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For authors, a new book is such a daunting process that the earliest stages, long before the first words of chapter one are put down, is a time of wary circling. You know the feeling–something interesting and unfamiliar catches your eye, and you move in, maybe just a little, to check it out more closely, maybe poke it with a stick to see if it moves.

You don’t know–you really just don’t know–what’s going to happen. Every year I must go through several dozen ideas for historical novels, some I think of on my own, but probably the majority suggested by fans and friends. Some ideas get abandoned quickly–not enough information for a historical novelist to go on, not enough interesting or appealing in the lives of the real-life characters, not enough of something else. Other ideas get put aside for another time. The circling begins with the third group, the ideas that won’t go away, the voices that say, “write about me!”

My bookshelves are full of biographies of women I haven’t written novels about and probably won’t: Cosima Liszt Von Bulow Wagner, Alma Schindler Mahler Gropius Werfel, Hypatia, Clara Schumann, Hadley Hemingway, Gertrude Caton Thompson, to name a few. Several are still possibilities: Ada Lovelace, Pauline Viardot, and Marie Curie spring to mind.

Marie Curie is the latest casualty of my circling. I read every biography of her (four, if I recall) and even wrote fifty pages of a first draft before I ran into an obstacle I didn’t know how to handle. In my four novels to date the protagonists have always been characters of my invention through whose lives fascinating real-life characters come and go. I had some doubts about having a biographical character as the protagonist, but Curie’s life is just so amazing that I set my concerns aside.

Turns out that little muse fretting on my shoulder was right to be nervous. I have had to admit in the last week that a novel about Marie Curie just isn’t working.

In my first draft, I told the story from Marie’s point of view, as a third person narration. Here are the opening few sentences:

“Don’t look,” Manya Sklodowska whispered to herself as the first snow of the season thickened the air and stuck to the lawns of the Saxony Garden outside her classroom. She knew it was snowing even without looking, because the world sounded different, as if someone had picked up the edges of Warsaw in white paper and wrapped up a gift of silence.

At neat rows of desks, twelve-year-old girls in white-collared, blue serge uniforms squirmed. They’d been waiting for snow for all day, ever since the gray sky began to lower and the air took on the faint astringency of winter….

Okay, not bad for a first draft, but here’s the problem: I am describing something that happened that day to a real person. I had the biographies open in front of me and worked from them. I did a good job, in my estimation, in dramatizing a quite traumatic event involving a surprise visit by the superintendent of schools, but the problem was that the entire book would be no more than that. I would move on to the next few pages of her biography and dramatize that, and then the next, and in the end I would have told the story of her life, but not much more.

I learned something valuable from this–that I need to be able to make up the story. I get excited about inventing characters and putting them in situations where I don’t know what’s going to happen. That gets me up at six every morning ready to put fingers to the keys and continue the adventure. That wasn’t going to happen with Marie Curie, because there wasn’t a plausible fictional character I could create who would be alongside her, observing her but having her own life story too.

I decided to try a new approach, having multiple narrators from various stages of Marie’s life–her sister, her father, her first love, her husband, her fellow physicists, her students, her lover. Here is the same scene told from the point of view of Hela, who was in the same class as Marie:

“Don’t look!” My mouth forms words I don’t dare say aloud. The first snow of the year is falling. Nothing else thickens the air indoors this way, or makes the world outside go quite so silent.

I stare straight ahead at Mademoiselle Tupalska. Over her old-fashioned whalebone collar, old Tupsia has one of the meanest and ugliest faces I’ve ever seen. Her thick brows knit into one line, and her mouth turns down in furrows that make her chin look cut through like a marionette’s. She’s taking out her ruler now and laying it on the desk. After a few months of school, there’s no need to slap it in her palm to frighten us into obedience. Most of us know from experience the damage she can do with it.

Tupsia knows what I want–what every one of the girls in our white-collared blue serge uniforms wants–as we sit in our neat rows of desks reciting Russian verbs. We’ve been waiting for snow for all day. Now the tickle in my nostrils from a draft through a cracked window has a faint astringency like the witch hazel we put on our scrapes and scratches at home. I see the other girls trying not to squirm or let their eyes drift to the windows, where we could be making halos of our breath, or punctuating the condensation on the window with the tips of our noses. Old Tupsia will have none of that. She doesn’t care if it’s snowing. She only cares about these dusty old books. I bet she eats cardboard for breakfast.

I try not to giggle at the thought as I look sidelong at my sister Maria. She’s ten, a year younger than I am. Before she was advanced into my class, I was the youngest and the smartest, but Manya knows everything I do and a lot more besides. Math, history, literature, German, French, and catechism–she’s the best at all of them, even though she is a bit too chubby around the middle and has hair that never looks nice for more than a minute…

I kind of like this approach, but deep down I still don’t think I have solved the problem. I am still stuck with too little to create except phrasings. I love to write, and I find point of view one of the most fascinating aspects of fiction, and if someone said “we’ve just got to have a book about Marie Curie and we need it soon,” I would probably go forward. But no one is saying that, and I am very glad of it, because I have decided to put this project aside until I find a way around this problem, if there is one.

This is the first time this has happened to me. Usually I get inspired and plough through to successful completion of a novel. This was a really valuable lesson, to see that there is more to a historical novel than a great real-life story. Marie Curie supplied the plot and the characters, but she couldn’t supply the inspiration. But I can wait. If she wants her story told, she’ll find a way to get in touch.

In my last post I told you what I was doing, and in this one I’ll try to tell you how I’m feeling as the publication date for FINDING EMILIE approaches.

It’s scary.

The process of writing a novel is so involved and lengthy that I swing through the spectrum of emotions over and over. Then, in the many months between finishing the final round of revisions and waiting for publication, I put FINDING EMILIE out of mind. I was making many appearances for PENELOPE’S DAUGHTER, finishing up novel number four (THE SHAPE OF THE WORLD), and doing some preliminary work on novel number five–plus teaching full time and doing some other projects, including serving as managing co-editor of two anthologies. FINDING EMILIE was, bluntly, the last thing on my mind.

About a month before a book comes out authors receive a box of finished copies, and when that carton arrived a few weeks back, the emotional roller coaster began for me again. I can’t describe the feeling of pulling back the flaps and seeing rows of one’s own book staring back. The cover is not a surprise–by then I’ve seen it often–but the bulk of the whole thing (I don’t know how else to say it) is a most pleasant reality check. I took a few out of the box and photographed them for–what else?–Facebook before curling up on the couch to leaf through a copy. Here it is, I said to myself. It’s finally, well, alive.

Then you wait. The time a book sits in warehouses and storerooms waiting for the publication date is pretty tough. I want the book out in the world now, but I’m also worried about what will happen when it is. What if people don’t like it? What if they write mean spirited or silly reviews on Amazon? What if they secretly (or not so secretly) decide that it’s okay, but not as good as my other novels? What if this? What if that?

I’m not sure what this worry is about, really. A number of people read the book in galley–a few reviewers, a few friends, a few fellow authors. Everyone has been very positive, talking about how reluctant they were to say goodbye to my characters and how vividly I’ve portrayed the world of Enlightenment France. “You like it?” I say, doing a Sally Field second Oscar speech imitation. “You really like it?” They smile, nod, or if they are at a distance, write reassuring e-mails that I read again and again.

Just today I found out that FINDING EMILIE is an Editor’s Pick in the next issue of Historical Novels Review–the biggie in my field. They like it–they really like it! I feel the weight coming off my shoulders. Maybe I can stop worrying now, since ALL the feedback is good–very very good.

This particular wait came to a strange, truncated end when I discovered the book went on sale on Amazon a few days ago–a week ahead of the pub date. All the countdown, all the talk of going out next Tuesday to celebrate seems suddenly moot. I’ve survived again, and now, the wait for blogger reviews begins. It’s like the time between leaping off the high dive and hitting the water, but I’m at this point more curious than scared.

I’d love to hear from you! Drop me a note when you’ve read the book, and better still, post a review on Amazon, B&N or someplace else. Writers are nothing without readers, and if you were here right now I’d thank you sincerely and deeply for all your support, except I’m chewing my nails and can’t talk at the moment.

If you are in the San Diego area, please join me and eight other area authors at the launch of our new endeavor, SAN DIEGO WRITING WOMEN, on February 19, from 6-9PM at Hair Drezzers on Fire, 3463 Adams Ave. in San Diego.

Here’s how we describe ourselves: “We are nine authors who are passionate about what we do. Some of us write for a living, yet all of us scramble to find the time to finish our books — between research trips to Borneo, Greece and death row, stand-up comedy shows or reproductive surgery on horses. A few months ago we started blogging here about the writing life. Now, we want to celebrate the written word with you in person, read from our latest books and launch our mission of sharing our combined knowledge and experience with readers, writers, and aspiring writers everywhere.”

The event will be a lot of fun, with wine and hors d’oeuvres, live music, and short presentations by the authors. So far close to 200 people have responded to the invitation posted on our blog. If you would like more information or an invitation to the event please RSVP to crother@flash.net. The event is open to the public, but for planning purposes, we appreciate your contacting us for an invitation.

Here are the other members of San Diego Writing Women who will be introduced at the Feb. 19 reading:
• Caitlin Rother: After 19 years in the news business, Rother left her job at The San Diego Union-Tribune in 2006  to make a living as a full-time author. She teaches writing at UCSD Extension and is working on book No. 8, about the John Gardner case. Caitlin will read from her new crime book, “Dead Reckoning,” the story of how a former child actor turned con man and hermaphrodite wannabe tied a nice married couple to the anchor of their yacht and threw them overboard — alive.
• Jennifer Coburn: Coburn is the USA Today best-selling author of four “chick-lit” novels and contributor to four literary anthologies. Her first novel, “The Wife of Reilly,” is in development for a feature film. “Tales from the Crib” is in development for TV. Coburn has written for newspapers across the country and is the recipient of journalism awards from the Press Club and Society for Professional Journalists.
• Divina Infusino: Infusino is the author of “Day Trips from Orange County:Getaway Ideas for the Local Traveler,” the writer of “Rock Gods,” a rock ‘n’ roll photography collection, and co-author on “The Love Response,” a mind-body wellness book.
• Sharon Vanderlip: Vanderlip will read from her new book, “Hedgehogs.” A veterinarian, she has provied veterinary care to domestic, wild and exotic animals for more than 30 years. She served many years as veterinarian for the UCSD School of Medicine and later as chief of veterinary services for NASA. Vanderlip has written more than 20 books on animals and pet care.
• Kathi Diamant: Television celebrity Diamant left a career in broadcasting to follow her dream to tell the story of Kafka’s last love, resulting in her award-winning book “Kafka’s Last Love: The Mystery of Dora Diamant.”
• Kathy Jones: Jones taught Women’s Studies for 24 years at San Diego State University and published books on feminism and the politics of the women’s movement. After writing “Living Between Danger and Love,” a memoir about the murder of one of her students, she left the university to pursue a writing career.
• Georgeanne Irvine: Associate Director of Development Communications for the San Diego Zoo, Irvine also is the author of more than 20 children’s books plus numerous magazine, newspaper, and Web articles. Her most recent work is the coffee table book, “The Katrina Dolphins: One-Way Ticket to Paradise,” the true story of eight dolphins from an oceanarium that were washed out to sea during Hurricane Katrina and dramatically rescued.
• Judith Liu: The author spent 30 years conducting personal interviews and hunting through dusty archives to research her book, “Foreign Exchange.” The narrative revolves around two women — one the author’s mother who attended an American Episcopalian missionary school in central China, St. Hilda’s School for Girls, and the other, an American woman who went there as a short-term teacher in the 1930s. Their lives intersected at the school during the brief time of peace in China. Set within the context of the school’s history, their tales provide a snapshot of China and its educational system before the founding of the People’s Republic.

We all hope to see you there!

I just took a look at the overall annual statistics for this website, which went live at the beginning of 2009 and has now been up for two years. I’m very pleased at the 50% growth in both unique visitors and overall visits this year. There were 30,316 visits this year (up from 20,691 in 2009). Since each month starts again with zero unique visitors, a visitor who checked in once a month would count twelve times, making it impossible to know how many of the 15,793 unique visitors (up from 10,392) were indeed unique. Still, it’s interesting to note that most people must have visited multiple times, and that the typical day sees more than 100 visits with an average of 3 pages a visit. In my best month (November) 1544 unique visitors made 3596 visits.

Not exactly superstar numbers, but very encouraging to an author still trying to build a base of support. If you are one of those returning visitors, thanks for your interest and encouragement. If this is your first visit, welcome! Check out the photos of my research trips for starters, as well as the section about my third novel, FINDING EMILIE (April 2011) and my newly completed but not yet marketed fourth novel, THE SHAPE OF THE WORLD. You also might be interested in my first trade book, UNTIL OUR LAST BREATH, which can be found under the non-fiction tab.

If you are interested in more frequent updates about my writing, please “like” my Laurel Corona, Author Facebook page. I post something every day or two about my thoughts, worries, and progress on my writing. Since I am still in the early planning stages for novel number 5, you can follow the whole process start to finish, or scroll back to see how THE SHAPE OF THE WORLD evolved. If you aren’t a writer yourself, this will give you an idea of what the life of a working author is like.

Again, THANK YOU, from the bottom of my heart, for being behind me and my work. You are the best!

My friend Christy English recently posted on Facebook to tell friends that she was finishing up her review of the proofs for her new novel, To Be Queen, out in April 2011. “These proofs will never end,” she says. Of course, I don’t want them to, I guess. I love seeing my books in print, but I love that time when it is just me and my characters. Am I nuts or what?”

For those of you unfamiliar with the lingo, the proof pages are photocopies of the book the way it will appear in the galleys. These are bound preview copies that usually come out 5-6 months before the pub date and are used for advance publicity and marketing. There are usually still some minor errors to correct in the proof pages, and authors are pretty anal about going through them, because we will have to live with any remaining typos or other problems.

In a follow-up post Christy added, “I’ve definitely got the crazy portion of the program covered.” This made me laugh, although I realize now I probably misunderstood her meaning. She was answering her rhetorical question about whether she was nuts, but I took it another way, that correcting proofs is the crazy-making thing she was now getting covered.

It’s all crazy making, really, every last bit of imagining, planning, writing, revising, editing, and reediting that goes into a historical novel. I’ll use myself as a case in point. In the last few months I have been most negligent about posting to this diary, but here’s my excuse:

THE FOUR SEASONS: Not much work anymore on my first novel, out since fall 2008, except to wrap up a couple of commitments made earlier. A book club won a silent auction item that was an autographed copy and a personal visit to their book club, and it just hadn’t gotten scheduled until this fall. Very strange to go back and revisit a book I hadn’t given much thought to for quite a while.

PENELOPE’S DAUGHTER: Published about 10 weeks ago. Huge amounts of effort are part of the picture for authors in my category, who don’t get big publicity budgets from their publishers. I guest blogged more places than I can remember, and made more than a dozen appearances here and there in less than two months.

FINDING EMILIE: Huge amounts of work for my next novel, coming out in April, right around the same time as Christy’s, so our lives are running parallel right now. Some glitches in the process of copyediting the manuscript created a disaster in which huge numbers of errors were introduced into the book at that late date. It took herculean effort by the editor and me to get it back on track, and even the proof pages had way more problems that normal. Presumably it is all fixed, but I will receive another set of proofs to check, so I’ll have crazy time again soon. I have a short break at that point before I will need to start the blitz of effort required to have a strong launch at publication time.

THE SHAPE OF THE WORLD: This is the working title of my latest novel. I started work on it last December and I have just finished it. When I am writing a novel I have essentially a second 40-hour-a-week job, and in the summer, the novel is a job and a half on its own. I’ve already written here about how I monitored my time to keep “the crazies” at bay this time, but a novel is such intense work, it is difficult to let it go, and then difficult to recover emotionally (and even physically) when you finally say, “I’m done.”

I’m done. The photo here is of my last appearance, a great time with a friend’s writing group. Now there will be a hiatus on everything. I have a few things lined up early next year, but my calendar is pretty clear. There will be nothing to do on THE SHAPE OF THE WORLD except incorporate a few revisions from early readers with specific expertise in various aspects of the book. It won’t even be marketed until later this spring, so the book can sit tight without needing care and feeding. Eventually, around March, I will start preparing guest blogs and lining up appearances for FINDING EMILIE, but there’s nothing to do now. PENELOPE’S DAUGHTER and THE FOUR SEASONS have left home and are managing on their own.

And, for the first time, I don’t have a clue about who or what I will write my next novel about. I’ve researched at least a dozen ideas and have decided that none of them are the one that’s going to pick me up by the scruff of the neck and sit me down at the computer. It’s a good thing, for I have never not been writing for about seven years now, and I have five books to show for it. A break is a good (although weird) thing for me.

No, you’re not nuts, Christy. You are just blessed with the passion for writing. Me too. Lucky thing, because the crazy portion is part of the bargain.

Last June, when I filed my grades, I had the astonishing prospect of eight months of unstructured time ahead. First, there would be the usual three months of summer, followed by a sabbatical semester, and then the winter break, so I wouldn’t be going back to my routine until the end of January.

Though I was thrilled by the opportunity to take the semester off, and I was excited by my sabbatical project, I admit I had a few misgivings. I think most people benefit from structure in their lives, and I had just lost mine. I knew I would need to create a routine that would enable me to remain productive, healthy, and satisfied.

I blogged about this back in July, in a post called “‘Healthy Author’ is Not an Oxymoron.” Here’s what I said:

“This summer I am telling myself that writing is only one of several good uses of my time, and it is inappropriate to be writing when I should be doing something else. I have a sign near my computer that has a list of 5 things:

• Writing
• Book Promotion
• Exercise
• Life Maintenance
• R&R

Every one of those things is a valid and necessary part of my day.  I plan every day around ensuring that I put in at least an hour on each. Then I fill up the rest of my time with a mix of all of them, in whatever way works that day.

I’m not talking about the 8-hour standard workday, but the whole 12 hours from the time I get up (around 6AM) to the time I call a halt to everything but an evening with my sweetheart (around 6PM). On most days the majority of my time overall is taken up with writing, but as I get more invested in the other things on the list,  I often spend more than the minimum on them, and I still have a lot of time to write.

I ask myself a couple of times each day whether I’m doing a good mix of the 5 types of things, and if I’m not, I tell myself “it’s not writing time now.”

Haven’t exercised?  Do it!  Haven’t taken a shower or gone to the store? Do it. Haven’t stopped just to do something fun? Do it!

I’m having a great summer, and interestingly, I don’t think my writing productivity has dropped overall.  I’m still on track to finish novel #4 this fall, and I think I could have finished it only a few weeks earlier at most if I had done nothing else. And I feel great–not at all like that stringy-haired, unwashed, antisocial creature with a backache I vaguely remember from summers past.

So here’s the report from the still washed and sociable creature who wrote those words four months ago: IT’S WORKING! I have gotten more exercise than I have in years. I have missed only two days since I started this plan, and both times I made it up the following day. I can run an hour with ease, do more crunches and lift more weight than I thought possible at my age. I’m feeling great, and best yet, despite all the time I am parked at my computer, I am still not straining to button my jeans.

I have blogged daily at Xanthe’s World since mid-August (part of book promotion) and done a pretty substantial number of real and virtual appearances since the release of PENELOPE’S DAUGHTER in October. I finished novel number four, THE SHAPE OF THE WORLD, and am well into the re-re-revision. I taught a mini-course at SDSU (that’s me in the photo) and gave several lectures other places. I’m getting out to lunch from time to time with friends, something I never seem to find time to do the rest of the time.

Oh, and that sabbatical project? The product of my sabbatical is four lectures (with accompanying slide show). I just finished the fourth slide show last week, two months ahead of schedule. For the remaining two months, I will go back through the books and other material I have amassed to see if I’ve missed anything I want to include, but basically, I’m done.

There’s a lot of time in a day. It seems the more I diversify what I do, the more time there is. I know many people have many more demands on their time than I do, but I still think that making a promise to oneself to put some time every day into ALL the things that are important instead of being swamped by one or two will cause a surprising increase in productivity and energy. When I go back to school, I’ll have a sixth category of time, and a slightly different promise to make to myself, but I’m doing it. I am really on to something and I’m sticking with it.

I gave a talk at the La Jolla Writer’s Conference this weekend on one of my favorite subjects, “Writing Scared.” In it I talk about how scary writing is even to those of us who do it all the time and are successful at it, at least to the extent that publication is an indicator.
At some point in the talk, I made a point I often made to my community college classes when I still taught research writing. We generally think in terms of things we want to do, but I think sometimes it works better to cast goals as things we want to have done.

“I want to get a college degree,” someone says, when the more accurate statement might be “I want to have gotten a college degree.” Likewise for many things. How many people want to work out, for example? Don’t most want to move on with their day having finished a workout? Don’t we want a clean house more than we want to clean it? To have a weeded garden more than to weed it? My students wanted to have written their first ten-page research paper far more than they actually wanted to write it. I heard thousands of testimonials to that effect over the years!

This seems like a simple enough point, except I suspect that the people who finish things may be those who have the best ability to remember how good satisfaction feels. Let’s face it–when we are working toward a substantial goal we spend the vast majority of our time in what I once named the “middle muddle,” where the tasks seem endless and the finished product far too distant to offer much light. Keeping going is really an act of faith mixed with a huge amount of imagination.

Can you remember how good it feels to stand up, covered with dirt, or sweat (or their equivalents when the task has been one of the mind) and look at what you have accomplished? Doesn’t the down-and-dirty of it just not matter anymore? Life is so good in those moments. and we can have them only if we’ve done the rest without faintheartedness. “I want to have written a diary entry,” I told myself this morning, and now I have!

I dedicated my newly released novel Penelope’s Daughter to “all the children left behind when fathers and mothers go off to war.” While I was writing the book,I spent a lot of time thinking about the impact of Odysseus’ absence not just on my main character, Xanthe, but on her older brother, Telemachus.

Of the two, I think Telemachus had it the worst.  In those days, gender roles were clearly defined, and most of the schooling a child got was from the parent of the same sex.  Xanthe has Penelope to teach her how to weave, how to worship the gods, and how to be gracious; and she has her surrogate mother, Helen, to teach her how to fulfill herself as a woman.

What does Telemachus have?  He has no real peers. A few men remain on Ithaca who were too old or infirm to go to Troy, and otherwise he is surrounded by a group of young men, perhaps ten to twelve years older than he is.  These young men were too young to go to war, but became adults in the two decades Odysseus is gone.

The young men grew up much as Telemachus did, without strong role models to help shape them into strong, productive, appropriately behaving adults. Anyone who could have done that sailed off with Odysseus. A kingdom whose males are almost all young boys and old men does not bode well for the future, and indeed what happens is that the young men grow up to be either  the bullies or the bullied.

The dedication of the book came about because as I wrote, my country was at war. I thought about how important parents are as teachers, and how every deployment takes that away from a child.  From the time I made the decision to dedicate Penelope’s Daughter in that fashion, I knew I needed to put something behind it so it wouldn’t just be a glib little nicety that meant nothing.

I decided to create a blog called Xanthe’s World, and dedicate it to all the children left behind by our current wars. I have posted every day since August. I don’t know how many people are aware that only 2 percent of American families are directly impacted by this war.  I am in the other 98 percent, as are most of the viewers of this website. I hope you will take the time to check out Xanthe’s World, and mark it as a favorite, so you can explore the world of  military children with me.