Carey Jane Clark

The Revision Process

September 23, 2011 by Carey Jane Clark

In my 3 in 30 post last weekend, I mentioned the revision process and the mistakes I’ve been cleaning up. You may wonder what mistakes I’m talking about. Most of them, I’m learning, are quite common–many writers make them. They involve words that I tend to overuse, simply because when I’m writing, they’re the first comfortable tool I reach for.

Words like “look” can indicate I’ve given too many “stage directions” to my characters in the midst of dialogue, or that I’ve just not taken the time to find a better, more fitting word or phrase.

Another no-no I come across is sentences using the word “was,” which is kind of a nothing verb that adds no color or life to the sentence. Sometimes, too, the use of “was” signals that I’ve told instead of shown. I get rid of was whenever I can. Sometimes that means eliminating the sentence altogether–the reader can figure out from what I’ve already written what’s going on, and the sentence with “was” is redundant. Sometimes, I simply rewrite the sentence using a stronger, more forceful verb.

I wrote the entire story originally from one point of view and in the rewrite, added a whole new point of view, so the final product is told from two points of view. My writing improved as I went along. As a result, some of the older scenes, written from my protagonist’s point of view need more refining.

The good news is, I am still learning as I go along, and getting better at revision. The other day, I had to write a new scene to replace one. Now that I’m finished, and can look at the story as a whole, I realized that one of my scenes needed to be replaced with a new scene that would bring more meaning to the climax. I wrote the new scene and had very little revision to do afterward because I was able to write well the first time, instead of having to go back and catch all those little mistakes.

To me, the aspect of learning as you write is one of the most intimidating things about the craft. I know that I may look back five years or even five months from now and want to bury my head if I read what I wrote today. The fact that you keep improving is a blessing and a curse. I have many author friends who have never read their books once in print. I will probably feel the same way. But I hope I can enjoy each step along the journey ahead as much as I’ve enjoyed the road behind me.

Physical Signs of Grief

September 22, 2011 by Carey Jane Clark

After the most recent miscarriage, I decided to take a bit of a vitamin holiday. I’d been taking so many vitamins prior to conception and then during the pregnancy, I jokingly called my shelf in the cupboard filled with vitamins, my personal health food “store.” Need a vitamin? I’ve probably got it.

But I don’t think my little vitamin fast was the best idea. The miscarriage happened pretty early on–at six weeks. Some people don’t even know they’re pregnant by then. The bleeding was pretty minimal, compared to the last two experiences.

However, sometime in the middle of last week, I began to ache, starting in my lower abdomen, and gradually traveling into my low back and then up my back. Walking was becoming uncomfortable. I was also waking up in the morning feeling as though I hadn’t slept at all, and then I came down with the first cold I’ve had in months.

Turns out, even if emotionally, grief isn’t being expressed overtly, the body finds a way to express itself. Check out these physical symptoms of grief that the body can manifest, according to HelpGuide.org:

fatigue
nausea
lowered immunity
weight loss or weight gain
aches and pains
insomnia

Hmmm…I score about 6/6. Yikes!

I went back on my vitamins, especially beefing up on magnesium and B-vitamins (for stress), and my body has returned to its normal, happy self.

The View from Here

September 14, 2011 by Carey Jane Clark

De-fictionalizing Miscarriage

September 13, 2011 by Carey Jane Clark

Everyone who blogs has a decision to make. How much information about one’s life is too much? Where does one draw the line between what is publishable and what is personal?

I have made a decision.

Last week, I experienced my third miscarriage. I didn’t even know at first that I had, until ultrasound confirmed no “products of pregnancy” remained. The first time was a blighted ovum. Although the fetus didn’t make it past six weeks, the sac continued to develop, so what finally had to be delivered was more like a 10-week pregnancy.

The second miscarriage was different too, because once ultrasound confirmed the lack of a heartbeat, I took some herbal preparations to hurry along the “delivery.” I didn’t want to wait around for the inevitable. I wanted it over, and quickly. I won’t do that again, though. I lost so much blood in one day, I nearly passed out, and it took me two weeks afterward to feel normal again. Not that I feel normal now.

We made a decision this time not to tell everyone we had conceived. We’d never made a secret of our pregnancies early on, but this time we felt it was important to protect our children, just in case. Even admitting that bothers me. We weren’t preparing for failure. And yet it happened. I can hardly believe it.

I conceived and carried each one of our three children with relative ease. The first miscarriage came out of nowhere and blindsided me, and I assumed it was a fluke. During the time I was having children, when I’d hear about someone who’d had a miscarriage I’d wonder, “How can she keep trying? What does that kind of disappointment do to a woman?”

I even wrote about miscarriage in After the Snow Falls. At the time, I had a lot of research to do to find out what it was like, what kinds of things doctors would be expected to say, what kinds of treatments my character might pursue. It was odd editing those portions of my story in the last week while I faced the same symptoms–for the third time.

But why talk about it? Why publish it here on my blog? Because I realized in talking about it after the first miscarriage how many women it affects. My first miscarriage happened while we were spending a week at family camp. We were surrounded by friends we get together with every year, friends who have been there to see each stage of my children’s lives, and to follow the unfolding events of our lives as we made the decision to go to China–friends I can confide in. As I did so, many women told me of their miscarriage experiences.

The strange thing is, although this is a pain many women share, few talk about it openly. It is this strange secret because it often happens before we have told people we’re even pregnant. As it did this time, to me.

And I didn’t tell my children. So I couldn’t explain to them why the progesterone supplement I was taking was making me dizzy and tired all day, why the many trips for blood tests and ultrasounds, why I have felt so strange since we returned from the hospital on Thursday and found out nothing was there, and it’s happened again.

But I’m saying something for another reason too. Despite the fact that miscarriage happens all the time, I do not believe it represents life as it was intended. And I believe there are answers out there as to why it happens. There is a strange phenomenon in women’s medicine. Something “wrong” can happen in our bodies, but medicine is content not to have an answer for that. I don’t think that’s okay, and I wanted to say so. And I’m going to continue to say so, and join some of the rare voices in medicine that are saying so too. Those voices tend to find each other, and so maybe I’ll be an encouragement to someone in this process, and maybe just maybe, someone will encourage me too.

« Previous Page