Keep Asking Why

When I’m not writing lately, I feel bereft, as if every moment spent not writing is a moment of my life wasted. This is huge progress from a few years ago, when I was so empty of words I couldn’t wait to get away from the page. So when I’m driving to work or walking the dog or doing the dishes, I listen to books about writing, which help me feel engaged in the process at times when I need something a bit more mindless to do.

My current listen is David Morrell’s The Successful Novelist, a book I’m thoroughly enjoying so far. He points out a habit I developed many years ago but never thought of as an actual writing technique. If someone had told me to do it at the very beginning of my career, it probably would have saved me the writing of a few terrible and overly plot-driven books.

The technique is this: When you are in the process of developing an idea for a book, and writing the book itself, have a conversation with yourself about the story on paper. It becomes a loose sort of plot outline. I keep a document for every book called “story notes” in which I brainstorm, write down ideas as they occur to me, ask myself questions I don’t know the answers to, and most importantly, I constantly ask myself why.

It looks something like this:

I think the heroine should be afraid of kids.
Why should she be afraid of kids?
Maybe because she has so many bad memories of childhood, and kids remind her of the pain she experienced when her dad drank too much and beat up her mom, and….

And it goes on that way. In the end I have a messy document, pages and pages of random conversations with myself, and always asking why, why, why. This question forces me to dig deeper. The temptation is always to go with that first idea that feels good enough, but the question why forces you to see if it’s really worthwhile. If I can’t come up with a good answer, I need to keep trying to find a better idea.

I don’t frequently need to refer back to my story notes document. Often, I have these conversations with myself right in the middle of my working manuscript when I get stuck, and if it’s something I feel I might want to refer to later, I’ll eventually cut and paste it into the story notes.

This kind of process, Morrell points out, is like a kind of written meditation, and I love that comparison. The written conversation forces me to put my meandering thoughts into real words, where I can examine them and see if they look pretty in the light of day.

Cindy’s Latest!

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.

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!

Read an excerpt!

Order from Amazon.com.

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:

Waste Not, Want Not

A very generous neighbor started bringing us huge bags of day old bakery bread two weeks ago–bread she had left over from her distributions to the homeless, so maybe she has decided we look hungry too–and because I can’t stand throwing away food, I had to figure out what to do with all of the bread. I gave some away to other neighbors I know like bread, and that still left us with just under a ton of bread to consume.

This led to a frenzy of looking up uses for old bread on the internet and asking friends for recipes. Here’s what we’ve made with the bread so far:

1 huge bread pudding with bananas
1 huge collard green and cheese strata
1 huge blackberry bread pudding
panzanella salad with tomatoes, mozzarella and basil
lots of sourdough toast
two pounds of garlic bread taken to a party
crostini
bruschetta

I still have two half-eaten loaves on the counter, demanding my attention, but I’m fairly sick of everything that contains bread. I plan on crumbling them up and freezing them to use as bread crumbs in meatballs, meatloaf, and such.

Any other favorite uses for old bread?

The War of Art

I’m re-reading Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art right now and finding lots of reasons to love it all over again. This book never fails to make me want to hurry to the keyboard and get to writing. If you have any kind of creative project you find yourself procrastinating on starting or finishing, I highly recommend the book.

I moseyed on over to the author’s website today and read a great post of his on the choices we make.

Pressfield writes: “I have a theory that people who succeed in life—in relationships as well as art or business or service—are the ones who, for whatever reasons, are more able to say yes and walk through a door. Sometimes, I think, it’s better to be dumb than smart, if smart means you see so many sides to the alternative future that you’re paralyzed to act in the now. Almost every time in my own life that I’ve held off and hesitated, I’ve regretted it.”

Saying yes to an option does indeed often mean saying no to all the other possibilities, but all those choices we boldly make and move forward with are what make an interesting and worthwhile life. This applies to writing as well. I may agonize over starting one project versus another, but all the time I spend agonizing is time not spent getting to work. So I will remind myself to make a decision and get on with it. I’ve never regretted having done a hard day’s work, after all.

Writing Lessons from a Dog

We adopted a dog from the pound on Easter Sunday this past spring, a long-awaited event in our family. His name at the shelter was Niner, which we couldn’t change fast enough. Wanting to stick with a similar sounding name because we had misguided notions about confusing him with a new one, we named him Reno. He’s a tall skinny pit bull mix with sad-sack eyes and a winning smile who probably has some kind of bird dog in his genes too.

He hasn’t intentionally taught me anything about writing (he’s a terrible writer, trust me), but I walk and jog him 5 miles a day, which has helped me reconnect with the old habit of musing about story ideas while I exercise. This is an important writing lesson–take advantage of quiet time to think about your story wherever and whenever you can grab it. In the shower, in the car, while waiting for your kids to finish their karate lessons…

Lesson # 2: Live in the moment, at least sometimes. We writers have to live in our heads a lot, but we should make it a practice every single day of spending a good solid chunk of time just paying attention to life and living it. When the dog flops down on his back and insists I rub his belly for the 28th time that day, I really have no choice in the matter but to stop and do his bidding. After all, what else could be more important at that moment? Write the next scene in the book? Maybe, but it can wait a few minutes. Living in the moment can make us better at writing in the moment too–letting a scene unfurl as it happens instead of trying to rush ahead with a lot of telling.

Lesson # 3: Trust your instincts. Animals, especially dogs, are masters of watching people and knowing instinctively what their intentions are. We can be masters of our instincts too when we learn to trust what we know without knowing. Sure, my dog might spend a solid ten minutes barking at the neighbor’s squeaky gate, but he can also tell in an instant when I’m about to leave for the day or take him for a walk or get him a doggy biscuit. Honing our own instincts makes us better writers. We learn to trust the story, trust our subconscious, and leave the rest to the dogs.

Free Books

It’s been a long time since I’ve done a book giveaway. So here it is. Free books! Whichever books you want. The catch? You’ll have to go on Amazon.com and do a search for my name in the books section to figure out which books you want. I’ll send up to 5 books each to the first 3 people who email me. There’s also a list a few posts back of all my book titles, if you want to go by titles alone.

Email me at jamiesobrato@yahoo.com with your choices. Quick! Before someone else does!