Sink or Swim? Dismal Swamp vs Alligator River, by J.C. Kavanagh

 

To order your copy of the award-winning Twisted Climb series, click here: https://www.amazon.ca/stores/J.C.-Kavanagh/author/B01H0Q9GLA?ref=ap_rdr&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

Choices, choices.

Regular blog readers will know that I'm on a sailing adventure with my partner, Ian. We left Georgian Bay, Ontario (Canada) last summer and travelled south to the Bahamas. After a sun-filled, enjoyable 'winter' there (sans snow), we're now heading home.

Part of our route involves motor-sailing through the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW), a 4,800 km (3,000 mile) waterway running parallel to the Atlantic Ocean. It extends from Massachusetts to the southern tip of Florida, up and around the Gulf Coast to the city of Brownsville, Texas. We will only travel the section from Florida to Norfolk, Virginia, and then traverse various canal systems to Lake Ontario.

The Intracoastal Waterway

The US government has mandated that the ICW be maintained/dredged to a minimum depth of 12 feet at low water tide.

I can unequivocally state that this 'minimum' 12 feet does not exist! Some areas - yes. But where shoaling occurs, and boy-oh-boy, does it occur, some areas are as low as four feet. The GPS will show the depths at varied levels, and other apps will state something different. Unfortunately, we have 'hit' bottom several times over the last couple of weeks. The draft on our sailboat (meaning the depth of the keel below the boat) is five foot seven inches. If there are waves, then we have to add more depth to the GPS sounding as the trough or lower part of the wave will affect the overall depth. Shoaling often occurs after storms and heavy seas, so I have to give some latitude to the Army Corps of Engineers who are tasked with dredging the ICW channels. Nonetheless, the shallow waters in the ICW make travelling a nail-biting, sphincter-test of nerves.

But back to the choices.

Dismal Swamp

It's the oldest operating, man-made canal in the United States. Originally an enormous swamp, it was drained and dug out by hand, beginning in 1793. It took 12 years to complete the 22 mile waterway which connects Chesapeake Bay, Virginia, to Albemarle Sound in North Carolina. According to Wikipedia, the government borrowed slaves from neighbouring plantations to be the labour force. What a sorry job for these men - the name Dismal Swamp is an apt description of the landscape and insects. The average depth along this route is six feet. Our boat requires a minimum of five feet seven inches to clear bottom. 

OR

Alligator River

This section of the ICW is also part of the Pungo River Canal. It's a 21-mile stretch of man-made land cut that's between eight and ten feet deep in the centre. Erosion along the banks of the river have contributed to logs and stumps scattered throughout. This makes for a dodgy travelling day because also scattered with the drifting logs and stumps are hundreds of crab pots. And if that isn't nerve wracking enough, you have to be on the lookout for swimming black bears, red wolves and yes, the occasional alligator. 

Our choice?

Alligator River. It's all about the depth!

Our GPS display as we travelled through the Alligator River.
The red arrow symbolizes our boat's position.
Note the depths (in feet) surrounding the dredged channel.

We didn't see any alligators or bears,
but we did see this beauty swimming across the river.

And so, our adventure continues. We're anchored in Norfolk, Virginia and tomorrow, we have to decide if we'll head out for an ocean pass to Ocean City, or, stay on the ICW and head to Chesapeake Bay. Choices, choices.

On a sad and personal note, the revered publisher of BWL Publishing, Jude Pittman, recently passed. It was sudden and unexpected. She has joined her beloved husband, Métis medicine man John Wisdomkeeper, in the spirit world. Rest in peace, Jude. You will be missed.

Stay safe, and don't forget to tell the ones you love that you love them.

J.C. Kavanagh, author of
The Twisted Climb - A Bright Darkness (Book 3) Best YA Book FINALIST at Critters Readers Poll 2022
AND
The Twisted Climb - Darkness Descends (Book 2) voted BEST Young Adult Book 2018, Critters Readers Poll and Best YA Book FINALIST at The Word Guild, Canada
AND
The Twisted Climb,
voted BEST Young Adult Book 2016, P&E Readers Poll
Voted Best Local Author, Simcoe County, Ontario, 2021
Novels for teens, young adults and adults young-at-heart
Email: author.j.c.kavanagh@gmail.com

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Preparation is Key

 

                                                                  Find my books here

In writing as in life, preparation is necessary.

Do you prepare for trips? When do you begin purchasing airline tickets, making a hotel reservation, and signing up for activities? Do you research upcoming weather so you’ll know what clothes you will need? And in this always connected age…do you make a note to bring those chargers?

What else can you not leave home without when you travel? I hope it’s a good book!

Writers also value preparation to help bolster and foster our creativity. 

I’m working on two collections of short stories now—one set in Newfoundland, Canada, and the other in Vermont, U.S.A.. My research binders are full of how horses weighing a ton or more carried empty ore carts at the height of Bell Island’s iron mining days, what visiting Norsemen were up to in AD 1000, what First People's lives were like, how Vermont faced its own witch hunts and vampire epidemics. Fiction, especially historical fiction, demands good research, and plenty of it before, during and after (fact checking!) the many drafts of my stories are completed. Then there is book promotion, a never-ending pursuit of finding loyal readers.

As the philosopher Seneca has observed: "Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity." And my preparation research often leads to interesting plot twists or an authentic line of dialogue. Lucky me!

I try to be well-prepared..with skills, knowledge and experience. I need them all to foster my creativity!

How about you? How do you plan in your journeys—in travel and life?

First Draft vs. Revision: which do you prefer? by Susan Calder

 

                                           For information on Susan's latest novel, check Amazon.ca

After my first novel was published, I participated in several group readings. At one event, an audience member asked each author which we preferred: writing first drafts or revision? I answered, "First drafts because I love the exploration." If I were asked this question today, I would say, "Revision."

What changed during the past fifteen years?

Novel writers tend to divide themselves into plotters, who outline stories before they start to write, and pantsers, who write by the seat of their pants. I'm a pantser. When I start a novel, I typically know some basics about my main characters, the book's genre, the setting, and the inciting incident but not much more than that. I develop the characters and story in the process of writing and discover such matters as "whodunnit" along with my protagonist. Like all exploration, this is a tad unsettling -- I never know if the story will hang together until I near the end of the first draft.     

With my first novel, I let the story go wherever it wanted. Each day, I continued writing from where I'd left off the previous time without a backward glance. Not surprisingly, my characters and plot went all over the place and became mired in extraneous details, but the work went quickly with this free approach. During my second draft revision, I cut large chunks of writing and made major changes, like adding and then deleting a significant character.   

While I was struggling with the third draft, I attended a speaker session on three-act novel structure, which is based on the screenwriting principle that certain types of happenings must occur at specific points in the story to make it a satisfying tale. During the first quarter, the protagonist dithers on whether or not to accept the challenge posed at the start until she finally commits to the quest, however the story defines this. Midway, there's a reversal that changes the story's direction. Then the action nosedives to the black moment at the 3/4 point. In movies, the protagonist typically wallows through moody music until she summons the strength to push to the story's climax. Even classic novels, written long before movies, follow this structure. The speaker opened her copy of Pride and Prejudice to reveal the reversal in the middle of the book. Jane Austen had an instinct for story that is hardwired into the human brain.  

This talk was a lightbulb moment for me. I instantly saw how and why three-act structure works and where I had naturally applied it to my messy draft and where I'd fallen terribly short. The opening quarter was way too long. My story had a reversal but skipped too quickly to the black moment. This led me to cut tons of stuff from the first quarter, add a completely new chapter after the black moment, and make numerous other changes. This third draft took longer to write than the first one, but it was better than it would have been had I not discovered three-act structure.  

I started my second novel with structure in mind. Since I knew the book would be roughly 100,000 words, I created a structure outline that divided it into quarters of 25,000 words each. I still didn't know what would happen in the story, but I wrote to the three major turning points - commitment, reversal, black moment. If I felt events were moving too quickly toward a turning point, I added another development to enrich the story. If events moved slowly, I eliminated something unimportant that I'd planned. For instance, I initially wanted a wedding to take place in the first quarter. When there was no space for it, I postponed the wedding to the second quarter, and then the third, and finally never. This saved me the work of extricating the wedding and its offshoots during revision. 

My first draft of this second novel was less messy than the first, and I continued the process with subsequent books. Along the way, I added new things I'd learned to create a more detailed structure outline. I still didn't know what would happen in the story or how everything would resolve, but my first drafts required increasingly less revision. For my latest novel, A Killer Whisky, each draft became quicker and more enjoyable to write than the previous one as I developed and polished the existing material.

Last month, I finished the first draft of my current novel-in-progress - yay! I realized that I've become far more attentive to the writing than I was for my earlier novels. Whenever scenes fell flat or veered off in a wrong direction, I went back and rewrote them before moving on. This increased my time spent on the draft, and yet I still didn't know if the story would work or how it would end until the last few chapters. So, my first drafts now combine the worst of both parts of the process - the uncertainty of pantsing a first draft and the attention to writing that I used to reserve for revision. It's exhausting.

But the toughest job is done (I hope), and I look forward to my new favourite part of writing novels - revision.         

 

Tiramisu for Breakfast by Barbara Wackerle Baker

 

 

https://www.amazon.ca/stores/author/B0BMTM18PW

Barnes and Noble 

I feel the tug. The finish line is within reach. In 7,000ish words I will write The End on the last page of Jillian’s story. I know how the final scene unfolds and I have a few ideas on how to play out the tale before it closes to ensure reader (and writer) satisfaction. It’s just a matter of getting there. As long as a bird doesn’t fly by the window. Or the sunrise isn't as dramatic as yesterday’s. I fight the distractions. But often lose. 

 

Possibly my reasoning for running away to a writer's retreat so I can focus on finishing the novel has a few flaws:

• the landscape is different. And stunning. Where’s my camera?
• the writer camaraderie is infectious and interrupts getting the words down with intense conversations on the writing topic
• the running-down-my-face tears of laughter is hard to pull away from to get back at it – the writing
• there's a lot of temptation to eavesdrop and offer another author assistance with their scene's dilemma. It’s obvious I can solve their issues faster than deal with my own.
• and the food - so much food. There's no rule anywhere that says you can’t have tiramisu and eclairs for breakfast, correct?

     

Before I finish the first draft, I put up this concrete wall so I can't see what comes after I type The End. And so I don’t get sidelined with revisions before giving the draft its due process. 

I will admit I'm looking forward to picking a cool voice for WORD to read Jillian's adventures to me. During the reread my focus will be to listen, follow along on the screen and catch glaring typos or punctuation errors. I promise myself I won’t get into the nitty gritty of fixing scenes. Not yet. But I will make notes in the margins to remind myself to stop at specific spots that need some love and/or wordsmithing. 

Once that’s complete, I will climb over that daunting wall to fix flaws, patch plotholes, find Beta readers (try not to breathe down their necks), review and tackle their suggestions, complete another read through, get an editor on board (be patient waiting for their return of my MS), review and manage the editor(s) comments and suggestions, another read through (possibly with a new voice) and then return the finished piece back to the editor for a final critique. Before I submit it to the publisher, I will proofread it one more time. 

Getting to The End of the first draft never gets old regardless of the process it has taken to get there. 

Maybe that’s why I keep coming back to write – the tug, the chaos, the tiramisu for breakfast, the whole messiness of turning a story into an escape for the reader. I revel in the angst, the excitement, the frustration, the tears, and the satisfaction of completing the project.

Here’s what a few authors think about finishing a first draft:

Ernest Hemingway - "The first draft of anything is shit"

Anne Lamott - "Incredibly shitty, self-indulgent, whiny, mewling first draft"

Shannon Hale - "I remind myself that I'm simply shoveling sand into a box, so that later, I can build castles"

None of their thoughts seem overly encouraging and yet here I am…

When you read a story, do you ever wonder what process the author went through to write it? 

Baker, Barbara - BWL Publishing Inc. (bookswelove.net)

Barbara Baker Author Page Facebook 

 Summer of Lies by Barbara Baker — BWL Publishing

What About Me? by Barbara Baker — BWL Publishing

Jillian of Banff XO — BWL Publishing

 

The Essence of Judo by Naguib Kerba

 https://www.nkerba.com/new-blog-1/u0h0a6j5hoh8qpqxyih1v7px4huii9

https://www.nkerba.com/ordinary-people-extraordinary-lives