After weeks (okay, months) of checking Amazon occasionally to see if, perhaps, I might find something there with my name attached to it (and yes, my name comes up in the acknowledgments of J.M. Hochstetler’s One Holy Night—thanks, Joan!), tonight, I finally found what I was looking for . . .
STAND-IN GROOM IS AVAILABLE FOR PREORDER ON AMAZON.COM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Categories: 500th Blog Post Giveaway · Authors/Reading · Road to Publication · writing business
Tagged: Author Kaye Dacus, Stand-In Groom
I know you’ve all been wondering what the standings are in the contest and just how many more of these silly posts you need to comment on, right?
Don’t forget that if you want to enter for the grand prize ($100 Amazon Gift Certificate, Book, CD), you need to have your wedding story turned in no later than midnight (U.S. Central Time) this Friday, July 25.
Here are the standings:
Shellie Powell–17 comments (8 entries in the drawing) + entered for grand prize drawing
Erica Vetsch–17 comments (8 entries) + entered for grand prize drawing
Eileen Astels–16 comments (7 entries)
Caleb Abel–16 comments (7 entries) + entered for grand prize drawing
Rose McCauley–14 comments (5 entries) + entered for grand prize drawing
Krista Phillips–13 comments (4 entries)
CJ–13 comments (4 entries) + entered for grand prize drawing
Leslie Sowell/greyfort–12 comments (3 entries)
Georgiana Daniels–12 comments (3 entries)
Amy Jane–12 comments (3 entries) + entered for grand prize drawing
Tracy Ruckman–10 comments (1 entry) + entered for grand prize drawing
Ruth Anderson–10 comments (1 entry)
Patricia Woodside–10 comments (1 entry)
The following people have not yet qualified for entry in the contest—but you’re almost there. Six days remain in the contest!
Rachel Wilder–9 comments
Nicole (ikkinlala)–9 comments
Emilie Bishop–9 comments
Sharon Lavy–8 comments
Jordan–8 comments
Amy Deardon–8 comments
Marcie Gribbin–7 comments
Jess–7 comments
Jennifer Hofmann–5 comments
The following people have entered a wedding story, but aren’t near where they need to be with comments to be entered into the drawing:
MaryBeth Isaac–Wedding story received, but only 4 comments posted
Meredith Duke–Wedding story received, but only 2 comments posted
For a reminder of the contest rules, be sure to visit the 500th Blog Post Contest & Giveaway page.
Categories: 500th Blog Post Giveaway
For the last couple of weeks, National Public Radio has been running a series in which they not only interview mystery/suspense authors, but they visit the cities that these authors have made iconic through their fiction. (See Crime in the City at NPR.) While I haven’t listened to all of the installments in the series (it’s usually on air as I’m running out of the house to try to make it to work on time), there is one thing I’ve noticed in common with those I have heard: the cities in question are all beloved by the authors who write about them.
Which (naturally) leads me to the question: do settings choose the author or do authors choose the setting?
It’s no secret that the setting of my three novels with Barbour are set in a fictional city in Louisiana that has been under development as a setting since 1992. How did it get started? Well, I needed to mask the fact that I was writing a fictional account of the lives of me and my friends from LSU. So I changed Baton Rouge to College Park (and later to Bonneterre) and I changed LSU to ULa (and recently to the University of Louisiana-Bonneterre, because who knew that during the years I would be using this setting, Louisiana would change the names of the smaller state colleges to the University of Louisiana system).
So why have I continued using this setting after all these years?
Well, for one thing, it’s easy. With so many years and stories set in a single setting, especially a fictional setting, I know this city. I know what the big social events are. I know where everything is. If I want to add a feature, I can. By not using Baton Rouge, where I spent every summer as a child and lived from 1989–1992, I’m not tapping into an existing culture nor being bound by a particular city’s real history or layout. Yes, it may be stretching some Louisianians’ imaginations that there’s a mid-size city buried somewhere in the middle of the state (especially for those who live in the middle of the state in Alexandria and surrounding areas). But the truth of the matter is that my experience with actually living in Louisiana is limited, even though I’m there at least once a year. By using a fictional setting instead of a real one, I can tap into my emotional memory of living there and apply it to a setting where I can control all of the cultural constraints upon the characters and events, instead of them controlling me.
In looking at my writing longer term, once I complete the three books in the Bonneterre series, I’ll need to figure out if the next contemporary-set stories I write will also be set there or if it may be time to look at setting my stories in the city where I live: Nashville. But will anyone buy novels that are set in Nashville if they don’t have anything to do with the music business? After all, that’s what the outsiders’ stereotype of Nashville is: Music City U.S.A. Opryland. The Grand Ol’ Opry. The Ryman Auditorium. The home of Country Music. Etc. But having lived here for twelve years, I have an insider’s view of the city that while music is, yes, a large industry in town, so are publishing, auto manufacturing (Saturn and Nissan plants, Nissan just moved their US headquarters here and Volkswagen just announced they’re doing the same), healthcare, aeronautics manufacturing, telecommunications, and so on. It’s also got a great history, from Daniel Boone to Davy Crockett to General John Bell Hood.
But would the setting (Nashville) be important to the story? Or would it just serve as a more generic city? What part of the culture of the location would I be incorporating in the story? What is this area’s culture if I don’t have at least one of the characters involved in the music industry? Would I be setting the stories here because it’s easy—since I live here—or because it’s for some reason a facet of the story that it takes place in Nashville, Tennessee?
I’ve discussed settings on this blog quite a bit before, yet still these questions persist. It’s easy to think of continuing to use Bonneterre as a setting for the foreseeable future—because, after all, I’ve “lived” in (with) Bonneterre for most of my adult life (I’ve lived in Nashville since 1996—four years less). Bonneterre is a part of me, because it came out of my imagination. However, I also have to think that while readers can enjoy a fictional setting, readers can connect even more with a real setting, especially one where they live or where they’ve visited or where they’d like to visit.
I’m not certain what I’m going to do (and plan to discuss this with my editor in September). I’m not leaning one way or the other right now. All I know is that I do need a good reason for the setting I choose so that I can use the setting as part of the story: to create culture and conflict, for events and things the characters can do, and to develop the background of the characters.
My historical trilogy is set in England, Jamaica, and aboard ships of the Royal Navy in 1814. For the story to work, it had to be set there because the story wouldn’t exist outside of it. So, in a way, instead of the setting being inspired by the story (like Bonneterre), the story was inspired by the settings. And that inspiration grew out of my love of that setting developed through my love of the stories of Jane Austen and the Horatio Hornblower series. There was no question about where I would set those books.
How do you choose your settings? Does your story dictate where it needs to be set, or has you developed your story around a particular setting? Are there certain places you’d like to set stories because those cities/towns/places inspire you?
Categories: 500th Blog Post Giveaway · Writing Process · craft of fiction writing · setting
We’ve had an ongoing joke in my local writing group, Middle Tennessee Christian Writers, about how on the second Saturday of every month, we’re the most extroverted group of introverts anyone has ever seen. This most recent meeting, we had a visitor come who’d found out about our meeting through the announcement on our group blog. Usually what happens is that someone posts a comment that they’re interested and they’d like to be contacted by “one of the moderators” (me) and we have an e-mail dialogue before they visit one of the meetings. I can thoroughly understand someone wanting to do this—it’s more comfortable to visit a new group when you’ve already met someone there (even if it’s just through cyberspace). But this gal just decided to come and check us out. Well, come to find out, she’s an extrovert—doesn’t mind going new places and meeting new people; in fact, she probably is stimulated personally and creatively by doing so.
Most of us always assume that a great majority of writers are introverts. And I’m using that term in the technical sense—introverts need time alone, it’s through solitude or time away from others that introverts recharge and get energy; being around large groups of people is extremely draining for the true introvert. (Extroverts, naturally, are the opposite and get their energy and stimulation from being around people; they have a tendency to shut down and become depressed if forced to spend too much time alone.) Those who are closer to center (like me) can do both when need be, but always we revert back to our natural inclination (which, for me, is getting away from it all to recharge).
I’m starting to wonder now if that commonly held belief that most writers are introverts is as true as we think.
Think about writers who talk about how they can’t work in silence, or they get their best work done down at the local coffee shop where people are coming and going all the time. Now, I personally, don’t work well with complete silence. I almost always have music playing—but very softly in the background. But there’s no way I’d be able to write in a coffee shop where people are talking, the register is going, the barristas are taking orders, the doors opening and closing—I’d find it far too distracting. Yet some writers love this environment. I’d venture a guess they’re extroverts.
People who’ve met me at conferences have a really hard time believing that I’m not an extrovert, that I am very uncomfortable when in large groups, and that for me, approaching someone I’ve never met and talking to them is one of the hardest things I do. For a couple of years, being an officer with ACFW made it somewhat easier because I was representing the organization, not myself. I’ve also learned over the years techniques for networking and taught myself (through lots of practice) how to handle social situations not by focusing on the large group of people surrounding me, but by focusing on only a few people out of that large group. (For more tips and tricks, check out the two series on Networking on the Writing Series Index page.)
Ah, yes, networking. You’ve read about it often enough here, and heard about it elsewhere. Why is it so important to push ourselves out of our introverted comfort zones and do something we don’t enjoy?
As I’ve stated before, you don’t have to network in order to get published. You don’t have to be a member of a professional writers’ organization (ACFW, RWA, MWA, etc.). You don’t have to attend conferences. You don’t have to blog. You don’t have to enter contests. You don’t have to do anything but write and submit in order to pursue publication. But those things sure do help.
How many times have I relayed the story about how I knew my agent for a couple of years before I ever submitted anything to him? He not only interviewed me for a job (when he was publisher of one of the CBA houses located in Nashville), but from that meeting came an idea for a project that we worked on together for ACFW. I took his continuing education session at that year’s ACFW conference. The next year, I’d planned to seek him out at conference just to touch-base and keep the dialogue open—and then I learned he’d left the publishing house and was opening an agency. Since I was only there for one evening (the banquet), as soon as I saw him walking down the hall, I had a decision to make: stay in my comfort zone, not put myself forward, OR talk to him and ask him if I could submit. The conversation lasted less than two minutes. And he’s now my agent.
Knowing the boundaries of our comfort zones is important, because if we don’t know where the boundaries are, we won’t know in what areas we need to be pushing ourselves.
Building name recognition (in a good way) before publication is important. If you are actively involved in your writing organization, if you are successful in contests, if you volunteer or serve as an officer, if you write a blog that generates interest amongst other writers—and possibly editors and agents—then when you start submitting, if the editor whose desk your proposal lands on recognizes your name, he or she might be a little more interested in looking at it (just like we’re always more interested in reading debut novels by people whose names we recognize than those we don’t).
This year at conference, I’ll be pushing my comfort zone by giving one of the morning devotionals as well as volunteering to be a timekeeper for the editor/agent meetings. But in a way, this was sort of a selfish act. You see, I enjoy public speaking, so getting up in front of everyone (though I’ll be nervous) will be enjoyable for me. And when I saw the call for volunteer timekeepers, my heart leapt because all I could think of was being able to be there for all of those people who are so nervous they’re nearly sick to their stomachs—to be able to talk to them, and possibly pray with them, beforehand, and to be able to see them afterward. Yes, it will mean talking to a bunch of people I’ve never met before, but it meshes so well with my desire to lift up and encourage other writers that it’s an easy way to step out of my own comfort zone.
So I challenge you: what’s one way you can step out of your comfort zone to help further your writing career this year?
Categories: 500th Blog Post Giveaway · Road to Publication · networking · writing business
The child hesitated for a moment. “Will you please call me Cordelia?” she said eagerly.
“
Call you Cordelia! Is that your name?”“No-o-o, it’s not exactly my name, but I would love to be called Cordelia. It’s such a perfectly elegant name.”
“I don’t know what on earth you mean. If Cordelia isn’t your name, what is?”
“Anne Shirley,” reluctantly faltered forth the owner of that name, “but oh, please do call me Cordelia. It can’t matter much to you what you call me if I’m only going to be here a little while, can it? And Anne is such an unromantic name.”
And thus we’re introduced to Anne Shirley. This year marks the 100th anniversary of the publication of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s classic novel Anne of Green Gables, the first installment in a series of eight books about the inimitable orphan Anne Shirley. When first published, the book was considered a great success by selling 19,000 copies in the first five months. A century later, more than fifty million copies are in print. It has been adapted into a very successful and popular set of miniseries (though the third one, while wonderful, has absolutely nothing to do with the story originally penned by Montgomery), musicals, stage plays, dolls, and other peripheral items such as dishes and linens.
~~~~~~~~~~
Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874–1942, called “Maud” by friends and family, known as L.M. Montgomery as an author) was born in Clifton, Prince Edward Island, Canada. Her mother passed away (from tuberculosis) when Maud was very young. Her father moved her to Saskatchewan, and shortly thereafter, she returned to Prince Edward Island, to Cavendish, to be raised by her very strict maternal grandparents. Though she would return to Saskatchewan for a brief time, she spent most of the rest of her life on Prince Edward Island, as well as in Nova Scotia. She attended Prince of Wales College in Charlottetown, where she completed the two-year teachers’ program in a year, then went on to study literature at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. After teaching in a variety of schools around the islands, she returned to Cavendish, PEI, in 1898 to live with her widowed grandmother. In 1901, she returned to Halifax, where she wrote for the two newspapers, but she returned to Cavendish in 1902 to care for her grandmother. During this time, she began writing Anne of Green Gables, which was published in 1908 (at age thirty-four, if anyone’s counting).
In 1911, she married minister Ewan MacDonald, and they moved to Ontario so he could take up the leadership of St. Paul’s Presbyterian Church in Leaskdale. It was from the Leaskdale Manse that Montgomery wrote her next eleven novels.
Montgomery died in 1942, and is buried in the Cavendish cemetery on Prince Edward Island. Twenty of Montgomery’s novels were published, but of those, Anne of Green Gables remains the most popular and well-known.
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Anne Shirley (that’s Ann-with-an-E) comes to Avonlea on Prince Edward Island when she is eleven years old. She is adopted by brother and sister Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert, who live in a large farmhouse with a multi-gabled, green roof, commonly known as Green Gables. Because of her difficult life before coming to Avonlea, Anne has lived in a world of imagination ever since she can remember. She has an overblown ideal of “the romantic” and seeks it in every aspect of her life—leading to some quite humorous “scrapes” and disasters. Living close-by is Diana Barry, whom Anne claims as her “bosom” friend. Believing her own red hair to be a curse, Anne envies Diana’s dark tresses and teaches the very grounded Diana how to dream and pretend.
Though her arrival causes a stir in the small community, especially with neighbor Rachel Lynde stirring the gossip up, Anne eventually wins the hearts of the residents through her kindness, her generosity, her humor, and her accomplishments. Anne is challenged in those accomplishments by Gilbert Blythe, the boy whom she originally cannot abide for his major mistake of calling her “Carrots,” due to her red hair. Anne works hard to beat Gilbert for the top marks in school.
Anne and Gilbert, and a few of their friends, eventually end up in the teachers’ program at Queens College in Charlottetown, where, once again, Anne finds herself in competition with Gilbert for academic honors. Eventually, they reconcile at the end of the first book and become friends.
Like Jo March from Little Women, Anne’s first forays into writing are by penning fantastical stories. Where Jo’s were of marauders and pirates and highwaymen, Anne’s are of fantastical, romantic worlds, with damsels in distress and knights in shining armor to rescue them.
When assigned to write a story for a school composition assignment (by Anne’s beloved teacher, Miss Stacey), Diana admits to Anne that she cannot possibly come up with a story to write. So Anne starts a story club where she, Diana, and their friends will make up and write down stories. Marilla thinks this is complete and utter nonsense, to which Anne responds:
Though Anne eventually puts her writing aside to focus on raising her children, we can learn a lesson from her fearless approach to life and to writing—the idea of living in the imagination, letting it overcome us until we can do nothing but tell the story, lest we lose it.
Resources and Articles:
100 Candles: Anne of Green Gables Grows Old and Gets Her Due
Virtual Green Gables
Prince Edward Island
The Films
Four of the novels online:
Anne of Green Gables
Anne of Avonlea
Anne of the Island
Anne’s House of Dreams
Categories: 500th Blog Post Giveaway · Authors/Reading · Fictional Writers
Tagged: Anne of Green Gables, L.M. Montgomery
This is something I posted on the forums at ACFW yesterday. It’s adapted from the discussion topic from my Weight Watchers meeting earlier this week.
With the ACFW conference only ten weeks away, many writers are beginning to feel anxious and experiencing writer’s block when it comes to accomplishing their writing goals by then—whether it’s what they’re going to be pitching to editors/agents, getting their submission polished for their paid critique, or just the prospect of attending their first writing conference. Since the WW topic was about motivation, and since I really need motivation in both “W” areas of my life right now (writing and weightloss), I adapted the topic from losing weight to writing.
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What is the motivating factor that made you decide to pursue publication—by submitting, by pitching, by attending a conference? Was it wanting to be published? Was it wanting to get a message out to readers? Was it being so full of stories you might just burst and wanting to share those stories with others?
Whatever it is, write it down. Tape it to your computer monitor and/or the bathroom mirror. Keep that motivating factor top of mind all the time.
There are three stages of working toward publication:
1. The Honeymoon—You love writing. You’ve taken some online courses and maybe attended a conference or two. The friends and family who’ve read your stories love them and tell you you’re a better writer than everyone on the bestsellers’ list.
2. The Thrill Is Gone—You don’t final in the first contest you enter—nor the second nor third. You join a critique group and discover that you don’t know as much about the craft of writing as you thought. You learn that your beloved story has all kinds of plot holes and that you have a tendency to use “as” and “so” too much. You have a file full of form rejection letters/cards from every publishing house and agent in the market. You have massive writer’s block and would rather vegetate in front of the TV than write. You wonder why you decided to do this in the first place.
3. Renewed Resolve—You go back to the beginning, back to the Honeymoon stage. You remember your motivating factor. You ask for accountability with making sure you write every day. You realize that it takes planning and discipline to be a writer. You also remember that God gave you this talent and that you’re following His calling on your life. You keep submitting, keep studying, keep learning, keep writing, because you know you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing.
The things in our lives that throw us into stage 2 are stress, tragedy, boredom, fatigue, emotions, and falling into old patterns. Being aware of these triggers doesn’t make them go away, but helps us manage those times. That’s when we need to consciously work to move ourselves into stage 3—by asking for help, by reviewing our crit partners’ feedback along with the comments on contest entries, by looking back at where we were when we started, by shaking things up a little bit and maybe trying something new or different as a kick-start.
To be successful . . .
Do what successful athletes do: visualize yourself as a success. What publishing house will you be published by? How many copies of your book will sell? Where are you going to do book signings? How many more books will you write? How will being published affect your daily life? How will your stories impact the lives of readers? What kind of feedback will you get from readers?
What will success feel like for you? Will you be more confident? more self-assured? more assertive?
Start practicing those things now—practice being more confident and self-assured. Be more assertive. NOW. (For ideas on how to practice these behaviors, check out the two series on Networking on the Writing Series Index page.)
And most of all, you must persevere and not let one negative critique or contest score affect your relationship with your story or your feelings about yourself as a writer. Or, if you’re like me, you must persevere and ignore the fear that comes from actually achieving a measure of success. Again, I’m struggling to do this and plan to conquer it this week as best I can. Then I’ll start next week and conquer it again. And the next week . . .
Oh, and in case you haven’t noticed, per Jess’s request, I’ve added a new widget to my right-sidebar containing the counter for MFR. I’m going back and concentrating on revising and shoring up the 41,000 words that show on the counter currently, but hopefully once that’s done, you’ll start to see that counter moving every single day!
Categories: 500th Blog Post Giveaway · Road to Publication · Writing Process · craft of fiction writing · writing business
If this is your first time visiting the blog, or if you haven’t visited in more than a week, be sure to click on the link to the right and learn how to enter my 500th Blog Post Contest and Giveaway for a chance to win one of five fabulous prizes! So far, only six people have entered the contest for the grand-prize drawing, so be sure to get your funny wedding story written and turned in!
I have always been a seat-of-the-pants writer, even well before I had ever heard that term. I almost never knew, beyond the fact that the hero and heroine are supposed to end up together, where my stories were going when I sat down to write them. With my first three manuscripts, I just sat down and wrote. Started with Chapter One and wrote straight through, discovering the story as I went along, being as surprised by the twists and turns the story took as if I were reading a book written by someone else.
Of course, that was before I started graduate school and learned all the ins-and-outs of plotting, character development/arc, story beats, and pacing. All of a sudden, there were elements of writing a story I kind of had to know before I could actually sit down and write one. Which is why my three manuscripts since then, Stand-In Groom, Ransome’s Honor, and Menu for Romance, have all taken me much longer to write, and have all required a couple of re-starts—because once I got into them, I found major holes in the stories or characters behaving in ways that didn’t lend to a good character growth arc.
A week or so ago, I pulled out the notebook containing the printed copy of my first complete manuscript—a six point-of-view romance/women’s fiction novel that I wrote in nine months following the first writing conference I attended. It’s the one where I practiced what I’d learned about limited POV and writing every day even when I didn’t feel like it. The amazing thing is that the story is strong, the main conflicts and plotlines are easily identifiable, and, even though the pacing suffers in places, the narrative drives toward the ending.
So why, over the last four years, have I had trouble repeating this process of just sitting down and writing a story?
Part of the difference is that I’d been “working with” the characters in What Matters Most for a couple of years before I started writing it. I’d started developing the lead female character, Bekka d’Arcement, and her four best friends several years before I figured out which of their stories I was going to write first. So I knew her quite well by the time I started writing. I knew less about the main male character, Andrew Blakeley, when I first started writing; but like Bekka, I got to find out his background and personal history as the novel moved along (which kept me from including too much backstory in the beginning of the novel). The other four POV characters were some I’d been working with for a while too.
So, in essence, even though I hadn’t been actually writing the manuscript for a couple of years, nonetheless, the story had still been in development for a couple of years. Same with the second book I wrote, which centered around another one of these five friends.
My third manuscript was an exercise in writing a contemporary-set tribute to my favorite Jane Austen novel, Persuasion, so I already had a pretty good idea of which direction the story needed to go when I started writing. Even though I hadn’t come up with the characters but about a month before I started writing the stories, they were based on Anne and Frederick, so I knew them in essence.
Stand-In Groom, however, started from the fact that I didn’t like the storyline of a certain movie about a wedding planner who falls in love with a client. I wanted to tell the story of a wedding planner who falls in love but doesn’t break up her client’s wedding by stealing the groom. Unfortunately, it took me about a year and a half—and three versions of the first ten chapters—to figure out who my characters really were and what their conflicts were.
With Menu for Romance being a spinoff of SIG, you’d think it would be easier to write, right? Well . . . while Meredith and Major are secondary characters in SIG, they don’t have a significant on-page presence, so I didn’t really spend a lot of time with them. In fact, up until I realized I wanted Meredith to be the heroine of a spinoff novel and that Major was the guy she was going to end up with, he was actually married! But as I expanded his role a little bit, as he grew on me, I realized he was the perfect hero for Meredith. However, I still didn’t know that much about either of them when I started writing MFR.
Now that I’m facing a deadline to get this book written, I realize that winging-it isn’t going to suffice with this manuscript. So last night, I pulled out my big flip-chart pad and my copy of Billy Mernit’s Writing the Romantic Comedy and determined the seven story beats of Menu for Romance. I also started penciling in the ideas for conflicts I’ve had and brainstormed a few more.
Just like What Matters Most was an exercise in learning POV and how to finish a manuscript, Menu for Romance is going to be an exercise in determining if a dyed-in-the-wool seat-of-the-pants writer can become a plotter.
Categories: 500th Blog Post Giveaway · Plot or Plod · Road to Publication · Writing Process · craft of fiction writing
Something that a lot of people like to do on the Fourth of July is play softball. So in that tradition, I’m throwing y’all a “softball” topic to respond to today.
What are your plans for the Fourth of July? If you’re not in the U.S., what’s your take on our Independence Day and all of the excess we go to celebrating our country’s birthday?
Categories: 500th Blog Post Giveaway · Reflections
Okay, so far, only ten people are entered in the contest. And a word of clarification: for comments to count toward the contest, they must be on the posts dated between June 30 and July 30—no going back to older posts and commenting on those! Also—it should be more than just “Great topic. Thanks for posting it.” I want thoughtful comments that prove you’ve actually read what I’ve written. Yes, that sounds narcisistic, but it is my blog and my contest, after all! For a refresher on the rules, click on the 500th Blog Post Contest & Giveaway link at the top of the page.
First confession. I don’t usually know from day to day what I’m going to post about on my blog. Even when I’m doing series, most of the time, until I sit down to write the post, I’m not entirely sure what the exact topic will be—though with most series, because I have to do a lot of reading, I already have a list of ideas that I want to blog about. And then there are some which I have to plan out very carefully, because it’s a topic that either requires a lot of research or a lot of time to construct. In the speech-giving world, this is considered “extemporaneous” versus “scripted.” Though I hated it when I first started, over the course of the semester in which I took my public speaking class as an undergrad, I learned that I actually enjoy public speaking. However, I’m much more comfortable when I’ve written out the entire speech multiple times so that when I’m up there with just bullet points, I can remember exactly what it is I want to say about each one. Why, then, am I a seat of the pants writer and blogger? If I’m more successful as a speaker when I’ve outlined and planned and researched before I even write the speech, why does the idea of outlining and planning a story stop me cold when it comes to sitting down to write it?
Second confession. Every time I even think about sitting down to write more of Menu for Romance, my second book under contract, I totally freeze up. Usually, when I have such wonderful ideas for conflicts and scenes running around in my head, I can’t wait to sit down and put it all on paper (well, on the computer, anyway). But I’m totally in the grip of some massive fear that I can’t seem to conquer. It’s the fear that all writers deal with: What if what I write doesn’t live up to how it plays out in my head? What if I do write it to my satisfaction and enjoyment but everyone else hates it? What if I write this whole contracted book and the editor decides she doesn’t like it at all and I have to start over from scratch? What if my books are successful and I have to do this again and again and again—write books that are already contracted and face these fears every time? What if I am just a one-hit-wonder, a flash-in-the-pan?
Third confession. I hate okra. It’s slimy.
Fourth confession. At the ACFW conference last year, keynoter James Scott Bell talked about certain people who have an affliction that the fear I just discussed has given me: they want to have written; they don’t actually want to write. Years ago, I used to come home from work and spend most of the evening sitting at my computer composing my stories—if not in the living room at a decent hour, I’d sit in bed with the laptop until 2 a.m. because the words were flowing and I didn’t want to stop writing. Now, I’d much rather be in the process of revising a complete manuscript. The problem is, I can’t bring myself to complete it! What a conundrum.
Fifth confession. I have a hard time writing when my house is in chaos, which it has been the last couple of months. I don’t know how I let it get as bad as it did. Well, I do—I’m lazy and I don’t like housework. I’d pulled out all of the clothes I’d kept from four or five years ago (the last time I lost a bunch of weight) and dragged the boxes into the living room where I tried all of them on. Many of them fit me. A few are still a little too snug. And a bunch need to go away—whether they fit or not—because I’m never going to wear them again. Great project, right? Yeah, except for the fact that until this weekend, every time I entered my living room, I started feeling claustrophobic because of these piles of clothes all around. (I live in a house that’s less than 900 square feet, so we’re not talking a huge living room here.) Stuff in my office started piling up—then in my bedroom . . . it got to the point where I was so overwhelmed by all the stuff that I couldn’t function. I would get home at night and enter a vegetative state in front of the TV every night because I didn’t know where to get started. But this past weekend, when I should have been marathon-writing with my fellow MTCWers, I spent the weekend organizing and starting to get my house, and hopefully my life, back in order so that when I come back from my little mini-vacation this week, I can start over fresh, with renewed motivation.
Sixth confession. I love jellybeans. Except the black ones.
Seventh confession. I’m the world’s worst role-model when it comes to being a “published” author. Aren’t I? I mean, look at everything I’ve confessed. How many times have I quoted or advocated what Madeleine l’Engle wrote in Walking on Water about writing every day? How many times have I talked about how important it is to make sure we push ourselves when we don’t feel like writing? How many times have I experienced in my own writing journey how the less often I sit down to write, the less often I’m going to feel like writing? how when I make myself write even when I don’t feel like it, I’ll eventually have a break-through when it’s all of a sudden 3 a.m. and I’ve written 3,000 words without even realizing it?
The compact. My Dazzlingly Clever Critique Partners, Georgiana and Erica, and I have entered into a compact with each other. For the month of July, we will write 7,000 words per week, which we will submit to each other for crits every 14 days. The three of us are very competitive—in a good natured way—so I know each of us is going to be trying to make sure we beat the others’ word counts. So far, I’m way behind for this week. My excuse has been that I’ve been trying to get the house organized and somewhat clean before I go on vacation. The truth is what I’ve just confessed. So I’ll be scrambling to get some writing done while I’m on vacation!
So, there you have it. Hopefully I’ve given you enough various topics that you can find something to comment on!
Categories: 500th Blog Post Giveaway · Reflections · Road to Publication · Writing Process · craft of fiction writing · writing business
Menu for Romance
(click title to read an excerpt)
Now available for pre-order.
Ransome's Honor
Book 1 of the Ransome Trilogy
Now available for pre-order.
A Case for Love
Book 3 of the Brides of Bonneterre Series
Ransome's Crossing
Book 2 of the Ransome Trilogy
