writing

Writershead Revisited

annabowling Leave a comment

“I should like to bury something precious in every place where I’ve been happy and then, when I’m old and ugly and miserable, I could come back and dig it up and remember.”
― Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited

My favorite movie of all time is the original 1980 Brideshead Revisited. Okay, technically speaking, it’s a miniseries, as it ran on PBS and clocks in at a whopping twelve hours, but to me, it’s a movie, and so I am counting it as such.

If you’re a purist and insist on theatrical releases, my preferences are thus:

  • Comedy: Love Actually
  • Drama: Remains of the Day
  • Other: Saturday Night Fever
  • Obscure: Lords of Flatbush

People who know me in the really real world, am I forgetting anything? I have not seen the Emma Thompson theatrical version of Brideshead Revisited, nor do I plan to,  because I do not mess with perfection. Sorry, Emma, not even for you. I’ve read the novel by Evelyn Waugh (Hevelyn, for those in doubt about which Evelyn wrote this one) and will correct any who try to call the building known by non-devotees as “Castle Howard.” They are wrong. It’s Brideshead. I know. I’ve lived there, with Charles and Sebastian and Julia, and I have deep emotional scars from the first time I saw the graffiti on Charles’s mural and the empty :sorry, I need a minute: fountain :sniffle: with barbed :I can’t, I seriously can’t: wire. Sebastian drove that car around the bend of the road on that first school break, and BAM, I, as well as Charles fell deeply, irrevocably in love.

It’s the same feeling I had when I stole the then-new copy of The Kadin by Bertrice Small from my mother’s night table and read it under the bed in the guest bedroom during a power outage. I knew then and there that I’d found what I wanted to read and write for the rest of my life. The same way a lot of my SF/F reading/writing friends fell hard for Star Trek, Ray Bradbury and others, that’s how I fell for historical romance, and that’s what’s been, increasingly strongly, calling me back home.

Today, I took the bulletin board off my office wall. If I haven’t been utilizing it in the three years and change I’ve had this office, that’s not where it belongs. Later, I’ll take the items off it, find them new homes, and figure out the board’s new purpose. There will be one, because I crazy love vintage office supplies. In its place, I put the Union Jack poster above, purchased at a local art store about two years ago. it’s been rolled in brown paper, waiting for “the right time.” Which would be when, exactly? When we could spring for a fancy frame? The right fancy frame? When life calms down? When (fill in the blank?) If there’s one thing loving historical romance and historical fiction has taught me, it’s to seize the moment. So, up it went, with blue tacky stuff holding it to the place where whoever painted the room a lovely moss green had obviously painted around the mirror that Real Life Romance Hero took down for me the day we moved in. Much as I like to work on my selfie game, I don’t want to stare at myself the whole time I’m writing.

Taken in a different room, but it would be pretty much this.

Taken in a different room, but it would be pretty much this.

I also unearthed a pub sign that I honestly don’t remember when I acquired it, and had been waiting for, you guessed it, the right time and perfect place to put it up. Maybe the right kind of hook, whatever, whatever. Baloney. I still has blue sticky stuff, so I slapped some on the back and then affixed the sign to the door. My office may technically now be the King’s Head Pub, and I am fine with that. We even have a pub cat instead of a pub dog, and I am fine with that, too. The two Georgian era prints I kept from my dad’s house and had wanted since I was a wee little princess, do need to wait for command hooks to come home before they can go on the office wall, but when they do, up they go. The right time is now.

This means I'm allowed to have pub food at home, right?

This means I’m allowed to have pub food at home, right?

Doing things like this gets me excited, makes me want to dive headlong into the story world, climb inside the characters’ skins and see through their eyes. Writing longhand with a fountain pen, at least initial notes, is another way I find I can connect. Today, I also added another notebook to my shelf of the usual suspects on top of my desk’s hutch. It’s one of those story ideas I’ve been on and off with for years, and, as the flip side of the bulletin when story ideas and characters and settings and such have been in my head for long enough that they are old enough to vote, drink, marry or join the military without parental approval, they probably aren’t leaving, period. Better for me to get their rooms ready. That feels right.

Today, I met my Ravenwood editing goal a lot earlier in the day (for the day, not the whole project) because I wasn’t focused on word count or verb tense, but telling the story and living in that story’s world. This afternoon, I jump to Georgian England and Her Last First Kiss, and I’m excited about that, too. I don’t consider myself old, ugly or miserable, but dusting off things I love and displaying them proudly in the now, that’s a piece of the puzzle sliding into place. The road to The End, on both of these current projects, and others, has never seemed clearer.

Course Corrections

annabowling Leave a comment

This is one of those posts I started several times, erased, started over, thought about, thought about skipping, realized I was out of writing quotes I had not used yet, muttered bad words, etc. I ingested candy corn, which I have recently discovered I do not hate, learned the hard way that the maker of said candy corn does matter (live and learn, right?) checked on under-the-weather-family member, almost tripped over Skye, almost tripped over Skye, almost tripped over Skye (cat people, you know how that goes) and finally came to the conclusion that this is One of Those Days.

We all have them. In my case, day could have gone on Schedule A or Schedule B, but life happened, and we ended up going on Schedule C, which meant no schedule, because nobody had counted on Schedule C, and I Hate Days With No Schedule. Hate, hate, double hate. Seriously bothers me to the point of irritability. Can I get a ballpark figure on when anybody wants lunch at least? Desired menu items? Give me something, people? No, nothing? Oookay. This is why I have an office (which does not, contrary to popular belief translate to “storage area.” We’re working on that.)

I work on a daily to-do list, which makes time a lot easier to manage. Days like this require course correction. Grousing about how things are not going the way I wanted them to go only takes me so far. It does not get the current ms written or the completed one edited, nor does it write blog entries. If there is one writing related thing on my list that I can control today, it is getting this blog entry written and posted. Sometimes, life is going to get chaotic, and the only sane thing to do is to call a time out. For me, that means getting away from the chaos and retreating behind office door. One of these days, I am going to have to make a new Writing Cave sign. Even on days when I’m not able to get to the keyboard, I can write in my longhand notebooks, both all purpose and for each project. Staying in touch with the stories that way and the discipline of putting pen to paper helps a lot on days like this.

Creativity starts, for me, with showing up. Butt in chair, pen on paper, and, as a former writing group facilitator often said, the process begets the product. In short, get the pen on the paper, keep it moving, and content will come. I’ve found that almost always works. Sometimes, trusting ourselves as writers is scary business, hypercritical gremlins picking at our clothes and whispering in our ears how we’re not good enough, they’ll all know we’re only faking it, don’t quit the day job, other writers do it better, and, in fact, so well that there’s no need for us. They’re wrong, of course, but we still hear them, and it’s still a big nuisance.

The notebooks in today’s picture were all purchased or received with love, and begun with good intentions, whether attached to a particular project or as an all-purpose book. Each one of them has some to several pages, but not more than 25% (math is not my strong suit, so probably an even lower number than that) filled with…something. Either I realized I was going in the wrong direction, that book wasn’t as good a fit for its intended content as I thought it was at first glance, or I flat out wasn’t feeling it anymore. In any event, there they sat, stuffed out of the way so I wouldn’t be reminded of Yet Another Failure.

Until today. There I was, at my desk, casting about for something to photograph, and there was the tiny pink Moleskine, my attempt to satisfy my longing for its full size version (and to be a handy dandy reference for one of those back burner historicals.) This led to the spiral pink notebook (similar reason) and the red-violet with the silver heart (too cool on the inside, with blank and lined pages both) and the blue deconstructed Studio Oh! book that I started using as a catchall book for Her Last First Kiss, then set aside when I found the right one. The Papaya! Art “Fearless” (hah) book that I’d forced myself to write anything in, then abandoned because that felt forced and plain and downright disheartening…you see the pattern here. I did, too, and stared down this sampling of notebooks that didn’t  (not the only ones, by any chance) and had a revelation. They weren’t ruined forever.

Nope. What are we talking here, a few pages? I love all these books. They’re pretty. Why do they have to be abandoned because I made a mistake or two in the early pages? News flash: they don’t. It’s okay to rip or cut pages out, glue them shut, staple, tape or paper clip them together if I think I might want to refer to them in the future, and start all over, fresh and brand new. I’d be thrilled if I were to receive brand new copies of these as gifts, so why not give them to myself? I can start fresh and fill them with the sort of art and writing I do now. I like that idea.

If that can be true about the physical notebooks themselves, it can also be true of the stories that go inside them. Okay, my first try at Book X didn’t turn out the way I wanted. I walked away, or it did. Maybe we decided on a mutual break, but there are still some parts, a character, an idea, a relationship, a setting, whatever, that hasn’t gone away, no matter how deeply I tried to bury it. Why not take that bit and make it into something new? What would I be losing? Nothing. What do I have to gain? Books, my friends. Big, sprawling tales of love long ago, and happily ever afters for all.

Sometimes, course corrections can take us to where we were always meant to be.

Typing With Wet Nails: Fountain Pen Day Edition

annabowling Leave a comment

Hello, all. Skye here, for another Feline Friday. Anty has not been sleeping a lot this week, and she is not sure why. I do not see the problem here, because that means she is up during the night and has more time to focus on me, but she does tend to get crabby, so that probably is a problem after all. It has been an eventful week. Today is a good day, though, because it is Fountain Pen Day. Anty only found out about  this holiday today, but she is still very happy about it. Anty loves fountain pens.

Right now, she has three of them, all by Pilot. They are disposable, which means that, when they are empty, they are all done. Anty is not very happy about that aspect, so she is looking into refillable fountain pens. She has one, also by Pilot, that is clear purple plastic, but she misplaced it, and would need to look up what refills it takes, anyway. In the meantime, she has these.

Black, blue and purple are good for a start.

Black, blue and purple are good for a start.

This kind of pen also comes in turquoise and red. Anty does not remember if it comes in any other colors, but if it does, she wants them, too. She likes writing with fountain pens very much, especially in her special notebooks by Paperblanks. They are fancy, and Anty likes fancy. Take a lok at this one. This is her longhand book for Her Last First Kiss. It gets blue ink because the cover is blue.

Anty calls this one "Big Daddy Precious."

Anty calls this one “Big Daddy Precious.”

Here is a look inside her longhand notebook for Ravenwood:

These notes will probably not be in the final book. Probably.

These notes will probably not be in the final book. Probably.

The cover for this one is black, and it has a dragon on it. There are not any dragons in this book. That is okay by me, because dragons are scary. I think. I have not met any dragons, not that I know of, anyway. There is a stuffed dragon in Anty’s office, but I know the difference between stuffed and alive, so I do not count him on this one. Anty likes this book a lot because the pages are gray, with a darker gray border. She says that puts her in the right mood to write about this particular story. It takes place after a very big sickness called the Plague. The people vets who lived back then did not know how to stop it, so this was a very scary time. Anty got the idea for this story when she read a magazine that had an article about writing medieval romance and one about writing postapocalyptic romance in the same issue. Anty likes both of those things and wanted to see if she could mush them together. Since she finished the book, I think she did. Now it is time for her to make sure it is as good as it can be at this time and send it to publishers and see if they will like it.

Anty has been in her office more often this week, and not only during the daytime. when she cannot sleep, she sometimes goes into her office. One time this week, I got very curious. I waited until Anty had all of her attention on the things on her desk, and I crept over the threshold. I am a ninja kitty a lot of the time. I like to get veryveryveryclose to my humans without them noticing. Then it is a big surprise when they move, and there I am. Sometimes I get scared and run away, but I come right back. That is how it works on regular floors. The floor in Anty’s office does not have a regular floor. It has a carpet that is different from the one in her and Uncle’s bedroom. I do not like the office carpet much, especially since my claws caught in it.

I got my claws un-caught, but it was noisy, and Anty looked, and she saw me and I saw her seeing me, and I ran. I came right back, because I love Anty, and figured she might feed me for being a brave girl. She did. She went back to sleep after that. I like to think I helped her with that, because it is part of my job as a mews.  It is also my job to help her recap some TV shows, like last night’s Sleepy Hollow. That recap is not posted yet, but she will share it with you when it is. Maybe she will even let me update this entry, but I think I will wait to ask her until after she has a nap. I can help her with that, too, so that is about it for this week. Until next time, I remain very truly yours,

Until next week...

Until next week…

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

PS: Happy Fountain Pen Day.

On the Fourth Day of Na-Not

annabowling Leave a comment

Improving isn’t only about fixing our weaknesses. It’s also about learning to play to our strengths.

–Bryn Donovan

Catchy title mostly because I needed something to put in the space for a title, and picture (uncropped, because I forgot) of lovely birthday loot from the lovely E. Catherine Tobler, because it is pertinent to my interests. Notebooks, pens and sticky notes are always good gifts. I haven’t put anything in the notebook yet, because I’m still in the stroking the paper stage and figuring out what wants to be on those pages.

This is going to be one of those blabbery entries, because it’s only my list, and time is ticking. I have Critique Partner Vicki’s chapter to crit, a chapter from Collaborator Melva to read and then we figure out where the next scene goes. Then there’s Ravenwood to polish, which is cooperating rather well, if I do say so myself. All of this can let Her Last First Kiss simmer on the back burner and sort out a few things without breaking my brain.

That’s one of the things I like best about working on multiple projects. There’s an energy I find in switching gears. When I was a kid, my mother would tell me that  the more I did, the more I’d want to do. I hated when she would say that, but now, I have to admit she’s right. The more I do, the more I want to do, especially with writing. I like that. When I would force myself to try and follow the NaNo method, I hated writing. The word count goal loomed over me, and I couldn’t see the story.

I’d thought that not doing NaNo meant cutting me off from the support system that I liked about the whole thing. While attending my first NaNo event a couple years back was a fun way to meet other local writers, I have a fabulous local RWA chapter. Not only other writers, but other writers in my chosen genre. Not only for one month out of the year, but all year round. Not only that, but writer friends I’ve known long enough that our friendships could vote, get married, and join the military without parental consent. Not necessarily in that order.

I am a talker. Those who have known me for more than about five minutes know that, and when talk turns to stories, the reading, writing, viewing and analysis thereof, well, the more I do, the more I want to do there, as well. So, November, when there is writing talk seemingly everywhere, is a good month. A really good month. For someone whose brain normally sounds very much like “storystorystorystorystorystorystory” this really is the best time of year, participation in a program or not. That’s been an interesting lesson to learn. Not sure what Mom would have made of that, but still important to keep in mind. Blogging is kind of talking, blabbering through my fingers onto the keys that are rapidly losing their letters. My E and N keys are wearing way, and it may soon be time to take out the Sharpies and reinforce the markings. Or stickers. Or not bother because I know where the keys are, and, apart from the missing H key on the old laptop, they aren’t going anywhere.

Anyway. Talking. That’s part of what I do, part of the process. For many extroverts, talking and thinking happen at the same time, and I’ve found that to be true in a lot of my experiences. There is an infamous fifty page letter in my storied (pun intended) past. I am not entirely sure, now that I’ve accepted my love for snail mail as part of my natural order, that it will always hold the title for longest non-manuscript document I have ever sent. I have no regrets. I love that I’m  excited about writing, my own and those of others. I’m excited to sit at the keyboard, steal away moments to scrawl in various notebooks in a rainbow of colors, let it be crazy and messy and off the leash. There’s plenty of time to smooth it all out later. For now, letting the story spill out is all that matters, because nothing else can be done before that.

Now it’s November…

annabowling Leave a comment

I’d meant to get this up yesterday, but life intervened, turning the day to family things, but that fits with what I meant to write anyway, so I am going to consider that a point of illustration. Anyway, it’s November now, and I am not Na-No-ing. Old news, and for those wishing I’d shut up about that already, I will, in a bit. Which is to say, probably December, because there’s no denying NaNo is everywhere. I’ve done it, I’ve won it, I’ve lost it, I’ve gone a few rounds with it, lost a few books to it, and have some interesting scars to show for the battle, but, in the end, there is one thing that NaNo gave me that I will always treasure. It gave me the knowledge that I am enough; the way I work is enough. I don’t need to conform to somebody else’s process or beat myself up for not doing so. As a writer, this is what I do every day (the writing, not the beating up, though that, too, some days. A lot of days. Working on that.) so a special month dedicated to it? Good for some, but I’m working on some things over here, so not for me at present.

This week, I’m looking at three things. First is Her Last First Kiss, which is hopping around between bullet points and research topics as the puzzle pieces come together. This is what I do, dive headfirst into the primordial ooze of a story and splash around until order forms, and then have a blast organizing the whole deal. It’s going to be rough, it’s going to give me fits, but, in the end, I can do what I do, and there will be a rough draft. Then I get to smooth is out and make it pretty. I can do this. I have done this. I am doing this now and will do this again with the next book and the next book and the next, repeat until dead.

Second is the novella with Collaborator Melva. This is our beach ball that we are passing back and forth, no pressure, just fun. We each get to play to our own strengths in this one, draw from each other’s, and stretch enough to make it a reachable challenge.

Third is my postapocalyptic medieval, Ravenwood, which may get retitled (and probably billed as medieval, never mind that the Plague does count as an apocalypse, but probably more on that later.) A call for submission has come up, and I do have a completed ms sitting right there in my flash drive, so a good once-over and off it shall go. I won’t be devastated if John and Aline come riding back my way, but if they do find a new home, I will be thrilled.

For the first time in a long time, I feel on firm ground where writing is concerned. This has come as the result of a LOT of writing. Some good things, some bad things, more free writing notebooks than I would care to count, filled with whinges about how hard writing is and things I wish I’d done and things I wish I hadn’t done. It comes from a ton of reading: the year I devoured every Barbara Samuel (and psuedonyms) I could find; my big fat YA summer-that-stretches-into-autumn (David Levithan, may I have your book babies, please and thank you?) and my current foray into 90s historicals and  one dead laptop (well, really two, counting the one RLRH inherited) and one new one and recapping TV shows. It’s working on the next incarnation of From Fan Fiction to Fantastic Fiction (coming in 2016, because this fall got crazy) and, by dint of that, taking a closer look at why I love what I love and how I can use those elements in my own work, and picking others’ brains and trusting myself and diving into piles of stationery and notebooks and picking up old habits that worked in the past but I gave up somewhere along the way because of “supposed to’s” and “should” and and and and and…well.

Fall has always been the time of year when I get my super powers back. I feel more energized with the shorter days, when the world gets tucked in for the night, nice and early. When hot chocolate and cider flow, and Thanksgiving is soon to be upon us, and there are sweaters and boot socks and colorful leaves, and a crisp snap to the air. It’s time for curling up with a good book (or ten) under an afghan, with cup of tea at hand, and, since I am me, a notebook (or ten) on the other hand, because I have to multitask even when reading. It’s November. I’m back. I got this.

Typing With Wet Claws: Scary Stories Edition

annabowling Leave a comment

Hello, all. Skye here, for another Feline Friday. Here I am, practicing my begging face. Are my eyes big enough? I am next to the refrigerator, so that Anty will know I want food. My food is not in the refrigerator; that is where they keep people food. My food is in the pantry, but I figured Anty was smart enough to make the connection. Today is also the day before young humans put on costumes and go begging for treats. I beg for treats every day (and I get them) so I feel sorry they only get to do it once a year.

I was not born yet when this happened, but I have an interesting Halloween story to tell about Anty. This happened back when Olivia was our family’s kitty, and Anty worked in a place called the mall. The store where Anty worked sold accessories, which was very fun for Anty. They also said that workers could wear costumes for Halloween if they wanted. Anty thought that sounded fun, but she was also very busy that year and did not have time to put a costume together.

That is not the end of the story, though. While Anty was at work, people from the mall gave her a prize for wearing an especially imaginative costume. Anty was very confused about this, because she was wearing her regular clothes. Well, regular for Anty, that is. She had on a long patchwork skirt, suede boots with zippers, a pirate shirt and a black vest. She also had a Star Trek: The Next Generation style communicator pin that she wore as regular jewelry. The mall people said that they loved Anty’s costume as a member of a Star Trek landing party in disguise. Anty figures it was very creative of them to come to that conclusion, and maybe she had subconsciously worked in that direction, so she thanked them and accepted the prize.

She also went back to sorting through the pretty toy coins the mall people gave her to hand out to trick or treaters (they could not give out eating things because of rules) because those were not toy coins at all. Anty did not know how the mall people got those coins, because those coins were from a big big party called Mardi Gras in Louisiana, and the mall was in Connecticut. What Anty did know was that some of those coins could make parents of the trick or treaters angry, because some of those coins advertised places and activities that are not okay for young humans. Places where only grownups can go, to get drinks that are only for grownups, and places where grownups can watch other grownups, um, I will say dance. I do not mean ballroom or ballet, if you catch my drift. Anty took those kinds of coins out of the basket and did not give them out.

Those are really the only two Halloween stories I know, but I know a lot about being scared. Anty likes TV shows like The Walking Dead and Sleepy Hollow. Those are only pretend scary. I will tell you what is really scary. Research is really scary, at least according to Anty. Her first book, My Outcast Heart, was set in the town where Anty was a people kitten. Her hero was a hermit and her heroine was a subsistence farmer. That meant that the expected income for that job was food. That sounds like a very good job to me. I like food.

For this book, Her Last First Kiss, Anty is not on such familiar ground. That means she has a lot of research to do. Her previous books have had what some might call outliers as main characters. That does not mean they were very good at not telling the truth. That means that they were not a part of mainstream society. The heroine of Never Too Late started out as part of society, but she left, so she falls into that category, too. Anty says I do not need to know what a mistress is, but she needs to know how one got paid and how much and how much it would cost to keep somebody in a special hospital in 1784, and what her boy story people would have studied at Oxford and how far it is from Point A to Point B..and C and D and E, and how long did it take to get a special license to get married and other things as well. I am pretty sure I heard the exact moment her brain broke yesterday. That was a very scary moment for a kitty, because Anty was the only human at home, and I still needed food. I think she is better today, but she has a big binder out and is muttering something about something about maps. She is irritated with the Romans for putting London all the way at the bottom of the country, because that does not leave her a lot of room for characters to — Anty says I should not be talking about things like that before she has them firm in her mind.

One thing Anty has learned from all the books she has started to write but did not make it all the way is that she needs to have the foundation in place, and research is part of that. When she wants to know what her people could do in that time, she can look at what people actually did in that time. Anty is writing a romance novel, not a textbook, but she also needs to know what her people’s world was like and what they could do. If she does not know what her people could do, then she gets overthinky and that scares even Uncle, so she has to find these things out.

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

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

Until next week...

Until next week…

Roots and Wings

annabowling 2 Comments

Leap the fence. Seize that chaos. Whet your own edge. Go weird. Go buckwild.

— Chuck Wendig

This is the first year I’ve felt 100% okay about not doing NaNo. No regret, no obligation, though I do give a hearty shake of the pompoms to all participants. This year, I am too excited to be working on Her Last First Kiss, immersing myself in the world of my hero and heroine (and the mutual friend caught in the middle, though I still don’t know if he gets a POV or not. We will find out.) to have much brain space left for the “oughts” and the “should” and the “everybody elses,” which is a good thing, and a goal I have been working toward for quite some time. So, that’s a win right there, in my book, pun intended.

The last few  years have seen miscarried manuscripts, at various stages of viability. Some are still waiting for the bad juju to burn off, so that I can see what’s left. Others and I have parted ways, mostly amicably, while yet others are like the one night stand one passes at work with downcast eyes and a pretended interest in the pattern of the carpet until one is out of the other’s orbit. (Vampire story, I am looking at you.) All have been necessary steps along the journey, and those that are still viable will get a second look once the HEA has been inscribed in stone on this one.

For me, discipline is key, but the kind that works for me. When I have a schedule made out, then writing/researching/editing time is from hour X to hour Y, and that is mine. I am at work, whether that means a notebook in the park or fingers on keyboard. All those miscarried manuscripts have taught me that  “um, I don’t know, England?” or “figure out why later” are not going to work for me, and the sanest thing I can do is hit pause, find out the specifics and then move forward. I love adding detail, adding layer on layer to make my story people into their own being, not my popsicle stick puppets, building locations I can see and hear and feel and breathe, so that I don’t have to stop and beat myself up because I don’t know the exact process of choosing a tanist :exchanges wary glance with time travel manuscript: or when house numbers came into general use :waves goodbye to novella idea that wasn’t strong enough to carry a story in the first place:

I’ve found out, the hard way, that my default setting at present, is Georgian England. Not that I can’t or don’t use other settings -far from it- but if I don’t know at the outset when and where a story takes place, that’s probably it. Part of this comes from being a child of the Bicentennial, and being a child of the Bicentennial while living in a town that was, literally, burned to the ground during the Revolution and rebuilt from a pile of ash. I can identify with that. The dress, manners, speech, and aesthetics of the Georgian era are second nature to me where historical romance is concerned. Love to read it, love to write it.

Studying the stories I love most to read tells me what I want to put into the stories I write. Deep emotion, the choices my characters make and the consequences thereof affected by the time in which they live. I love stories of identity, where the character breaks away from what others tell them they “should” or “ought” to be and instead, discover who they actually are, and live in that. Again, this is relevant to my interests.

I haven’t written a story like this one in a while, and it’s scary at times, but going back to my roots, the stories and characters that I love, fills me with anticipation rather than pressure. Piecing together my timelines, planting family trees and slapping down bullet points in notebooks and fresh documents lets me approach the work with enthusiasm, and without the feeling that I’m forcing anything. Challenging? Yes. Very much so. This timeline has me with one foot on the ledge already. There’s a gray area in a choice a character makes – maybe it’s not “likable,” but I’m not here for “likable.” I’m here to tell the stories that come to me, and, in this story world, that’s what happened, and I’m glad it did. When the characters start making their own choices like that, that’s when I know the story is real and alive. That’s when it goes from idea to book in progress, and this is definitely that.

Making the Map as I Go

annabowling 2 Comments

I need to watch things and feel like I can do that, too, or feel like if that thing got made, there’s no reason I couldn’t make one of my own things.

          -Will Wheaton

One more trip around the sun down, aka brand new year of me. Lovely birthday experience all around, with lots of love from dear ones both in person and in cyberspace, requisite reexamination of life, some reading, some writing and cake-like things on top of frozen yogurt in lieu of actual cake, and we now embark on a new week of a new year.

my partners in pondering

my partners in pondering

Today, I came to the sad conclusion that my office is, indeed, the place the internet goes to die. If I move a few feet to my right, as in leave my office and set up shop in the kitchen, everything works fine. Except for the fact that I am in the kitchen and not in my office. Which is kind of the point of the whole thing, a special room where I can Get Things Done, behind a closed door, Writing Cave sign (at this point, a faded Post-It with “writing cave” written in similarly faded Sharpie on it) optional. Housemate said it sounded like there was some sort of lead shield around my office. Good enough explanation, as the entire list to date of devices that cannot get connection in that room and only that room includes:

  • ancient desktop
  • old laptop
  • possibly the older than that laptop, but Merman took that one over so long ago that I don’t remember, so it gets half credit
  • new laptop
  • tablet
  • first smartphone
  • second smartphone

By the time even my phone could only take less than a minute of connection before it made like a tired toddler and refused to do anything, I decided it wasn’t worth my time and effort to make things work. I’d take things old school and bust out the pen, paper and three ring binder, because it is indeed story bible time. I’ve resisted making one for a while, because character questionnaires and such tend to make  me forget not only very basic things like my character’s ages and appearances, but that I understand English.

Cranky Anna does not like filling out forms.

Cranky Anna does not like filling out forms.

Getting all my ducks in a row, however, is essential, as I am dealing with more than I can keep in my head right now. The calendar says I am a big girl, so time to be that big girl and do what I need to do to get this book written. Which means, in this case, I have to haul out The Binder. In the past, I’ve tried to do it the way I “should,”  which means the way it has worked for other people. The “research” section generally ends up with me resentfully printing out a few webpages of historical detail, three hole punching them and never looking at them again. Normally, this gest accompanied by a hefty dose of negative self talk about not being smart enough or intellectual enough or academic enough, etc, but that is what Real Historical Writers do, so :grits teeth: on with it, girl.

This time? No. This book is mine, and this story bible is mine, and it’s going to serve me, instead of me serving it. So far, I have a section labeled “story junk,” a section for my hero, one for my heroine, and one labelled “support,” a purposefully catchall term. Dividers are littered now with sticky notes of various sizes and colors, all the things I’m going to need to know scribbled down in hasty scrawls, with lots of blanks and question marks. Those who have known me for any length of time know that I am prone to overthinking things like this, so I am shoving some of the work off onto Critique Partner Vicki, who actually likes looking up such matters. I can send her my out of order lists of things that have to happen and who was born when, and such, and she can send me back a timeline.

The things that throw me are the numbers. Dates, distances, how much things cost, how long it takes to get from point A to point B in a carriage vs on horseback, and how long it will take mail coaches to make those same trips. Also transatlantic travel when the options were “ship” and “how long can you tread water?” It’s not enough to know that certain characters have stately homes “in England.” Where in England? Manor? Castle? What does it do? There are duties and obligations that come with being a peer, so, in the case of characters or their families who fit that designation, what are they? Fine, the earl can send his son to Eton and Oxford, but what did the boy study? How did he do in those studies? Would he have rather studied something else? Expectations are different for my second son hero (with a happily married and remarkably fecund big brother) than they are for his only child best friend, dear old dad’s heir. My heroine? Mostly taught herself. She’s resourceful.

This, for me, is the grunt work, and I can’t rush it. I’ve torn the outline apart, put some back together, and some of it now needs to be shaped by the realities of what was practical and/or plausible for the time. Which is not to say every person who lived in historical period X always did Y and never Z. Far from it, but what works for this writer who goes heavily by intuition, is to see what the world my people lived in was like, and from there, see how they respond to it. That’s where the fun comes in, but the foundation has to be laid first.

Things That Make Me Go “Whoa.”

annabowling Leave a comment

I want to know that there’s something just beyond MY ability, that I can eek (sic) out one day that can move people like I’ve been moved.

–Ben Folds

Once again, we’ve arrived at blog day, but my first reaction is to say I’ve got nothing and see you next time. Not going to do that, however, as this is on my to-do list, so it is going to get to-done. This is one of the reasons I keep a list of writing related quotes on hand. That way, I always have something to use as a prompt, whether it’s strictly adhering to the original quote or using it as a jumping off point to something more loosely related.

Right now, still not sure in which direction I’m going to go, but I am going. The first time I remember being aware of Ben Folds was in my BFF’s car, on a long ago December 26th, at precisely 6 AM. Points to the DJ who cued up “Brick” at exactly that moment. From the first haunting piano notes, I knew I was listening to something special.

I didn’t know at the time that this was a song about an abortion from the viewpoint of a seventeen year old boy, nor that it was from the singer/songwriter’s personal experience. All I knew was that this was raw emotion, the very serious subject matter at odds with the beauty of the music, and played against the mood of the holiday season, the contrast was sharp. In short, it wakened that “how did he do that?” reaction in the story part of my brain.

My father was an artist all his life, and I remember, from a young age, being brought to art shows and museums, and noticing people with sketchpads or easels, in front of certain works. I wasn’t sure what they were doing -it seemed rude, from my four-ish year old perspective, to be in a museum and they’re paying attention to what they can do at home on their own?- so I asked. My father told me that they were copying the masters in order to learn how they did what they did. Centuries before YouTube videos, webinars, mass communications or even widespread literacy, this is how it happened. Try and fail and try and fail and keep eyes on the good stuff and try to figure out how the good stuff got good.

This is, as a matter of course, going to result in turning out a lot of crap along the way. That’s part of the process. As much as I would love to spit out a bunch of words and have them arrange themselves into timeless fiction while I sleep, that’s not going to happen. What is going to happen is that I need to treat this like any other form of education. I need to study the books in my genre that work for me, and figure out why they work for me. What elements of these books, these writers’ voices, etc, can I adapt to my own use? I  need to study books in my genre that do not work for me, and find out why they don’t work for me. Do I see any of my own bad habits there? How can I work on improving those? I  need to study books outside of my preferred genre, to see what elements in those books can enrich what I do and add something new to the time honored elements.

Sometimes, it feels like, well, work. Which it is, of course, for those of us for whom writing is a profession as well as a pleasure. When I feel a reluctance to get to the work, that usually means I need to reconnect. Which, for me, means a lot of reading, because story in, story out. Though I’m still reading a lot of realistic YA these days (because they seriously deliver the visceral emotion and make me want to step up that game in historical romance) I’ve missed the deep immersion of the older historical romances, so revisiting a lot of those, and will likely be doing a lot of rambling on that in the future.

So, these days, I have at least part of my brain in magpie mode. I want to be challenged in what I take in. Surprised. I’m listening to a lot of music on Spotify these days, sometimes dedicating time to read the lyrics (I love that feature) while listening to the music, and treating that as research. The way Ben Folds uses language – seriously impressing this gal who completed an English minor in two years without even trying (I honestly did take all the required courses merely because they interested me ;  go figure) and am now in a serious Damien Rice mode, because my heart is still dying a little from “Accidental Babies” and “The Greatest Bastard.” Lots of brilliant turns of language and emotion there, essential for writing romance.

I can feel the closing paragraph coming on here, the one where we restate the topic sentence (did I have one here?)  and leave readers with a takeaway. Not sure how well this is going to hew to that (look at me, using vocabulary words) but here’s what I’ve got. I want that “wow” moment. That “I never thought of that” moment. That thing where all I have to do is hear three piano notes and a whole movie plays in my head. Hopefully on my pages as well. Story in, story out, in all its forms.

Crabby Monday

annabowling Leave a comment

This blog entry exists because I want to cross something off my to do list. It’s one of those days where writing related things are getting done, but the actual writing has been scarce. Not anybody’s fault, as domestic tornadoes happen when domestic tornadoes happen. This is one of those days when inspiration takes a back seat to discipline. Which means, in short, butt in chair and fingers on keyboard and/or pen to paper.

I’m sitting in my favorite coffee house right now, a cup of cold tea in front of me. It was hot when I ordered it, but it, like me, today, is pretty much kind of there and that’s it. Blah. Not what I was going for, for either of us. I will credit the barista with leaving the infuser in the cup and giving me a generous splash of skim milk in the cardboard cup so that I could let the tea, a delicious chai I get almost every time I come here, brew to perfection and then add the right amount of milk. That’s not exactly what happened, my apologies to the tea.

This is one of those parts of writing that is not exactly glamorous. Meh. Cold tea, blank brain, tired body. Still, the idea of totally blowing off the day bothers me. It rankles. Doesn’t fit. I mean, I could. That’s within my grasp, and, some would argue, within my rights. Part of me would actually like to do that, but then it runs straight into the part that rolls its eyes. OMG, are you whining about how hard writing is again? No wonder it’s been a while since your last book release. Sit down and do it. It’s easy. What, you can’t? Must not be a writer, then. There, there, you tried. Failed, but tried. Now go  home and put away the laundry and…mmm nope, that’s about all I’ve got, but I will flip through this list of anxiety triggers while you wrangle the laundry and then we’ll see which one we’re going to go with for the rest of the day. How does that sound?

Actually, not very good. Not very good at all. True, not every day can be a perfect one, and the slower days do get balanced out with the days when everything seems to want to come out of my head at once. There are times to produce and times to take in so that I can produce later. Even on those days when story brain says “nope,” there are still things I can do. Crit a critique partner’s chapter, discuss the next steps for the novella (partner and I there agree we are wrapping the end of the beginning and are pumped to get to the beginning of the middle) and write a blog entry. Not too shabby there, even if I am spending most of the entry blabbering.

Let’s see, what else? Conversing with some writer friends via email and discussing the use of angst in romance (a favorite topic) and trading songs that make our hearts hurt but also create plot bunnies. My favorite contribution for that discussion would be “Accidental Babies,” by Damien Rice:

Somewhat related to Her Last First Kiss, as there is a love triangle of sorts in that one, though my heroine wouldn’t say she’s in love with the other gent, but there is some fondness there. The mood fits, though, and it makes my heart ache the way my heart needs to ache for my hero’s situation at a crucial point in the book, so been listening to this one quite a bit, but haven’t actually moved it onto the book’s playlist, but that will probably happen soon.

So. Getting around time to wrap this sucker up and call the entry done. Likely also time to stick my nose in a good book and refill the well. Mondays are going to happen; that’s a fact of life. Okay. They happen. The adventure comes with what I choose to do with them. If putting out is an issue, then it’s usually time to take in. Even spending time in favorite places can count toward this. The brick walls of the coffee house, the street-level windows, eclectic tables and seating, the ever-changing flow of other guests; these are all good things. I am looking forward to the month progressing into Daylight Savings in the not too distant future, when I get to look up from keyboard or notebook and watch the day fade into night. Those evenings when I can go to the coffee house in daylight at walk home at night, still on my regular twoish hour stint, that’s the good stuff. I can pin my sights on that and keep moving toward it.

In the meantime, this entry is here. I did it. Novella progress is moving forward and partner and I agree on where the next step goes. Chapter critted for critique partner, and I can shoot her a note saying I’m brain-free today, but would love to brainstorm tomorrow. Then…maybe reading, maybe adult coloring book, maybe movie. We’ll see. What’s important is that this entry is here.