Total Control

August 16, 2012 By 6 Comments

Have you ever thought you were totally in control of something, only to find out you weren’t? I had that happen recently. I thought I had absolutely everything I needed for a meeting at my daughter’s school, only to find I didn’t have the proper immunization records, the registration form they had mailed me, AND that her birth certificate had disappeared.

Sometimes the same thing happens in my manuscripts. I am a partial-pantser (writing friend Marie Lamba calls us “thongers” but that’s just not an image I want burned in my brain), so there’s plenty of space in my manuscripts to go off the rails. Reading over the rough draft, I find things like neglected plot clues, inadvertently changed place names, and minor characters left in the bathroom from chapter 2 until the end of the book.

So what to do when things firmly in hand spiral out of control? The only effective way I’ve found to deal with this is to concentrate on fixing one thing at a time. I called my toddler’s pediatrician and got her records, picked up another registration form at the meeting, and still haven’t found the birth certificate, but I can pick up another copy from the vital records office.

As far as mistakes in the manuscript, the same rule applies: tackle one thing at a time. I always go from big picture to nit-picky because changing big picture items will inevitably change the smaller things. Why waste time fixing commas in sentences you might cut out altogether?

Sometimes I can’t have everything as under control as I’d like. (This is a lesson I am learning over and over as the mom of a toddler.) All I can do is control what I can, not beat myself up for what I can’t, and fix what needs fixing.

Total control is impossible.

Getting to the goal by tackling one issue at a time is not.

The Dreaded Synopsis

August 9, 2012 By 1 Comment

While my WIP is with an editor and readers, I am filling time by working on my query and synopsis for that WIP, so I will have the marketing materials ready ahead of time. That way, once I get my WIP feedback, I can set to work revising and be ready for querying immediately.

I have a query I quite like. A few other people are going to give me feedback, but I feel the underpinnings are solid.

My big problem is the synopsis. I can easily tell the story of what happens, at whatever length is required. What always seems to elude me is the voice of the book and the emotional heart of the story. By the time I have editing the plot down to something synopsis length, all of the voice and life have vanished and it reads like an outline in prose. Boring!

I have a first draft, which I will return to and try to liven up. But even if I get the voice in there, I feel I have missed the heart. A lot of the plot points I include are only important because of the emotional arc attached, but that somehow does not come through in this draft.

This part of the process always frustrates me, because I feel that I should be able to do this much better than I do. After all, this is my book—who else knows it as well as I? My passion and excitement do not come through on the synopsis page, and they need to. It reads like one of the many college papers I wrote. I got A’s on them, but the synopsis is judged by a different metric.

Perhaps I will approach the synopsis more like a short story. Perhaps viewing it through that lens will open up that emotional heart I’m lacking.

I believe that if I can write a great synopsis once, I will have the “lightbulb” moment that will show me how to do it consistently. Here’s hoping the lights come on soon!

How do you approach synopsis writing? Any advice to share?

Rebooting the Writer’s Brain

August 2, 2012 By 2 Comments

Every writer has a distinct way of “rebooting” after they finish a long project. Short projects, or going back and forth between several projects at one time is one thing, but being completely immersed in a project and then suddenly having it finished is a different mental process. Some writers like to dive right into the next project; some prefer to take a little time off. Everyone has a unique spin on what recharges their creative brain.

As for me, for the first few hours after a project is finished, I find myself at loose ends, almost lost mentally. I’ll find a few spare moments and then have no idea what to do with the time since my project is done. Solitaire sees a lot of me in those first few hours!

Once the fuzzy-headed period passes, though, I go on an organization spree. I’ve just spent a month intensely editing my middle grade manuscript, and finally finished. Like usual, when I get deep into a project, I let everything else go except what is necessary. I had piles on my desk, non-writing household projects that have backed up, and EastEnders TV shows clogging up the DVR.

So far I’ve cleared my desk piles, finished a non-writing project and a half (and added a few more), and have checked a score of other items off the never-ending To-Do List. I haven’t gotten to the DVR yet—mostly because I’m watching the Olympics instead.

I find that taking a few days to catch up and organize clears my brain. It resets the switches so I can come to my next project focused and ready to roll. Not having all those loose ends takes the pressure off so I can have some fun with words.

How do you refocus after a long or intense project? What rituals work for you?

Villains and Writers: Why is it so hard to be evil?

July 26, 2012 By 8 Comments

One of the things I often read on agent and editor blogs is that the antagonist in a manuscript isn’t strong enough. That they are cardboard, nebulous, and somehow not as threatening as they should be. I’ll admit I struggle with my antagonists. Obviously, I am not alone. But why is it so hard?

I think it’s because most of us are decent people. We can’t fathom hurting others or blocking some event that is clearly a good thing for humanity. Sure, we all have our moments of making rude gestures to other drivers, or using words we don’t want our 2-year-old overhearing, or even thinking some very vengeful thoughts. But for most of us it stops there. The darkness we all have inside of us scares us to death.

When I see someone like the Colorado shooter, I cannot fathom his thinking. Sometimes with bad guys, you can see where they’re coming from, see how they are damaged emotionally, see how they think what they’re doing is the right thing. But by all accounts, this shooter had everything going for him. And yet he killed 12 people in cold blood. How do you get inside the head of someone like that? How do you write someone like that believably?

The key, as I alluded above, is to know their damage. When writing a villain, we must remember that he has his reasons for doing what he’s doing. And they make sense to him. He is the hero of his own story, and he believes HE is the one doing the right thing.

We as the writer must know the emotional driver behind our bad guy’s thinking, his actions. Only by letting the reader understand this will our bad guy gain the strength he needs to be a gripping antagonist. I think accessing the darkness inside terrifies a lot of writers. We don’t like to think it’s inside us. And once we unleash it for a book, can we put the genie back in the bottle?

While you may discover some uncomfortable truths about yourself during this process, writing the antagonist doesn’t need to be so gut-wrenching a process.

I have found some guidance by using Donald Maass’ Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook. Maass walks you through the antagonist’s world. Outline the story from the bad guy’s POV. Justify his actions using literature, mythology, law. Justify them in such a way that for just a moment your hero can actually AGREE with the villain. In other words, don’t just understand WHAT the bad guy does in your story, but understand WHY.

How do you approach your antagonists? Do you ever scare yourself?

Polish Editing and Potty Training

July 19, 2012 By 2 Comments

This month I’ve been neck-deep in revisions, trying to get my manuscript ready for the editor by August 1st. I added about 20,000 words to my middle grade WIP during “big picture” edits, and now am in the process of trying to pull out 12,000 to get my word count back to where it should be. (For the record, I’ve cut a little over 7,500 words so far.)

Some of those cuts have come in large swaths, where I deleted large amounts of words by restructuring a chapter or two. For example, it occurred to me suddenly that my entire first chapter was window-dressing. Aside from about 200 words, I didn’t need any of it. So I cut the entire chapter and moved the 200 words to other places in the book.

Unfortunately, most of my word-pulling has not been so effortless. And since I am a mom as well as a not-yet-published writer, this intense editing is not the only thing on my plate. My two-year-old announced this past weekend that she wanted to wear big girl panties. Great for her! Bad for me.

My productivity drops like a stone when escorting a toddler to the bathroom every 20-30 minutes.

But I found that potty training and this level of intense editing have a lot in common:

1. Both are painstaking processes. Often success seems almost impossible, but each small victory moves us one step closer. Toddler has a Potty Chart. I have an Editing Progress Chart. Hers has flower stickers. Mine has color-coded squares. It’s all good.

2. Both require constant concentration. Toddler has to pay attention to her body. I have to pay attention to every single word and see if it deserves to live.

3. Both are best accomplished by taking them in small increments. We set a timer for 30 minutes for Toddler. For 20 if she’s been drinking a lot. I focus on one chapter at a time. One paragraph if I’ve been drinking a lot. (For the record, I don’t drink.)

4. Both have their share of accidents. Toddler—well, you can guess. As for me—Did I really just delete half a chapter?!? UNDO! UNDO!

5. Both will be successfully accomplished. Toddler will eventually stay dry all day. I will get this manuscript polished and ready for the editor. I will likely reach my goal first, but I will not complain if Toddler beats me to it. 🙂

Working on two very intense yet completely different projects saps my energy, but I am managing to muddle through.

As long as I do not become potty-mouthed in my writing or try to delete my daughter, things will work out fine.

Oops, there’s the timer! (I feel positively Pavlovian.)

The Allure (and Danger) of “Free”

July 12, 2012 By 10 Comments

I get that people like to get things for free, but pirating a book when you know it’s stealing baffles me. Maybe I’m more sensitive to it because I am a writer myself, and I know that the author likely spent years on that book.

I really could not understand the pirates’ belief that somehow they DESERVED to have this for free. That they were ENTITLED. Why would anyone feel that they deserved to get a product for free? Where does that attitude come from?

I never understood it—until I experienced it myself.

I played with the idea of changing the look of my blog, so I browsed the Free Themes section. And I got irked because none of the free themes did the things I wanted. I saw a few paid themes that looked like they might do the trick, but WHY SHOULD I HAVE TO PAY? Is it too much to ask that JUST ONE free theme does what I want?

Oh.

There’s that entitled attitude.

A lot of stuff on the Internet is free. That is a wonderful thing. The problem is, all that free stuff (a lot of it good-quality free stuff) primes you to want more free stuff. If they give away X free, why not X+1? And then because you got Level 1 free, you feel somehow cheated when you can’t get Level 2 free.

How well this equates with the feelings of a book pirate I don’t know, but I think the same basic theory applies. “Some books are free, why should I have to pay for any?” While I’m sure the psychology of it is more complex than that, it leads me to the dangerous part of “free.”

Devaluing a product is a slippery slope.

With the rise of ebooks, many authors use free books to prime the pump. They use 99¢ books to draw readers. They keep their books priced $2.99 or less to attract downloads. All of those promotional strategies are fine in themselves, and I’m all for using them in small doses. But when it leads to scores of books always selling for under $3, readers begin to believe the value of ALL such work is under $3—and don’t want to pay more.

They value your years of research, writing, and editing as worth less than a throw-away cup of coffee.

Once your work is devalued, it is almost impossible to bring the price point back up. People come to expect—to believe they DESERVE—your work at the lower price. This devaluation of our worth is in part what agency pricing was meant to stop.

What happens to the authors when all ebooks have to be priced under $2.99 or no one will buy them?

Pricing is deviously hard—but so is writing. Be sure to consider the value of your time and effort when pricing your book.

YOU deserve it.

Hanging Pictures in Your Story: Putting the finishing touches on your manuscript

July 5, 2012 By 4 Comments

We’ve been in our new home just under a year, and we have finally gotten around to hanging pictures. That’s usually the last piece of the puzzle—that step that makes you feel like you really live in your house.

Hanging pictures is like the final edits of your manuscript. Just like a picture, you make sure each room (chapter or scene) has something colorful in it. A picture is often more than just decoration—it is either a photo of something important in your life or a painting/print depicting something that stirred you emotionally. Every chapter should contain meaning like that—something that forwards the plot and/or shows character development and emotion.

A picture is often a focus point in the room. Every chapter needs focus—a reason for being in your story in the first place. A fun way of ensuring that there is a point to your chapter is to ask yourself, “If I wanted to take a picture in this chapter, what is the best moment to capture?” If the highest moment of your chapter wouldn’t create a meaningful photograph, maybe you need to rethink your chapter.

Another facet of focus is directing people’s attention. Often, the arrangement of pictures on the wall can control how people view a room—the order in which they see objects, and even the overall feel of the room. In your final revisions, you refine where you want your audience to focus their attention. What do you need them to notice in each chapter? Are you purposefully misdirecting? Decide what’s important for the audience to pay attention to in each chapter, and write your prose accordingly.

So when you’re putting those final touches on your manuscript, pay attention to where you hang your pictures. You want your finished manuscript to be pretty, but you also want the pictures to focus attention and convey the deeper meaning of your story.

Hang your pictures with care, and enjoy finally being moved in!

Can writers avoid burnout in the 21st century?

June 28, 2012 By 6 Comments

Ever since my child was born, I have been struggling to find time to write. I know I am not the only one – many writers I have spoken to ask the same question, “How can I fit writing into my life?”

We are all trying desperately to shoehorn writing into a day jam-packed with other responsibilities – spouse, children, day job, school, and the millions of other things that crop up unexpectedly. Add to the writing the fact that we are also supposed to be “building our social media platform” as well, and that’s even more time we need to squeeze out of the day.

Can we really do it all?

I know I’m exhausted all the time, and recently another writer said she was stepping back because she could no longer juggle everything—the pressure was too much and every aspect of her life was suffering. And I can totally relate. I often feel like I’m neglecting many, many things (although hopefully not the truly important ones like spouse and child) in order to find time to write something longer than a grocery list.

And then comes the news that in the 21st century, authors are going to need to write more than one book a year to stay competitive. Color me depressed! Here I am cutting every possible corner to try and get out ONE book, and now I’m supposed to write more! No wonder so many writers are starting to feel burnt out. Write multiple books a year AND do all your own marketing AND take care of your family, day job, etc.

This is not a sustainable model for most writers.

I really examined my schedule the other day, and realized I NEVER STOP. I’m like a shark, I have to keep moving or I die. (Actually, I have to keep moving or I fall asleep.) There is no down time for me. I am never not doing something. Every second of every day is taken up. My “free” time is my writing time. The only time I’m doing “nothing” is when I’m sleeping—6 hours on a good night. Other writers I know are similarly scheduled to the eyeballs. How can we all maintain this pace?

As the pressures keep piling on, will we see more writers walking away? Will there be more one-hit wonders who then cannot sustain the pace? Will there simply be fewer writers in the mix, dropping out before they ever reach publication? Will we see a rise in poorly-written, poorly-edited works released before they should have been simply to keep up with the ravenous content monster?

Time will tell.

For myself, I will keep plugging away. My writing is my salvation at this point, the one thing that keeps me from being totally consumed by this creature called Mommy and losing my identity as an individual beyond my (wonderful) daughter.

I have never felt close to burning out on writing—perhaps because I get so little time to actually indulge in it. I still have story ideas and characters tumbling over themselves in my head, clamoring for my attention. I wish I had the time to give them all the attention they deserve!

Have you ever gotten burned out as a writer? How did you get back into writing?

Writer’s Guilt

June 21, 2012 By 5 Comments

I stole something last week.

Time.

Time to work on my own writing.

I have been ready to dive into my major revision on my MG novel for weeks now, and have been frustrated at every turn. Nothing tragic happened, no sicknesses to contend with, just busy with the 100 things on my To-Do list, and the 50 other things that popped up that weren’t even on the list. So finally, I said to myself, “That’s it. Today and tomorrow everyone else’s stuff can wait, and I am working on mine.”

And I did.

I flew through nearly a third of the “new rough” draft. Exhilarating! I confided to a writing pal that I had done this, and she said, “You say that as if you did something naughty – heck, it’s your work!”

Her comment got me thinking: Why do I always feel guilty when I put myself first?

I tend to take on too much because my brain still lives in the time before toddler. Before toddler, I really could do it all, never dropping any balls. Now balls are dropping, rolling away, and hiding under the sofa next to the dust groundhogs (they’re too big to be bunnies). The balls I tend to drop first are the ones that apply to me – my writing, my sleep, my free time. Not because I’m an incredibly selfless individual, but because they are the easiest to deal with dropping. No one is affected by the dropping except me.

I also take on too much because there’s so much I WANT to do. Do I want to read a friend’s manuscript? YES! Do I want to edit someone’s work? YES! Do I want to be actively involved in my daughter’s MOMS Club? YES! Do I want to be part of wonderful group blog? YES! Do I want to spend time with my husband? YES! Do I want to spend time with my daughter? YES! Do I want to clean the house? Well, not so much, but you get the point.

So many interesting and exciting things to do, it’s hard to say no! So I usually don’t. And I usually get them all done. But look at what’s not on that list above: my own writing. Do I want to get my own writing done? YES…but…but… There’s always a “but.”

Writer’s guilt.

As if taking the time to write is “naughty” or selfish. As if I have internalized the common notion that what we do isn’t “real.” That it isn’t “work” if I’m not getting paid.

Well, I don’t get paid to be a stay-at-home-mom, either, and that certainly is real work! So I think I will work harder at giving myself permission to write. Permission to put my work first.

Because it is work.

And it is real.

Do you suffer from writer’s guilt? How do you cope?

My Biggest Takeaway: 2012 Philadelphia Writers’ Conference

June 14, 2012 By 1 Comment

Every year I talk about my biggest takeaway from the Philadelphia Writers’ Conference. (I say “every year” as if I have been there more than twice.)

Last year I experienced an epiphany in pitching. This year the pitching had the desired outcome, but was not my biggest takeaway.

Instead, I learned that what I’d thought was my greatest strength as a writer may in fact be my greatest weakness.

A strange confluence occurred at the PWC. I took three 3-day courses: Novel—Character with Jonathan Maberry; Middle Grade/YA with Marie Lamba; and Horror, Science Fiction, Fantasty and Paranormal with Caridad Pineiro. The topics seemed disparate: Character, genre-specific tips, and world-building.

Instead, they ended up talking about the same issue: character.

Obviously, Novel—Character was about character. But Marie Lamba taught us that voice and strong character are the hallmarks of successful MG/YA books. And Caridad Pineiro told us that she figures out her character arcs first, and then builds the world around them, to test the characters to their utmost.

Character is something I always felt confident in writing. I knew my characters. I could write a believable character. A three dimensional character. I prefer character-driven books to plot-driven books, I’ve devoured scores of them—how could I not be a natural at writing character?

Very easily, apparently.

Now, my problems with character did not strike me like lightning at the conference. For months, if not longer, I have felt that somehow, my characters were not what they should be. They were not as alive as they could be. That while they were real for me, they were not for my readers.

I had critiques from different people all saying the same basic thing: “The story is great, but I just didn’t connect to the characters as much as I’d like.”

The conference simply cemented these niggling doubts for me. The character strength I thought I had is actually the weakest part of my writing. I need to figure out why, and how to fix it, because that is what is holding me back from having that story that is truly ready to go out to the public. This lack of connection is the hazy “something” I have sensed lacking in my stories for a long time.

Why hadn’t I noticed this before? Probably because there were so many other areas of writing that I needed to improve. There was a time when my instinctual characters WERE the strongest part of my writing. But that’s not the case anymore. The rest of my writing craft has risen, and the character development has not kept pace—likely because I hadn’t thought it needed work.

Now I know better. I’m not quite sure what the problem is, so I’m not quite sure how to fix it, but I know where to look to get started.

Vibrant, believable, complex characters—that’s what I’m looking to gain from this year’s takeaway.

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