writing process

Mapping the Wilderness

annabowling 4 Comments

Technically, I am dressed. Technically, I am wearing makeup. Technically, I have a new daily pages notebook, but I think this one is actually for some other purpose. My brain works like that, so I am not surprised.

Last night, I finished reading Follow the Heart, by Anita Mills, a historical romance set in England, New York, and Canada, during the French and Indian War. Technically, I have my third book hangover in the last few weeks. This is not entirely a bad thing, but it does leave me with the “crap, what do I read now?” part of the book hangover, that makes finding a new book, which I may very well love as much or even more than the book that haunts my storybrain, all that much harder. This is where making a reading list can come in handy, and, knowing me, I really should have one of those. At present, I do not.

This surprises me. I do extremely well with lists, and, since I do have a goal of reading more historical romance, especially eighteenth century historical romance, and specifically the kind of historical romance that does give me a book hangover, from characterization, author voice, etc, having a list would be a huge help, but I don’t have one right now. Part of me still wants to go on instinct/intuition on this one, or maybe I haven’t found the right organizational system yet. I don’t know if I can say that’s anything like falling in love with a gorgeous notebook, deciding it will be the perfect thing to succeed my current morning pages book, getting it home at last, and then my brain won’t quit going back to the two other notebooks I also looked at on that same trip.

The other notebooks had alternating designs on their page spreads, whether two or four variations, and this one (pictured above) has the same pages throughout. Gorgeous, but I’m exactly two weeks away from finishing the notebook I’ve been decorating myself, as it came with plain lined pages. I’ve found I do like the process of customizing the pages, but, if I put decorative tape on the same part of every page, then that adds bulk to that part of the page only, and the middles of the pages sort of cave in. That feels weird when I handle the book, and I don’t need that in my morning pages. Good experiment, glad I did it, but it doesn’t provide the same experience I want in this practice.

What I want in a morning pages book, is a book I can open, see the images already there, and pour out whatever has bubbled to the surface of my brain between waking and caffeine. Such books are out there, even though they may be buried in a sea of books with plain lined pages, and, thankfully, the hunt is part of the fun. It’s sort of like that when I have a focus for my reading, as I do now. That focus for reading is very similar to the focus for writing. Where there is focus, there is organization, and where there is organization, there is, oddly enough, liberty. When I know where the boundaries lie, I can go nuts within those boundaries.

This is one of the reasons I’m excited to greet a new week of writing historical romance. All I have to do is set my story before living memory (anybody here born before 1784? Anybody? Anybody? Bueller? No? Nobody? Going once, going twice…okay, cool. Before living memory, I’ve got.) and ensure that it has an optimistic and emotionally satisfying ending (aka Happily Ever After, or HEA, which, :consults outline and double checks against first draft: Yep, got that, too.) and I am good. I can do anything. An-y-thing.

Pretty exciting, that, and it definitely applies to Her Last First Kiss. This is one of those books that found me, while I was wandering about the metaphorical woods at night, oven mitts on my hands and buckets on my feet, in search of something that could be quickly written and marketable. Yeah, that’s not how things turned out. I wanted Hero to be somebody else entirely, but, thankfully, he didn’t listen to me, and now I have Hero. Heroine, too, looked at my plans for her, snort-laughed, and marched off in her own direction. The two of them found their own way to meet, and, by this time, I have learned that when the characters start mapping their own way through the wilderness, the most logical thing for me to do is to follow them.

Which leads me to today. The scene I’ll be writing was not in the original outline, and it was not in the original draft, but it roared to the surface during last week’s critique session, and has been poking me all through the weekend, when my brain was required for other things. Silly brain. don’t you know by now that the characters are going to make themselves known when and where they will? Today, instead of mucking my way through my imaginary friends sitting around a table and talking, I get to feel Hero’s throat go dry when Heroine shows up at the worst possible place, at the worst possible time, feel the mad flutter of her pulse, because this isn’t any easier for her than it is for him. At this point, it’s nononononononono, they do not want to be around each other, because if they felt the things they might be feeling, this is going to cause big trouble, not only for them, but for a mutual friend caught in the middle, who has no idea they are in the middle, and…:happy sigh: Yeah, I live for this stuff.

Reading the sort of historical romance that I like to write is helpful, even if not always easy, but story in, story out, is usually a good way to go. At some point, after I have my pages for the day written (or on a break in the middle) I’ll pet the spines of my TBR shelf and the still-boxed books from my friend’s visit, and something will come to the fore. If I show up, the books will, too. That’s my story. Pun intended.

 

In The Wee, Small Hours of the Morning

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This past weekend, we saw the removal of old light fixtures and refrigerator, the installment of new versions, other maintenance on our family abode, and welcomed friends-who-are-family from out of state (with juvenile canine, which was a huge plus) so this, again, was not the most writerly weekend, in terms of productivity. Since the only way to get these books written and on their way to readers, is to actually write/revise/submit/publish them, that means butt in chair and fingers on keyboard.

Normally, I like to write in the morning. I am a morning person. Eyes open, feet on floor, caffeine, breakfast, personal maintenance, and let’s go. This doesn’t always work out, in practice. Our family includes two other adults, and one feline, all who come complete with their own needs, schedules, preferences, and habits. All of us have to occupy the same space, often at the same time, so, often, there needs to be a plan B.

This Monday, I shot N a quick email, asking if we could look at some alternative schedules for the week. We’d agreed, last week, to up our goals to two scenes each for critique, and I was having issues with getting one up to snuff. Could we meet later in the week, maybe? Possibly meet twice, so we’d both have time to get the second scene ready? As it turned out, that was not viable, so we agreed on one scene, regular meeting time.

Ulp. This meant burning some midnight oil. In the critique group I’d attended for double digit years, back in the old country, I was known as the only person who had something to read every single time, no matter what. It wasn’t always on the same WIP, and it wasn’t always top of the line, but it always was. My current critique partnership is smaller, only myself and N, but I want to hold on to that title, so there would be pages, by any means necessary.

In this case, any means necessary meant that my butt remained in the chair until three in the morning. The scene wasn’t complete-complete, but I did get it to the point where I could blend it with the one that came after, and, I hoped, eliminate the need for a filler scene I didn’t want to bumble my way through. This is what happens on a second draft for me; dialogue from Scene C really belongs in Scene B, and it should come from Character Y instead of Character X, so that means Scene D is not going to work anymore, and we, instead, get Scene D.2. The jeweler who didn’t even have a name in the original draft of the scene is nowhere to be found, but that’s because Character Z showed up, doing the nameless jeweler’s job, and I kind of want to see him again.

There’s something different about writing in the wee small hours, when the rest of the two-legs in the house are sound asleep. Skye seems to approve of me burning the midnight oil. No choices needed over which human she wants to shadow, as the others are abed, and I am the only one doing interesting things. If I’m listening to quieter music as I work, I can take out my earbud (desktop earbuds are now singular earbud; will fix that soon) and we can listen together, without waking the house.

When I gave N this week’s pages, I told her most of them were written in the middle of the night. She said I should keep it up, as it seems to be working. Huh wuh? I’d worked on last week’s pages in the wee, small hours as well, which I had forgotten, or at least pushed away from conscious thought. N may be on to something. If the middle of the night is where I can get more writing time, then I want to take it. This may be one of the things I find out while doing the left foot, right foot thing through this whole writing process journey.

Like my mother used to tell me, “the more you do, the more you’ll want to do.” Since I was a kid when she told me that, of course I thought she was full of, um, stuff, and merely wanted a few minutes of peace (which, to be fair, she probably did,) but, as an adult, I am more inclined to believe she is right. The creative muscle, like any other muscle, gets stronger with exercise. The more times I can write, the more I can write, and then I get to jabber about fun things like book releases and cover reveals and all that good stuff.

First, though, comes the less glamorous part. First comes the late nights of squinting at the screen, refilling my travel mug full of ice water, and using the walk to the cat food dish as my chance to figure out what would happen if I moved this dialogue from one scene to another, and turned one of the extras into a supporting player.

Typing With Wet Claws: Rainy and Well-Lit Edition

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Hello, all. Skye here, for another Feline Friday. Today, the weather is cool and rainy, which is Anty’s very favorite kind of weather for this time of year, so that makes her very happy. Our landlord, Mr. Dave, came by yesterday morning, and changed the light fixture in Anty’s office, which is to say that the light now works (he is very, very tall and did not need a ladder. That is impressive.) Anty says that having an overhead light is like having a whole new office. Maybe now she will see how ugly the carpet is and want to get rid of it. A kitty can hope.

There is more to say about Mr. Dave’s visit (hint: it will involve me being put in my room for a while, but more on that later) but, as always, first, I have to talk about where Anty went on the interwebs this week. As usual, she was at Buried Under Romance on Saturday. This week, she talked about having a book hangover (she had two of them.) That post is here and its link on the main page looks like this:

BURgrumpycathangover

That brings us to Anty’s reading for this week, and, because it is the first Feline Friday of the month, we get to check in on her historical romance reading challenge. In that, Anty did not do that great. She read three books this past week, which brought her to only three books behind her goal for the Goodreads challenge (go, Anty!) but none of them were historical romance. (Anty, I am disappointed. Go read a historical romance right now. Preferably with cats in it.) She read two YA novels and a nonfiction book:

I should note that I did not spell Miss Moira’s name exactly correctly, but it is very difficult to hit the right keys to make special letters when one has paws (and special paws, at that) instead of hands.  Anty is still thinking about her review of Even In Paradise, because it is inspired by one of her favorite books/favorite miniseries, Brideshead Revisited. That story is kind of historical, because it takes place long before Anty was born, and there is a love story in it (maybe two, depending on perspective) but it is not a romance, so there is no HEA. It is actually pretty sad, but the good kind of sad, the kind Anty likes, the same way she likes cool, rainy days. Please put a sticky note on that, because I am going to come back to it later, but if you want to keep up with Anty’s Goodreads challenge, it is here. Right now, it looks like this:

GRReadingchallengemay17

Even though Anty did not read any historical romances this week, reading more historical romance is still one of her goals, and I am keeping track of the historical romances she reads throughout the year.

hr-challenge-2016-badge

So far, this year, Anty has read twenty-seven books. Fifteen of those have been historical romance. That is preggy good, but I think she can do better. If I count The Wicked City, by Beatriz Williams, that makes sixteen historical romances, but only half of that book is historical. The other part takes place in the 1990s, which, while before my living memory, does not qualify as historical. This is one of the pitfalls of not letting cats be in charge of important things. Still, Anty is still at more than fifty percent historical romance for her reading this year, so we are going to call that good, but she still needs to get in a few more historicals, because she is riding the line here.  She may want to consider re-reading some old favorites, to establish a firmer foundation.

Writing has gone well this week. Anty wrote a new part of Her Last First Kiss for her critique session with Miss N, which worked very well. Both the scene and the session, actually. Even though this will be a very busy weekend, she will have part of her brain working out how the next scene is going to go, because she thinks she can put out more this coming week than she has been. I believe in Anty. She can do it. She has also been working with Anty Melva, to make Chasing Prints Charming even better, so that it will be the best it can be when some lucky publisher would like to see more.

Anty has also started looking down the road and scouting out how she might best like to approach making a story world that she would use for three to five books. This is a very new thing to her, so she is probably going to make some mistakes along the way. She is also going to find a few things that will work. One thing she did this week was to start a private Pinterest board that has pictures of characters she thinks she might like to have live in that story world. Then she looked at it for a long time, until the pictures started to make connections in her brain. This may not make sense to people who are not writers, but people who are writers probably understand this very well. This coming week, one of her jobs is to list motifs or elements she might like to have in that world. Then she will probably throw those things into a Scapple document and see what connections form all on their own. I will be watching from the hardwood before the carpet starts.

Not tomorrow, though, because Mr. Dave is coming back, with Mr. John, who fixes things. They are going to take out our refrigerator and put in a brand new one. I expect there will be a lot of loud bangy noises. I do not like loud bangy noises. Uncle will be there, though, so it will not be too bad, but I will require extra treats because I will have to be a brave girl, even though I will be scared (also under the bed, full disclosure.) Kind of like Anty feels, trying out this new thing. I think we will both be okay, but it might not hurt if Anty had some treats of her own. I recommend gummi bears.

That is about it for now, so, until next time, I remain very truly yours,

skyebanner01

skyebye

 

Missed (Fictional) Connections

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I am a planner. I need to know where I am going, and how to get there, or I will spend an inordinate amount of time circling the metaphorical roundabout, looking for the on-ramp, until I run out of gas and abandon the car entirely and head off on foot. From there, I will probably wander the moors, my lantern held aloft in the whipping wind. In the distance, a wolf howls. In short, this never leads to anything good.

Especially not in the whole area of a sustainable writing career. Which means time to plan. Conventional wisdom, right now, at least as it applies to historical romance, is that the best chances of success (as in financial/sales/building reader loyalty) are with connected books; at least three books in the same story world, preferably five. The most marketable setting right now seems to be Regency England (not my cup of tea) followed by Victorian England (same; I suspect I was born without the nineteenth century gene) and :drumroll please: Georgian England. Georgian England, I can do.  Since I’ve already set my focus, for the time being, on eighteenth century romance, this gives me a place to start, and a foundation on which I can build.

My natural bent, and still my preference, after all these years, is still my first love, the standalone romance. One pair of lovers, one story, one HEA, wave them off into the sunset and then on to something else entirely. Basically, “Well, medieval France was nice :dust palms: I’m thinking…:drums fingers: Gilded Age New York next, and maybe pirates after that. Who’s with me?” That last bit might be best read in David Tennant’s Tenth Doctor voice. Go back and read it in that voice if you’d like. I’ll wait.

I also have a strong preference for selling books over not selling books, so this means it is an opportunity to learn new skills. Last night, I sat in my uncharacteristically quiet office, the window open, no music playing, only the sound of the rain on the street outside, and looked over some options. While I browsed blog archives by other, more successful, historical romance writers, I also poked around my private Pinterest boards regarding projects currently on the back burner. I opened the board I’d kept for my Regency crash-and-burn, and de-Regencied the whole thing in one go. Wiped out every single pin that pegged this story as taking place in that particular era, no exceptions, and, immediately, I felt…relief. Now, what about reimagining this story as a Georgian? Possibilities there. I think it could work. I’d have to move some things around, but the hero and heroine wouldn’t have too drastic changes, and their love story stays the same.

Which got me to thinking about other orphaned manuscripts, set aside at various stages. Would it be possible to take the most viable of those orphans and stick them in the same story world? Now that I’ve accidentally found out how to include pictures in Scapple, I can throw my various people on the same page, along with a bunch of things that inspire me in a more general sense, and start making connections.

This is new for me. Melva Michaelean and I have planned out two more books in the same world as Chasing Prints Charming, but this is the first time I’ll have taken on something like this on my own. It’s an adjustment, and a challenge. Can I make things work together? How are the characters going to fit together, when they’ve been in their own corners up until now? The only answer I have at present is that I will soon find out, and that I will likely surprise myself on more than one level. Thinking in terms of “and,” not “or” is a big help here. I can still write my standalone stories, and I am fully aware that those may be a tougher sell, or present a smaller return than linked books. I am fine with that. It’s a good balance.

The next step here is creating that world. Part of me thinks this could be fun and the other part already has a headache.  To bring this back full circle, I am a planner. I want to know what I’m doing while I figure out what I’m doing, and, at the same time, I want some of the connections to make themselves. That’s probably part of the whole flinging everybody on the same electronic whiteboard process. I already know I’m going to have more than one artistically inclined character, and probably more than one of the gents will wear or have worn regimentals at one time, but those are places where connections can start to form. Where they go from there, remains to be seen.

Last night, while poking around my desk, I found the bunch of index cards, pictured above, with chapter headings written on the top line of each card. I have no idea what project these were meant for, but rather fortuitous that they surfaced when they did. Maybe it’s a sign. What do you think?

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Thank you for your response. ✨

Want vs Need

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I had wanted, no, needed, this past weekend to be one of relaxing and well-filling. That was not what happened. Right now, my mind is scrambled, I have one eye on the clock, because, maybe, if I can get all my morning stuff done by noon (it is almost eleven-thirty now) then maybe I have a shot of getting this day back on track, even though what I want to do most at the moment is unplug from everything, go eat an entire pizza and dig into my towering historical romance TBR pile. Also maybe go to the park and look for baby waterfowl, because we are getting to that time of year. Baby waterfowl make pretty much anything more manageable. Do not ask me how; they probably don’t know, either.

Today, I am in the chair out of sheer stubbornness, and the fact that routine is a big help when things get domestic tornado-y. Butt in chair, check daily task list, put in earphones, select “Go To Work” playlist, and forward we go. Real Life Romance Hero is now chasing down Option C for our lunch date, as Options A and B fell through. There will be food and there will be RLRH, but that, at this point, is all I know.

After that, and after any more work needed on this blog post, if I’m not done by then, it is Her Last First Kiss time, which means rereading the chapter I brought to last critique session, which turned out to be me stuffing a ten pound cat into a two pound bag (that never ends well for anybody) and really needs to be two different scenes, one taking place before the last couple of scenes…arrgh. I’d planned to use the weekend to immerse myself in historical romance, but this weekend turned out to be one of those areas where theory and practice turned out to be two different things. I don’t like when things like that happen, but I dislike not-writing even more, and I dislike postponing critique session, so  my only option is to get the danged pages written. Which means I have to get in the mood. I’m not sure I’m going to get the chance to tuck in with a seasonally appropriate beverage and a few chapters of historical romance, because it’s Monday now, and Monday is back to work.

Last night, I gave Melva the thumbs up on our partial manuscript for Chasing Prints Charming, so today or tomorrow, she will send that on out. That will mean we have our first co-written story under consideration with two distinct entities. That’s a little scary.  It’s been a while. If I were listening to another writer tell me this same thing, I would make a game show buzzer sort of noise and tell them the fact that it’s been a while means it’s high time, and yay, them. That’s not the way I always talk to myself, though that may be a useful skill to acquire.

Only two hundred-ish words to get through this entry, and then I can talk to RLRH about lunch. After that, ready or not, it’s back to 1784, and splashing about in the shallows of a scene that is not in the first draft, but clearly needs to be (this is what second drafts are for, after all.) It’s not going to be perfect. This bothers me, but imperfect pages are a necessary evil. Comparing draft pages to pages in a published book, that has been through multiple editors, packaged, promoted, etc, is an exercise in futility. They can’t be the same, and they shouldn’t be. Where’s the fun in that?

Today, I am tackling this scene because I need to tackle this scene. Heroine needs me. She’s going to be ticked if I don’t spend the time with her today, and she’s not going to move forward if we don’t have this scene, which would mean a lot of her getting all grumbly and glaring at me and nobody is going to have any fun with any of that. I could put things off, but I think that would only make both of us grumblier. Time to put on our big girl panties and wade on into this sucker.

Lately, I’ve been making a concentrated effort to connect with what it is I love most about historical romance, and the historical romance authors who helped me fall in love with the genre. Those are the books and the authors who got my pulse pumping, and had me, on more occasions than I could count, sitting on the floor of a bookstore, either new or used, with a pile of books that I absolutely had to have, but could only take home a limited number. That meant I had to make some decisions. More often than not, those decisions weren’t based on which book was next in whatever series (as most of them were standalones, still my favorite format, and that is a whole other subject) but a gut reaction. Which ones did I need?

Sure, I wanted all of them, but which ones did I need? Which ones would hurt if I put them back on the shelves? Which stories could I not live without until the next time I could come back and comb through the treasure trove on the shelves? In a used bookstore, which books did I not want to take a chance on not being there the next time? Those were (and are) the ones that came home.

On days like this, that’s where I want to get back to; that need. What does Heroine’s scene need to be? What is she going to come out of the book and punch me if I leave out? For those who have not seen the gorgeous image by Sandra Schwab, this is Heroine:

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image by Sandra Schwab

She’d do it, too. I love Heroine (Ruby; her name is Ruby, but I still want to call her Heroine when I write about her here) more than I thought I could ever love another heroine again, so I owe it to her to make sure she gets everything she needs. Which means, today, this scene. If I blow off this scene because I’m tired or cranky, I’m going to regret it, and it’s going to follow me into the supposed relaxing I’d be doing instead, which would only make me crankier and less restful. Time to bust open Scapple, throw down the essentials, and start making connections.

Typing With Wet Claws: Hangover Cure Edition

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Hello, all. Skye here, for another Feline Friday. This has been an interesting week around here, but more on that later. Anty finds it ironic that her picture of me this week is of me asleep, since Anty did not get a lot of sleep herself, but not to worry. I can more than make up for the sleep she does not get.

Before we get to anything else,  I have to talk about what Anty has done on the interwebs this week. As usual, she was at Buried Under Romance on Saturday, though she forgot to send out word that she was there. It was that kind of weekend. Oops. Anyway, this week, she talks about libraries. That post is here and its link on the main page looks like this:

BURlibrarybaby

Even though Anty did not get a lot of sleep this week, she used some of that not-sleeping time to get some reading done (finally.) She read so many books, in fact, that I had to put them all in one picture. Links to Anty’s reviews of the books she read this week are below. Click on the link to read the review, or check on her Goodreads reading challenge progress here. So far, she has read twenty-four out of ninety books, and is only four books behind. Keep going, Anty. I believe in you. These are the books she read:

All together, they look like this:

GR4reviews

Not too shabby there, Anty. If we break that down, that is two YA books, one nonfiction, and one historical romance. After Anty read Fair Day, and Another Step Begun, she wanted to read a medieval romance that was based on medieval legend, and she pretty much did, with Agnes Moor’s Wild Night. A tournament like the one in the story actually happened. Anty was very happy to find that out in the author’s note, even though it is fact instead of legend. Anty says that is close enough. The author is Miss Alyssa, whose workshop Anty did not get to see. Anty is still salty about that, but she does have another of Miss Alyssa’s books on her TBR shelf, so that helps a little bit. She is still looking for some (preferably older) medieval with that ballad/legend feel, so if you know of any (or have written some) let me know in the comments, and I will tell her.

This has been a very interesting week around here. Normally, Anty on a double book hangover would be enough to deal with, but Uncle has another new job. He is very happy about that, which makes Anty happy, even if she still could use another nap or ten. This week, Anty stayed up very late on Monday night so that she could have Her Last First Kiss pages ready for Miss N on Tuesday. This particular time, that meant writing parts of two different scenes.

When Anty started the second scene, she had a feeling things weren’t exactly right, but she wanted to get the right amount of pages written, so she kept on going. By the time she got to a stopping point, she was very sure she had written the wrong scene. She did not mean that the scene did not belong in the story, but that it needed a scene that came before another scene (or between some other scenes) because this one felt like shoving a ten pound cat into a two pound bag.  Miss N agreed, which meant Anty’s next job was to go home and figure out what that scene needed to be.

Not too long ago, this would have made Anty very anxious, and think that maybe she is  a bad writer, because a real writer, or a good one, would not have made that kind of mistake. That is not how she feels now. Now, she knows that is a part of the process, and it is okay to go back and fix things. Second drafts, like first drafts, do not have to be perfect; they only have to be written. As soon as she and Miss N started talking about what could happen in the missing scene, Anty got excited about writing that one. Having that scene will make this current one, in its new form, much easier, because it will have room to breathe. It will also mean Anty has some moving around of things in both Scrivener and Google Docs (she is not sure yet which one is easier to use at this stage of the game, so she often writes in one and then copies to the other) but, that, too, is part of the process. That is how she can keep moving forward.

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

skyebanner01

skyebye

 

Write Like a Stove

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Not feeling the blogging thing today, and that’s okay.  Writing, yes, but not blogging. I have my daily task list all planned out, but when I come to “write blog,” there’s a blank. Which is fine. White space and all that. Part of the reason I blog is to clear out the gunk from my brain so that I can be primed and ready for the good stuff, which, from my perspective is writing fiction. The same could be said for morning pages, but the difference here is that morning pages are private, and blogging is…not. It’s the opposite of private. It’s splashed onto the screen with the explicit purpose of being read (passive tense, ooh, dangerous) by others. Commercial fiction, which is what I write (subset: romance, sub-subsets: historical romance (on my own) and contemporary romance (with writing partner, Melva)) is also meant for public consumption, and, when we add the extra factor of a reader or readers, that also brings in the knowledge of the potential reader or readers.

I do a lot better when I have a topic planned out ahead of time. This time, I don’t, so what you get instead is the first thing my brain can latch onto, which is…the stove.

 

STOVE

that would be this stove

 

This post is not about cooking. We did get a new stove yesterday, the delivery window starting after I had left the house for critique session with N. Real Life Romance Hero had the day off, and earned extra hero points for supervising the removal of the old stove (which Landlord and I delicately referred to as “vintage.”) and installation of the new one. Since strange people moving appliances around is not an environment especially conducive to writerly  concentration, Real Life Romance Hero and I agreed I would remain at Panera, post-critique-session, and get some work done.

Aha. Here we go. Connection time. One of the things I like about keeping some of the notebooks that I do, is that it makes the spotting of patterns easier. Since one of the patterns I’d noticed of late is that, when I try to cram all the work on Her Last First Kiss into Monday, because Tuesday is critique day, I feel rushed and crowded. Feeling rushed and crowded also makes me feel pressured, and I focus on the number of pages I’m putting out, rather than making the story the best it can possibly be. So, clearly, that is not a good thing to have going on, on a regular basis. N and I both agreed that we wanted to bring more pages to our critique session each week, which means I need to find more time to devote to that book. Where to find that?

As it turns out, right there. Since I needed to stay out of the house while the stove was installed, I had extra time in Panera, bottomless iced tea (my second of the day, as I’d accidentally knocked the first one into the trash; could not have planned that if I tried.) and my writerbrain already riding on N’s comments, as well as the energy of being with another writer in person. I don’t have any blogs due on Tuesdays. Double aha. Since N and I had discussed a new scene needed to break up a big block of Hero scenes, I wanted to strike while the iron was hot, and that worked out pretty darned well. A week is a lot more comfortable lead time than a day, so this is probably going to become a regular feature. The sooner N and I get to The End of our drafts, the closer our respective imaginary friends are to getting out into the world and into the hands of readers.

Right now, I’m looking at my task list for the day, and feeling that rushed and crowded thing again, and that tells me I need to recalibrate. The same as the stove only has four burners (plus oven and warming tray) my brain has space for front burner tasks and back burner tasks.  Back burner does not mean “never,” and trying to put all the pans on the front burners at the same time is going to result in dishes nobody is going to want to eat. In fact, the results may not even be fit for consumption, but, putting each thing in its proper place and time, well, we can get a banquet out of that.

Which all brings us to over the magic seven hundred, so that’s it for today. I am off to play with my imaginary friends.

 

 

Reconnections

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It’s Monday. The conference is over. Easter is past. There are buds on the trees, and a good chance that I may witness some sweet sweet waterfowl loving on my walk through the park tomorrow, en route to or returning from my critique session with N.  My back no longer hurts, and the weather, at least for today, is not trying to kill me. Sometime this week, or possibly next, Landlord will install our new stove and refrigerator. Melva and I have two requests to see partials of Chasing Prints Charming, and are ready for prewriting on Drama King. Today, after this blog entry (presuming we do not get surprise appliance installation) I go back to work on Her Last First Kiss. There are some Heroes and Heartbreakers posts waiting as patiently as they can in my brain,  and, with the scent of soon-coming season finales in the air, there will be more to join them soon.  It’s definitely spring, and definitely time to make sure I have a solid plan on how to get all of this done.

The fact that this new week means I am now ten books behind in my Goodreads challenge does not sit well with me, nor does the fact that I realized, well into the weekend, why I’ve had such a hard time making my way through a historical Christmas anthology, which I’d picked up specifically to take a chunk out of that reading debt. I love Christmas anthologies, and, usually, I can suck those down like ice-cold tea on a hot summer day. (Seriously, I can read Christmas stories any time of year, so writing one would be an interesting new experience, but that’s a someday project, not for today.) This time? Not so much. What started out fun turned into a slog, and I didn’t know why.

 

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Portrait of the blogger as a confused reader.

 

It wasn’t because the writing was bad, because it wasn’t. I liked what I was reading, found at least one new to me author whose work I would like to explore further, and bounced in my seat several times, because a new book by one of the authors I already follow is only a few months away. After a weekend where I carved out time to reconnect with my art journal stuff (and found, in the process, that some of my most-loved resources had expired of old age while I was away; there’s probably a whole other blog in that, so I’ll save that for later) and a heart to heart with a writer friend, over an entirely unrelated topic, the answer came to me. Nineteenth century overload. My last read, Judith Ivory’s Untie My Heart, was Victorian. The anthology is (I have one story left to read before I can call it read) all Regency. The book I’d read before that? Regency. Before that? Edwardian. Okay, that’s slightly over the line into the twentieth century, but still, I’m seeing a pattern, so, when I move this anthology into the “read” category, I need to read something else.

Maybe I’ll read a YA next, to cleanse my palate, but, after that, I need to follow my heart, preferably to the eighteenth century, as that’s where Hero and Heroine live, and the commute would be short. Right about now, I could use a short commute. The good thing about going to a conference is that I return all pumped full of I Can Do This. The scary thing about coming back from a conference is that I need to turn that I Can Do This into I Am Doing This. That can be a daunting prospect, because this is the part that nobody else can do for me. When Melva and I work on our joint projects, the work divides itself according to who’s better at what; for us, that works. When I’m working on a solo manuscript, then it’s all me.

I am the way Hero and Heroine get out of my head and onto the page. N is my first reader for Her Last First Kiss, the first chance I get to know if I have put the right words in the right order so that other people can watch the movie that’s playing in my head. To make sure I have what I need to do that, I need to make sure my creative well is filled. Which is where things like playing with paint and ink and paper come into play; I can’t write an artist Hero if I’m not making art myself. Which is one of the reasons I’ve been peeping this undated art journal planner, ever since I saw an ad for it in my favorite art magazine. I do have a planner already, and I use it and I love it, but I want to play with this one, so it may yet happen.

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my two favorite historical romance novels

In the meantime, there is work and there is well-filling. Last week, I asked Facebook readers/writers who love historical romance to tell me what books made them fall in love with the genre. Some of the titles given were books I have known and read and loved, myself, and some were new adventures yet to be read. All of the answers were filled with what I was looking for when I asked that question. The connection, the spark, the recognition of “yes, that’s mine,” the seed that burrows deep into the soil of the writerbrain (or readerbrain, for that matter,) sprouts and blooms and explodes all over like cherry blossom season on steroids. That stuff goes a long way.

If Not Now, When?

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In two more days, I will be at the Let Your Imagination Take Flight conference.  Between now and then is laundry, packing, about elebenty bajillion emails, and some furious keyboard pounding, as the Beach Ball reaches endgame. This year, I’m pitching again, after a couple years’ break, and I am co-presenting for the first time ever. There’s no time to be nervous. There’s only time for doing what has to be done, and figuring out the time in which I can do it. This entry is getting pounded out in one go, because I have pages to fill, and there is the aforementioned laundry to be done, with the help of Housemate, because I have, according to Housemate and Real Life Romance Hero alike, sustained the most Anna-y injury ever. I hiccupped too hard, and now my back thinks it’s digging-Housemate’s-car-out-of-the-snowbank all over again. Good thing my work involves sitting in a comfy chair.

Every three months, a new issue of Art Journaling magazine comes out, and I pounce on it as soon as I possibly can. Every time, I scan it quickly, then take a longer look later, with beverage of choice, possibly a nibble or two, and drink in all the inspiration. I wish I could make pages like that. I wish I could layer colors and make backgrounds and figure out where to put stamps, and knew the best kind of white pen to write on paint or magazine images, and not look like a third grader on the first day of art class (even though pretty much every artist ever has been a third grader on the first day of art class, at some point in their creative journey.) I look through, and I want to make those pages, and I make some pages, and some of them are kind of okay, but nothing more than that.  At some point, I throw my hands in the air and wander off, leaving scraps of waxed paper and blobs of gesso in my wake.

This past weekend, while doing my regular grocery shopping, I made my ritual pass through the notebook aisle and found something I’d never seen before. Cahier style notebooks, with multicolored bright pages, plain black cardstock covers, but -BAM- color explosion inside. I am pretty sure that the package of three notebooks jumped into my cart of its own accord. This is not a bad thing. I hate blank white pages. Hate them. They’re…blank. They’re…white.  They’re…:gestures vaguely: there. Daunting. Where the heck does a person start on a plain, blank page? This is exactly why my morning pages have to be done in a pretty book, or one I make pretty with my own embellishments. I knew as soon as I saw these, I had to take a crack at using them to make those pages.

Yesterday, I needed to get out of the house, so I threw a few long-neglected supplies into a bag, grabbed my new toy and headed for the coffee house I hadn’t seen in over two weeks. No overthinkings, only making marks on the page. I’d started at home, with an ink test on the last page of one of the books, and then…I printed. I doodled. I squiggled. I made notes on things I had bought but never tried, or tried once and wandered off because it didn’t work perfectly the first time. I put in my earbuds, put on some Netflix, and I put stuff on the hot pink page.

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Here’s a better look at the supplies I used:

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I didn’t use the glue stick, because I didn’t bring anything I could glue onto the page, but it’s in the bag, so it’s there when I need it. When it was time to go home, I had a couple other techniques I wanted to try. I slapped some gesso on the next spread of pages (okay, first, I slapped some matte gel medium on the inside cover first, because I didn’t read the label before I opened the jar) and then, when that dried, thought I’d have a go at another thing I’d always wanted to try, and always looks foolproof. It is not foolproof. I am referring to the green blobs in the corners.  Those green blobs were meant to be gentle washes of different shades of green. Maybe next time.

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Even so, I think I did okay. This is only two layers on one substrate. I still have stamps I’ve been too nervous to try, because they are special stamps, from a favorite creator, and I don’t know, or have forgotten what I did once know, about inking those images and getting them to do what I want. Still, the way I see it, I have two options here. I can leave the special stamps safe in their packaging, or I can rip off the cellophane, slap some ink on those suckers and see what they can do.

In that respect, it’s not all that different from writing. When I sat down with the contents of my travel pouch, and a pristine, hot pink page, with its subtle contrast of lines, I wasn’t going for perfect. Nobody ever had to see this. Nobody would ever judge this (that only applies when one does not slap it on the interwebs, btw) and my only goal was to explore and have fun doing it. I knew I would create imperfect pages, and that took all the pressure away. What did this tool do? What kind of mark does this pen make? Let’s find out. Let the movie play and slap things down on the page and drink tea, censors off.

As the first draft of the Beach Ball bounces its way to the finish line, I’m keeping that in mind, and that’s also the plan for draft two of Her Last First Kiss. Create imperfect pages, on purpose. Let the movie play.

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Priming The Pump

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So, it’s Monday. The weekend was full of family and friends, lots of errands, sometimes employing not only plan B for the day, but plans C, D, and E. Par for the course around here, which all makes it not that surprising that this is the third or fourth time I’ve started writing this blog entry, because my brain is tired and I have no idea what I wanted to put here. Even my trusty “in this moment” prompt (thanks, Barbara Samuel) which I usually interpret as “right now” has failed me, and there is a part of me that would like nothing better than give a hearty “forget it” to the whole idea of writing today, and retreat to my recliner, with beverage of choice, afghan, and laptop, and binge on Elementary while I eat three flavor popcorn straight from the tin.

That’s not what I’m going to do. What I’m going to do is babble here and prime the pump, until something decent comes out, then get back in there and bounce the Beach Ball around, because forward motion gets one to one’s destination. Which means that, since my fingers are on the keys, I need to keep them going until I meet the magic seven hundred. The previous attempts had all been too hard, too forced, too think-y. When I get think-y, I know I’m off the path I need to take. Not that thinking is bad, exactly, but over-thinking, which is all too easy for me to fall into (and pretty darned difficult to get out of) that’s the stuff that can kill writing.

There is not enough caffeine in this house (even though we bought tea this weekend) to remind me where I put that Lin-Manuel Miranda quote about writing the rust out of the pup until one hits clear water, then writing down the clear water. I do remember the bit about writing without inspiration, though: throw stuff down on the page without inspiration, and then sift for nuggets. I can sift for nuggets. Hey, look at that; I’m already over halfway to the magic seven hundred words I need for this entry. The plan is, get this entry posted, flog it around the interwebs, and then I can put on my big girl pants and get cracking on some of that commercial fiction all the cool kids are doing these days. I will also put on old clothes, because I will soon have a head full of Manic Panic. That’s the hair color, not a psychological state of being.

With five days, today inclusive, until this year’s conference, this is crunch time. I’m going to need to prewrite and schedule blog entries, knuckle down and keep moving forward on both fiction projects, and do that whole packing thing. Not to mention agree on breakfast plans, because I am not going into my first time giving a workshop on an empty stomach, and definitely not without caffeine. I may pack my own Lapsang Souchong, for the benefit of the public at large.

Before I do any of that, though, I need to get this written. Maybe it sounds like a whole lot of blabbering in no particular direction, and maybe I do a lot of that, but it’s my blog and I’ll blab when I want to. The very fact that I have to do this tells me a few things:

  1. Sleep is a need, not an option. That’s in-the-bed, under-the-covers, head-on-the-pillow sleep. If it’s one of those nights when sleep flat out isn’t happening, I need to be kinder to myself the next day. Take a nap, or head to bed early that next night.
  2. Well-filling is also a need. I do not want to count the number of books I have scattered about the apartment, in various stages of being-read-ed-ness. I will, though; including electronic reading material, it’s five. Too many. Pick one, read to the end, pick another one, repeat. The reader guilt is crushing, and not good for the creative mind.
  3. Clutter has to go. Mental clutter and physical clutter. All the “I’ll get to it laters” pig pile on top of each other and crowd out the fun, playing with imaginary friends stuff, which is what I would much rather have. Since I like organizing and planning, this is actually the easiest of the three to dive in and conquer.

Allrighty, then, I think we got us some water coming out of this here pump, so I am going to leave you all here and head off with my imaginary friends. Toodles.

 

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