Novelist in Progress

The End is Nigh!

2007-07-17T10:33:00.000-04:00

And so it begins.

In eighty-some-odd hours, the Pötterdämmerung will be upon us. As an avid reader of Rowling's series, I am both excited and somewhat sad about that. On Sunday, I went to see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and my nostalgia began in earnest. I sat in the theater annoying my companion with such whispers like, "Look how cute they are!" and "Remember when Dan looked like a homeless kid? Do you think that's what inspired Rupert's look?" The movie was great, but on the way home I started thinking about what it will be like to turn page 783 and realize that there is only one page left in Harry Potter's universe.

I am the first to admit that I get overly attached to characters. Don't even start me talking about Rose Tyler. But the HP kids - I've watched them grow up. With each book, I've become prouder and prouder of them as they have made difficult choices, learned painful lessons and grew to be damn fine people. Rowling has a special gift for capturing the adolescent experience, and she's made me believe in these characters like I have in few others. I feel as though I should have a memorial service for these people that I've loved so much. But that would be obsessive, right? No memorial service. Except perhaps in my head.

I suspect Saturday will see me mourning the loss of some very good friends, even as I enjoy seeing what Rowling has in store for us.

Queries, Queries Everywhere

2006-05-04T16:10:00.000-04:00

Hands down best part of having an agent? Never having to write another query letter.

Okay, and my agent is a pretty nifty sounding board for story ideas, a great motivator and a fabu margarita buddy, too. But for my money, one of the best reasons to pursue a good agent is that they know what a winning query looks like and how to write one for your masterpiece.

For everyone who is in query hell (or query heaven--does that exist?), today's column over at Romancing the Blog has a fantastic list of resources for writing good queries. Don't you love the Internet?

Fine, I Give Up!

2006-05-03T17:09:00.000-04:00

So, I wasn’t going to venture into the fracas about Kaavya Viswanathan and the Novel that Ate New York Publishing. But as more and more allegations surfaced this week, I found some disturbing posts on some of the blogs I frequent across the Internet. Most bloggers are united in their disgust with Viswanathan for plagiarizing, with the industry for saddling a seventeen-year-old kid with the pressure that comes with a $500K deal and with the media for eating this up like a fresh pint of Chubby Hubby. I sympathize with all those concerns, and have ceased to be surprised at the new developments that come out of the case.

What concerns me, however, is the comments being made in response to some of the blog entries. More than one reader responded with weariness about the issue, and a few even wondered aloud whether there weren’t more important topics to tackle. Short answer: on a writing-centered blog? Nope.

Plagiarism is theft, plain and simple. Writers make their living by honing and selling their plots, characters and voices. For any plagiarizer to “lift” story elements, scenes or even just voice-related things like a nicely-turned phrase or character description is to infringe on that tiny spot one particular writer has carved for himself in the bookshelves of stores and readers. Forget the legal ramifications—which are serious enough on their own—morally, plagiarism is a slap in the f ace to every other writer on the planet. Readers should be insulted as well; a plagiarizer is hoping you will spend your money on a book that is merely a copy of one you may have liked before. Any instance of plagiarism, great or small, should be an affront to writers and readers alike.

Hopefully, the Viswanathan case, as well as the case of Raytheon CEO William Swanson (which would be big news if business books sold like women’s fiction), will serve as warning lights about the publishing industry. As writers, we need to be aware that intellectual theft is a threat. As readers, we should be as vigilant as the fans who blew the whistle on these and other cases and hold writers and publishers accountable for what they sell. Without help from all the parties that make the literary industry work, this kind of scandal will run rampant.

Recommendation Tuesday - Espionage Edition

2006-05-02T11:43:00.000-04:00

For obvious reasons, I’ve had spying on the brain lately. Most of what I was going to rec for you today was intelligence related anyway, so I decided to just run with that. Here you go—recommendations for the spy-on-the-go:

Read:

John le Carre’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

Why?
Okay, so the Cold War is over. But it really was the ultimate espionage setting, wasn’t it? Revisit ultra-scary dictators, Soviet double agents who are not Irina Derevko, and cutting-edge technology like transistor radios and microfilm in Le Carre’s classic story of the search for a Soviet mole in MI-5. Bonus fact: If the action seems realistic, that’s because it is. Le Carre was an operations agent for British intelligence.

Listen to:

Evans Blue’s “The Melody and the Energetic Nature of Volume”

Why?
Today’s spies aren’t so much hiding microfilm in tuna fish cans as using high-tech devices to capture information via computer. Clearly, they need a kick-ass soundtrack to back them up. This album’s goth rock-ish lyrics and licks are just the thing. Check out the cover of Sarah McLachlan’s “Possession” and see how long it takes you to realize that yes, you do know this song.

Watch:

MI-5

Why?
This British intelligence drama is a little like Alias, only it exists in something approximating reality. The spies on this show confront terrorist threats that could actually happen, and use their brains instead of goofy gadgets and lots of improbable martial arts fighting. At the same time, they’re dealing with very real personal issues including, “How do I tell my girlfriend that I’ve been lying to her since the day I met her?” and “Why do these government jobs pay so lousy?” Also, Matthew McFayden? HOTT. I’m just saying. If you’re not quite ready to commit, Netflix has all three seasons available for rent.

Perspective

2006-05-01T15:09:00.000-04:00

This weekend, having finished the edits on my spychick novel, I pulled out my paranormal WIP, brushed off the month’s worth of dust that had accumulated and chucked most of the climactic scene I’d written at the end of chapter ten. Yeah, it had to be done. I knew before I took my editing hiatus that the scene wasn’t working, but going back to it after a month made it all the more clear.

Going back to a manuscript after some time away usually changes my perspective on the writing. When I’m not working on a particular project—that is, when I’m not actually sitting down at a computer and adding to it—I generally spend time thinking about the story in larger terms. Arc terms, character terms, theme terms. . .sometimes it’s as simple as tagline terms. That often changes my thinking about the way I write the story when I go back to, and it is usually a much more directed, tighter story because of it.

I’m on a deadline for the day job today, so I’m going to keep this short and sweet. An occasional hiatus from the WIP—good, bad, nonexistent? Discuss.

Progress Update

2006-04-28T16:17:00.000-04:00

Isn’t it nice when there is actual progress on which to update people?

Last night I finished the edits on my spychick MS and sent the new draft off for review. Yay! The booty dance that ensued at Chez Melanie was a sight to behold, I assure you all. Now I just have to catch up on some other editing and then I can return to working on my paranormal. I’m hoping the initial confrontation between my hero and heroine won’t be so difficult now that I’ve let it simmer for a few weeks.

This morning driving to work, I had the usual frantic second thoughts about the completed MS—did I emphasize the action over the romance too much? Vice versa? Should I change the heroine’s job? Would it be more believable if she was a _______? So naturally, I called a friend who has read the MS and interrogated her about it. It took about half an hour, but she eventually convinced me that yes, it’s good, and yes, an editor has already requested it even after hearing about the heroine’s job and knowing about the romance/action equation. She also convinced me that I really do like the MS (or at least I did twenty-four hours ago). It’s just an attack of cold feet, and if I try to hang onto the MS until I have tried out every possible combination of hero/heroine/romance/action/career paths, I will never be finished.

The logical part of my brain knows that this is true, but I also know that there is a careful balance. I don’t want to send my baby out there until it’s ready to leave the nest, and yet at some point it has to go. So when is the right time? Every writer’s dilemma, right?

All of you writers (and agents, and editors, and CPs) out there, how do you know when a project is ready for submission? And how often do you wish you could reach back into cyberspace and snatch that puppy back five minutes after you’ve sent it on its way?

Editing, editing now I go. . .

2006-04-27T12:01:00.000-04:00

I am still up to my eyeballs in edits for my spychick novel, which I fully intend to have to my agent by midnight on Sunday. It’s not that I think Nephele will drop me or lecture me or take away my booze if I don’t have it in, but I have this thing about deadlines. I actually work really well under them, and tend to set them for myself as a measure of my own progress if I don’t have an official one to work under. It’s going pretty well with this project because while there may not be an official deadline, there certainly is a time issue in that Neph (and I) would like to get this puppy out to editors before everyone disappears for the summer.

I’m closing in on the end now, fortunately, and have added approximately 9,000 words to the original manuscript. Just a few more chapters to look over and tighten and it'll be ready to go. I’m pretty pleased with the progress I’ve made since I pitched the MS not quite three weeks ago, and I think the additions I’ve made really enhance the story and the characters. It is definitely a better MS than I had a month ago—and really, that’s what editing is all about, right?

Back to the salt mines now, children. What is everyone else working on?

Equal Treatment

2006-04-26T14:17:00.000-04:00

Earlier this week, Amy Garvey blogged about tortured heroines—or, more specifically, the lack of them—in today’s market. I hadn’t really thought about it before, but she’s right. Our heroines are strong and resolute and brave. They have to be, because they have to break through to our heroes and we like our heroes tortured, don’t we? We like orphans who become womanizing rogues because they never knew the love of a mother. We love heroes fighting their own hungers, whether it’s a vampire hounded by bloodlust or a junkie overcoming his addiction. We love it even more when a hero is burned by love and the heroine must break through the wall around his heart—come on, that’s one of our favorites, right?

My question is, since Garvey covered the lack of tortured heroines so well, why do we like our heroes broken? Do we have some need to “fix” these idealized male figures? Or is it the vulnerability we find attractive? Are we looking for someone who needs us emotionally, or do we just love the angst created when a hero can’t bring himself to express his feelings for the woman he loves?

I personally am an angst junkie. I love star-crossed romance, unrequited love—all that stuff. I especially have a fetish for couples who get separated at some point and have to fight their way back to each other. I think this may stem from one of the first romance novels I ever read, which was about two ballet dancers. The hero was Italian and ran off to fight Mussolini, and the heroine escaped her weird, controlling family in England and returned to America. It was years before they found each other again, and even more years before they finally got back together. I loved every minute of that book and am heartsick that it was accidentally tossed out in one of my frenetic anti-clutter fits. I also remember a fantasy series in which the hero and heroine were close enough to speak to each other for approximately three chapters, and actually a couple in less than one complete chapter—this was out of four books. And yet I ate it up.

So what’s the deal? Why do we torture our heroes? What tortured heroes stand out as your favorites, and how were they “fixed?”

Recommendation Tuesday

2006-04-25T12:37:00.000-04:00

In the spirit of sharing, I hereby declare Tuesday to be Recommendation Day here at Novelist in Progress. Each week I will share recommendations for books, music and maybe some extras that strike my fancy. Everyone is free to jump in and plug what they’re reading/listening to/obsessed with. This week’s selections are below.

Book of the Week

Twilight by Stephanie Meyer
Seriously, get and read this book. Immediately. Even those of you who think you are too mature for YA books will be taken in. The characterizations are beautiful (who doesn’t love an ungodly beautiful, yet tortured, vampire hero?), the setting is marvelous and the plot unfolds at a great pace. The sequel is due sometime this fall.

Music of the Week

Demolition by Ryan Adams
I love me some self-destructive emo boy music. Highlights include a semi-cover of U2’s “Desire” that uses the same melody (albeit a slowed down, acoustic version) and new lyrics that bring the shivers. Love love love.

Bonus Rec of the Week

Polka Dot Wedges by C. Ronson
It’s spring—go buy sandals! Specifically, buy cute polka dot espadrilles for only $53. You might need a flippy skirt to go with them. Your call.

Where in the world. . .is this story taking place?

2006-04-24T13:15:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago at an RWA conference, I had the opportunity to do my first ever face-to-face pitch to a great editor who shall remain nameless—but trust me, she’s awesome. After talking to my lovely and very helpful agent, I decided to pitch my spychick novel. We both agreed that it was not precisely what this editor was generally looking to acquire, but that it would be good practice for me and hey—you never know, right? I’ll spare you the suspense and tell you that the meeting went well. I really liked the editor’s no-bullshit style and she not only liked my pitch, but asked to see the full manuscript. But what intrigued me most about the whole meeting was what caught her interest. The first minute and a half of the meeting went more or less like this:

Editor: Nice to meet you. I have a few questions to start off.

Me: Sure.

Editor: Contemporary or historical?

Me: Contemporary.

Editor: Genre?

Me: Romantic comedy/thriller.

Editor: Who’s your heroine and what does she do?

Me: __________________.

Editor: Who’s your hero and what does he do?

Me: __________________.

Editor: [Not crazy about hero’s occupation.]

Me: [Boy, this is going well.]

Editor: What’s the setting?

Me: Los Angeles and Berlin.

Editor: Reeaallly.

From there on, I really felt I had her attention. Said editor immediately remarked that she had never had a romance set in Berlin and proceeded to ask why it was set there, whether or not I had been to Berlin and how readers would know that the action was taking place in Berlin and not Topeka. So for the last few weeks as I run through my edits on this MS, I’ve been taking care to make sure I really have a sense of place about the story. Fortunately, I have been to Berlin so my recollections of the city and the places the heroine sees in her mad dash across it come from personal experience and not from a guidebook. Ditto with Los Angeles.

But since place has been on my mind so vividly recently, I’ve started going over the books I’ve read recently and thinking about how place is presented there. It may not be the first thing that jumps out at some readers, but I have to admit that place and the author’s use of it can make or break a book for me. Take Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight, for a perfect example of this. The book is set primarily in a small town on the Northwestern coast, and while I have spent only minimal time anywhere in the Northwest (and then only in big cities), Meyer vividly paints the setting as both an important part of the story and as a background. When the action moves briefly to Arizona, the shift is dramatic and noticeable. As a reader, I felt disoriented by the move and that helped draw me even more into the character’s trauma. Very, very well done.

On the opposite end, I recently read a book (which shall also remain nameless) that took place in Budapest. Now, one of the reasons I picked this book up is because of the unique setting. I briefly visited that city two years ago and loved the history, architecture and culture. If I close my eyes, I can still remember the view from Fisherman’s Bastion, the weird up-and-down railway car that takes you to the top of the hill where most of the Buda side rests, the dark coolness of the labyrinth beneath the castle and the old Soviet monument park still visible from the river at night.

This book? Had none of that. By the time the book was over I felt certain that the author had not only never set foot in Budapest, but that she hadn’t even bothered to read a guidebook about it. I am not necessarily against setting a work in a place you’ve never visited; some authors have the ability to bring a place alive after reading about it and seeing pictures and that’s great. Sometimes a particular plot point or even a plot itself requires the action to move to a certain place and I understand that this might require an author to “write blind,” as it were. What made the entire lack of place stick out to me in this particular book was that it didn’t need to take place in Budapest. It could have been almost anywhere else—so why pick a city so unique and rich if you’re not going to use it?

When I read a book, I want to feel transported. I don’t care if it’s to a big city I’ve always wanted to visit (or have visited and loved) or to a small town that I’ll probably never see. I want to know I’m in a different place, and not only because the book jacket tells me so. Done well, setting can make a book rise above its competition and earn a place on my “keeper” shelf. Without place, the book—just like the reader—may very well end up lost in limbo.

What's up with all the evil?

2006-04-21T13:56:00.000-04:00

I think I have a problem. Not a really bad problem like, you know, cancer. But a problem nonetheless.

I am addicted to evil characters.

There, I said it. It became clear to me last night while watching the return of Alias (Did everyone know that Irina is back? Because I kind of forgot and then BAM! Hotness!) that I am far more invested in the evil or morally compromised characters than the white hats. Okay, it’s nice that Agent Weiss has apparently done well for himself and that Vaughn is apparently alive and all, but. . .hey! Tom Grace might be working both sides? Irina’s been using Syd all along? Yes! More, more, more!

Ahem.

This got me thinking. What goes into a really good villain—the kind of twisted, sadistic bastard you just love to hate? My spychick MS is the first time I’ve really sat down to create a larger-than-life villain who has enough gusto to last through what I hope will be several installments, and it was harder than I thought. You can’t give away too much about a villain, not at first anyway. If his motives are crystal clear, he’s just evil and not intriguingly evil. But at the same time, you have to hook a reader’s interest in what made him intriguingly evil and so there has to be some sort of backstory to him (or her).

Take one of my all-time favorite villains: the above-mentioned, awesomely hot and almost always eeeevil Irina Derevko of Alias fame. I’ve faded in and out as an Alias fan over the years, but one hint of an Irina appearance and I am parked on the couch rubbing my hands in gleeful anticipation. The key here is that she is a complex character with more layers than a five-pound onion. She evil! She’s misunderstood! She was forced to betray her husband and daughter! She’s always been working toward her own endgame! We never know what to think, and yet we always want to know more. It’s taken four seasons (okay, so she wasn’t actually in season three but she’s always lurking, even when she’s off-screen) to peel back her mystery and reveal. . .more mystery. Yet along the way the viewers have been given enough crumbs to make us sympathetic to the woman who has quite possibly been playing all of the white hats for fools all along. That is one masterfully-drawn villain.

In the case of my story, it’s told from the heroines POV and she has precious little information about the villain. Her CIA masters (some of whom are less evil villains) may or may not have more, but they’re not telling—yet. So I had to come up with some other way of making the reader care what happens to him and ended up working in a tie to a future plotline that is just hinted at in this book. The reader, like the heroine, might just as well want him dead but if that happens he’ll never have a chance to elaborate on what he knows. Mwahaha—

Sorry.

There’s no secret formula for a good villain, just as there is no formula for a good hero. Character development is not a science, no matter what all those books on writing would have you think. But just like a main character, a villain is a key part of the story and can either advance it naturally or simply appear as a one-dimensional plot device.

Bottom line? Write me a good villain and I’m yours forever. Or at least until I find a good therapist.

What a Feeling!

2006-04-20T15:56:00.000-04:00

You know that great feeling you get when you recommend a book to someone, and then that someone hands it back to you a week later with a huge, satisfied sigh and a demand for more? Yeah, I love that. I just got back the copy of fellow NEC member Lauren Willig’s The Secret History of the Pink Carnation that I lent to a colleague and she loved it. Bonus points because she’s recovering from a stroke and reading is part of her therapy to help her concentration. So it’s not only enjoyable, but healthy!

Seriously, y’all, that was a great book. If you don’t have it already, now is the time to pick it up because it’s finally out in paperback.

Balance

2006-04-19T15:35:00.000-04:00

I have always struggled with the concept of balance—and not just because I am a born klutz, either. Yoga? Not my forte. Surfing? Only because I don’t mind falling into the water. Career/personal life? Perpetually off-kilter. Writing projects? An object lesson in tipped scales.

Recently I’ve been dealing with an upswing in activity at my day job. It isn’t unexpected—this is an election year, after all—but the crush of projects and research that have appeared on my desk lately appear to have begun breeding to produce gnarly, genetically-altered work that mysteriously causes my head to connect repeatedly with my keyboard. At the same time, I have two writing projects that I dearly want to be working on. One is my unfinished paranormal, which whispers (and sometimes shouts) sweet nothings about vampires and destiny and doomed love stories in my ear until I am dying to write ANGST. The other project is an edit of my spychick novel that my lovely agent and I have hammered out together. (Side note: how encouraging is it to open a project you haven’t looked at in several months and find that you still like it?) I’m enjoying being back in that world again, too, and honestly it’s nice to have a break from the more serious and complicated world of my paranormal. This edit is exactly what my spychick novel needs, and it’s progressing well. If the vampires would shut up—just for a couple of weeks, guys, I swear!—all would be well in Muse World.

When my longer work hours, I’ve had to really think about the way I use my writing time. Dabbling in other projects has had to go, and obviously I’ve neglected this blog for a while now. But--but--I’m writing. In a little over two months, I have 150 good pages and about a hundred more of backstory and brainstorming for my paranormal. In ten days, I’ve made edits on about half my spychick novel, adding around 6,500 of my target 10,000. Not too shabby, if I do say so myself.

I’m not sure if balance is something I’ll ever be able to attain (or keep) in my writing process. I’m not even sure if balance is my style. I write a lot more in the bursts of creative output that my Muse seems to favor than in systematic, Stephen King-like routines. My ideas don’t come in convenient packages that fit into wordcount goals and carefully planned writing sessions. Instead, I find myself dictating messages into my cell phone while walking through underground parking garages, furiously jotting down notes on the subway and toting my laptop with me day in and day out just in case I have ten minutes in which I can lose myself in writing. That is what works for me, and I’m beginning to realize that messing with the formula just causes me problems. I can meet deadlines. I can shut the door and force myself to write (or edit) when the occasion calls. But that’s not how I write best, or how my best ideas foment.

So for now, I will thank the Muse for those bursts of creativity that send me fumbling for paper on my morning commute and even for those nights when I don’t stumble to bed until 4am because I just had to finish a chapter. Maybe balance is for the birds.

Threat Level: Cautiously Optimistic

2006-02-21T15:43:00.000-05:00

As I posted last week, I’ve been in a real funk lately about my writing. I’ve had little progress on anything, and until the last couple of weeks it hasn’t been for lack of trying. I had hoped to kick start myself with the High Noon Challenge that took place over the weekend, and guess what? It worked! Cue choirs of angels.

From Wednesday until Friday of last week, I perused about half a dozen (and completely read three) Young Adult books recommended by various lovely people, and I sketched out a vague outline for a YA series I’ve been wanting to try. But whether it was my recent (repeated) viewing of Underworld, the YA vampire book that I could NOT put down (Jana, how much do I *heart* you for telling me about Twilight?), the Muse had a different direction in mind.

Between Friday night at 6pm (the start of the challenge) and Monday at 9pm, I wrote about thirty pages of an adult paranormal novel, the plot and characters of which I’ve only toyed with very briefly until now. Hmm. Where did that come from, you ask? No idea, but I’ve also written a pretty decent background for the characters and the Rules of Engagement for this particular universe. This is definitely not chick lit. It’s grittier than what I normally write, and the heroine is both a tortured soul and a calculating killer with super powers, so she’s not exactly someone I’m used to having in my head either. So far, though, I’m enjoying this departure. Maybe what the Muse needed was a break from the same old, same old and a jaunt into something a little darker.

One of the reasons I’ve shied away from paranormal thus far is that editors seem to want their paranormal with a side of steaminess, and I hate—HATE—writing love scenes. But while I haven’t progressed to writing that critical element yet, I can already tell that I’m a little more comfortable with it. The characters I’m writing about are not regular human beings, certainly not people with whom I have (pretend) relationships with. It’s easier to write sex scenes when you’re writing about slightly surreal characters. Or so I hope, anyway. Don’t get me wrong—this isn’t going to be erotica, not even close. But when you have a hot-tempered killer for a heroine and an ungodly beautiful vampire for a hero, you’ve got to have some shagging. It’s just expected. I’ll let you know how that goes when I get there.

At any rate, I am relieved and happy to be writing again. I’m still in the honeymoon phase with this project, in which I’m discovering how the characters mesh (or don’t) and shaping plotlines so that they will eventually intersect. I’m figuring out tone (though that seems to be coming easily at the moment) and working out character backgrounds, and doing some historical research because you can’t write seven-hundred-year-old characters without cracking some history books. This part is fun—the real test will be in the next few weeks when I find out if this puppy will work at all. But so far, all is well and I’m pleased with my progress.

This is SO much better than last week.

The Beast

2006-02-16T14:16:00.000-05:00

I have been cranky lately. No, I’ve been more than cranky. I’ve been a vengeful, crank-tastic, snippy, one-pushed-button-away-from-nuclear bitch. There are a couple of reasons for it (PMS, anyone?), but the main one is that I’ve been having trouble with my writing.

In late December, I sent off the first draft of my second novel (keeping up?) to my agent. I feel pretty good about that MS. It’s got good characters, good plot, good set-up for future installments. But once I finished that one and sent it off, I had to figure out what to write next? The sequel to Novel 2? The paranormal-ish scenario I’ve had knocking around in my head for ages? Something contemporary, set in Petersburg—the city I’ve been dying to write about for years? I finally settled on the last—a women’s fiction piece set in Petersburg—and wrote about twenty pages on that, only to find it wasn’t working. Undaunted, I rewrote those twenty pages. Still didn’t work. I then edited the rewrite, went back to the first draft and considered pulling it off the bench. A week later, I switched heroines. Nope, still nothing. At that point, I ate an entire Entenmanns’s devil’s food cake with marshmallow icing and a plate of chipotle ranch fries before indulging in a frenzy of reading other people’s books while feeling vaguely sorry for myself. Two weeks later, I’m still doing extra laps at the gym to get rid of that cake and I haven’t written a word.

Productive, no? And the thing is, I’m not happy unless I’m being productive. I hate feeling stuck, I hate to be without a project—something I can chip away at little by little and see my progress measured in word counts and filled pages. Basically, this time between projects sucks.

Fortunately, I’ve got an incentive to get off my ass. This weekend, Romance Divas is having a High Noon Challenge stretching from 6pm on Friday evening until noon on Sunday. The goal is simple word count—just sit down and write straight through without editing and agonizing over each paragraph. That’s actually not a bad way to write if you’re trying to break through writer’s block. I’ve found that what hinders me the most is not lack of plot, but lack of voice. I generally start a project with a pretty good idea of the plot. Voice is harder to come by.

This weekend I’m going to start an entirely new project—I’m consciously choosing one that I haven’t tried to work on in the last two months only to get bogged down. The goal here is a new start, not continued frustration, right? This project is a Young Adult paranormal, something I haven’t attempted before. I’ve gotten some excellent suggestion as to YA titles to peruse in order to get familiar with the market, and I quite enjoyed the two hours I spent last night at Barnes & Noble reading Libba Bray’s A Great and Terrible Beauty. I plan to go back tonight and flip through some others, and then on Friday. . .things get serious.

Hopefully, this time next week will find me back in the writing saddle and not quite so bitchy. Fingers crossed, people!

It's That Time Again. . .

2006-02-14T14:26:00.000-05:00

I don’t really have to specify, do I? We all know what today is—even those of us who have vowed to ignore it, or to instead celebrate Singles’ Appreciation Day. I’m not that cynical (not yet, at least). I will admit to being a V-Day junkie. I love the profusion of hearts and roses everywhere from Tiffany’s to Stop-N-Shop, I love the schmoopy cards and the Very Special Episodes of my favorite television shows. Most of all, I love the ridiculous kiddie Valentines that come in boxes of 20 from CVS and other quality retail outlets. The Ricky Martin card I received one February stands out as one of the most amusing—it gets a special bonus because it was written in Spanish. Basically I think that love, in any form, should always be celebrated, and yet I know that many of us are too busy running from one project to the next and juggling family/career/relationships/social life to really concentrate on it every day out of the year. If we need one particular day to help remind us, one day on which we take the time to show our honeys and friends and families that we love them, so be it. Years ago, a college friend pulled me into his tradition of showing compassion—a kind of love that this holiday isn’t exactly focused on—for one random stranger or acquaintance on Valentine’s Day and now that we live several countries apart, I keep that tradition and then call him to tell him that I haven’t forgotten. I won’t tell you what I did this morning on my way to work (that’s part of the tradition), but it was a nice way to start the day.

What? What’s that you say—this blog is supposed to be about writing? Oh. Um, hang on a second. I can tie this together. . .yes! Okay, romance is in the air—or at least, it’s supposed to be. I know that a lot of people don’t like Valentine’s Day because it creates high expectations that are almost never met. I see that point, and I raise you this: what is it like to be a romance author on February 14?

There are a couple of stereotypes out there about romance authors—that said author is a sexually frustrated housewife or (gasp!) virgin writing about what they wish their life was like; that said author is really a man writing about the women he wished he’d met in high school; and, of course, that said author really gets around and has actually tried out all the steamy things she writes about. I’m not sure which category I’d least like to be consigned to; they all have their issues. But think about it—bookstores usually incorporate romance novels into their V-Day displays, and sometimes even seek out authors to do signings or talks on the day. Would you want to be answering the questions that must crop up at those events—or the e-mails that I’m sure find their way to various authors in preparation for this holiday?

Cue dream sequence:

Yes, Ms. Author, I have a question. In your bookRide the Cowboy, you have a scene where the hero and heroine make love on the back of a galloping horse. Have you tried this? Does it really work? Do you recommend side-saddle, or Western for best results?

Or, alternately:

To: author@sexypublishing.com
From: reader@hopeful.net
Subject: Helpful Hints

Dear Ms. Author,

I love your books (especially the nookie LOL) and was wondering if you have any bedroom tips for me and my husband. Our sex life has been kind of dull lately and I’d like to spice it up. You seem to know a lot about [improbable sexual experiment possibly involving some sort of food]. Can you help me?

Thanks,

A Reader

Yeah, I wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of either of those. (Did that sound dirty to anyone else? Maybe I’ve been reading too many romance novels.) At any rate, being a romance expert has the potential to be a headache around this time of year.

On the other hand, maybe a holiday dedicated to romance could inspire an author to write a really great proposal scene, or one of those “oh my goodness, I think I love the man I’ve purported to hate for the last 200 pages!” scenes. Or—just throwing it out there—a really toe-curling love scene. Not that I’m going to attempt that later. Nope. Just a thought. Really.

Oprah-fied

2006-02-08T19:06:00.000-05:00

Good news for the literary world: Oprah approves of Eli Wiesel—it is now safe to read Night. Whew.

I can’t say exactly why I get so annoyed whenever I see that Oprah has chosen a classic for her book club selection. I mean, I love classics. I’m disturbed by the thought that there are entire classes of high school students that graduate without ever having read To Kill a Mockingbird and Johnny Tremain. Theoretically, anything that gets people reading classic literature is okay with me. But in actuality, I am also disturbed by the thought that the American public needs Oprah’s recommendation to pick up Anna Karenina.

I am not wholly opposed to the idea of celebrity book clubs—or book clubs in general. A lot of my reading is based on recommendations from other people. And the simple truth of the matter is that Oprah sells books. If her endorsement can get Night on the bestseller list—even for a week—part of me thinks I should just shut up and be glad people are reading it. But on the other hand, I don’t really trust her taste. I mean, seriously—you can’t read Tolstoy without reading Dostoevsky and come away with a decent idea about Russian literature. You get no context, no counterpoint. It’s maddening that Tolstoy’s moralistic bombast will be all some people know of the great Slavic writers. C’mon, Oprah—throw us a bone!

Oprah’s book club, of course, has been in the news most recently because of her public endorsement of James Frey’s faux-memoir, A Million Little Pieces, just before his public unmasking as a liar. While I respect Oprah for retracting her endorsement and having Frey back on her show to give him the chance to apologize and/or explain his actions, I’m bothered by the whole-hearted support she gave Frey after reading his book. Does Oprah simply not have a truth/fiction filter? Frey’s falsified accounts of his own debauchery should and did raise alarms with everyone I know who read the book. The Smoking Gun’s revelations were not even the first time Frey was publicly questioned. And if Oprah’s bullshit detector is really that flawed, do we really trust this woman to choose our reading material for us?

Just a few questions to ponder while we wait for Ms. Winfrey to approve the next return bestseller.

Defending our Young

2006-02-06T19:31:00.000-05:00

I recently entered my first-ever contest—a nice, low-key one over at Romance Divas. The premise of the contest was “Best First Meeting,” meaning the first encounter between the hero and heroine. Now, I am lucky enough to have some great people who read and critique my stuff before I send it along to my agent, and I appreciate their candor and their enthusiasm more than I can say. But. . .well, I know those people, and they know both me and my writing. Even if that first chapter (or first meeting, as the case may be) doesn’t grab them, they’re going to keep reading. They trust me to follow through and to provide them with a good story.

Strangers are a little bit different.

The scene I entered in the contest is the first encounter of my hero and heroine in my most recently completed MS—a romcom/adventure hybrid that I hope is the first installment in a series. Because of the hybrid nature of the work, I had trouble deciding what category to enter it in, how to set up the scene (or if I should set up the scene—isn’t the scene supposed to speak for itself?) and how much of the chapters before and after I should include. Eventually, I decided to restrict it to just the scene between the two characters and, since the story has barely begun when they meet, to forgo adding in lots of background information. I mean, really, what was I going to write? Well, see, the heroine is secretly a spy—only she doesn’t want to be one, and she only does it part time, and she’s really not very good at it— Yeah, that was going to get complicated fast. So I submitted my severely edited scene and waited.

I have to say, the Divas give excellent reviews. I’ve gotten seven as of this writing, and every single one has been thoughtful and thorough. When the contest is over, I plan to print out the reviews and keep them on hand for the next round of edits on this MS—I’ve gotten some good ideas from the comments. My only complaint is that all submissions are anonymous at this point, so I can’t defend, explain or elaborate. This is the problem with scene-specific contests—there is no context, no follow-through. One of the questions on the review form asks if the conflict that will keep the characters apart is apparent, and I think that is a legitimate question. But it doesn’t fit for every entry. In mine, for instance, the main plot is what keeps the characters apart: the heroine is off being a super-secret spy and the hero is back in LA wondering why she doesn’t return his phone calls. That isn’t going to come across in a scene that clocks in at just over 2,000 words. Honestly, if the conflict is that clear-cut after 2,000 words, I have to wonder what the rest of the book is about.

This complaint is, obviously, no reflection on the contest or on the excellent nature of the Diva reviews. This is about ME, about MY insecurities and about MY desire to defend my work. One of the reasons I entered the contest was to thicken up my skin, so to speak, in anticipation of the day when my work hits the public and I have to see it ripped apart by reviewers who don’t care for my brand of humor or suspense or romance or whatever. Clearly, I have some work to do on that front. But really, beyond the extremely gentle criticisms I’ve received, I am incredibly heartened by the response to the scene. If a reviewer can fall in love with my hero in 2,000 words, there must be an editor (and readers!) who will like him, too. And if a bunch of strangers who read enough romance to be frequenting a website dedicated to it think my work is worth reading and reviewing, maybe I’m doing something right after all.

Overall, this contest has been an extremely positive experience for me—frustrations and all. I’ve got some great ideas, some honest critiques and, above all, a desire to show reviewers and everyone else that my story is worth a try. I highly encourage any other writers out there to enter and enter often!

Wait--am I defending Andy Greenwald?

2006-01-26T17:36:00.000-05:00

Intrepid readers of this blog will remember that a few weeks ago, I posted about Jess Crispin’s disdain for chick lit. In retrospect, I suppose I should have figured that Ms. Crispin’s literary sensibilities would engender equal disdain for other segments of popular literature, too. Indeed, as of yesterday, it is also official that Jessa Crispin Hates the Emo Boy Writers.

Wow, what a shock.

I am not, perhaps, an unbiased opinion in this matter because I happen to have a soft spot for emo boys. I know, I know—they can be annoying as hell, but I’m a sucker for bands like the Strokes and JET and now I seem to have a thing for skinny, over-emoting James Blunt. But Crispin’s objection to this type of literature seems just as arbitrary. She doesn’t like that they “name drop” a la Nick Hornby (to which my Nick Hornby love responds with a resounding, “BITE ME”). She hates that they use pop culture references to iPods and movies like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Her most vicious wrath is reserved for the referencing of websites such as LiveJournal, which she believes is full of self-hating fourteen-year-olds and therefore not worthy of her time—on the Internet or in the pages of these books whose existence she chooses to ignore.

Obviously, I can’t fault Crispin for her personal taste simply because it differs from mine and I can, in some ways, see why she doesn’t like this particular type of book. The few that I’ve read (with the exception of Hornby—again, BITE ME) have little chance of being enduring literature. I tried desperately to get into Andy Greenwald's Miss Misery (a special nemesis of Crispin) after a male friend raved about it, only to hand it back with a smile and vaguely positive review. That title, like many of the rest, is too littered with pop culture references that were only ever significant to a select few, and they are far too “of the moment” to capture the public's attention for very long. But the point that Crispin misses is that the datedness of “emo boy lit” is the point. Not to sound all philosophically cliched about it, but we live in a far different world than we did ten years ago—and a far different one than we will inhabit ten years hence—and popular literature is one way of immortalizing this particular moment in history. And regardless of the fact that Crispin doesn’t want to recognize it, popular literature does change society.

In college, I wrote a paper about the role of underground literature ("samizdat") in bringing about the downfall of the Soviet Union. My two main examples were Solzhenitsyn’s A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and Anatoly Rybakov’s Children of the Arbat trilogy. Though both of these works are enjoyable reads and were extremely popular in their day, they are unlikely to be on anyone’s reading list now. In fact, the Rybakov trilogy was out of print the last time I checked. Both authors were writing for a certain audience at a certain time, and they both hit their marks with the accuracy of champion sharpshooters. These books were published on underground presses and passed around in serial form for decades. Thousands upon thousands saw life under Stalin and his immediate successors mirrored in fiction and sided with the characters against totalitarianism and for individual freedom. But now? Few modern readers can understand, much less identify with Ivan Denisovitch, who doesn’t much question his fate as a prisoner in a labor camp so far north that there is no reason to attempt escape. And who can quite see themselves as Rybakov’s Sasha, betrayed by the Party he once loved simply for writing some not-so-funny jokes about shock workers? For that matter, how many non-Russians know what a shock worker is?

I know that some books are timeless—some are destined to be classics as soon as they leave the author’s pen—and some of those timeless books do indeed bring about change from within a society. But if every author sets about to write books set in some nameless, faceless place devoid of references that may one day date it, who will speak for this time, this moment? As a sometime historian, I am passionate in my belief that popular literature is a vital tool in recording our culture—we as writers have some responsibility to set down the world that we live in so that it won’t be utterly forgotten. These “emo boys” for whom Crispin has such disdain are doing just that. They are writing of an America obsessed with iPods and blogging, of bands that may never be remembered as the Beatles of a generation, but will still provide the soundtrack to our memories of today. If they are pretentious, if they can’t seem to find their own words in which to talk about modern relationships, then perhaps it is because we as a society have grown pretty damn impressed with our own intellectual prowess but are still figuring out this “dating” thing that our grandparents made seem so simple.

The Irish poet William Butler Yeats unashamedly wrote to capture the days in which he lived. In his poem, “To Ireland in the Coming Times” he set down this purpose with all the passion and fervor of a big tent revival preacher:

“While still I may, I write for you
The love I lived, the dream I knew [. . .]
I cast my heart into my rhymes
That you, in the dim coming times,
May know how my heart went with them
After the rose-bordered hem.

I can’t say it any better than that. Write on, emo boys. One day you’ll be the record of our name-dropping, emotionally stunted, technology obsessed existence.

Mood Music

2006-01-24T17:41:00.000-05:00

Not that kind of mood—get your minds out of the gutter. Unless you’re writing erotica, in which case, back into the gutter with you. I’m talking about creative mood, literary mood, Muse-won’t-shut-up mood. What’s the soundtrack to yours?

Yesterday I had a horrendously long meeting that had me begging for death by the time it ended sometime after noon. I had planned to go to a cozy coffee shop and spend some time writing that afternoon, but my head was completely full of special elections and poll numbers and distinctly empty of anything I could use to work on my novel. So I went for my iPod and scrolled through to find some good music to get me into a creative mood.

This is something I do a lot—there’s nothing like music and coffee to get me kick-started into writing mood. I have several playlists on my iPod devoted to “writing music”—songs that get me thinking or ones that evoke certain emotions for me. When I was writing my first novel, I discovered that I wrote best with music playing softly in the background to drown out all the other noise. I also discovered that songs with strong lyrics really get me into a creative mood. It took me a while to get the “soundtrack” right, but when it finally clicked, I had over an hour of music that really fit with the story and put me into the mood I needed to be in to write it. That playlist tended heavily toward the Sundays, the Jayhawks, Beth Hart and Aimee Mann. For a while, I associated the Sundays’ version of “Wild Horses” so strongly with the more emotional moments of my book that I could no longer play that song in the car.

My second novel is not so emotionally heavy, and includes more action and suspense. My writing music reflected that. Instead of chicks who sing like they’re on the verge of tears, there were more guitar-heavy songs like “Momentary Thing” by Something Happens. The Dropkick Murphys, Supreme Beings of Leisure and the Dead Kennedys (because my heroine loves them) rounded out the action-y parts of the list, and some of my old favorites like “A Pair of Brown Eyes” (the Pogues), “La Cienega Just Smiled” (Ryan Adams) and “Righteously” (Lucinda Williams) are the more romantic soundtrack for the novel.

Over the next couple of weeks as I get geared up to really begin my current project, I’ll go through my music collection and look for things that evoke the same imagery that I’m trying to write and will probably haunt some music stores (and iTunes, of course) until I find the perfect mix. One of my most recent finds, which I expect will make up at least some of that mix, is James Blunt’s album Back to Bedlam. You might know the single “You’re Beautiful,” which is currently being played to death on major radio markets. Since I don’t listen to the radio that much, I’m not too bothered. The melodies on this album are unobtrusive and the lyrics are honest and interesting. One of the tracks, “Goodbye My Lover,” is a fantastic take on a break-up song and I can see that figuring heavily into my current project.

To me, music is an intrinsic part of writing. Without it, I have trouble capturing mood and breaking through bouts of writer’s block. So the time I spend making playlists and soundtracks is time well spent. I know some of you do the same thing—I even have some of your soundtracks, come to think of it. But how do you find the right music? Is it mostly from your existing CD collections, or do you search out new stuff? And how do you know when it’s right?

To read, or to write--that is the question

2006-01-19T17:54:00.000-05:00

A pledge of sorts has been going around some of the blogs and journals I read, and yesterday several friends signed on with their personal goals to read fifty books in 2006. These ~~over-achieving freaks~~ committed bibliophiles also listed the books they’d already finished this year, which was anywhere from three to seven. That’s seven. Eighteen days into the year, some people have read seven books.

I guess I’m not really doing too badly on that front. I’ve read four books (five, just as soon as I get twenty minutes to finish The Devil Wears Prada), and I’ve got a stack beside my bed that I can’t wait to dive into. I know that I probably could read fifty books this year if I put my mind to it. But the problem is, once I start reading, it’s hard to stop. I love books, I love stories, I love the constant flow of information into my brain. However, since I’m also trying to be a writer, I have to leave myself time to write. I wish I could do both at the same time—really, I’ve even attempted to listen to audiobooks while writing—but it simply doesn’t work.

It’s a balancing act, I suppose, because despite being stingy with any time I could potentially spend writing, I know that I need to spend time reading. For one thing, I need to keep up with the industry. The hours I spend in bookstores or checking out recommendations on Amazon keep me at least slightly in touch with what other authors are writing and what publishers (and the public) are buying. But more importantly, I have to read if I’m going to write. Reading is what made me want to write in the first place—that kick of inspiration that comes from reading a book I love, the “I MUST be able to do better than that,” that strikes after a truly bad book. Regardless of what I read, I know that reading makes me a better, more prolific writer—and it gives me ideas for future projects, too.

So I’ve decided I won’t be pledging fifty books this year, but I will be reading. Fast or slow, short or long, just as long as I’m reading I know I can still create. I have decided to keep track of my reading, an idea snitched from my Web pals—I can’t believe how many of you were already keeping track! This will hopefully solve an ongoing problem for me; I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wanted to go back and find something in a book I read and can’t remember what the hell I’ve read recently.

For me, reading and writing go hand in hand—I think they always have. If I didn’t take time to curl up with a book every now and then, I might have more time to write, but I doubt I’d actually write more. It’s not a difficult equation at all, even for me: reading = creativity, therefore reading = writing. The key, as in all things, is to keep the equation balanced.

Requiem for a First Draft

2006-01-17T15:29:00.000-05:00

Late Friday night, sitting on the floor in front of my coffee table with my laptop in front of me and a bottle of pinot within easy reach, I came to a difficult realization: my novel is not working.

Cue swearing, several more glasses of wine and requisite moping.

It’s frustrating—isn’t it?—to realize that no matter how you tweak and adjust and shift, it just. doesn't. work. I’ve known for at least a week now that my project isn’t quite gelling, but I had held out hope that it was something minor—that I hadn’t quite nailed the voice yet, that the shift from “intro” to “story” just hadn’t happened. I mean, I really liked my first chapter and I felt like some of the dialogue in the second was good. But just before midnight on Friday, I created a new file on my computer titled “Chs. 1-10, Take 2.” Not the way I wanted to start my weekend, let me tell you.

In this case, I feel like I know what the problem is. The heroine isn’t right for the story—she’s a character to tuck away for future projects maybe, but just not the right lens through which this story is meant to be viewed. Since I write mostly in first person, this is not a problem I can correct with any amount of wordsmithing. A non-writer friend naively suggested that I just “change the heroine’s personality.” How silly of him—doesn’t he know that once a character has been birthed, the writer has very little ability to manipulate that character’s actions, let alone their personality? Good characters are complex. They have hometowns, accents and jobs they love/hate/love to hate. Good main characters have, in addition, parental issues and first loves and repressed memories of that day in junior high when they slipped in the cafeteria and the entire school saw their underwear. I can’t believably reshape a fictional character’s psyche any more than my shrink can reach inside my head and reshape mine.

Instead, I’m starting from scratch (as far as heroines are concerned, anyway—I really, really want to salvage that first chapter) and building a new character from the ground up. It was disheartening to scrap those twenty pages, but I feel better now than I have for the last week when I trudged around snapping at people who asked how my writing was going. Now I have a plan, and a direction. That’s way better than this time last week. I may have twenty pages sitting in a “scraps” folder and an unfinished character sketch to write before I can get going on my novel again, but I’ve done the deed—cut off the dead limb, excised the wound and tossed out the bathwater while hopefully saving the baby. Best of all, I’m excited about this project again and believe that it will work, once my brand-new, yet-to-be-constructed heroine is in place

So here’s to a week of new beginnings for us all. May the Muse be kind.

Just Say No to Prada

2006-01-12T19:35:00.000-05:00

I’ve been overdosing on chick lit lately (and enjoying every minute of it, of course) and because I’m reading books so close together without a break, I’m starting to notice certain small things that are either overdone or not done enough. None of them are major—I probably wouldn’t even notice them if I wasn’t plowing through my To Be Read stack like Kirstie Alley through a six pack of chocolate SlimFast. My favorite chick lit books tend to be the “Career Girl in the City” variety, and I’m probably a little harder on them because I am a Career Girl in the City, but come on. At the top of my list is this: Learn some new designers.

Seriously, people—I’ve had it with every It Chick, editor, starlet, and ball-busting female boss character having a wardrobe full of the Big Three: Prada, Armani, and Versace. First of all, not everyone with a pocket full of cash spends it on designers who have been coasting on brand recognition since approximately 1996. This also goes for Fendi, Dolce & Gabana and Gucci. A good rule of thumb: when fourteen-year-olds are running around sporting a designer’s logo over their training bras, actual fashionistas lose interest. Really, for people who know designers a huge logo is a desperate cry for hipness, not a sign of quality. There are hundreds of other designers turning out things that are just as beautiful, just as expensive and just as likely to induce a shoegasm in the dressing room at Neiman Marcus.

Secondly, has anyone actually looked at what the Big Three are putting on the shelves these days? I won’t bore you with the details of my rant concerning the Fall of the House of Versace, but let’s just say that having J. Lo as a muse has never done anyone a favor, Donatella. Even Prada—the tasteful old workhorse of yesteryear—is producing fewer gorgeous stilettos and more monstrosities like this little number from their Spring 2006 collection. Now look at that and tell me anyone with a subscription to Vogue can still take Prada seriously.

Third, if your character works at a women’s magazine, she would know all of the above and dress accordingly.

Before you set off to write about a heroine known for her fashion sense and sophistication, do some research. If your target audience is a twenty-something single woman with disposable income and a huge shoe collection, get to know some women who fit that demographic. They have their own language, and they can spot a non-insider from forty feet away. Read Vogue--that’s Vogue, not Glamour--and visit Bluefly.com to see all the beautiful things being made by indie designers that can’t afford to blitz the major fashion mags. Subscribe to the Daily Candy mailing list for the city where you story is set, and find out what’s happening there. Most of all, don’t assume that Carrie Bradshaw is the epitome of big city fashion and model your character’s wardrobe after her. Trust me, she’s a freak. Even Betsey Johnson can’t explain her fashion sense.

And while you’re checking out all those websites and shops, pick a designer you’ve never heard of and buy something nice for yourself—a Helen Welsh bag, a pair of Casadei pumps, a cashmere sweater by C3. Go on—you deserve it. I won’t tell.

Wishes (and Resolutions) Aren't Enough

2006-01-10T15:42:00.000-05:00

Two summers ago, a friend and I journeyed to Eastern Europe for a two-week vacation that included Berlin, Vienna, Budapest, Krakow, Warsaw and, of course, Prague. I firmly believe that no trip to Europe (Eastern or Western) is complete without a trip to Prague. Central to this fairytale city with its “Thousand Spires” and towering castle is the Charles Bridge, the oldest bridge in the city and a tourist destination that no one should miss. Between the sixth and seventh pillars of the bridge, near the revered statue of St. John of Nepomuk—patron saint of Prague—is a small plaque bearing a simple star. This spot is said to mark the spot where the martyr’s body was thrown into the Vlatava River below. Legends (and tour guides) say that if you touch that cross and make a wish, your wish will be granted. As my friend and I walked across the bridge on a scorching day in late July, we found the spot, closed our eyes and made our wishes. Being a frustrated novelist-in-progress at that particular point in my life, I naturally wished for the thing most on my mind: to finish my book before the end of the year.

Well, that wish did not come true. In fact, it was almost a full year later that I finally typed those beautiful words: THE END. Looking back at the year in between my Charles Bridge wish and the end of my novel, I think I can begin to see where I went wrong. I had a burning desire to finish that project—it had already been hanging over my head for more than a year and I knew I wouldn’t be able to commit myself to anything else before I completed it. I had wishes, New Year’s resolutions, and a whole section in my Goals/Objectives Journal dedicated to writing. What I didn’t have was a plan. I’m not talking about some regimented system a la Stephen King wherein I would nail myself to a chair for three hours every morning at sunrise and write steadily until my egg timer went off. That sort of schedule doesn’t work for me, and not only because the sunrises I tend to see signal the end of a night, not the start of the day. I mean a plan to harness my particular writing habits into the most profitable use of time until I completed my manuscript.

Finally, last summer, I sat down and assessed where I was in my writing and what I was doing wrong and right. I made a list of the things I liked about my manuscript, things I knew needed work and things I hated. Then I made another list of ways to motivate myself and make the most of my time. The best idea I had was to stop going home at the end of my work day and instead head to the library, a coffee shop or just stay in my office with the phone unplugged and devote the time I always meant to spend on writing to actual writing. The result to that idea was even better than I’d hoped—in addition to finishing my first novel in under two months, something about writing each and every day kicked the Muse into high gear and I was able to complete a first draft of my second novel before the end of the year. Signing with an agent, and outing myself and my real name on this blog and other Net outlets also felt like a big step because it removed the idea that writing was a hobby that I could quit at any time with no one the wiser.

Since I now have a better idea what works for me as a writer, I approached my 2006 goals far differently. For one thing, I didn’t put a number or a deadline on myself. It’s never worked in the past (for major projects, anyway), and when the deadline passes and I’m still stuck I get frustrated and depressed. I also didn’t set a number of hours to spend on writing every day or every week because my day job is unpredictable and since it pays the bills, it has to come first. Instead, I am making an effort to fit writing into my every day life and, as much as I am able, to shift my focus into the literary world. Maintaining an active blog, and networking with other industry people are also major goals, and although I know that the time I spend doing those things may sometimes cut back on my writing time, I also know that keeping up with the industry makes me a better writer. I do have a game plan—not the kind of regimented, deadline-oriented plans I use in my day job, but I’m adjusting.

So, the game plan for 2006: write, of course. Continue figuring out how best to harness my productive times. And get used to the idea of being a writer, instead of someone who occasionally writes. The rest, I leave up to the Muse. She did well enough this year.

You Know What You Need?

2006-01-05T16:34:00.000-05:00

A random Livejournal conversation yesterday had me in front of my computer for forty minutes working on a new project—not an actual writing project, mind you, but something to hopefully assist in my writing. A fellow writer mentioned a “Graph of Shame” on which to record daily word totals and find out precisely what my productivity is. Now, due at least in part to my background in politics, I love numbers because they tell you exactly where you are and when. Numbers, numbers—tiny little evidences of success—how I love them. As a sometimes-political consultant, I pour over polls. As a student loan-plagued former student, I love to watch my Sallie Mae balance inch down a little every month. And as a writer, I love recording word counts.

However, I know that the purpose of this little graph (or in my case, spreadsheet replete with automatically sum-functioned totals) is not for me to chuckle gleefully over my progress. A word count really isn’t a good arbiter of progress on any writing project; we all know that it’s not in the writing, it’s in the revising—and revising is hard to measure in neat little columns. What I’m really hoping this spreadsheet will do for me in the coming year is help me analyze when I’m most productive. I’m also hoping it will be, as Jennifer Echolls put it, a Kick in the Ass when I’m procrastinating or getting bogged down. Because as much as I believe in the power of revision, no words = nothing to revise. You’ve got to write it before you can perfect it.

My question to the rest of the writers out there is this: what provides your Kick in the Ass? Do you have a critique partner who doubles as your own personal Vic Mackie when you haven’t touched that dreaded Word doc for a week? Do you set daily word count goals—do you have a work ethic that compels you to meet said goals? Do you have Jewish/Catholic/Yankee/Southern guilt that nags you every time you sit down to watch Project Runway instead of sitting down at the computer? (Show of hands—who else wants to see a crossover with America’s Next Top Model where Janice Dickinson and Nick have the most awesome walk-off ever?) Do you have a Graph/Spreadsheet of Shame that makes you heave your butt off the sofa and into your desk chair? Or is it all about deadlines for you—do you need an actual drop dead date when the thing has to be finished?

As a writer who took two years (two. freaking. years.) to finish one novel, I can see the value in all of these methods. I’m hoping my little spreadsheet (which can be converted into a graph, come to think of it) will be enough to get me going when Shirley the Muse is being difficult. Let's face it, we all have slow phases. . .and dead phases. The point is to get going again, no matter how you do it. My goal this year, more than finishing any number of projects, more than writing a certain number of words, is just that--to get going and keep going even through the rough spots. I wish you all the same.

Write What You Know

2006-01-03T16:09:00.000-05:00

That’s the old adage, right? By and large, I am a believer in this philosophy. From setting to character, I tend to stick fairly close to things I’ve either experienced or studied extensively. At the very least, I write about things that interest me. For instance, I will probably never write a western because I cannot remember the last time I stayed awake long enough to read or watch one. I can’t even make it through Unforgiven. Oh, wait—I did manage to watch Legends of the Fall one or two million times, but that was mostly because of the. . .er, scenery. Anyway, the point is that most of the writers I know tend to write about familiar things.

But what happens when those familiar things are a little too personal? This in itself is a very personal question for me because I’ve recently started a project that is very close to my heart. A few years ago, I spent some time living in working in St. Petersburg, Russia and I loved every minute of it. (Except perhaps the minutes spent trying to make my cleaning lady understand that I didn’t want her to throw out the miscellaneous scraps of paper piled on my desk.) I came back to the States under protest and pouted for at least six months before I decided that living in Boston wasn’t really all that bad. At the very least, Boston has salad bars consisting of more than iceberg lettuce and ranch dressing. But Russia in general and Petersburg in particular still have a special place in my heart (wow, that was corny) and for a long time I simply couldn’t think or write about it without getting incredibly homesick. There is an unread book in my collection right now that I’ve picked up and put down at least a dozen times because it takes place just before the 1917 revolution and is set in the neighborhood where I lived—it’s terrible; I know what’s about to happen to my beloved city and I cannot bear to read about it.

Recently, however, I’ve felt the itch. You know, that faint longing somewhere in the back of your mind that begs you to write about __________. For me, this time, the itch has been to write about Petersburg. I suppose enough time has passed now that it’s not so intensely personal and my homesickness has subsided a bit. So about a week ago, while I was home for the Christmas holidays, I sat down and started writing a story set there. It’s been a great experience so far. As my heroine discovers the city, I am remembering my own first reactions to this place that has meant so much to me over the past few years. I remember how dazzled I was the first time I saw Nevskii Prospekt at night, and how I sat at the window of my office every evening for a week to watch the sun set over the Neva. I remember how I’d sometimes start to forget the huge division between rich and poor in the city and then I’d turn a corner and see a homeless person huddled in the doorway of a posh boutique. I remember finding a place in the expat community there, and how for a while my entire social circle was made up of voluntary exiles like me. And I remember when I finally dropped my inhibitions and made friends with Russians, and how they took me into their families without hesitation.

I don’t know how much of this will make it into the book, but I’m sure some of it will spill into my heroine’s consciousness because—wait for it—I’m writing what I know. And at the moment, it feels great.

What's Your Hook?

2005-12-29T17:47:00.000-05:00

I recently received a rejection letter from an editor—my second—and have consequently been ruminating on rejection lately. (Anyone who hasn’t read Deidre Knight’s recent column on this topic over at Romancing the Blog should definitely check it out.) Both editors have given very positive feedback, saying that the heroine’s voice was engaging, and they liked the rest of the characters as well. The problem, according to these editors, is that my novel lacks a hook and I can understand why, in this extremely competitive genre, they’re looking for something with an obvious and immediate attention-getter.

I mean, I would love. . .love to see my first novel published. I adore the characters I created, I think the plot is solid and there is a lot in those pages that I hate to think might never see the light of day. But honestly, when I finished that project, I’d been working on it for over two years. I know that literature doesn’t exist in a vacuum. The chick lit genre is a different place today than it was when I wrote the first chapter and ironed out the plot.

Anyone who is keeping up with women’s fiction in general, and chick lit in particular, knows that the playing field is massively crowded at the moment. The only thing getting published lately are books that have a clear hook—i.e., vampire chick lit, or reality show chick lit or fat girl chick lit. To be honest, part of the reason it took me so long to finish the project in question was that I wasn’t sure exactly what distinguished my novel from the others out there. Jemima J is the one where the heroine loses, like, a million pounds in three months, In Her Shoes is the one with the psychotic sister who ruins the boring sister’s shoes all the time—how would readers describe my book? In the end, it required a rewrite and the sacrifice of several scenes that I adored for me to figure out why my work was different and special. Now I’m confident that, if it ever gets into the readers hands, it will stick in their memories as the book where. . .well, I’m not going to give away the ending, but let’s just say it’s got a unique set of conflicts and resolutions.

That second rejection letter, couched in the friendliest and most positive of terms, made me briefly revisit my insecurities about my work, but once that passed it made me wonder what we’re missing now due to the industry’s insistence that every book they publish have a gimmick. Really, that’s what it boils down to—a creative title and interesting blurb is no longer enough. Chick lit now needs an obvious hook, something that will make readers sit up and take notice. Frankly, however, a fantabulous hook is no promise of an equally fantabulous story. I can think of several books that I’ve picked up recently because of a unique gimmick (I admit it, I’m a sucker for a concept book) that were just. . .disappointing. Not a bad read, but not a classic either.

I’m not opposed to writing concept chick lit. On the contrary, my current project is so conceptual that my character-loving muse engaged in a balancing act worthy of the Flying Wallendas in an effort to keep the concept at the core of the story without sacrificing character development. Over the Christmas holidays, I started sketching out an outline for yet another project, one that will most certainly be described one day as “that book where the heroine _______.” But as I sit here remembering some of my favorite women’s fiction, I realize that it’s not the gimmick that holds me, or the snappy titles or even the gorgeous covers. It’s characters I believe in and wish I could go to lunch with; it’s a vivid setting that means I don’t just know the book is set in London because the heroine refers to the transit system as “the tube” instead of “the metro;” it’s conflict that I see reflected in my life and the lives of my real-life friends. I hope that, when the over-saturation of the chick lit marketplace has subsided a bit, there will still be room for a thousand flowers to bloom because that, after all, is what draws me to those strategically-placed tables at Borders every time I cross the threshold of the mall.

Bookmarking the Writer's Journey

2005-12-27T17:33:00.000-05:00

Merry Christmas, happy Chanukah and happy New Year to everyone out there in the Blogosphere!

I’ve been in my hometown of Wilmington, Delaware (that’s between New Jersey and Pennsylvania, for those of you who haven’t driven all of I-95 and thus crossed into the First State) visiting family for the holidays. I'm still sane--mostly--but looking forward to having my own space again once I get back to Boston. I have a fairly large family, and they're all concentrated in this area. At the moment, they're all concentrated entirely too close to my person.

One of the last things I did before I left Boston was mail in my application to join the Romance Writers of America (RWA). Now, it really only occurred to me a few weeks ago that joining RWA might be a good step for me. I mentioned it to a few writer friends and chatted about it to Jana, then visited the RWA website and the websites of a couple of the chapters that interest me—specifically the chicklit chapter and the New England chapter, which meets ten minutes from my office. I will probably end up joining both of those chapters, and am already planning to attend both the New England conference in April and the national one in July.

Until recently, I have thought of writing as a very solitary occupation. You know, a la Henry James, all “we work in the dark, we do what we can.” That kind of mindset. But after attending a few author chats on the Knight Agency web site (which are not to be missed, seriously!), I’ve changed my mind. Chatting with other writers in pre-arranged author (or agent) chats, getting tips from the Yahoo! Chicklit e-group, schmoozing at RWA meetings, trolling the boards for the occasional "OMG--it's [fill in name of amazing author]!" moment--all of this gets me really excited about my own writing, and makes me strive to write more, write better.

All this brings me to the question of the week: what "writers'" sites do you frequent and why? Some of my answers can be found in the links at the right; now I want to hear yours. Help out your fellow writers--post a link if you've got it!

Fifteen Things About Books

2005-12-22T11:11:00.000-05:00

This has been going around some of the blogs and journals I frequent, and I couldn’t resist.

1. My mother taught me to read using a series of books that added a few new words to each installment until, by the end of the series, they were pretty much regular chapter books. I went through the first ten without getting up from the floor and my mother had to physically take the box from me to get me to the dinner table.

2. A few weeks after my sixth birthday, my kidneys failed and I was in ICU for over a month. When I was finally allowed to go home, my immune system was shot and I wasn’t allowed to be around other children while I recovered. That winter, my father dislocated his shoulder and my mother had a bad arthritis flare-up, so we were all stuck in the house pretty much until spring. To pass the time and keep from killing each other, all three of us read the entire Little House on the Prairie series. I clearly remember waiting very impatiently for my father to finish On the Banks of Plum Creek so that I could have it.

3. The first romance novel I ever read was called After the Affair and I found it in my grandmother’s laundry room when I was nine. I believe it was a Harlequin that she’d gotten in one of those $5 bags from the library, and she’d probably be shocked to realize that, indirectly, I found out about sex from her. Three years later, when my mother handed me a (non-fiction) book in lieu of “The Talk,” I was like, “Um, yeah. What else have you got?” As I recall, the non-fiction version sounded like a whole lot less fun.

4. My mother started giving me classics to read very early on because she suspected that I was reading books that she considered too adult for me. (She was right.) As a result, I read most of Jane Austen, the Brontës, and Henry James before I started high school.

5. My all-time favorite book is To Kill a Mockingbird. I love the characters, the story, the humor and the tone. Even though she only ever published that one book, Harper Lee is one of my idols.

6. The first day of my freshman year, I walked into my English class carrying War and Peace, which I hadn’t quite managed to finish before the school year started. My English teacher, who was just out of college, looked at me like I was from another planet and didn’t believe that I had actually read most of the book until she quizzed me thoroughly on it.

7. In college, I was a history major in large part because I read The Zion Chronicles and The Zion Covenant series as a teenager and was fascinated by the history in those. Fifteen years after I picked up the first book, I am still impressed by the amount of research and historical realism in those books.

8. I get very nervous when people borrow my books, particularly ones that aren’t easy to replace. I’ve lost so many beloved books to people who promised to return them that now I practically make people sign a contract just to peruse my bookshelves.

9. On the other hand, I have no problem giving books away if they’re not ones I want to keep and re-read. This goes for most of the trade paperbacks that I read, books I got at used bookstores and anything else I am confident I can replace.

10. Shortly after reading About a Boy, I had a sex dream about Nick Hornby. Yes, I know he’s short and bald—I didn’t care. He’d be pleased to know that, in my dream, he was magnificent.

11. Last spring, I went on a vacation to Hawaii and read nine books in eight days. This was in between snorkeling, swimming, surfing and eating my weight in fresh pineapple. It was heaven.

12. I have an ongoing love affair with Russian and Irish writers. Give me some Dostoevsky, some Wilde and maybe a pint of Guiness, and you won’t see me for hours—possibly days.

13. I love to visit the homes and haunts of authors I admire. I once spent several hours sitting on the stairs outside Maxim Bulgakov’s apartment in Moscow, just breathing in the genius. Last summer, I dragged my protesting little brother into the Dublin Writer’s Museum and spent two blissful hours with Behan, Yeats and O’Casey. Another favorite vacation memory is going on the Literary Pub Crawl in Dublin with my friend Kath.

14. I get extremely nervous when my favorite books are made into movies. I’ve actually sat in the theater with my hand over my eyes, terrified that the movie will fail to capture even an inkling of the book’s spirit.

15. My vision of heaven strongly resembles the Long Room of Trinity College Dublin, which is an enormous room filled with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and battered wooden tables. I just hope heaven has a good Chinese delivery restaurant.

So, do we become writers because we love books, or do we love books because we are writers?

One Reader at a Time

2005-12-20T10:57:00.000-05:00

I recently came across this article in the Boston Globe: Taboo-breaking novel stirs passion, debate in Saudi Arabia.

In a nutshell, the article is about a book called The Girls of Riyadh, which the articles likens to a Saudi Sex in the City. Published in Lebanon in September, the book tells the story of four Saudi women looking for Mr. Right and having mixed success. The book is currently in its third printing, and though it has not been formally approved for publication in Saudi Arabia, bootleg copies of it abound. Reaction in Riyadh is mixed, largely because the book’s characters go against the prevailing attitudes about what is proper for unmarried women. But the author is undeterred, and the book is only getting more popular. After reading the article, I experienced a surge of triumph—followed by an attack of giggles. It’s fabulous: chick lit is changing the world.

If you read “serious” literary journals or have a Google Alert for the term “chick lit”—as I do—you know that the term and the genre are both subject to much scorn from the traditional literary world. A few months ago, I read an article by writer Chris Mazza, who claims to have coined the term as the title of a feminist literary journal. She ~~whined~~ argued that she and her fellow female writers had meant it to be a sarcastic nod to what the stereotypical male chauvinist would think of the journal, and ~~moaned~~ lamented that the term had been co-opted by a genre that she believes plays into the stereotype of fashion-obsessed, boy crazy women.

Mazza isn’t the only woman offended by the term “chick lit.” A quick perusal of recent articles shows the author and performer of a one-woman show publicly objecting to her show being lumped into this genre, and a panel discussion on whether chick lit is even a relevant form of literature. Jess Crispin of Bookslut went on record as saying that readers “should be ashamed of chick lit, because it’s bad.” I admit, that one stung because I am an avid reader of Bookslut and often agree with Ms. Crispin’s reviews. Chris Mazza, also a panelist, objected to the idea that chick lit could one day be compared to female authors like Jane Austen because chick lit is formulaic and only deals with a portion of the world as it is, whereas Austen “gave her women the entire world that was available to them at the time.”

To put it bluntly, I disagree.

For liberated women, Crispin and Mazza certainly have narrow views of what women writers can legitimately write. I’m not sure when Ms. Mazza last picked up Jane Austen, but I reread Persuasion just a few weeks ago and I don’t remember any of the characters discussing the plight of London prostitutes, or domestic violence. If Ms. Mazza believes that women in Austen’s day would have been ignorant of these topics, then she’s giving them even less credit than she gives modern day chick lit heroines. It sounds to me like Ms. Mazza doesn’t give much credit to any work of fiction that isn’t written with a specific political or social agenda, and that’s sad because it means that she’s missing out on the greatness of literature.

Jane Austen wasn’t attempting to strike a blow for women’s rights when she penned Pride and Prejudice. She wrote a story meant to be enjoyed—that she also introduced generations of women to strong, independent heroines was a side effect of her writing genius. I’m sure Austen had many contemporaries who did their damnedest to produce relevant, socially conscious literature, and I’m sure that some succeeded. But generations later, Austen continues to inspire us to be great women, while the earnest social crusading writers of her day are forgotten.

Which brings me back to the article I first mentioned. The author of The Girls of Riyadh did what any good writer endeavors to do—she wrote a book with compelling characters who lead compelling lives. I have not read the book, but from the article I gather that none of the main characters are feminist crusaders. They are simply women seeking to live their lives the way they see fit. Unfortunately, that puts them in opposition to the attitudes and values that govern their world. Does the fact that they don’t actively discuss politics and the war on poverty make them unfit feminist heroines? I certainly hope not.

Literature never changes the world overnight. Solzhenitsyn started writing decades before the rest of the world became interested in what actually happened in the Gulag. Jonathan Swift was not an overnight success when he used satire to point out the ridiculous nature of British foreign policy. And despite Ms. Mazza’s contention, the women of Austen's day did not put down their copies of Sense and Sensibility and immediately organize a Take Back the Night march. But slowly, reader by reader, authors like these did change society. They enlightened us, they opened our minds in subtle ways that made us look differently at the world around us.

I contend that popular literature—be it chick lit, young adult, romance, graphic novels—does the same. I can’t vouch for the quality of all chick lit, and I won’t attempt to. Every genre has its highs and lows. But to suggest that any genre that prizes independent, self-sufficient heroines is irrelevant and even embarrassing is ludicrous. I’m proud to read and write chick lit, and I don’t care who knows it.

Getting Started

2005-12-18T12:30:00.000-05:00

Thank heaven for the Internet! What in the world did writers do before the advent of blogs and writing boards and e-groups? Well, okay, they probably got more writing done. But where did they find camraderie? And feedback? What did they do without feedback? I suppose the solitary nature of pre-Internet writing was what Henry James meant when he talked about working "in the dark." He did okay for himself, though, so perhaps it wasn't as bad as I'm imagining.

Personally, however, I need an outlet for my ramblings and, hopefully, people to tell me I'm not crazy when I have a 2am bout of insecurity and consider giving up on this silly "novelist" thing entirely.

So, a word about where I am on this whole "Writer's Journey" thing. I've been writing most of my life. I think I was about nine when I started filling notebooks with stories and even the occasional really bad poem. (Don't worry--I stopped writing poetry years ago.) After a very bad run-in with a very bad "guidance counselor" at age 16, I decided that being a writer was a pipe dream and pretty much put it away. That didn't mean the stories in my head went away, however. About four years later, when I found myself living in a foreign country where I didn't speak much of the language, I needed an outlet for my thoughts and one day I left my apartment, bought a cheap notebook, sat down in a coffee shop and the words just poured out. I've been writing ever since.

Two and a half years ago, I started making notes and testing out voices for a full-length chicklit novel. Two years, a couple of boyfriends and a career change later, I still wasn't finished. That novel, full of characters I adored, had become a monkey on my back and I simply couldn't enjoy writing anymore because I knew I needed to finish that novel before I felt confident to start on anything else. I mean, unless I was sure I could finish one project, how could I be sure I would finish any of the others knocking around in my head? So I gave myself two months to finish--and actually managed to do it.

Once I had a good draft, I sent my manuscript to Nephele Tempest of The Knight Agency, who paid me a wonderful compliment when she told me that she'd stayed up late to finish reading it, and then agreed to represent me. Because I already knew that Neph has fantastic taste in literature, I was flattered. Because I knew that she is a dedicated agent and works for a fabulous agency (founded by the lovely and talented Deidre Knight, another lady I simply adore), I was thrilled to be in business with her.

My first manuscript, a chicklit novel set in the wonderful and underrepresented city of Boston, is currently being shopped to publishers, and I recently sent the first draft of my second novel to Nephele. The second manuscript is a cross between a spy novel and chicklit, and I've had great fun writing it. I'm very excited about both projects and about taking my writing from a fun hobby to a serious (and yet still fun) undertaking.

So sit back, comment if you have a mind to, and enjoy the ride. I intend to share thoughts about the process of writing and the literary industry in general. Now, if I can just remember to keep updating. . .