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Monthly Archives: February 2011


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Why reading can be bad for my mental health

Today, I’m feeling like I will never crack this writing lark.

Doesn’t mean I am giving up, just that it’s bloody hard going some days. I love reading romance, but every time I read a good one, I just can’t help the comparisons. I made the even worse mistake of reading one suggested by one of my CPs, with some similarities in the theme and set up with the story I’m writing.

The story is Nikki Logan’s Their Newborn Gift, one of the free Mills and Boon ebooks on their Everyone’s Reading site.

It’s excellent. And very sensual for a Sweet Romance. No sex, but the sensual awareness between them sizzles!

It’s also depressing the frick out of me. The basic premise is similar to mine, the heroine has to find the hero, father of the child he doesn’t know about, to help the child’s serious health problems. And she’s done it so much better!

Of course she has, she’s an experienced, multi-published author, and I’m, well, not. But she’s done it not just a little bit, don’t-worry-Autumn-you’re-nearly-there better. A helluva lot better. She’s wrung so much emotion out of the situation, and these two people who are so right for each other but can’t see it. I honestly can’t  imagine I will ever write that well.

Maybe I really just don’t have what it takes, the natural talent, the voice. Maybe determination and sticking with it won’t be enough.

*sigh*

I can’t let myself believe that, or I’d have to give up now. Keeping on going, reflecting on what I’m writing, working to keep improving- it’s got to be enough. Shirley Jump, who now writes an amazing eight books a year, took ten manuscripts and eight years of solid writing to get published in fiction.

That’s kinda reassuring. She writes like a dream.

So I have a better plan than giving up. I’m going to reread some of these books I love. Very slowly. Very analytically.

What made Nikki’s story so good? How did she infuse their interactions with so much sexual tension and heart deep emotion, simultaneously. How did she make the heroine and heroine not simply realising they loved each other and getting together about half way through the story work and not just seem Too Stupid To Live like my characters? How does she put in so much lush description without slowing down the pacing?

That might help.

Actually, I just found this on Nikki’s website-

Plagiarising technique – a great learning tool

Some new writers live in fear of unconsciously plagiarising content or mimicking someone elses style and avoid reading as some kind of safety net.

Don’t.

If you want to get published you should be reading recent, quality works in your genre specifically so you CAN pull them apart to see what makes them so good. You don’t want to adopt plots characters or text, of course, but you do want to adopt good technique. Having said that… if you pitch a work with some terribly obvious, high profile trademark technique in it… that’s gonna get noticed and not in a good way. Everything in moderation.

So maybe instead of doing another writing workshop next month, I’ll do my own workshop, analysing a good published story a week. As well as keeping on writing.

Right now, what I’m doing for my story is cutting out a whole load of backstory infodump in the first chapter. My Prologue (I know, they are the Kiss of Death, but this story seems to need one!) has gone from two pages to eighty-eight words.

I’m also wondering if another plot device that’s part of what keeps them apart can be cut. Seems like I cut one out last week, but I’m realising today that I didn’t completely excise it. remnants of the same thing are still there, in the shape of the misunderstanding that split them up ten years before. All I did was remove the real event that lay behind it in the original version. Took out the date rape from the first draft, changed it to the same creep of a guy simply spreading rumours that she had sex with him. The hero, the town’s bad boy, was too insecure and prickly to doubt it, the heroine, the town’s golden girl, was too proud and too upset that the hero could believe it to deny it.  And they still are the same emotionally, ten years later, even though their roles are reversed.

But it seems unnecessary to keep the misunderstanding. If only they’d drop their bloody pride for a minute and talk about it, it could be cleared up. Except they won’t drop their protective facades. Not that far. But it can’t be the misunderstanding that’s the true relationship block, it’s the misplaced pride, the lack of trust, the basic belief that no-one would ever love them that really keeps them apart. Those roles and beliefs they were given in childhood that they haven’t shaken off yet. So, is the misunderstanding needed at all? Can I get to the bones of what their issues are without having a silly thing like that between them? Or is that a way in, shorthand to symbolise all their deeper issues.

I’m not sure!

I do need to work this out soon, because Chapter One is full of allusions to it.


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Big grinning over my test results!

I am a happy girl this evening!

Just back from my doctor’s appointment to get the results from the core biopsy last week. Thank God, it’s good news. Although there are some low grade changes there, it’s nothing that is likely to cause problems so I don’t need to do anything more. Basically, it’s not quite normal, but it shouldn’t turn too abnormal either. A bit like me!

I’ve been hell to live and work with all week. I get irritable when I’m anxious. I was visualising the worst, and trying to imagine what it would be like to look down and see nothing where my breast used to be. Okay, they are saggy, baggy, and nowhere near as pretty as they once were, but I’m attached to them!

I knew before I even walked into the doctor’s office chances were excellent things would be fine- he didn’t ask me to bring my husband in with me. If he had, that’s when I would have known I had something to worry about…

Phew! First thing I did after the appointment was go out and buy some pretty bras on the way home! I can start making plans again, book the tickets for the trip to Istanbul, get the quotes to get the bathroom retiled.

So, it’s been an interesting experience. I know all over again what real, gut-gnawing fear feels like. The weeks since I found the lump have probably been the second most anxious period of my life. If I need to write a heroine who’s anxiously waiting, I know exactly how she will feel, what those visceral reactions will be.

I’ve done some reappraising of what is most important and what I do and don’t want in my life. Thankfully, I won’t have to face making any massive changes. I do need to think about what little ones I can still make. One thing this has made me realise (besides that core biopsies hurt), is that life’s too short to mess around.

I’ll make silly changes, like deciding it really is worth spending the money to buy a Vitamix. I’ll keep going with the writing, stick to the plan I made at the start of the year. Despite all the crap this month, I’m still on target for meeting my goals. But I do need to make time for other things I enjoy. I can’t be narrow focus, just working and writing. I need more play too. I need to do more sewing (and find out how to use that overlocker I bought off eBay two years ago and never even tried to thread up- I gather it’s complicated!). I like Lagenlook clothes, but they cost a fortune and should be well within my sewing skills. I want to make and wear more jewellery, express my creativity more in how I look. I want to make some chnages to our home. I realised this Spring I hadn’t planted up bulb planters like I normally do.

These are the little and not so little things, I need to ensure I make time for. Watching movies too. Some homework in a writing workshop I’m doing was to discuss characters in a film we recently watched. I can’t remember when I last watched a film. Can’t remember when we went of a picnic, or did something fun just for the sake of it.  Like reading to enjoy the story, not to learn craft skills. Or just hanging out with my honey, instead of everything being so goal oriented and task focused.

I’m very determined. When I really and truly decide to do something, that’s it, I do it. But I need to relax more. I need to soften. I need to stop wanting my goals so bad. Get that balance. Want it bad enough to stick to the steps along the way when I could be having more fun doing something else, but not so bad I can’t enjoy life along the way because I’m so focused on that end point.

Anyway, thank God this was just another wake up call. Just like the wake up call with the night in hospital last February, that gave me the kick in the butt I needed to change my weight and fitness. I never dreamed this time last year I could lose the weight I did, get as strong as I have, do the Yogalates poses I’m managing. So, who knows where I’ll go after this wake up call. I’ll be interested this time next year to look back and see.


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Those Chapter One Infodump Blues

Well, I finished the first draft of Cady and Lock’s rewritten chapter one.  It’s not bad. It’s not good either!

The voice and pacing is off. What should be a dramatic opening scene is draggy and slooooooow.

My CPs straight away told me why.

I’ve done my usual thing- too much information. The infodump-in-internal monologue thing. Maybe not quite as bad as it could be- nowhere does it go on for more than a paragraph, and a fairly short one at that. It’s just that there’s a lot of those paragraphs. That’s what’s slowing the pace down. It’s also affecting the voice. The character isn’t there in the present moment when she’s thinking of the past half the time.

I need to go through the draft and use that handy dandy highlighter button in Word. Anything the reader doesn’t need to know right that minute can be marked for cutting.

Okay, these guys have a lot of history. But the reader probably doesn’t need to know it all at once. And some things can be taken as a given. It’s a secret baby story, so chances are good the reader can figure out for themselves Cady and Lock had sex at least once in the past!

I just read a first chapter of a new story from one of my my CPs,  Maisey Yates. It’s easy to see why she is pubbed and I’m not yet. Her chapter zings and sizzles. It gives the same amount of information, just does it differently. It’s dripped in through dialogue, in actions, in snippets of sentences of introspection, not whole paragraphs. Things are hinted at but not fully explained. The difference is obvious! (BTW, the post I link to at Maisey’s site gives a good example of changing character dramatically, with just some tiny tweaks – it’s good!)

I’m also feeling like my heroine isn’t clearly defined enough. We start in her POV, and though her goal is clear and definite I don’t think her character is coming over so well. One difficult issue is her feelings are so confused. She still loves the hero and there’s still that tug of physical attraction, though she’s also angry and resentful over how things ended between them. She’s guilty that she kept their child a secret from him for so long, but believes she did the right thing at the time, the thing that was in everyone’s best interest. She never wants to see him again. but she has to, because she wants something from him, something that will make all the difference for her son. This is what I have to get across in that first chapter, not the details of their history, that can come out later.

 By taking her out of her head and into her emotions, adding in more visceral, gut deep physical reactions, Cady will be far more present on the page. That’s a twofer- stronger characterisation, better pacing, less infodump.

Okay, I think I know how to strengthen this chapter! On to mark it up.

I probably won’t make any changes today, just mark what needs to be changed. Then I can get started on Chapter Two- Lock’s POV. Yum! My feeling is that the partial will hang together better if I wait until I’ve first drafted the three chapters, then edit them up all at once.

Yesterday also gave me a couple of new ideas for later in the story, especially about how the community can play a stronger role. One thing in particular will be a lot of fun. I can see now why Blake Snyder calls that section about a third of the way into the story, early in Act Two, ”Fun and Games”. I didn’t really get it before, but now I see which pieces go there. This is where the subplots are developed, this is where the promise of the story comes out. In this story, it’s the heroine and her son becoming part of the community, and start to become part of a family with Lock, as well as first steps in healing her damaged relationship with her mother. (See the Blake Snyder beatsheet adapted for romance for more explanation of this.)

I love it when all those disconnected puzzle pieces start falling into place!


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Letting go

Today, back to the writing! Lock and Cady’s story needs a load of work doing, and I have homework due tomorrow for the Revision workshop I’m doing.

The revision process is turning out more painful than I expected. At first I thought it wouldn’t be too bad. Seemed like just the partial would need complete rewriting.  The key advice in the rejection letter was -

Unfortunately, in this case, the plot relies to heavily on external forces and secondary characters to bring Cady and Lock together. Everything that happens comes about because of actions taken by other people, not from any decision made by the hero or heroine. For this story to be successful, we’d need to see the characters be more proactive in their lives and their relationship instead of simply reacting to the other people around them.

Okay, that seemed easy enough. Yes, this was a rejection letter, not a revision letter, but I figured I could change it enough that it would be all right for me to resub a new third version of this story to Supers. Sure, I needed a new strongly motivated reason for them to meet again, because both the reason I used in my first draft and the similar reason I used in the subbed version, based on Cady’s mother being ill, weren’t strong enough. I thought what I came up with for the subbed version was stronger, but reading it back in the light of the rejection letter, I know the editor is 100% right.  Still not strong enough. Still not related to their core conflict. If I took that thread out of the plot, it takes nothing but some word count away from the story. The goal that initiated the action linked to the subplot, not to the main romantic plot. So that wasn’t the right goal, wasn’t motivation enough.

Okay, need to come up with a new reason for them to meet again, some goal that would motivate one of them so strongly that they would seek out the other after so long apart, that tied in to their core emotional conflcit- the realtionship between them that ended ten years before. It seemed the heroine needed to be the one with the goal, because she has the most to lose. It’s got to be something important enough to force her back to the home town she hasn’t visited for those ten years, to make her face the man she separated from cruelly, and reveal her biggest secret- she had their son. What could be stronger for a mother than a health problem for her child, making her need to confront the father she never told. 

At the time, I thought this was a brilliantly original idea. Since then, I did a little more investigation and discovered at least one  recent Harlequin Sweet Romance and one recent SuperRomance with similar plot lines. *sigh* Bang goes the “original” theory! But I couldn’t come up with anything else that rang true for this couple, so even if I was going to look derivative, that was what I decided to go with. It worked for these guys. 

Best of all, their core conflict remained the same. The existing partial had to be scrapped, all that lovely writing I’d slaved over and been so proud of. None of those three chapters could be used in the new version. But that wasn’t such a big deal. With the new way into the story, much of chapters four to twelve in my original story could stay. Especially her other secret. Especially those wonderful emotional scenes where she finally reveals this. Those scenes that made me cry as I wrote them and cry when I read them back. They could stay in. They had to stay in.

Except they can’t.

This morning I was ready to carry on with the rewrite of the rewrite of the rewrite of Chapter One, and I realised one of the reasons I am struggling so much with the scene is that I’m having to explain things too much. The decision the heroine made in the past if I leave that plot element is harder to justify.  It’s starting to feel like an unnecessary complication, and that the story will be just as strong if not stronger without it. Maybe there’s enough conflict with the other history they have between them, with the situation in the present with their son. I looked at it the same was as I did the story strand of Cady’s mother’s illness. If I took it out, did the story still stand?

The answer is yes. So it’s definitely an unnecessary complication, something I’m very prone to. At least now I have a sixty second test to tell me. I’ve had a good insight that will help me make the completed story stronger. And I have to cut my best writing of the whole book.

Arrgghhh!

But it’s got to be done, swiftly and surgically. (Possibly, my own current health concerns are affecting my choice of metaphor here!) I can maybe come up with another set of characters where this is their key complication. Maybe those chapters can be tweaked for a different hero and heroine. But they don’t fit Lock and Cady any more. They are excess baggage and have to go!

I’ve heard it described as “killing your darlings”. I Googled the phrase and found an excellent blog post by Love Inspired author Brenda Coulter. Like me, she writes a discover draft first. She describes her writing process -

They say a sculptor views a block of marble, imagines a statue, and then chips away every bit of stone that isn’t the statue, thus revealing the work of art. That’s how I write. My “block of marble” is the first draft of my story, which tends to be at least thirty percent and often fifty percent longer than the 55,000 words my editor wants. But that’s fine. I take that draft and patiently chip away everything that isn’t my story. I am a ruthless scene-killer, an unremorseful conversation condenser, a wild-eyed wielder of the Delete key. I used to save some of the better quality material that I cut, just in case I wanted it later. But I never did want it, so I no longer save it. There’s plenty more good stuff where that came from. If I change my mind and want to reinsert a deleted scene, I just write it again and make it even better than last time.

Is it a waste of my time to write so much more than I know I’m going to use? No, because all writing is practice for more and better writing.

“Killing your darlings” is what many writers call deleting paragraphs, scenes, and even chapters that they’ve spent hours creating–all for nothing, they often believe. But a writer who can’t stomach killing any of her darlings is not focusing on the big picture: her story as a whole. You may hate cutting scenes that are hilarious or poignant or suspenseful, but to be a good writer, you must do exactly that. If anything that you’ve written, no matter how beautifully, doesn’t move your story along, it will bog your story down. By saving your “darlings,” you might be killing your story.

Here’s a writing tip some of you might be able to use: After finishing your first draft, find the highlighting tool in your word processor and then start reading, using the highlighter to indicate all of the sentences, paragraphs, and scenes that are absolutely essential to your story. (I use a yellow highlighter to remind myself that those parts of the story are “golden.”) When you finish, delete everything that isn’t highlighted. Save it in a Dead Darlings file if that makes you feel better, but I predict that after a while you’ll stop bothering with that.

Now you’re left with nothing but story. Your manuscript is still in very rough form, but there’s not a boring bit in there because you’ve taken all of the irrelevant stuff out. Now you’re ready to revise and polish. I go through many drafts on a book, so I do a highlighting pass after finishing my first draft, then do it again when I’m nearly finished with the manuscript. After some more tweaking and polishing, I use the highlighting tool a third and final time. When the manuscript is all golden, I’m finished. (Two notes: First, the highlighter is invaluable to me because except during that first pass, I’m not starting at Page One and progressing to the end of the manuscript. I jump around, working on whatever scenes and chapters I’m in the mood to work on. The highlighting tells me what I’ve finished and what still needs to be looked at. And second, on the last highlighting run I’m just deleting words and sentences, not whole paragraphs and scenes. It’s all pretty painless by that time.)

I love every part of the writing process, but bringing a story home–making that final pass with my yellow highlighter and assuring myself that every sentence, paragraph, scene, and chapter is “golden” satisfies my writer’s heart on the deepest level.

I’m not sure I could be quite that brave (maybe I’ll save a copy of the original draft, just in case!), but it sounds like something that could work for me.

Anyway, wish me luck as I go off to “kill my darlings”. First task  – taking any allusions to the issue out of chapter one and seeing how I can strengthen and deepen what I’m left with.

Back an hour later to add- another aha moment! I edited my synopsis, and realised I am wrong about the theme of the story- it’s not about secrets blocking love at all. It’s about coming home, and about following our oldest truest dreams.


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Announcing Autumn!

Well, I did a post over at our group blog Seven Sassy Sisters today introducing the new me, so I guess I’d better do a post here as well to christen the new blog.

To say I am humbled and awed by some of the responses to my recent posts there and at my old blog Waiting for the Call would be an understatement.

I am feeling so encouraged, blessed, and inspired by the support, honesty, and courage of other writers who’ve replied. It’s a wonderful thing.

The story so far- I’ve always wanted to write, but that dream got sidetracked while I chased other dreams, some of which I succeeded in, some of which I failed at spectacularly. Then in December 2007, when I realised one very large dream was never going to come true, I am a decision to rediscover writing, to commit myself to becoming the best romance writer I could be, with a  long term goal of early retirement from the Day Job and making my living from writing. I was mulberry on many blogs and forums, Waiting for the Call on my own blog, and Jane Mulberry Jones on the group blog. I clocked up six rejections from Harlequin Mills and Boon, made some great online friends,  and learned a lot along the way.

Now, I’ve decided to reinvent myself. I realised none of the ways I was being present on the web really reflected all of me, and particularly weren’t reflecting the person I wanted to be. Me the writer, me the reader, me the nurse, me the wife and lover, me the creative vegan cook, me the successful dieter, me the lagenlook clothing designer and dressmaker, me the online bookseller, me the natural homebuilder, me the woman scared spitless over a breast lump.

I thought about the blogs I like the most and realised they weren’t just single topic blogs. Those writers didn’t just talk about their stories or their writing, they talked about recipes, kids, holidays, families, and personal issues too. Blogs like Trish Wylie’s used to be, like Shirley Jump’s is now (and how she stays so slim with all those fab recipes is a mystery, she must just burn it up working so hard!).

So in between the Day Job, writing, and hospital visits for the “unusual” breast lump, I’ve been doing a workshop on Online Persona at Shrinking Violets Promotions. One of the comments on a post there read-

it isn’t so much a case of putting on a mask as taking one off. Instead of pretending to be someone else, we’re really being the person we would love to be if those who know us in Real Life wouldn’t lift their eyebrows and say, “What’s gotten into her?”

I realised I want my new blog to reflect all of me. To be the me I can’t always be in Real Life, where things are more compartmentalised, where the me I am at work isn’t at all the me I am with my husband and is different again from the me I am when I’m all alone. So it won’t just be writing and reading, it will include sewing, recipes, cats, travels, and some bits of Real Life as well. I’m kinda scared my quirkiness and many interests will just seem downright odd, that I’ll seem too scattered, but I’m hoping it will work.

That’s going to be one of my themes, actually, being our own quirky lovable selves no matter what other people might think. Not just being quirky, celebrating our unique quirks! As well as coming home, sustaining love, and keeping on growing. And keeping a positive attitude, not in an ostrich position way, but in a true Pollyanna glad game way- acknowledging that though a situation sucks, we can find the thing to be grateful for in that.

I want my blog, like my writing,  to be a feel-good celebration of life, love, and home, whatever that means to each of us.

I hope that you will feel welcome to visit and share here.

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