Thursday, August 12, 2010

Writing: A lesson in perseverance

It’s been quite a long time since I updated my blog. Sorry. Yes. I am still plugging away and no, I still haven’t sent in my MS. I've had three or four deadlines for myself and have passed each one up. Damn life gets in the way. I can see how writers would like to barricade themselves in a cabin in the woods or by the beach and write/live/eat/sleep with their stories. But alas, this luxury is not allowed to most of us. Most of us have jobs that pay the bills. We have families, husbands, pets and children. All of which require our attention and gets in the way. Yes, we love them but they do get in the way no matter how you look at it and that’s where perseverance comes in. The ability to get on the move again when life deals you something else.


It's also when you feel like you’re writing poorly and you still push when you want to quit but you still tell your story. If you’ve ever had to put yourself on paper you know what I mean. You pour your soul out. I laugh with my characters, I cry with them, it's exhausting...


I can't tell you what it's like to push forward and write. It's one of the hardest things I've ever attempted. It's like putting your innards on paper for all to see and critique. One day I read something that I wrote and I say to myself, "Wow, that's actually good." The next day I could read the same paragraph and say, "What a piece of crap! Who's gonna wanna read this crap?"

You have to push past your own resistance and self-sabotaging ways and continue. I recently read a great book, "the WAR of ART," by Steven Pressfield. If you are struggling with pushing through a difficult time in any given task I recommend that you read it.

Well, there seems to be light at the editing tunnel and hope to send my MS out by late February, hoping the editor still wants it. I know it's a been some months since she requested it but I couldn't send her something less than my best. And it's a good possibility that my best will get rejected but like I said earlier, I will just have to persevere some more and find someone who won't reject it and then write another one and so on...

Monday, July 12, 2010

Now that I'm here what do I do?

So, I left off at my epiphany. How I decided that writing was my new life path or rather how my muse made me sit up and listen.

Well, the next step on my journey was the contest.

I had been writing for five months and found out that I'm not a plotter but a pantser. I prefer to call it "flying into the mist" as one author called it in the RWR. There's no outlining of the manuscript, mostly just writing what comes to mind. This works for a while but then at some point you have to connect the dots, which I did about 3/4 of the way through. I tend to be an emotional writer, the emotion and sex is easy for me the conflicts and other stuff, hard. So, I wrote the scenes as they came to me, they meet, she saves his life, he gives her a gift, they have sex. I thought it sounded good but my partner read it and I laugh every time I repeat her words, "I hardly know this man" she typed in her critique of my scene. My response..."OK, exactly how many times do they need to be together before they can have sex?"

Next, we decided to learn more about the craft and took Lori Wilde's online workshop on Layering Scenes for Maximum impact. We learned A LOT! Can't thank Lori enough, it was an eye opener.

So, then this contest comes along. The Greater Detroit Romance Writers of America's "Between the Sheets" contest. My partner sends me the link and says that I should enter it. Contest schmantest I exclaim. Then she explains to me how important they can really be and I mull it over. At this point I'm not signed up for RWA, I have no home chapter, I'm just getting knowledge secondhand from her and writing on my own.

Then I decided that if this was going to be my life path I better get myself out there and declare it as my path. I joined the RWA despite the fact that I might not be able to really afford it living check to check and all. I rationalized paying the fee, thinking that if I needed the money that I sent I would just not pay my credit card for that month, (luckily for me I didn't have to avoid paying my credit card). I filled out the contest application and began to polish my sex scene, not only polish it but cut it down as well. I submitted the application on February 2nd and the deadline for submission was the 14th, Valentine's day. This seemed pretty short but to make matters worse, my son's 7th birthday was on the 12th and I was planning a Clone Trooper celebration for the 13th. So, with shopping and planning and cooking and only having one car to do this with (meaning I had to drive my husband to work and pick him up when I needed the car), oh and taking a workshop, it was pretty challenging.

My scene started out as 9 pages, not too bad, you have to submit 10 and a 1 page set-up but it was missing some major parts like, oh, talking. So, I had to add to it. I stole some parts from my manuscript and had a complete scene, the page count after all that was 19 pages. 19! Crap, now I had to cut out 9 pages!!! Well, it wasn't in manuscript format so after doing that it was decreased to 15. Still. I had to cut it to 10 pages and so I started. I learned while doing this I had WAY TOO MUCH narrative so some of it was easy to cut. I had to sacrifice some of the naughty parts too but it was for the good of the contest and I knew I could put it back.

So I worked for hours and hours, pouring over this one scene and by the time I was done with it I couldn't stand anymore manhood, or thrusting or anything. I was done. I submitted it on the evening of his party, Saturday February 13th 2010.

Why did I enter? To begin to put myself out there, to put myself on the chopping block, to see if I was on the right track. I didn't think about winning, I mean I had only been writing for 5 months. But I was proud of those 10 pages. I had worked my ass off! Well, the closer it came to the announcement of the finalists the more I wanted to win but it was too much to hope for to actually final. I was so new, so inexperienced, it could never happen.

Never say never because it did. I just about died when I got the email that TIMELESS had final-ed. I had to send it to my partner for her to verify that indeed is what it said but first I called her up and said, "we did it!" "We did what?" She said with excitement. "We final-ed!!!" "I think I could vomit," she said. Yah, me too, I thought. That was unbelievable, it was just her and me muddling through and we had done it. It was so validating that all my work had actually paid off. Next were the final judges, my stomach knots just thinking about it.

I won't make you wait for the result. I received 4th place (honorable mention) which was disappointing, I wanted to make it in the top 3 but the fact that Senior Editor,Patience Smith from Harlequin asked to see the full cushioned that a little bit. OK, A LOT!!!

One thing though, it wasn't done. Meaning 1/4 of the story was still in my head. Now, I didn't enter to buck the system. They always say (but I didn't know that at the time) don't enter a contest or pitch if you don't have a finished manuscript. I entered to get some feedback, that's all. So, I worked very hard and as quick as I could to actually finish it. Now that I think about it, I may not have finished it if I didn't have the push of the request behind me.

And that's where I am now. I am editing and revising and polishing to send it off to her and at the very least take my next step in the Romance Writing World and become PRO. But it IS delicious to dream of the alternative...

Monday, June 7, 2010

Writing: How I got here.

Hi everyone, this is my very first blog. Yup. Now that I'm a writer I was told I should blog. OK. So now what? What do I blog about? Who wants to hear...er...read my blogs? Maybe no one I think but I'll blog anyway.

I decided to start off with my journey into writing. I figure that I'll put it down in writing...er...blogging...er...cyberspace and I won't have to remember how it all occurred.

Let's go back a decade or two to my best friend. You see, she was/is in love with romance novels, read them like candy, wrote about them in journals, reviewed them, etc. I find this behavior quirky and cute all at the same time.

Now, fast forward to 1999/2000. Her and I started to go to the Renaissance Faire. Ever been to one? It's the most fun one can have while being dressed :) We fell in love with it from the moment we stepped in the gates. We bought outfits, joined the clubs and websites, we made friends and most importantly for my story here wanted to learn the language. We decided that we would write emails to each other in Old English only, nerdy yes, but fun too. The problem was that it's extremely difficult (at least for newbies) to talk about day to day modern stuff in Old English. So, I started to make up a story as we went along and she followed suit. We sent each other daily or almost daily emails continuing our story. We even have a name for it, Letters to Violet. Well, we wrote about 30,000 words and then life got in the way and we tabled it. Don't worry we WILL pick it up again someday and finish it.

Fast forward to 2009. She has this epiphany, not sure what exactly it was but she announces that she's going to write romance novels. She jumps into it head first, starts to write, joins not one but two RWA chapters, goes to the biggest convention that you can go to for romance writing and her passion and joy is intoxicating. And mostly because this behavior, this joining and networking was usually my job in our dynamic duo relationship but now it was all her and I was loving it. I was loving it but I wasn't joining. Even though she had encouraged me and told me it was better to embark on this adventure with a partner I wasn't buying. This was her dream not mine.

She shared all her new found knowledge with me and I listened and filed it away. I served as her beta reader and gave her feedback on her stories. But I just didn't have the time to do it myself. My son was in half day kindergarten, I carried about 30 hours a week at work and I didn't really have any writing talent, that I knew of anyway. I hadn't ever considered myself a writer. And my choice of genre was all over the place. I read V.C Andrews and Koontz in H.S. My tastes now ranged from A Knight in Shining Armour to the Celestine Prophecies (which I believe now gives me a broad range to pull from). I really wasn't a romance reader let alone a writer. And I loved film. I actually favored movies over books. Now...don't string me up just yet. There's actually a reason. You see, I have problems sleeping and when I read I never sleep. I actually preferred movies for the instant gratification of the end being somewhere in the 2-3 hour future. Believe me, I have the utmost respect for the written word, which is why I never thought I'd be able to do it.

Well, maybe 6 or so months passed and I was having a banner year. It all started with the toaster (which will have to be a title of at least one of my stories) and went on from there. Well, I didn't need a brick to fall on my head to start writing, I needed a tree. Yup. A tree. A fifty foot, dead ass, rotting weeping willow.

You see, I had no car, no air conditioning, no toaster, a dead cat, a broken CD player, no money, there's more I just blocked it out and lastly at the end of August after an expensive, exhausting and fabulous 40th luau birthday party that I threw for my husband (had to, another story) my willow tree decided to fall. Have you ever paid to get a tree removed? Not fun. There's nothing quite like spending money, $1100.00 to be exact to remove a dead tree. You have nothing to show for it, just an empty space where a beautiful work of art once stood.

I found myself at one of the lowest points in my life, not quite as low as after the death of my Mother but pretty close. I can remember the day I had my own epiphany very clearly. I had just finished up the Twilight Saga (yes, I am a huge fan). I devoured the entire four books in 9 days and it lifted me somewhat. I found a spark, a spark of that old nostalgia for the beauty of love. I was enamored with the Twilight soundtrack. Robert Pattinson's soulful crooning touched my core. I credit that experience along with many others as a push in the right direction.

I sat there that day in September lamenting and wishing for hope but I had none. I longed for the passion for something like my best friend had for writing. But what was my passion? What was my purpose? I found myself thinking that maybe I'd get into an accident and find it. Sick huh? Yes, but it had a basis in reality. I remembered all those expose's I saw on people who got in some sort of crash or tragedy and started painting angel pictures or something and are now billionaires. I wanted that but then I thought that was kinda crazy to wish for a tragedy and all when I was having such a crappy time of it as it was.

Anyway, I started to put pieces together that day. Gee, my friend is having the time of her life and she's writing. Gee, Stephanie Meyer is so inspiring. Then I saw an interview with the author of the DaVinci Code. Yes, on that very day and I kid you not, I never watch daytime TV, but I did that day.

I remembered how I had talked about the writing of Twilight with my friend. She shared with me that Stephanie had a dream about the meadow and started to write her story from there. I had shared that with my friends at work too. Then I remembered how often my friend repeated that info to me and I got to thinking. Gee. There was that day I had that pseudo dream. I say pseudo because I was napping and it was the point at which you aren't awake but aren't quite asleep either. I don't know what I was thinking or fantasizing about at that time but a little snippet of a story crept in and I thought, hmmmm...that might make a good story someday and tucked it away in the recesses of my mind until that day in September.

I thought, maybe just maybe I could write about that. Maybe I had my own story in my head. Could it be that easy? Is that my life path? I didn't know but I could sure try. People tell me I'm witty and funny. People say I articulate myself on paper very well. I wonder if I could put that into a story? I thought about it all as I cleaned my house, listened to the Twilight soundtrack and let the juices flow. It was like wires had been connected to my brain and fed it energy and thoughts. It sizzled. I cleaned and I formulated a story, my own story. I sat down that week and cranked out 20,000 words.

I was afraid to tell my friend at first. Afraid to be a dream stealer but I wanted to share it with her and get her feedback for she was indeed my inspiration. Well of course she was ecstatic and welcomed my participation because the battle that is art was getting the best of her and my email came at the most opportune time and now we officially call ourselves writing partners and we're in it together for the long haul (which could be another story, how a partner lifts you up when you are down).

So that's it up to my ephiphany. I'll start it from there next time I blog. There's plenty of off shoot stories beginning with this one and I'll just keep blogging what's on my mind, maybe someone else, some day will read it besides her :)