Check out my dear friend Cindy Procter-King’s new book release, Where She Belongs, which earned a 4-star review from Romantic Times:
Yay, Cindy! Visit her website for an excerpt, reviews, and more fun stuff.
Cindy’s Latest!
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It’s Try Something Different Day!
No, that’s not a real holiday. I just made it up.
I got a new computer for Christmas, intending to use it only for photo editing and the general playing-with of photos. My little Macbook Air is wonderful in innumerable ways, especially for writing, but it doesn’t like big honking jpeg files being crammed by the thousand onto its hard drive. Nor does it like Photoshop Elements.
Anyway, this new laptop is free of the psychological baggage that goes with years of less than productive writing habits such as checking email, checking email again, popping onto the internet for just a second to look up some oh-so-important fact, checking Facebook, checking Twitter, checking email again… Using it is like sitting down at a new desk, in a new office, with a lovely new view from the window, and getting busy on refreshing new work.
Because my laptop computer is my desk, office, and window all rolled into one handy little device, it’s by far my most important writing tool. I began writing on the new laptop (just because the newer version of Word fascinated me), thereby breaking my self imposed rule that the old computer would be for writing, and the new computer would be for photography and fun. And the words flowed.
And flowed, and flowed some more.
The lesson here isn’t that if you’re stuck, you should buy a new computer. Rather, it’s that it never hurts to change things up a bit. On a regular basis, try changing your work location to another room or outside, or switching from computer to paper and pen, or moving from home to a cafe. Or all three. Try writing with a fancy new pen, in a beautiful journal, or try writing on notebook paper with a pencil.
You’ll be surprised how sometimes these changes can jar you into a new feeling of creative flow. It doesn’t always work, but sometimes it does. My favorite place to write is in the hammock under one of our redwood trees on a warm day. But do I get much writing done there? Not generally. It’s too relaxing. My least favorite place to write is sitting at a desk, but often I can get loads of work done there. And sometimes I can’t.
I have to remind myself to be aware of how a writing session is going. Does it feel like pulling teeth? Then it’s time to try something different.
Quote of the Day: On Self-Doubt
“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.” ~Sylvia Plath
Writers are notorious self-doubters. Putting our words out into the world feels a little like running naked through a crowd. It’s a powerful act to set aside one’s fears and write boldly. What have you got to lose? Every day you don’t write is a day you might have spent writing your best work yet.
How Much Should You Write?
I know writers who regularly write 20 pages a day, while others struggle to get a few pages written daily. I tend to be a bit haphazard, some days writing a lot and other days writing nothing, but in my never-ending quest to get it right, I often ponder–what’s the sweet spot?
Stephen King, in his memoir On Writing, advises his readers to write 10 pages per day. He also says to work every day. Other writers, such as Anne Lamott, tell us to celebrate a page or two as a victory. Who’s right? I think they both are. Stephen King writes popular fiction, while Anne Lamott’s work is a bit more serious for the most part. Serious, I believe, can take longer. Popular fiction, difficult as it is to write, doesn’t get too caught up in a perfect turn of phrase. Crafting a great scene is more important to the author of pop fiction.
I have found myself most able to stay steadily productive when aiming for 8-12 pages per day. Those pages might take all day to write, or they might take a few hours, depending on how well the words are flowing. I can write 5-6 rough pages in an hour when I’m really on a roll, but it’s more realistic to expect 3-4 pages an hour as an average pace for rough drafting. If I shoot for bigger goals, such as 20 pages in a day, I inevitably burn myself out and end up needing a day of no writing here and there. If I write less than 7 pages in a day (the length of an average scene, more or less), the work tends to feel choppy and stilted.
Why does any of this matter? It helps to get a sense of others’ practices so that we can determine what is realistic in goal-setting. My current goal is 4 pages per day, simply because my day job keeps me so busy I can barely hope to get that much done. It comes out choppy, yes, but a bad scene is better than no scene at all!
What’s your daily page count goal? How do you decide?
Why Should You Attend a Writer’s Conference?
I decided to attend this year’s Romance Writers of America conference in July, and it led me to ponder a few of the reasons writers should (and shouldn’t) attend conferences.
Good Reasons:
Learn from other writers
Learn from industry professionals
Meet editors and agents (if you have a finished book)
Bad Reasons:
You want to be a “writer” by association instead of action
You want to make sure an editor or agent reads your work
You want to stalk editors and agents in the restroom
I could go on, but the bottom line is this: have you written a complete novel that you are proud of? You might learn more about writing query letters and improving your craft at a conference workshop. You might learn about mistakes made by authors in the query and submission process. You might meet an editor who asks you about your work and invites you to submit it to her.
Or you might not.
I think of writer’s conferences as writer-filled little vacations where I get to go and think about the business of writing for 3 days straight. I also get to see old friends and maybe learn something new.
Mistakes writers often make at conferences include being too pushy with editors and agents. Remember–it’s not just your book you have to sell, it’s YOU. Make sure you are behaving like a person you would want to work with throughout the arduous process of editing a novel (many novels, we hope!). Don’t rush to sell yourself or your book to anyone you meet at a conference, because really, no one wants to be ambushed that way. We writers tend to get oddly desperate when it comes to getting our work published. That desperation is poison–avoid it at all costs.
Are you going to RWA Anaheim this year? If so, I look forward to seeing you there!
My Books Now Available on Kindle: The Sex Quotient
Did you know that The Sex Quotient is a prequel to Call Me Wicked?
Let the experiment begin!
Subject/victim: Griffin Reed
Theory: Sensual pleasure makes people stupid. Stupid people don’t get promotions. Therefore must have sex with Griffin to keep competitive edge…Procedure: Lots of satisfaction for Griffin. Contain self in order to keep brainpower optimal.
Macy Thomaston has just learned the most important scientific discovery ever–intense sexual pleasure leads to a temporary dip in IQ. Surely there’s a way to leverage this against Griffin Reed, her palm-sweatingly hot coworker…and the thorn in her professional side.
Macy just needs to blow Griffin’s mind–literally–and get her promotion without a single teeny release for herself. And she’s really hoping Griffin is lousy in bed….Otherwise this whole experiment could completely backfire!
Flashback
Just came across this photo of me at a Romance Writers of America conference, holding one of my favorite book covers. I don’t remember who took the picture or what happened to the blown-up book cover, nor do I remember what I was thinking with that goofy expression on my face. Care to suggest captions, anyone:
How to Sell a Novel, Part 1
I occasionally get questions from people about the process of selling one’s first novel, so here’s a quick and dirty explanation. I’ll go into further detail in future posts.
First and foremost, you need to have written the novel. This may seem obvious, but it’s very common for aspiring writers to have an idea for a novel they’d like to sell, but an idea is not sellable, at least not to publishers of fiction when your name isn’t Stephen King or Nora Roberts.
And really, why wouldn’t you want to write the book first? If your hope is to get rich or at least considerably less poor by selling a book, you might want to try collecting recycling as a more lucrative pass-time. Presumably, you want to write a book because you love to write, you are driven to write, the demons in your head insist that you cannot be content unless you write, and/or you can’t not write.
I can’t think of any other good reasons for writing fiction.
So you’ve risen before dawn every day to slave for a year–or ten–over your first novel, and now you want to sell it. You’ll first need to write a query letter that describes, in a paragraph or so, who you are and what your book is about. It should be such a compelling paragraph that agents can’t help but ask to see a few chapters or the entire book.
Some agents will also accept partial manuscripts. This is the first three chapters of your book, along with a synopsis of the entire story. In this case, your query letter should still be entertaining and compelling, but you also have a chance to dazzle the agent with your actual manuscript.
The next step is to query agents who represent the kind of book you’ve written. You can do a google search for agents of fiction, and thank goodness plenty of agents these days have websites with their client lists and preferences stated. This makes finding an agent, at least theoretically, easier than it used to be.
You should look for agents whose client list includes books you enjoy, and you should probably target newer agents over the established heads of literary agencies. The more established agents tend to have fuller client lists, making them far more selective about whom they represent. Newer agents are looking for authors whose careers they can grow along with their own careers, so it can be a beneficial relationship for you both.
A few publishers, such as Harlequin, do accept unagented submissions, and it is indeed possible to sell to them without an agent. But should you? Maybe. I have always had an agent partly because I found a few willing to represent me and partly because I didn’t want to sell only a single book–I wanted to build a writing career. An agent can help with that. An good agent can help you navigate contracts and can get you access to all the editors who don’t give serious consideration to unagented manuscripts.
I think it’s always smart to approach agents first. That will help you get a sense of whether your book is ready for the world. If you query a handful of agents and get nothing but form rejection letters back, you might want to rewrite your query letter and/or revise your proposal. You are not going to be a good judge of your own work, and while it’s possible you’ve written something that won’t sell, it’s also possible you’ve written something that will be so in demand by publishers that your new agent will have to oversee a bidding war. You can’t do that yourself.
If you find an agent, that agent will then discuss with you options for submitting your work to publishers. A submission plan will be developed, the manuscript is submitted by your agent, and you just sit back and bite your nails while you wait to hear responses from editors. This is the part where writers must develop nerves of steel. Many editors will not like your work and will not want to buy it. That’s just a fact of publishing. In fact, all the editors may not like your work and may not want to buy it, even though your agent likes it.
(This is why it’s important that you write because the demons in your head command you to and not because you fully intend to retire at the age of 30 on your book sales.)
So what if you can’t get an agent? You might want to read some books on the craft of writing and figure out if you’ve got some revising to do on your manuscript before you continue trying to sell it. You can also submit directly to publishers. Another option is to attend writers’ conferences where you can meet agents and editors, learn more about the craft of writing, and commiserate with other writers in the same plight as yourself.
At the same time, you should be getting to work on your next novel, because really, the more you write, the better your chances of writing something worthy of publication.
This is a general overview of the process of selling a novel. Stay tuned for more posts on specifics of the process.
Writing Crap
Anne Lamott’s brilliant book on writing, Bird by Bird, reminded me last night about the importance of the shitty first draft. There is no such thing as getting it perfect–or even nearly perfect–the first time around, so give yourself permission to write stuff you’ll never show the outside world. I was a much more productive writer when I kept this in mind daily.
I don’t let anyone see my writing in first draft form. I barely let anyone else even touch my computer for fear that a first draft might be read by curious eyes.
I write a lot of unusable stuff, but this is the only way I know to get to the material that is worth reading. It’s also how I get to know my characters intimately.
Do you give yourself permission to write crap? If not, you should try it.
5 Things You Can Do Right Now to Improve Your Writing
1. Lose the adverbs. Slowly, haltingly, feverishly–whatever. If it has an -ly on the end of it, ask yourself if you really need it, or if there is a better verb you could use.
2. Speaking of verbs, in dialogue, keep it simple. Use he said and she said whenever you need to make it clear who’s speaking, and cut out as many of those as possible. The trick is to allow your reader to get lost in imagining the actual conversation, not puzzling out how “she murmured breathlessly” would sound. The descriptors in dialogue should be minimal to avoid jarring your reader out of the scene.
3. Read your work out loud to check for good rhythm and to avoid awkward pacing. Better yet, have someone else read it to you.
4. Don’t go with your first idea. When you’re plotting and planning, brainstorm as many courses of action as you can–ideally, 20 or so–and choose the best of your ideas.
5. Open up to a random page of one of your favorite books and study what works well about it. Take note of what the author does to draw you in. The more you repeat the reading of a passage, the more you can notice things you didn’t catch in your first or second or fifth pass. Don’t just note what works though–take note of anything that jumps out at you as a fault, too, because even the best of writers make mistakes. Now, take what you’ve learned and apply it to your own writing.
