Everything in Waves

I'M BACK!

I'm sorry for my prolonged absence from the blog, this summer has been full of fun stuff and a lot of changes!  Because of this all my writing, not just the blog, has suffered.

Everything I do seems to happen in waves and there is very little that I do 100% of the time.  It seems like I'll be in a mood for one particular thing and that will occupy me for a few weeks or months and then that ebbs away and another desire replaces it.  For a while I'll be obsessed about catching up on all the hot TV shows, sometimes its a video game.  Maybe I get bored easily, maybe I have so many interests and so little time I try to make time for everything.  Whatever the reason, I don't seem to stick with something consistently after I start it.  The good thing is after a good break I'll miss whatever I put aside and I'll pick it back up.

It seems that, for me, for now, writing has fallen into this bucket.

The only hobby I have that I seem to do more consistently than everything else is reading.

I started to feel the writing itch again about a week ago.  I started to miss my characters and my world, but where I left off was slightly de-motivating to me.  I started to think it over and I realized that maybe my outline was less than stellar.  I have a pretty bare bones outline and I was doing a lot of the writing from the seat of my pants which made it harder for me to get down to it in my limited writing time.

I have a four page outline for my full length novel.  When I wrote it up I thought that was pretty impressive, until I read an article with an author who said her outlines are usually 20 pages or so.  I couldn't help but be shocked, 20 pages!  Yikes!  

I guess my outline wasn't nearly as good as it needs to be.

Now everyone is different, every writer writes differently but I found I was relying pretty heavily on an outline that didn't have enough information to be useful.

Ok, so how do I fix that?

Over the weekend I got an idea that would help expand my world, give more depth to my characters and help sculpt the future of my novel.  A prequel short story!

Yesterday I sat down an did a story board session for my prequel and got all the big plot points for the story. 

This will be my experiment.  I will see if this beefier outline helps me in the short story.  If it does I will go back and work up my existing outline for my novel and see if that helps.  

So I'm getting back into it.  Time to bring on the next wave :-)

And the winner is...

Not me...   oops, I guess that's kind of a spoiler.

A few blogs back I told you guys about a writing contest I entered hosted by NPR.

It's called 3 Minute Fiction and the guidelines are simple, write something that is 600 words or less, something someone can read in less than 3 minutes.

The theme for this round is to write a story where a character find something they have no intention of returning.

Over the last few weeks they have been posting a few online and tonight they announced the winner.  As I mentioned before I was not it, nor was I among their list of favs.

I'm ok with this.  I know that there will be hundreds of rejection letters in my future and while I didn't actually get a letter telling me no, I was not among the posted list.  The important thing I put myself out there and gave it a whirl.  It gave me a great idea for a book and I got to do something that I was really proud of.

Congrats to the winner, and to all those that were posted on the website and read on the radio.  If any of you are interested in reading any of the stories you can find them here.

So without further ado, here is my story.  I hope you like it.



The Key

     I leaned over to spit more blood into the dirt at my feet. I couldn't lean too far with my hands tied together at the wrist and looped over a hook protruding from the stone wall above me. I lifted my head again to look at my captor with the most bored look I could muster. The small stone cavern we stood in tilted wildly then righted itself making my stomach churn in response. I must have taken one too many blows to the head.

     “Tell me where it is.” my captor snarled, “You're a smart girl. You know this only ends one way. Give me the key and I'll let you walk out of here unharmed.”

     I raised an eyebrow and looked down at myself. My cargo pants were torn in places and exposing gashes and bruises. My once white tank top was gray now from the dirt with a nice red stripe down the front from the blood coming out of my mouth or my head, I couldn't tell anymore. The normally blond hair that hung down in front of my face was also caked with mud and dried blood.

      “You're right,” I muttered around a swollen lip, “a quick shower and I'll be as fresh as a daisy.” I laughed a little then, I couldn't help it. The whole situation was suddenly funny. I shifted my feet, the hook above me was high enough that I had to stand on my tip toes to support my weight.

     I spent years scavenging through old libraries and exploring caves to find the very door on the opposite side of the small cavern. Once I had found it, I spent another few years trying to find a way to open it. As luck would have it, I found directions to the key's location on an unrelated cave exploration written in some old clay tablets. I could barely contain my excitement. If I had known it was going to land me in this predicament I would have thought this through a little better.

     My laughter only seemed to raise Jayce's ire. He stalked over to me looking like an animal about to strike. “WHERE IS IT?” he screamed in my face.

     I looked at him for a few silent moments while he stood there panting. His breath blowing the snarled strands of hair out of my face.

     I wiggled my fingers furiously to show him I had nothing. “It's only for the worthy, you don't qualify.”

He hit me just below the ribs, hard. I made a move to block the punch but my bound hands kept me from doing so. His fist landed in my side with a resounding thud. Again all I could do was laugh. He moved to hit me again but this time I was ready. I grabbed on to the hook and jumped. I lifted my feet up to kick him square in the chin. He went flying back to land against the opposite wall, out cold.

     I jumped up again to release my hands and quickly freed myself. I dug a small silver object out of a zippered pocket on the inside of my waistband and held it to my lips. Oh the things I endure for my craft. I smiled at my personal joke and walked to the door.

     I held the key to the door. “Please.” I said

     A rumbling could be heard then the door opened slightly. I pushed it open the rest of the way and walked through.

Busy Bees

With my birthday, Mother's Day, a Brad Paisley concert, catching Grease up in Manchester, and 3 birthday parties in two weekends my days have been pretty full.  Add to that a Game of Thrones book club all the season finales happening right now and it does not leave much time for writing.

Things have been slow but I continue to make progress.  I think I have mapped out that dialogue sequence that was giving me such a hard time a while back and I am much happier with the scene.

I know I missed last week's blog but I was determined to write something this week and say Hi.

I would also like to thank all the members of the United States Military, both past and present, for sacrificing their lives and their time away from their own families to defend our freedoms.  We can sometimes forget that this holiday means more than time away from work, the unofficial start of summer and backyard barbecues.  It means honoring those who have giving everything so we can have something!

Happy Memorial Day!

  

I'm sorry, How many words?

One of the most terrifying thoughts for me was not knowing if I would be able to write enough to fill an entire book.  The prospect of writing 85,000 words for a book sounded crazy!

That's so many, I thought to myself!  How on earth could I fill that much.  I only have a few scenes in my head.

Well thanks to my outline I have a rough idea as to where I want this story to go and I know about how far down the road I am on my story map.  I came to the realization recently that I might actually have to start cutting stuff from my book to speed it up and get to the good stuff, cut to the chase, make with the interesting.  It was pretty satisfying to know that from what I am looking at right now I can write that many words.  The trick, however, is not in the writing of the words, the trick is in actually telling the story, and telling it in a way that doesn't bore people to tears.

A friend of my recently came across a writing competition held by NPR.  They are currently in the 11th round, so I'm assuming this is a regular thing over there for them.

It's called 3 Minute Fiction.  They take submissions from wannabe writers, but there's a catch.  This has to be something that can be read in 3 minutes or less.  So for writers that translates to 600 words or less.

That sounds like quite a bit, but just to give you a frame of reference as of this word right here, I have written 276 words, that almost half of my allotment to tell an entire short story!

Yeah, it was going to be challenging for me.  I was getting used to filling a story out, making sure I could reach 85,000 words or more.  600 words is a drop in the bucket by comparison.  Most writers would consider this a warm up.

So I thought on it for a whole day.  I put out mental flyers hoping someone would pick it up and step off my mental bus and tell me a quick but entertaining story.

I was in luck.  One spunky gal answered my call!  So I had my idea.  Now I have to tell it in less than a page and half of double spaced text in Word....

I did what I always do.  I decided I was just going to write.  I'll thin it out later.  It would be easier to do that then try to compromise my story by worrying about the length as I went.

After I wrote it all out I thought it was pretty good, now it was time to check the word count.  I use OpenOffice and lucky for me they put that option right up in your face in the tools menu.  It's probably my second most used tool.  Right behind spell check.

I opened the counter and I saw the number and I was shocked.  In a quick 45 minutes I had written almost 700 words.  And I felt like I was going light at that.

I knew that anything over 600 words would be disqualified so I had to reign it in with a few words to spare.  You know, just in case.

So I started going through my story again, line by line, sentence be sentence.  I was getting rid of any words or descriptions that were not absolutely necessary to the telling of my story.  It probably took me almost as long to edit the doc as it did to write it.

I probably read it through about 4 or 5 times before I felt satisfied.  My final draft had 594 words.  After that I realized what a great exercise this was.  It really made me look at each sentence and made me ensure that each word was being used as efficiently as possible.  I had a story to tell, I couldn't waste words on things were not vital to the story.

The competition closed last night.  So we'll see how I do.  The theme of this round was "Someone finds something that they have no intention of returning."

The winner gets signed copies of the guest judge's books and gets published in the Fall Edition of the Paris Review.

They are going to announce the winner in early June but before that they will be posting a few of their favorites on their webpage as well as reading a few aloud on their weekend radio show.

One of the rules states that this cannot be published anywhere before they announce a winner to the contest. So once they announce the winner and I am free to post I will do so here.  I want you all to be able to read a sample of what I have been learning all this time.  I figured if you're still hanging around you deserve an award for your loyalty!

I'm pretty proud of what I wrote.  It was a fun exercise and I plan to do round 12 when it's up.  Even if I don't win I got a pretty good prize out of doing this.  My new friend is fresh off the bus and told me a quick story for this contest, but she has a whole lot more to tell.  I decided her story is going to be a really fun one to write.  She's waiting for now, but I don't think she'll be waiting for long!

How I started to feel like a fictional PI

I have people living in my head.

If you didn't know any better you'd think I was certifiable.  Well, maybe I am, but not for hearing voices.

No, in my head I have people, living and talking to me.  All kinds of people.  Some of them are shy and I have to coax them out of hiding, others are very, very pushy and want to be heard whether I am ready to receive them or not.  These people are most annoying when I'm trying to work...

I have no idea where they came from, or how long they plan to stay with me.  Most of the time they just pop in like they got off a bus and they were looking specifically for me.  Once they have found me most of them want to give me as much information as they can in very short bursts.  Its like they have this story they need to tell and they need to do it RIGHT NOW!

This has happened to me so many times now I have taken to carrying a small notepad and pen in my purse.  I would whip it out anytime I would start getting frantic messages from any of my new (or sometimes older) friends.  Information is coming at me so fast I start to feel like a police officer trying to calm down a hysterical witness to a crime.

"Calm down, calm down, please.  Take a deep breath.  Now, tell me what happened."

It's at this point that I start to feel like a private investigator.  I've been hired by my clients to figure out all the people involved, gather all the facts, and tell the story.

I would always start with the very people who would come looking for my help.

I had to know everything about them.  What motivated them to come to me in the first place?  Why is this story so important to tell?  Is this person very forthcoming with the information I am looking for or do I have to interrogate them to get what I need?  After they would finish with their compulsive verbal diarrhea, I got to ask questions, lots of fun questions.

For me, at the beginning its a lot like having a phone conversation with someone.  I can hear their voice but I have no face to put with the sounds.  They usually give me a quick description of themselves but as is the case with most people, the best descriptions I get for these people come from the other people involved.  As time goes on, I start to get some pictures of the places in the story, the landscape, their homes, and finally the people.  Sometimes I'm quite surprised by how they turn out.  I had one picture in my head but when I finally see them, really get to see them, they may look completely different from what I envisioned.

Some of the people who come looking for me step right off the bus, push their way to the front of the line and demand to be heard.  These are usually the people with the most and best information.  Others will get off the bus and be content with hanging around the station until I get to them.  When this happens I usually have to pull information out of them like they were teeth.  Most often, I just explain to them that I understand that they are not ready to tell their story and I can wait for a little while but there is a statute of limitations and I will not wait forever.

I even had one case where a woman stepped off the bus dragging her brother and sister in tow.  She was very interested in telling her story, which then leads to the story of her brother and then sister.  I have heard their parts in her story, but they are as yet unwilling to share too much info about their own stories.  Fear not, I have ways of making them talk and they will come around.

So far, no one has left, they are all still with me.

To date, all of the very pushy people in my head have been women.  I don't know if that says something about them, or me...  Who knows, maybe both.

To keep track of the people living in my head I had to start keeping records.  I have a write ups on a handful of them.  Others have nothing more than a quick description.  Some go so far as to document what their favorite subject in school is and do they keep their house neat or are they messy.  Each of the questions in my file tells me a little bit about the people involved in my investigation.

You may be reading this and think it rather odd.  In fact, I felt very self-conscious about it at first.  Then I started reading interviews and blogs from published authors and realized that a lot of them admitted to something very similar, if not exactly, what I was seeing.  Some did indeed have the same experience I did.

One of my favorite authors got the idea for her wildly popular book series because she had a dream of two people fighting.  She started to do her own investigation and things just started to fall into place.  So much so, that the fight she dreamed didn't even show up until book two!

These people may be fictional characters, but to me, in my head, they are very real.  I laugh and cry with them, I share their joy and their pain.  I feel their hurt, get frustrated over their choices and feel their regrets.  I cheer over their triumphs and feel pride in their accomplishments.  These characters are almost like children to me.  Though they feel to me like they are coming from somewhere out of the blue I know they came from me.  Every last one of them.

I only hope I am worthy of their choice and that I am capable of doing their stories justice.

Just a Spoonful of... Confidence

As many of you know I had a very uncertain start to writing.  I started my journey not really knowing where I'd end up or if I would even end up at all.

In the past, when I would get a little stuck I would begin to doubt myself and think, what am I doing?  There's no way I can write a book, this is just another example of why I can't.

I am pleased to announce that I have crossed a bridge of sorts.  I apparently have decided to start believing in myself and I didn't even realize I was doing it for a few days...

It happened last week.  I was working on some dialogue between my hero and my heroine and I was just not feeling it.  The chemistry wasn't right and I felt like I was jumping the gun on the outcome of the scene.  I needed to regroup and rethink the whole thing.

The last time this happened to me, it sent me into a tailspin I had a hard time coming out of.

This time, I realized this wasn't going the way I wanted and after a few seconds I thought, well I'll just fix it later and pushed through to finish up my 750 words.

That's it, that was my revelation and I completely missed it at the time.  I think that the fact that I missed it really tells me something too.  It wasn't a momentous enough of a thing at the time that I felt I needed to pat myself on the back.

No, it wasn't until about three days later I was actually laying in bed and rethinking my scene.  What was I trying to accomplish with this scene?  How did I want it to ultimately end up?  How was this moving my story forward?  Then, what I had thought to myself that night I was writing hit me like a bolt of lightning!

I realized that I thought the scene was no good and I didn't think to myself that I needed to quit because I was never going to become a writer.  No, I said, I'll just fix it later.

My subconscious had apparently worked out the fact that I was actually doing this and though it was rough, it wasn't half bad.

It's too bad it took my conscious mind a few days to catch up.  My subconscious, she's a sly one!  She does this to me all the time!

I think I'm done working on something and then a thought will pop into my head out of the blue and sometimes it's intense enough that I need to share it!  My husband is constantly giving me a hard time on my swift change in topics or my ability to be doing many things at once.

So I'm happy to say that writing a bad scene no longer sends me into an emotional tailspin that I have work extra hard to come out of.  Those 5 words really changed a lot for me and I had no idea at the time!

It's fun to feel my confidence growing.  Of course I only knew my confidence was growing because a scene came along that knocked me down a peg or two.

The difference this time is, I know I will work it out.  That's what editing is for!  I don't need to compare myself to anyone but me.  Just keep swimming and all that Jazz.

I'm going to make it to the end of this, even if it never gets published I will at least know that I was able to do something I set out to do.  And you know what, I feel pretty good about that!

Guest Blogger - Matt

First and foremost let me say this.  What happened today in Boston was horrific and may never really be truly understood.

I grieve for the victims of the bombings today at the Marathon's finish line, and I await the day the perpetrator of this heinous act is brought to justice.



Tonight I had an appointment that left little time for me to write a blog entry myself.  I asked my friend Matt, who was the subject of last week's post, to write up a little something to keep the momentum going.

So without further ado, I give you Matt.


Let me open with a clarification: I am not Jess. I’m her friend Matt. I’m three days younger, several dozen pounds heavier, and have no internal filter to speak of. You have my sincere apologies in advance.

Jess reached out to me this morning and asked if I’d mind throwing together a ‘Guest Blog’ for tonight, as her dance card was full up for the day, and she wasn’t going to be able to find the time to write her regularly scheduled blog. I took a look at my own brimming schedule for the day, then shrugged and said “The hell with it. Sure.”

I spent some time thinking about some different topics that might be interesting to ramble on about… Writing with Internet ADD… Novels vs Short Stories… The Catch-22 around Agent Desires and Publisher Desires…. But in the end, I decided to basically write a ‘Mirror Post’ to what Jess put up last week – Peer Reviews.

In my opinion, Peer Reviews are incredibly difficult to do properly, because it’s a two person process. Obviously, the person giving the review needs to do things a certain fashion, so that they’re providing good feedback without harping on the minuscule or otherwise tearing the piece to shreds, but just as importantly, the one receiving the feedback needs to have the correct mindset for it.

Last week, Jess hit on some of the emotions that go into letting someone else look at your work… it’s more or less stark, nail-biting, terror. Odds are you’ve worked your ass off writing something and have potentially spent hours on that one section once you start doing revisions. Additionally, there’s a good possibility that you’re completely convinced you might have written trite garbage that no one will ever want to read, and you should probably quit and go take up a different hobby where nobody will judge your work. So handing that piece of work to someone else takes no small amount of guts (and probably a solid shot of liquor or two to steel the nerves).

I had the ‘easier’ role of the two last week… I sent Jess about a half dozen pages from a section of my short story that, frankly, I hated. It was a necessary part of the story, but I just didn’t like what I’d done there (so much so that I’ve decided to shelve that work for a couple weeks and focus on another piece, for submission to a different Anthology. That’s how self-confident I am over what I’d written). Jess came back with some good pieces of feedback, and said that, overall, she didn’t think it was half bad… that definitely helped bolster my confidence a bit… perhaps I wasn’t writing COMPLETE Garbage… at least, there was a chance some of it could be redeemed.

This week, we changed roles a little bit… I reached out to Jess for a couple “What do you think about the formatting of this line…?” questions, and in turn, she sent me the first half of her Prologue to peek at.

At this point, it becomes very obvious to me that, while receiving criticism over your ‘baby’ is hard enough, they should, and probably do, teach college level courses on giving critiques. They’re incredibly hard for me, and I’ll tell you why…

I am the Grammar Police. Stick ‘em up.

If it wasn’t for the fact that I don’t know a ‘dangling participle’ from my own elbow, I’d probably be a good copy editor, as the QA side of my brain has trained me to catch every silly little formatting issue. Spelling errors, punctuation failures, sentences that seem out of order… but for the level of Peer Review we’re doing, I know that Jess doesn’t give a damn. She’s handing me a piece that hasn’t undergone revision, and will be looking through it all again long before submitting it to a publisher. She doesn’t need copy editing, she needs feedback. The other thing she doesn’t need is someone to look at a paragraph and say “You know, here’s how I’d have done it.” – I’m not writing her story, she is. How she wants to use a turn of phrase is up to her, and dictated by her style.

So I turn off the part of my brain that’s looking at the little things, and instead look at the big picture and try and get some feedback for her… I let her know that I think she’s got a good opener… here are a few excellent hooks that caught my attention, and would keep me flipping pages… I like how this piece here is written… and so on. I briefly mention that I noticed some technical flaws that I think a pass of revision will clear up, but don’t harp on them because I want to make sure she’s getting the positive feedback that she’s not off course. Her ship is on the right heading, she just needs to tighten the rigging as it were.

Now, earmuffs kiddies, this isn’t to say that feedback should be a big circle-jerk where it’s all rainbows and smiles. It just turns out she sent me a piece I felt was good. It would have been even harder for me if she gave me something that had real flaws in it, because I’d still need to give her solid feedback in terms of “I don’t understand this character’s motivations…” and “…why bother doing this when she could obviously just do this other thing with a fraction of the difficulty?”, but would need to do it in a constructive manner, that didn’t come across in a way that would depress her… because then I’m not only not helping her process, I’m harming it by sucking away her motivation.

Done correctly, Peer Review is an incredibly powerful tool if you’ve got the right people helping you out. You’ll be able to see things from a reader’s point of view… get a second opinion when you’re wavering on a particular formatting method or story idea… and can generally make sure you’re not heading down a dead branch. The caveat is just that you need to make sure you’ve got the right people helping you out, so you’re gaining, rather than losing, motivation every time you hand a piece out.

Help Me, Help You, Help Me

As I have mentioned before a good friend of mine started to venture into the writing world around the same time I did.  Like me, he had been sitting on some great ideas for sometime and finally worked up the confidence to jump in and start writing.

We had a really great chat a few months back just talking about how we got started.  So one day when we were finalizing the plans for Matt and his wife to come babysit my kids I asked him how the writing was going.

I can't quote him directly but the gist of it was it wasn't going well and he hadn't really committed much time to it lately.

He mentioned a lot of distractions but I had a feeling he was letting himself be distracted from writing for reasons he wasn't really telling me.  I thought this because everything he was telling me I had heard myself say before to others.  I had been in a bit of a slump and looking back now I realized it had a lot to do with the fact that I didn't really think I was doing such a great job writing and I was feeling a little down on myself.

I could see all this mirrored in my dear friend.

So being the bossy, domineering, and loving person that I am, I talked him into having a bit of a working session with me.  I told him we could just talk it out.  I was by no means an expert but sometimes if you just start saying stuff out loud to other people it starts thought processes you might not have kicked off by yourself.

Matt's story is a short sci-fi story set in the future.  So I was asking a lot of questions about his world and the people of that time period in general.  He was worrying that his characters didn't seem real and their interactions with each other were forced and unnatural.  My hope, in asking the questions I did, was that it would help him better understand his characters and the world in which they live so he might better understand why people might react they way they do.

He had great answers for everything I threw at him.  So it was obvious to me that background wasn't really his issue.

Matt was telling me was having a hard time with dialog, so I sent him a snippet of some dialog I had been working on that evening.

Let me just take a second to highlight that last point a bit.  I sent him a snippet... of my book... that no one else has ever seen snippets of before...

I jokingly told him to feel special all the while I was sitting on the edge of my seat to see what he might have to say about what I wrote.

Here I was trying to help him with dialog and he could be reading mine thinking, this is worse than mine, she can't help me!

Matt was uncharacteristically quite for a minute or two, I started chewing on my nails.  He did respond back but he just continued along with the conversation without mentioning my snippet!

We were doing all this over a chat so its very possible that he was in his own manuscript when I typed that to him and he just missed it.  My brain, however,  jumped right to the worst case scenario.  He must be thinking it is awful.

I took a deep calming breath and reminded myself that tonight was not about me.  I was determined to get his butt back in the writing chair if I had to drive over to his house and tie him to it.

We continued on back and forth for a bit longer when I finally said, ok just send me something, show me something you think is just utter crap and I will tell you what I think.

Matt and I have been friends for quite some time, we were once co-workers and we have collaborated on many, many projects in the past.  It takes an insane amount of courage to send someone a chunk of your work if you love it, much more so if you hate it.  I want to say that I was honored that Matt felt comfortable enough to show me something he felt was so horrible it made him want to stop writing all together.

He sent me about 4 pages of typed material via drop box and I set off to read it.

After a few (very intense for Matt, I'm sure) minutes I came back to tell him what I thought.  I told him what I truly felt about it.  I didn't think he was far off from the story he wanted to tell.

I think I surprised him.  They say writers are their own worst critics and I think that was true for Matt.  It's probably true for me too but we'll see.

I'm not a big sci-fi reader but I do enjoy them from time to time.  I really enjoyed what I had read, I was able to follow all the sci-fi stuff because the context was well done and I genuinely wanted to know what happened to this guy after the scene I was given came to a close.  That's hard to do in just a few paragraphs.

Matt had prefaced the whole thing with what he felt was wrong with it.  His character feels like he isn't  having enough of a reaction to the news he is given and the dialog felt, for lack of a better word, stiff.

I thought his character was having a reaction, but I could see what Matt was talking about.  He wanted him to have a more intense reaction.

With Matt's permission I added about 20 words to a few paragraphs of his work and showed him with a few tweaks you can convey to the reader a more intense reaction without rewriting the entire conversation.

I think he liked what I had to show him, it also proved to him that he really wasn't that far away.

All this led to a conversation about the Show Don't Tell Rule in writing.  Which is all I ended up adding when I threw in a few extra words.

This made me feel empowered to show Matt another snippet from my own writing where I am writing about my own character's reaction to something someone else said to her.

This time Matt did comment on it and he liked it, he really, really liked it!

His praise on my 2 small paragraph snippet sent me over the moon!

The whole conversation was just about an hour and I think it left us both feeling pretty jazzed up to do some more writing.  In my opinion if that session did nothing more than motivate my friend, it was an hour well spent.

Matt, thanks for having a working session with me.  We should be having those check ins every so often.  Also thanks for letting me devote an entire blog entry to you and our conversation.  If you're up for it, talk about what you've been up to since that night in the comments.

I have been promised that I will get to read his story when he's done!  Yay, I can't wait!!!!


   

Blogging is Hard and 750 Words a Day

Every week my blogging task is becoming harder and harder.  I think I'm in a good steady state with my writing and I feel like I don't have a lot of new stuff to talk about... yet.

I like writing this blog because its good practice, it keeps me on a schedule, it forces me to come up with a new topic every week and because my adoring fans would be devastated if I missed the opportunity to blog... you know, both of 'em.

Last week I talked about how much my reading impacts my ability to write.  I am happy to say that I am back into the reading swing of things and almost finished with a book in which I spent more than 2 months on page 50.

In addition to reading again, I set out with another plan of attack.  I had set aside one night a week for writing.  For me it was usually Wednesday nights.  The entire night was devoted to writing and I did nothing else from the time my kids were in bed to the time I went to bed.

Of course there were a few problems with that.  First, I was spending about the first 45 minutes to an hour going back over what I had written the week before to maintain my consistency.  I didn't want my character to draw her bow in the scene I wrote tonight if she had already drawn her bow and was holding it in the week before.

The second issue I was having was that I felt like I was giving up all the other stuff I wanted to do just to write.  I wanted to write, but I didn't want to sacrifice everything else I love doing in my free Mommy time.  I thought back to a conversation a friend and I had about writing.  He mentioned to me that he tried to stick to the 750 words a day challenge.  So I decided to a little research.

Really the 750 words a day challenge is to get the juices flowing in the morning so you're ready for a day of writing awesomeness.  But it can be used just to motivate people to getting some writing done everyday.

Since I don't have the luxury of getting to write as my full time job I thought maybe I can write 750 words a day in my book.  I tested myself and 750 words took me about 45 minutes on a bad day.  So many shoes on Facebook....

So I decided to commit myself to spending at least one hour every evening I am home to writing.  Monday nights is for the blog and a girl has to get her floor hockey games in, but that leaves plenty of other nights in the week.

By doing it this way I found that I actually spend more time during the week writing, and I get a lot more down on paper.  I'm also never going more than 2 days since the last time I wrote, so maintaining my continuity is a lot easier as well.  I read the last few sentences and I'm off and running.  The last thing I found is that since it really only takes me an hour to accomplish this goal, I get the writing done, then it's off to read my book or catch up on those TV shows I can't seem to break away from.  I also feel less guilty when I need a night off and decide not to write because I'm only taking a extra day off, not a whole week.  That was a slippery slope to never finishing my book.

So this decision has really worked out for me and hopefully it will help me get the manuscript finished up that much faster.  I'm sure editing is going to a whole new adventure all its own!

On a side note, I have been hearing a lot from you guys in person or in other messages that you're enjoying the blog.  The happiness I feel when I hear these things cannot be described in words.  Please keep the comments and chats coming!  It's really inspiring and motivating to hear what you guys have to say.  I'm even more impressed that so many of you expressed interest in reading the book once its finished!  I love talking about what I'm trying to do,  this blog, and even your own writing experiences.  I'm a very social learner and I love to hear what you've gone through.  I am learning from people everyday and maybe I might be able to help you out as well!

Thanks so much for reading.  :-)

Two of the Three R's go Hand in Hand

As some of you know, I have been in a heck of a reading slump.  I started a book at the end of January (2 months ago at the time of this writing) and I am not finished yet.  This is pretty unusual for me but it's not the first time its happened.

I read all the time, and once every so often my desire to read wanes slightly and I find myself getting wrapped up in something else.  It's usually for only a few weeks and then I'm back to devouring books as voraciously as ever before.  I am currently in that state.  I blame you, Hellfire!

I joined the Goodreads Reading Challenge this year, as I did last year.  Last year I came out ahead of my goal which was pretty awesome.  If you haven't guessed by now I am a bit of an over achiever.  This year I knew I was going to be putting a lot of effort into writing so I backed down my commitment.

Thanks to this slump I'm currently 3 books behind on making my goal.  This is a new state for me, I spent all of 2012 ahead of the game so I'm pretty sure Goodreads was worried.  They were likely wondering if I had been kidnapped or if all my books had perished in a fire.

Well I didn't notice it until very recently but I started a different slump around the same time.  I noticed that my writing was suffering as well.

I wasn't as motivated to write.  When I would sit down I was distracted by Facebook and shoes and I noticed I was only getting about a page or two in a night when, before that, I was getting 5-10.

Not only did going to the Boston Author Event get me motivated to write again it got me reading again too.  I wasn't worried about my desire to read coming back.  I knew it would and I will still most likely end up ahead on my reading goal.

I have read countless interviews and how-to articles and books that all say if you want to be a good writer you have to be a reader.

And that really resonated with me.  I did read a lot.  So I didn't really give it a second thought when I started my slump.  What I realized is that, for me, reading is a very important part of my writing process.

Some interviews of authors tell stories of alternating between reading books and writing.  Others say that they have to read 20-30 pages of a book before each and every time they sit down to write.

I think I might be in the group that needs the latter.  It really gets the creative juices flowing and gets me really excited to see how my story is going to play out on paper.

When my reading when on hiatus, so did my writing.  Now that I have my motivation back to read I noticed the motivation to write is stronger and so is the caliber of my work.

So chalk this one up to lessons learned along the way!

Now I know.

What about you?

How I spent 2.5 hours on a cold Boston Saturday!

Thanks to a good friend I have been invited into a wonderful group of readers.  This group of readers, who shall remain Anonymous, is a wonderful mix of authors, publishers, editors, and, of course, romance enthusiasts!  They always seem to have their fingers on the pulse of anything book related and are always trying to get to book signings and conventions.  If it weren't for this group I would not have been standing on a chilly sidewalk in Boston this past Saturday.

On Saturday March 16th the Boston Author Event was held at the Omni Parker House in, well, Boston.  Thanks to my aforementioned friend, I was registered and shuttled down.  I really had no idea what to expect so I was looking forward to it but I hadn't really thought much about it.

A lot of authors there were indie authors, and I have to say that I have not read a single book from any of them.  I was not dissuaded by this, it didn't really matter that I hadn't read any of the authors there.  I was excited that I was going to get a short afternoon away from the kids and be surrounded by other reading freaks (said with love, ladies)!  I also thought it would be a great opportunity to hob knob with some people who have been where I am now and remind myself that they did it and so can I.

Amy, my friend, had registered us a while back.  The event was going to be scheduled from noon to 4pm and we had an arrival time of 2pm.  Amy and I have never done anything like this before.  Yep, total noobs! We figured since they gave us an arrival time we should be able to get in either right at that time or pretty close to it.

Amy picked me up at 1 and off we went!  We were both giddy about our upcoming adventure.  We chatted happily on the way down and Amy was giving me the run down of what she planned to accomplish while she was there.  She had to deliver wax (she sells Sentsy) to one author, she had a bottle of wine for another, she wanted to finally meet one of the authors she beta read for and pick up a book she had pre-ordered from yet another.  This was all not counting the few other books she had with her to be signed by authors planning to attend.  She was like the ever prepared boy scout heading out into the wilderness to survive on her know-how and gumption.  Me, I felt like the slacker kid who shows up to the camping trip wearing all the wrong clothes and without the proper supplies.

It was ok.  I just told myself, and Amy, that I was going to ride her wave and be happy for the experience.

Oh boy, did that pay off for me.

Just before 2pm I am navigating Amy toward the Omni Parker House and we lucked out and found a parking garage pretty close to where we were supposed enter reader heaven!

We pulled into the parking garage and hopped out.  I hoisted my purse up onto my shoulder, Amy did the same.  Then she hauled out her boy scout preparedness supplies, aka the tote bag full of stuff she brought with her. OH and did I mention that the tote bag was actually from the event itself?  For our convenience there was a list of all the authors present at the event printed in a lovely teal color right under Amy's elbow!

We move into the elevator, the excitement building.  We thought we were going to have to walk a few blocks to get where we needed to be.  I started punching in the address in my phone to get the walking directions.  We picked a door to walk out of a very opulent looking lobby.  As soon as we walk out the door we can see the Omni Parker House.  It was across the street!  We couldn't have found better parking if we tried!

That was the good news, the bad news was, the line was stretched all the way down the block and around the corner.  Amy and I looked at each other.  It was going to be quite a wait.  We should have come much, much earlier.

As we were walking down the line Amy spotted a few friends of hers from the group.  After a quick chat we felt we had better take our place in line if we had any hope of getting in!

We quickly discovered that the line queued up next to the Beantown Pub.  That's right, an Irish Pub... on Saturday... March 16th... In Boston!

At least we were thoroughly entertained by the endless amount of people walking by in green clothes, orange wigs, funny hats, headbands, glasses and any other St. Patrick's Day novelties you can think off.  Most of the wearers of all this regalia were heavily intoxicated.  I could probably write an entire blog entry on just what we saw and heard but I won't.  If you really want to know, ask.  :-)

As we stood in line and realized there was a distinct possibility that we may not get in to see anyone, we were starting to come up with a Plan B.  This plan mostly consisted of joining the celebrations at one of the dozen or so Irish Pubs we passed on our way in.   We started to do something that I have heard many people say happens when waiting in line for things like this.  We stuck up a conversation with 2 ladies standing in line behind us.

I have read blogs of people who attend conventions of all kinds and have even heard from some of my convention going friends that the excitement and shared love of the same thing spark heartfelt discussions and quick friendships.  I have never really experienced anything like this.

After some time the duo behind us was joined by a third.  We found out that 2 of the ladies were budding authors.  One, Mina Vaughn, has a book coming out in August.  Another, Daisy Prescott, was in edit for her book and the third, Traci Olsen, works for a romance publishing company!

Here I was standing in line waiting to meet authors and other people in the book writing world and I was lucky enough to be standing right next to a few in line.

We had some wonderful conversations and even spanned topics like cosplay and videogames, though I'm sure Amy wasn't so excited about those. :-)

We shared some writing stories, I learned what a Geoduck was, we all offered to shoo event squatters away if any of the ladies were signing books at an event, and we all struggled to stay warm standing in a man made windtunnel.

The afternoon started to get late and some of the organizers of the event started walking the line asking if people were interested in seeing just one or two of the authors.  Worrying that we may not be able to get in at all if we didn't take this offer I let Amy pick two authors off her tote and jumped at the next opportunity to get in.

We found out that we would be escorted in, we would see the 2 authors we picked and then we would be walked right back out again.  They were having a hard time with occupancy maximums, excited attendees hanging around and organizers who were a little too nice to shoo people along.  Pair all of that with a larger number of attendees than planned for and you have a recipe for long lines and long waits.

Amy was able to see almost everyone she wanted to see.  She didn't meet the author she bought the wine for, but don't worry, we didn't let it go to waste!  After waiting in line for 2.5 hours we were really only inside for about 10 minutes.

Please don't take anything I say the wrong way.  I had a blast!  I now know what people talk about when they say they spent hours sitting in line but had the best time!  It really has to do with the people you end up next to in line.

We also had some lessons learned.  Next time we will be earlier to get in line, we'll bring more line provisions like snacks and extra mittens, and we will be sure to strike up conversations with those around us in hopes of meeting people just as great as the ones we met in line this year.

Amy, thanks for taking me along on your adventure!  I had so much fun.  To the ladies I met in line, I wish you all the best of luck and I hope we continue to stay in contact.  I want to read all your books or pre-read anything that you're willing to float out there!

To the organizers of the Boston Author Event.  Great job getting the authors in town and letting us all know about it.  I'll see you next year!  And next time I'll be sure to read books from a few of the authors.

Scouts honor!

The Adventures of the Disillusioned Learner and his sidekick Crap Writing

Whenever we make up our mind to do something, we want to be good at it.  Yes?  No one sets out with the goal to be lackluster.  No, we get excited about the new adventure.  We dream about what it be like when we master the task and become, dare I say, proficient!

According to a leadership training seminar I was in a few years back a person in this stage is known as a Enthusiastic Beginner.

This person is all starry-eyed and full of visions of a successful venture into whatever they have chosen to do.  They are excited.  This is something they very much want to do.  They're not thinking about all that it's going to take to accomplish their goals.  They're not thinking about the challenges ahead.  They are most likely aware that there will be challenges and even hard work ahead but they don't want to think in specifics.  All they care about is taking that first step on the road to being successful.

It's only after they start and they hit that first bump that the road starts to look a lot longer and full of more potholes than they ever imagined.  They start to realize that they are not going to be as good at this as they thought.  This is going to take some real work and lot of time to become good.

This stage is known as the Disillusioned Learner.  They have just enough of a taste of what the task entails and a better understanding of what it's going to take to get to the end where they are successful in whatever they set out to do.

Everyone of us has experienced this.  In college I found this to be true when I decided to take up snowboarding.  I went to school at the foot of the White Mountains of NH.  I was 30 minutes or less from some of the best skiing in the Northeast.  My friends, roommates, and even my boyfriend was doing it.  I might as well give it a try.

I had visions of myself swooshing down the mountain, the wind blowing through... well, nothing I hate the cold so I was going to be bundled up pretty well.  I was going to be able to engage in an activity that my friends were doing and loved and I would get to share this with them.

I think we all know where this is going...  My first day out I ended up butt down in a hole off to the side of the trail.  It was full of water and worse yet, my feet, both still firmly attached to the snowboard, were up over my head.  Thank goodness I was 21, I spent the rest of that afternoon in the bar.

It was as my boyfriend's roommate was pulling me out of that hole (Think of a someone being stuffed in a trashcan with their feet and head sticking out of the top) I realized that it was not going to be as good at this as I thought I was going to be.

As I predicted it would, the same happened to me while I was writing.

I knew it was going to come.  I think it was part of the reason why I put off writing for so long.  I wasn't sure I was going to be good at it.  I didn't know if I could actually do it.  I hate not being good at things and I hate failing.... Seriously.

It happened two weeks ago.  A moment I was looking forward to for some time had finally arrived.  My two main characters, the focal point of my whole story, were going to be in the same place at the same time and actually, *gasp*, talk to each other!

I sat down knowing what I wanted to convey to the readers.  I made them wait this long to get the two of them on the same page, literally.  The problem was I didn't know from whose point of view I should be writing.  This derailed me.  I went into a bit of a tailspin.  I couldn't concentrate.  I ended up spending the most of my writing night on Facebook (lots of shoes to look at).

I finally picked a POV and just went with it.  I think I picked the right one but I couldn't stay focused.  I only ended up writing about 200 words that night when I had been averaging about 4 times that per writing night.

As I wrote my 200 words I realized something awful.  This is the first time they are supposed to meet.  It's supposed to be intense, its supposed to be sizzling, its supposed to be.... interesting.  It was none of these things.  It was reading like two people chatting at a bus stop, and this is NOT a bus stop!

After that, I was really demotivated.  I found it hard to get back into writing.  I even skipped my writing night last week.  I know.  One of the rules is even if you don't feel like writing you should just write anyway.

And to top all this off, I'm in a pretty bad reading slump so I couldn't get motivated that way either.

I found my motivation again when it occurred to me how I could fix my scene.  While I was washing my hair of all places...

So I would like to introduce myself.  Hi, my name is Jessica and I'm a disillusioned learning at writing.

I would add snowboarding too, but I think you actually have to be doing it to count yourself a learner.

I gave up on snowboarding.  Ultimately I think it was because my heart just wasn't in it.  I spent a year after that incident with the "puddle" trying to get better but I didn't get far.  The very last time I ever went I was able to get off the chair lift without falling down.  I figured what a way to go out!

I don't want to let writing follow down the snowboarding path.  I actually care about becomimg good at this.

I keep reminding myself that I'm new at this and I should cut myself some slack.  But I can't cut myself so much slack that I'm not doing it anymore either.

The only way I'm going to get better is with practice.   A LOT of practice.

Rejections

I know what you must be thinking reading the title of today's post.  "Rejections, you don't even have a book yet, right?"

We've all done it at some point in our lives.  We have all put ourselves out there for one thing or another.  Willingly making ourselves vulnerable for our own benefit, to help another or even bring attention to something.  Chances are that you're going to end up getting rejected more often than not.

Maybe it's that new job you really wanted.  Maybe it was that cute guy at the coffee shop.  Maybe it was just wanting to be apart of something as you look in on it from the outside.  I'm sure everyone reading knows what I'm talking about.

I got my first writing rejection letter today.  It came in the form of a very pleasantly worded, generic, sorry-but-the-position-has-been-filled kind of email.

Here's the part of the blog where I blame Facebook.  Over on the right hand side of the window, Facebook suggests pages you should follow or friends you should have.  The friend suggestions seem to be a little out there for me.  I really don't need to know what my father's brother's nephew's cousin's former roommate is up to these days, and just because we have one friend in common doesn't mean we know each other.  Thanks Facebook, but if I want more friends I'll go looking for them.

The pages, on the other hand, have always been pretty good for me.  All my suggestions seem to be centered around shoes and books.  :-)  Works for me!

So when a suggested page came up called Book Riot, I had to take a look.  Book Riot is a fantastic site.  It's full of contributing authors that write about all kinds of things all centered around reading.  I found this site around Thanksgiving time and had been reading the articles here and there.  Just like any magazine or newspaper, some of the articles I found very entertaining and some, well, not so much.

When I found that you could actually add their articles to your RSS feed I was hooked.  They post a lot more articles everyday than what they advertise on Facebook.

If you love to read you really should check their web page out!

Where was I?  Oh yeah, my rejection.

Anyway, after I had been reading their articles for a few months, and about a month after I started this blog, Book Riot put out a request for submissions.  They were looking for new contributing authors.  It also looked like they were trying to diversify their topics since they were looking for avid readers of Romance, Fantasy, Christian, Young Adult, and Crime and Mystery books among others.

This seemed like a really great way to get even more writing practice.  They were only looking for a 2 post a month commitment and to be willing to work with other Rioters (that's what they call all their writers!  Awesome huh?) on some group projects.

I thought this was great.  I could actually get paid to read books, write fun articles about them, get my work published and possibly even make a little extra spending cash (revenue share).  It took me about a week to decide what I was going to write in my submission articles.

I sent my little submissions out into the world, to have someone read something I wrote outside this blog.  It was a huge first step for me.

I though they handled it splendidly.  I got an email about a day after I submitted saying thanks and we'll be in touch.  Now all I had to do was wait.  Thankfully, in the meantime, I had all these great articles to read.

Today at work I was up to my eyeballs in stuff to get done, so I didn't really think much of my phone buzzing to tell me I had a new email.  As I was walking down the hallway I opened the email and began reading it before it even registered in my brain what it was I was reading.

As I mentioned before the email was very nice but it was very clear it was a mass email.  It stated they had over 440 people submit and that they have, at this time, filled all the positions.

So bummer, I wasn't going to be a contributing columnist for Book Riot.  Let me take a 5 second break so I can feel sorry for myself.   .   .   .   .

Ok.  Now that that's over I can get on with it!

I have read quite a few articles and interviews with current big time authors who talk about all the rejection letters they got in the beginning, or even still get today with some of their ideas.  I get that rejections are part of the process.

So bottom line, my first rejection letter didn't make me feel like I needed to pack it all up and forget about being a writer.... I know I was just as surprised as you at my reaction!

I really don't feel that badly about not being chosen this time around.  I will continue to follow the site and if they call for another round of submissions, I will join that one as well.

As I think about how well I am taking this I realized that what I gave over to Book Riot were two 500 word articles that I spent a few hours putting together over the course of about a week.  When I someday write the blog entry that talks about the first rejection letter I got for a book that I put my heart and soul and countless months into I might take it a little more personally.

But before that happens I actually have to get the thing written!  So thanks for not picking me for now, Book Riot, you've freed up a bunch of my time to focus on my own book.  But, someday, you might be sorry you didn't scoop me up when you had the chance ;-)

Brain Burnout

Last week I had to work extra hours at my day job, both of my children were ill (you name it, they had it) and no one in my house was sleeping very well.

This all can lead to not enough energy or time to feel productive in other areas.  I started a book, from a series I thoroughly enjoy, over 2 weeks ago and I am only on page 50.  I can't even remember what day it was when I read the paragraph I am currently on.  I sure haven't had a whole lot of time to devote to my writing.  This sadly leaves us with not a lot of material for this blog.

So why do it?

I do it, because I need to make myself do it.  It would just be so easy to say I can't do this, I'm tired, I don't have the energy, I don't have the time, I just don't feel like it.  Here's the thing.  I feel like if I can't take time out and devote at least an hour a week to writing this blog, I'm never going to be able to commit  the massive amount of time it's going to take to finish my book.

As I said before.  My goal for this blog was to help me establish a writing habit.  A reason for getting me to the computer to write something for which I'm going to be held accountable.

Since my book writing has seen a slight holdup, I need to do this blog.

It keeps me anchored.  It keeps me from floating away from my computer, never to return again.  It doesn't matter to me if no one out there is reading it.  There's a possibility that someone might be, and that someone may be looking forward to reading, just like I look forward to updates to some of my favorite blogs.  It's the possibility that someone may read it that keeps the pressure on me to keep writing.  And that is a very good thing.

This week is, thankfully, back to a more normal schedule and the kids are both on antibiotics so I will be able to devote time again to writing my novel.  Wednesday night!

Even now I feel the bubble of excitement rise up when I think of the time when I get to sit back down and get my hero and heroine talking to each other for the first time.  Its exciting, I feel like I'm setting up a blind date where I know the two of them will just love each other.... eventually :-)

So thanks for reading if you are.  You keep me here and you make me want to write!

If you're not reading it well, I guess I can say whatever I want about you because you're not going to know about it, but I will say thanks to you too.  Its the possibility that you may read it someday that gets this butt in this seat at least once a week so I can share with you.

I really enjoy writing.  More so than I thought I would when I set out to do this!

So my brain might be mush right now, but in a day or two it will have recovered enough to make two fictional (but no so fictional to me) characters go all mushy for each other!

Just like getting over a cold.  I'll be back in the saddle before long!

My goal for blogging

When I first set out to write a blog about writing my first novel what I was really after was writing practice and a way to committing to write on certain nights of the week.

As I started writing I was hoping that eventually I might get some posters on my blog telling stories that related to what I was talking about or even some advice on how to get over a hurdle I was currently facing.  I even hoped that someday I could use this blog to get some exposure for my impending novel.

Last night I got something from this blog that I would never have expected in my wildest dreams.

I had a really good friend of mine send me a message.  This friend and I had met at our day jobs.  We had a few chats many, many years ago about how we both wanted to write novels.

In this message my friend told me that my blog had motivated him to start writing again as well.  He was starting off small but hoping to work up to something bigger in the future.

So while I started this blog for practice, advice, camaraderie and maybe even a little fame in the writing community (well a girl can try), I got something even more rewarding.

Hearing that I motivated someone out there to write got me excited that people are actually reading my blog, yippee!  It also got me really excited to get to my writing night so we can have more writing chats as delightful as the one we had last night.

Sadly, my day job needs some extra TLC this week.  I am probably going to be skipping my book writing night so I don't burn myself out.  After working 11 hour days I don't think I will have the mental capacity to come home and write anything worthwhile in the pages of my soon to be masterpiece.  It would  also be why the blog post is a little shorter and, maybe, less entertaining tonight.

But hopefully that will be just this week and next week I can be back at it with a vengeance next week!

A place for everything, and everything in its place

I'm a list maker.  Just ask my husband, his honey-do list is about a mile long.

The reason it's a mile long is because I make lists to help me accomplish goals.  I create a punch list of each item or task I need to acquire or accomplish to reach my ultimate goal.  This could be as simple as "Finish Grocery Shopping", "Clean House", or even, "Pack for vacation".  They can go all the way up to very complicated with things like "Sell House" or "Remodel Fireplace Room with Built in Bookshelves" which are really lists of lists.

So starting to write was no different.  I needed my list of things I needed to do.  If you read my last post some of the things on my list were really there to keep me from completing the list, but most were valid items I needed to get done.

The first item on that list was finish my very encouraging book leading me out of the land of Dummies and into the world of the enlightened published author.

There is an entire chapter in this book about Outlining.  I was very excited when I saw it in the table of contents (NERD ALERT!) and I was also very excited when I reached the chapter and was on the verge of learning how to properly put together an outline.

I learned the importance of outlining my senior year of high school.  Since I didn't take an English class that year I had to take a literary and a writing course.  The writing course I mentioned here.  The literary course was one of my favorite classes of all time.  It was called Woman as Hero and the entire course was about gynocentric literature.  The structure of this class was read a book and then for tests on the book we would write in class papers.  We would be given the exact topic of the paper ahead of time and we were allowed to bring only an outline with us.  The outline would be turned in with the paper so she could see you didn't just bring in a bunch of cliff notes.

At first I didn't put too much in my outlines and it really showed in my papers.  They were disorganized, not very well supported and were not receiving grades that were up to my standard.

I didn't realize that my real problem was in my outline.  About half way through the semester my teacher put a note on my test saying that she knew I was reading the material because my in class discussions were spot on, but my papers were not where they should be.  She helped me work on my outlines and by the time I knew it my outlines were strong enough to produce papers with strong, well supported arguments.

All through college my outlines were the foundation for every paper I had to write, even if it was just a rough couple of bullets of topics or arguments I wanted to cover.  Come to think of it, those outlines were probably the start of my list writing habit, but they sure made writing easier.

So here I was, eager to devour the chapter in Writing a Romance Novel for Dummies on Outlining.  I was expecting a sort of how-to outline for a work of fiction instead of that of a term paper.

I finished the chapter and I was a little disappointed.  I read the entire chapter and basically the take-aways were:

1. Outlines are important 
2. Always write an outline 
3. Even if you don't want to write an outline write one anyway.  

I had expected to know everything I needed to know about outlining at the end of this chapter.  I was an outlining dummy for crying out loud!  After reading this, I didn't feel like less of a dummy, I felt like dummy in the dark.

Well, now what was I supposed to do.  I did what I have been doing every time I got stuck on my writing.  I just shot from the hip to see if I could hit anything.

If I missed maybe I would try the other hip?

In hindsight I'm not really sure why I expected this after finishing the chapter.  In any of the other chapters she didn't give me a step by step checklist on how to write other aspects of my novel.  So why should the outline be any different.  You need to find out what works for you.  

So I already had this stack of note cards I had been using for story boarding.  So one night after the kids were in bed and my husband was off playing hockey I started to lay all the cards out on the floor in our living room.

Holy Winter Wonderland, Batman!  I had so many note cards strewn across the living room floor it looked like it snowed!  That night when my husband came home from hockey he found me on my hands and knees crawling around on the floor trying to get my cards in the right order.  For the next book, I am going to have to find a better way to do this!  Maybe a white board in my office... Oh honey, I have another item for your list!

The nice thing about this was I was able to see where there were holes in my story and I quickly plugged them up.

Before I created my outline, I had a real fear that I wouldn't be able to turn the few vivid scenes I had in my head into a whole story.  After going through the exercise of the note cards and then translating them into an outline on my computer it really showed me that not only did I have enough ideas to make a whole book, what occupied the 4 pages in front of me was the skeleton of a future romance novel!

I think I read through it about 100 times just to reassure myself that it was all there.  I made a few tweaks and changes but I finally felt good about this.  To be completely honest as I am sitting down now and writing my novel there are things that I come across in my outline that won't really work anymore because things change even as you're writing.  That's okay.  The outline is easy enough to change and to see what your changes will affect in the future.

So, yes, the outline is a vital tool in the writing process, for both fiction and non-fiction and you should write one even if you don't want to.

For me it wasn't just something to put together to keep me from getting lost while I'm writing, it was a way of showing myself that I did really have everything I needed and it was time to start writing.

That was a very good day for me!

The power of excuses

It took a really long time for me to work up the courage to decide I had enough material to cover a whole book.

If you think about it, books are long.  It takes many dedicated hours to get through even a moderate sized one.  If it's good those hours don't really seem like anything.  If the book is... not so good... every hour reading it seems like a day.  You feel like you've been reading it forever, and not in a good way.  You just want to get through it and move on to a new, more exciting book.

I don't abandon books easily.  It has to really just tweak me in a certain way for me to completely give up on it.  Most times I will suffer through, knowing the author made a valiant effort and then I can't even really bring myself to make a poor review on Goodreads.  I feel their pain and I wouldn't want someone else to do that to me when I get there.  There will, of course, be those out there that don't like my book and I'm sure I will agonize over that, but let's cross that bridge when we get there.

I had an idea for a book, was it good?  I don't know.  It sounded really awesome to me!  But when its your little fantasy that you've been daydreaming about for years it better be pretty good to you.

The question was, was it good enough that other people would want to read it too?  Not only do I want them to read it, I don't want the vast majority of people out there to keep checking their collective watches while slowly but surely making their way through my agonizingly boring book.

It has to be good, I told myself, or its not worth doing at all.

I'm a bit of a perfectionist in a lot of ways.  It's not house cleaning or car maintenance, but when I really put my mind to doing something I want to be the best!

Because of this mind set I felt like I had to have everything perfect before I could actually begin to write.

The office has to be cleaned up
I need a new desk chair
I need a bulletin board
I need a printer
I have to finish the book I'm currently reading
I have to finish the Writing a Romance Novel for Dummies book
I need word processing software

Ok maybe the last one was slightly more necessary than the others.  I thought I was going to need all of this stuff before I could even begin writing.  I'm sure if you ask my husband this list is not complete.

I kept getting a lot of questions from friends and family about how my writing was going.  I always had something to say about it.

"Well I can start writing as soon as the planets align, that baseball pitcher throws that perfect game and my son goes to bed on time, all on the same night!"

One day when I actually heard myself telling someone that I couldn't start writing because I was waiting for Jon to hang a bulletin board in the office I realized I was really just making excuses.  I still felt like I couldn't do it.

I was having a hard time pulling the trigger because I wasn't even sure the gun would fire.  Here I am standing at the range, knowing I want to shoot a gun but I'm not sure if the bullets I have on me are going to work.

My real problem wasn't the list of tasks I needed to accomplish before I could begin writing.  My problem was that I was still doubting myself.

It was that day that I pulled the note cards off the bookshelf and started to work on getting them in order and figure out where my holes were.

I am still full of doubt, that hasn't changed.  I decided that instead of constantly questioning whether or not I could do this, I should just start and see if I could.

It was a good decision and I'm glad I made it.  Time will tell if I'm actually good at this, but at least then I will know for sure.  I don't want to wake up 50 years from now still wondering if I could have done it and never knowing.

I might be late to the party, but at least I'm showing my face!

Writing night

So today is Thursday. This is my usual writing night of the week.
Thanks to my need to put food on the table and provide for my family I have a nice, steady, bill paying job.
That job has landed me, literally, in Pittsburgh for the rest of the work week. 
So what does this mean? It means that tonight I will not be able to work on my book. And I have to say I'm actually missing it.
So to get my writing fix, I'm sitting in my hotel room constructing this blog entry from an app on my phone.
So while I probably won't be able to carve out any book writing time until next week, I'm happy that I feel bad for not being able to work on it.
It's very easy to just put it off and procrastinate another day but that does not produce a book. 
I'm sure when my next writing night rolls around I'll be tempted to say that I just don't have the energy.  Hopefully I'll look back on today, remember how I missed being able to write, and get to work.
Then go to bed with a smile on my face.

Ready, Set... Ready, Set... Ready, set, GO!

When I started toying with the idea to write I did what I do anytime I want to learn more about something... I bought a book.

I went into my local Barnes and Noble, aka heaven.  I always chose to go to the store rather than buy online if I could help it.  Barnes and Noble was one of my most favorite happy places, and still is.  I don't remember that book writing books were on my shopping list that day.  This was most likely one of my regularly scheduled visits to B&N but I do remember that I was alone.

When I go to a B&N alone I usually wander around enjoying the smell of the cafe and rows upon rows of books.  I love finding a aisle that is void of people and immersing myself in the sensation of being surrounded by things that I love.  Bonus points if that aisle is for a genre that I am interested in.  I remember one time I spent 2 hours in the store and didn't realize it until I got a phone call from my mother asking me where I was.

I was doing my usual wandering (For those that have ever been shopping with me, they know exactly what I'm talking about) around B&N and ended up in the Self Help/How To section.  After bypassing all the books on parenting, weight loss books, and an entire section on getting married, I found a few books on how to write.  There was one title in particular that called to me.  Writing a Romance Novel for Dummies  It was the only one on the shelf specifically dedicated to genre that I wanted to write and I was certainly a dummy, so the book seemed like a perfect fit.

I grabbed the book off the shelf like 30 other people were trying to climb over me to get to it.  I held it close to my chest and sprinted to the checkout.  I completed my red-faced purchase and took my new treasure home where I put it on a book shelf and left it for about, oh, I don't know, 8 years.

I think I should clarify my red-faced checkout.  For a very long time I was a closeted Romance Novel fan.  I loved the stories and the characters but I was so embarrassed to have people see me reading them.  I would blush every time I handed my stacks of books over the middle aged man or the condescending college girl behind the register at the B&N.  Just looking at the covers it was very clear what was going on in these books.  If anyone ever asked me what kind of books I liked to read, I would respond with a little bit of everything but would say my main interest was in historical fiction.  Which wasn't a lie.

Those who know me now know I have no problem sharing exactly what books I read, how I feel about them and will actually whip them out for people to see.  I suppose you can say I have come out of the closet in that respect and I am not shy about it!

While my book spent the years slumbering away on the bottom self of my bookcase, I went on fantasizing what it would be like if I could actually write a book.  A whole book.  Then I would be filled with instant terror at the very idea and move on to some other thought.

I would occasionally stand in front of my 7 foot book case just to admire my books. What, you don't do that?  I would see the writing book sitting down on the shelf and it always seemed like it was waking up, stretching and then through a yawn would say, "Pick me up, read me, let's do this!" I would always tell it to go back to sleep.  The idea of turning the few measly scenes I had into my head into a whole book still scared me to death.  I knew I wasn't ready to try.

So while my book gathered dust I started poking around other places for information.  Did you know that there's a ton of it out there on the internet?

I think I googled something to the effect of "How to start writing".  After poking through a few of the first few selections which were all college courses on writing, I found a small interview with an author for some small magazine.

This author (I'm sorry to say I never caught his name or that of the magazine) used the idea of story-boarding   Like in movies!  I'm sure this isn't unique to this author but I certainly was in love with the idea.

This author said that when he would get an idea for a book it usually started with one scene.  Then, as it incubated in his brain he would get more and more scenes.  So he would write each scene on some note cards.  Then later he could lay them out, put them in the order he wanted and decide how he got from one scene to the next.  Doing it this way, he claimed, would show you exactly where the holes in your story were and what needed more structure.

This was a great idea.  I had done this idea of note cards before.  Writing research papers in junior high our teacher taught us to put one fact on a note card with the source information right on it.  Later, when you were outlining or writing the paper it would be easier to cite sources and keep information organized.

I went out a bought a deck of note cards.  I had so many scenes bubbling through my head for so many different books by this time.  I spent an entire Sunday afternoon at my parents house, while everyone else watched football, writing out one scene per note card.  I think my family was so happy I was finally trying to do something about it instead of just talking about it they pretty much let me be.

But in my head I imagine they were in the other room asking each other if I was really going to do this between yelling at the refs and running around like crazy when their team scored.  ahem, Jon...

After I wrote it all down, the note cards joined the book on the shelf for a few years.  After everything was down on paper and I didn't have to try to remember it all the time I stopped thinking about it so much.

Every once in a while I would think of some new scenes so I would write them down and add them to the pile.

One day I realized that the note cards I was writing were all for one book idea and that the pile had gotten rather large.

That's the day I picked up the Writing a Romance Novel for Dummies book.  I figured if all my attention was suddenly on this one story idea, then maybe I was onto something.

I was terrified when I started reading it.  How was I going to remember everything in this book when I sat down later to write?  How many of you have read a text book and then sometime later try to remember everything you learned from it?  It didn't always go so well.  :-)

I thought my success at writing all started with my ability to retain what I learned in this book.  That was a lot of pressure to put on myself and it almost made me put the book back on the shelf.

But I didn't.  I read it.  What I found as I started burning through the chapters was that everything the writer was saying I was saying to myself, "I'm doing that", or "I have that"

What this book did for me was really give me the confidence that I was already on the right track.  She also stressed the importance of writing an outline.

But that's another story all together!

Unexpected Encouragment

When I finally decided, this is it, I'm going to do it. I'm going to write a novel. Random memories from my life started to pop up. Things started coming to me in flashes with complete clairty. Kinda like waking up after a morning of drinking and remembering what you did the night before in small incriments. Not that I have ever done that...

Anyway, I started to remember that I have been writing fiction for some time. I remember a time after school, I must have been in the 4^th grade, I wrote a story for our babysitter. I don't recall what the story was about now but I do remember my babysitter pointing out that I spelled machines incorrectly. She was in highschool and apparently knowledgeable in how to spell things. I must have been unaware of this when I asked her to read it. I was writing in a Lisa Frank diary, there was no spell check. I tried to play it off like I meant to misspell machine because I was making up some new type of machines. I don't think she bought it.

When I was in 9^th grade my english teacher handed out those little blue test booklets that most of you will probably remember from college. He said that we had to write in them. He didn't care what it was and he was not going to read them. All he cared about was that we wrote 4 pages every week. On Fridays he would walk around to each student and we would have to show him our 4 pages and he would sign the bottom of the last page to ensure you didn't try to pass off old work. I remember being ridiculously excited about this. I was being encouraged to write whatever I wanted and no one was going to read it. I instantly decided on fiction. I actually wrote what would today be considered a Young Adult Fantasy Romance. It included magic medallions, deserted islands, seemingly unstoppable forces of evil and of course a hunky guy that my heroine instantly fell for. I wonder if I kept these and have them stashed away somewhere. I'm pretty sure that one story filled most of the school year. I must have filled a dozen of those little blue test booklets in 4 page chunks.

My senior year of highschool we had the option to take a 4^th year of english, or we could take a one semester writing course and a one semester literary course. Since my high school offered a creative writing class I opted for the latter.

I always loved my English classes. Most of my classmates would complain about the books we were reading but I usually enjoyed them.  In an attempt to not standout and therefore subject myself to ridicule (I got that on plenty of other topics) I complained right along with the rest of them. I was a closet english-class-book-lover.

There were plenty of writing exercises in my Creative Writing class and I remember enjoying most of them, except for one. We were given the assignment of writing about our happy places. I remember getting the rush of excitement sitting in my desk. My happy place. What could be better? I started writing in my head almost instantly.

I wrote about a warm, white sandy beach, with waves big enough to boogie board in. The water was so warm you could actually enjoy said boogie boarding without having to go numb. I live in New England. If you get in the water here you have to wait until you're numb to enjoy any aquatic activity. There was no one else on my beach, this was my happy place. I think even dolphins played in the water with me.

On the day it was due I felt like Ralphie from A Christmas Story walking up to pass in his theme. There was no way my teacher wasn't going to just love this! I mean its about someone's happy place. How could you hate it?

Apparently my teacher did. I got a C on that paper. A C! Not even a C+, a C. I'm pretty sure this was one of the first Cs I ever received on any assignment ever! I was shocked. I felt like this was one of my best pieces of work. You could feel the sun on your face and the sand under your toes just from reading about my friggin happy place! How could that not be worthy of an A?

Then I started to look at all the red marks. She crossed out so many words on my paper there were enough straight lines to make it look like it coded. In her summary at the end she felt my wording was too "flowery" and that most of the words I used were "unnecessary". From that day on I decided that I did not share her definition of descriptive writing.

Maybe she had a point, without acutally going back and reading the paper now its hard to say. But even to this day I find it hard to believe that paper deserved a C. All my other work was graded well and I ended up with an A in the class.

I think that class, and that one assignment in particular, really discouraged me from something I really enjoyed doing. I was always coming up with little short stories and ideas but I remember a lot of that coming to a grinding halt after that. Luckly the Literary course I took the second semester of my senior year introduced me to some wonderful books and authors. I read for the first time one of my favorite books in that class.

When I got to college I had to take another required class. My roommate talked me into taking a class called Women in Contemporary American Culture with her.

It was a class I needed to graduate and a Gen-Ed with your roommate and friend was always a great idea!

It ended up being one of my favs. And I love guy reactions to the name of this course. Every one of them comes to the conclusion that its a feminist class. I can assure you there was no bra burning or marching around the room shaking our fists and shouting Votes For Women!

This class was one step away from a book club. We would read short stories and books that were all gynocentric (writen by women and women were the main characters). We also looked at a lot of examples of women in pop culture. My final was a group project with my roommate about Sex and the City!

After each book or short story we would read we would be required to write about it. What we liked, what we disliked and how it made us feel. We usually had to turn in a 3 page paper once a week. A lot like my days in 9^th grade english except I didn't get cart blanche to write whatever I wanted and someone was most definitely reading and grading it but it was free from anything overly structured.

About half way through the semester the professor stopped me on my way out of the classroom just to tell me that she though I wrote beautifully and that she enjoyed reading my papers every week. I'm pretty sure I floated back to my apartment after this statement.

It wasn't until years later, when I decided I was going to try my hand at writing, that I even remembered most of this. But thinking back on it now, I still get a warmy fuzzy feeling from that compliment.

When I first started talking about writing I got a lot of fantasic encouragement from my family, friends, and most of all my husband. But I still felt like I wouldn't be able to do it.  The C on my overly flowery happy place came back to taunt me.  If I couldn't even write about my happy place what made me think I could do it for a whole book? 

It wasn't until I started to remember that this wouldn't be my first adventure into fiction. I had been doing it for a long time.  I had highs and I had lows, I couldn't let the one bad thing I remember about writing discourage me from all the other times I thought I did well.  I sure couldn't let keep me from trying something that is almost becoming necessary just to silence the characters in my head.

If you're like me and you're even considering writing a novel, chances are you have a background story that is similar to mine.

My childhood wasn't teeming with literary masterpieces, it wasn't even teeming with literary flops. I wrote from time to time when the inspiration hit. I spent a lot of my time outside of school playing with friends and playing softball.

After all the positive feedback and encouragement I got from those around me, I didn't really feel like I could do it until I remembered things like this. My friends and family were convinced I could do it and told me so but the most effective encouragement I got was from myself. I know that sounds incredibly cliche, but there you have it. Sometimes the best encouragment is the encouragement that comes from some unexpected places.