April | 2012 | Finding home, finding love - writing romance, making clothes, growing food, and growing up

You can tell I’m the sister who writes sweet, my posts have less half-naked men, sorry!

Now I don’t know why I got to thinking about self-publishing again, but I did. Probably because one of the Sassies, who writes fabulous stories that should be snapped up by a publisher pdq, was mentioning it.

I’ve been beating myself up over missing yet another self-imposed deadline, for the Harlequin Romance Fast Track. I feel a strong sense of failure. I didn’t do what I set out to do, which was finish the chapter and the synopsis and sub them. Actually, I finished the synopsis, and I feel it’s a strong one. The problem was, the chapter didn’t fit any more. Too slow. Too introspective. Not enough hero and heroine together. And not enough GMC. The goal, motivation and conflict is there a bit, but not nearly strongly enough. So rather than sub stuff I knew wasn’t ready, I chose to wait.

That sounds good. Except I know there’s another reason. The reason I procrastinated getting it done.

I am safe from getting another rejection in a month’s time. Smiles a twisted smile and shakes head.

What I want of course is impossible. I want a road to publication where I never have to face another rejection. Where everything I write is accepted (minor revisions okay). Where I never get a negative comment or bad review.

Oops. That fantasy bubble just popped. That’s WTF Publishing out then! WTF would accept me immediately, but the reviews (if anyone ever reads the story) could be something else again.

The problem with some self-pubbed writers is they are doing it for the wrong reasons. Not because they’ve written a story that would be accepted if they subbed it, but they want to hold onto complete creative control. Not because they’ve written a good story that just isn’t a good fit with the mainstream publishers. Not because they’ve rewritten and revised to make this the best story they possibly can and it still doesn’t quite hit the publisher’s mark, at a time when being bloody good just isn’t enough, a new writer has to be sensational to break in.

There are some writers with great stories that have been rejected who really ought to self-publish them. I know a couple myself. I know how hard they’ve worked at their craft. I know how well they write. I know how gutted they are when they get another rejection on something they’ve poured so much into, a story that genuinely is worthy of publication. I would pay to read their stories, just like some books from some of the other self-published writers I’ve bought, read, and enjoyed.

I am not one of those writers. There are a lot of writers self-pubbing who aren’t, either.

Whenever I fantasise about self-pubbing, it’s for other reasons. Because I can’t face another rejection. Because I want an easy route. Because I want to be published, dammit, even if it only sells eight copies and I don’t make enough back to pay for my cover photo.

Not good enough reasons. I remember thinking with my last rejected story, while I was waiting for the response, that if it got rejected I would self-publish it. I believed the story was good enough. Then the rejection letter hit. I thought again about my vow to self-publish.

Maybe I should send it to an different publisher before going to self-publishing? Because I do realise, it’s probably NOT easy to do it right. Eradicating every single error. Formatting it right. Getting a professional looking cover that doesn’t scream “Self-pubbed on the cheap” to potential readers. Maybe I was just wimping out from all that work and the risk of bad reviews, too!

So I looked at the story again.

Ooh boy. The story was very rightly rejected. What was I thinking of when I subbed it in the first place? It’s nowhere near ready. If I self-pubbed this, I’d be lucky to scrape two stars on Amazon. Maybe two and a half, if I could get friends and family to write some – ahem – creative reviews.

That rejected midlength novella is now getting rewritten two ways. One digging deep and changing the conflict significantly, extended into a 50k category romance (that’s the version I just missed the fast Track deadline for, the one I’m kicking myself in the butt over). That’s actually a whole new story. There’s not much I can transfer over from the old story. It’s a full rewrite, just taking off from the same idea. The other will be a very short 10k novella, doing the opposite. Pulling out what’s good in the mid-length novella, tweaking the internal issues and taking out the clunky and unnecessary external conflict that pads out the word count.

The structure is all wrong. Not only is it devoid of any stated goal and motivation for these characters, it’s far too slow to start, I have too many secondary characters and take too long to get the main characters together and get into the conflict. If it was the start of a single title, it would be okay. Maybe.

But the worst thing was- I resolved the essential internal conflict waaaaaaay before I resolved the external relationship block.

So funny to read it again and be half way through and think “This is where the story should end.” So it will!

And the scene that came next, the scene I loved at the time? The scene that absolutely had to be in there? It sucked. I couldn’t even finish reading it, it was so bad. Any reader who’d stuck with the story that far would definitely give up there. I’m not sure that scene is even salvageable. The concept might work, but the execution in this case most definitely did not! That scene doesn’t fit in wither version.

At last, I understand what that phrase “kill your darlings” really means in editing. Nearly all the scenes I liked the most at the time need to go. I’ll be doing huge rewrites on both versions to make them good readable and emotionally moving stories.

But I won’t be self-pubbing them. Once they are rewritten and self-edited as well as I can, I’ll be sending it off to my favourite publishers again.

I hope the writers who do choose self-publishing do well at it, publish wonderful polished stories and get great reviews and fab sales. To do that, they are further along their writing path than I am.

For me, at the stage I’m at with my writing, I need those rejection letters. I still hope soon I’ll sub something that gets a Revise and Resubmit, not another rejection. But if I do get another R, I need to embrace it like the gift it is. An editor’s opinion on why the story isn’t yet ready to publish, the opportunity to take another look at the story I thought was ready to go. Another chance to look hard at the story and see how it can be made stronger, deeper, more focused, a better read.

I want a reader who pays money and invests time in one of my stories to get to the HEA with a satisfied “Ahhhh,” not delete it off their Kindle half-read, wondering why the hell they bothered and swearing never to buy another of my stories again. I want to be on their auto-buy list, not the auto-reject list.

If I self-publish now, they’ll be getting option 2. And somehow I have a feeling having a story rejected by an editor is easier to bear than having it rejected by the readers.

I’m still learning how to write a romance. And I wouldn’t expect anyone to pay for one of my stories now, any more than I’d expect to pay for a piano recital and get to listen to someone practicing their scales.

I better get rewriting! By the time you read this, I’ll be on the plane to Australia, for what’s supposed to be a holiday and a house hunting trip, but may end up being very focused on my parents and their health issues again. Wish me luck with my mission, and time to write somewhere in there too!

April 22, 2012
by Autumn Macarthur Leave a comment

Resistance- friend or enemy? Or- How not to kick your own butt

Photo by Michael_Swan

So I decided not to enter the Romance Fast Track with Tash and Morgan, because the story isn’t quite right. I should feel relieved, the pressures off, but I don’t.

Because I’m just putting more pressure on myself- now I’m telling myself I ought to switch stories and go back to the Medical idea for the Medical Fast Track, and I’m resisting.

My Resistance is taking a sneaky form. I write, but I’m spending a lot more time on what I call parawriting, writing about writing, than I am actually storifying, creating story word count. I love my characters. I love thinking and writing about them and their motivations and their emotions. But when it comes to actually writing the story? My gut clenches, my shoulders tense, I want to throw up. I can’t stay focused.

I used to be better at this than I am now. Of course, when I was at my last job I wasn’t so tired and I had more time. That’s only part of it though. Even at Christmas when I did the first draft of Morgan and Tash, I was a lot more focused than I am now. It’s definitely fear of rejection. That’s probably the real reason I’m not going for the fast track too, why I’ve procrastinated on this story.

Fear of rejection has me in it’s nasty little clutches and I have Resistance with a capital R. It’s worse now than it was when I was merrily writing and subbing stories all over the place. I knew what I was subbing was crap. I had nothing invested in it, so the R didn’t hurt as much. Now I’m taking my time. I’m going deeper. I’ve learned more craft. Those rejections have a lot more bite now.

So I procrastinate and resist writing, while kidding myself I AM writing because of all the parawriting. I do my morning pages. I blog. I write character notes and do my little charts and all the rest. But I’m not actually doing what it’s all about. Creating Story.

I’m back in Resistance.

Normally, when I get like this, I try to battle it. I read The War of Art. I know what I should do. Treat Resistance like the enemy. Kick butt and take no prisoners. This is War. Except it doesn’t work, or if it does, not for long. That battle is bloody tiring. It just makes me want to give up even more.

Yesterday, I read this post by Cathy Yardley- A steaming pile of should.

Cathy says-

But when I hear someone say “well, I need a drill instructor, because otherwise I’m lazy” all I’m hearing is:

“I don’t like myself, I don’t believe in myself, please beat me until I do it right.”

The other thing with that — it only works as long as you have the energy and resources to devote to the battle. It’s not a natural system. So if you need a drill instructor to sit down and write, then as soon as the drill instructor goes away, so does the writing.

And as someone who has had terminally low self-esteem for years, I can vouch: an internalization of “you maggot, get out of bed! Sit down at the computer! Write, you lazy asshole!” really does nothing for your writing.

Because the writing will never be good enough to satisfy it; the speed will never be fast enough, the productivity will never be sizable enough. And at some point, you’re going to go from soldier to prisoner — and you’re going to start fantasizing on some level about beating that drill instructor to a bloody stain on the pavement.

What if we didn’t have to be miserable?

What if we loved our talent, and respected it enough to nourish it by taking care of ourselves?

What if we stopped assuming we’re lazy gits and started assuming we’re naturally wonderful people who rock at writing?

What if we figured out what our resistance is trying to protect us from, and then negotiated a compromise that let us move forward without the fear?

That resonated. Because there’s resistance and then there’s Resistance.

One is a useful warning sign that there’s actually something wrong in the story. The Muse is telling the Editor Mind Go Back, You Are Going the Wrong Way, and she goes on strike and refuses to play any more. The answer is to find out what’s erong and change it. Usually for me this is Editor Mind turning the characters into puppets and trying to make them do stuff they don’t want to do.

Then there’s the Resistance that needs to be overcome. It’s overcome far better by working with it to understand what the message is than trying to bully ourselves on and through.The Muse has gone completely on strike because she’s had enough of the Editor Mind bossing her around. Fear of another rejection. Writing something that’s just plain wrong for us, trying to fit a line or write what we think the editors are looking for when our voice isn’t a good fit. Writing characters who don’t interest us or who we don’t understand.

Or maybe it’s nothing to do with the writing. Maybe you are just plain exhausted and need to give yourself a break. None of us live in a perfect world where there are no financial pressures, and our time is 100% our own. food and housework magically gets sorted without us raising a finger. Spouse, family, friends and anything else never intrude into our magical bubble of peace and serenity.

If your life is like that, lucky you, please share the secret in the comments!

For most of us, it’s not quite like that. I get up at 5.30am. I’m out of the house from 6.30am to 8.30pm at a high-stress job where I’m lucky to get five minutes to eat lunch. I have aging parents and a mother in law all needing support. My husband has multiple chronic health problems and can’t work. I’m tired. I’m a bit depressed. My stomach hurts.

So, I’m not writing as fast as I wish I was.

The last thing I need is to be kicking myself in the arse for not doing more, more, more. It’s time for a moratorium on self-loathing, and on beating myself up.

Trying to use the kick-in-the-butt approach to bust through these sorts of blocks just plain won’t work. It may produce a short burst of activity, then the resistance returns, bigger and badder than ever. Because it has a message and if you aren’t listening, it’s going to starting SHOUTING!

And when we don’t listen for long enough, it isn’t pretty. We get physically sick. Or we get depressed. Or we give up, decide it;s just too hard. Or if we’re very strong willed we force ourselves to keep writing through gritted teeth and we hate it.

Every. Fracking. Word. We. Write.

The answer isn’t to keep plodding on. The answer is to listen. Talk to the Resistance. It thinks it’s job is to keep us safe. It’s trying to protect us from hurt, like the husband or friend who says “Just stop trying” when we’re upset over another rejection. Maybe we can negotiate. Once we know what the message is that Resistance is trying to give us, we can work with it. Use it as a tool rather than treat it as the enemy.

Maybe we aren’t just lazy slobs who need a drill sergeant to knock us into shape. Okay, maybe now and then that approach is called for. But not all the time. And usually, it we really tune in, we know the difference. And even then, its more likely to be that the Muse is whingey and whiney and wants to play and not work. Bribery might work better than bullying then. “let’s write a thousand words then we can go for a walk/ to the coffee shop/ to the gallery/ for a swim/ take a bubble bath/do some sewing/ go on the internet/have a nap/go to the book shop/ your muse’s bribe of choice.

Listen to what the Muse wants for this story, what’s right for these particular characters, not what we think the editor is looking for or what’s flavour of the month.

Maybe even instead of forcing ourselves to keep writing we can do something fun, but all the while keeping that question simmering in the back of our minds- “What does this story need? What do these characters need?” And trust that the answer will come, and when it does, the writing will be fun and easy again.

Anything but beating ourselves up once again.

Or maybe we are just lazy slobs who need Bootcamp!

Somehow though, I doubt it. We wouldn’t have tried so hard and worked at it so long if we were.

So, how do you deal with resistance? What works for you?

April 21, 2012
by Autumn Macarthur Leave a comment

When giving up on a goal can be a good thing- and GMC

Photo by h.koppdelaney

An interesting day. I woke up all fired up to finish my synopsis and first chapter for Morgan and Tash’s story to sub to the Harlequin Romance Fast Track (deadline Monday!). I felt okay about the story and how it was coming together. I thought the characters had clear goals and motivations and conflicts and emotional arcs. Then something happened that got me wondering, Then more than wondering, absolutely knowing, that I can’t sub this story without giving it more thought and reworking things. So the Fast Track deadline will pass me by.

I feel bad about missing another deadline (the Spring Fling story back in February was the last one), but I really believe I’m better working on the story some more and subbing it as a partial. No point subbing to the Fast Track and getting a speedy form rejection because I screwed up the basics yet again!

One of my writing buddies shared the most wonderful revise and resubmit email she’d had from Ruth, one of the Entangled Publishing editors, and wanted advice on applying that to her story. There was a lot in there about GMC. Or more, the lack of it. Now of course, it is all there in her story. It’s just not made explicit in the partial. She’s such a fabulous writer I didn’t notice that when I read it (and I’ve read the partial several times, and the full once). Her awesome humour, sizzling sexual tension and snappy dialogue kinda distracted me!

I hope she doesn’t mind me sharing some of the email (edited to remove identifying features!), because the advice in it is sensationally good. Ruth clearly knows her stuff and then some!

Category requires really compressed story-telling, and I’m just not seeing the story coming through clearly in your first three chapters. Your characters also lack focus.

Try to get a strong sense of your characters’ goals, motivations, and conflict into these first three chapters. I know a tiny bit about the hero and heroine’s past wounds, but I don’t know what either character *wants*, nor do I know yet what’s going to keep them apart as the book goes along. The first three chapters of a romance
novel should set up the dominoes for the whole book — they’re like the book in miniature, and all the subsequent chapters just play out the conflict that’s constructed in these chapters. So I’d encourage
you to get more of who the heroine is (via her goals, the reason behind her goals) and who the hero is (via his goals and the motivation behind them) on the page, and make it crystal clear how their goals are going to be
in opposition in this story.

That advice just blew me away. Every time I read it I get more out of it. I’d never ever seen it like that before, that it all has to be there in the partial. From there, it all unfolds and plays out as the book continues, but the key elements must be in place.

It got me thinking not just about my friend’s story but about Goal Motivation and Conflict in general, and then my story. Seeing I don’t have her awesome humour, sizzling sexual tension and snappy dialogue, it’s even more crucial I get this stuff right! Because leaving out the GMC is something I do wrong ALL the time.

So I’m sharing my thoughts just in case they are useful for someone else. And because I blog what I most need to learn!

So GMC is Goal Motivation Conflict. What the editor wants is for the hero and heroine to have very clearly stated goals. They have to both want something that puts them into some sort of opposition. Ideally, this should be stated upfront in chapter one, either in dialogue or thoughts.

I read this post on GMC, then used what she provided to make my own GMC chart, specific for category romance. I hope you find it helpful!

The key thing for romance (and what makes it far more complicated in it’s own way to write than say a thriller, or a mystery) is that the two characters goals need to bring them into opposition, so that they each become the external conflict for the other, or at the very least a complicating factor. And on the inner level, each needs to be the only one who will challenge them to make that internal change they need to make. So they are complementary.

On the surface level, they stop the other getting what they want, but on the inner level they are the only key to the other getting what they really need.

Thinking about this has made it very clear to me I need to get a grip on this for my own current story. It’s something I’m really just starting to get a handle on. I read a few articles on GMC, and of course, I have Deborah Dixon’s book , which I need to reread. It’s too long since I read it and very obviously I didn’t “get it”!

So I decided not to try to get anything in for the Fast Track. I need to work out the GMC far far better! It’s almost there with what I have already but not quite.

Also, I still have far too much lead in to my story. What I have is good, but not good enough. I need to get straight into the action. Even if she sees him from across the showground but they don’t meet for a few pages. As always, I’ve started just that bit too early!

I will do some notes on GMC, finish the synopsis, then put it aside to stew for a while so I can work on the Wrong Brother story (not a Wrong Bed any more) which turned into a Medical, for the Harlequin Medical Fast Track. Closing date for this is 7th June, so I might have a chance!

I also want to edit out the 10 or 12k version that is hidden in the 22K novella of the WiP (once I take away all the padding and the external issue that doesn’t really belong there) to submit to Entangled’s Flirt line, but that will have to wait a while.

Next week, I go back to Australia for two weeks, this time with my husband. It’s supposed to be a holiday, but I suspect my parent’s health issues will take precedence! I’ll take the baby laptop with me, and make sure I make time to write as well while I’m there. Then hopefully by the end of June or early July I can drop back to half-time work (and half pay of course!). More time to write, yippee!

April 17, 2012
by Autumn Macarthur 1 Comment

The heart of a romance synopsis – emotional conflict

Another cross post with the Sassies blog!

Photo by Wrote

Several of the Sisters are ~~struggling with~~ writing synopses right now. So we had a discussion – what should go in, what should stay out, what’s it all about anyway?

Very timely for me as I’m entering the Harlequin Romance Fast-Track, with a total rewrite of a novella I wrote last year, beefing it up into a longer story. The novella is 22,000 words, but it doesn’t work at that length at all. It needs to be simplified right down into a 10K novella, or I need to go deeper into the potential issues and make it 50K.

So, for now, I’m going for the 50K version for the Fast Track. Sometime, I also want to do the shorter version. Not much of a risk of self-plagiarism (which only matter if I sell both of them!). Digging into the conflict to lengthen the story has completely changed their issues, so the characters in each version will be different anyway. I actually won’t use much of the original story. It was a jumping off point to get me going, but it’s morphed into a whole new story.

Anyway, I need a first chapter and synopsis, pdq. I thought I had a handle on the chapter, but didn’t have a clue about the synopsis as I have no idea “what happens”. I thought I knew whaT my character’s conflicts and issues were, and that was it.

Well, that seemed like a good place to start.

Except I was wrong about that. I actually knew nothing at all. Only the characters’ names and what they did for a living and a bit of their history. I even had that wrong!

I got stuck about halfway through in my first chapter. It was fine, right up to the point where they met. In other words, not very far in at all!

The characters’ reactions to each other just weren’t ringing true for me. I didn’t know why, but it felt forced. I was making them do what I wanted, but they were puppets, stiff and unnatural. Now I’m pretty sure old lovers meeting again after a long separation would act stiff and unnatural, but you know what I mean.

Things weren’t flowing. It just didn’t feel right.

I really thought I knew what these guys history was and how they would react to each other when they saw each other again. Yet it wasn’t working. So I decided to start the synopsis instead. Maybe if I knew what was supposed to be going on between them, I’d know how to fix this chapter. Maybe I’d even stop procrastinating.

I should know by now, when I procrastinate, when I have to force myself to write, I’ve gone wrong somewhere. So looking at the synopsis made sense.But I had no idea how to approach the synopsis. I really do write the worst synopses in the world.

I know you think you do, but I’m willing to bet you don’t. Mine will be worse, for sure!

Jackie gave some good advice-
I would think about the emotional arc of the characters, not so much what happens. Their developing feelings, why they feel they can’t be together,then how those feelings change.

That felt so right.

I don’t need to know “what happens” in the conventional sense. I need to show how they feel at the beginning. What’s drawing them together. What’s keeping them apart. What triggers change in each of them until they finally have grown emotionally enough to reach their HEA.

I started writing the synopsis. Not the way normally do, a list of what happens. I started with the heroine, and what her feelings were about the hero at the start. I added why she has to see the hero again, waht forces them together. Then I wrote the hero’s feelings.

Sounds good.

Except it wasn’t! I had it all wrong. And that was why my chapter was stuck at 2000 words.

Suddenly, on the commute yesterday, I started writing a whole lot of what-ifs in my synopsis. What if their past hadn’t happened the way I thought it had at all? What if she wasn’t angry with him for betraying her? What if she’d chosen to go, thinking she was protecting him? What if the issues between them were very very different to what I thought? I wrote some ideas, but worried I was overcomplicating, adding more to the mix instead of digging deeper.

Then in my morning pages today, things really got interesting.

A what-if for myself. What if instead of over complicating, what I’m doing is brainstorming? Throwing lots of ideas into the pot so I can choose which ones work and fit these characters?

Ideas started popping. The characters’ pasts and their core conflicts shifted. The story started to be about something quite different. Yes, the theme is still finding home, and knowing we deserve the highest love, but the way these characters get there is very very different. The external conflict seems lighter, less anger, less bickering. But the internal stuff goes waaaaay deeper. The emotional wounds these characters need to heal are painful and verey very central to who they think they are.

Then I logged onto a fabulous discussion, all about synopsis writing. It wasn’t about my synopsis, it was about Abbi’s. But wow, it got me thinking some more about the essential nature of the core emotional conflict in romance. I’ve edited out some of the comments that were highlights for me.

Abbi- Question: would the worst woman for my hero be the one who sees beyond the facade or the one who will make him stay when he doesn’t plan on it, or both?

Jackie- One thing I would ask is why does the hero feel he can’t be himself? And who is he underneath? So yes, re the internal conflict, the worst woman for him would be one who sees beyond the façade. But then you have to think about what that façade is hiding and why it would be so very awful for him if someone saw who he really was.

Robyn- I’m playing with the same concept but in a different way. My H thought he’d had his facade accepted for a long time,
and yet his partner always knew it was a front. Stripping it away completely will be necessary if he wants to wants to get her back.

Abbi- I always thought the worst person he/she could meet was the one who per se made them fall in love or made them stay because of love. That’s just a cover to protect their inner conflict isn’t it?

Robyn- I think it depends on who your character is and what they want. If they don’t want to go then someone making them stay won’t be a worry. And if they want to fall in love then the issue might be more who they’re falling in love with rather than the act of falling.

I’ve got my hero thinking he’ll never love anyone again then realising he cares for the heroine more than he thought, but only after she has gone. As it goes on he understands that he’s in love with her, always has been… but getting her to fall for him after years of lies is going to turn him inside out. Mine’s rarely textbook conflict so I probably give unusual answers to
conflict questions.

LOL, Robyn, no, just fabulous thought provoking ones!

Jackie- I think you also have to think about why being in love is bad. I know for one of my heroes, his deep conflict was that he didn’t want to love because being in love meant a loss of control. And losing control meant he was just like his father.

Robyn- I think I do everyone wanting to be in love, but the cost being higher than they ever imagined it would be.

Jackie- Yeah, I think not wanting to be in love does work well for a strong alpha. The high cost of love is very sexy too may I add.

Maisey- I think it’s…not necessarily about the other being the worst for them, but they’re the one that will force change.

In Robyn’s case, her hero found the woman who forces him to confront his fear of loving, really.

Robyn- I like that. I always struggle with that worst person idea, but someone who forces change I can relate to.

Maisey- I figure that’s what really forces the black moment. One person is ready to lay their issues down and change, the other hits a wall and can’t break through it yet. But the romance is that journey to change and…healing.

Maisey again- I feel like there’s often three layers to conflict and character. What they show the world they’re doing, what they think they’re doing and why they think they’re doing it, and the real reason they’re doing it.

I love all this. It’s why being part of a writing group all doing romance is so good.It keeps me focused. It reminds me what romance is all about and why we love it so much.

It’s all about emotional change. It’s about people becoming the best they can be, the most real and true to themselves and authentic they can be. It’s all about the character being challenged by the one person who sees through their front, to relate at the level of who they really are. About the character having to grow and change, become more of who they are and less of who they pretend to be. About the deepest healing and the deepest love being hard, but possible.

Romance affirms what we want to believe is true.

For my story, things shifted a lot in the last two days of playing with what-ifs. Yet I can see I need to take it another level deeper again it I’m to get to the core of what romance can be. What I have is still too superficial. I need to go even deeper, to the whys, to the level of essence. To Maisey’s third layer. I’ve got it for the heroine, but not yet for the hero.

More questions to ask my characters. Do they want to be in love? Is falling in love the worst thing that could
happen to them, no matter who it’s with? Do they want to be in love, but this person is the worst person for them? Do they not want to be in love at all, and especially with this person? Or like Robyn’s characters, do they want to be in love but the price is far higher than they ever expected to pay?

The answers will tell me a lot.

I also need to really think about the questions of the character’s facade and their inner reality. Michael Hauge is great for this. I made a chart last year based on his concept of identity to essence and the lectures he gave at RWA last year. I wasn’t lucky enough to go, but recordings of all the talks are for sale. It’s the conference you have when you can’t afford to fly to the States and pay the conference fees- but without the fun and the alcohol and the crazy shoes.

Anyway, I need to do the chart for my characters and see what comes out.

Then, I’ll know enough to write my synopsis. And maybe I’ll even be able to finish the chapter!

April 10, 2012
by Autumn Macarthur Leave a comment

Why is this hero perfect for this heroine?

Photo by h.koppdelaney

I know I should be writing. I have been, promise!

It’s 100% pure dreck, but at least I finally got my hero and heroine on the page together. I think I’m going to have some cutting to do so that happens sooner. Always the same issue- too much scene setting and internal monologue before I cut to the real stuff.

Anyway, I’m doing a bit of blog surfing in a ten minute break. And I’m thinking about my character and what her emotional growth will be through the story.

I tend to have an issue here. I want my characters to be likeable, so I make them too nice to start with. I don’t give them enough room to grow.

Now, sometimes being overly nice and agreeable is a character flaw in itself and that character’s arc might be to start developing some no-power and stop letting everyone walk all over them. Or it could be that I suck at writing characters who actually have realistic emotions and characters!

I realised early on than in first draft my hero forgives the heroine far too soon. He’s not angry enough. He can quite rightfully be pissed off with the way she’s behaved. That will be tricky for me to handle, but I can see it’s needed.

What I hadn’t realised was that she also forgives him far too soon.

She starts off angry and upset and determined not to get close and them wham halfway through the story it’s like one slow dance later and she’s melting in his arms, all is forgiven? Come on! Time for me to get real here. There needs to be a bit of a growth process here. The one-step-forward-two-steps-back dance of can-I-trust-him-or-can’t-I, has he really changed?

I realised something big last night. She’s not just angry with him over what he did to her when they dated in their teens. She’s taken that hurt and attached a whole lot of other stuff to it, stuff other people did to her that she’s kidded herself she’s totally okay with. In her mine, he’s the only person who’s hurt her, the only person who’s done something so bad it’s unforgivable. Because he’s wearing her anger over EVERYTHING that’s gone wrong in her life. It makes no sense why she’s as angry with him as she is, why she didn’t just demand he explained it then and there, back at age seventeen when it happened. It also makes perfect sense looked at another way.

Not only is her sudden jump from anger to forgiveness in the first draft not the least bit believable, she’s also being too nice. She needs to be a lot more angry. A lot more hurt and resentful. A lot less likely to forgive. It’s going to take far more than one slow dance to get over this one!

Lightbulb moment- characters don’t have to be ”nice”. Their feelings don’t have to be the least bit rational. They just have to be understandable.

I read a good little free e-book on Crafting Unforgettable Characters last night, by K M Weiland. She said a lot that resonated with me.

When we write characters who are fighting both their circumstances and their own natures, we create characters who are instantly real.

That’s external and internal conflict explained in a single sentence!

Then today during my ten minute break that seems to have stretched just the teensiest bit, I read a post on Natalie Hartford’s blog, quoting a line from This Means War.

Don’t choose the best guy, choose the guy that brings out the best in you!

That’s exactly why Morgan is the only man for Tash. He may be the man she sees as her worst enemy, the man she loves to hate. But he’s also the only man who will see past her prickly defences and help her change, help her heal her past, help her find the courage to love. He’s the only man who sees the truth of who she is.

And now, that brings me back to what I already knew and had forgotten, Michael Hauge’s advice on writing romance. The reason the characters should be together is because only with each other can they be all they can be. Only with this man, this woman, will they be the best self possible. He talks about the other character being the only one who can see through the self-protective mask the hero or heroine wears, to see the real person within. They may clash on the superficial level, but at the deeper level they, and only they, connect. I bought the recording of his lecture at the RWA Conference last year, which is amazing. He also has this article among many others on his website that are all worth reading- Writing Romantic Comedies.

This quote always makes me get all teary-

In movies, as in real life, both the joy and terror of intimacy grow out of our exposure to those we love. To be accepted for who we are is magical. But once we allow ourselves to be seen in this way, all the dark parts of our personalities – our weaknesses, desires, fears and shortcomings – are brought into the open. The possibility that someone might peer beneath our carefully constructed persona and see who we truly are becomes terrifying. So the dance of pursuit and retreat continues endlessly.

Conscious or not, the lies in romantic comedies are always designed to protect the hero’s image. Better to lie to the person he loves than to expose the unworthy person he believes himself to be.

But of course, the hero’s deception can never work, because it is only by standing up for who he truly is that the hero can achieve real fulfillment and self worth, and connect with the love of his life. The romance character is TRULY the hero’s destiny; she’s the reward for finding the courage to grow and change.

Romantic comedies concern the continual battle between comfort and longing, between fear and desire. We’re all terrified of intimacy, pain and loss, so we all shut down emotionally in one way or another. But the beauty and power of a romantic comedy is that for two hours in the dark we can identify with a hero facing the same eternal struggle. And in the movie theater, we will always grow, and we will always win.

I hope and pray I can bring that level of emotional realness to my stories. Tash isn’t just lying to Morgan about how she feels and how her past has affected her, she’s lying to herself. I hope I can write well enough to do her justice.

And now I better go actually do some more writing instead of talking about it! Back to work tomorrow and I have nowhere near as much written as I hoped to.

Just wondering- what is it that makes your characters perfect for each other in your WiP?

April 9, 2012
by Autumn Macarthur 4 Comments

This Writer’s Manifesto

I found the image on The Frugalpreneur. Please let me know if it originated elsewhere so I can give correct credit!

I read something today- Jeff Goin’s The Writer’s Manifesto. It’s short, but powerful and inspiring. Simple yet profound. His blog is well worth a visit too.

It really resonated with me, particularly today, when I was feeling stressed and pulled in a zillion directions and needed to focus on what is most important.

Not the Day Job. Not housework. Not getting a new capsule wardrobe sewn before I next travel. Not criticising my husband for all the things he does that annoy me. Not organising my finances. Not ebaying. Not planning the trip. Not researching. Not starting that new writing workshop I signed up for. Not even reading inspiring blogs and books.

Two things are important for me.

Cherishing the people who are closest to me, making sure they know how much I love them. Showing them, not just in words but in actions.

And writing. Being true to myself and my creativity. Showing up. doing the work. Finding what is emotionally real.

I’ve been procrastinating. Writing came last on my to-do list. Oh sure, I’d done things I could pretend were kind of writing. Done my morning pages. Kept plugging away at the touch typing (painfully slowly). Read writing blogs. Chatted with my writing buddies, and yes, there was a bit about the story in there.

But actually doing the work, getting down and dirty and storyifying, not just thinking about it, came last. I stayed insanely late at work one night and got home so exhausted I wrote nothing at all. The next day I did a bit of planning and wrote a paragraph or two. The following couple of nights I squeezed out maybe half a page each night, writing at 11pm after everything else got done.

Today, I didn’t want to do that. First thing this morning, I read Jeff’s Manifesto and it hit home, an arrow deep into my soul. Smack bang into that fearful little part of me that doesn’t want to try because trying means risking failing again, and it’s so much safer not to let that happen. Think about it, sure. Have great story ideas, sure. Play around with character development and plotting, sure. Starting new stories I never finish? Sure.

It’s the ultimate lie. I’m writing, I tell myself. Oh yes, I’m writing. And it’s safe. Risk free.

But actually writing and polishing and finishing a story? Getting it out there, where it can be seen? Taking the chance of another rejection? Another form R? Another I-liked-this-but-didn’t like-that? Another it-just-didn’t-work-for-me?

That’s what I’ve been afraid of. So I procrastinate. Or I jump from story to story to story, never going deep.

Today, I realised, it’s not just the rejection I’m afraid of.

It’s digging deep. It’s the emotional pain. The hurting with and for the characters that has to happen for a story to be deep enough and real enough to touch a reader’s heart.

First, it has to touch mine.

I have to feel that pain, that deeply buried wound, that hurt the characters is defending so desperately, to be able to write it. I have to die with the characters in their Black Moment. I have to soar with them when they finally achieve their happy-ever-after. If a reader is to feel anything when she reads my story, I need to feel it too, not just as much as she does, but ten, twenty, a hundred times as much.

That’s what I’m really scared of.

Today, I read Jeff’s Manifesto. Nothing in there explicitly about feelings and emotional depth. But it IS all about being real as a writer, writing what is true.

I sat down and wrote.

And I had a MAJOR breakthrough on my heroine’s issues. I realised what my heroine is hiding, what secret wounds she’s protecting. When I realised it, I cried. My heart still aches for her. I had to stop writing. It just feels so real and so true. That poor little girl she was, I want to hug her, and I can’t. And that sucks. Luckily, I can get the hero to do it instead. I have to write, so she gets her peace, her resolution, her chance to overcome the past. No-one else can do that for her but me.

I’m very very glad this story got rejected in it’s first incarnation. It’s going to be so much more than it was.

This blog is a procrastination too. But this is a different procrastination to what I did yesterday. This is a I-need-some-time-to-process-this-so-I-can-do-it-justice type of procrastination. I will write this story. I will get Tash her happy ending.

I’m not writing a story to sell. I’m writing a story because it feels real.

For now, I’ll go back to first drafting. What I know about the heroine may not have much impact yet, in the early chapters. But I’ll know it. It’s there and it’s big and it’s real.

I’m going to write it. Even though it hurts. Even though it will make me cry. Even though the story may still get rejected.

We only have today.

That is all we are ever promised.

And today, we must write.

April 7, 2012
by Autumn Macarthur Leave a comment

How do YOU write a great story?

Fab image and inspiration from Winning Edits

A cross post with the group blog, Seven Sassy Sisters.

I’ve been the Slacker Sister lately. This is my first post for ages!

I do have a good excuse- a family crisis sent me jetting home to Sydney with no notice, straight into the twilight land of the Internet-Free-Zone. Even if I’d been able to get away long enough to buy an dongle, it wouldn’t have done me any good, my parents live in a reception black hole. In a way, though, I found it all strangely relaxing. No responsibilities except caring for my parents, a good and necessary duty.

Then I flew back to a clingy husband who’d missed me desperately, a psychotic cat who won’t leave me alone, and a Day Job that ate my brain and my time from the minute I walked back in the door.

The good news is, the Day Job have agreed to let me drop back to half time hours. Yippee! With care, extreme frugality, and with any luck selling a story sometime in the next year or so, we can survive on half my income. And I have a wonderful two days extra a week to write. Not just that, the Work-Life balance changes. I get a hell of a lot more life out of two days less work, because I’m betting two long days, with a day off in between, won’t leave me nearly as brain fried as four of those days do! My job role changes a bit too, as with luck in the dividing up of the different parts of my job between me and my job share-ee (does that word even exist?) I’ll manage to end up with the less stressful part of it. Looks like it’s heading that way, anyway!

Which isn’t what I meant to post about at all! What I want to post about is telling a good story. That should probably actually be showing a good story, as I do way too much of the telling side of things.

Coming back to Old Blighty, the Land of Endless Wifi Connection, I discovered what I’d missed while I was away. Harlequin annoucing a Romance Fast Track. Sweet! I’d just thought up a new story idea, just perfect for a Romance. Except I promised I the other Sassies I wouldn’t start a new story until I finished one of the many I already had.

Then I found an even better answer. A rejected story just shouting out to be rewritten. At the time the rejection hit, I had plenty of ideas how to change it, how to fix it, but I’d shelved them to start another story. Now the timing seemed ideal. Pull that story out again and go for it. I’d written it as a novella, but only skated across the surface of the characters’ conflicts. If I went deep, dug out all the potential for real emotion that already existed between them, if could be a fifty K story.

Rereading that story was fascinating! The first time I’ve ever had that experience of putting enough distance between myself and the first writing to read the story as if someone else wrote it.

What an amazing experience! I’m seeing it so differently now compared to when I first wrote it and reread it immediately after to do some surface edits. Some of it is wonderful, and really needs to be kept. Some is slow and draggy, the pace is all wrong. Some of the scenes I most wanted to include just don’t work for me now.

There are bits that work, sections that carried me along with the story and the feelings and when I came to the end of the scene I was all “I wrote that? Wow!” . Then are far too many other bits where I was “I wrote that? WTF, why? What was I thinking?”

The fabulous thing is seeing what needs fixing. Really getting why the story was rejected. And seeing what can be a cut and paste and tweak and work just fine, because it does work fine. Right now it’s like a jigsaw puzzle. Some of the pieces are perfect and I know just where they fit. Some of the pieces are lovely but I have no idea where they can go. And some of the pieces seem to come from a different puzzle entirely!

I can see that my story arc is a mess. I structured it all wrong. It’s a reunion story, and the heroine held on to the “big sekrit” of why she left him before for far too long, meaning when she did eventually disclose it,, it seemed way too tiny to be a convincing reason. That needs to come out way sooner.

The emotional resolution comes way too early, and then it’s more external factors keeping them apart. So that needs to be switched around, altered more, taken deeper. The Black Moment, the change demanded of them both, the moment where they face losing the love of their life rather than surrender their defences, needs to be bigger. More of an emotional death, a death of their old ways of protecting themselves against hurt and pain. Reading this blog post helped me see that.

Plus the hero is just too nice! Sure, it’s going to be pitched as a sweet romance, so he’s not going to be a Modern/ Presents style Alpha, but that doesn’t mean he needs to be a wimp. He can be a whole lot angrier, and a whole lot less forgiving, at least to start with.

Lots to fix, lots to work with. And just two weeks to pull together a polished first chapter and a synopsis that makes sense.

Eep!

I need to listen to the advice in the picture. Tell the truth. Think. Care. Let blood flow (mine, not the characters, dig into my own heart). Inject a splinter- find the characters’ painful spots and probe them. Especially as I’m editing an already written story- cut the crap. Drop the backstory. Lose the long scenes with secondary characters. hit the delete key on those scenes I thought I just had to have but really don’t work in this story.

Most of all- keep the focus. Characters, conflict, and a satisfying and emotionally real climax. Solve an emotional issue, and remember that’s the most important story problem, not anything external to the relationship.

I’m writing romance, and emotion is what it most needs to be about. Not my wonderful setting. Not the hero and heroine’s realtionships with other people. Their relationship, and the deep emotional blocks that keep them apart. The moments of tenderness, of yearning, of the magic of falling in love. The pain of knowing that it can never happen, this relationship can never work, of old hurts being uncovered, of defences being torn down and desperately rebuilt.

I always want to add more. More external conflict. More stuff in the characters’ pasts. But what if the stuff I already have is enough? What if instead of throwing more into the mix, I took them deeper and further into what’s already there? Maybe the three words I most need to remember as I write this story should be “Keep digging deeper.”

Keep digging deeper.

What three words best describe what you need to write a great story?

April 1, 2012
by Autumn Macarthur 6 Comments

Disappearing days- and new decisions

Photo by Amulon Photography

Disappearing. That’s what’s happened to the last few weeks, they have, quite literally disappeared, with not much to show for them.

After the see saw ride of a week while Mum was in hospital, and all the will I- won’t I about whether I should go, a phone call from my sister three Saturday’s ago decided me. I had to go, and I was on a flight to Australia that evening.

I stayed over two weeks, came back to the UK, and straight back to work, still jetlagged, so no time to blog.

No internet connection while I was there, either, only crazily expensive access via my mobile to send an email or two a day to my husband, who I missed a lot.

I’m very glad I went, I know me being there helped everyone. A big, unexpected expense, but worth it. Going was far less stressful than staying here and trying to keep working, and supporting my sister over the phone and email, and worrying about Mum and Dad would have been.

Being there wasn’t stressful. Emotional, yes, especially seeing how much memory my father has lost and how it affecting him. Challenging at times, especially the first few days. After that, it felt like a strange sort of holiday, an interlude out of time. I cooked and shopped for them. I did some patient education around managing their health conditions. I tried to get Dad to see his doctor and talk honestly about his problem. I went for little walks with them, as far as they could manage. I went with Mum to her cardiologist. I supported them in getting some home help set up. I helped my brother understand what was going on.

I also did my morning pages. I wrote some more on my Wrong Brother story, which is morphing into something very different to what I first thought it was. I read a lot. I enjoyed being back home in Sydney, my real home, not just the place I live. I heard a lot of stories about when my parents first met and their early married life before I was born.

Taking that time to be with them was a gift to me as well as them.

Then I came back to England. Went back to work. Caught up with my internet writing buddies again. A week after I got back, that time out feels almost like a dream, lost time, time that didn’t really exist, that just disappeared.

Yet it changed things.

It deepened my relationship with my parents. A true adult relationship, untainted by past hurts. My husband seems to appreciate me more. He missed me, the first time we’ve been apart for over 24 hours since we married. The Day Job seems to have missed me too. I planned to give notice in mid May, give them time to get my replacement in place before I left in Mid September. Instead, my boss is offering me part-time work, a job share. The thing I asked for first, before I decided to resign, and they told me couldn’t be done!

I felt so strongly about needing to leave. Giving myself time to explore writing full-time, really focus on that. Though the finances worried me. The fact that unless I sold straight away, and maybe even then, I knew I couldn’t afford more than six months of full-time writing before I’d need to find at least part-time work. Also, being back home and seeing how things were with my parents had got me knowing that I need have enough money to go back twice a year, if possible. And I would love to buy a little doer-upper house in a country town, to have a foot on the ground in Australia.

I’d asked for that in my Morning Pages the last full day I was there. Then I had this offer. It felt like an answer.

So, I’ve made a decision. I’ll take the part-time position, and delay giving myself what I’ve dreamed of, writing full-time. It’s a dream, and a good one, but I’m not ready for it yet. I need to develop my writing further first. I need to be more ready. I need to be in a better position financially.

I’m not giving up, by any means, just modifying my goals. Doing it more gradually, a staged withdrawal from the Day Job. I’ll only need to go two days a week. Yes, they’ll be two very long days, and I’ll still have the commute, but it’s only two days a week. That means I have five days not at the Day Job. The balance has totally shifted. If I can’t write more with five days off a week, I won’t in seven days, either. I can’t use the Day Job as an excuse once I drop my hours. And I will still be earning enough to support the household, just. No money for many luxuries, but just enough to get by on.

Maybe even enough for the one luxury I really want- that little house in a small New South Wales country town I like a lot, about four hours drive from my parents. It will need to be cheap. It will need to be rented out to help pay the mortgage. But there are a couple of possibles I want to look at when Arthur and I go back again next month on our planned holiday (tickets paid from by last year’s Qantas cancellation debacle!).

In the meantime, I have a new writing goal. There’s a new story idea that keeps nagging me, but I promised I’d finish at leat one of my older stories before I start anything new. Time to stop adding to the long string of unfinished stories I’m trailing behind me. The truth is, I’ve never truly “finished” a story. I’ve only finished first drafts, and I’ve started far more of those than I’ve seen through to The End. I’ve never edited and polished an entire story, only partials. That needs to change.

So, I decided.

I’m rewriting a previously rejected story entirely, taking on board the advice I’ve had about what needs doing with it. It was quite rightly rejected. In effect, I subbed first draft. It’s quite nice first draft, I edited as I went for language. But it’s still hardly better than cleaned up first draft. What I left out fixing was story structure. And good old Goal Motivation and Conflict. I had relationship blocks, but not convincing ones. My heroine had no reason for doing any of what she was doing. No reason to keep rejecting the hero. The start was too slow moving, the pacing too leisurely, the emotions just not deep enough.

I do believe in the story and the characters though. I know they deserve better. So, I have a goal. To rewrite and polish polish polish the first chapter, do a synopsis, and send it off for the Harlequin Romance Fast Track, by April 23.

I need to get moving on that!

Finding home, finding love – writing romance, making clothes, growing food, and growing up

Adventures in living an authentic creative life

Monthly Archives: April 2012

A very personal argument against self-publishing- I need the gift of rejection