Sylvia's novel writing blog

I'm hovering at 70,000 words. This past month, I've written two new chapters: a historical storyline prologue, and a current day storyline prologue. I think they're turning out very nicely, especially since my three main proofreaders have made profound (as usual) editing suggestions. These prologues will in turn allow me to ease up on the exposition that was weighing down my dialogues and narration.

Once they are completed, I can sit down to write the five-page synopsis that's needed for the writing workshop I'm attending this summer. Once I get that going, I'm going to comb through my first 50 pages again (which the literary agent Mr. Maass will evaluate), then try to finish up my final 3 or 4 chapters that I've left hanging.

Today I feel optimistic about this novel. After brewing inside me for years, I feel that the story is just now beginning to match the mood and ideas I originally intended for it. But on some days, I just hate the whole thing, and wish that I had taken up painting or guitar lessons--at least the reward would be more certain and immediate. I guess I'm just super stubborn, but I've been obsessed with it for so long that I can't put it down now.

I've come to realize that a creation must become monstrously ugly before its true beauty can be realized.

This past month I've been working on a prologue scene that will relieve me of all the exposition that's been weighing down my dialogue in one of my chapters. My word count would be over 70,000, but because I've been paring dialogue and narrative, my word count has hovered at 65,000 for about a month. It's like my work was ballooning outward, crammed with ideas, and I had to get in there with a knife to give it shape.

I recently registered for a week-long intensive writing workshop in Chicago this coming July with literary agent Donald Maass. I'm very excited about it since aside from daily instruction, he and his staff will critique the first 50 pages of the manuscript.  I have two months to prepare my manuscript and synopsis before sending it to his agency.

Novel mini-synopsis

This past year I've been writing a novel that entwines the lives of two women through historical and current day storylines. The current day story starts in Puebla, Mexico where the young heroine is spending a week with her professor mother and sister. The protagonist is going through a life crisis after her romantic relationship abruptly ends, and she is pressured by her mother to do the pilgrimage to Santiago to collect a valuable literary diary for her mother's research. Her journey across northern Spain in the dead of winter takes the form of self-discovery, as she is forced to reflect on the direction her life has taken, her relationship with her loved ones, and the people she meets along the way on the Camino. 

 

The historical day story is set in Galicia, Spain during the late 19th century. When the historical heroine discovers that the overbearing woman who has been raising her is not her biological mother, she sets out on a quest to find her true mother.

 

Themes for both storylines involve self-discovery, self-identity, forgiveness, love, and explore relationship dynamics between mother and daughter, sisters, and man and woman.

 

Father passed away

I haven't gotten beyond my 85% mark (65,000 words). The day after I returned from Spain I learned that my father had suddenly died of a heart attack, so I flew to Arizona to help my brothers clean out my Dad's cottage and give a memorial service. Ever since then, I've felt disoriented. Writing was the main connection I shared with my dad, and so it has been hard to get back into it. Also, many of the things that happened in my novel paralleled with the way my dad died--kind of unsettling. I'm hoping to ease myself back into writing this coming week.

 

Research diary in northern Spain in January 2008:

Wednesday, January 9: Exhaustion

I missed a connecting flight to León from Zurich, so I edited my novel while waiting for the next flight. I also discovered that I left my jump drive at home. I was fighting off a cold and already feeling homesick.

 

I felt better once I arrived in León. The historic area is small but pretty and was lit up with little golden lights. My hotel, Hotel Paris, was very close to the cathedral and the San Isodoro monastery.

 

Thursday, January 10: Some disappointment

The sun rose at 8:15 am. I searched for something to eat, but found out that the Spanish idea of breakfast consists of bread and coffee. This poses a big problem for me since I’ve been avoiding wheat this past year. Good thing I bought candied almonds yesterday.

 

The Cathedral was closed for renovation, so I checked out the frescos at the San Isodoro Monastery. 

 

After having Caldo Gallego soup for lunch, I took a bus to a town called Hospital de Orbigo. The bus drives along the old highway that parallels the Camino, so I could keep track of the sights the Camino passed. I saw a couple pilgrims walking on the dirt path, but they were walking toward toward Leon. I assumed they were returning to their starting point by foot, as some pilgrims have started to do in past years.

 

Hospital del Orbigo is a tiny sleepy town. Most window shutters were closed. I walked around the outskirts of Orbigo looking for the long medieval bridge. First I walked away from the town down a dirt road toward the countryside because I saw a sign with a symbol of a bridge pointing that way. I walked through some leafless forests and found the refugio by chance. After taking a closer look at what I thought was a cottage, I read a plaque saying it was a refugio. An elderly man pointed me the way toward the bridge. It was an incredibly long, beautiful Romanesque bridge as far as bridges go. I can't imagine jousting on that bridge as knights once did, including Don Suero de Quiñones who was the main character in Cervantes’ novel Don Qixote. A restaurant I had wanted to use in my novel for one of my settings is closed in the winter. The refugio looked closed for winter, too. 

 

Around 5 p.m. I considered taking another bus onward toward Astorga, but got tired and hungry so I returned to León instead and found a large, crowded cafeteria near my hotel that served a chicken and vegetable paella, called Paella Valenciana. I was the only person eating dinner, as all the other 50 customers were drinking coffee and socializing. Restaurants don't serve dinner until 8 p.m.

 

People here work until 5 or 6 in the evening, shop for a couple hours (end of season sales), then eat out at a restaurant. I like watching the three-generation families dine interact as they dined and walked around town. I also like it that Spanish fathers kiss and hold their sons a lot.

 

I studied the map of Asturias to decide whether I want to take a bus tomorrow to Astorga and beyond, or rent a car and try to visit a lot of towns in one shot before returning for another night in León. I'll play it by ear and see what the weather holds for me.  

 

Slow down!

I just realized I've been pushing too hard to finish writing my novel at the expense of my health and family. I’ve been missing out on quality moments I could have been having fun with my sons. As I walked through Hospital del Orbigo, I began to realize that my novel is going to require many more months of rewriting to get it up to the level of quality it deserves. This coming year, I'm going to simplify my life by slowing down my writing pace and spending more time with my family. Also, I am going to eat better and work out to gain weight and muscle. Making these changes will hopefully put my life in balance.

 

Friday, January 11: Snow blizzard

I am so glad today is over with. The gates to the Gothic cathedral in León were finally opened this morning so I took a stroll around inside. The stained glass windows were long and massive.

 

This morning I rented a car and drove to Astorga in heavy rain. To be honest, I felt nervous about driving to Astorga and beyond because I hate the idea of getting lost in a foreign country, especially in bad weather. But I didn't want to think that I had come all the way to Spain only to chicken out. My first stop was Astorga. I drove up the hill the old city sets on while listening to a song from the album “Lunas Rotas” by Rosana. I saw the cathedral and Episcopal church as well as one of the albergues then grabbed a cup of hot tea to warm up. At one point the cold rain turned into snow. 

 

After a couple hours in Astorga, I drove beyond the city to places my main character passes through. I hurried

before because I didn't want to drive back to León in the dark. As I drove on, it started snowing hard! I was nervous because I’ve never driven through snow before. I drove through El Ganso and saw that the Cowboy Bar she is supposed to visit was closed for winter. Next I drove through Rabanal del Camino and Foncebadon.

 

By then it was snowing very hard and I had to drive at a snail's pace. I had to drive up a mountain toward Cruz de Ferro (Iron Cross), but the snowstorm got out of control and the snow got so deep I felt the tires sinking into the snow and mud. No one was around except for a few poor pilgrims several miles down the mountain standing around in the snow waiting for an albergue to open. The snowstorm forced me to turn around on the

narrow road, armpits sweating, though I was only a few kilometers away from the top. I was just glad to get out of there in one piece and find my way back to León before it got dark.

 

I miss my family so much it hurts. I want time to pass so that I can get back to them. I've been questioning why I chose to take so many days to do this research.

 

I'm exhausted and disappointed to find out how little the reality of the setting here matches my expectations. I'm going to have to rewrite a lot of chapters. Now I wish I would have heeded Tracy Chevalier's (via her secretary) advice to focus more on the story than historical and setting accuracy.

 

Of course, I'm grateful to find out now rather than later what must be changed in the story. And I'm also grateful for discovering how important my family is to me. Maybe the time and money I've spent here so far make it all worth it in the end?

 

My 2008 resolutions:

• Spend more quality time with family
• Slow my writing and editing pace
• Exercise more and gain weight
• Study more Spanish

 

Friday, January 11: Arrival in Santiago

Today I took a bus from Lugo and arrived in Santiago late at night and took a taxi to the historic quarter where the Santo Grial was located. My hotel room was very nice. The owners renovated it so that the architectural integrity was kept intact. It had free Wi-Fi in the rooms, a large flat-screen TV, and a balcony that overlooks the narrow street Rua Franco. The whole city is car-free, so I there shouldn't be much traffic noise.

 

I felt so much better once I got to Santiago. I feel so connected to it. One-third of its 90K population consists of students, so it is quite lively. It has so much to offer any curious tourist: art, music, history, cuisine, etc.

 

Saturday, January 12: Santiago

Santiago is such a pretty old city despite its wet, gray skies. This morning I attended mass and walked all over. I'm going to take a guided city tour around 4 p.m, then record mass vespers.

 

I met a very sweet informative guy named Fernando who studies English philology and works at the tourist center who answered a lot of my research questions about architecture and history.

 

Sunday, January 13: Santiago

Today I attended noon mass after eating a large plate of jamón serrano and tortilla España. I thought I had asked for a piece of tortilla, but got a whole pie plate of it. Then I only had 20 minutes to scarf it all down before the pilgrim's noon mass began.  At the cathedral, it was fun to watch the religious rituals being played out. The priest and a nun took turns giving the sermon, and there was a young altar boy who stood behind the priest, preparing the holy water. He looked kind of sleepy and kept yawning. I walked around the interior of the cathedral to etch a mental image of how the pews were arranged and other details, and hugged the St. James statue.

 

I took a guided tour with Diego around the city in the afternoon. I was the only person that showed up, maybe b/c it was raining. Diego knew so much about architecture, the cathedral, the history of the city, the pilgrimage, cuisine and folklore. He finished his PhD in Galician history, but hasn't gotten around to doing his thesis. He also had lots of interesting personal stories about witches and ghosts that his grandmother had told him. We had to take occasional walking breaks due to the weather. At one point when we were standing outside it started raining so hard then a strong gust of wind blew in and broke my new large umbrella.

 

I've been doing a lot of walking here. Yesterday I probably walked around for 5 or 6 hours. I feel invigorated from all the cold weather walking. Maybe exercise is helping me keep my food tolerances at bay. I don't seem to need as much sleep either. Or maybe it's that I'm sleeping more soundly so I don't need as much sleep.

 

Monday, January 14 Santiago

Today the storm shattered the umbrella I bought only a few days ago. I was going down to the train station during the storm when my umbrella blew to pieces. So I took a picture of it then threw it away in the trash can. The train to Padron left too late, so I went to the music store nearby to listen to Galician vocalists. I didn't find anything good, though.

 

Today I walked through the park and around the outskirts of the city. I was thinking that this was the last time I'll probably ever return to Santiago. Then I thought that if I have the success I'm striving for, I'll probably return again within a few years. 

 

This afternoon I visited the Pobo Galego Museum. I took a lot of pictures of things regarding how people looked and lived in the 19th century that might help me with my writing.

 

At night, I bought ten semi-precious stones from a woman at a very small unique shop last night. The shopowner was very mystical about the purchase and educated me about the stones I was buying. She told me that citroen quartz aids creativity and restores the immune system (perfect!). She told me how to care for the stones. She said I should wash the stones in a fountain, river, or in the sea to wash off other people's energies. If I lose one of the stones, that means I didn't need it. If a stone breaks by chance, then that brings me good luck. That night I washed my stones in the Toural fountain near my hotel.

 

Tuesday, January 15 Santiago

For dinner I returned to a tavern called Maria Castañia. I had a Caldo Gallego soup again and a glass of Albariño wine that is so smooth I could drink it every day. For dessert I had a hot tea and castañias in some kind of fruit juice. I also asked if I could have a small taste of their Galician soft cheese with marmalade. The waiter was so nice. He brought me out a small plate of three slabs of cheese and a firm slab of their honey-like marmalade.

 

I've been so lucky with the people here. I reach out a lot more to others when I travel alone. In this way, I like myself better when I'm on my own. I've talked to so many interesting people and have had some nice exchanges. People here have been very helpful and patient with my low Spanish/Galician proficiency.

 

Wednesday, January 16 Santiago

According to my mom’s suggestion, I’m thinking about starting my book from the historical storyline with the main character’s diary entry. It’s a powerful passage and a good place to start reading. I used to worry about it sounding too poetic and was afraid of turning off readers who would then think the entire book is like that. If it were at all possible to express in words, I would like to create a prologue in which the aged literary diary moves through time to the past, generation by generation, held by a woman's pair of hands who is holding or repacking the book into another box. Time passing backwards would be shown by change of dress and furniture and lighting, until the diary ends up in its author's hands. 

 

I haven't been writing much since I've been in Santiago--have been trying to soak everything in for now. But I think I have only 4 more current day chapters, and then 3 or 5 more historical chapters. That sounds about right considering word and page count. I'm finally feeling hopeful and interested again in continuing the novel. When I first got to León, I hated everything I had written thus far.

 

I took a short train ride out to Padron by train this morning. Rosalia de Castro lived in quite a large house near the train station the last years of her life. The exhibits in each room of her house were all pretty interesting. I think you know she had a scandalous birth right? Her father was a priest and her mother was of lower nobility, and so her birth certificate stated neither parent's name and she was raised by her paternal aunt. She was brave, too. At a time when it was frowned upon to write in any language other than Castillian Spanish, she wrote a book of poems "Cantares Galegas," which helped spur on the Galician revival in the late 1860s. Her husband encouraged her to write in Galician and publish her stuff. One sad thing is that she outlived all seven of her children. Even so, she seemed to love life and her homeland, and her poems and novels reflected her passion for life, family, nature, and Galicia. I felt honored to visit her place and see all of her things.

 

Afterwards, I walked to the Padron's historic quarter, but shops were closing up for the afternoon and it started raining hard. I got drenched on my way back to the train station. Earlier this evening I visited a chocolateria and ordered a cup of hot chocolate with churros. Talk about rich! Then I went down to the music store and bought a CD by a Galician folk music band called Berrogüetto. I put one of their more recent songs titled "Un Volta e unha Poema" on my blog a while back.

 

I'm leaving my hotel early Friday morning to return to León via train. It's a 5-hour train ride, but it should be very pretty.

 

Thursday, January 17 Santiago

It's 8 p.m. and Paloma, her husband Miguel, and their 3-year-old son Andres just returned home. They arrived in town around 1:30 p.m. and after we had a tea at the nearby cafe, we went to a good restaurant where we ate a long lunch. From the time we met until the time they left, we talked the whole time about so many things, mainly music, the music industry and medieval poetry, but many other things as well such as literature and her family history and how her great uncle was a friend of President Franco. We walked all through the city, through the park and to another cafe for a cup of that rich hot chocolate and churros.

 

Before she arrived, I became a little nervous. I meditated on us having a very interesting and exciting time together as two women who have a passion for creating art, and so it happened the way I had envisioned it, much to my amazement. We talked about music, art, business, child-rearing, Rosalia de Castro, Galicia, and so many other things.She teaches music in an elementary school. Her husband Miguel makes a variety of wooden instruments such as the Galician bagpipe in their home. Their 3-year-old son Andres is a great kid--well-behaved, intelligent, funny, and fun to be around. Meeting Paloma and her family made today fantastic for me.

 

With just 10 days to go until I fly to Leon and make my way across northern Spain (by car, bus, or hitchhiking--I'm not walking) to Santiago or Cape Finisterre, I'm having to think about what I should bring with me to make this research trip fruitful. I'll be there for 12 days. Here is a list of some things I plan to bring:

• laptop (to edit manuscript in the evenings)
• manuscript with 4 pages printed on a page
• camera with charger and new memory flash card
• voice recorder (to record mass, vespers, nature, etc)
• small notebook for taking notes
• Spanish phrase book
• phone with charger (must remember to sign up for worldwide access)
• map
• cultural guidebook
• loads of fleece (I'm used to living in a dry desert climate)
• hot water bottle (I'm a wimp when it comes to cold temps)
• passport/cash/itinerary/credit card (remember to alert bank so they don't block my purchases)
• lightweight backpack

Am I missing anything? Can anyone think of anything else I should bring along to make my trip more successful or comfortable?

I'm leaving for northern Spain in two weeks to complete the finishing touches for the novel I've been writing this past year. I'll be there for eleven or twelve days and I'm nervous about going alone. I had wanted my husband and kids to come along, but my husband insisted that I go alone so that I can concentrate. I've been to Spain a couple times including the summer I spend in Santiago in 2000, so I was also thinking I could attempt to capture the overtones of the setting and so on based on memory and photos. Tracy Chevalier  brilliantly captured the setting and historical overtones in her novel Girl With a Pearl Earring, but more than likely she visited Delft to do her research since she lives in England. My husband convinced me that my story would have a richer texture if I spent some time there and followed the same route on the Camino to Santiagoas my hesitant heroine. I'm glad he persuaded me; I think he's right about those things, but I'll be glad when I'm back home with my kids. I guess that's what having a family does to a person.

My novel is about 80% complete, with less than 15,000 words needed to produce a 75,000-word novel. I haven't written anything in the past few days, though. I'm sort of burned out from the end of semester whirling dervish and holidays, plus my husband is in Nepal with his son Max for a week so I'm trying to preserve my energy for my little tykes as much as possible. I'm also trying to fully envision my next scene before I sit down to write it. 

Has anyone done the pilgrimage on the Camino to Santiago de Compostela? I found a good YouTube video that captures the feeling of the pilgrimage with footage of the Camino from Leon to Santiago in the fall.

It's Christmas Eve and I'm sitting in a computer lab during my break at the university where I teach English because, well, I teach in the Middle East where Christmas isn't considered a holiday. Fair enough since last week we were off due to it being Al-Eid (a holy post-Ramadan kind of holiday that includes a lot of family time, feasting, and gift-giving). Still, there's a lot of pressure on westerners living over here who have to work, shop, cook the Christmas feast, bake ginger cookies and be there to watch their children open their presents.

As of right now, I'm between 75-80% finished of my writing target of 75K words. That boils down to only writing a meager 18K words or so. I think I know which scenes still need to be written, and I'm doing them one by one, usually taking two days to write a scene, but I've been going at a very slow pace because a lot of editing still needs to be done as well so that it's a polished first draft. I'm a little worried about the historical storyline since I haven't been working on that much at all in past months, and now I'm trying to figure out how it's going to fit. I have my outline of scenes I can look at to jog my memory, but my current storyline and its themes have evolved to the point where I can't just insert the historical storyline (as is) as I had intended.

You would think writing is a joyful hobby, but I tell you, I only feel joy maybe 1 out of 5 times when I sit down to write. It's painstaking, tedious, humiliating at times, and brain-sapping as if I'm solving a very difficult puzzle, taking every scrap of mental effort I had been saving to mop the kitchen floor with.

Anyway, it's likely I won't complete the first polished draft by December 31 since my husband and stepson are leaving for Nepal the day after Christmas and will be away for almost a week. Creche is on holiday, so I'll be sitting here working and watching my two little goats kids. That's okay, I'm not crying over not meeting my writing goal because I think I've done pretty well considering I didn't begin writing this novel until July due to the arthritis thing (however, I had written scenes, outlines, character sketches, and done research earlier this year and last year). I think the important thing is the determination a person has along the way when s/he is striving to meet a goal.

Just 70% above target. I can now see the handful of scenes I need to write to complete the novel I'm writing, and I'm both thrilled and terrified at the same time. But overall, as of today anyway after completing a scene, I am beginning to feel a sense of relief that I am accomplishing the task I set out to do one year ago.

Recently, I thought of another couple books that have deeply influenced me and my writing: On the Road by Jack Kerouac, Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson, and Candide by Voltaire.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have a week off to write instead of teach due to Al-Eid holiday in the UAE. So I am going to get as many scenes finished as possible while juggling my time with my family, especially since my super cool step-son Max (and personal investor) is coming to visit. Meanwhile, in the evenings I am reading my manuscript aloud to listen for anything that sounds stilted or wrong, and rewriting in the rare moments I have when I'm not power writing. I've also emailed the first batch of 50 words out to a few people. After the first polished draft is complete, I plan to ask as many of my friends as possible to review the manuscript while I am in Spain for a couple weeks in January researching my setting on the Camino to Santiago de Compostela.

By the way, I am pleased to announce that my nonfiction The Long Distance Relationship Guidebook has been doing well at the online bookstores.

This past week I've been fermenting the last leg of my main character's self-discovery journey on the Camino to Santiago, and hover at 65%. I say "self-discovery" because I've realized that overall, that's the overarching theme in my novel. There are many books and films out on this topic, but none resemble my own (thank God).

I was just reading the reviews of Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert on Amazon.com, and it terrified me how some reviewers lambasted her. I hope she never reads some of the vicious remarks people have written. They were lambasting her for two reasons: 1) she received an advance from her publisher before taking off for a year on her journey toward self-discovery to Italy, India, and Indonesia, and 2) they say she is too narcissistic. I don't know, isn't the point of self-discovery for people to focus on themselves? I haven't read the book, so I''m withholding judgment for now. I sympathize with their concerns, but still, I wish people would show a little more tolerance towards others, even if they have been given a helping hand. And furthermore, it's not like she hadn't traveled a lot under spartan conditions before getting any help from her publishers.

I've researched other notable works on second chances and self-discovery, and I've come to realized how influenced I am by Herman Hesse's books Siddhartha and Steppenwolf which I read in my twenties. 

I'd like to deepen my understanding of a person's self-discovery by watching Woody Allen's paragon of reinvention, Shirley Valentine which is about a middle-aged woman who is dissatisfied with her marriage, travels to Greece alone and ends up finding herself again.

On a lighter note, there are the films Bread and Tulips (Pane e Tulipani), Under the Tuscan Sun and more recently, The Holiday, all of which I've seen over the years and enjoyed very much.