Her Last First Kiss

Hey Hey It’s A Monday

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New office chair (thank you, Ursula) is in place, it is super comfortable, and my back has already sent out hand-written thank you notes to my brain, which my brain greatly appreciates. I am having a weird hair day. Not a bad one, merely a weird one, which is why there are messy buns and beak clips. I am wearing both an infinity scarf and sandals, a sure sign that it is September in New York. I have learned, only about five minutes ago, and a day after I used a wrench to open a particularly sticky bottle of seltzer, that what I thought was a mini-mousepad is actually a bottle opener grippy thing.

I  have had said grippy thing since the NECRWA conference this past spring, and it took me that long to figure it out. If I hadn’t noticed that the surface of the supposed min-mousepad, which should have been smooth (which is kind of the whole point) was textured and kind of rubbery-pebbly, but in a grid-ish sort of fashion rather than actual pebbles, I probably still wouldn’t know, and would keep toting the darned thing around, rather than tossing it in the kitchen drawer where I now know it belongs. This also means that mini-mousepad goes on my list of desired (preferably pink) computer accessories.

This was not my only d’oh-worthy discovery of the afternoon. The notebook in which I made notes that I had planned to transcribe today? Left it at home. Okay. Slightly different focus to today’s session, then. When packing my tote, my brain was too busy with the “is it time to put away the summer tote for the season” debate to notice that I had not actually brought the notebook that was the whole point of going out, but I can do what’s on the index cards for now and fill in the rest when notebook and I are in the same place. I will admit to a small voice in the back of my head, whispering that it’s a sign I should instead use the time to watch Friday Night Lights, but I am not listening to that voice during writing time. Writing time is writing time, and much as I love spending time with Coach Taylor and the gang (mostly Tim; came for Jason Street, aka Future Mr. Amber Holt, stayed for Tim Riggins, still don’t care about football, but love the passion for the game) they are not going to get this book written. That’s my job. I show up, Hero and Heroine show up, too, and we all hit the field…er, page, which is when the magic happens.

I like knowing where I’m going, how I’m going to get there, and who’s going with me. I’ve tried pantsing, but as a person who has actually sustained physical injury from putting on pants, that is not a tactic that works well for me. There is a component of flying into the mist when following the original idea -the best characters and/or stories are the ones that find me- but when I know where the journey of a particular book is going, I want to know how we’re going to get there, what the stops are along the way, and leave enough room for some fun surprises.

Learning to ask for what I need is a new thing for me, and that includes asking myself…and listening. That’s scary. What do I need right now? Do I need to touch paper? Step away from the keyboard, touch some paper. Maybe my version of black on white that I need right now is actually purple on pattern. Am I not physically comfortable right now? If I am, how so? Am I hungry, angry, lonely or tired? Do I not have what I need to know what happens in this scene? If so, I can go get it. Maybe that means popping online, to check a bit of information. Maybe it means I need to talk about it to a write friend, online or face to face. Maybe the missing bit is at the bottom of a cup of tea or at the end of a movie or TV episode that has the right feel, or that actor who does that thing in that scene. Maybe it’s in the middle of the bridge of that song I can’t get out of my head, or somewhere in the book my brain keeps going back to when I don’t yank its leash.

I’m at the end of my blog time for today, so I’m going to take some inspiration from Skye’s weekly signoff and say that’s about it for this entry. Sometimes, what I need is a good pointless babble, which, in reflection, makes it not that pointless after all. There is an inherent order into unexpected side trips, as long as they get me back on the main road, and I am going to call that good enough.

 

Book Brain

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“Your hero and heroine should be different people at the beginning and the ending of a book. Otherwise, what’s the point?”

— Rebecca Zanetti

 

Right now, half of me would like to retire to my comfy chair and split my time between binge watching Friday Night Lights and making a dent in my huge TBR mountain. The other half wants to dive back into Her Last First Kiss and rip Hero and Heroine’s lives to shreds before they get their happily ever after at last. The power balance fluctuates, but here’s a short list of things I have done because my head was in the book, rather than non-book tasks at hand:

  • smacked head into faucet because I forgot I was washing my hair when an idea hit
  • eviscerated rather than pierced three bratwurst while cooking
  • had three water bottles going at one time because I forgot where I put them
  • put one (full) water bottle in the cat food section of the pantry and left it there
  • missed my “exit” on the walk home from breakfast with N
  • sent the same EARC to my Kindle ten times, possibly more, but that’s where I stopped counting
  • asked for a login name reminder for a site I visit frequently, because I couldn’t remember what I’d used. It was my name.

Yeah, this is boring me now, and I don’t have time to start a whole new blog entry from scratch, so we’re going forward from here. Point is, I have book brain, and I like it. This book is real. It’s happening. That’s a good thing.

Yesterday, at my weekly breakfast with N, I’d brought Big Daddy Precious and a mess of index cards and sticky notes, to take her through this draft’s bones. I know I’m on the right track because the chapters sorted themselves out, and I have numbers and color codes, and getting to the page is something I look forward to, rather than dread. I don’t have to ask myself if I can do this book thing, because I am doing it, and if I show up, Hero and Heroine show up, too. Pretty sweet deal. Here’s what it looked like by the time I packed up to go home, about halfway through the whole story.

hlfknotebook200916

 

See all those sticky notes? There’s a color coding system, but that’s another story. I read the pages through to N, and she stopped me at a certain point. Heroine can’t do Thing A. Huh, wuh? My story, N. I’m the one who gets to say about what goes on in it, but no, N was right. See, Heroine would normally do Thing A, like she did all the other times, because she honestly believed there was no other option, but she’s different by this part of the story, so different that she can’t do Thing A anymore, because Thing A would be wrong now. She’s had a pretty big paradigm shift, so yes, N was right. Now that Heroine has gone through an irreversible change, she’s going to take a different tactic. She’s not going to do Thing A. She’s going to, for the first time in her life, do Thing B, which scares the crap out of her, but it’s her chance to do something right. Hence the flurry of sticky notes and pencil scribblings in the margin, a zig where there was once a zag, and darned if I don’t now love the scene I used to like. For a writer, there is no jolt of energy quite like that.

As fine a gentleman as Mr. N is,  I have to admit that my reaction to his joining us, to spirit N away at the end of our time together, was, “already?” Noooo, I want to keep going. Forbidding a friend to go adventuring with her own real life romance hero is something this romance writer cannot do, so they departed. I applied pencil to paper a while longer, and headed back home, foggy about my route, because I had Hero and Heroine on the brain. My body traversed, more or less, the distance between Panera and home, with detour through the park’s garden. Where I really wanted to be was back in the book, figuring out how much Heroine doing Thing B  instead of Thing A would butterfly effect the rest of the book, so there was some degree of wandering involved.

When I got home, I crashed into an impromptu nap, and when I woke, I was hungry for both food and story. I needed to take in story, in book form, in TV form, in music or wherever else I could find it. Writing eats that kind of stuff, and I came out of that nap in starving hyena mode. It’s a good feeling, after years of dragging myself along by my fingernails. Maybe there is some sort of formula, if I look through the stacks of notebooks I’ve filled about the whole process of getting back up on the horse. I’m still not sure when one can declare oneself officially back on, if there is such a thing? Completion of an initial draft? Final draft? Submission? Sale and/or self-pub? Certain types or numbers of reviews? Distribution through certain outlets? Something else? I’m not going to stress about that, but stay in the moment, fill those pages with sticky notes and pencil scribbles and go scene by scene. Right now is right now, and that’s where my time and attention has to go. If that means a few water bottles in the pantry, duplicate ebooks and opening multiple cans of cat food at one time, I am okay with that.

Theory and Practice

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The cookie, for those who are wondering, is coconut chocolate chip. I wasn’t going to get a cookie today, but I had a deal with myself that, if there was anything with coconut in it, I could make an exception. I wasn’t going to wear my long beige skirt yet again, but it’s comfortable, I strongly dislike wearing pants, and always have. I think it’s in my blood. Anyway, the point I’m getting to, besides the fact that I did have a topic in mind for today’s post, over the weekend, but cannot, for the life of me, remember it now, is that things change. That’s a given.

Since I like to plan and organize, earlier in the week, I made lists of things I need to get my office at its peak functionality. Big things like replacing the ancient desktop that is out for blood (specifically mine) and refuses to recognize the internet, medium things like deciding whether it’s better to find a way to get the super awesome office chair out of the storage unit 200 miles away but will not fit in the back seat of Housemate’s car, down here, or drop a few bucks at a local retailer to get an okay chair, because the makeshift camp-chair-with-smushed-pillow no longer works, to smaller things like a wireless mouse. I have never had a wireless mouse. Besides my intrinsic distrust of technology (apart from technology that will let me play The Sims) I’ve always had a thing about wireless whatever.

Never saw the point. The electronics dude at the retailer I visited when my mini mouse died advised me away from a wireless mouse for a couple of reasons, battery life included. Valid points, and I appreciate his expertise, but I don’t like hauling around a big, corded mouse when I’m on the go. Big, corded mouse is also gray, and having a big glop of gray wires is not my favorite part of taking laptop pictures. Hence, need for pink mini mouse, no tail (Does that make it a hamster?)

My original plan for today was to get all the handwritten notes I made for Her Last First Kiss from last week, transcribed, so I could send them to N, in anticipation of our breakfast tomorrow. That’s not what happened, or it hasn’t happened yet. I had some time sensitive tasks to clear off my desk. I critiqued the chapter a writer friend had sent me, looked over a pitch for a workshop Melva and I would like to try out at a regional conference this year, and wrangled a couple of other tasks. Researched for an upcoming H&H post, and took care of some domestic issues before they became tornadoes. Much easier to think and write when the environment is not in chaos. While doing all of the above, I also  reminded myself that the transcription didn’t have to happen today.

It will happen. That’s how books get written, at least my books, and, as it so happens, those are the only ones I can control, so works out well that way. I’ve already told N I’m going to bring the notebook and scene cards with me, so we can talk about them. Some things are, very likely, going to change. We’re going to spread the cards out on top of the table between us, move some around, combine a few, maybe throw out a card or two. What’s going to go in that document after we talk isn’t going to be exactly, word for word, what I have there now. Pretty close, I’m sure, but I will have picked up threads I didn’t know I’d dropped, ensured that everything planted in the beginning is harvested in the end, and then…then I go forward. This phase of creating the book will be over, and it will be time to print things out, go scene by scene, and Get This Done.

That’s both scary and exciting. There have been more manuscripts I can count that didn’t make it this far. I miss some of them. Others weren’t meant to be, but all were started with the best of intentions. This one…this is one of the books that found me, instead of the other way around , and  it talks back. I wanted Hero to be blond and a musician. He told me, pretty soon into our venture, that he was ginger and an artist. Pen and ink, thank you, though he’s done other things to get by, but that’s his natural bent. Heroine, too, wouldn’t get in line, and, now, I’m glad that she didn’t, because I like her the way she is, rather than the way I’d originally wanted her to be.

Not that different from looking at the schedule made at the start of the day, before the day actually started day-ing, but there’s something to be said for rolling with the punches and taking things as they come. It all gets done, not always in the order I’d intended, but what I’ve got is what feels right, and I am okay with that.

 

One Guard Had Red Hair, or, File Hide and Go Seek

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Confession time. I still have not reinstalled Spotify on my laptop. This is not because I don’t use it. I do. Rather a lot, actually. That’s part of my maximalist tendency. I want a lot of stimulation, and I want as much of what I love around  me as possible. So, there is usually music playing while I work. Sometimes, I listen-listen, sometimes, I let the feel of the music seep into me and couldn’t tell where one song ends and the other begins. Sometimes, my brain is on autopilot, but silence-silence can often make me edgy. So, music, or, sometimes, ambient sound, is a must, but actually reinstall the music program I use every single day? Eh, there are workarounds.

Note that I did not say terribly convenient workarounds. I’ve had somewhat spotty luck with the web player, which irks me, because that would be easy. Instead, I usually use my phone, which is fine, but, right now, the battery is charging, and phone itself is picky about what chargers it likes and what ones it doesn’t. My tablet is not speaking to anything today, because it’s busy downloading speech to text (or the other way round?) utility that it is only now letting me know it has. Will have to investigate that later, because if there is one thing I can do, it’s talk. Also write, which is like talking on paper. Or pixels. Whichever works at the moment.

One would imagine (for those who are curious, I am listening on the web player, while writing on the laptop. Today’s picture is of my secretary desk, because there is too much light in the living room, where laptop and I currently are. This is what I see when I sit down to write my morning pages, complete with morning pages book.) that it would be easier to download Spotify on the laptop, so it would be there, and I wouldn’t have to go through two other devices and opening another browser, but that is not what is happening today. Today, I am searching files for the pages of Her Last First Kiss scene stuff that I know I wrote at some point on the long weekend, but then promptly put somewhere they should not be, and thus am spending the time looking for them.

This is not the worst I have ever done. Back when life was caregiveapalooza, I lost the manuscript for an entire book,  which I only found out when I got an email from my then-editor, reminding me when they needed the final copy. Ulp. I called in hardcopies from my critique partners, and reconstructed the entire book, save for one scene that had not made it to critique group. That one, I had to build from the ground up. After a fifteen minute panic session, an email to a writer friend, and a moment of silence, I plopped myself back in the desk chair and summoned a memory –any memory– of the missing scene.

Only one thing came to mind. One of the guards had red hair. Okay. I could work with that. I typed it onto the screen. “One of the guards had red hair.” Which meant there was more than one guard, if I needed to make the distinction, and I knew where that book’s hero was going, since I had the scenes before and after it to give me my start and end points. So I threw things onto the screen in a big firry glop, all out of order and mushed around. Then I mushed them into place, amid much grousing and determination, and, eventually,  the scene came together. That book, for those who are curious, was Orphans in the Storm, and the scene, well, some secrets, I am going to keep, but it’s not hard to figure out.

It’s been some time since Jonnet and Simon’s story was the new kid in town, and I’m glad we had each other when we did. Though the books are not in any way related, Hero and Heroine would not be here without those two crazy kids and their supporting cast, because every step in the journey is one step closer to the destination. This morning, while I was going through my files, looking for the now-missing scene stuff for HLFK, so I could show it to N, and couldn’t find it, my first reaction was not panic. Instead, it was “huh, can’t find that right now,” as a matter of course, and my instinct was to take out my all purpose (also called commonplace) notebook and start making a bullet point list of everything I remembered from the missing sections. That, I took to breakfast with N, ran it past her, and, even if I don’t find the original document (I suspect the Scrivener trash file) Plan B, and a rather painless one, at that, is to transfer my bullet point list to a new document and continue on from there.

Train of thought is rapidly derailing here, because I am now counting down the time to when Housemate and I make a library run. Also because I would really rather get back in there and mess with Hero’s and Heroine’s lives, figure out if Place was built to be Place, or if it was something else first, because that is going to affect where Room is, and all that other good stuff. Mostly torturing Hero and Heroine at this point, but it’s okay, because I write romance, and we know everything will turn out all right in the end. Better than all right. Happily ever after. As long as we know the two lovers in a romance novel are going to come out on top, and together, we can handle the author throwing pretty much anything in their way along that journey, so it really isn’t that much of a stretch to see it the same way during the actual writing process. All of which is my big fuzzy way of saying see you all tomorrow; time to go play with my imaginary friends.

Typing With Wet Claws: Hello September Edition

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Hello, all. Skye here, for another Feline Friday. Although the calendar says fall does not begin until the twenty-second of September, and this is only the second, by Anty’s measure, fall begins on the first of September, so happy fall. Anty is very happy it is fall. She had tea this morning, and even debated taking a sweatshirt with her when she did laundry (for warmth; it was not dirty, and she did not end up taking it, anyway, because it was not that cold out) so that is a pretty good indicator. She knows there are still some  hot days coming, but it is fall in her head, and that means that her super powers are back. Also, I am in full shed. That is the real sign of fall around here; the changing of my floof.

Rules are rules, even in fall, so, before I do anything else,  I have to talk about Anty’s writing (which is pretty much the whole reason I got this gig in the first place, and by that, I mean the blogging gig. I got the pet thing because the humans needed a kitty and I needed a home. Worked out pretty well, but I digress.) Her Buried Under Romance post this past week was about how humans who read more than one book at one time juggle having multiple reads at once. It is here and it looks like this:

BUR

If the link above did not work, this one should: http://buriedunderromance.com/2016/08/saturday-discussion-juggling-act.html

 

Then, since it is a new month, the humans at Heroes and Heartbreakers like to ask their bloggers what their favorite reads of the month were. Since Anty has been working on making reading a priority, it is not a surprise that, this month, she had to split her vote between two. One of them surprised even her. To find out what they are, and what other bloggers liked best this month, it is here:

http://www.heroesandheartbreakers.com/blogs/2016/08/hah-bloggers-recommend-best-reads-august-2016

and it looks like this:

HandHBestOf

I should probably mention that the picture is not one of Anty’s favorite reads for August. Anty did not read the book in the picture above; she read different books. It is still a nice picture, though.

Speaking of pictures, Anty  has been taking rather a lot of them. As Miss H said, when she found Anty’s Instagram, “So, basically laptops and cats.” Really, it is only one cat (me) and only one laptop, but there are also other things. Like this one, which is, as of this writing, Anty’s laptop background (it is still Ichabod and Abbie on the desktop; she refuses to change that one):

editingoutlineAug292016

 

Part of the reason Anty likes this picture as much as she does (if some of you think this picture looks familiar, you are probably right) is because she has found apps that let her make old timey effects on the pictures she takes, but another part of it is because of the subject. These are the outline pages Miss N printed out after Anty sent them to her, for the real, true ending of Her Last First Kiss. All of the handwriting you see on those pages is Anty’s, and it is in different colors, to indicate different things. If the ink is blue, it is about Hero. If the ink is Pink, it is about Heroine. If the ink is green, then it is about a supporting character or place. If the ink is black, it is a more general sort of note.

All of this will help Anty flesh out the story and smooth the outline (Anty’s outlines can get very detailed) into the next stage. This week, she will be fitting all the pieces together, and sending the whole deal to Miss N, to make sure she has not left anything out. I do not think it is a coincidence that this has coincided with the return of Anty’s autumn super powers. Anty will need a lot of energy and concentration to get this done, but she is excited to tackle the job. That is a big difference from how she has approached some of the other projects that she prefers not to talk about. I could talk about those, because I am the one writing this particular entry, but Anty reminded me who is in charge of how much treat I get (hint: it is Anty) so we will not be going there today.

Today, Anty will be using  most of her time to get all of her puzzle pieces in one place and make notes of things she will need to research, as well as check to see that recurring things do in fact recur, and are not a big surprise when it is not meant to be that way. This is where her love of story telling and organizing coincide. It will probably involve a lot of sticky notes and index cards. Anty actually does have sticky index cards, but only in one color (yellow, which is her least-favorite) but she has sticky notes that are not index cards and index cards that are not sticky notes, in a lot of colors, so she will be fine. I am pretty sure the plot board is going to come out of the closet. It is a big board and it folds. Sometimes, it falls over. It has not fallen over on me yet, but it might, if I get too close. That is one of the occupational hazards of being a mews.

That is also about it for this week, because the holiday weekend is coming, and Anty has plans with Uncle, once Mama goes off to visit Grandma, so Anty wants to make all the writing time count. Until next time, I remain very truly yours,

 

i1035 FW1.1

Until next week…

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

 

Rust, Clear Water, and Finding the Corners

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…and you write until the rust comes out of the faucet, and it’s clear water. Then you write down the clear water.

–Lin-Manuel Miranda

Furious writing in the margins is a good thing. Furious writing in the margins, that wraps around said margins, across the top, and down the other side of the page, is even better. After yesterday’s breakfast with N, and her critique of the revised outline for the last leg of Her Last First Kiss, (there is a unique sound made by a writer when the writer’s critique partner announces they have a few notes on the pages the writer sent them the night before, and then takes out six handwritten pages. Ulp is not quite it, but probably the closest approximation, only more whimper-y.) and possibly the longest detour I have taken yet on my way home (on the plus side, there are some gorgeous brownstones in this city) I arrived home, thankfully not overheated, which is rare for this summer, and ready to work. Bold and italics both needed here, because brain was firing on all cylinders and I needed to get home and make some serious notes.

There’s a special feeling for us puzzler writers when it clicks that, yes, we have all the pieces now, and we can move on to the  next stage of the game. I’d tossed the outline N’s way, to make sure there were no dangling threads (there were a couple, but a bit of chatter over tea/coffee and bagel/Danish) sorted that out right proper, and…yeah. This stage is done. I’m one of those writers who has to know where I’m going, and if that means splashing around in the shallows for a while, I am, at this stage in my life, fine with that. I’m not writing anybody’s book but my own, so I need to do what works for me. It’s like finding all the corner pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, because once one has the corners, one knows the boundaries of the image. Top and bottom and side pieces are also clear, and, once that happens, then the mess in the middle isn’t quite so…messy.

It’s actually kind of fun, fitting things where they ought to go, especially helpful when the characters do the heavy lifting. Going from “Hero has to find out Heroine is pregnant somehow, but I don’t know what he’s doing while she’s doing her stuff over here, blah, blah, self-flagellate, cry, etc, ” to “well, this time when she blurts it out to Other Character would be the worst possible way for him to get this information, so that has to happen, so that fits,” is pretty heady stuff. Since characters aren’t waiting in the wings, tapping their feet and waiting for their cues, that means Hero was doing something else, and since things have to come to a head with Supporting Character and Hero, oh, well, it makes perfect sense they were over here, doing that other thing, and then they saw/heard the thing and came to see what it was, and then, dun dun dun… Not fun for them, but good for the story.

Now it’s a matter of going back to the start and make sure everything that comes full bloom in the end is planted in the beginning, and that I properly tend it along the way. That is about as much as I know about gardening, so I will leave the analogy there. What I do know is writing historical romance. Now that I know Location is actually going to get some screen time, as it were, there’s research to do on that, and, now that it has a name, I have to go back and change references to “that place over there” to Location’s proper name. Still keeping names close to the vest on this one, because that’s what feels right for this story, at this time. It’s not big enough to play outside on its own, without holding onto Mama’s hand at this stage but, at the end of the next pass, I think it will be.

With the framework in place, now it’s time to start making it pretty. There’s still the whole matter of connecting the back part to the front part and that’s going to take some work and some loose leaf paper and some sticky notes (Plot board in my closet, I am looking at you.) and looking up from the keyboard to see the metaphorical story contractors standing there, in their hard hats and overalls, clutching metaphorical blueprints and wanting a minute of my time, because we’ve come up against a zoning ordinance or the  new guy brought the wrong lug nuts and has to go back to the hardware store, or unicorns are nesting in the hole dug for the reflecting pool, but those are occupational hazards. What’s important is that I know where the corners are, and the water coming out of my faucet is clear again. Next evolution.

 

 

The Enemy of the Good

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The perfect is the enemy of the good.

-Voltaire

 

Right now, I want a nap. Like really, really want a nap. At the same time, there is part of me entirely devoted to “we were without cable/internet for two and a half days, company is coming on Sunday, I have a Skype session with Melva tomorrow, Saturday’s workshop unlocked that part of Her Last First Kiss where I wasn’t sure what I was doing, and now I am, therefore, I cannot sleep and must do all the things. Right now. Preferably at once.”

Which, realistically, is not how things work. Our friends are not coming to see us because our apartment is a showplace (it is not) -we are going to a museum for that- and there is probably, realistically, plenty of time to get most of what I want to get done, done. For somebody as motivated by lists and planning as I am, this should be second nature, and, in some ways, it is. More on that later. Unless I forget. Because I did not outline this post. Winging it, because this is technically Monday’s post, but we did not have any internet on Monday; our service had been shut off by mistake (the subscriber the technician intended to disconnect was another house on our street; lots of moving in and out around this time of year in a college town, so understandable on their part.) Props to Tim from Time Warner Cable, for doing an A plus job, being respectful of scared-of-strangers kitty, and making sure everything worked its very  best before he left.

Okay, not entirely without internet, as one of this city’s perks is municipal internet, but we can only get one bar in our living room, so enough to get the essentials done, but not conducive to mindless web-surfing, falling down a Netflix hole, or other use that doesn’t have a specific purpose. On the plus side, it is enough to text chat on Skype while writing. I have come to know myself well enough to know when I need to blabber to another writer while I work, and when I need to be on my own, earbuds in and head fully in story world. Not a one size fits all approach to every writing session, I have found, and I like that part of the discovery process.

One of the items on my list today was to apply the lessons from K.A. Mitchell’s workshop at CRRWA, to nudge the gelatinous near-the-end part of Her Last First Kiss into shape. There is a particular joy only writers know, of getting our characters to the almost-happy place. Sure, they think they’re happy, but little do they know Everything Is About To Go Down The Crapper And It Is All Their Faults. That’s a fun part to write, even -maybe especially- in romance, because we already know things are going to work out in the end. Hero and Heroine are going to be FINE. They’re going to be better than fine. Because this is a romance, they get to live Happily Ever After (not that it means they’ll never have anything bad ever happen to them again for their entire lives, because how boring would that be? Talk about unrealistic. It means they’ll be together and happy about it, and face whatever comes, together.) so what chance does anything the author throws at them even have in the first place, right? No chance, but we writers have to make “no chance” look like “I have no idea how they’re going to get out of this one” (to the reader, that is; it looks plenty like that to the writer at this stage of the game.)

Which is what had me at my secretary desk, two notebooks open at once (notebook shown is the “official-because-I-say-it-is” notebook for this project (Abbie and Ichabod have nothing to do with this book; they’re just pretty, and they make me happy, so they can stay) and the entries in it are, hm, we shall say well-spaced, because this notebook intimidates me. It looks like this on the outside:

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It’s the big one on the bottom; I am lazy and not scrolling. Also, hello, my legs I did not crop out of the picture. Whatever..

In short, the notebook is pretty and fancy and I did not want to ruin it with my horrible straight-out-of-my-brain writing. Especially when it is of the “I have not idea what I am doing” variety and have trouble reading my own handwriting. This is slightly better when I use better pens, like fountain pens, which I use here, or rollerballs, which I used in the other notebook, to take notes in the workshop. Basically, that part of  my day consisted of me copying things from the workshop notebook (really my all purpose notebook) into the HLFK notebook and expounding upon/applying the points to Hero and Heroine’s story. At a certain stage of the story, in any genre, readers have some expectations, and if those expectations aren’t fulfilled, readers are going to be cranky. I do not want cranky readers. On the other hand, I would take cranky readers over no readers, because my standards in that department are not that high at this stage of getting back on the metaphorical horse.

Which is actually a big help to the writer. This stage of the game is where we do the thing. Okay. We can do the thing. How, exactly, do these particular characters do the thing? That’s what makes this book different from all the others out there, and there are a lot of them out there, but this one  is mine. Well, actually Hero’s and Heroine’s, but I am hoping you get the drift here. Even if you are cranky; if you are cranky, reading a good book could help. Or read one of mine. That would set you apart from the crowd. (cue saxophone version of “Ain’t Too Proud To Beg” in the background)

 

So, basically, that part of my day consisted of using the pointy part of my fountain pen to stab Hypercritical Gremlins (thankfully, they bleed ink) and rough out exactly how Hero and Heroine would most likely do this particular thing. Find the worst thing that could happen to them, and then make it happen. Well, that’s easy, and provides a healthy dose of schaudenfreud (which I probably misspelled, but refer to Voltaire quote above) -the only way it’s okay to be happy that other people are miserable. I need to run this by N, but I think I am on to something, and the formerly gelatinous part is getting to a nice degree of firmness and providing forward momentum. I am going to call that good.

One of Those Scenes

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Monday again, and I am mostly winging this entry, because A) “blog entry” is the next thing on my list, B) it’s almost lunchtime, and C) I am eager to get to one of those scenes in Her Last First Kiss.  By “one of those scenes,” I do not mean a love scene (in this case.) This is not a kissing scene (but it does get Hero and Heroine set up for their first kiss, aka the titular smoochification.) Heroine is not kindly disposed toward Hero at this point, who has no idea why she’s angry, but she’s about to fix all that.

This was actually one of the first scenes that came to me, when I was first stirring the idea soup for this book. That was back in the magpie stage, collecting every shiny thing that caught my storyeye, even if I didn’t know how they would all fit together in the end. Didn’t matter. It looked good, in it went. Musical playlists, pictures of interesting faces, places, assorted objects, historical costume (though I’ve accepted that the Georgian era seems to be my current default, for the time being, there’s still probably always going to be that phase of flipping through the dress of different eras before a hero or heroine tells me they’d wear this or that, and then I know for sure when the story is set. I once had to hunt down a whole setting from the hat that story’s heroine wore when she first presented herself. That was, alas, one of the stories in suspended animation, but it will wake at the right time. By now, I’ve learned how to tell which stories are likely to wake and which ones aren’t.) – well, okay, that was a bunny trail. New paragraph, because I have no idea where I was going with this now. Told you I was going to babble. Well, wing it, which is basically the same thing. For those who have been wondering, this is basically what I do in my morning pages book, too.

Right, back to the scene. This is one that has definitely come in layers. The first version took place on pretty much a bare stage, because my scenes often do that. With my involvement in theater when I was in school, this makes perfect sense. Run the whole production over and over and over, from table read to blocking to rehearsals to dress rehearsals to hair and makeup checks, to tech, and then the performance. Maybe that carried over into writing books. All I know is that this is how I work, so I wasn’t too bothered that the  movie screen in my head showed Hero and Heroine going at it (not that way; told you this isn’t a love scene…well, not that kind of love scene; love scenes don’t always mean sex scenes, but again, another topic for another day) on a blank stage with only the barest of props.

That’s all I needed at that time. The rest could build from there. Big prop tells me what Hero has been doing with his time when he’s not onstage. Small props that Heroine carries with her tell me not only how she’s feeling, but where she was immediately prior to making her entrance. Girl’s got a plan here, and dude does not have a clue, though he soon will, and that clue is only going to raise more questions. I love this scene, because it’s so them. It hurts both of them, pretty darned badly, but it also sets them up for moving toward something better. Not immediately, because this is a romance novel, and they can’t be completely happy until the very end (got that covered already; you’ll be fine, guys) but enough to give that spark of hope that maybe, maybe, the way they’ve thought life had to go isn’t really the only option there is. Of course, since we aren’t at the very end yet, taking that chance means making other things go horribly, horribly wrong, but it’s all part of the journey, and I’m eager to get on with this one.

That’s a good feeling, and it’s been a long time getting to where writing felt this good again. Far from perfect, and if I had my druthers, I’d have had this happen a long time before now, but maybe, like with Hero and Heroine, all the steps between where I once was and where I’m getting to now, were needed. Strengthening weak muscles, learning new things, adding new colors to the palette or new tools to the toolbox. New steps to the repertoire. All I know is that it’s Monday, and, instead of whacking my head against the keyboard, or putting out breadcrumbs, hoping to lure my characters closer, there they are, tapping their feet and sending me “hey, get over here, we want to talk to you” looks. I call that a good day.

 

Typing With Wet Claws: Autumn is Coming Edition

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Hello, all. Skye here, for my regular Feline Friday post. I would like to send out a big thank you to everybody who checked in to see how I have been doing since my big vet adventure last week. As you can see, I am not wearing the cone of shame, and my, um, stuff, has all been regular for the whole week. My humans have been shooting bad-tasting liquid into my mouth twice a day. They tell me it keeps infection away, which I do not fully understand, but they do feed me immediately after that, and I do understand food.

Since I am feeling much better now, Anty says I have to go back to talking about her writing first. This week, she is a little embarrassed (and by a little, I meant that she went down into the  neck of  her t-shirt like a turtle when she realized this and made a sound I am not sure I have heard before) that she did not post anywhere about her Buried Under Romance discussion post. She was excited about this topic, too, but then my butt exploded, which was pretty distracting for everybody, so I think she is allowed an oops on this one. In case you missed it, and you probably did, because she did not post anywhere, (but people who commented, you made Anty’s day) the discussion on treasures of the used bookstores is here and it looks like this:

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Apologies for the black part at the bottom. The crop tool is difficult to use when you have paws instead of hands.

 

This week, Anty has been hard at work on her turn with the Beach Ball. Anty Melva showed Anty the scene she had written, which made Anty take another look at her own scene, and want to change some things about it. Anty loves working with Anty Melva, so she does not mind, and then new scene will probably be better than the one she had originally written. It could have picked better timing, though, because Anty is feeling a little sluggish herself, something she gets when she is stressed and does not get enough sleep. She knows what to do when that happens, so there will be no cone of shame for her, either.

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Shoes like this are important in the Beach Ball’s story, so this picture may become a visual cue for when Anty talks about it. She is not sure about that yet. We will see.

 

As much as Anty likes playing with the Beach Ball, she is very eager to get back to Her Last First Kiss, which is going to require cracking open the old laptop, because that is the one with Scrivener on it, and Anty wants to preserve disk space on the new laptop. She is actually kind of paranoid about it, and cleans up extraneous files daily. By “kind of,” I mean “really, really, really.” She says she may crack in her resolve here and put Scrivener back on the new laptop, because the old one takes its time doing things, and she wants to keep the ball rolling.

Either way, Anty gets itchy when she spends too much time away from that story. One of the most important things she has learned on this long and winding road back to the active writing life, is that, the longer she is away from a project, the more challenging the road back will be. There have been times when the road has been so long and convoluted that she got so hopelessly lost that she might as well have ended up on the wrong continent. Her worst-worst nightmare in the really real world is to be stuck, alone, someplace from which she cannot get back on her own. The last few years have felt like that sometimes, and she is not willing to let that happen again. So, this time, she’s going to take steps to make sure that does not happen. Some of those steps, she is figuring out as she goes. This may be one of them.

I have faith in her, though, because I know a secret. Okay, it is not really a secret. Autumn is coming. That is the time of year when Anty gets her super powers back. As you may be able to tell in my picture, there is a floof on my neck. “Floof” is our family’s word for the bunches of fur I shed at one time. I always start around my neck, and when I start making neck floofs, that means I am going for the Big Shed. This time of year, it will mean shedding my sleek summer coat (well, as sleek as Maine Coons get; we are pretty fluffy all year round) and growing in my nice, warm winter coat. That will make me super fluffy.

Autumn also makes Anty super happy, because it is her favorite season (but when it is winter, she will say that is her favorite season. I think they take turns) not only because I start getting fluffier, the leaves turn pretty colors and fall on the ground, and there is pumpkin flavored everything (Anty loves pumpkin flavored everything) but because that is usually when Anty hits her stride and becomes more productive. Earlier this week, Anty spent an entire day piecing together everything she and Anty Melva have written on the Beach Ball, to see how far along they are.

Although Anty does not like to count words when she is drafting, Anty Melva wanted to know how far they were, so she found out. She was super impressed. They have already written a bunch and are well on their way. They wrote more than Anty thought they had; a lot more, actually. Now it is her job to finish this scene and send it to Anty Melva, so that they can be even further along. She knows what her next scene, after Anty Melva’s next scene, is going to be, so she can work on that one, too.

Her next scene for Her Last First Kiss is one of her favorites so far, so she is very eager to get deeper into that and add more layers. Since the vet said that the other part of my butt is not looking explodable, I think it is safe to say I am not putting any obstacles in the way of that scene for this coming week. which means that is pretty much it for this week. Until next week, I remain, very truly yours,

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Until next week…

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

Morning Pages, the Heir Presumptive, and the Young Pretender

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With one week left in my current, much-beloved morning pages book, the time has come to decide on which book will be its successor, and I’d like to say I’m closer, but a young pretender has entered the fray.  Going by only what I currently possess, the heir presumptive is this lovely bird and flower themed Punch Studio book:

Endpapers
Lined pages

 

That’s the endpapers in the first picture, internal pages in the second. Same images on all spreads, where I do prefer that they rotate. Banastre Lobster has no opinion on that.

Normally, the issue would be settled, but we have a young pretender to the throne, this spiral-bound Papaya! Art (the exclamation point is part of the name) gorgeousness, which would continue the Paris theme:

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Banastre must, of course, investigate.

My heart did a skippity-skip when I first saw this on the shelves at Barnes and Noble, and I don’t remember when the precious actually came home, but I knew I wanted to save it for something special. Since I still have absolutely zero ideas for any Parisian historical romances, morning pages would fit the bill. Inside pages are not lined, but are lovely.

First, we have this inside cover and first page, which presents a challenge when the discipline is one two-page spread for each day:

 

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Name and address on inside cover, obv, but facing page?

 

After that, we have these:

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None of the pages are lined, but those backgrounds…guh. Gorgeous. I want to put things on them. On the one hand, I think Hero would heartily approve of my appreciation of a pre-prepared background, because he used to do that kind of thing, but then again, his experience in Paris (hey, there is a connection!) was not exactly his favorite part of life. He wouldn’t know about the Eiffel Tower, though, as it was a century after his time. The clouds, though, and the design elements, those he knows, and the floral motifs fit nicely for a Georgian gentleman (and his lady.)

The question for me  here is, would the lack of lines be a problem? Also, what sort of pens do I want to use on these pages? They’re thicker than regular paper-paper, but not thick enough that I’d feel comfortable using Sharpies, at least not without an ink test, but I don’t want to sacrifice a page for that. Even so, the rotating designs excite me, and since I plan to increase to seven entries per week instead of six, that’s almost two rotations every week, but not exactly, so monotony would not be an issue. If the pages are visually inspiring, I am going to come to them with a better outlook, and, if stuck for what to put on the page, the images have suggestions right there. If I really need lines, I can draw them on with pencil and ruler. Fountain pens or rollerballs are my best educated guess on the pen issue. I’ve tried another book by this same maker, a different design in this line, with ballpoint, and I was so unhappy with that, that I set the book aside. Will need to resurrect that one, with a better selection of pen.

As I am writing this, I am listening to the Hamilton soundtrack. A writer friend will be traveling from Canada to NYC to see the show live this coming week. Right after the original cast departs, which does bring a pang, but, then again, there will be the energy of of the new cast making their debuts, and there will be the PBS documentary in October, and the original cast has been filmed, (I would totally go see this in theaters, if it were to be distributed that way) so it’s possible to get the best of both worlds there. I’ve been listening to the soundtrack, first as an Independence Day celebration (I know, Banastre, I know. Mama still loves you.) and then as part of my “immerse myself in the zeitgeist” plan of working through this draft.

Her Last First Kiss is set in England, in 1784, and Hero is not a soldier; he’s an artist, and he’s spent the pertinent years on the Continent (see Paris experience, above) so he’s pretty far removed from that business in the Colonies, but he does exchange letters with a cousin, relocated to Canada from New York, because expulsion of British and all that. Heroine is the product of a Russian father and English mother, was raised in England and identifies as British. These two have latched onto me in a way I’d been afraid I wouldn’t experience again after the time travel stalled, and I want to give them the very best story I can, which means I need to let their world seep into my writerblood.

The thing with writing historical romance novels is that the characters don’t know they’re in a historical. They think they’re in a contemporary. For Hero and Heroine, 1784 is their now. They aren’t wearing costumes; those are their clothes. People are people, no matter what century in which they do their people-ing, and that’s what I want to bring to live the most. If Hero were a 21st century person, he’d probably be glued to his phone, but he’s an 18th century person, so he carries around a portable lap desk so he can write letters and sketch/doodle. That was actually the first thing he showed me about himself, that desk. Writers, you understand how that works. Once he saw I was going to treat the desk right, then he came a little bit closer, like a stray cat when their benefactor moves the food dish an inch closer to the porch every day, until both cat and human are astonished that they are cuddling in the porch swing together.

If I were going to let Hero pick the new daily pages book, he’d pick the spiral bound. Which is, obviously, a lot thinner than the heir presumptive. Which may lead me to the same dilemma sooner, rather than later. I am not complaining.