Category: Abby Road

What I learned from writing the 1st draft of SOL

3 Comments
1) I am a writing drama queen


 Wait. Let me back up.

 I first have to tell you a little bit about the process of writing the Speaking of Love (spin-off of Playing at Love) draft.

 I wrote the first three chapters over two months ago, got the “okay to move forward” from my editor, then got busy with other writing projects (such as editing both P@L and Abby Road and writing numerous guest blogs and interviews for P@L), knowing that I still had loooooads of time to get back to SOL. Then it came time to do the actual manuscript writing. I sat down with my laptop, cracked my knuckles, then checked Facebook. And Twitter. And pretty much anything else that falls under the title of “time suckage.” After about a week of this, I started to worry. Therefore, being the good little author I am, I sent an email to my editor explaining that it may behoove us both if she gave me a due date for the first draft . . . .because, obviously, I wasn’t getting it done on my own.

She did as asked.

And I freaked out.

Because it seemed very soon, only one month away. Additionally–since I simply CANNOT allow my editor (who, let’s face it, thinks I’m perfect. . . .) to see a first draft without it first going to my critique partner for a blood-drenched edit–I had to move up the completion date in time to send it to her in time for her to read it and send notes and then for me to have time to fix those before the looming due date. AND, since my crit partner is participating in NaNoWriMo starting at the stroke of midnight on November 1st, I needed to get my draft to her even sooner, since she would be completely out of pocket come 11/1.

Sooooo. . . .needless to say (but since I’m so long-winded, I’ll say it anyway), my writing time went from one month to two weeks and I was completely freaking out. Then (heh-heh) came the “writer’s block”–which often comes when I put undo pressure on myself. 🙂 After another few days of falling into the “time suckage” vortex, I was really panicking. My writing sucked, I lost focus, I didn’t know who my characters were or what they wanted or what they sounded like, and I basically started rethinking my skill as a writer and my reasons for being born.

Very productive.

Despite the fact that I was woefully behind my self-inflicted schedule, I took an evening off….not able to face that blank page. I watched a movie that I loved and pulled a book off my shelf that I hadn’t yet gotten to. I read that book and the first half of another. It was pretty amazing what that did. If nothing else, it reminded me what an actual book is supposed to look like and feel like and sound like. The books weren’t amazingly great, but they took me away from my own story long enough for my creativity to rest and reboot.

And then I wrote.

For three days straight.

My characters were back conversing in my head and driving me crazy, and the muses were smiling. It’s what we call a breakthrough. I finished the first draft just shy of two weeks. Which, for me, is pretty dang fast. It’s not perfect, it’s got loads of problems, but. . . . for a rough draft. . . I think it’s quite fab.

 But I digress. . . . .

2) writing a good “hunky guy chopping firewood” scene can snap me out of a writing funk
3) I need to cut myself major slack
4) writing is easier when my mother is in town and cooking for me. Just knowing I have a freezer full of potato soup is soothing
5) it doesn’t help my writing to watch Vampire Diaries, but it sure is fun
6) I am productive under pressure, but I fear it ages me and drives those around me to want to run and hide
7) for a time, it’s okay to think that I don’t have any writing talents or marketable skills or reasons to be living. Obviously, that will all pass. If I can learn something from it (and then blog about it a week later), maybe those moments of panic aren’t in vain
8) I really need to read THIS
9) cupcakes can save the world (but I kind of already knew this)
10) a support system and friends who ask about my projects mean the effin’ world to me
11) Taylor Swift’s new album is really good. I like THIS one best.
12) I should give up Diet Cokes but I can’t
13) a good crisis of faith is healthy–but only if short-lived
14) I want/need a new office chair. One of those ones with the mesh back. Or a recliner. Or a private island.
15) Gwen Stefani totally gets me
16) always laugh. Find balance. Enjoy the moments. Even the stressful ones. Everything is fodder.

Now–my creative types–time to dance to Gwen. The first two minutes, you know you totally relate to this! 

(“tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock”)

What I learned from writing the 1st draft of SOL

3 Comments
1) I am a writing drama queen


 Wait. Let me back up.

 I first have to tell you a little bit about the process of writing the Speaking of Love (spin-off of Playing at Love) draft.

 I wrote the first three chapters over two months ago, got the “okay to move forward” from my editor, then got busy with other writing projects (such as editing both P@L and Abby Road and writing numerous guest blogs and interviews for P@L), knowing that I still had loooooads of time to get back to SOL. Then it came time to do the actual manuscript writing. I sat down with my laptop, cracked my knuckles, then checked Facebook. And Twitter. And pretty much anything else that falls under the title of “time suckage.” After about a week of this, I started to worry. Therefore, being the good little author I am, I sent an email to my editor explaining that it may behoove us both if she gave me a due date for the first draft . . . .because, obviously, I wasn’t getting it done on my own.

She did as asked.

And I freaked out.

Because it seemed very soon, only one month away. Additionally–since I simply CANNOT allow my editor (who, let’s face it, thinks I’m perfect. . . .) to see a first draft without it first going to my critique partner for a blood-drenched edit–I had to move up the completion date in time to send it to her in time for her to read it and send notes and then for me to have time to fix those before the looming due date. AND, since my crit partner is participating in NaNoWriMo starting at the stroke of midnight on November 1st, I needed to get my draft to her even sooner, since she would be completely out of pocket come 11/1.

Sooooo. . . .needless to say (but since I’m so long-winded, I’ll say it anyway), my writing time went from one month to two weeks and I was completely freaking out. Then (heh-heh) came the “writer’s block”–which often comes when I put undo pressure on myself. 🙂 After another few days of falling into the “time suckage” vortex, I was really panicking. My writing sucked, I lost focus, I didn’t know who my characters were or what they wanted or what they sounded like, and I basically started rethinking my skill as a writer and my reasons for being born.

Very productive.

Despite the fact that I was woefully behind my self-inflicted schedule, I took an evening off….not able to face that blank page. I watched a movie that I loved and pulled a book off my shelf that I hadn’t yet gotten to. I read that book and the first half of another. It was pretty amazing what that did. If nothing else, it reminded me what an actual book is supposed to look like and feel like and sound like. The books weren’t amazingly great, but they took me away from my own story long enough for my creativity to rest and reboot.

And then I wrote.

For three days straight.

My characters were back conversing in my head and driving me crazy, and the muses were smiling. It’s what we call a breakthrough. I finished the first draft just shy of two weeks. Which, for me, is pretty dang fast. It’s not perfect, it’s got loads of problems, but. . . . for a rough draft. . . I think it’s quite fab.

 But I digress. . . . .

2) writing a good “hunky guy chopping firewood” scene can snap me out of a writing funk
3) I need to cut myself major slack
4) writing is easier when my mother is in town and cooking for me. Just knowing I have a freezer full of potato soup is soothing
5) it doesn’t help my writing to watch Vampire Diaries, but it sure is fun
6) I am productive under pressure, but I fear it ages me and drives those around me to want to run and hide
7) for a time, it’s okay to think that I don’t have any writing talents or marketable skills or reasons to be living. Obviously, that will all pass. If I can learn something from it (and then blog about it a week later), maybe those moments of panic aren’t in vain
8) I really need to read THIS
9) cupcakes can save the world (but I kind of already knew this)
10) a support system and friends who ask about my projects mean the effin’ world to me
11) Taylor Swift’s new album is really good. I like THIS one best.
12) I should give up Diet Cokes but I can’t
13) a good crisis of faith is healthy–but only if short-lived
14) I want/need a new office chair. One of those ones with the mesh back. Or a recliner. Or a private island.
15) Gwen Stefani totally gets me
16) always laugh. Find balance. Enjoy the moments. Even the stressful ones. Everything is fodder.

Now–my creative types–time to dance to Gwen. The first two minutes, you know you totally relate to this! 

(“tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock”)

things I’ve learned from the second pass of edits

3 Comments

(and I’ve had two of them now, which makes four passes in all)

 I use these words too much:
     “continued” (we’re talking 123 times, but I managed to cut it down to 44. No easy task.)
     “scoffed” (I fear I use it incorrectly, as well)
     “paused” (my new go-to is “hesitate.” I might be deleting that one during the third pass.)

I expect people to be mind-readers. They’re not. Not even my editor. Who should be, right? 

I am absolutely rubbish at the proper use of the em-dash.

Speaking of punctuation and over-usages, I also overuse (and misuse) ellipses. We’re all shocked. . . . .

I can’t count – if the way I numbered my chapters is any indication.

Cutting word count is effing hard. I’m much too long-winded for that. Ask anyone.

Evidently, it doesn’t faze this writer when I use the same word four times in one paragraph.

Oh well. Moving on. Here’s to Round Three!

things I’ve learned from the second pass of edits

3 Comments

(and I’ve had two of them now, which makes four passes in all)

 I use these words too much:
     “continued” (we’re talking 123 times, but I managed to cut it down to 44. No easy task.)
     “scoffed” (I fear I use it incorrectly, as well)
     “paused” (my new go-to is “hesitate.” I might be deleting that one during the third pass.)

I expect people to be mind-readers. They’re not. Not even my editor. Who should be, right? 

I am absolutely rubbish at the proper use of the em-dash.

Speaking of punctuation and over-usages, I also overuse (and misuse) ellipses. We’re all shocked. . . . .

I can’t count – if the way I numbered my chapters is any indication.

Cutting word count is effing hard. I’m much too long-winded for that. Ask anyone.

Evidently, it doesn’t faze this writer when I use the same word four times in one paragraph.

Oh well. Moving on. Here’s to Round Three!

Tootles!

3 Comments
I’m going to be away from this pretty blog for a while. But I’ll be back soon, I promise! 
Some of you already know the very exiting WHY I’m going to be occupied elsewhere. 
Oh, you haven’t heard? Well, read on. . . .

See you later, gators!

It’s pretty exciting, actually. Here’s the journey so far:
A couple of months ago, Stacy, my fab editor at Entangled Publishing came up with an idea that–while waiting on the second round of ABBY ROAD edits (coming to a bookstore near you in March 2013) that I should submit a story to the  new ebook category-romance line that she was going be heading. 
It’s called BLISS and it’s all about sweet romances. She said the stories that she was looking for were very similar in voice in my contemporary romance novel, ABBY ROAD. She sent me a list of cat-rom tropes to see if anything sounded fun to write about. Oh, you don’t know what a “trope” is? Neither did I. So, first I had to learn about those, and then came the research: I read my first cat-rom. I was a little confused at first, because what I read was really not the kind of thing that I write. But the more I read, and the more I translated in my writerly brain what I DO write with what my editor had in mind for the new BLISS sweet line, things started to make sense. And one night I came up with a story idea.

The next day, I scribbled out a few paragraphs of what I had in mind and shot it to editor Stacy. She said I was on the right track but she offered some suggestions and let me in on the rules of cat-rom. Oh, there are rules? You bet. And they’re unwavering. Who knew? Oh, the things I’m learning! So, I did some reworking then started in on the actual manuscript, banging out the first 3 chapters. I send those extremely rough pages to a  very trusted readers (hollah, sister!) and she liked what she read. So I prettied them up a bit and sent them off to Stacy. She was very excited about my submission, gave me some more cat-rom rules (really? more rules??), asked that I polish up those 3 chapters, write a 1-2 page synopsis and then shoot the whole lot back to her so she could submit it to the “new acquisitions” editor at Entangled. 
Wow! Really? That was easy, right? 
Not so fast. 
If you’re not familiar with a synopsis, it’s the high-level telling of the story from beginning to end in just a few pages; sometimes only 1. First of all, as any other long-winded novelist will tell you, synopses is the bane of our existences. Second, writing a synopsis of a book I haven’t even written yet? Yeah, that’s a problem. Nonetheless, it took me 2 days, but I did it, and I joked with my critique partner–when we both thought the synopsis ran a little long–that 24 hours before, I didn’t even have a story. And now I have a too-long synopsis! Hooray! 

After making sure everything was as perfect as could be, I sent off the official submission to Stacy. The next day she told me she loved it and was subbing it to go under contract. 
A few days went by….no word. And I was sweating. 

Then one night, while I was out to dinner with a big group from work, I got the email. My cat-rom was going to be picked up. AND, editor wanted a blurb about the NEXT book. (SIDE NOTE: cat-roms usually come in sets: 1 book with 2 or 3 (sometimes more!) spin-offs.) So, after celebrating with my work team, I dashed home and made up a couple of paragraphs about my next story. Remember, I’d still yet to write more that a few chapters of the FIRST story! 

The next day, I got the exciting news: My new contract would be a multi-book deal! Woo-hoo! 

But, hold on. Stacy wants book 1 of the series to come out in October. 
Uh, what? 
“But…” I said, “my first book, ABBY, isn’t slanted until March! So…how can that be?” 

Some more things I’ve learned: ebooks come out much, MUCH faster than traditional paperbacks. So, actually, I will probably have 2 ebooks out before the grand release of ABBY. Which is great, right? Super exciting!

In order to keep to this timeline, however, Stacy and I set a very ambitious due date for my first draft. We’re talking weeks, less than a month. At first I freaked out a little. Okay, a lot. It took me years to get ABBY polished and perfect. And my other complete novels took months and months to even get on paper.

But then I calmed down, ate a cupcake and considered. Some of you may remember when I participated in NaNoWriMo back in November ’11. If I could write a brand new, 50K-word story back then, surely I can do it again. Of course I can!

So, if you’ve been wondering, that’s where I’ve been. I’ve been writing. And I will be writing for the foreseeable future. My personal reading, TV, movies, this lovely blog….all of that is going to have to move to the back burner. 

Best email from Stacy: “You’re going to be very busy in 2013.”
My reply: “Bring it on!”

Tootles!

3 Comments
I’m going to be away from this pretty blog for a while. But I’ll be back soon, I promise! 
Some of you already know the very exiting WHY I’m going to be occupied elsewhere. 
Oh, you haven’t heard? Well, read on. . . .

See you later, gators!

It’s pretty exciting, actually. Here’s the journey so far:
A couple of months ago, Stacy, my fab editor at Entangled Publishing came up with an idea that–while waiting on the second round of ABBY ROAD edits (coming to a bookstore near you in March 2013) that I should submit a story to the  new ebook category-romance line that she was going be heading. 
It’s called BLISS and it’s all about sweet romances. She said the stories that she was looking for were very similar in voice in my contemporary romance novel, ABBY ROAD. She sent me a list of cat-rom tropes to see if anything sounded fun to write about. Oh, you don’t know what a “trope” is? Neither did I. So, first I had to learn about those, and then came the research: I read my first cat-rom. I was a little confused at first, because what I read was really not the kind of thing that I write. But the more I read, and the more I translated in my writerly brain what I DO write with what my editor had in mind for the new BLISS sweet line, things started to make sense. And one night I came up with a story idea.

The next day, I scribbled out a few paragraphs of what I had in mind and shot it to editor Stacy. She said I was on the right track but she offered some suggestions and let me in on the rules of cat-rom. Oh, there are rules? You bet. And they’re unwavering. Who knew? Oh, the things I’m learning! So, I did some reworking then started in on the actual manuscript, banging out the first 3 chapters. I send those extremely rough pages to a  very trusted readers (hollah, sister!) and she liked what she read. So I prettied them up a bit and sent them off to Stacy. She was very excited about my submission, gave me some more cat-rom rules (really? more rules??), asked that I polish up those 3 chapters, write a 1-2 page synopsis and then shoot the whole lot back to her so she could submit it to the “new acquisitions” editor at Entangled. 
Wow! Really? That was easy, right? 
Not so fast. 
If you’re not familiar with a synopsis, it’s the high-level telling of the story from beginning to end in just a few pages; sometimes only 1. First of all, as any other long-winded novelist will tell you, synopses is the bane of our existences. Second, writing a synopsis of a book I haven’t even written yet? Yeah, that’s a problem. Nonetheless, it took me 2 days, but I did it, and I joked with my critique partner–when we both thought the synopsis ran a little long–that 24 hours before, I didn’t even have a story. And now I have a too-long synopsis! Hooray! 

After making sure everything was as perfect as could be, I sent off the official submission to Stacy. The next day she told me she loved it and was subbing it to go under contract. 
A few days went by….no word. And I was sweating. 

Then one night, while I was out to dinner with a big group from work, I got the email. My cat-rom was going to be picked up. AND, editor wanted a blurb about the NEXT book. (SIDE NOTE: cat-roms usually come in sets: 1 book with 2 or 3 (sometimes more!) spin-offs.) So, after celebrating with my work team, I dashed home and made up a couple of paragraphs about my next story. Remember, I’d still yet to write more that a few chapters of the FIRST story! 

The next day, I got the exciting news: My new contract would be a multi-book deal! Woo-hoo! 

But, hold on. Stacy wants book 1 of the series to come out in October. 
Uh, what? 
“But…” I said, “my first book, ABBY, isn’t slanted until March! So…how can that be?” 

Some more things I’ve learned: ebooks come out much, MUCH faster than traditional paperbacks. So, actually, I will probably have 2 ebooks out before the grand release of ABBY. Which is great, right? Super exciting!

In order to keep to this timeline, however, Stacy and I set a very ambitious due date for my first draft. We’re talking weeks, less than a month. At first I freaked out a little. Okay, a lot. It took me years to get ABBY polished and perfect. And my other complete novels took months and months to even get on paper.

But then I calmed down, ate a cupcake and considered. Some of you may remember when I participated in NaNoWriMo back in November ’11. If I could write a brand new, 50K-word story back then, surely I can do it again. Of course I can!

So, if you’ve been wondering, that’s where I’ve been. I’ve been writing. And I will be writing for the foreseeable future. My personal reading, TV, movies, this lovely blog….all of that is going to have to move to the back burner. 

Best email from Stacy: “You’re going to be very busy in 2013.”
My reply: “Bring it on!”

What I’ve learned from editing

5 Comments

As many of you know, for the past few weeks, I’ve been living in Edit Heaven: eating, breathing, sleeping my manuscript. “Abby Road” is really shaping up thanks to the wise (and, I’m sorry, freaking brilliant) notes from my editor at Entangled Publishing.

Maybe I’ve been viewing this whole process through proverbial rose colored glasses, but. . .seriously, I’m having such fun! Writing is the love of my life, and I’ve felt (practically) nothing but joy as I’m understanding my darling, precious characters more and more, and while seeing them through different lights and angles.

That isn’t to say, however, that there haven’t been some hard lessons and some tough love. My editor is kind but she also tells it like it is. Which I’m so very grateful for.

Here are some things I’ve learned:

Be true to my characters. When I’ve made a point of writing particular personality traits, it’s unfair to create a scene with them behaving in a different way. Real people aren’t like that. And since I’m writing about “real” people, I am obligated to stick to that rule. Real people do real things.

Be clear not cutesy. Editor thought one of my characters was Jamaican because of the dialogue. He’s not. So, apparently writing accents is not my current forte. Another lesson learned.

Sometimes readers get bored. Really? Come on now. But this is the greatest story in the world! Otherwise, why did you buy it? Yes, yes. But sometimes even the most interesting stories can get bogged down. . .either by too much description or too much dialogue. Mix it up. Keep in interesting. Make your lovely readers keep guessing.

Leading readers down a path only to slam into a dead-end isn’t cool. (see Breaking Dawn. Really? Bella is trying to get fake ID’s? Then what? I’m still ticked about that!) One of my very minor subplots came to a climax, and I originally decided to have it end in nothing–almost as if it was the reader’s fault that they cared about it. (Which I’m sure would make plenty of readers angry had they been watching that storyline develop.) This was pointed out to me. And with a few adjustments, that subplot worked itself out in a much more satisfying way. Again: Be true to characters.

Sometimes humor unintentionally comes across as sarcastic or even mean. Yeah. I have this problem in real life too. There are no emoticons in manuscript writing, so there’s no way to add a ” 😉 ” after saying something snarky while trying to be funny.

Build tension and don’t give everything away in the first three chapters. Well, duh. But honestly, it’s not as easy as it sounds. For me, at least. Perhaps because I know my story so well and have been living in it for so long, I figured that no one would “get” the secret and I could plant a million clues and expect my audience to be as dumb as I am. You’re not. And thanks for that.

Throwing in a sudden revelation in the last act doesn’t work. Maybe I thought this was kind of a fancy sneak attack, but when there are very few (if any!) clues along the way, having a main character, say, admit they have some disease in the last chapter–which is why they’ve been acting so crazy the whole time–is sloppy and unfair.

Not every smart character should sound British. Yes, I had an issue with this. But I don’t anymore.

Sometimes smexy is besty. Going back to being true to my characters. I had to make a pretty important decision about them fairly late on in my editing. I’ll admit, I wrestled with it for a while. But what it comes down to is: This is something these characters would do. Keep it classy and keep it sweet. And the smexy will be there. I find this to be true. Just wait. . . .you’ll see.

I love my story and I’m so excited for the changes I’ve made; they’ve done nothing but strengthen in ways I never imagined. I do wonder, however, if I’ll be as enthusiastic after our third round of edits. I sure hope so!

What I’ve learned from editing

5 Comments

As many of you know, for the past few weeks, I’ve been living in Edit Heaven: eating, breathing, sleeping my manuscript. “Abby Road” is really shaping up thanks to the wise (and, I’m sorry, freaking brilliant) notes from my editor at Entangled Publishing.

Maybe I’ve been viewing this whole process through proverbial rose colored glasses, but. . .seriously, I’m having such fun! Writing is the love of my life, and I’ve felt (practically) nothing but joy as I’m understanding my darling, precious characters more and more, and while seeing them through different lights and angles.

That isn’t to say, however, that there haven’t been some hard lessons and some tough love. My editor is kind but she also tells it like it is. Which I’m so very grateful for.

Here are some things I’ve learned:

Be true to my characters. When I’ve made a point of writing particular personality traits, it’s unfair to create a scene with them behaving in a different way. Real people aren’t like that. And since I’m writing about “real” people, I am obligated to stick to that rule. Real people do real things.

Be clear not cutesy. Editor thought one of my characters was Jamaican because of the dialogue. He’s not. So, apparently writing accents is not my current forte. Another lesson learned.

Sometimes readers get bored. Really? Come on now. But this is the greatest story in the world! Otherwise, why did you buy it? Yes, yes. But sometimes even the most interesting stories can get bogged down. . .either by too much description or too much dialogue. Mix it up. Keep in interesting. Make your lovely readers keep guessing.

Leading readers down a path only to slam into a dead-end isn’t cool. (see Breaking Dawn. Really? Bella is trying to get fake ID’s? Then what? I’m still ticked about that!) One of my very minor subplots came to a climax, and I originally decided to have it end in nothing–almost as if it was the reader’s fault that they cared about it. (Which I’m sure would make plenty of readers angry had they been watching that storyline develop.) This was pointed out to me. And with a few adjustments, that subplot worked itself out in a much more satisfying way. Again: Be true to characters.

Sometimes humor unintentionally comes across as sarcastic or even mean. Yeah. I have this problem in real life too. There are no emoticons in manuscript writing, so there’s no way to add a ” 😉 ” after saying something snarky while trying to be funny.

Build tension and don’t give everything away in the first three chapters. Well, duh. But honestly, it’s not as easy as it sounds. For me, at least. Perhaps because I know my story so well and have been living in it for so long, I figured that no one would “get” the secret and I could plant a million clues and expect my audience to be as dumb as I am. You’re not. And thanks for that.

Throwing in a sudden revelation in the last act doesn’t work. Maybe I thought this was kind of a fancy sneak attack, but when there are very few (if any!) clues along the way, having a main character, say, admit they have some disease in the last chapter–which is why they’ve been acting so crazy the whole time–is sloppy and unfair.

Not every smart character should sound British. Yes, I had an issue with this. But I don’t anymore.

Sometimes smexy is besty. Going back to being true to my characters. I had to make a pretty important decision about them fairly late on in my editing. I’ll admit, I wrestled with it for a while. But what it comes down to is: This is something these characters would do. Keep it classy and keep it sweet. And the smexy will be there. I find this to be true. Just wait. . . .you’ll see.

I love my story and I’m so excited for the changes I’ve made; they’ve done nothing but strengthen in ways I never imagined. I do wonder, however, if I’ll be as enthusiastic after our third round of edits. I sure hope so!