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What Do You Want Right Now?

annabowling Leave a comment

I started this blog entry multiple times, with multiple approaches, and none of them worked, though all of them were true. This morning  had an exceptionally good three-hour writing stretch, when Hero and Heroine met me for breakfast, and we chatted, the three of us, at the kitchen counter, me perched on my stool, pen in one hand and phone with Pinterest board open in the other. Spotify playlist played through my earbuds, but it was their voices I heard, their heads poking over my shoulder, real and alive and chomping at the bit.

Surprised the heck out of me, that flow hitting when it did, but, when I came up for air three hours later, the pages filled with my chicken scratch going every which way (writing otherwise than with the subtly printed lines of a Paperblanks book? Shock horror!) and littered with pink and blue Post-Its, there was a good chunk of story in bullet point draft. No angsting, no agonizing, merely story.

How did that happen? I can’t point to one thing, but I will put a highlight on two things. Okay, three, as discussions with critique partners always jog some sticky stuff loose, though that ties directly into the two things:

  1. What does (character) want right now?
  2. Make a decision.

Super easy, those two. Instead of angsting about everything, take a step back and observe. Character X was doing one thing. Then they were done doing that thing. What thing did they do next? Odds are, they’re going to fulfill a want. In the first scene in question for me today, Heroine wanted Hero to not die in her study. To have him not die in her study, that meant he had to 1) stay alive, and 2) not be in her study. Both easily accomplished by getting Hero out of her study.

Okay, cross the threshold, and he’s technically out. Where to put him, though? Well, what rooms are available? Can’t get lost in too many options (one of my biggest bugaboos) if there is only one option.  So, we have only Room Y? Put him there.

POV shifts to Hero, once he is in room Y. So, he’s there. Now, what does he want, right now? When in doubt, refer to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Since Hero is soaked to the bone wet and freezing, a pretty safe bet is that he wants a) out of those wet clothes, and b) to be warm. Remove wet clothes, wrap in blanket and wait for hot water to be brought up to him. Eighteenth  century here, so it’s going to be a while. What does he want next? This particular hero is an artist, and he had his things with him, so check on the inks, check on the pens, check on the papers that are not drying in Heroine’s study. Phew, that thing is okay. Drat, that one isn’t. Can’t…find…the…other…thing. Calm down, it’s probably drying out downstairs. Etcetera and so on.

The movie in my head flitted between Hero’s scenes and Heroine’s, inserted the right servant who can tell Hero the thing he needs to know but can’t see. Hero has some feelings about this new information, and feelings about those feelings, Heroine sees something she wasn’t supposed to see, and has some feelings about that. Each learns something new about the other, and want to know more about that, but Mutual Friend Character, you ruin everything. (He really does.)

I learned things, like how Hero -an artist, duh- thinks better when doodling, a perfectly natural way to insert Heroine’s predilection for firearms, and  how to get Hero and Mutual Friend Character to a place where Hero does something good (but not good enough, though he’s working on that) and Mutual Friend Character does something dumb that will bite him in the behind later in the story.

Three hours later, I set the pen down. Did a wee bit of notebook hacking (need to do a wee bit  more, at that) and jotted a couple of notes so I’d know where I left off when I came back to this, which I promised myself -and Hero and  Heroine- (Mutual Friend Character can go suck rocks because he is being a doodyhead here) would be as soon as humanly possible. There’s a little ache to leaving the characters when it’s time to take care of other things, but we do not  have a self feeding cat, and domestic management skills were in demand, and I am the designated domestic warrior queen, so had to take a break there.

Even so, the movie in my head kept playing. Totally random life advice, not based off anything that ever happened to me, especially not today, no matter how good the book thing is that you just that second figured out while plunging the bathroom bowl, do not raise the plunger above your head in victory. It cannot end well. Don’t ask me how I know this. I just do.

I’m not saying the rest of the book is going to be the writing equivalent of skipping barefoot through a field of daisies (I’d probably step in cow poop or something, anyway) but those two bits above are a good place to start. What does my character want, right now? Make a decision. Maybe it’s the wrong decision, but that’s what first drafts are for, innit? (See? Dialect. That was a decision.) If it doesn’t work, then do something else.

I suggest locking hypercritical gremlins in a closet. I think Hero and Heroine might have done that for me while I was rooting around the pantry for tea.

 

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Strange Bedfellows

annabowling Leave a comment

I’m sitting in my second coffee house of the day, volume on my headphones cranked up to maximum, to block out sound around me. This morning, I walked through a snow-covered park, and met with N, to set long and short term goals for our work. I love these once a week meetings, and have taken to staying after N leaves, to get some extra time in, working on the book or free writing, to dump junk out of my brain. The bottomless tea doesn’t hurt, either, even if there wasn’t any caffeinated tea on hand, period, today.

At the moment, I’m listening to a mix of songs from Hedwig and the Angry Inch and Hamilton. There’s some connection there, beyond the fact that I listened to both original cast albums on the same day. My mind does that sometimes, marries things to each other, even when I don’t know why it’s doing that. Sometimes, I find out later, and sometimes, I still don’t know, several years down the line.

If I had to guess right now, I would say it’s strong storytelling, standout characters, and really good music. Super talented casts don’t hurt, either. An East German glam rocker with identity issues and one of the founding fathers may not have much in common on the surface, but beneath that, there is something that connects the two. My brain doesn’t see all that much difference between the birth of a nation and a would-have-been-empty Broadway theater that spans from a divided Germany to a trailer park in Kansas, because it’s more than that. The emotional connection is there in each, raw and visceral, and real.

Neither central character is perfect, each caught up in circumstances beyond their own making. Neither ending can be strictly classified as “happy.” Hamilton dies. Hedwig is…no longer Hedwig, though I think that is a conscious choice. Both suffer devastating losses. Hedwig, born Hansel, loses her identity more than once, on top of being an internationally ignored song stylist (her own words.) Alexander Hamilton, well, history fills us in on most of those particulars, but for the sake of moving things along here, let’s focus on the sex scandal that did things to not only his political career, but his marriage to his beloved Eliza, not to mention losing their son, Philip, in a duel.  In the end, Hedwig strips down from her over the top attire and walks out of the theater. Hamilton’s legacy lives on, and I am not ashamed to admit I tear up every danged time Eliza sings about the orphanage, doing what she can for children who are where her beloved Alexander once was.

With both shows, it’s easy to climb inside the title character’s skin and see the world from their eyes. For Hedwig, there’s always that lost little kid beneath all the glamour, the yearning for something great, even despite being beaten down, used, abandoned. I think Alexander Hamilton would have understood a lot of that. Poor romantic choices? Both shows have that covered. Hedwig has a series of poor romantic choices, Alexander only one impulsive one, that we’re shown his attempts to resist, but, as Hedwig would likely understand, even the great ones fall. We’re none of us perfect, and it’s in those imperfections where the stories grow.

If a character already has what they want, there’s no story there. Both Hedwig and Alexander want freedom, purpose, and love. Alexander’s Eliza loves him to his death and beyond, while Hedwig has three dysfunctional relationships that end badly, and departs the stage, alone. I’ve read that, in the movie version, Hedwig’s exit is au naturel. On Broadway, there is an undergarment. Hamilton has a huge, diverse cast, and pretty much everybody gets to sing (and rap,) while in Hedwig, the music is almost entirely Hedwig, except that one song where she’s Tommy. Which pretty much fits Hedwig. It’s her world, and we’re only living in it for a little while. From a certain point of view, so is she.

Even though neither show can be classed as a romance, my romance writer brain inhaled both of these soundtracks, and there’s something churning. What? Not a clue, but I’ll know what I need to know, when I need to know it. That’s generally how it works. Still working out what I’m getting from each of these, and both together. My brain ties them both to Rent, which isn’t an entirely unrelated connection, as an original concept was to perform the Broadway revival of Hedwig on Rent‘s closed set. That didn’t happen, and a fictional musical version of The Hurt Locker, which Hedwig tells us closed during intermission, provides Hedwig’s venue instead. Rent takes place in New York, which would have been the capitol of the country Alexander Hamilton helped to build, so there’s that, and it’s a modern-day retelling of La Vie Boheme, which gives both historical and contemporary vibes, which combine to make something entirely new.

In all three cases, there’s an indefinable thing. I want that thing. To create characters like that, give that level of emotional investment and connection to my readers, that’s the goal. Since I write romance, my people are alive and together at the end, but before then, throwing the unimaginable at them and seeing how they get through, how that changes them into who they need to be, seems to be the order of the day.

 

 

 

Typing With Wet Claws: Mostly Writing Edition

annabowling 2 Comments

Hello, all. Skye here, for another Feline Friday. Lots of stuff going on this week, so I will get right down to business. No pawing it for me on this one, which is good, because I was running out of ideas.

First, Anty is very excited for February sweeps on TV. That means she will have more recapping to do, as more shippy moments happen, to pay homage to the month dedicated to romance and attract more viewers to the various shows. Last night’s The Big Bang Theory was one of those episodes. Anty recapped big romantic doings for Sheldon and Amy, and Raj could  be the point of a love triangle? That is food for discussion, for sure. Anty’s recap is  at Heroes and Heartbreakers here, and looks like this:

 

SHAMY

When Amy Met Meemaw…

 

Tonight, Anty also gets to recap the new episode of Sleepy Hollow. I cannot put a link to it here, because it has not happened yet. Anty will share the link on Facebook and Twitter when the post is up tomorrow. Anty hopes Ichabod and Abbie can find each other again, because that is kind of the whole point of the show. The rest is really framework.

Speaking of framework, Anty is wrestling with her Scrivener. Miss N spent all of Tuesday morning showing Anty how to use Scrivener more efficiently, which Anty greatly appreciates. I also appreciate Miss N very much, because she has four kitties in her house. Well, her and Mr. N. He lives there, too. But this is not about the kitties. This is about Anty and Scrivener. Those who know Anty very well joke that she needs a tech manual to operate a butter churn, and that is not too far off. Her Scrivener setup had become a big fuzzy mess (and not the kind I make, either) so she needed some help. I think Anty needs to talk to Miss N again, because, while Anty likes the idea of starting a fresh document with only the files she will actually be using, she somehow found a way to botch the setup of what she sees on her glowy box screen.

Here is what Anty would like  her screen to look like, and what all her other documents look like already:

ScrivenerRIGHTRIGHT

 

See the index card at the top of one side of the screen, and the nice pink box at the bottom? That is what Anty wants the new document to look like. That is not what the new document looks like. The new document looks like this:

ScrivenerWRONG

See the big white box at the side of the screen? Anty does not like the big white box. First, it is a big white box. That makes her nervous. Second, she does not remember how it got there, or how she can make the index card and smaller box (she knows she will have to make it pink; it will not be pink all on its own. She is okay with that.) go away. This is why Anty prefers to write longhand, but she needs to use the glowy box because that is how things work in the writing business, so she is going to have to figure this out. I would help, but there is a reason there are no computer manuals written by cats. I do not think I need to explain that, so we will leave that there.

Anty did not know, until Tuesday, all that she could do with Scrivener, so, since Miss N helped her, it is like she has a new toy. Knowing where all her files are makes Anty a lot more confident, and she will not be distracted by lots of things that she does not need any longer. This will also make it more fun to write, and that is very good for everybody. I do not need to tell regular readers of this blog what having Grumpy Anty means. Nobody wants to have Grumpy Anty. Happy Anty is much, much better.

If setting up files this way works out, Anty will move some of her other manuscripts to this new format, and then maybe have an easier time dealing with those. She is excited about that prospect. Since it is time for Anty to get the computer packed to go write at the coffee house (probably with some real index cards, color coded, along for backup) that is about it for this week. Until next time, I remain very truly yours,

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Until next week…

 

Skye O’Malley Hart-Bowling
(the kitty, not the book)

 

 

This is What You Get

annabowling 2 Comments

Originally, I’d meant to bang out a quick video blog and get on with my day. The fact that you’re reading this is proof that didn’t happen. Well, the video part happened. Over twenty takes, as a matter of fact, ranging from eight seconds to six minutes, but each one ended with me scowling at the screen, muttering some variation of “I’m not doing this” and hitting the button to stop the recording. A few roundsI don’t think you missed much. Skye insisted on staying out of camera range, no matter how I tried to entice her to join me, and, no matter the list I’d made on what topics to cover with my blather, my brain went blank. Took me a while to get the message that this was not a video blog day, but I finally did.

No typical shot of my workspace, either, because I left my phone on the kitchen counter when I left the house, despite my reminder to not repeat yesterday’s blunder of not bringing the computer cord, which was why there was no entry yesterday. I did bring the cord today, so there’s that. As to what this entry will actually contain, at the moment, I have no idea.

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This is what my workspace sees.

There are days when I start out with the best of intentions, to-do list made, and then – wham. I hit the wall. Some days, that’s earlier than others. Is this one of them? I’d like to think I would know something like that by now, but I can’t say one way or the other. What I can say is that I am doing the most essential thing; I am showing up for the writing. There will be a blog entry today. I will write my Buried Under Romance post for Saturday. I will work on Her Last First Kiss. I will probably have to hit the supermarket afterwards, because :shifty eyes: aliens broke into our freezer and ate the last of the strawberry ice cream while I was doing take elebenty bajillion of the video blog, but that is not an entirely bad thing. I can listen to selections from Hamilton and Hedwig on my walk, which definitely counts as creative well-filling.

Here’s the deal I made with myself today: I babble here for about seven hundred words, minimum, and whatever I have at the end of that is what goes up. Then on to the Buried Under Romance entry and I get a break. Novel work may happen in longhand, because I will likely have had enough of the screen by that time, but it does have to happen. Not sure, at this point, if I’m going move all my novel stuff to a new Scrivener document or ruthlessly slash the one I have down to the bare bones, but things are going to get moving. I am sick to death of not having  a new book out, and there is only one way to fix that particular problem. I have to write the book.

That’s scary. That’s daunting. What if I get it wrong? Who’s reading me anyway? Not Regency, not series, not wallpaper, no dukes, no wallflowers, so does that mean no readers? Eh, possibly. It’s entirely possible that nobody will read any given book. It’s also true that I don’t have to please every reader; only my readers. :beat: Both of them. Okay, all three. Realistically, it’s probably more than that, but I am in the midst of one end of year earning statement funk. This is a competitive game, and these are older titles I have out. In publishing terms, I’m basically starting from scratch, which can be exciting in its own way, but right now, it’s aggravating.

I’m motivated, though. Common wisdom has it that one needs five books to break out and get attention. Five books is also one of the milestones CRRWA has for recognizing notable achievements by members, and nets said member a padfolio as a reward. I am enough of a stationery junkie to need that padfolio. Sell or publish a book merely to get stationery? Challenge accepted! We all have our motivations. Mine happens to smell like paper.

Monday Morning Coming Down

annabowling Leave a comment

“The really good idea is always traceable back quite a long way, often to a not very good idea which sparked off another idea that was only slightly better, which somebody else misunderstood in such a way that they then said something which was really rather interesting.”
–John Cleese

 

No idea what to blog about today, but I’ve hit that point on my to do list, this is the time I have for blogging, so I am going to jump in and ramble. No plan, no agenda, merely brain droppings, which will  hopefully stave off the hypercritical gremilns.

NOPE, WE’RE STILL HERE!

Le sigh. Okay, well, at least I’m not alone, then. Hi, guys.

WE READ YOUR YEARLY EARNING STATEMENTS. OLD NAVY IS HIRING.

We’ve talked about that.

ABOUT HOW MUCH YOU SUCK? WE HAD TO GET A MICROSCOPE OUT TO READ SOME OF THOSE NUMBERS. WHICH IS PROBABLY THE MOST YOU’VE BEEN READ IN A WHILE.

That’s not what we’re talking about here.

YES, IT IS. IF YOU WERE ANY GOOD, YOU’D BE RAKING IN THE DOUGH, HAVE YOUR COVERS PLASTERED ALL OVER SOCIAL MEDIA, AND OUTSELL HARRY POTTER.

Harry Potter is YA fantasy. I write historical romance. That’s not even the same genre.

OK, TWILIGHT, THEN. WE ALSO READ THE START OF YOUR VAMPIRE STORY. GOOD CALL TRASHING THAT ONE.

This is the one time I am going to agree with you.

YOU AGREE THAT YOU SUCK? WE RULE! WOO HOO!

No, I agree that the vampire story wasn’t a story I wanted to tell. It also had nothing to do with Twilight.

OH REALLY?  VAMPIRE YA ROMANCE IS HOT. IT SELLS. TWILIGHT IS THE ONLY ROMANCE NOVEL A BUNCH OF PEOPLE KNOW. YOU WRITE ROMANCE? LIKE TWILIGHT?

Really. I don’t think my books are like Twilight, but I’ve never read it, so I really can’t say. Why are we talking about Twilight, anyway?

YOU’D RATHER TALK ABOUT HARRY POTTER?

No.

DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW MANY PEOPLE CAN ONLY NAME THOSE TWO BOOKS WHEN ASKED TO NAME NOVELS?

:sigh: Sadly, yes, but that’s not my problem.

DON’T WORRY…UH, NO, DO. YOU HAVE LOTS MORE PROBLEMS. DO YOU WANT THEM ALPHABETIACLLY, CHRONOLOGICALLY, OR IN THE ORDER THE BAILIFF READS THE CHARGES?

:stares crossly over rims of glasses: I am not facing any charges.

FROM US, YOU ARE. YOU’RE A NOBODY, YOU HAVEN’T HAD A NEW RELEASE IN A LONG TIME, YOU’VE MISCARRIED ENOUGH STORIES WE CAN COUNT ON BOTH HANDS, AND YOU COULDN’T EVEN THINK OF SOMETHING TO BLOG ABOUT TODAY.

But I’m blogging right now.

YOU MEAN WE’RE BLOGGING RIGHT NOW. INCLUSIVE WE.

Still counts.

HMPH. FINE. WE’LL GIVE YOU THAT ONE. THIS MEANS WE’RE EVEN. UH, WAIT, EVEN IS NOT GOOD. WE HAVE TO BRING UP SOME DEEP SEATED INSECURITIES. CAN WE HAVE A MINUTE?

Sure. :sorts Post-Its collection:

OKAY, OKAY, WE HAVE SOMETHING. YOU MADE YOUR GOAL LIST FOR THE MEETING WITH N AT THE MEETING WITH N, AND YOU’RE PLANNING ON DOING ALL THAT WORK TODAY.

That is correct.

GOOD LUCK WITH THAT. JUST SO YOU KNOW, WE’RE BETTING AGAINST YOU.

Okay. You do you. I have some outlining to do, and then take a crack at a scene.

YOU’VE TAKEN SEVERAL CRACKS AT THAT SCENE.

Getting closer to the right version every time.

SUUUURE. IT’S A WELL KNOWN FACT THAT REAL WRITERS BANG OUT THE ENTIRE MANUSCRIPT IN ONE GO, OR AT LEAST SEVERAL THOUSAND WORDS PER DAY -AND COUNTING THOSE WORD IS SUPER IMPORTANT- AND IF YOU DON’T DO EITHER OF THOSE THINGS, YOU HAVE FAILED FOREVER.

Um, I’m pretty sure that’s not how it works.

SAYS WHO?

Experience, for one thing. Romance Writers of America, for another, and any number of writer friends. Everybody has their own method, and their own journey. Finding out what doesn’t work is as much a part of that as typing The End.

WHAT PART IS LISTENING TO BROADWAY SHOW TUNES?

That’s part of the magpie stage.

MAGPIE STAGE? WHAT IS THAT? THE LEAST SUCCESSFUL FORM OF TRANSPORTATION IN THE OLD WEST? BY THE WAY, YOU’VE NEVER WRITTEN A WESTERN.

That’s not by accident, and to answer your question about the magpie stage, that’s when I gather shiny things that catch my attention and dump them all in my creative pot, to make idea soup.

WHICH PART OF YOUR HISTORICAL ROMANCE NOVEL INVOLVES EAST GERMAN GLAM ROCKERS WITH IDENTITY ISSUES AND PHILANDERING AMERICAN POLITICIANS?

No East Germans or Americans in this book, but I do touch on issues of identity, the difference between what’s seen on the surface and exists beneath, and lots of romantic complications. Inspiration comes in a lot of forms, and it’s a writer’s job to dig for the gems. Sometimes, it’s a tiny glimmer from here, an interesting idea from there, flip a concept or two, mix with everything the writer has ever experienced in their own life, and it all turns into something entirely new. It’s an ongoing process.

WE HAVE SEEN YOU CHAIR DANCING.

I have never denied chair dancing.

YOU’VE NEVER SEEN YOURSELF CHAIR DANCING, EITHER. ALSO, ARE YOU EVEN PUTTING ON MAKEUP TODAY? LOOKING KIND OF PALE THERE.

That’s because I am pale. I’ve been pale my whole life. What’s your point?

THAT YOU ARE A PALE IMITATION OF WHAT YOU WANT TO BE. JUST SAYING.

So, I’m supposed to do what, give up because I’m not at my ultimate goal right this very second?

BY JOVE, WE THINK SHE’S GOT IT. BY THAT, WE MEAN OUR POINT, NOT, YOU KNOW, TALENT OR DEDICATION OR DRIVE OR ANYTHING LIKE THAT.

Well, look at that, we’ve come to the end of time we have for this entry today. I’m opening my file.

BUT WE’RE NOT DONE YET. UNLIKE YOUR CAREER.

:opens file:

:puts in headphones:

:turns to fresh page, uncaps pen:

I can’t hear you gremlins over the sound of my writing. Later.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Typing With Wet Claws: Creative Differences Edition

annabowling 2 Comments

Hello, all. Skye here, for another Feline Friday. Anty and I are having some creative differences this week. There was a topic Anty had suggested for me to write about, but I had to exercise my duties as a mews, and let her know (gently, because this insomnia thing makes her grumpy) that her idea was not very interesting, which it was not. Fridays are my day to blog, and Anty needs to trust me to do the job she asked me to do. At the moment, she is too busy chair dancing to “You’ll Be Back,” from the Broadway musical, Hamilton, to put up much of an argument anyway.

One of the things Anty has come to realize about days when it is difficult to focus is that she probably needs more stimuli. New music is always a good thing, and when it comes highly recommended by people whose opinion Anty values, that is a good sign she may want to have a listen. Anty has not seen Hamilton, but she loves when things people may not think go together -the American Revolution, Broadway, and rapping? What?- do go together, and not only work, but work far better than one would expect.

So far, Anty is only a few songs into Hamilton, but she has already listened to this song five times. No, wait, it is six now. When Anty finds a song that clicks with her, she is going to listen to that a LOT of times in a row, and she does get something new from each listen. I think it has something to do with that whole more layers thing.  I probably should remind Anty that she has her DVD of Idlewild sitting on the DVD shelf in her office, and the combination of Prohibition and hip hop probably is going to jog something loose in her brain. Movies and art journal time are very good for things like that.

Anty has also never seen A Knight’s Tale, but that is on her list, too. She did not see it when it first came out, because it had too much of a modern slant – fighting for the honor of the queen, sure, but to the music of Queen? Uh, no, they did not have Queen in the middle ages, thankyouverymuch. Anty’s  outlook has changed some since then. Now, she is more concerned with the feel of the story world, verisimilitude instead of strict accuracy.  People who lived in other centuries wanted the same things as we do today, but the ways they got them were different.

Now that Anty thinks on it, some of these creative mismatches are the truest of all. Anty loves Elton John and Tim Rice’s version of Aida. Did I mention how one of Anty’s favorite-favorite tropes is star-crossed lovers? Well, it is. It is probably her favorite of all. Anty’s best definition of historical romance, the way she writes it and likes to read it, is a love story worthy of history. She thinks “Written in the Stars” has to be one of the greatest star-crossed lovers songs of all  time. I will give you a spoiler here: Aida and Radames do not get a happy ending (well, not in this life) but in a historical romance novel, they absolutely would. I should amend Anty’s favorite trope as “star-crossed lovers who make it work.” She cannot get enough of that stuff, so she has to make more, of her own.

When Anty finds it difficult to put out story, then it is time for her to take some in, to fill her well. What well needs to be filled can vary from time to time. Sometimes, she needs an infusion of emotion. Other times, it is a grounding in the world of the time of the story. That does not mean facts and dates, which may surprise some. For Anty, it is the way the world felt.

Anty’s favorite research session ever, she thought was going to be a very boring one. She had gone to Old Mystic Seaport, with two other writer friends, who were excited to use the research library, and the people who could help them find the books they needed. When Anty got to the library, she felt like the walls were closing in, and didn’t know how to answer the person who asked how he could help  her find what she needed. She didn’t know what she needed from all those books, so she told her friends she had to take a walk. It was cold and very, very windy, and Anty soaked it all in for hours.

She stood at the shore and watched the tide come in, walked through the completely deserted shipyard and inhaled its scents, picked up shells from the tide pools, and picked the brains of every costumed interpreter she encountered. There were not many of them, because it was really cold and really windy, but Anty did not mind. When she read, in her pamphlet, that an  to talk about what life was like for a house slave in that era, she ran to the right building, so that she would not miss anything. By the time her friends met her for lunch, Anty was full of ideas and stimuli, and couldn’t wait to get all of it into her story. The story she was working on at the time -and hopes to again, in the future- was not set in the time or place of the museum, but that did not matter. What mattered was that they were near the sea, and there were the skeletons of ships, and that was the same centuries and an ocean away.  Getting the feel right, knowing why a certain character loved ships more than anything else, that was what Anty had come for, and she got it.

That all feels vaguely subversive, but Anty likes it that way. It has been said that well behaved women never made history. Maybe the same thing applies to writing historical romance, as well. What is it some humans say, play by the rules, miss all the fun? I am not sure Anty is not having a little too much fun, listening to Hamilton. “Helpless” is playing, and this degree of chair dancing cannot be safe on that kind of chair. That had better be about it for this week, so, until next time, I remain very truly yours,

 

i1035 FW1.1

Until next week…

 
Skye O’Malley Hart-Bowling
(the kitty, not the book)

 

 

 

 

 

Forging Ahead, Reinvention and Learning to Dig

annabowling Leave a comment

We never end up with the book we began writing. Characters twist it and turn it until they get the life that is perfect for them. A good writer won’t waste their time arguing with the characters they create…It is almost always a waste of time and people tend to stare when you do!

– C.K. Webb

 

I’ve noticed, lately, that I often get to the keyboard and find I’m not doing what I intended to do. Like with this blog, today. I’d intended to write this entry (well, not this entry, obviously, because today hadn’t happened yet yesterday) on the regularly scheduled Wednesday, because routine and discipline and all the rest of that good serious writer stuff. I did not write yesterday’s entry because I’d gone two and a half nights with no sleep, and my brain and body were so depleted that I couldn’t focus.  (Apart from Pinterest, but we’re talking writing here.)

Originally I’d planned to make this a video entry, but A) forgot about that until I’d already set up for the afternoon at the coffee shop (video entries are best not made in public) and B) my hair and I could not reach an agreement about what we were doing that particular day, apart from a five minute span around breakfast time. I’d planned to still make this a video entry today, but nobody wants to see me with wet hair (trying my best not to touch it while it air dries with product in, because beachy waves, dagnabit, or at least that’s the theory we are testing today.)

There’s a reason I frequently trot out K.A. Mitchell’s advice to A) open the file, and B) change your seat. That’s because they work. So, when I sat in front of the screen this morning, my brain a muddle, that became a signal that it’s time to mix things up. When I retired the previous version of Typing With Wet Nails and started this new one, I’d come to a point where I couldn’t do the old blog any longer. Finding a new clip for Happy Dance Friday became a chore, and Saturday at the Movies, instead of being fun, made my head hurt. So, it had to stop. Clean sweep.

After clean sweep comes more layers. I’d been to a wonderful workshop by Jeanette Grey on making websites with WordPress, and figured it couldn’t hurt. What to put in it? What’s really in my heart and head. That was, and is, talking about the whole writing experience. I love seeing other writers showing off covers and talking about new releases and awards and reviews, and, trust me, I will be one of them in good time, but then there’s the other side of the matter.

There are all those notebooks I have, months of them, filled with venting about how hard writing had become, how arduous it was to get words on the page, how I despaired of ever fitting into the market, how, maybe, I missed my chance and was doomed to spend the rest of my life (a pretty darned long time, I would hope) as someone who could have been a writer. The voice of an acquaintance at a mutual friend’s book launch haunted me. “I knew the author when I used to write,” she said to another guest, and laughed. I didn’t laugh. I shuddered,

Used to write. I can’t think of more horrifying words. (Okay, genocide, fascism, polyester; but stick with me here.) I can’t not-write, and so the writing is worth the struggles. One of my favorite quotes is a Japanese proverb that says “fall down five times, get up six.” That resonates with me, and resonates deeply. In the last couple of days, two writers of my acquaintance have posted about their own difficulties in keeping motivated. I want to let that marinate before I expound (besides this, that is) because I think this is a fairly common malady.

There are a million reasons to quit, but all of them together don’t overpower the one reason to keep at it. I have to write, the same as I have to breathe. There is no off switch for this relentless pull into the story world. That, for me, my natural habitat is historical romance, that, too is organic. The market will change. My need to tell my stories won’t. Logic alone says keep going, and so I do. Muscles grow stronger with exercise, so I keep at it. Fingers on keys, pen on paper, show up, open the file (or notebook.)

When that’s not enough, time to change my seat, change direction. Change my wallpaper. Play different music. Put some goop in my hair. Browse the library stacks. Trust that what I need to go forward is out there, and, if I look for it, remain open to it, things will click. Sometimes that takes a while, and sometimes, it happens in an instant.

With fiction, I’ve come back around to something, I used to do when I’d only first started. Let the characters lead. I’d wanted Hero, for example, in Her Last First Kiss, to be blond and a musician. When he actually showed up, he had red hair and wanted to play with my pens. I tried wooing him back in line by playing the music that was supposed to be his passion; he responded by picking up one of my fountain pens and doodling. Okay, fine. Heroine was supposed to play the pianoforte to relieve stress. Nope. She likes guns.

This brings to mind certain questions- when did all that start? Why that interest? What are you doing with my pens, Hero? These things generally take me away from what I’d intended, but usually to a better place, and I am okay with that.

The good thing about characters being stubborn like this, when they tell me I’ve got it wrong, means that they are real and alive within their world and they are going to  help me tell their story, rather than making me do all the work completely by myself.  I like to think we make a pretty good team.

 

Monday Morning Brain Dump, With Notebooks

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Urgh. Monday morning again. I have shown up at the keyboard, which is an achievement when I’m coming off another night of no sleep. I hate insomnia. Brain races a million miles an hour, but will it focus on something useful, like the WIP? Nope. Not a chance on that one. Late night Pinterest pinning sprees are about as close as I get on that front.

Most recently, I started my Pen and Paper board, which is here. Not enough caffeine in the world to figure out why my computer says I can’t share the screencap I took of my own Pinterest page with myself, so click on the link to see all the pretties. Pens and notebooks, that’s it.

Since I’ve become more serious about my interest in notebooks, I’ve been doing more research, and my wish list is growing. Moleskines are still my workhorse, supplemented by Picadilly and Markings -I really need to do a comparison post/video on those soon- but I have found I’m not as immune as I used to be for the other brands out there.

The newest “must try this or a part of myself will forever mourn” item is this. Leuchtturm 1917 A5 Medium hardcover notebook in berry, with lined pages. Need. I love that the pages come pre-numbered. I love the color, which goes perfectly with my laptop. I honestly can’t tell if the pages are white or ivory. I strongly prefer ivory, but if this paper takes fountain pen ink as well as I’ve heard it does, I am willing to make an exception. I also have a strong thirst for a large Moleskine Volant, a format I hated in the 3×5 size, love in the mini, and now want to revisit in my preferred size, 5×8. Gray is first choice for color, purple second, though there are new colors that look interesting, too.  The books may have to go into a leather cover, because the plastic feel of the books themselves feels off to me, but perforated pages all the way through? I have to give that a try. Maybe blank pages, rather than lined, but lined might be all right also.

There are actually a lot of notebooks I haven’t tried yet, and the whole fountain pen world? Only dipping my toes into that. Which reminds me, I’ve never even held a dip pen, but the mere thought of that makes me feel closer already to the eighteenth century people currently taking up space in my head. Hero and his letterbox and his sketches, (I seriously cannot draw worth beans, and I’d originally wanted him to be a violinist – I also cannot play the violin- but nope, he went right for pen and ink, so here we are) and Heroine and her ledgers (that, I can get. Keeping track of stuff is important) and my natural affinity for longhand make this an appropriate pastime.

Certain notebooks work for certain things, I’ve found since I’ve become serious about the habit, and no, any old notebook won’t do. There was a time when I thought that was the case, and I was wasting time and money and mental energy by using pretty paper (or making plain paper pretty) but I’ve found that’s not the case. It’s a natural and needed part of my process. Using notebooks has taught me a lot about the way I write fiction. Slap something on the page, anything, and get it moving. If I don’t like what’s down there, I can change it. I can rip it out. I can tape it together. I can cover it. I do not have to be perfect on the first try, which is a misunderstanding I’d been laboring under for longer than I care to admit, even here.

It’s okay to say, “this isn’t working. I’m going to try something else.” The thoughts, feelings, images, words, stories, all of the above, that I want for project X may not come at all on lined paper, but move to dot grid and work in boxes rather than paragraphs and :angels sing: there we go. Pen and paper matter. An old Japanese proverb says that a poor workman blames his tools, and there is some truth to that, but finding the right tool can make the job all that much easier.

 

 

 

 

 

Typing With Wet Claws: Scribbling Furiously Edition

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Hello, all. Skye here, for another Feline Friday. I am pawing it once again in regard to topic, because Anty is hard at work on Her Last First Kiss. Now that she knows she has an assignment to turn in to Miss N on Tuesday, she is not about to let anything stop her. This can be both a good and a bad thing.

The good thing is that a writing Anty is a happy Anty. She knows where this book is going, and she has the new opening roughed out, so it is now time to smooth that out and show it to an actual other writer human, in person. A writing Anty with a deadline is also a very focused Anty. When Anty does not have a tight focus, she will try and write in the living room, because that is where the glowy box is when she gets up in the morning. The problem there is that the rest of the family has access to the living room, because it is for everybody, not only for Anty, and they want to use the room, too. Since Anty is focused, she is doing more of her at-home work in the office.

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The view from Anty’s seat

 

That room still needs a lot of work. You can probably see the big glowy box screen behind the pink glowy box. That screen goes with a glowy box that stays on the desk (well, next to it) but is too old to run the Internet or, more importantly, Sims. Anty is figuring out how to get a better big glowy box in there, but for now, Anty brings the pink glowy box into the office in the morning, makes a list of what she has to get done, and then she will come out when it is lunchtime. Specifically my lunchtime.  Until then, she can put all her attention on the book, stick those pink things in her ears, so only she can hear her music, and get to work. What comes out of Anty’s head at first is very rough, and needs several passes before she can show it to anybody. With this scene, she grumbles a lot about too much happening inside Heroine’s head. Even I think she is going to have to fix that, and I am a kitty, so I can only imagine what other humans would have to say.

Besides the first scene, the other thing Anty has to do is make a list of all the characters in her book. When they make their first appearance in a scene, Anty has to write their name down on a separate paper (probably in a notebook, or copy it to a notebook from the scratch paper) and then write who they are and what their relationship is to the other characters. She can also put anything else she wants about the characters in that description, but that brings her to a place where she does not want to go.

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I do not think I like overthinking.

 

I am talking about overthinking. Anty is really, really, really good at overthinking. She can think about one thing so much that she gets paralyzed in her thoughts and cannot go any farther on that topic. That has meant some miscarried stories in the past. She does not want to go that way with this book, so she is trying new things to make sure that does not happen again.

One of those things is writing her first-first pages in present tense. For example:

Skye sleeps in the sunbeam.

Rather than:

Skye slept in the sunbeam.

That way, for Anty, the story is something that is happening now, and she can alter it as she goes, rather than something that has already happened, and is set in stone. She did not know she was thinking that way until she talked with some other writer friends, and started reading books for almost-grown humans. Those are sometimes written in present tense, and it is a good way for her to get her brain working and moving forward. It lets her take in more of the scene that is in the movie in her head if it is happening “now,” so it is like noticing rather than remembering.

Once she has that on the page, then she can go back and revise what she has already written. She can put the present tense into past, and see if she can get things out of characters’ heads and into action or dialogue. That part can make her edge over to the crabby side, but it is all for a good cause. She will be better once she has the revisions made and can get some feedback.

Anty needs the computer back, because it is story time, so that is about it for this week. Until next time, I remain very truly yours,

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Until next week…

Skye O’Malley Hart-Bowling
(the kitty, not the book)

Talking With Wet Nails

annabowling 1 Comment

New title for video blog posts today . These will now be under the heading, “Talking With Wet Nails,” because it’s catchy, and that’s my best attempt for a title today. Still need to come up with an appropriate graphic, but that’s a problem for Future Anna.

Note that I am not actually doing my nails in this post, because that would be awkward, messy and probably boring. I did, however, stumble into the captions function, so we’ll see how that goes.

I’m hoping to make this a more frequent feature here, as part of my effort to stop being as quiet as I have been lately. This also means I only have to write-write one blog per week, as Skye still has Fridays. Innovative and labor saving. I like that.

 

 

TLDW (too long, didn’t watch) :