writing

I Have No Idea, or, Roadmaps

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“Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.”
– Arthur Ashe

Not ideas, because I am not O  at a loss for any of those. I have index card files, seriously, so I am not going to run out any time soon. Not every idea is going to be written, but each one of them has something in there that I can use in some form. Even if what I glean from that is “never pitch a book idea you pulled out of your :ahem: self after not sleeping for three days straight because the pitch session just took an awkward turn. Not that that ever happened to anybody I know. :cough: But ideas, yes, lots of those.

What I’m talking about here is those days when I have no idea what I’m doing. I hate those. People who know me know that I’m a planner. I like to know what is going to happen, when, not to mention how. I love to-do lists, and the only think I like better than listing tasks is crossing them off. Maybe prioritizing, because that’s actually fun, especially if I get to play with highlighters.

Life, especially the writing life, doesn’t always work that day. Sometimes, the nonwriting life takes a good long look at a writer and says, “Writer, you are now officially my puching bag.” Whompity whompity whomp. Nonwriting life can have a mean left hook. Domestic tornado chains whip through what should be a fairly productive writing day. Sick family members, financial hiccups, domestic duties that require immediate attention, lest the universe implode, and the like are not going to take a break because we’re making good time on the work in progress, or a blog post due.

Which is where today’s ramble comes in. Yesterday had its challenges, and there was no way on earth I was going to give up my time with Her Last First Kiss, so Monday’s post got moved to Tuesday. I probably had some vague notion (or maybe a not so vague one) about what I wanted to cover in this blog post. Something about notebooks, maybe? A Camp NaNo update? How much fun it is to be splashing around in the shallows of a new book, and then, without meaning to, diving down deep and finding ohhhhhh, that’s why that thing was in that scene. I may not have known what I was doing at the time my hero picked up a china dog in a shop (and a scene I didn’t plan), as a gift for the heroine, but he did, and that’s what matters. He knew she would like it, even if I had no earthly idea, bu a few chapters later, when she finally admits a Deep Secret she will only trust to him, it all makes sense.

i1035 FW1.1

We’ve been in our current home for about two and a half years now, Real Life Romance Hero and Housemate and Skye and I , and only recently did I finally get around to employing an arty idea I’d had while apartment hunting. I’ve tried scrapbooking, and it’s really not for me, but I love mixed media art, and anything even remotely notebook-related. About a week or so ago, I took out the map we’d used in finding our home, so that I could memorialize the search with art. I covered the cardboard box that my new computer cord came in with part of that map, and now use it to store pens and a small notebook. Easily portable, unique and personal. It reminds me of the writing desk the hero of Her Last First Kiss counts as his most prized posession. His is wood, not cardboard, far more durable than what I have, and he sure as anything wouldn’t have made it himself (carpentry is not his thing) but the connection, that’s there, and it’s strong. Through all of his travels, my hero counts his writing desk as his true home, and I can relate to that.

Today has been one of those punching bag days. Yesterday was another. This post exists because I don’t like having to push back Wednesday’s post because I haven’t yet done Monday’s post, and because posting is one thing I can control when nonwriting life starts lobbing stuff at me. Sit down at the keyboard and blabber about writing? I can do that. I may not know the exact topic when I set out on the journey, but that’s okay. I know how to write. I’ll get there.

So it is with the art and discipline of writing a book. It’s been a while since I’ve had a hero and heroine talk to me this clearly ( things,perhaps, only other writers will understand) amd I am not going to squander that. Maybe I don’t know where we’re going for a particular session, but I trust them. I trust that I know how to write a book. I’ve done it before. I can do it again. I am doing it now. Sometimes, we need to make the maps while we explore, then follow them later.

Telling the Story

annabowling 3 Comments

“The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.”
– Terry Pratchett

Well, that’s one week of Camp NaNo in my rearview mirror, and I seem to be doing all right so far. This is a bit different from past NaNo endeavors, in that I’m not focusing on writing. Also, that I’m ahead of my goal. How’d that happen? This time, I’m telling myself the story. I’d discovered, last week, while talking with a critique partner, that I’d never bothered to write down the outline for Her Last First Kiss. Huh wuh? Nothing? Not a thing? Cue frantic flipping through notebooks both dedicated (those are new, so it didn’t take long) and multipurpose ones. Check any computer files that might possibly have been misfiled under a different name. Do a computer search for hero’s and heroine’s  names. Nope, never did.

I’d classify myself as more of a puzzler than plotter or pantser, but I’m not labeling at this point. What I am doing is telling the story. The fact that I’ve been able to hold so much of it in my head, so clearly, for so long, is a good thing, but the stories we keep in our heads and nowhere else don’t get a lot of circulation. The scariest thing in the world would be to get to the end of my life and think “I could have been a successful writer.”  Scratch the could be and replace with “am.”  Successful, right now, means showing up and getting this story down. That’s all I have to do right now. Tell the story. There’s time enough after I get to the end of this draft to make things all pretty and get fancy with finishing touches. For now, the emphasis isn’t on how many words there are in the file but on getting the story told. How did we get from Once Upon a Time to Happily Ever After? With romance, we know the Happily Ever After Part is a gaurantee, like we know in a mystery that the detective will find out who committed the crime, but along the way? We can do anything. I think that’s pretty exciting.

In telling myself the story, I am discovering it. Though I do like to have an outline when I write the book, in the telling the story portion, surprises come up when they will, without me trying to shoehorn them in because that’s where they should fall according to beat sheet or pinch point or any other paradigm. Not saying those things aren’t useful; they are, and I love finding out how other writers work. Some of that stuff finds its way into my own process, and some remains an interesting tidbit that works better for others. Floating bits of unrelated things (this is one of the places where that puzzler thing comes in) bump into each other and bond, and, without my having put much thought into it, they make sense.

I really had no idea why my hero impulsively bought my heroine a cheaply made china dog, but then when she tells me (only writers understand fictional characters telling us what really happened) that she knew her father was leaving the family when he took his favorite hunting dog, there was that “oh” moment. So that’s what those things were all about. Okay, that gives me some structure. I know that my hero (I really should be using their  names here, but want to keep that private for a while longer) and heroine had a conversation in which she mentioned dogs, though she doesn’t have any, and that it made an impression on him, which is why he picked that china dog (very clear in my head, and it’s actually kind of ugly) because he knew it would make her happy.

This process rather fits this book, because neither my hero nor heroine have that firm a grasp on what they’re doing. The whole falling in love thing isn’t for them, both believing they’re locked out of that game. They made plans. Love wasn’t in them. Funny, but it tends to find its way in ,anyway. Which is a lot like the process of discovering a story.

Also, we have ducks:

i1035 FW1.1

Typing With Wet Claws: Special Easter Monday Edition

annabowling 2 Comments

Hello, all. Skye here, for a special Monday edition of Typing With Wet Claws. I am blogging for Anty today because she is taking a mental health day. So far today, she has cleaned throwup twice (only one was mine, but I did try to eat it again. She would not let me.) and poop once (that was mine, but I did not try to eat it) and both Mama and Uncle are at home when they were meant to be at work. Mama is resting now, to get over her tummy bug,  and Uncle got his shift changed, so that pretty  much took care of Anty’s plans to have a productive day of writing at home.

That does not mean that she will not have a productive day, or that she will not write. Anty has a lot of notebooks, and is even now deciding which ones (plural) she will take with her when she heads outfor the day. She does not have a plan at this point, and I must admit her occasional cackles give me some pause (I already have paws. Four of them.) because that is not a sound I her very often, but Uncle convinced her that it will be best for everybody if she heads out for a while. Uncle likes to putter, which is not always compatible with Anty writing in the living room. Her other plan today was to work on organizing the office while listening to Paper Towns, but that would be too noisy, as the office shares a wall with her and Uncle’s bedroom.

Anty calls days like this well-filling days. That means she needs to take in new things so that she will have more to draw from when she writes. I have seen  her try to write when she does not take in enough, and it is not a pretty sight. This day away from the keyboard (well, mostly. I know my Anty.) will be good for everybody. She mentioned something about going to the park to look for ducks, and I did see her putting her camera in her big purse. The computer is probably staying home today, unless she comes back to get it and write at the coffee house, which she might do.

Normally, Anty likes to have a plan for her days. She will make a list of things that need to be done on a given day, usually over breakfast, and pick which one is the most important, then do that one first. Then she picks the next most important, and so on. Sometimes, things get carried over to the next day, but a day without plans does not happen all that often, especially on her own. Today, though, it is necessary, not only for staying away from sick and/or cranky people, but making sure she does not become one of them herself.

Schroedinger's bunny?

Schroedinger’s bunny?

In other news, yesterday was Easter, which means Anty gave Uncle an Easter basket. The foil wrapped chocolate bunny is important. Anty learned that the hard way, after we had to hand off at least four (I could not count higher than that, since I was counting on my paws) naked chocolate bunnies from the freezer to our former downstairs neighbor when we moved. Uncle does not like unwrapped bunnies, and Anty does not care for chocolate that much, but didn’t want to throw away perfectly good food items, so they lived in the freezer. Some of them, for a very long time.

Every basket also has to have a stuffed animal. This year, it was Cadbury Bunny. Very nice of him to come wearing a name tag, and he brought snacks. Anty and Uncle put him on the floor so that I could meet him (they are very good with that) but I am confused. This bunny talks. He makes chicken sounds. He does not move, but he does talk, and I am not sure if he is alive or not. Still figuring that one out, but Anty and Uncle seem to like him a lot, so I will follow their lead.

That ends this special entry. I will see you all on Friday, so until then, I remain very truly yours,

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

See you Friday....

See you Friday….

Typing With Wet Claws: It’s Not Easy Being Mews Edition

annabowling Leave a comment

Hello, all. Skye here, for another Feline Friday. It is finally feeling like spring here. That means that it is not freezing all the time, and I can watch birdies through the living room window while Anty and Mama have their breakfast. Uncle gets up a little later, and I have his breakfast with him in the kitchen. Everybody gives me kitty food when they get their people food, so I am not going to complain.

This week, Anty began Camp NaNo. That is a time when humans who write try to do a lot of writing in a short amount of time. That is like NaNo, except it does not make Anty as stressed, because she can decide how much writing she wants to do. Really, how much writing she wants to tell people she does, because she does a lot of writing. It’s the counting the words she does not like. She likes the actual writing fine. I am glad I do not have to count things. My job as a mews (see what I did there?) is to sit very very close to Anty and send out love beams. That is inspiring, I think, although I do not know how effective it is when it comes to making her put more kitties in her stories.

Yesterday, she put a dog in her new book. Only a china dog in this scene, but I looked at her outline. There will be a real dog later. She said the characters put the dog in there; she didn’t. I am not too sure about that. I know that characters are people who live inside Anty’s head, so maybe she should talk to some of them about having cats. There are horses in this book, but that is mostly because horses dragged the people carriers around in the times Anty’s stories are set. I have never met a horse, so I do not have a firm opinion on this, other than that it would not be too hard for Anty to maybe mention a barn cat or two when one of the horses is in its stable. I think that is fair recompense for all my hard work. If that is okay. Anty is most dominant in our pride, so I cannot tell her what to do, but I can make suggestions. Also look very very cute. I am good at that.

tools of the trade

tools of the trade

Anty has been doing a lot of writing this week, which keeps her busy, and that is a good thing. As you may be able to see in the picture of her keyboard, we have some casualties. There is now no letter at all on the E key, the Q key now looks like a broken O, and the L is pretty much a scratchy line. Anty says she may write letters on those keys with a silver Sharpie, but she knows what keys are where, so I do not think she is going to do that anytime soon. Also, people need to kiss on TV more, so that Anty can write about that and have more posts up on Heroes and Heartbreakers. She is part of this post on bloggers’ best reads of March, which has lots of ideas if you do not know what to read next. A word of warning: Anty’s pick is a very thick book that makes a loud sound when it is dropped. Loud sounds are scary. At least she read it by the bed, so I did not have to go far if I wanted to run under the bed for some reason. She is considerate that way.

goth laundry?

goth laundry?

This week also means it is time for Anty to get ready to go to the NECRWA conference. I have talked about that before, so I will not repeat myself here, except to say that the whole getting ready thing is not exactly cat-friendly. She does open the closet a lot and take clothes out, which I find very interesting. Sometimes, she puts them back in and sometimes she does not. Ever since she took the bright colors she does not like very much out of the closet, she has more fun playing with clothes. Most of her laundry looks like the picture above. Some of it is Uncle’s, but the stripey things and anything with a skull on it should be Anty’s. Sometimes new clothing comes home when Anty goes out hunting, and it does not smell like our things, until she washes it and wears it, and then it does. Until then, I am suspicious of all new items. I am not entirely convinced that the Skirt of Doom is not going to come back, even though I was the one who made it go away in the first place. Never you mind how. I was never sure if it was on Anty, part of Anty, or, worst of all, if it had Anty. Sometimes, a kitty has to do what a kitty has to do.

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

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

So I’m Camping

annabowling 4 Comments

Put something on the page. The story will come.
–Mairi Norris

Yesterday, I remembered I’d signed up for Camp NaNo. The day before, I’d remembered I’d signed up for RWA’s The End, and had been meeting my goal there for the last two months, so this one couldn’t be any different. This means that I am doing two writing challenges at once. I’m using the same project, Her Last First Kiss, and this is very much a rough draft I’m using for both.

Initially, I wasn’t going to do either. Word count and I are not friends. Not that it doesn’t matter how long a work is, but if I focus on that aspect during a rough draft, I am not going to get anywhere. I know myself well enough by this point that how I work doesn’t allow for that. Let me tell the story first, and then we’ll work the rest out later. So, how, or more importantly, why did I find myself participating in two -no, I tell a lie (and thank you, research on the vernacular of Northern Ireland for that one,) it’s actually three, as CRRWA is tracking member word count for this year, though I haven’t reported in there yet- at the same time?

Part of it is the way real life has swept through recently, and carefully made plans get shoved to the side when there is caregiving that needs to be done right this minute. As a person whose only reason not to have started a notebook notebook (that is, a notebook devoted to keeping track of my other notebooks) being that I have not yet found the perfect notebook to used for such a purpose, I like to have things well planned out, both in life and in writing. Good plan, but it doesn’t always work that way, in either area.

Which is basically how I found myself, yesterday, moving my laptop around the coffee house table, trying to evade the sunlight streaming in (because I have not yet comprehended that my favorite seat in that section will result in me being unable to see the screen due to aforementioned sunlight, which counters the whole going there to write thing, but I am both stubborn and determined) onto my screen and figuring out where I record my progress on two out of the three. I was going to do this, and that was that. I love this book and these characters and their story more than I’ve loved any project I’ve worked on in a long time. Years, really, so this is happening, and on my terms.

I spent some time staring at the blank Scrivener screen, stymied by where a new chapter goes, and how many scenes should be in a chapter, anyway? To which my writer brain screamed a loud, insistent, STOP. No math now. None of it. Close Scrivener. Open Word. Blink at blank Word screen. Close Word. Stick in earbuds, open hero notebook and take out pen. Write bullet points. What happens next? Wite that. How did hero react to that? Write what happens next after that, all the way to the end of the scene. When that’s done, open Word again and transcribe. Kind of comfortable, that. Punch word count button and enter number in appropriate blanks, then go play Sims. That, I can do.

That would be the blue one...

That would be the blue one…

Getting distracted from what works is all too easy for some writers to do. There are a lot of shoulds floating around out there. This person’s career is taking off. That one’s tanked. That other one had a great career, it tanked, and then they came back with another name or subgenre and all of that in the time I’ve been stomping around in the woods with a bucket on my head and both feet stuck in rotten logs. But those are their journeys, and this one is mine. I’m the one who gets to say how I do it, because I’m the one who knows this story the best, and I’m the one who’s in the best place to see what actually gets the story told. If there happen to be bullet points in pretty notebooks along the way, I’m fine with that. I’d rather have fun getting the story told than bash my head bloody against a brick wall to reach a particular number.

It’s not about the numbers for me, or even about the words themselves. It’s about this hero and this heroine, two broken people who find wholeness is within their reach after all, both individually and together. I can’t think of anything more delightful to do with my time. It’s on.

Do What Works

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Just write what you love. If you are passionate about your characters, your readers will feel that way too.
-Virginia Henley

This past week, I attended three different RWA chapter meetings. Tonight, I’m trying out a local writers’ group, and I submitted the first scene from Her Last First Kiss for critique. This group is not affiiliated with RWA, and is multigenre (slanted toward mainstream and literary, IIRC, but don’t quote me) so I have some reservations. I’ve had experiences both good and not so good with multigenre critique groups, but at the same time, want to keep an open mind and give things a fair shot.

The pluses are easy: this is a local group, meets at the local library (most of the time) which is a lovely walk from my house and I do like the members, from emails exchanged and the one meeting I was able to make a few months back. In-person critique and/or support groups can be like catnip for the extroverted writer. There really is some truth to the theory of hybrid vitality, and getting input from readers outside one’s genre of choice can provide insight that couldn’t come from anywhere else. Did I mention this group will be meeting in a library? Building full of books and movies gets an automatic point in its favor right there.

Then there’s the potential minuses. Not a romance group. In the past, this could have been a source of anxiety. Maybe I should try to tailor what I write to suit their needs. Writing is writing, right? Keep the peace, fit in, all of that stuff. Now…no. I write historical romance, I’m happy with it, I’m proud of it, and if it doesn’t fit with a particular group, then that’s probably not the group for me to bring my own work. I’ll critique pretty much anything, because I love stories, period, but knowing what to share with whom, that’s a learned skill.

There is always a chance, in a multigenre group, that somebody (count on at least one) has not read the genre a particular member writes. The good side of that? Honest reaction of a reader totally new to the genre. You get to be their first. Maybe they’ll find something new they might like, and so might you. Making assumptions about who reads what based on age or gender is usually a bad idea. When in doubt, ask. “So, what do you read?” is a classic reader/writer icebreaker, and a good way to test the waters. If it’s not a good fit, say so, in a polite and friendly manner, and move on along, no harm, no foul. Reach out to any individuals with whom you feel a connection and keep on doing you.

Which brings me to today’s picture. I have a lot of books. I mean, a lot of books. Most are in storage, but one box more than the boxes I’d tagged to make the move ended up getting on the truck, and into my office. Since I’m reorganizing said office in preparation for new-to-me desk, chair and computer (which will free my beloved secretary desk for longhand writing, which is what it was built for in the first place) I’m going through things that have sat for a while. I opened this box and hello, old friends. Where I’d been casting sidelong glances at a static TBR shelf of mostly new releases and telling them the reason they’ve been on that shelf for so long isn’t them, it’s me, the sight of these spines looking up at me from their cardboard cradle made my heart go pitty-pat.

Look at all those settings: 20th century time travel, Tudor England, Medieval England, Victorian England, Victorian-era Australia, Interregum England and Africa? (Not pictured because I’m currently reading it) Don’t see all of those that often these days, do we? All of these date from the mid 1980s at earliest to 2000 at latest, confirming that my current reading interests are, at present, very comfortably ensconced in books written/published in the 1990s, give or take a few years either way. After reading two brand-new releases (thumbs up on both of them) I’m ready for these. That’s what works now, and darned if I’m not plowing through the tale of a runaway bride in the midst of the English Civil War, and a hero who I’m pretty sure is going to wind up enslaved in Northern Africa, if I’m reading this right.

There is, of course, the voice of current marketing in my head, reminding me that we’re on page x and hero and heroine haven’t met yet, and that is not done. Grab the reader now, now, now, be fast, be clear, be…shush, voice. Mama’s reading. I’m engaged in the story; that’s enough. It’s a romance. They’ll be fine. That’s all I need to know, so that voice can be quiet now.

A Camping I Will Go (NaNo style) And Other Tales

annabowling 8 Comments

I’m doing Camp NaNo this year.

I hadn’t planned on it. In fact, I’d planned on not doing it, because NaNo wordcounts give me the heebie-jeebies, and as I told the delightful Shannon Kauderer at today’s Saratoga Romance Writers meeting, tend to leave me in a fetal position under the dining room table, sobbing uncontrollably. Shannon reminded me that I can set my own word count for Camp NaNo, even zero, and that the moral support, which is what I’d liked about NaNo in the first place, was the main point. So, this year, I’m camping. Also, Shannon has mermaidy green curly hair and charm for days, so that may have had something to do with the fact that I am now officially signed up. Not focused on word count; it’s all about the story for me.

ready to work

ready to work

Good thing, that, as Shannon, the regional municipal liason for NaNoWriMo (and camps) was the guest speaker, presenting her workshop on the Snowflake Method of plotting. I’ve taken this before, when Shannon presented at CRRWA, then, as now, with the delightful SueAnn Porter as my companion, so I knew what I was in for, and surely, I’d whip through this, no problem, be all set to charge forward.

Not exactly. The first step, creating a one sentence description of one character’s journey, had me stymied at first. Lots of writing, lots of crossing out, lots of squeezing in teeny tiny words above those crossed out lines, and I finally came up with this:

A disreputable rogue finds the love of a lifetime in the one woman he can never have — his best friend’s mistress. 

Hm not half bad there. Okay, the meeting itself went rather smoothly. I felt right at home in the, warm, welcoming and professional group, and definitely plan on visiting again. I am not only saying that because I won the drawing for these lovely blooms right here:

Free flowers, that's how to welcome visitors.

Free flowers, that’s how to welcome visitors.

It was when SueAnn and I hit the parking lot that things got interesting. Flat tire. SueAnn figured we could limp along to the nearest service station, but reversed her decision and direction and we headed back to the parking lot. There was a quick fix kit in her trunk, which we both gave the old college try, but the green sludge in the squeezy bottle refused to go into the actual tire.

actual green slime

actual green slime

In my family, the words “dripping green slime” are a way of expressing barely contained anger, but there was none of that as SueAnn and I waited for AAA to show and swap flat tire for spare tire, which turned out to be the smaller donut sort. With weather thankfully warm for the day, we waited as only writers can – picking apart bad endings to good movies and TV shows, and fixing them. By the time AAA did show, we had a couple more stops before I could head home and charge straight into writing.

at least we tried

at least we tried

Adventure over? Not a chance. SueAnn wanted to get the real tire fixed and back on, which makes sense as she’s off on another adventure with Mr. Porter after she drops me off at home, so we had a short detour to the place from which her tires originally came.  There, we met an individual SueAnn has asked me to dub “Ridiculously Handsome Tire Guy.” We do not have a picture of Ridiculously Handsome Tire Guy, but SueAnn put him at “Derek Morgan level” (Shemar Moore in Criminal Minds) found herself distracted enough to momentarily forget how to speak English, which she assures me is indeed her native tongue (but sorry, SueAnn, “tire” and “photograph” are not synonyms, no matter that the gent in question seemed to catch her drift even so) and drop her purse. Somewhere out there, she’s sure, a romance novel is missing its cover model.

ridiculously handsome writer's dog

ridiculously handsome writer’s dog

Quick stop by Chez Porter to feed Bailey and make sure he got to :ahem: visit the great outdoors (and pose for a photo op) and then time to brave the traffic to drop me home. What do I do immediately upon arrival? Yep, head for they keyboard. A day spent talking writerly things gets me excited to go home and put all that theory into practice. The more I live with that one line blurb, the more I like it. Should be a fun time at camp this year.

Update: Flowers now exiled to office, as incessant sneezing makes me suspect I may be allergic. Balcony door now open to let in the evening air as I snuggle under a blanket to further explore story doings.

Typing With Wet Claws: Crunching the Numbers Edition

annabowling Leave a comment

Hello, all. Skye here, for another Feline Friday. Exhausting week this time, with Uncle sick, but he is feeling much better now. It is still cold outside, even though there are some birds outside the living room window. If I could jump (I do not, because I have special paws) I would be on the window seat all the time, because birds are very, very interesting.  The art across from Anty’s favorite seat at the coffee house has changed. It is now this:

i1035 FW1.1

This week, Anty has been writing a lot. There are the blog posts, here and elsewhere, and she is hard at work on a new book. There is a lot that goes into writing a new book, besides only telling the story. Since Anty writes historical romance, she has to make sure that she has the historical details right, but not in a boring or heavy handed way. The love story is the center and the history has to come second to that, but still provide versimillitude. That is a big human word that means it has to feel right. Anty  has to get enough of the historical flavor to make sure the story fits its time and the people don’t think, talk or behave like modern humans, but still in a way that modern humans can understand and relate to them. Anty usually does have kitties in her books, and I am her consultant. I make sure the kitties are still kitties, because we do not change that much, no matter the time period.

Humans, though, are another story. I did not mean to put that pun in there, but i will let it stay. The humans who are in Anty’s stories…how should I put this?  They have problems. Personally, I think that if they  had more kitties, they would have fewer problems, but Anty says humans without problems are not that interesting. I guess she knows best, because she has books out and I do not, but I still think there should be more kitties. I hear there may be dogs in this book. I am not sure how I feel about that.

Yesterday, Anty spent a chunk of time figuring out how old the important humans in her story were. Sometims, Anty gets anxious about certain details. If she gets it wrong, does that mean the book is doomed? Is it too much detail or maybe to little? Is this marketable? Maybe she should write something more on trend (I have to remind her that is a very silly human concern, since trends in books are really about two years old when they hit the shelves, and that is slightly less than one third of my age. I say she should write the story and she says I am right and then she goes back to making clicky sounds on the keyboard and I can take another nap, because i find that sound soothing.)

Where was I? Oh, right, human ages. That involves numbers, and Anty does not like dealing with numbers. She would rather tell stories, but because her stories are historical, that means she is going to have to deal with numbers at some point. Anty likes to have clear boundaries when she writes. That means she needs to know how old her people are, what year it is, and things like that. Vague definitions make her fidgety, and I pick up on that, so really, if she wants a happy kitty, she needs to deal with this. Yesterday, she was on the glowy box, and her friend , Vicki, helped her figure out the ages.

Anty was having problems figuring out who was how old. Vicki is good at noticing when Anty goes into a loop (that means worrying about the same thing over and over again so that no writing gets done.) She suggested Anty look up the average age for first marriage of male heirs of peers during the era in which her story takes place. (Anty had already figured out the year the story has to take place by looking at historical events that impacted her people, so she knew when to look for this.) The answer was late twenties to about thirty. The hero in this book is a second son, so these figures did not apply to him, but it did apply to a secondary character, and Anty knows that the hero is two years older than that character, who is two or three years older than the heroine, so there was a lot of math involved, and talking about that is tiring me out, so I can only imagine what it was like for her.

Anty and Vicki agreed that it all depended on how old Anty wanted the heroine to be (Anty would say it’s not how old she wanted the heroine to be, but how old she is, because that’s the way people show up in her head, and you can’t go around telling people how old they have to be, because that’s not the way that it works. Plus, I think that would be rude.) and they could figure out everybody else’s ages from there. First round of numbers Vicki came up with, Anty shot down because everybody felt too old. So, Vicki asked Anty (Vicki has known Anty and the way Anty writes for a long time, so she is smart about things like this) how old the hero feels. Anty said twenty-seven, which is what Vicki also thought, so that meant the other human male was twenty-five and the heroine twenty-two or twenty-three. This is, some might be surprised to find out, not out of the ordinary for a woman to be that age at that time and not yet married. These are things humans find out when they do research.

Anty is giving me that look again, and I want a snack, so I will wind this up for now. If you did not get to read Anty’s post last week at Buried Under Romance, about how to pay tribute to a favorite author who has gone to Rainbow Bridge, it is here. If you are new to the blog and have not read her posts on remembering BertriceHuman, they are here, here, and here.

That is about it for this week. Until next week, I remain very truly yours,

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

Until next week...

Until next week…

Typing With Wet Claws: The Book, Not the Kitty Edition.

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Hello, all. Skye here for another Feline Friday. I know my picture this week is fuzzy, but so am I. This has been a sad week, because Anty had somebody she loved go to Rainbow Bridge. That would be a human, not a kitty, the human who wrote the book for which I am named. My Anty first read that book a long, long time before I was born, but she and my Mama, who also likes that book very much, both agreed that its title fit as a name for the new family addition. The Skye O’Malley in the book was a brave, smart, beautiful female who had many adventures and triumphed over much adversity, to find true love at last. I like to think that fits, but there are some differences, too.

the book, not the kitty

the book, not the kitty

HumanSkye -I will call her that to avoid confusion, and I will still be me- lived a long, long time ago, in a place called Ireland and a lot of other places, like England and Algiers. I do not know where any of those places are. I am seven and was born in Massachusetts. I live in New York now. HumanSkye was both friends and not friends with a very powerful human named Elizabeth Tudor, who Anty tells me actually lived in the really real world. I know there is a difference between really real world people and those who live in writers’ heads like Anty’s characters do. HumanSkye was born in Bertrice Human’s head, but she was inspired by a really real world person named Grace O’Malley.

Writers, I have found, do that quite a lot. They will take something from the really real world and then make it into something else. Sometimes this is a person, like with HumanSkye, and sometimes, it is a place or part of a song or a picture. The writer takes many different things and mixes them together until they become one new thing. This is how books get made. My Anty is working on a book right now, and that  means that she is gathering lots of inspiration.

One thing she likes to do is make soundtracks for her stories. That means that she finds a lot of songs she likes, that sound like her characters or what happens to them, and she puts them in order and listens while she writes. Some writers do not like to listen to any music, or any music that has words, but Anty says the words do not bother her, and the lyrics mean something, so they are fine. I like when she plays very soft music. That makes me want to curl into a ball at her feet and take a nap. it is very relaxing when she does that.

Another thing she does is to make Pinterest boards with pictures of people and things that look like her story. I would share those with you, but she says that if she makes the board public, then she does not want to work on the story anymore, so they must stay private until the stories are done. She can put music with pictures on those boards, too, although I do not know how that works. Sometimes, she will stare at pictures and listen to the same song over and over and then she will write a lot. That is part of the writing process, too.

So is watching TV shows that she really, really likes. One of those is Sleepy Hollow. She says she now has an idea for a new colonial book, but it must wait until her current book is finished. She wrote about the season finale, which may or may not also be the series finale, here. It looks like this:

season finale or series finale, what do you think?

season finale or series finale, what do you think?

Anty had two other bits on Heroes and Heartbreakers this week. First, she shared her favorite read of February along with other H&H bloggers here. There are a lot of books in that post. I do not know how many of them contain any cats, though. They should put things like that on the website. More cats would read them then, I think, but nobody asked me.  There are also links to posts Anty wrote before about BertriceHuman’s books in the news roundup here. She will put links up later in another post with all posts where she mentions BertriceHuman, so they are easy to find. Maybe her best read for March will be one of BertriceHuman’s books. Or maybe the new Nick Hornby. She likes his books very much, too. She likes a lot  of books, which is probably a good thing for a writer.

One more thing before I sign off. Any has talked to SueAnn Porter and said that Bailey may be coming here for a posting playdate soon. I think that is very exciting, and also a little bit scary. If you know of any questions you would like to ask a writer’s pet, please let me or Anty know, and maybe we will use it.

Okay one more one more thing. Anty was quoted -twice-  on Peter Andrews’s blog, How to Write Fast, here. Anty first met Mr. Andrews a couple of years ago at the NECRWA conference, and they had a very interesting conversation about writing and reading. She took his workshop on how to write fast and still uses some of what she learned there in her writing now.

Anty needs the computer back, so that is all 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…

Remembering Bertrice Small, Part Two: As a Writer

annabowling 7 Comments

Bertrice Small was the first professional writer I met in person, and long before I knew that writing stories of loves long ago even could be a job, but as soon as I figured it out, I knew that was what I wanted. I never had anything but support from this lovely lady, even when that support took the form of tough love.

The summer I was sixteen, I had the great good fortune to assist Bertrice Small’s assistant, which mostly consisted of answering fan mail, an experience I still cherish to this day.  This up close and personal view of what a working author actually does, besides the making up stories part only cemented my desire to pursue writing. I spent part of every weekday at the desk in the basement, so much that Bertrice joked that I was going to turn into a mushroom, spending all my time in the dark, underground. As I’m sun-sensitive, that was not a hardship, and I found the whole process fascinating. My “job” consisted of typing out responses to every piece of fan mail, already pre-sorted into one of three prepared responses. No email in those days, and so I had to physically type each reply from a template.  There were three of those: one for readers who read the latest book and liked it; one for readers who had read the book and did not like it (very few of those) ; and those who had read their first Bertrice book. There were special flags for letters that required a personal response beyond that, and those had to go back upstairs before I could stuff the envelopes and send them on their way.

I became a fan of her fan mail that summer. The stories in those letters proved beyond the shadow of a doubt the profound connection romance authors and their readers share. I still remember the letter from one reader who wanted to name her daughter Skye, but her husband vetoed the choice and they settled for another heroine-worthy name. Years later, I worked at a nursery school at college where two of the preschool students, sisters, were named Silver and Skye. Skye would have been old enough to have been born after that letter, so I always wondered if perhaps their mom was that reader. I never found out, but it’s possible.

That summer, I also had free run of Bertrice’s research library after hours (apart from the shelf that held what she needed for her current book) and it was kid in a candy store time. I had no idea what I was doing, so pulled books down at random and paged through them, hoping I’d catch the magic.  Knowing that these books I held in my hands had played a part in creating my favorite novels was a thrill and a half. The best part, though, was yet to come.

I had to write. That was a rule. At the end of the summer, Bertrice would read what I had written and give a fair and honest critique. I. Was. Terrified. I wrote what would be termed YA today, even though that wasn’t what I loved to read (big lesson there – “write what you love” is as important as “write what you know”) and there is no agent or editor pitch that will ever be as nerve-wracking or mean as much to me a sitting on that couch in her office. She pulled no punches, and I am glad she did not. She pointed out every plot hole. Every character blunder. Questioned my adjective choices. She told me to get a dictionary and learn how to spell. She told me to say “fuck” or don’t say “fuck” and not to be coy with allusions. She told me I needed to live if I was going to write (that one, I can safely say I have done) and told me I was going to be terrific one day. I left that meeting emotionally bruised and encouraged all at once. I wanted to write after that, even more, and I did.

I chucked the YA and started a historical romance. Heavily patterned after her own books, I will admit, to the point of pastiche, but here’s the thing. I was hungry to write that book. Starving for it. I raced home from first high school and then college classes to pound out new pages every single day. I lived and breathed that hero and heroine. Bertrice said I could call her anytime with writing questions, and I did. No, I could not give my Tudor era English hero a French first  name.  Yes, politics of the time were interesting. She answered a lot of questions about the industry and gave me a lot of homework. She never saw that manuscript, which now lives in a storage unit where it can’t hurt anybody, but being treated, not as a kid on a whim, but as a serious novelist myself, did more to sustain me than anything else during that writing.

Fast forward double digit years, and we were both at the Long Island Romance Writer’s Luncheon. Mentor and aunt at once, Madam Bertrice asked me which editors or agents I had wanted to meet at the event, and charged me to stay put. “I’ll go get them,” she said, and she did. “This is my niece,”
she said. “She’s going to pitch her book.” She told them she always thought my wanting to be a romance writer was a phase, but it obviously wasn’t, so she’d do what she could. The rest was up to me. She did it again at another luncheon, a year or so later. Both times, I got requests for full manuscripts. No sales from those encounters, but valuable input and experience.

I’m sad today that I won’t ever be able to hand her a paper copy of one of my books, but the fact is, my books, both past and future, exist in part because Bertrice Small was a wonderful writer, an encourager, a tough teacher and a lover of the great genre she helped to build.