Donna, thank you so much for having me here today to share a bit about how this book happened—and, hopefully, to share one or two things I learned that might help your readers.
My passion has always been for fiction, not just to write but also to read. My shelves are full of novels and short stories; I can get lost for hours in a Neil Gaiman book, a García Márquez novel, a collection of Margaret Atwood’s stories.
And when it comes to writing, nothing beats giving a
what if the wings to fly. Creating a character from scratch and watching them come alive draft by draft—that’s joy. Those middle-of-the-night bursts of inspiration when the perfect plot twist comes to you, and you just have to get out of bed and get it down, at least scribble a few notes so you won’t forget—that’s my high. (And let’s not forget the addictive factor of that escape from reality that fiction supplies.)
Which is to say that no one is more surprised than me that my second book wasn’t the novel that I’ve been working on since 2011, not even the ‘new’ novel (I started that one in 2015) about the LGBT community here in Curaçao. No. Instead, it turned out to be a non-fiction how-to guide to dog rescue.
Hard to get any farther from the tender arms of fiction than
that.
The whole thing began innocently enough with an April A-to-Z series in 2016. My publisher saw the posts and suggested turning them into a book. How hard could it be? Everything was already written. A little editing, a little reshaping, some additional material, maybe, and
finito.
Oh, boy.
What I thought would take me a couple of months at most took me nearly two years. The original date the publisher had suggested for the book was November or December 2016. Instead, the book was (finally) released this April.
Why? What happened?
I wasn’t hospitalized. No deaths in the family. (Well, one: Sasha, one of our dogs, died last June. But at that point the book was at the publisher’s, for the umpteenth revision. I refuse to use her as an excuse.) My computer didn’t crash, my hard drive didn’t get erased. Nothing major happened, really—except a rapid series of those fierce lessons life is so fond of hurling when we’re not looking.
Research
It’s one thing to claim something on a blog—a statistic, a percentage, a source. Translate it to a book, though, and suddenly the whole thing takes on a rather solemn tone. For one thing, it’s not just my reputation that’s on the line (for whatever it’s worth), but the publisher’s. Also, a blog is—well, just a blog. An online, public journal. Personal opinions. A book carries more weight, more gravitas. It was no longer enough to
think I knew something; I had to back it up. Double- and triple-check facts, obtain sources, add footnotes.
Formatting
Bullet points, lists, headers, sub-headers, footnotes, margins, indents—it was a nightmare to keep them all uniform. Even when the manuscript (in Word and in PDF) looked okay, the first proof copy revealed all sorts of irregularities: sub-headings that looked like headings, shifts in indents, lists that weren’t properly spaced. In fiction this kind of formatting hardly ever comes up, and when it does it’s limited to a section or two. Working through an entire manuscript like this was… torture. And not just for me; for the publisher, too.
The Issues of Voice
A blog is an informal thing, and blog posts usually have a rather informal tone. The original dog rescue series was no exception. Which worried me. Wouldn’t that personal feel influence how seriously readers took the book? Wouldn’t it take away from whatever authority I was claiming in writing a guide for beginner dog rescuers? I considered rewriting the whole thing, trying for a more professional, ‘authoritative’ voice; that know-it-all attitude so commonly associated with nonfiction. Then again, I could hardly claim to know even a fraction of ‘all’.
To quote the book’s introduction, “The only thing that qualifies me to talk about dog rescue—and I use the word
qualify rather loosely—is the fact that I’ve botched more than my share [of rescues].” Also, dog rescue isn’t a popular subject (most people would much rather not know, let alone do), so maybe a more personal, informal approach would make the book more palatable? How to walk the line between sounding like a crank and coming across like a snooty grandstander? (I’m still not sure I figured this one out.)
The Gamechanger
When the final (final-final-final) draft of the manuscript was approved, when both publisher and I agreed that this was done, I thought to myself, “Never again.” Nonfiction was clearly not my thing—and maybe that’s true. But I did discover something unexpectedly beautiful about it: nonfiction can get a lot more personal than fiction. This morning I received a photo of It’s About the Dog from an acquaintance; it had just been delivered. I can’t tell you how weird it felt. As if a part of me had been teleported to her kitchen counter.
When my first novel came out in 2016, several friends sent me photos of the book in their homes, in their cities, in selfies—and it was exciting (and much, much appreciated), but… not like this. Maybe it’s because the dog on the cover is my own dog (and the photo is mine, too). Maybe it’s the subject matter; dog rescue has been a defining force in my life, after all.
Or maybe it’s more than that. In fiction, there’s a certain ‘curtain’ between author and reader, even between author and the characters, the world of the book. We inject parts of ourselves in it, certainly; tell our truths through them. But there is a distance, however small, that separates ‘them’ from us. I thought nonfiction would be even more so, that it would feel impersonal, that I, as the author, would feel further removed from the reader than with my novel or my short stories. And I was wrong. Seeing this book in the hands of a reader feels like I’ve given over a piece of my heart.
I really didn’t expect that.
This post is a part of The Dog Book Blog Tour; during April and May, author and book will be making the rounds of dog-loving sites on the blogosphere to talk dogs and rescue—and to give away THREE signed copies. (More about both tour and giveaway here.)
