Oh, Canada

Tomorrow, for those of you whose calendars don’t list non-US holidays, is Canada Day. The terre de mes aïeux (my home and native land) will be 138 years old tomorrow. And, gosh, she doesn’t look a day over 95! Though I’ve been living in the US of A for over fifteen years, I’m still very fond of my homeland and listen to CBC Radio just about every day. So, though I have to work tomorrow, I will raise a glass in toast to Canada.

Perhaps as a way of celebrating, I will start my next (hopefully last) major revision of the novel Missing Persons that I’ve been working on for the past year and a half, off and on. I delivered the first draft to my agent about this time last year, went through one round of revisions early in 2005, and had an hour-long conversation with him the other day that has given me the direction I needed for the rewrite. I have no idea how long a process this is going to be, but I’m hoping it will be done before the end of August, and I’d really like to finish up in six weeks or less. Part of the reason I want to finish is I have the basis of the next novel bouncing around in my head and I’m aching to get started at it, but I refuse to do so until I finish up with Missing Persons. If I were a full time writer, I might be able to work on two projects at once, but with less than two hours a day to write I can only handle one thing at a time.

These revisions are going to be pretty substantial. In some places it’s going to be a matter of rearranging when things happen, which on the surface seems like it could just be a cut-and-paste, but on deeper reflection it’s going to call for some drastic modifications. My agent has given the manuscript a great deal of consideration and he has some suggestions concerning character arcs and motivations. Though I’ve put my two main characters through an emotional wringer, they come out the other side not really having learned a lot, I now realize, and character change is one of the things that drives most novels. Or should, at least. If they haven’t learned anything, what’s the point, after all?

I’m trying to wrap my head around the best way to tackle these changes. One idea I had was to go through the book in threads, following the individual character point-of-view chapters, but on reflection I realized that probably wouldn’t work because the fates of the main characters are inextricably linked. The only logical way to do it is chronologically. My agent suggested that this time I send him segments as I get them finished instead of waiting until the end, and that seems like a good idea. That way if I go astray or overlook something major, we can catch it sooner.

My agent, by the way, has his own book coming out this fall, The Seasoning of a Chef, cowritten with his twin brother, who is a chef. “The fascinating diner-to-Ducasse true story of a young New Yorker’s meteoric rise from his grandfather’s Greek diner in Queens to the kitchens of some of the world’s greatest restaurants.”

Countdown to NECON: two weeks from today!