Megan Suthers's Blog
July 25, 2014
God Bless the Editor (or how to be elated over a three star review)
Handing your work over to an editor is something I have never experienced before. But I knew I couldn't objectively read my own material and find every little mistake, nuance and bad grammar. So I reached out for help. I know a lot about this editor. I know she is an avid reader. I know she has read thousands of books. And I know she has read works like Tolstoy's "War and Peace". Handing over a fiction piece to someone who has read "War and Peace" is like giving McDonalds to someone who is used to French Cuisine.
Terrifying.
So with trepidation, I waited. She sent me the first bit. Okay. Not as bad as I thought. I have some bad habits. I can fix those. When I finally got the finished piece, it wasn't nearly as painful as I thought it would be.
Then she gave me my review. Three stars. Three stars from a girl that reads Tolstoy and Hemingway? I can live with that. In fact, if Hemingway is a five star, I'm ELATED with a three star!
Now it's over. I'm edited and I feel much more confident having my work out there.
God Bless the Editor!
Terrifying.
So with trepidation, I waited. She sent me the first bit. Okay. Not as bad as I thought. I have some bad habits. I can fix those. When I finally got the finished piece, it wasn't nearly as painful as I thought it would be.
Then she gave me my review. Three stars. Three stars from a girl that reads Tolstoy and Hemingway? I can live with that. In fact, if Hemingway is a five star, I'm ELATED with a three star!
Now it's over. I'm edited and I feel much more confident having my work out there.
God Bless the Editor!
July 6, 2014
The f*****g art of cussing
Some people are offended by the f-bomb and that's fine. I used to be. I couldn't say *shit* if my mouth had been full of it. Then I entered the world of EMS in one of the busiest non-metro services in the state of Minnesota. I learned the art quickly. A twelve hour shift with paramedics and police is twelves hours punctuated excessively with the f-bomb.
Then I married a soldier. His first deployment was a sixteen month tour of Iraq. A month before he returned, all of us at home received an email from his Captain warning all families that their soldier may swear more than he did before his deployment. Part of it read: "I know a couple of guys that can make complete sentences using only f-bombs with a few words like if, then and the sprinkled in."
It was true. My husband came back and in random conversation, whoops! A bomb!
I think people who have experience and/or witnessed a lot of trauma in their lives need some way to deal with it. Being in the business, I've seen a lot of things that could have made my heart hard, unfeeling and apathetic or just driven me crazy. To maintain some sense of humanity, the hardness came out in my language. It kept me somewhat compassionate.
So yes, there is a lot of swearing in the book. It's how we talked to each other. Sometimes it's even how we showed affection to each other. It was a lifestyle like any other I have ever known.
Then I married a soldier. His first deployment was a sixteen month tour of Iraq. A month before he returned, all of us at home received an email from his Captain warning all families that their soldier may swear more than he did before his deployment. Part of it read: "I know a couple of guys that can make complete sentences using only f-bombs with a few words like if, then and the sprinkled in."
It was true. My husband came back and in random conversation, whoops! A bomb!
I think people who have experience and/or witnessed a lot of trauma in their lives need some way to deal with it. Being in the business, I've seen a lot of things that could have made my heart hard, unfeeling and apathetic or just driven me crazy. To maintain some sense of humanity, the hardness came out in my language. It kept me somewhat compassionate.
So yes, there is a lot of swearing in the book. It's how we talked to each other. Sometimes it's even how we showed affection to each other. It was a lifestyle like any other I have ever known.
July 1, 2014
Death of a character
People who don't write can't understand how devastating it can be to kill a character. When I neared the ending of this book, I knew a certain person would have to go. It was heartbreaking. For days I felt as if I had lost something then I realized it wasn't the character I needed to let go, but the real life equivalent of that person.
With that in mind, I sat down with a glass of wine and re-read the death with "Seasons in the Sun" playing in the background.
"We had joy, we had fun, we had seasons in the sun but the wine and the song like the seasons have all gone."
Unrequited love is a sad and terrible thing to live with. It's hard to embrace what we have in front of us when what's behind us keeps kicking our ass. But after all these years, I found a way to symbolically put a death to what could never be.
Writing is more than just story telling. It's therapeutic. It's purging. It's a way to move forward.
With that in mind, I sat down with a glass of wine and re-read the death with "Seasons in the Sun" playing in the background.
"We had joy, we had fun, we had seasons in the sun but the wine and the song like the seasons have all gone."
Unrequited love is a sad and terrible thing to live with. It's hard to embrace what we have in front of us when what's behind us keeps kicking our ass. But after all these years, I found a way to symbolically put a death to what could never be.
Writing is more than just story telling. It's therapeutic. It's purging. It's a way to move forward.
