More Thoughts on Plot

Or, I was more organized in 2007 than I realized

On Saturday I woke up at the crack of dawn to speak over Zoom with some writers at UEA about all things novel-related, or perhaps novelist-related. How I became one (you’ve probably heard the story about the people in my poker group in 2005 by now…), how I do the work that I do. The conversation evolved into something of a masterclass, as I had primary sources, my current chapter map, and my current working draft for Bonfire open on my laptop while we were speaking, and finally it just seemed easier to screenshare so they could see what the heck I was talking about. It’s a little nerve-wracking, showing a raw draft on a giant screen to a few hundred very talented people. But fortune favors the bold! I hope.

After discussing my plotting methods on this Substack, and after my conversation with the writers in Norwich, I heard from more than one person asking if I might be willing to share the chapter map of a previously published book. So, friends, I present to you an Excel document called “Chapter map stage 2 in excel,” which was last saved on August 20, 2007. It is the refinement of the original chapter map for The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane, which was published almost exactly two years later, in June 2009.

To be honest with you, this is much more pulled together than I expected. I usually write in two time periods, and I am often asked how I manage to move back and forth so smoothly, or whether I write the novels all in order or write one time period first, and then the other one. Now you can see how I do it, mapped out ahead of time. Looking at this spreadsheet now, almost twenty (erp) years after I made it, I’m surprised at how meticulous I was being. Bonfire’s equivalent, currently open in my tabs on this browser as I write to you, is more condensed. You can’t see all the characters down the left in the screenshot above - you can only see the protagonist, my doppelganger Connie Goodwin - but I included all the major and minor ones on this original version. My minor characters for Bonfire are more schematic, and some of them don’t even have names yet. Perhaps I’m morphing into a pantser? It’s been known to happen.

Curious what else was going on in my life in August of 2007, I just dipped into an old journal and found the following entry, written ten days after this Excel file was saved, entitled “Stalling.”

“I sit in my usual cafe, nearly finished with the first iced coffee of the day and trying to get started. I am within grasp of completion, but as usual I am stymied.

To distract myself I look at a craigslist ad for a used Sunfish sailboat for sale in my small New England town. L sent the listing to me, while my fingers were typing him an email claiming that it is too expensive (I’d have to buy new sails!), I have just as quickly constructed a detailed fantasy of not only buying the boat, but where in our house I would store it (would it fit in our haunted basement in the winter?), how we could take it out to sail in the afternoons, and how it would be perfect to keep in the barn of our New England farmhouse by the sea, which we do not have. “Would you like to take out the Sunfish?” I suggest to my nonexistent ten year old, who is bored on a summer afternoon. “Wear your life jacket,” I say, waving.

Part of my reticence stems from having gotten an email from the bullring manager in Toledo, back I presume from his villa on Sardinia. “I am not going to watch your tapes anymore,” he said. “I want distance from your style when I view your tryout bout in a couple of weeks. I am excited to see your tryout fight. When shall we schedule it?”

“I hope to be ready for the fight by the end of Labor Day weekend,” I wrote back. “Or during that next week, on the outside.”

And now, when it comes down to it, I grow fearful. I have been practicing all summer, to the exclusion of all else: beach visits, dissertation, preparation for teaching in the fall. It all comes down to whether or not I can strike the final blow.”

This is the code I was using for myself, out of rank superstition, to talk with myself about my correspondence with the woman who would become, and still is, my agent. (She is not, nor has she ever been to my knowledge, a bullring manager in Toledo.) Apparently I was nearing the end of my first full draft of the book whose working title was Cunning Women, but which would become Physick Book.

I didn’t buy the Sunfish. Instead I inherited an Ensign in 2011, which I still have, and which you probably get tired of seeing the bow of if you follow me on Instagram. I take it out with my son, who is not yet ten, but who will be before too long. We wear our life jackets. I still grow fearful. I’m still practicing. And I’m still hopeful that I’ll be able to strike the final blow.

So what’s next?

I’m drafting. It’s going okay. I think? I don’t know.

This weekend, assuming flights are actually running, you can catch up with me in Cincinnati at Books by the Banks.

We are closing in on the end of the semester at Marymount, and I will miss my composition students there. But I will be in a classroom again in the spring, which excites me. More details on that after I officially receive the letter. Superstition. You know how it is.