel a lot or did you only sit at home and study and write?
Until I started writing in 1985 I had only traveled across the United States and to Hawaii, with short trips into Canada. I did spend two months, in 1985, traveling across China, with my daughter, Debra, who was teaching there at the time. Once I could afford to travel, after selling my first book, I went to Australia 3 times, to India twice, and to Thailand, northern Europe (England, France, Denmark, Sweden) and Mexico, where I lived for 7 wonderful years. I have always been attracted to third world countries, so unlike my own. I have not traveled nearly as much as I would have liked.
As for different historical periods, I am fascinated with history, so I generally choose a place to write about before deciding on story or characters. I love warm sunny places and since I spend 2 years writing a book I mentally live there as I write, I tend to choose warm sunny places. An exception was Stairway to the Stars, which takes place in England, mainly between the two World Wars. In 2004 I was visiting Blenheim Castle, where Churchill was born, and as I stood surveying its beautiful grounds, a story popped into my head and within a week it was a full fledged story that just seemed to come out of me. I’ve had that happen a few times, when the story controlled me and characters did things I didn’t expect them to do. I love research and have always thought that if I were plopped down in any library I’d be happy. But most recently it is Google that I turn to.
How were you able to cope with your writer´s career and personal life? Did you have children?
By the time I started writing my 3 children were grown and had left home and I was divorced. If I had any family to take care of I could not write. I think writing is a self-centered profession, and for me it does not allow me to think of others first, which is what a woman always has to do with a family. I had to wait until I was responsible for no one but myself so I could live in make believe worlds, so that I was free to think (I always say writing is easy, it’s the thinking that’s hard). I am sure there are creative people who can cope with personal relationships and still be creative but generally writers, artists, actors do not have a high degree of successful personal relationships. I think creativity comes from deep within and does not allow for others in one’s life. I have always thought that creative people live in worlds of their own and are not normal well-adjusted people. I like to think I am a very nice person, and I did spend a great majority of my life putting others first (as women have to, it seems), but that had to be behind me before I could dedicate myself to writing. I love writing. I love living alone. I love having hours and hours to think and to write. At the same time, I would not like to live totally alone, without an animal. I could not live happily if I didn’t have a dog or cat with me. As long as I have a beloved pet in my life, I am not lonely. I am sometimes, however, lonely at parties when surrounded by people.
Love and relationships between men and women play a very important role in your novels. Sometimes BARBARA BICKMORE characters are able to make the right decision at once.
Well, if they made the right decision right away there would be no reason for a novel. How many times in life have you made the right decision right away? What a narrow life one would lead if you made the right decision right away. You would not experience pain and compromise and fear and failure and ecstasy. A full life is spent in searching, searching for the right answers, perhaps. But the right answers change with periods in our lives. What satisfies me now would not have satisfied me in my twenties, for instance. I look back at the men in my life who I thought were the right answers at the time and thank the Lord I never married any of them. What seems to be the right decision often proves not to be a right answer at all.
But more often they experience troubles, hopeless situations, sometimes they have nowhere to go, but despite of it all they are always able to go on.
I like to think I write about real life, and real life is composed not only of happiness and day to day experiences, but of troubles, hopeless situations, feeling that one is in an abyss with no way to get out. My heroines always find ways to go on, much as I have done when my future appeared to be hopeless. Generally I take a normal well adjusted young woman and throw slings and arrows at her and she has to grow. My heroines always suffer pains and challenges and love gone wrong and live in circumstances that seem impossible at times, yet they do something about it. Most women’s roles historically have been to react, generally to whatever the man in her life does. My heroines do not react so much as act. They not only climb out of abysses but become heroic. They make a difference in the world, perhaps just a dent, but somehow life is different because of them. In Stairway to the Stars, for instance, I leave the reader with the idea that my heroine founds UNICEF. What is more heroic than saving the world’s children? Yet my heroine has to go through a loveless marriage, is thrown into an alien culture and has to figure out how to fit into it and improve the life of people around her. She is thrust into saving some of Europe’s children during World War II, and rises to the challenges life hands her. My heroines do not just climb out of abysses, they rise to heroic heights because of their actions. They do not wait for life to come to them. They greet life with outstretched arms.
What is the real life about?
I wish I knew.
To bear the fate or try to fight?
For myself and my heroines, it is never to bear the fate but to do something about it. It is not ever easy to figure out how to do this.
What is, in your opinion, the most important thing in a woman’s life – love, men, children, friendship, pets, nature etc?
I can’t answer for anyone but myself. I was brought up to believe that love, a husband and children were the only acceptable way of life for a woman. And I have had all of the above. At certain times in my life love seemed to be the most important answer. And of course men are involved with love. But it was never enough. I was never content to have love and a husband and family and have that be the limit of my life. I knew there was more. For over 20 years I taught American Literature and loved doing it. So, for those years a career was also important.
My children have been the one constant in my life. They are still the most important ingredients in my life. My children are my jewels. One daughter is a doctor and the other a teacher. I am inordinately proud of them. They are making a difference in the lives around them.
I have found friendship one of the sustaining parts of my life. I have always been surrounded by dear friends, and I have had some for as long as 45 years. My books always include friendship as a nurturing ingredient. It is vastly important to me. Friendship sustains me, with men as well as women. I have had male friends far longer than male lovers.
I cannot live without a pet. I have been a dog lover all of my life, but in the last few years I have added cats to the beloved pets of my life. Right now I share a bed with a symbiotic, somewhat mysterious, beautiful cat who I swear sees into my soul! I cannot live in cities (I grew up 25 miles from New York City and had my fill of cities). I need to be near beauty amid nature, I like to live overlooking a river or mountains, and be near trees. I like to hear birds. I think there would be less crime if more people had space. I need my own space.
I think writers are basically solitary people, who communicate best on paper (or nowadays on the computer). I love the technological age. I started writing my first book in 1984, when computers were still new, and now a computer is the most important thing I own. In fact, I can say I not only love my computer but am in love with it. I think that if I go a few hours away from my computer my fingers get itchy!
I wrote my first short story when I was 7 years old and writing has been a part of me ever since. I am a compulsive writer. I would say writing is as necessary to me as food, as breathing perhaps. It has become a part of me.
It would be really great if you could send your wish to Slovakian women at the end of this interview. You can imagine how complicated it was for them the period of the last fifteen years – transition from planned to market economy and its impact on daily family life etc.
Thank you very much!
I am sorry to admit that I know very little about Slovakia. I happen to think all of life is complicated. I have never found life easy.
I have lived an untypical life where I’ve taken more chances than most women of my generation have, and where at times I’ve been Superwoman. So when it came time for me to write, I only wanted to write about women who started off life as an average woman and grew to heroic heights. A woman who starts out thinking being a wife and mother is what life is going to be about, but because fate throws slings and arrows at her she is forced to rise to heroic heights. My heroines have adventures and become larger than life.
As I was growing up, it was only men who had adventures. They went down the Congo and explored continents, invented the airplane, led countries during crises, developed the West. They took risks that women never could. They’ve built empires and family dynasties, they’ve become famous painters, they’ve come up with quantum physics and geometry and the theory of relativity. They’ve been our poets and great novelists, they’ve been our philosophers and adventurers as women stayed at home, having children and taking care of their families, freeing the men to dream grand dreams and, many times, to lead those lives they dreamed of. I wanted, not to be a man - I never wanted that, I have always liked being a woman and have always felt lucky to be one, but I wanted to live life to the fullest. I didn’t want a house and its walls to be the limits of my world.
I think that living life to the fullest is about taking chances. Trying new experiences, having new adventures, taking risks, breaking the pattern and routine of life. I think that is Romance.
Maybe it’s trying a new job, something completely different from any you’ve had before. Maybe it’s learning to surf and screwing up the courage to combat those waves. I think I have a love affair with my computer. And somehow since there is always something new to learn, it keeps behaving like a romance, often exasperating but often exhilarating, always demanding my attention. Romance is becoming involved in something that you ordinarily don’t do, a new experience that makes you stretch, that for awhile takes over your life. It’s thoughts you hadn’t thought before. It breaks the pattern of life and makes your heart beat quickly. No one but you can find romance in your life. It’s like trying to find the right man. You keep looking and not finding him for the longest time. But he’s there, suddenly appearing in your life one day. Unexpectedly. Almost when you’d given up. But you must be willing to become completely involved, to search and not just wait.
I’ve had a life filled with Romance, sometimes with men, more often with the experiences I’ve opened myself to. I don’t know whether my friends think I’m courageous or crazy. I don’t know whether they envy me or think the chances I’ve taken in life are insane. I look at them and not for a minute would I have chosen the safe paths they’ve stayed on. Most of them yearn for but do not really want to have constant Romance in their real lives, so luckily they read my books. And I like to think that in some small part my readers are living the lives of my heroines, doing marvelous things for mankind or building dynasties or discovering new medicines or helping people who are unable to help themselves. And I like to think you think, Oh, I could do what those women, my heroines, do even if you don’t. You know it’s there, waiting for you and you can dream about it. In the meantime, I hope you keep reading about the possibilities I offer you.
I like to think that BARBARA BICKMORE books show you the possibilities of life. They show you what can be.
7/2011
The following questions and answers are from an interview with Martin Chovanec of Slovensky Spisovatel publishers in Slovakia. The interview was published in Slovenka magazine in July 2011.
The plots of BARBARA BICKMORE novels are situated in various continents and in very different historical periods. Was your own life also so adventurous? Did you travel a lot or did you only sit at home and study and write?
Until I started writing in 1985 I had only traveled across the United States and to Hawaii, with short trips into Canada. I did spend two months, in 1985, traveling across China, with my daughter, Debra, who was teaching there at the time. Once I could afford to travel, after selling my first book, I went to Australia 3 times, to India twice, and to Thailand, northern Europe (England, France, Denmark, Sweden) and Mexico, where I lived for 7 wonderful years. I have always been attracted to third world countries, so unlike my own. I have not traveled nearly as much as I would have liked.
As for different historical periods, I am fascinated with history, so I generally choose a place to write about before deciding on story or characters. I love warm sunny places and since I spend 2 years writing a book I mentally live there as I write, I tend to choose warm sunny places. An exception was Stairway to the Stars, which takes place in England, mainly between the two World Wars. In 2004 I was visiting Blenheim Castle, where Churchill was born, and as I stood surveying its beautiful grounds, a story popped into my head and within a week it was a full fledged story that just seemed to come out of me. I’ve had that happen a few times, when the story controlled me and characters did things I didn’t expect them to do. I love research and have always thought that if I were plopped down in any library I’d be happy. But most recently it is Google that I turn to.
How were you able to cope with your writer´s career and personal life? Did you have children?
By the time I started writing my 3 children were grown and had left home and I was divorced. If I had any family to take care of I could not write. I think writing is a self-centered profession, and for me it does not allow me to think of others first, which is what a woman always has to do with a family. I had to wait until I was responsible for no one but myself so I could live in make believe worlds, so that I was free to think (I always say writing is easy, it’s the thinking that’s hard). I am sure there are creative people who can cope with personal relationships and still be creative but generally writers, artists, actors do not have a high degree of successful personal relationships. I think creativity comes from deep within and does not allow for others in one’s life. I have always thought that creative people live in worlds of their own and are not normal well-adjusted people. I like to think I am a very nice person, and I did spend a great majority of my life putting others first (as women have to, it seems), but that had to be behind me before I could dedicate myself to writing. I love writing. I love living alone. I love having hours and hours to think and to write. At the same time, I would not like to live totally alone, without an animal. I could not live happily if I didn’t have a dog or cat with me. As long as I have a beloved pet in my life, I am not lonely. I am sometimes, however, lonely at parties when surrounded by people.
Love and relationships between men and women play a very important role in your novels. Sometimes BARBARA BICKMORE characters are able to make the right decision at once.
Well, if they made the right decision right away there would be no reason for a novel. How many times in life have you made the right decision right away? What a narrow life one would lead if you made the right decision right away. You would not experience pain and compromise and fear and failure and ecstasy. A full life is spent in searching, searching for the right answers, perhaps. But the right answers change with periods in our lives. What satisfies me now would not have satisfied me in my twenties, for instance. I look back at the men in my life who I thought were the right answers at the time and thank the Lord I never married any of them. What seems to be the right decision often proves not to be a right answer at all.
But more often they experience troubles, hopeless situations, sometimes they have nowhere to go, but despite of it all they are always able to go on.
I like to think I write about real life, and real life is composed not only of happiness and day to day experiences, but of troubles, hopeless situations, feeling that one is in an abyss with no way to get out. My heroines always find ways to go on, much as I have done when my future appeared to be hopeless. Generally I take a normal well adjusted young woman and throw slings and arrows at her and she has to grow. My heroines always suffer pains and challenges and love gone wrong and live in circumstances that seem impossible at times, yet they do something about it. Most women’s roles historically have been to react, generally to whatever the man in her life does. My heroines do not react so much as act. They not only climb out of abysses but become heroic. They make a difference in the world, perhaps just a dent, but somehow life is different because of them. In Stairway to the Stars, for instance, I leave the reader with the idea that my heroine founds UNICEF. What is more heroic than saving the world’s children? Yet my heroine has to go through a loveless marriage, is thrown into an alien culture and has to figure out how to fit into it and improve the life of people around her. She is thrust into saving some of Europe’s children during World War II, and rises to the challenges life hands her. My heroines do not just climb out of abysses, they rise to heroic heights because of their actions. They do not wait for life to come to them. They greet life with outstretched arms.
What is the real life about?
I wish I knew.
To bear the fate or try to fight?
For myself and my heroines, it is never to bear the fate but to do something about it. It is not ever easy to figure out how to do this.
What is, in your opinion, the most important thing in a woman’s life – love, men, children, friendship, pets, nature etc?
I can’t answer for anyone but myself. I was brought up to believe that love, a husband and children were the only acceptable way of life for a woman. And I have had all of the above. At certain times in my life love seemed to be the most important answer. And of course men are involved with love. But it was never enough. I was never content to have love and a husband and family and have that be the limit of my life. I knew there was more. For over 20 years I taught American Literature and loved doing it. So, for those years a career was also important.
My children have been the one constant in my life. They are still the most important ingredients in my life. My children are my jewels. One daughter is a doctor and the other a teacher. I am inordinately proud of them. They are making a difference in the lives around them.
I have found friendship one of the sustaining parts of my life. I have always been surrounded by dear friends, and I have had some for as long as 45 years. My books always include friendship as a nurturing ingredient. It is vastly important to me. Friendship sustains me, with men as well as women. I have had male friends far longer than male lovers.
I cannot live without a pet. I have been a dog lover all of my life, but in the last few years I have added cats to the beloved pets of my life. Right now I share a bed with a symbiotic, somewhat mysterious, beautiful cat who I swear sees into my soul! I cannot live in cities (I grew up 25 miles from New York City and had my fill of cities). I need to be near beauty amid nature, I like to live overlooking a river or mountains, and be near trees. I like to hear birds. I think there would be less crime if more people had space. I need my own space.
I think writers are basically solitary people, who communicate best on paper (or nowadays on the computer). I love the technological age. I started writing my first book in 1984, when computers were still new, and now a computer is the most important thing I own. In fact, I can say I not only love my computer but am in love with it. I think that if I go a few hours away from my computer my fingers get itchy!
I wrote my first short story when I was 7 years old and writing has been a part of me ever since. I am a compulsive writer. I would say writing is as necessary to me as food, as breathing perhaps. It has become a part of me.
It would be really great if you could send your wish to Slovakian women at the end of this interview. You can imagine how complicated it was for them the period of the last fifteen years – transition from planned to market economy and its impact on daily family life etc.
Thank you very much!
I am sorry to admit that I know very little about Slovakia. I happen to think all of life is complicated. I have never found life easy.
I have lived an untypical life where I’ve taken more chances than most women of my generation have, and where at times I’ve been Superwoman. So when it came time for me to write, I only wanted to write about women who started off life as an average woman and grew to heroic heights. A woman who starts out thinking being a wife and mother is what life is going to be about, but because fate throws slings and arrows at her she is forced to rise to heroic heights. My heroines have adventures and become larger than life.
As I was growing up, it was only men who had adventures. They went down the Congo and explored continents, invented the airplane, led countries during crises, developed the West. They took risks that women never could. They’ve built empires and family dynasties, they’ve become famous painters, they’ve come up with quantum physics and geometry and the theory of relativity. They’ve been our poets and great novelists, they’ve been our philosophers and adventurers as women stayed at home, having children and taking care of their families, freeing the men to dream grand dreams and, many times, to lead those lives they dreamed of. I wanted, not to be a man - I never wanted that, I have always liked being a woman and have always felt lucky to be one, but I wanted to live life to the fullest. I didn’t want a house and its walls to be the limits of my world.
I think that living life to the fullest is about taking chances. Trying new experiences, having new adventures, taking risks, breaking the pattern and routine of life. I think that is Romance.
Maybe it’s trying a new job, something completely different from any you’ve had before. Maybe it’s learning to surf and screwing up the courage to combat those waves. I think I have a love affair with my computer. And somehow since there is always something new to learn, it keeps behaving like a romance, often exasperating but often exhilarating, always demanding my attention. Romance is becoming involved in something that you ordinarily don’t do, a new experience that makes you stretch, that for awhile takes over your life. It’s thoughts you hadn’t thought before. It breaks the pattern of life and makes your heart beat quickly. No one but you can find romance in your life. It’s like trying to find the right man. You keep looking and not finding him for the longest time. But he’s there, suddenly appearing in your life one day. Unexpectedly. Almost when you’d given up. But you must be willing to become completely involved, to search and not just wait.
I’ve had a life filled with Romance, sometimes with men, more often with the experiences I’ve opened myself to. I don’t know whether my friends think I’m courageous or crazy. I don’t know whether they envy me or think the chances I’ve taken in life are insane. I look at them and not for a minute would I have chosen the safe paths they’ve stayed on. Most of them yearn for but do not really want to have constant Romance in their real lives, so luckily they read my books. And I like to think that in some small part my readers are living the lives of my heroines, doing marvelous things for mankind or building dynasties or discovering new medicines or helping people who are unable to help themselves. And I like to think you think, Oh, I could do what those women, my heroines, do even if you don’t. You know it’s there, waiting for you and you can dream about it. In the meantime, I hope you keep reading about the possibilities I offer you.
I like to think that BARBARA BICKMORE books show you the possibilities of life. They show you what can be.
From Print to Digital Worlds
8/30/2012
Interview by Armchair Publishing (AP) with author Barbara Bickmore.
AP – You love to read on your Kindle. Is that what planted the idea to turn your books into Ebooks?
Barbara - The moment I saw a Kindle I knew I wanted my books digitalized. I begged my NY agent for years to do it, but they can't make enough money that way to be worth their time. So I finally took matters into my own hands and decided to do it. Thanks to my discovering Tony and Karla Locke (and Armchair Publishing), who were willing to undertake editing, digitalizing, designing covers, doing all the research necessary it has come to pass. Now they've discovered a way to bring my books out in paperback too. The best of all worlds.
AP – Since your books were only available in printed form, they had to be converted to digital. This meant copying them and then converting to digital, which resulted in unusual characters and misinterpretation of some of the words. Due to this process, it required you to go through each book, page by page, to edit and correct.
Barbara -Yes, it was tedious, reading for every comma, etc.
AP - What was it like to revisit your stories?
Barbara - It was interesting. Many times (most times) I didn't even know what was coming next. It had been a long time since I'd read them. I didn't even remember some of the characters. All in all, I decided I was pretty proud of them, particularly the historical ones, which are factually accurate. I spend a lot of time researching. Combining facts and fiction is something I love to do. I call it faction.
AP – Since the rights to your books were returned to you, this put you in the publisher’s seat. You were now in control of all aspects of your book; editing, cover design, publishing and marketing. Did you find yourself enjoying it?
Barbara - Not particularly. I do not think that generally creative people enjoy or are even good at the business side of it, the factual details. My mind likes to soar to the land of make believe not the little details of reality.
AP - Did you enjoy having creative input into the designs of your new covers?
Barbara - That was fun. And working with Tony Locke was most enjoyable. He'd take the ideas I tossed at him and come up with ideas that we'd discuss and he was a pleasure to work with, so that added to the enjoyment. I did not like all the original covers of my books. For instance, in Distant Star the heroine was wearing a kimono, whereas it takes place in China and kimonos are only worn in Japan. That irritated me. I like the details to be accurate as well as have something to do with the story.
AP - It has been quite a while since your last book was published in the U.S. Now two of your books, Stairway To The Stars and West Of The Moon, are going into print for the first time in the U.S. Are you just a little excited?
Barbara - Well, they've been out in Europe for years and I have at least a dozen book covers of them already. I like the idea that my friends and fans now have the books available to them. For over 20 years I taught high school English (American Lit) and I think once a teacher always a teacher. I think my history books will teach readers things they didn't know or weren't aware of, and I love the idea that I'm till teaching, still able to introduce new ideas to readers.
I've had women from all over the world tell me that my heroines inspired them or even changed their lives. Oh, what a wonderful feeling!
8/30/2012
Interview by Armchair Publishing (AP) with author Barbara Bickmore.
AP – You love to read on your Kindle. Is that what planted the idea to turn your books into Ebooks?
Barbara - The moment I saw a Kindle I knew I wanted my books digitalized. I begged my NY agent for years to do it, but they can't make enough money that way to be worth their time. So I finally took matters into my own hands and decided to do it. Thanks to my discovering Tony and Karla Locke (and Armchair Publishing), who were willing to undertake editing, digitalizing, designing covers, doing all the research necessary it has come to pass. Now they've discovered a way to bring my books out in paperback too. The best of all worlds.
AP – Since your books were only available in printed form, they had to be converted to digital. This meant copying them and then converting to digital, which resulted in unusual characters and misinterpretation of some of the words. Due to this process, it required you to go through each book, page by page, to edit and correct.
Barbara -Yes, it was tedious, reading for every comma, etc.
AP - What was it like to revisit your stories?
Barbara - It was interesting. Many times (most times) I didn't even know what was coming next. It had been a long time since I'd read them. I didn't even remember some of the characters. All in all, I decided I was pretty proud of them, particularly the historical ones, which are factually accurate. I spend a lot of time researching. Combining facts and fiction is something I love to do. I call it faction.
AP – Since the rights to your books were returned to you, this put you in the publisher’s seat. You were now in control of all aspects of your book; editing, cover design, publishing and marketing. Did you find yourself enjoying it?
Barbara - Not particularly. I do not think that generally creative people enjoy or are even good at the business side of it, the factual details. My mind likes to soar to the land of make believe not the little details of reality.
AP - Did you enjoy having creative input into the designs of your new covers?
Barbara - That was fun. And working with Tony Locke was most enjoyable. He'd take the ideas I tossed at him and come up with ideas that we'd discuss and he was a pleasure to work with, so that added to the enjoyment. I did not like all the original covers of my books. For instance, in Distant Star the heroine was wearing a kimono, whereas it takes place in China and kimonos are only worn in Japan. That irritated me. I like the details to be accurate as well as have something to do with the story.
AP - It has been quite a while since your last book was published in the U.S. Now two of your books, Stairway To The Stars and West Of The Moon, are going into print for the first time in the U.S. Are you just a little excited?
Barbara - Well, they've been out in Europe for years and I have at least a dozen book covers of them already. I like the idea that my friends and fans now have the books available to them. For over 20 years I taught high school English (American Lit) and I think once a teacher always a teacher. I think my history books will teach readers things they didn't know or weren't aware of, and I love the idea that I'm till teaching, still able to introduce new ideas to readers.
I've had women from all over the world tell me that my heroines inspired them or even changed their lives. Oh, what a wonderful feeling!
Get Ready to Fumble
9/12/2013
Armchair Publishing (AP) interviews Barbara Bickmore.
AP - It is Football season. Get Ready to Fumble.
As you write your first draft you may fumble through it, but when you revise/rewrite your work:
1. Do you have a play-by-play method for revising/polishing your work in order to reach the goal line?
2. Or, do instincts kick in and tell you when you have made a touchdown? In other words, how do you know when it's just right?
Barbara - I have to laugh at your question. A play-by-play method for revising my work in order to finish it? I start revising it the evening of the day I write it. Then I look at it the next morning and revise that. Then I put it in a drawer (or on the computer though I like to keep a hard copy, for safety's sake) and don't let myself look at it for three months so I have some objectivity. From thereon I revise it only if I am revising large blocks, like many chapters. After I have about 300 pages I'll put everything aside and read it entirely, to see if I'm bored stiff (I have been on a couple and just stopped and thrown it all out at this point). If I'm bored others will be. I make sure I'm consistent (not have the hero's eyes be brown in first chapter and blue in chapter 22, for instance). I see if I've screwed up relationships, if I've said the same thing too many times trying to make sure my reader gets the point! (a no no. Readers are intelligent). I try to strengthen it, and I don't know how to explain that. By this point it's been many months since I started the book so I have some objectivity and have forgotten numerous things. If I'm happy with what I have, and the revisions I've made, I generally don't read this big a block again until I've finished the book.
AP - How do I know when it's just right?
Barbara - From the beginning I've marveled at how I know when I've come to the end of a chapter. I mean I'm writing along, and I write something and suddenly sit up straight and read what I've written and know, just know, that that's the end of a chapter and it's good. That happens with the ending of every chapter I've ever written. I've never had to think about how to end a chapter. It just ends itself, so to speak. Now the ending of a book is another thing, always a struggle. I get near the end and know I'm in for a bit of agony. When I was writing my second book, "The Moon Below", I'd known from before I started writing how it was going to end. However, about 10 chapters before the end (tho I didn't know it was 10 chapters to the end) I realized I'd fallen in love with a different character than I'd planned for my heroine to end up with. Well, what to do about that? I called a friend, who had been in on the writing of all my books, from a thousand miles away some times to discuss a problem or a character, and asked her to come visit me when I was living in Mexico, and for a week we tossed ideas around. One day it was one ending and the next day a different guy. After she left visiting me, I would sit in my hot tub with Bailey's Irish cream and commune with the stars and tune out everything else. The ending came.
In my book about China I was really struggling to figure out how to end it. Friends and I were spending the Christmas holidays at a resort north of Puerto Vallarta and the man, tired of my moaning I guess, said, "Let's figure this out." He listened to me outline my plot in ten minutes (two years of work!) and said, "You have to come full circle." That one comment gave me the ending, though it took numerous chapters to accomplish it.
There's no one answer to making a touchdown. Usually I have to go back and reread it all and often that gives me the answers, and I have to figure out how to get there. The endings I'm most satisfied with are "Stairway to the Stars," (I love that ending) "The Moon Below" and "East of the Sun." They reflect me as a person, though of course every word of all the books does that too. Anyone who reads my books knows me better than friends who have known me for 50 years or my kids. I bare my soul in my books.
9/12/2013
Armchair Publishing (AP) interviews Barbara Bickmore.
AP - It is Football season. Get Ready to Fumble.
As you write your first draft you may fumble through it, but when you revise/rewrite your work:
1. Do you have a play-by-play method for revising/polishing your work in order to reach the goal line?
2. Or, do instincts kick in and tell you when you have made a touchdown? In other words, how do you know when it's just right?
Barbara - I have to laugh at your question. A play-by-play method for revising my work in order to finish it? I start revising it the evening of the day I write it. Then I look at it the next morning and revise that. Then I put it in a drawer (or on the computer though I like to keep a hard copy, for safety's sake) and don't let myself look at it for three months so I have some objectivity. From thereon I revise it only if I am revising large blocks, like many chapters. After I have about 300 pages I'll put everything aside and read it entirely, to see if I'm bored stiff (I have been on a couple and just stopped and thrown it all out at this point). If I'm bored others will be. I make sure I'm consistent (not have the hero's eyes be brown in first chapter and blue in chapter 22, for instance). I see if I've screwed up relationships, if I've said the same thing too many times trying to make sure my reader gets the point! (a no no. Readers are intelligent). I try to strengthen it, and I don't know how to explain that. By this point it's been many months since I started the book so I have some objectivity and have forgotten numerous things. If I'm happy with what I have, and the revisions I've made, I generally don't read this big a block again until I've finished the book.
AP - How do I know when it's just right?
Barbara - From the beginning I've marveled at how I know when I've come to the end of a chapter. I mean I'm writing along, and I write something and suddenly sit up straight and read what I've written and know, just know, that that's the end of a chapter and it's good. That happens with the ending of every chapter I've ever written. I've never had to think about how to end a chapter. It just ends itself, so to speak. Now the ending of a book is another thing, always a struggle. I get near the end and know I'm in for a bit of agony. When I was writing my second book, "The Moon Below", I'd known from before I started writing how it was going to end. However, about 10 chapters before the end (tho I didn't know it was 10 chapters to the end) I realized I'd fallen in love with a different character than I'd planned for my heroine to end up with. Well, what to do about that? I called a friend, who had been in on the writing of all my books, from a thousand miles away some times to discuss a problem or a character, and asked her to come visit me when I was living in Mexico, and for a week we tossed ideas around. One day it was one ending and the next day a different guy. After she left visiting me, I would sit in my hot tub with Bailey's Irish cream and commune with the stars and tune out everything else. The ending came.
In my book about China I was really struggling to figure out how to end it. Friends and I were spending the Christmas holidays at a resort north of Puerto Vallarta and the man, tired of my moaning I guess, said, "Let's figure this out." He listened to me outline my plot in ten minutes (two years of work!) and said, "You have to come full circle." That one comment gave me the ending, though it took numerous chapters to accomplish it.
There's no one answer to making a touchdown. Usually I have to go back and reread it all and often that gives me the answers, and I have to figure out how to get there. The endings I'm most satisfied with are "Stairway to the Stars," (I love that ending) "The Moon Below" and "East of the Sun." They reflect me as a person, though of course every word of all the books does that too. Anyone who reads my books knows me better than friends who have known me for 50 years or my kids. I bare my soul in my books.
