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Monthly Archives: January 2012


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Story planning, step 281(feels like!)

Well, I had a breakthrough on my story yesterday. Finally figured out why it’s so dull and lifeless and plodding and I’m having to force myself to write instead of coming to it with enthusiasm, all bright eyed and bushy tailed and raring to go.

Pretty basic and straightforward really- there’s no conflict between the characters. The heroine has a goal, and the hero is helping her get it. And yes, they are attracted and there are all sorts of reasons they shouldn’t act on that, but it’s not enough. I have NO external conflict.

I read this article by Michael Hauge on writing romance. It’s geared for scriptwriting, but it works for books too. Seems that what he’s giving there is a roadmap to character based plotting for romance. His view of story really works, IMO. It is a kind of synthesis of all the thinking about story I like best. Please do read the article if you haven’t already seen it!

Anyway, these were the words that resonated with me-

The hero(ine) must pursue some additional visible desire.
Pursuing two goals simultaneously adds originality to the story and accelerates the pace. And when the hero(ine)’s two desires inevitably come into opposition (as I will discuss momentarily), the conflict is increased, along with the audience’s emotional involvement.

The romance character must create obstacles to both the hero(ine)’s desires. Without conflict between the hero(ine) and romance, your screenplay will lack the emotion necessary to sustain the story.

So he looks at romances as a two goal story. The outer desire is the external goal the character starts off with. Then the second goal develops in the course of the story- winning the love of the other character. What mine missed was that Tom wasn’t in any way a block to her external goal, creating the garden. He was a helper, when for real conflict he needs to be a hinderance.

I’ve worked out how to do it, I think. It’s obvious when I look at my set up- I looked in the wrong place for the hero. Yes, he’s going to help her recover from the disaster that threatens her fledgling garden design business, but he’s also going to be the cause of the disaster, dealing with his own serious business problems.

It works. The basic situation is pretty much the same, but the difference in the hero’s background adds loads more drama and conflict. It lets my heroine, who feels kind of wishy-washy at the moment, be more proactive instead of reactive. She’s not sitting around asking for help, she’s got to go out and demand it, and find her Ladyballs in the process!

But it means an almost complete rewrite. Actually, it will probably be easier to rewrite than try jigsawing in the pieces that are
kind-of-usuable-with-some-editing, anyway. And I’m almost certain it’s going to need to be a longer story, at least 20 to 30K, maybe 40K. Trying to develop a believable romance that the characters would make sacrifices for, from a first meeting to HEA in under 15K was never going to work, anyway.

So no chance of meeting the Spring Fling deadline of 1 February. But I think as long as I sub it by the end of Feb, mid-March at the latest, it may still be saleable as a story for this Spring/ early Summer. If not, well there’s next year.

*big sigh* Back to the beginning again.

I’m learning something else about my writing process. I write my way in, yes. A lot of my first two chapters is really backstory that won’t need to be in the completed story.  But it goes further than that. I also often don’t discover what the real conflict is until I’m at least 10 k into the story, or even 20K. Then I get to a point where I know I need to stop and rethink, even if it means having to throw away what I have so far and start over.

I can see what happens. I manufacture a conflict to get me started, but I don’t know the characters well enough at that stage to really know their conflict. I have to write enough to get to know them. That’s when I find out what the conflict really is.

With this change in the hero’s background and how they meet, her inner relationship issues remain the same but are intensified. And he actually has some, when he didn’t that much to begin with. He’s become a much more rounded and developed character. What I’m seeing now is the deeper emotional blocks that lie underneath the obvious superficial internal conflict I manufactured. The characters are real enough now to tell me what their issues are. I’ve created them well enough that the conflict comes from who they are, not from me imposing it on them. So creating more EXTERNAL conflict actually works to deepen their internal conflicts.

I don’t want to start over. But my story will be better for it.

This rewrite could be fun!


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Story of my Life- and this time, the fear isn’t winning

So that was yesterday. I meant to post it yesterday, and didn’t, but without it, today’s real post won’t make sense!

After starting off so positive and optimistic, the day went downhill. I felt so irritable and upset all day. I wanted to cry, my eyes had that prickling behind them all day. Bit I didn’t cry. I wanted to drink, blot it out and forget it. But I didn’t. I did get angry and shout at my husband. I did spit the dummy and throw a mini tantrum with the girls in the group. I had an upset gut, too.

I really have no idea what it was about. Arthur annoyed me, but I think that’s a symptom, not  a cause. I got some hassle from my future boss about resigning at work the day before, which may have stirred up some ambivalence. It’s probably the anniversary of one of the miscarriages, and I always feel upset then and don’t know why.

But I think what it’s really all about is my fear I won’t make it as a writer. Leaving the Day Job means I’m confronting my deepest dream and my deepest fear too- that I’m just not good enough. The cost of being a heroine in one’s own life is failing. Taking the risk and it not working out. That’s why it’s hard, after the Black Moment. They know they have to do it, do this huge thing with no guarantee of success, because if they don’t they’ll be living a life half lived.

That’s where I’m at now. I’m preparing. I’m doing what I can now to make it work.

But I can’t know it’s going to work out. There’s every reason to think it won’t. All I have to show for three years of serious but part-time writing is a string of hot-mess manuscripts and an equal string of rejections. I see other writers who I know write far better than me, and they still haven’t had an acceptance. Boy, am I scared.

Failing at this will gut and fillet me just as bad as the miscarriages did. The dream of being a writer is as strong and  as deep and as much a part of me as the dream of being a mother. I think I’ve had those two dreams for about as long, and wanted them about as much.

I don’t know how I will survive losing this dream as well. I will, of course, but it’s going to hurt, bad. Going from the relative comfort of a couldabeen, being able to tell myself if only I’d had more time/ more money/ started sooner/ whatever excuse de jour I want to use, to knowing I gave it my best shot and still couldn’t do it. That failure’s going to eat its acid right down to my bones and bleach them  so clean there’ll be no pickings even for the doubt crows.

Because at that stage, there will be no doubt. It will be official. I suck at writing. I gave it all I could and I still couldn’t do it.

Of course, chances are it won’t be like that. I do write well enough to be published, somewhere. It will simply be matter of working my way down to the very smallest epubs. Or there’s self-publishing if it comes to it. I probably won’t be able to make enough money to support my household from writing, but I may make enough to only ever need to work outisde the home part time. That’s a kind of success. Not quite what I want, but it would be enough. But I’m still scared, scared deep in my guts.

There’s a part of me who sees its job as being to protect me and keep me safe from anything scary and potentially hurtful. And it’s making the fear and anxiety worse by telling me not to do it, in that protective parent voice. “Don’t do it, you might get hurt, it’s not safe, why take the chance?”

I’m taking the chance because I have to. If I don’t prove myself now, when will I?

Interesting that my current story has a heroine in a similar situation. She’s coming out of a marriage to a much older man. He was far from intentionally abusive, but he did overprotect her and control her. She’s feeling that same need to prove herself. Not so much to anyone else, but to herself. She married him young, almost straight out of school, and gave up her dreams.

I didn’t have an external protector stopping me from doing what I wanted, like Lissa did, but I did listen too much to the voice of my internal protector. At school, I had teachers who encouraged me, told me how well I wrote, told me I should submit things. I did, but the first few rejections had me running for cover. At home, I had my parents telling me I was stupid, I didn’t write well enough to make a living from writing, that was just a dream but I had to live in the real world.

So safety and security won. I got a secure, sensible job. Then in my late twenties, I eased back on work for a while to study English and Creative Wriring at uni. Again, I had encouraging teachers, telling me my writing was good and I should submit. Fear won totally that time. I didn’t ever submit anything, and in the end I dropped out of the course without completing third year. Do not pass go, do not collect $200.

In my thirties, I tried again. I’d always loved romance and wanted to write for Mills and Boon, so I started on some stories. Actually, looking back at them, my ideas were pretty good. Very focused on external conflict, but stories then were. But I never got further than the second chapter on any of them. They weren’t “good enough” so I gave up. After a couple of goes, I gave up completely. Now I can say- “Of course they weren’t good enough, they were fricking first draft!” But back then, I didn’t know writers edited! I’d got my way through high school and being an A student at University subbing first draft. I grew up with a father who kept telling me if I couldn’t get it right first time, I should give up because I clearly had no talent or ability.

That’s why I loved it when I heard about the 10,000 hour rule. Sure, some people have natural talent. But most people can learn to do almost anything they choose well if they work at it hard enough. So at 48, I started  writing again, with a goal of getting published by fifty. Um, not quite.

But for my 52nd birthday, I’m giving myself the biggest gift I can.

The gift of time to write. The gift of space to prove I can do it. The gift of facing those fears, once and for all, even if it means that Protective Parent inside me has to be bound and gagged and locked in the Cellar. Or, cos I’m not really a violent person, sent on holiday to the Bahamas to lie around poolside with sunshine and cocktails on tap and cute cabana boys to ogle.

And I’m going to stay home and write. No Day Job from Hell to stop me. No more excuses. Just me and writing.

Scares the shit out of me.

And I’m going to do it.


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Big decisions- leaving the Day Job

Here I am again. Feeling relaxed and pressured simultaneously at the start of five days off, with the sixth day being the deadline to sub the Spring Fling. I’m really wondering if I should forget about the deadline.

I’m not really going to forget it, but I’m not going to make it the be-all-and-end-all. If I have a good enough story by Wednesday, great, I’ll send it. If it’s not good enough and I know there is still more I can do to make it better, I won’t send it. Of course, I know there will ALWAYS be something that can be done to make a story better and that’s the perfect procrastinator’s excuse.

But the trick is, if I KNOW how I could make it better- like “If I rewrite that scene and move that scene there and have them do this…”, or “I need to strengthen her motivation in that scene, what she does doesn’t make sense”- I do it. If it’s just that vague this-isn’t-right feeling (especially if the girls aren’t coming up with anything either), then I sub. Easy as that.

I am aware of tension though. My hands and shoulders are tight. I have stomach pain. I’m sure it will be better when I leave work and that pressure is removed. The guy who will be my new boss after July called yesterday and tried to talk me out of it. My ambivalance may get stronger, not better, as the time gets nearer, especially as other people are feeding into it.

But the plan still is- I save as much as I can while I’m still working there (and don’t beat myself up for all the money I HAVEN’T saved while I was working there, all the things I bought that I am now selling on ebay), have three months break to write full time, then I’ll probably need to find part-time work two or three days a week tops. No more than thirty hours, ideally less than twenty four, and close to home. So I’m swapping fifty six hours out of the house for no more than thirty four.

There’s at least twenty hours a week more writing time straight away.

And because I won’t be constantly so exhausted (I hope!), I will be more focused, more productive, more able to reach my writing goals. That’s the theory, anyway. I do believe it will be the reality.

I want to review that short course I did at Savvy on becoming a full-time writer. The main issue for me is that I’m in a very different position to many people contemplating or doing the same move. It’s not the same when the spouse is earning fifty K to my situation, where once I give up the Day Job there’s the prospect of no money at all coming into the house. That really does change things, big time.

I have a lot to learn. About other ways to make money without a “job”. About marketing and promotion. About writing more short pieces, articles and the like to get tiny bits of money coming in. There is a lot I can be doing right now. I need to be doing more than just writing, towards building my writing career. I need to be learning. I need to be researching markets. I need to be looking at other options. I need to be building a platform. So much to do!

And in it all, I need to not lose track of what it’s all about. The writing. Story. The joy of creating characters who come to life and move and talk and breathe and fall in love despite all the reasons they shouldn’t. Helping those people find their way to their HEA. Hopefully, writing stories to make readers feel good, stories they will close with a sigh.

That’s what I want more of. That’s what it’s all about.


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Marrying the Muse

I need to break out of being so self-critical, but I also need to free something my writing is lacking, and that’s liveliness, spark, spontaneity. I’m writing too much out of my conscious mind and not going deeper and connecting with my unconscious and subconscious, where the Muse lives in glittering caves lined with crystals, deep underground. Oddly, she’s all in purple and the crystals are amethyst, though I suspect they change colour.

LOL that I can see her there, now I need to let her speak instead of overruling her all the time and telling her what I think she should say. I do need to write wild. Write down the bones. Let myself write those silly and crazy first drafts like I used to. Because that’s where the good story is. That’s where the interesting stuff is.

I can see what’s happened. This is part of my writer’s journey. I wrote this wild and crazy stuff just for myself to start with. Then I tried to edit it into something else, or wrote something from scratch to fit a particular box. Because I told myself I wanted to write for this line, or enter that contest, so the story had to fit a specific shape. But what I’ve done was write with my editing brain in control, or force a story to be something it never was meant to be.

This means dead writing. Staid formal writing. Writing that lies on the page like a killed butterfly pinned down by a collector. Compare that to the beauty of the live butterfly flying free. That’s what I’ve been doing to my creativity. Pinning it to the page and expecting it to fly.

Ain’t gonna happen. That butterfly there on the page is dead, killed, an ex-butterfly. No miracle or electric current or blue parrot sketch can resurrect her once the life has been pulled out of her.

The problem with a lot of my writing now is, the life was never there to begin with. I’m writing totally from my head and not from my heart and guts and genitals. I don’t know how but I need to reconnect with that wild creative self who wrote for fun. And still keep what I’ve learned about craft.

The main reason I lost touch with that part of me and started writing from my head was because I could see what she produced was fun to write, but unsaleable. I wanted to sell my writing, so it needed to change. As it was, I had no structure. No cohesiveness. No real plot, no cause and effect, just stuff happening. Yes there were some fun lines and some good scenes, but it wasn’t really a story.

That was a big issue that needed fixing. My characters didn’t have goals or motivation, things changed in their lives they had to deal with, but their best goal was usually just to get things back to where they were. Which is a good enough goal, but doesn’t always work so well in a story. Passive characters aren’t so engaging, aren’t so sympathetic. My story people need to want something, bad. So I need to understand goals and motivation and how that feeds into conflict, both internal and external.

I always write my way in. Just gotta accept that and work with that. Don’t stop first draft to fix things. Just accept that I’ll need to ditch or at least heavily cut the first one or two chapters. I do want to write stories that will get editors reading beyond the first two pages! I need to understand starting a story with a bang, with characters immediately in conflict- wanting something and meeting obstacles.

But that doesn’t need to be there in my first draft. My characters went on strike and refused to talk to me for days when I looked at my first couple of chapters and said they had to be cut. They sulked. It took me another week, when I could have got the whole first draft of the novella done if I’d kept writing, to figure out how to start the story. I still don’t know I have it right. Where I went wrong there was not respecting my writing style. I did it wrong last time too. I can’t write polished first draft and tidy it up as I go. I know writers who can, and write superbly. I just can’t.

Or I end up doing what I did last time, submitting something with a first chapter that’s well written and beautifully polished but that isn’t really story. It’s backstory. It might work in a single title (and maybe it wouldn’t there either), but it definitely doesn’t work in a category novella! I imagine the lovely editor stopped reading after three or four pages when the story still hadn’t started.

I can see what I need, a marriage. The wild and crazy feminine muse needs to be given space to do her thing. The red pencil wielding male editor needs to take care of her. He needs to make sure she’s fed and housed and kept safe. He needs to set some boundaries, to stop her going too far off track, but they need to be loose ones.

And once she’s created first draft, he gets his turn with the story. He’s wise enough to know he has to shut up while she’s spinning her yarn and weaving it into fabric. He knows his job is to cut it into shape and piece it into what it’s supposed to be. If he messes with the weaving process, he’ll just produce a mess. If he waits till she’s done her work and hands it over to him, he can take that raw material and turn it into all it has the potential to be. And she lets him, because she sees that both their skills are needed to produce true beauty.

I think many writers do this instinctively, it can feel like it happens all at once. Or they write a chapter, then cut and shape it. But it looks like and feels and sounds to me like I need to do it as separate processes.

They both still need to grow and develop. She needs to channel her wildness. She needs to be willing to come out to play more often, be less temperamental and capricious. He needs to be less controlling, more nurturing. He needs to learn how to cut and shape and form the raw material better so he’s not cutting all the beauty out of the fabric. Too often he tries to turn a soft fluid fabric that will make a gorgeous draped dress into a boxy structured jacket!

I like that marriage metaphor. I like the sewing metaphor. I’m a sewist, so it makes sense to me- I’ve done that using the wrong fabric thing too many times and ended up with something unwearable, just plain wrong, too wrong to be rescued.

The wonderful thing about writing is- it I cut and shape it wrong, I still have that raw first draft to go back to any try again. I can give it a different shape  If the story gets rejected by one editor, they may accept a total rewrite and resubmit, even it they did a flat rejection not an R & R. Or there are other lines at the same publisher, or other publishers.

Fabric, not so forgiving. I’ve rescued things that went wrong, cut off sleeves and resewn them, on used the fabric to make something completely different, like cutting a top out of a dress that just didn’t work. I can’t make it bigger than it was, only smaller.

Sometimes with writing there are stories that can’t be fixed as they are. Sometimes instead of slogging on, it’s about knowing when to stop. But the time for that isn’t first draft. For me, first drafts need to be lightning drafts, written fast and messy and furious. They need to be finished, even if editor mind is standing there tapping his red pencil telling me “This is crap.”

I need to tell him to shut the f up. Get back to doing his job, and let me do mine. Write the mess. He can steer me back in the right direction if I’m getting too far off course, but he can’t criticise. He has to trust that the creative self knows what she’s doing.

Interesting right now I relate to the creative self. She is “me” now, because I’m first drafting. I will have to let him be “me” next week when I’m editing.

I love this adventure!


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The “big sekrit” as romantic conflict?

Sorry if that last post didn’t make any sense! It was a big oopsie!

I cut and pasted some stuff from an email to save for a future blog post and must have hit Publish instead of Save as Draft! Bugger!

Now I better finish it, but I’m supposed to be writing.

*wail*

Actually, my characters are being seriously uncooperative. That’s what I get for telling them I’d chop the first two chapters, where first she then he gives us some backstory thinly disguised as stuff happening. Their first meeting is in chapter two, and I’m sad to cut that, but I do need to find a better way to get straight into the story. Novellas don’t have the luxury of a slow start.

Though Michael Hauge and The Hero’s Journey both say it’s necessary to start with the character’s Ordinary World first, so the reader understands and empathises with them BEFORE  things start changing forever, that’s difficult in romance, where the expectation is that the hero and heroine will be on the page and in conflict as soon as possible. Even more so in a novella.

For these shorter stories, I somehow need to work out how to do that in a paragraph or less. Definitely no more than a page.

Anyway, Tom and Lissa have retaliated for me telling them I’d cut things by stopping talking to me. I managed to scrape up a few hundred more words the last few days, but the story isn’t flowing. So maybe taking time out to write a blog post isn’t such a bad thing. But I hope they are there and alive and wanting to talk and ready to play when I can start to write later today.

Must remember- first draft first, THEN edit!

Now, this post doesn’t relate so much to the story in working on, which is why I intended to save it until I was writing and rewriting on that does. But here, there aren’t any Big Sekrits used as a plot device to keep the characters apart. In my attempt to keep it simple for a short novella, Tom and Liss have a very obvious thing making it unlikely a relationship would work- an eighteen year age difference.

But I do use the Big Sekrit frequently enough to have noticed a problem with using this as conflict. Unless the secret is a bloody good one and the character has good enough reason not to tell it, the telling can seem anticlimactic. The last thing I want is for a reader to get to the Black Moment and think “What the heck, is that all? She could have told him that a hundred pages ago!”

My last rejected novella, Morgan and Tash’s story, has two sorts of secrets. The heroine left town ten years before without telling him why, and there’s another reason that’s developed since then that means she believes she can’t be with him now. And in my longer romance from the Haven Bay series, Lock and Cady’s story, it all hinged on a secret from her past she was keeping, the reason she left him nine years earlier and meant they could be together now but she couldn’t be truly intimate with him.

Anyway, my CPs were talking about character secrets in general one day last week. Maisey said this-

 I think it’s actually good practice to get the secret out so you can find out what the real, deep conflict is without that in the way.

Very wise! How she gets to be so awesomely knowledgeable about writing at half my age I dunno, but she is.

She says she has to make jokes about BJs the rest of the time to keep the cosmic balance. Maybe that’s right. I’m not so wise, so I don’t need to be so funny either!

The point is, telling the secret earlier can mean the conflict can go even deeper. Telling forces the character to go even further out of their comfort zone to deal with what’s under the secret. Because of course there HAS to be another layer under the secret, feelings of guilt, shame, grief, inadequacy,whatever. It there wasn’t, they wouldn’t be keeping it a secret. 

My stories too often hinge on a Big Sekrit, and I don’t handle the reveal as well as I could. Too many missed opportunities for digging deep into emotion. mainly because I do hang on to those secrets too long.

I’m not sure the other character always needs to know the secret early on. But maybe the reader does, so they can empathise and understand where the character is coming from. There at least have to be hints they have a secret, or the Big Sekrit Reveal as black moment is as unreal and unbelievable for the reader as the character suddenly developing a new superpower ten pages from the end that solves all their problems.

And if a secret is the trigger for the black moment, it had better be BIG. Just plain ordinary big isn’t enough. It has to be huge, earth shattering, the sort of secret someone would die rather than tell. The sort of secret a sane person would throw away the best relationship of their life to hang on to. Or the sort of secret  their equally sane partner would consider ending the relationship over. Thaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat big.

It’s it isn’t that big, maybe it’s better to tell it earlier. Time to dig deeper. Because if the secret isn’t huge enough to risk the love of a lifetime over, there has to be something else hiding underneath it that is.


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Still procrastinating… and a new writing tool to share soon

Having a bit of a posting frenzy at present. Partly down to finding a lot of writing stuff coming out when I’m doing my morning pages at 750words, mainly because I’m procrastinating. Sorry if it seems self-indulgent, maybe it does. I also know so many writers feel the same, and I’m hoping posting it will help someone else.

I ended up listening to the two Michael Hauge recordings from the 2011 RWA conference yesterday instead of writing.

Excellent stuff and I highly recommend them. All about the transformational character arc and how that affects plot. I’ve made a chart for character arc based on the journey from identity to essence that I think is a good tool. I plan to do a full blog post on the workshops and post the chart here in case anyone else finds it useful. I used the chart for Tom and Liss last night and it helped me see what was happening for her emotionally more clearly.

Just to prove I’m not 100% procrastinating, I’m not doing that today. It would be too tempting to spend hours writing up a post on what I learned and write nothing on the story!

No excuses for not writing today. I literally didn’t write a word on the story yesterday, so it’s the 16th today and it’s still not started! I know I can get something finished in time, but I hoped this time to make it something that could actually be saleable!

*sigh* I’m going to end up the only one in my writing group who’s unpublished. I’ll be glad for them, when all my CPs soon get their Calls, but I am going to feel sooooo left behind. Making myself feel sad thinking about it. This is supposed to be motivating, not demotivating!

Actually, it’s supposed to be honest.

Maybe if I write all my fears out here, I can have the courage to keep doing it, knowing failure is probable and knowing failure will hurt like hell.

Yes, it’s true, I’m shit scared of writing and subbing again, because each successive rejection hurts more. I’m procrastinating starting the story because then I can kid myself that I only subbed first draft so of course it was rejected. I can kid myself that if I’d really worked at it and subbed something polished, I would have been accepted. Actually subbing something polished kinda blows that one out of the water. So don’t do it, at all costs! Keep delaying until there’s no way I can sub something other than dreck. Keep those delusions intact.

Okay, that’s coming from identity, my false self-protective front (you can see I listened to those Michael Hauge tapes yesterday). I need to find the courage to step into essence, the truth of who I am. To put the best writing I can out there, knowing how much it will kill me when it’s rejected. Because that’s the only way to get through to the other side, to start earning money from this. I need to be the heroine in my own story.

Today, I have to write.

Most of the problem is fear. A bit of the problem is that I still have Morgan and Tash in my head. Not so much now though. I mainly thought of Tom and Liss yesterday. Though oddly enough this morning, it’s Morgan and Tash again.

Or not so oddly. My mind being self-protective again. Identity is misguided, but always logical in what it does. What could be more self-protective (in a kidding-myself-I’m-still-making-progress way) than to have me working on Morgan and Tash. A story that can’t be subbed anywhere until later in the year because it’s a seasonal story for Valentine’s Day?

Ticks all the boxes. I’m writing. I’m learning and growing, because I’m fixing a rejected story. Oooh, I can feel so good about myself. And I’m delaying the risk of being hurt for at least nine months. Perfect! So much better than working on the story that most likely will be rejected next month.

So much crap!

Target for today- start Liss and Tom. So what if I don’t know where to begin, just start the frigging thing. Write badly and write fast, just get this story moving! I could get a third of it done today, hell, if I really got myself moving I could write half of it today and the other half tomorrow. It’s only got to be ten to fifteen thousand, after all, and I’ve done 6K days before.

This time I need to write fast first draft, so I can see early if there’s something structurally wrong with it. I need to get the story blurted out so I have enough time to fix what will inevitably be wrong with it. I have to let it be okay to write drecky first draft, much as it pains me. I have to just do it, despite the fear that’s making all my muscles tight and my joints ache and my guts tie themselves in knots.

Because writing and subbing is the only way out and through.

I have to laugh at myself. I’m making such a big deal of this.

But actually, it is a big deal. There’s another alternative to facing the fear and writing. This is one of those times when it would be so easy to give up. I haven’t kept count but I’m sure I’m way past ten rejections now. Hell, I gave up numerous times in the past just because I couldn’t get the first chapter right. So many failed attempts in my twenties and thirties, that only failed because I didn’t stay with it and keep going.

Well, okay, they may have failed even if I did keep going and sub them, that self-protective little Give-Up-Now voice in my head is saying. I’ll never know.

I do know I’m not ready to give up yet. Today, I write.


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Resistance

Arrgghh! I shouldn’t be blogging, I should be writing story.  I’m not writing. I want to, but I’m not. I’m avoiding it, any way I can.

I had huge plans for how much writing I would get done, as I have a four day weekend. The idea was, I’d have a rough first draft of the new novella by Tuesday night, so I had twelve days to edit it up and hopefully sub something far better than last time.

But I’m resisting starting it.

I have a pretty good idea of the characters and their conflict. I have a few pages of a plan for what happens, almost up to the black moment. I can even see the resolution. It’s not quite clear to me which one of them triggers the black moment, but I figure that will get clearer as I write. I suspect it’s Lissa, the heroine, but I want to leave room for them to surprise me as I write, too!

It’s now noon on Sunday, and not a word has been written.

I have loads of good excuses. I had to spend most of the day with my MiL yesterday. I have lots of cooking to do, because I’m on this funky diet and I can’t eat anything at all pre-processed, everything has to be prepared from scratch. I had the car insurance to sort out. I need to list some more items on ebay for my sell-five-things-a-week decluttering plan. A sneaky little voice is telling me not to bother with writing today, start tomorrow. But tomorrow there will be other excuses, like the things I sell on ebay today that need to be packed and posted!

What I really need is to deal with my resistance to starting the new story. I suspect the root cause is not wanting to get another rejection so soon. That would really confirm for me what I secretly fear. That I’m a crap writer who is never going to make it.

Of course, not writing so I can’t sub makes that an absolute certainty!

Now maybe I could get away with not writing today. I could let myself off, do some learning instead, like listening to those MP3s of the sessions Michael Hauge gave at RWA. Or seeing my pacing sucked so bad in my last story, read up on how to fix pacing problems. I have no excuses tomorrow though, I just have to write.

Or maybe I should make myself overcome this resistance and just start. Possibly once I get a few pages into the story the story itself will pull me in and make me keep going.

The thought of starting makes me feel sick. I want to cry. I’ve never had resistance this bad before.

Yet I look at the collage I did for the story and  see the characters and their conflict and I know I have the seeds of a good story here. How hard can it be to first draft twelve or fifteen thousand words on these people?

It’s not anything to do with this story that’s stopping me getting started. It’s bigger and deeper. My deeper fear is that it’s not my characters that are the real issue. It’s not conflict that’s the real issue. It’s not pacing that’s the real issue. My fear is- it’s my voice that’s getting me rejected. The essence of who I am as a writer. I can get everything else right but if readers (editors) hate my voice, I have no chance.

I don’t know what I can do about the fear there’s something basically unacceptable about my writing.

Only one thing I can do. Just write despite that sick feeling that has my gut clenched and my shoulders tight. Just write the best story I can. Just sub that story and hope for the best

Because I have to live with that fear. Unless I send in stories with everything else right, I’ll never know the answer.

I don’t think I’m the only one with this worry underlying everything else. I’m wondering, how do other writers deal with it?


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Living today

Read an awesome first chapter to a novella today.

Not mine, one of my CPs Jackie’s. Oh my, that woman can write! It’s strong, it’s sexy, it’s raw, it’s emotional. It doesn’t just hook the reader, it grabs them by the throat and drags them into the story.

In other words, it’s bloody good!

It also made me see where my recently rejected novella went wrong. Too nice and ladylike. Too in their heads and not in their hearts, guts, and gonads.

Of course, mine is more of a sweet. I won’t ever write like Jackie. I’d just reread Donna Alward’s One Dance with the Cowboy and the tone and language and emotion is more like that. After experimenting with trying to write hotter and more Presents/ Modern Heat-ish, I know the sweeter writing is more natural to me.

But maybe it’s too sweet, too wimpish emotionally. Not that Donna’s is, but I don’t write as well as Donna does! I haven’t dug deep enough into the potential for emotion that’s there in my story. It’s all too introspective, with not enough visceral reaction to each other.

The tone is a kind of messy mishmash, too. Because it’s slow to start, a bit lacking in emotion, the lovemaking scene is definitely warm not hot, but perhaps a little more than most sweet stories would have, then I have this one fairly strong scene that really doesn’t fit the overall tone and may even be offensive to some readers. Not sex, it’s to do with the heroine’s sick Dad. It’s realistic, but maybe too much so to fit the rest of the story.

I’m worried with I make it stronger and rawer right through though that I will fall completely between two stools and miss both the sweet market and the more modern market. I’ll write a story that no-one will ever want to read. Well, what the heck, I think I have already! So I need to make it stronger, grittier, more emotional, while staying true to my overall voice.

Need to strengthen her motivation, both to run away in the past and to not let the present relationship develop. I think I know how to do that. It’s all to do with her issues around being abandoned by her Mum and taken in by her Dad, who certainly cared for her as best he could, but not very well. So she’s determined to prove to herself she’s not like her Mum, and she won’t abandon her dad when he has serious health problems. Yet from Morgan’s POV, she abandoned him ten years before.

He needs to tell her that. He needs to be angrier with her. There needs to be a bit more raw emotion and rough edges. It’s all too nice and polite.

I should of course, be working on my Spring Fling. But reading Jackie’s chapter showed me an edge this story was missing. Also, the power of diving straight into the conflict rather than going for a slower entry into the story. She whams her characters together and into conflict from the first line. While my first chapter is nicely written and sets the scene but it doesn’t grab the reader and hurl them straight into the story like Jackie’s does. It hints at conflict, that doesn’t eventuate till the next chapter, and is wimpy when it does!

Mine is put-down-able. Jackie’s grabs the reader by the shirt-front and drags them in.

*sigh* Getting the feeling I’ll never get this right.

I will, of course. It’s all learning. That’s all it is. Learn from every rejection, and keep learning. I really need to work on Pacing. I saw an email for a workshop on it, but I want to save more money (so I can leave the Day Job!) and spending $30 on a workshop doesn’t sit easy with that. Maybe I have a book I can read on it.

Or maybe I can just apply what I’ve learned on this one to my Spring Fling and to editing Morgan and Tash when the time comes.

It’s all learning and growing and keeping on and not giving up, ever. That’s what will get me there. It’s hard at times. But I need to keep the faith. Faith in myself. Faith that I can do this. At least I hope I can. I hope I’m not kidding myself and I have no chance at all of ever writing anything someone else would want to read.

I have to believe it will happen. I can have that dream, of the house and the garden and the chooks and the fruit trees and the veggie garden and the writing room I spend most of my day working in, and people actually paying to read my stories. 

But I can’t live in that future dream. My husband had an aunt, who sacrificed everything in her life, even marriage to a good man who loved her deeply. to stay in her secure London job and build up the best pension plan she could. She didn’t have much of a life, but she didn’t mind. She planned to live her life after she retired. Problem was, she retired with her big pension fund, bought her little house in the country, and promptly died.

I don’t want that to be me, giving up my present quality of life for dreams of happiness “someday”.

I can start living that life I want now. So I don’t have the house and the chooks and the veggie garden and the writing studio surrounded by trees just yet. But now is when that life gets built. Every choice I make now, impacts on my future. The only way to create the future I want is to create the present that I want.

Write now. Write as often as I can and as well as I can. Keep submitting. Learn something from every rejection. Make sure every story I submit is stronger, more deeply emotional, and better written than the last one. And once the weather gets warm enough, plant up some veggies in repurposed pots that can sit on the paving outside. Save enough money to give myself a six month break from having a Day Job, get by with part-time work. See what I can achieve if I am a full-time writer and part-time nurse, instead of the other way around.

For today, start my Spring Fling story.

Now is when I live. I can’t live in the past. I can’t live in the future. I can only ever live in the now, the present moment. So I’d better make it a bloody good one!


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Can 750 words change my life?

I found a new toy yesterday- 750words

It’s so cool, a private online way of doing Morning Pages or any sort of journal, with lots of added extras.

Buster Benson, who created it, says-

I’ve long been inspired by an idea I first learned about in The Artist’s Way called morning pages. Morning pages are three pages of writing done every day, typically encouraged to be in “long hand”, typically done in the morning, that can be about anything and everything that comes into your head. It’s about getting it all out of your head, and is not supposed to be edited or censored in any way. The idea is that if you can get in the habit of writing three pages a day, that it will help clear your mind and get the ideas flowing for the rest of the day. Unlike many of the other exercises in that book, I found that this one actually worked and was really really useful.

I’ve used the exercise as a great way to think out loud without having to worry about half-formed ideas, random tangents, private stuff, and all the other things in our heads that we often filter out before ever voicing them or writing about them. It’s a daily brain dump. Over time, I’ve found that it’s also very helpful as a tool to get thoughts going that have become stuck, or to help get to the bottom of a rotten mood.

750 Words is the online, future-ified, fun-ified translation of this exercise.

Okay, so I’ve only used it two days, but it’s fabulously motivating so far. A bit like Write or Die, but a happy smiling supportive version rather than a punishing version! It gives points for showing up. It tracks progress and shows how many words a minute have been typed overall,  and breaks that down to minute by minute for the time it takes to write as long as you want to write. I actually averaged 39 words a minute, which surprised me, thought I suspect I’d be far slower when I’m writing story rather than stream-of-consciousness! The program also creates a word cloud based on frequently used words. It even makes a guess about one’s emotional state and preoccupations by analysing word use. I haven’t used it yet, but there’s even a feature that can graph correlations between different variables a writer can add into their journal entry- like sleep and mood, or rather more Bridget Jones-ish weight/ calorie / bad habit charts.

Best of all, it’s free to use, though the guy who made it welcomes donations and subscribers.

I haven’t tried writing story using it yet, just journal type stuff, but I think it could work well for either. It’s interesting how keyboarding journal entries feels so different from writing them longhand. Not necessarily better or worse, just qualitatively different. I find I’m less spontaneous and whingey, more focused on problem solving rather than going on about it.

Whether that’s better or worse I’m not sure, and of course two days aren’t long enough to say if that’s really a pattern or just the way I’ve felt the past two days!

I wanted to get back into Morning Pages and journalling again, to see if that would help me deal with the work stress better. It seems paradoxical that spending some of my precious writing time journalling instead of story writing could increase my productivity overall, but I’m hoping it will work. It will definitely be fun trying!

I can’t say it’s helped yet.

I wanted to start writing the Spring Fling story today, but don’t have any story words at all. I do have a pretty picture with the hero and heroine and the background, as a visual prompt. I have a bit of a plan, though not complete as I’d hoped it would be. And I did some essential background research on the setting which I absolutely couldn’t get wrong. It’s a start.

I set myself a deadline today in those very practical morning pages. I want the story first drafted by the evening of the 18th, so I have time to get feedback from my CPs and do some decent edits on it before the deadline of 1 February. I don’t want to sub what is essentially tidied up first draft like I did last time. Luckily, I have a four day weekend coming up, and it’s a short novella (I’m aiming for 12,000 words) so it’s doable. Provided I get started, pdq!

I hope everyone is happy and the writing and ideas are flowing…

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