KayeDacus.com

Today at lunch, I have to brave the spring rains and drive a couple of blocks over to the post office. Going to the P.O. isn’t something that I do very often. I buy my regular stamps at Walgreens. I do all of my banking electronically. My agent takes everything through e-mail. So why am I risking losing the good parking space I got this morning and going out in the bad weather to go to the post office?

To mail back to Barbour the contracts I signed last night for Menu for Romance and A Case for Love, the two follow-up books to Stand-In Groom! Yes—I now have a three-book deal with Barbour. The series’ working title is either “Bonneterre Brides” or “Brides of Bonneterre.” Menu for Romance is due December 1, 2008, and A Case for Love is due July 1, 2009. As soon as I find out the tentative release dates, I’ll be sure to post that info here.

I’m cracking the whisk!

During the month of March, I was supposed to be writing about 31,000 words on Menu for Romance during MTCW’s March Madness Marathon. Unfortunately, I didn’t think about the fact that edits on Stand-In Groom were due at the end of the month nor know that I’d get feedback on Ransome’s Honor and want to take time out to make revisions on that as well.

So, I might be limiting the number of new posts here until I get caught up with where I need to be on the word count for Menu for Romance, if I’m going to have the first draft of it finished by the end of April. That gives me five weeks to write about 60,000 words—which means I need to average 12,000 words per week, or about 1,715 words per day. I only wrote 750 yesterday.

At the top of the screen, you’ll see a page entitled MFR Progress. I should be updating that page daily with what I’ve accomplished (either that day or the day before). If I go for more than a couple of days without updating that page, please contact me to find out why I haven’t written anything!

If I can get at least 1,500 words written today, I’ll have another Hooking the Reader post for you tomorrow!

Don’t forget, if you would like to be an influencer for Stand-In Groom and receive a copy of it from Barbour about a month before it hits shelves (so sometime in December) in exchange for posting a promotional review on your blog/Amazon/B&N/CBD, etc., please e-mail me with your name and mailing address and I’ll add you to the list.

Well, I just e-mailed the final version (at least, my final version) of Stand-In Groom to the editor, along with the dedication and acknowledgments.

I made one last little tweak to it before sending it in—introducing the heroine of the third book, A Case for Love, by name through a voicemail message Anne listens to (she’s an important secondary character in Menu for Romance as well).

If you would like to be an influencer for Stand-In Groom and receive a copy of it from Barbour about a month before it hits shelves (so sometime in December) in exchange for posting a promotional review on your blog/Amazon/B&N/CBD, etc., please e-mail me at kaye (at) kayedacus.com with your name and mailing address and I’ll add you to the list. I can submit up to 75 influencer names, so it’s first-come-first-served.

Hope you enjoy the rest of the weekend and have a blessed and reflection-filled Easter.

Since I ended up spending most of the day yesterday shopping, I just now finished making all of the changes in the file of Stand-In Groom. My editor is on vacation this week, so I’m going to wait until next Monday to e-mail it to her. But it’s finished!!!

I only ended up cutting 1,573 words and a total of six pages from the length.

I still need to write my dedication and acknowledgments, figure out three authors whose writing style I would compare mine to, and determine 1–3 key issues the book deals with that someone could use to help a friend “through the softened message of fiction” for my April 1 deadline.

One of the things that I had to do while reading through the manuscript for edits was to make changes based on decisions I’ve made since starting the second novel, as well as check on details that I need to make sure remain consistent through the series. Here’s a photo of my continuity notes (sorry it’s blurry):

As of 1:32 a.m. on Sunday, March 16, edits on the hardcopy of the manuscript of Stand-In Groom are complete! Yay! Now I can spend a few hours making those changes in the electronic file Sunday and enjoy my day off on Monday!

I’m curious to know what the final word count will be and how much I’ve managed to cut out.

But for now, I’m going to bed!

I managed not only to make it through the day today without feeling like I was going to fall asleep at my desk, but got to the gym and walked two miles and went back to the library for some more edits.

Thursday, March 13: I arrived at the library at seven and lucked into another empty group study room. After twenty minutes, though, I figured out why it was empty. The people in the room next door were so loud—and had an occasionally screaming child in there with them—that even with my earphones in and music turned up as loud as I could stand it, I could still hear them. Instead of making a scene and knocking on the door and asking them to shut up (which might surprise Ruth, Lori, and Leticia—after the movie theater incident and asking the loud drunk chicks last night to take their conversation outside), I packed everything up again and ended up moving to a carrel on the other side of the building.

Completed: Chapters 10–14. Rewrote the dialogue in the scene I didn’t like. Cut some unimportant stuff here and there. Got rid of more “as” and “was” sentence constructions (that’s what’s taking me the longest!). I’m now officially halfway through (and I say “officially” because I set the completed pages next to what’s remaining and the stacks were the same height).

What’s even better, I completed chapter six of Menu for Romance and will get that out to the CPs tonight!

Tomorrow, the library closes early, so I’ll have to be disciplined and work at home. But things are looking quite good that I’ll be able to meet my goal of getting all of these changes finished by Monday evening.

As I mentioned yesterday, last night was a night off from edits while I went to dinner and attended the Michael Buble concert downtown. We had a wonderful time (especially since the loud-talking, possibly drunk girls with tickets for the two seats beside Ruth left during the second song from the warm-up band, Naturally 7, and never came back!).

While I had a really great time at the concert and am glad I went, it reminded me, though, of why I so rarely attend concerts. I enjoyed the music, Michael’s banter with the crowd, and being with friends. But as he was singing, all I could think of was how much stuff I could have gotten done at home while listening to music. This is what happens to me during concerts, though. I’ve written before about how I’ve taken home napkins filled with a new scene or a three-foot-square piece of paper table cloth covered with plot brainstorming—written while sitting through concerts. Then, there’s the fact that I’m totally feeling my age this morning—plus at least ten years!

All that to say that, while I would enjoy going to another one of his concerts, I’m thinking I’ll wait a couple of years—and hope it’s on a Friday or Saturday, instead of a weeknight when I have to go to work the next day.

Tonight . . . the plan is to get through at least four more chapters. I will record the two episodes of LOST that air tonight and save them to watch until after I’ve completed the hand-written edits (that’s a big challenge and incentive for me!). One of the chapters I face tonight contains a scene that I’ve disliked ever since I wrote it—it’s a conversation between Anne and George that I wrote when my grad school mentor told me she didn’t think George was coming across as British enough. So I forced a conversation between the two of them about some of the idiosyncrasies of Southern slang that George was trying to figure out. Since I originally wrote that, I started working with and have become really good friends with a gal who is actually British—in fact, she’s my walking buddy whom I go to the gym with after work every day. So I’ve been picking her brain for something real I can have them discuss (culture-difference) and have a great topic. Tonight, I just need to figure out how to work that into the situation.

Well, the editing process is slower-going than I’d originally expected—though there are more scenes in the beginning of the novel that need changes due to Meredith’s presence in them. Tonight, I won’t get to work on it as I’m going to see Michael Bublé in concert with friends.

Tuesday 3/11: Walked two miles at the gym after work, came home, and took a quick shower. Got to the library a little before seven o’clock. Found an empty study room, which was definitely better than the carrel I’d ended up using Monday night—much more room to spread out.

Completed: Edits/rewrites on chapters 5–9. Cut a big chunk from chapter 6, where my editor thought the pace was too slow (it was), and found several places where I could tighten the writing (as in, cutting out lots of telling signpost phrases like she knew, she felt, and he wondered).

Supper: Easy-Peasy Pork Roast

3–5 lb. Boston butt pork roast
1 cup water
1 medium-to-large onion, cut into 1″ chunks
Favorite season-all seasoning (I use Tony Chachere’s Creole Seasoning)

Sprinkle roast with seasoning. Pour water into crock pot. Break up the layers of the chunked onion and place in crock pot. Place roast on top of onions. Cover and cook for at least three to four hours on low.

I put this in the crock pot when I went home for lunch yesterday (so, around two o’clock). By the time I got home at six, it was cooked through. I left it in the crock pot while I was at the library; and when I got home at nine, I was able to pull it apart with a fork, it was so tender! The water, onion, and run-off from the meat create a nice au jus to serve with the meat. Perfect with sautéd asparagus.

I’ve gotten everything I need to work on the final edits for Stand-In Groom (final, that is until it goes to the copy editor). My goal is to have hand-written corrections completed on the hardcopy of the manuscript finished by Friday, and electronic changes completed by the end of the day Monday, which I’d already planned as a day off for this very purpose. Since that means this will be taking up all of my free time, I’ll just be checking in with my daily progress for the rest of the week.

My plan is to spend two to three hours at the library at my undergrad college (about five minutes from my house) each evening this week—away from the distractions of TV, e-mail, Facebook, blog stats, etc., and concentrate on copy editing and making the necessary changes to the manuscript.

Monday 3/10: Was at the library from 7 — 9 p.m. Reviewed all of my continuity notes—notes I’ve made since starting Menu for Romance to make sure that little details, like the types of cars people drive to eye color, all the way to big things, like the changed backstory for the main characters of MFR, get changed—and then started editing. It’s been a really long time since I’ve read this manuscript, and I found myself laughing over some of the things I didn’t remember writing.

Completed: Hand-written changes to chapters 1–4.

Before we move on to the new series HOOKING THE READER, I wanted to give some final thoughts on the subject of writing contests, this time from my perspective as a judge who has finaled in the past and is now no longer eligible to enter unpublished author contests. Some of this I’ve gotten into a little bit already, but there are a few things I want to discuss further.

Judging in the ACFW Genesis contest is something I highly anticipate every year. In the past several years, I’ve judged women’s fiction (was the category coordinator in 2004 as a matter of fact), contemporary romance, historical romance, young adult, and the tag-along assortment of leftovers when we didn’t have enough judges. I try to stick with the romance categories—they say, “Write what you know”; well I say, “Judge what you know.”

Even with as much as I look forward to judging the contest, it never fails that when my entries finally arrive, I dive in with gusto . . . and then by the second or third entry I’m so frustrated I’m nearly ready to give up! What frustrates me? Usually common mistakes, oversights, or flaws that could be easily addressed before the chapters were ever entered into the contest—and definitely need to be addressed before they’re submitted to editors or agents. Here are some of the most common:

1. Manuscript entered in the wrong category. This seems to be a more pervasive problem this year—or at least, I’m in communication with more judges who are seeing this issue. Fantasy novels entered into the historical category. Chick lit or women’s fiction novels entered into contemporary romance. Romance novels entered into general fiction or historical fiction. Young-adult stories entered into anything but YA. Not only is this frustrating for the judges, but this is a good way to get a manuscript rejected by an editor. In the CBA, genre guidelines are pretty clear-cut; and most houses’ submission guidelines clearly spell out what they’re expecting to see in the genres, which is how the contest coordinators wrote the genre descriptions for the contest. When you get ready to enter a contest and you aren’t certain which category to enter, ask a few people (preferably not friends, people who aren’t familiar with your story at all) to read your submission and ask them what genre they think it is. If it’s supposed to be a romance and they come back and tell you it’s a mystery, you either need to spend some time revising your entry so that the elements expected in the first few pages of a romance novel are evident, or you need to consider your book may actually not be a romance novel.

2. Grammatical errors—especially punctuation,.!?!; Ooh, this is a pet-peeve of mine. Yes, that mostly stems from my full-time job as a copy editor, where I’m required to know the punctuation rules backward and forward—and even then, I still miss commas or put in a period when I need a question mark or forget the closing parenthesis or quotation mark. But that’s one of the reasons I have crit partners: to catch all those little things I’ve overlooked.

–Please, please, please have a couple of people who are well versed in punctuation rules read your entry before you submit it. One of the most frustrating things is inconsistency in the use of commas. Learn the rules.
–While most of us punctuate our e-mails, IMs, and other electronic correspondence with a plethora of exclamation points, they are very rarely needed in fiction! Especially in narrative!! And more than one is never called for!!! If your character is yelling, show it through emotional and visceral responses!!!!
–Sentences that start with He wondered if are declarative rather than interrogatory ninety-nine percent of the time (e.g., He wondered if he should buy the roses or lilies). I can’t tell you how many entries I’ve seen where the writer puts a question mark at the end of this. Of course, my comment (aside from changing the question mark to a period) is to flag wondered as a telling signpost word and suggest it be put into deeper POV (e.g., He debated between the roses and lilies; she loved both).

3. POV problems. While I’m not going to go into too much detail here (see Point of View under Fiction Writing Series), I do need to point out that one sign of a novice writer is not having a good handle on POV. A POV character—whether first or third person (limited)—cannot see his or her own face to know it’s red, unless he or she is looking in a mirror. They cannot see that they look tired. While they can hear their voice, it’s more likely the person they’re with who’ll notice it sounds weak or strained or high-pitched. Really get inside your character’s head—give us the emotion behind what’s making the face red, the voice strained.

4. Showing vs. Telling. I’ve done a whole series on this subject. I spend more time judging trying to suggest easy ways for the entrants to learn what this really means than on most other craft-related issues.

5. Too much or not enough introspection. It seems that most of the manuscripts I’ve judged over the years have had one or the other problem (when I run across one that doesn’t have this problem, it’s one that usually ends up being a finalist). In the first two entries I judged this year, one was overwhelmed with narrative introspection, the other had almost none. What does that mean? Well, the first had page after page after page of the character’s thoughts and internal monologue. Not a lot of action, not a lot of interaction with other characters. Not a very dynamic opening to the story. The second had a lot of dialogue and stage direction, but very little indication of internal thought in the POV character. There is no quick-fix for this. It’s just something we learn over time through extensive critical reading and working with critique partners.

6. Too much italicized direct internal thought in third-person manuscripts. Either you’re writing in third person, or you’re writing in first person. Don’t go half-and-half. In deep third-person POV, editors are looking for the writer to be so inside of the character’s head that the narrative is the character’s stream-of-consciousness thoughts and feelings. Extensive use of italicized first-person internal dialogue is not only annoying to readers, it’s a sign that you’re not getting deep enough in your third-person POV narrative. (See this column by Zondervan editor Andy Meisenheimer as well as my take on when it can be useful for more on this subject.) Don’t just switch back and forth between third person/past tense and first person/present tense—better to italicize the first person thoughts or else receive a low score for constantly switching POV. Make all the first-person stuff third person narrative.

Fore more common mistakes, see Camy’s article today on Writer . . . Interrupted.