I’m Published!
It’s official… I’m published! I just got the June 2006 copy of Singing News (the only magazine dedicated entirely to Southern Gospel Music) in the mail and my very first published work — two CD reviews — appears on pages 94-95.
You know that whole “networking” thing people talk about? Well, this is proof that it really works!! Even though they had no job openings, this company called me in for an interview after I did a broadcast-mailing of my resume a few months ago during my job search. Just going in and talking to one of the editors and mentioning to him that I enjoy southern gospel music, I now have an additional source of income and publication credits to add to my resume (and new music to listen to, as well).
The new job is going well. I’ve read two novels in two days. Yep, they started me out on the first two books in a new series, “Tales from Grace Church Inn,” which is in the same style as the Jan Karron books: three middle-aged sisters–one recently widowed, one never married, and one recently divorced–inherit their parents’ enormous Victorian mansion in a tiny Pennsylvania town and decide to turn it into a B&B. While it was hard for me to turn off the internal critiquer and just proofread them for pagination, punctuation, widows/orphans, etc., nothing could have made me more comfortable my first two days on a job than to be completely in my element. Oh, and the stories are cute, too, which made it so much more enjoyable. Now that the editors are back from Book Expo America, they will “initiate” me a little better into the workflow process and give me more stuff to do!
Reflections on Writing and Baseball
I’m the first to admit—I’m not a baseball fan. I am, however, an avid LSU sports fan…primarily FOOTBALL but, when I can catch it on TV, any of the other sports including my two least favorites: basketball (FINAL FOUR!!!) and baseball (coming back with wins over top-25 ranked SEC teams like Arkansas and Auburn).
But as I sit here watching the LSU-Auburn game (Game 3 of a tripleheader) while procrastinating from writing my critical essay for school (due on Wednesday), I started thinking about how baseball is like writing.
Like any other sport, the players must spend years preparing: learning the nuances and rules of the game, conditioning themselves, practicing, playing, learning the “market” (how other teams play, what to expect), going out every game with a winning attitude, and learning how to be a good loser.
As a writer, I have spent years preparing: from the basic fundamental of learning how to write, learning grammar, learning to type, to learning the rules of good writing; conditioning myself and practicing by writing, writing, writing, as well as by working with critique partners and learning how to edit and revise; studying the market – determining which publishers to target and what they’re looking for; approaching each writing session, editor/agent pitch, or contest entry with a positive, “winning” attitude; and learning how to graciously accept rejection from said editors/agents/contests.
Baseball, obviously, is a TEAM sport. Each player has his individual position to play, but each must also support the team as a whole. This, to me, mirrors the importance of fellowship with other writers which, for me, is represented by my local writing group, Middle Tennessee Christian Writers. When a player hits a three-run homer with two outs, the team is there to meet him at the plate with cheers and congratulations. When the next batter up pops out to center field, while the team is disappointed, there should be no condemnation, only encouragement and offers to help him improve his batting average. In a writing group, when one of our members makes a sale or wins a contest, my role as a teammate is to be there at “home plate” waiting to give her a high-five, to congratulate her, and to publicly applaud her. When the next one comes back with a rejection, my role as a teammate is to offer support, encouragement, and offer any assistance such as critiquing, editing, etc., that is within my expertise to provide.
An individual player is like a writer, too. When he stands at the plate waiting for the pitch, he knows why he’s there. When I sit down at my computer to write, I know why I’m there. The batter waits for the pitch, not knowing whether it’s going to be a fast ball, a breaking ball, or a curve ball. I wait for inspiration to strike, not knowing from where it will come. The ball is pitched. One of four things happens to the baseball player: He doesn’t swing and the pitch is “ball.” He doesn’t swing and the pitch is a “strike.” He swings and either misses the ball for a “strike” or connects for a foul ball. Or, he swings and connects with the ball for a hit. When ideas/inspiration come my way, similar things can happen. I can let it go right by me because it’s not something that really works. I can let it go right by me and realize I’ve missed something important that I might not ever be able to get back. I can start writing the idea only to discover it’s not going anywhere, or that it’s going somewhere off track. Or, I can start writing and make a great connection. How far I “hit” it depends on how well I’ve prepared myself. And, even if it’s a fabulous piece of work, it may still lead to an “out” – a rejection.
Once a batter hits a homerun, he’s not told to go sit on the bench and relax and enjoy the rest of the game. In the next inning, he must still play his field position as well as go up to bat again. His next at-bat may be another hit or it may be a strike-out. But he doesn’t quit just because he can’t follow up a homerun with another homerun. He keeps working, redoubles his efforts to get that batting average up. Just because I’m a finalist in a contest doesn’t mean I can sit back and rest on my laurels. I have to keep writing, keep improving, keep studying, keep practicing to remain in the “game.”
So, now that the game I’m watching is in the 9th inning (with LSU leading Auburn 8-2), I suppose it’s time for me to “hit the field” and get my essay finished!
I’m Really Graduating!
After a horrible day at work where I was pulled in about 16 different directions for nearly 10 hours, I arrived home to find my registration information had arrived for my FINAL WEEK OF RESIDENCY in my Master’s degree program.
It’s so hard to fathom that it’s really been two years since I started at Seton Hill…and yet in ways it seems like it’s been forever ago that I received my welcome letter and first registration packet (the day before I walked across the stage to receive my BA).
Both of my thesis evaluators passed me, however their feedback couldn’t have been more different! As I read the first evaluation to be returned to me, even though she’d marked “Pass” on each of the criteria, I began to wonder if she’d really meant to pass me, as it seemed that she found my manuscript flawed in several ways. But she passed me, so I was happy with that. Then, about two weeks later, I received the evaluation from my second reader. She also passed me on everything and was so complimentary her comments brought tears to my eyes.
In between receiving the two evaluations, I learned that this same manuscript (although in an earlier version) is a finalist in the American Christian Fiction Writers’ GENESIS contest for unpublished authors in the Contemporary Romance category. I had entered a much earlier version of the first chapter (completely different) two years ago with mediocre results. If my entry ends up being one of the top 5 scores coming out of this round, it will be taken straight to the pub board at WARNER FAITH publishers (well, the proposal, synopsis, marketing strategies, and first three chapters will be reviewed—I’ve got a lot of work to do between now and June 1 when all this is due to the contest coordinator!). Warner Faith doesn’t guarantee the winning manuscript will actually be published, but 1st Place is $500. And one of their editors is the one I pitched it two 2 years ago at the Denver ACRW conference who requested a full manuscript (she was with a different house then).
But anyway, I digress. I received my registration packet in the mail today and one of the pages in it is the THESIS PRESENTATION schedule – the schedule of when all of the graduating students will be presenting their—I mean our—theses publicly. I have been really worried about this schedule—not so much about the actual presentation, but about what time I would be scheduled to present. Having been through this several times now, I know that the later presentations are not very well attended, and I knew if they saw my genre of “Inspirational Romance” at a 7:00 or 8:00 slot (the 1-hour timeslots begin at 5 p.m.), I would be lucky to have five or six people there, especially if it’s later in the week. I am pleased to report that not only am I presenting on the first night, I’m presenting in the first timeslot at 5 p.m. And, because we have a small graduating class, I’m only presenting opposite one other person, unlike previous residencies where three or four presentations are going on at the same time. I don’t know yet when my teaching session will be, but at least I know for sure it won’t be on the same day as my thesis presentation—as there are no teaching sessions the first day! I’d actually really like to do my teaching session on Thursday morning (the first time available) so that I can really relax and have fun the rest of the week.
So, getting that in the mail today really turned around my bad day. Now, if only I can get some even better news on Thursday, my week will be perfect!
Milestones
I killed a couple of trees this weekend.
No, not the two little crepe myrtles I planted last summer (although I am worried about them, because they’re my only foliage that hasn’t started budding yet). I’m talking about the trees that paper is made out of. Which reminds me to say, I got my new “refurbished” laser printer from Fry’s the other day and got it hooked up (it uses a USB connector so I didn’t even have to crawl up under the desk to plug it in…just plugged it into the second USB port on the front of the CPU that I never used anyway!). But I digress…
I finally forced myself to sit down and make the corrections to the 3rd draft of Happy Endings, Inc., which didn’t take nearly as long as I expected. Half of the six hours was spent mostly just formatting the e-mails from my mentor into a version I could print (I’ve been pasting my chapters directly into e-mail and sending them to her, which come back to me in a “plain text” version with hard breaks after every twenty words or so and a > at the beginning of every line). That printed on about 165 pages. (Arial 9 point font.)
While editing page 314 of 344, as I dragged and dropped to move a word, a “fatal error” popped up–and I panicked! When had I last saved my changes? How much would I have to go back and fix again? I chose the option for Word to restore my document while it restarted, and it came up with all of my changes in tact. (Praise the Lord!)
So as Extreme Makeover: Home Edition started in the background, I clicked Print and sent my full manuscript to the printer. Thirty minutes and three paper refills later, I had two enormous stacks of paper (after a false start of about 65 pages when I realized I’d forgotten to put a header with my name, manuscript title, and page number on it) containing the final product of nearly three years’ work. I started this manuscript in the fall of 2003, finally wrote an ending for it in May 2005, and have spent the last ten months editing and refining it.
What an odd feeling it was to see it printed out like that. No, it’s not the first time I’ve seen a full draft printed–I printed it and put it into notebooks for my mother and grandmother for Christmas. But for them, I reformatted it to print single spaced and front & back to save paper. I work with reams of paper at work all the time — I print at least one document each week of nearly 200 pages. But to see a stack of 344 pages containing my story gave me nearly the same thrill as when I finished my first full manuscript five years ago.
Tonight, all I have to do is write a 1 page synopsis of the novel and then take it up to the 24 hour post office to mail off to my two readers who will hold the future of my Master’s Degree in their hands. After that (and a couple of critiques and judging a few entries for the ACFW Genesis contest), it’s full-steam-ahead on writing Ransome’s Honor, with a goal of having it finished by Thanksgiving.
What I’m reading
I’m so excited! My new research book came in today. I’ve been waiting to receive this book for about two months, as it’s out of print and I had to order it used through http://www.alibris.com/. It’s entitled Jane Austen and The Navy by Brian Southam. The next one I’m trying to get my hands on is What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew by Daniel Pool. Why am I so excited about these two books? Do you know how hard it is to find any research about the British Royal Navy in the early 19th Century—or about what times they ate their meals or how they were served—in Nashville?
I also picked up several new historical Christian fiction novels this weekend, when I realized it’s been over six months since I read a book in my genre (either contemporary or historic inspirational romance), so as soon as I finish a few critiques and the final revisions to my thesis manuscript this week, I really look forward to getting some reading done!
Internal Dialogue
I’ve run across a couple of people recently who’ve asked about the difference between using italicized direct internal thoughts versus using deep 3rd person POV incorporating the internal thoughts. Because I write in DEEP 3rd, when I read someone’s work (published or unpublished) that tends to use a lot of direct internal dialogue, I begin to feel like the author is patronizing the reader’s grasp of being in the character’s head—or that the author just doesn’t have a good grasp of what deep 3rd is really all about. Here is an example of deep 3rd person point of view incorporating the characters internal dialogue from the opening of my contemporary romance Stand-In Groom:
- Nothing like running late to make a wonderful first impression.
- Anne Hawthorne left a voicemail message for her blind date as to her tardiness, and crossed her office to the gilt-framed mirror that reflected the view of Towne Square from the converted row-house’s front windows. At a buzzing jolt against her waist she flinched, smearing her lipstick.
- Great.
- The vibrating cellular phone chimed out the wedding march. A client. She reached for a tissue to repair her mouth while flipping the phone open with her left hand. “Happy Endings Inc., this is Anne Hawthorne.”
I’ve highlighted in red text the “direct” thoughts of this character. “Deep 3rd Person POV” is when the author’s presence isn’t noticed . . . it’s all about being inside the point of view character’s head. I try to avoid phrases such as “she thought,” or “she knew” because that would be me as the author pulling back from the character and just narrating what’s going on. By just delving right into what my character knows, thinks, and feels, I as the author disappear and the character takes over telling the story. Therefore, I choose to use 3rd person for direct thoughts . . . except for passages where I need short, jolting bursts, like this from later in the manuscript:
- She grinned. “I’ll bet there’re a lot of differences in what you’re used to hearing and how we talk down here in Louisiana.” To see him like this—relaxed, casual, and chatty—was addictive. She could imagine spending every Sunday afternoon like this with him. He’s engaged to Courtney Landry.
- “No doubt. Just coming to America was more of a culture shock than I had expected. Watching American programs on the telly or American films didn’t prepare me for the differences in casual language.”
- Anne slipped off her shoes and pulled her feet up under her. “For instance?” Get up. Leave now. He’s not available. He’s already spoken for.
- “I overheard two ladies at dinner a few nights ago gossiping about people they both knew. They would say the most terrible things then follow it up with ‘bless her heart.’”
- “Quintessential southern charm.”
- George shook his head. “I’ve always found the idiosyncrasies in language fascinating.”
- “I believe a lot of it has been perpetuated through regionalized literature. Until the last seventy-five years or so, most authors were published regionally. We didn’t start to have numbers of international best sellers until technology made mass producing books more cost effective…” Anne stopped, embarrassed, at the odd expression on George’s face. Why did she become such a geek around him, running on about something that no one she’d ever known—outside of her professors—had ever shown the least interest in?
- “Please continue. Your conclusions are fascinating. It sounds as if you’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this.”
- Her pulse did the jitterbug. Was he serious? “I used to. My master’s thesis was on the impact of culture on Southern literature of the early twentieth century.”
- “You’ve a master’s degree in literature?” George set his book aside, shifted to the edge of his seat, and leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees.
- She tried to swallow the emotion that threatened to cut off her breath. She’d ventured into treacherous territory; he belonged to someone else. I have to get out of here. I have to put an end to anything but a professional relationship between us. “I was about ten hours from finishing when I had to leave school for financial reasons.”
The reason I used Internal Dialogue in the second excerpt is because I needed the impact of the conflict going on inside Anne. Her “inner voice” is in direct confrontation with what she’s doing/wants to do. I don’t know about you, but I don’t always “talk to myself” as I go about my daily business. Deep 3rd Person POV is more of the stream-of-consciousness we each experience as we go through our day, making decisions, learning new tidbits of information, or just processing external stimuli into our thought-patterns. There are times, however, when I do have “direct conversations” with myself, usually when I’m in conflict over something, which is why I only use that technique when I need to show some major internal thought/conflict happening.
A Reminder about Accurate Research
So I received my copy of the newest edition of Pride & Prejudice on DVD in the mail this week and promptly sat down to watch it, while working on edits of my master’s thesis manuscript Saturday afternoon.I happened to glance up at the screen when Col. Fitzwilliam walks in and introduces himself and realized–HE’S WEARING A NAVAL OFFICER’S UNIFORM!
You see, because of my extensive research for my own regency-set novel (and, of course the director of the new P&P movie set it during the time when it was written, not when it was published), I know what the uniform of a Post Captain in the Royal Navy looks like… I’ve got so many pictures of my Captain Sir William Ransome (thanks to my template actor’s being in the Horatio Hornblower films) in his uniform on and surrounding my computer it’s not even funny. I haven’t yet listened to the commentary to see if there’s a reason why they put a Colonel (a rank that didn’t exist in the Royal Navy) into a Navy uniform, but it just drove home once again the importance of accurate research. The irony is, I didn’t even notice it until the third time I’d seen the movie…the time when I’m familiar enough with the main action and characters, I’m paying more attention to the secondary details.
National Loyalty
In this day and age, it’s hard for a lot of people to believe that France used to be America’s biggest ally and England our worst enemy. However, that was the political landscape 230 years ago during the American revolution and continuing on into the 19th Century (including the fact that France nearly came to the aid of the Confederate States during the Civil War).
I am an extremely patriotic person. I tear up whenever I hear the national anthem (I cried more than our gold medal winners did in Torino!). I love celebrating Independence Day with reading the Declaration of Independence, watching The Patriot, and watching fireworks set to the finale of the 1812 Overture. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the first two books in J.M. Hochstetler’s American Patriot series: Daughter of Liberty and Native Son, set during the Revolutionary era.
But recently, I’ve started to have a “national” identity crisis… in my historical trilogy, the Americans and French are the enemies of my characters! My heroine’s father fought against the fledgling American Navy both in the waters off the coast of America and along the coast of England. Later, my hero, William, fights against the Americans in the War of 1812. Then, there are the French, whom England fought against for decades (all during the course of my novels).
When I watch The Patriot, I cheer for the Americans (naturally). I’m thrilled when the French show up in the end and help to force the British to surrender. I despise the British soldiers (as I’m supposed to) for subjugating, torturing, and killing the patriotic, idealistic Americans.
But as I’ve researched the era from the British point of view and placed my British characters (Royal Navy officers) into real historical events, I find myself looking for battles where the British won – where they defeated the Americans. (I really don’t have any trouble with separating out my feelings about their defeating the “Frogs,” because of what the French were doing to their own countrymen.)
Do I have a solution to this dilemma? Not really. But pragmatically, although my fictional characters may be in conflict with my real-life ancestors, I can look at it with 21st century eyes with the knowledge that while America and England were bitter enemies 230 years ago, in 2006, England is our greatest ally. And I think that my characters would be happy to know that our two countries would finally come to the point where we recognize our similarities and have put old animosities behind us.
Using Critiques: To Revise or To Forge On
A schoolmate wanted to know if she should go back and make all of the suggested revisions to the first couple of chapters of her story, or just set the critiques aside and continue writing. Here was my response:
Reading the critiques and putting into practice what you’re being taught is very important. But don’t get caught up in the mentality that you have to go back and correct everything before you can move forward (unless you have to trash absolutely everything and start over fresh). Read the critiques, take a couple of days to process them, read them again, and then move forward with your story, putting into practice the techniques, skills, rules you learned from that round of critiques.
My thesis novel is my fourth completed manuscript, and the first one that took me longer than 9 months to write (I wrote my first full in nine months, #2 in seven months and #3 in four months). I started Happy Endings, Inc., in July 2003. In September, I hooked up with a couple of girls at the ACFW conference and we decided to become critique partners. This was the first time I ever received serious feedback on my writing style, technique, voice, characters, plot, and so on. I had written almost ten chapters up to that point. Based on my crit partners’ feedback, I went back and started rewriting those ten chapters… so by the time I started at SHU in June 2004, I had twenty chapters… the first ten chapters in two versions. Then I started at SHU and submitted the first chapter for workshop critique at residency. Based on the feedback received from that, I started another revision of those ten chapters. By January 2005, I had thirty chapters… yep, three versions of the first ten chapters of the book. But then I had an epiphany. What if, instead of George Laurence just being someone Anne had to work with who was making her life difficult while she planned a wedding for her ex-fiancé, she was having to work with this difficult person but didn’t know she was planning the wedding for her ex-fiancé? So I spent the first month of the spring 2005 term writing four or five chapters in that vein… all the while trying to put into practice everything I was learning about the craft and trying not to use the word “as” too much so my mentor wouldn’t ding me on it.
But then, after completing Chapter 15 for the first term deadline last spring, I had another epiphany. What if Anne not only didn’t know she was planning her ex-fiancé’s wedding, but she also thought George was the groom? Yes, I went for the Shakespearian hidden identity plot. At that point, I could have stopped and gone back to rewrite the first half of the novel with that plot. But I was afraid if I did, I’d never finish. So instead, I wrote a 2-3 page synopsis of the beginning of the novel and picked up in chapter 16 and powered my way through the end. So by May 8, 2005, I had a “complete” first draft, almost two years after beginning it. By then I was so tired of it, I was ready to throw it aside in favor of the new story I’d just started, Ransome’s Quest. But taking several weeks “off” from HEI, from the day term ended until I had to start working on a second draft for the fall term, and immersing myself in William and Julia’s story helped me gain perspective on HEI. I also realized that I couldn’t just leave it like it was, a wounded puppy needing someone to nurture it and help it grow into a “best in breed” (no, I haven’t been watching Westminster, just seeing the ads for it). I had to take these three different pieces – Chapters 1-10, Chapters 11-15, and Chapters 16-27 – and revise it into a cohesive story.
So that’s what I did last term. By October 27, I had a complete second draft of HEI, one I was pleased with enough so that I gave copies of it to my mother and grandmother for Christmas.
This term, going through and making revisions based on critiques from last term has been a breeze! All because I powered through and didn’t allow myself to go back and get caught up in the write-revise-rewrite-revise loop.
It’s a lot easier to just sit down and write straight through when you’re not receiving feedback and getting ideas or questions from other people reading it. But, having a “complete” manuscript before getting caught up in revisions has worked much better for me.
How do we handle Genre Stereotypes?
Jane Austen’s first novel, Sense & Sensibility, was published as being written by A Lady. Her next book, arguably her most popular, Pride & Prejudice was attributed to The Author of Sense & Sensibility. During her time, reading novels was considered to be the height of impropriety–only people of loose morals read novels openly (everyone else hid the fact they read them), so heaven forbid one should admit to writing them! Austen made fun of this in her novel Northanger Abbey.
In this day and age, “writing fiction” isn’t as looked down upon as it was 200 years ago… unless you happen to write genre fiction such as romance, science fiction/fantasy, mystery, thriller/horror, etc. — basically the genres covered by the term “Popular Fiction.” The genres which easily conjure stereotypes: Romance = bodice rippers with a picture of Fabio on the front. SciFi = novelizations of the Star Trek TV show. Mystery = the staid, quiet brainteasers of Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot. Horror = “Oh, you mean like Friday the 13th?” and so on. The genres taught in the Master of Arts in Writing Popular Fiction program at Seton Hill University.
Amongst the 80 or so students in the program, we each have our own prejudices for or against certain genres. But it’s still a “safe” place for authors of popular fiction to receive encouragement and understanding of our work. In the last couple of days, there has been a discussion on our web forum about a blog entry from someone at the SHU admissions department using stereotypes to describe each of the genres. No one is happy about it, and with good reason, as the school’s website is one of the main recruiting tools for our small, unique program.
While I don’t like romance being associated with only the image of Fabio, I tend to be a little more philosophical about it. No, it’s not good that this was posted on the school’s website, and I’m pleased that the head of the program has gotten involved in the issue. However, I also know from experience what kinds of prejudice and stereotypes every single one of the students in this program will face once they leave the “secure” environment of school.
As an author of Inspirational Romance, I have had my fill of trying to explain how Romance can be written with a Christian worldview. Now that I’m writing something set in the regency era, it’s a lot easier to compare it to Jane Austen’s novels. But I still get the odd expressions, the questions (“but how can it be a romance novel with no sex in it?”), and the wink-wink-nudge-nudge.
What keeps coming back to me, though, is that none of the jokes, the stereotypes, the misinformation, the wink-wink-nudge-nudge, the horrible criticism I received a long time ago when I was majoring in a “traditional” creative writing program–nothing has kept me from writing Inspirational Romance. But I have to wonder…if I’d never found American Christian Fiction Writers (which was American Christian Romance Writers when I joined in 2001) and if I’d never learned of the WPF program at Seton Hill, would I be nearing the point where I’ll be sending my synopsis + 3 chapters + series proposal off to a literary agent?
If Jane Austen’s first two books hadn’t been met with critical acclaim, would we ever know they were written by Jane Austen and not A Lady? She didn’t pay attention to the prejudices against novel writing 200 years ago, and the world is a much better place for it. So I intend to follow her example, not listen to those who would discourage me with their winks and nudges or innuendos, and pursue the stories God has put in my heart.
KayeDacus.com 