Writing your best damn book

In her blog a couple weeks ago, Erica Orloff said, “given the state of the publishing biz, nearly every writer (including this one) has taken the philosophy that now you need to better your game, you need to bring it. Your best game. Your best writing. Now it the time to go deeper. Write the best damn book you’ve ever written.”

For the last couple years, I’ve been working on adding tension to every page, adding emotion and adding more of my voice in. I think I pretty much have the tension thing nailed. When I don’t have it, I realize it now during revisions.

I’m getting better at adding emotion, too, though it’s something I continue to work at. I love adding my voice, a twist of phrasing and sometimes, if it suits the scene, sardonic humor. I do this as I write, but I also do it during revisions. I think that’s why I love revisions so much. It’s when I add in the special bits and shine up my writing.

What I’m working on now as I write goes back to what Erica said. I’m digging deeper. I’ve been hearing that for awhile, and I’m finally getting it. It’s when a scene goes an extra step, when I add poignancy or I reveal something extra to the reader. It’s hard to explain, but when you do it, you know it. It’s a “Wow! I nailed that!” moment.

What about you? Are you consciously working to improve your writing? So you can to write your best damn book? Or is this something you’ve done in the past?

WELL DUH!

By: Barbara Longley

April 8, 2009 Motoko Rich of the New York Times writes: “In a recession, what people want is a happy ending. At a time when booksellers are struggling to lure readers, sales of romance novels are outstripping most other categories of books and giving some buoyancy to an otherwise sluggish market.”

Well duh! Who doesn’t need escapism when things are so tough and uncertain?

I know many of agents and editors have blogged about the economy over the past year, and it’s all been bad news. I thought then as I think now . . . where is their common sense? When people can no longer afford the big ticket leisure activities, they turn to the less expensive forms of entertainment. Can’t take that big vacation? Fine, watch more movies. Can’t buy that new car, or find a new job?  Then escape to exotic locales in a good book—make that a good romance.

This pattern is nothing new. The same thing happened during the Great Depression in the thirties, and in previous recessions. Movies and books flourished. You’d think the publishing industry would gear up accordingly and cater to the current market trend. This is the time to buy new romance authors. Instead we hear and read that agents aren’t willing to take on unkowns, and editors are afraid to buy unless it’s from authors who have a track record of strong sales. My CP’s agent even said editors are afraid to buy new authors for fear their book will be the one that gets them fired.

Where has our American spirit of fearlessness in the face of adversity gone?  The publishing industry could be trend setting instead of trend following. Book sellers could be the industry that starts the recovery. Now is the time to take risks, not bury our heads in the sand.

What do the rest of you think?

Three Reasons to Love Joss Whedon

I’m in a great mood today. Why? For two reasons:

• First, my novel Starstruck: Hunter went on sale 4/6/09 from Liquid Silver Books. To celebrate, I’m giving away a FREE copy over at my site.
  

To enter, go to this post and comment telling me what you love about urban fantasies. Make sure to use a valid email address so I can contact you if you win. The giveaway ends 4/30. I’ll announce the winner 5/1/09 on my site.

• Second, Dollhouse comes on FOX tonight!

If you haven’t seen this show yet, you are missing out. I’ve been a Joss Whedon fan since his Buffy the Vampire Slayer days. I fell back in love with him when he gave the world Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. And now I’m seriously crushing on him for creating a drama that hits the mark in every way.

Dollhouse provides Whedon’s trademark dark humor, action-packed sequences and gut-wrenching emotion. But what I really love about this show is that he takes on a very serious concept — human trafficking — in a creative, thought-provoking way.

So, because I’m such a Whedon fangirl, I’m counting down the Three Reasons I Love Joss Whedon:

3) The Action

2) Eye Candy

1) His quotability.

On love

“Love isn’t brains, children, it’s blood — blood screaming inside you to work its will. I may be love’s [w]itch, but at least I’m man enough to admit it.”

~ Spike, Buffy the Vampire Slayer [*I changed a letter of what Spike said to keep the quote clean.]

“Love makes you do the wacky.”

~ Buffy, Buffy the Vampire Slayer

On conflict resolution

“I will smack you!”

~ Echo, Dollhouse

On hilariously nonsensical threats

“You give my regards to St. Peter. Or whoever has his job, but in Hell.” ~ Captain Hammer, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog

What are some of your favorite things about Joss Whedon?

The Effective Book Trailer

Well,

I did manage to forget this was my blogging day! I guess I need a few more weeks to recover from the American Title. But, since I have been thinking a lot about book trailer and wrote an article about them a few weeks ago, I thought I would post my favorite here: the book trailer for Duma Key by Stephen King. Warning, it is not a romance. But it has all the elements that I like in a trailer: super short, simple images with no acting, big music that fits the images, simple writing.

Viewing this before I made my own for ANCIENT WHISPERS gave me a lot to think about.

You be the judge!

Poor Jane…poor, poor Jane

By Tamara Hughes

Now I’m a pretty laid-back person.  Very few things really get under my skin, but when I first heard about the “new” book Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, I was appalled, no worse, disgusted.

I have nothing against horror stories (although I shy away from them myself), and I can seriously see mixing romance and horror together for those who enjoy both.  No problem.  But messing with Jane Austen?  Come on.

My favorite movie of all time is Pride and Prejudice.  The story is a classic.

No, that’s not it either.  While it annoys me that Pride and Prejudice suddenly has zombies terrorizing the town, what gets me is witnessing legal plagiarism at work.  I realize that Jane Austen’s copyright has expired, making it perfectly legal for Seth Grahame-Smith to take her book verbatim and add his own subplot.

Still as a writer, I feel like shouting at this guy.  “Come up with your own story, your own words.  Don’t copy someone else’s and call it your own.”  And then I swallow hard.  Didn’t I use lines from Hamlet in my own work?  Yes, yes I did.  But copy a whole story?  Hmm.  Nope, still bothers me.

All right, my ranting is done.  And now I’m eager to see what you all think.  Feel free to disagree.  I’m calm now.

Have a great day.

Tami

The care and feeding of muses

By Jessica Darago

Sometimes I think I spend too much time immersed in words. My new writing has been very slow these past few months, while I argued with my muse–”No, no you may not rewrite the Skye scenes for the fourth time. Here. Read about Charles II.”–mostly to no avail. Lovely and useful creatures though they are, muses are fussy, moody, and bloody minded. You cannot make them do anything.

The best you can do is distract them.

That’s why, instead of taking advantage of a rare free weekend by duct-taping myself to a keyboard, I went for a walk. A loooooong walk. Rough terrain, strong winds, the Once soundtrack blaring on my ebook reader iPod, and some of the most beautiful scenery Washington DC has to offer–I’m not sure it did my muse any good, but it did wonders for my mood.

And thanks to my other, other, other artistic pursuit, I can share some of my walk with you. Enjoy!

One of DC's famous flowering cherries.

Of course, the cherries aren't all that's in bloom.

And it wouldn't be DC without a few columns.

A Sense of Place

I seem to be stuck on the theme of locations for books at the moment. Actually this post is for Barbara, as she has just discovered the British TV series Torchwood on DVD. As it is filmed around where I work I promised her a couple of shots of what the locations look like in daylight. So – this is what The Hub looks like in real life. The building with the poem on the front – Welsh and English, although not direct translations of each other – is a theatre/opera house – scene of my recent triumph when I read my work on a “Night for the Unpublished”. But I digress.  The column in front of the building is a fountain – a much photographed location as it is meant to be the site of the invisible lift which gives access to The Hub. Can’t say I’ve ever seen it myself.

By now everyone who has never seen Torchwood will be completely mystified.

I’ve blogged before on books, films and TV set in locations that the reader/viewer has visited. I enjoy seeing and reading about places I know. It made me think too about the places you connect to. If I want a romantic location for a book I am inevitably drawn to Italy. I love books set in Greece and I’ve visited Spain and France, yet I’ve never been tempted to set a story in any of those places. Was I an Italian in a previous life?

London is a frequent location, but then I lived there for years. I’m having a great time at the moment with a cosy crime that I am writing for fun. I’ve invented a whole new part of London and it has some of the strangest architecture and occupants you’ve ever met.

I usually try to put at least a scene or two set in Wales into my books, if I can.  Scotland is a very popular location for romance – two of the ATV finalist set their books there – is it the scenery, the men, the kilts? It’s probably not the haggis and the bagpipes, but you never know.

I’d be interested to know what draws others to write about specific places.

Is every book set in a new place, or do the same locations keep pulling you back?

Let It Not Be Said I Didn’t Try!

by Qaey Williams

These are the words I’d like to make sure I never forget: Let it not be said I didn’t try.

In my day job the words “I Can’t” seem to be the mantra of many of my students. I wonder why that is? I wonder why kids feel they have to do it right the very first time, every time, or else it isn’t worth it. The feeling of success and accomplishment is one of the greatest feelings a person can experience, yet, because of our increasing demands on kids to do everything faster and better and more efficiently I believe we’re destroying that sense of adventure and exploration all kids are born with.

Don’t tell me a child is born being afraid to try new things–I won’t believe you. Kids are born curious. They want to know everything. They want to explore the new world around them. They want to investigate each nook and cranny they can get their little fingers and toes and noses into. Grown-ups are the ones who create the fear in the kids.

“Oh, be careful, honey, you might fall!” “No, don’t touch that, it could be hot!” “Get down off of there, you’ll hurt yourself!”

Yes, I know as grown-ups we’re supposed to protect the kids from being harmed, but tell me, what kid who’s burned him or herself on the stove ever touched the burner again (hot or cold)? Keeping them safe is important, but stifling the curiosity and adventurous spirit in them is just wrong.

Why, might you ask, am I going off on this when I’m a romance writer and I should be talking about the craft, or my next book, or the million other little things that drive a writer’s life? Well, I am a writer, but I’m also a teacher. I love watching kids explore the world around them and create their own understanding of how things work. What I don’t love is the defeat I see in a child’s eyes every time they try something once, fail, and then refuse to ever try something new again. (You try getting 21 Kindergartners to type in their user name and password on a computer–then talk to me about adventure!) 

Failure is part of life, but everyone is so determined that kids’ lives be sweet and wonderful and full of positive self-esteem society is ruining the individuality in the children entrusted to us. Let the kids fail. Let them fall down once or twice or a dozen times just so they understand that they CAN get back up BY THEMSELVES. That they don’t need someone walking around behind them taking care of them and boosting them up with positive reinforcement.

As writers, the American Title V authors are all very familiar with rejection and failure (at least I know that’s been my experience), but every one of us persevered. We kept going and worked harder to improve our craft.

Each of us will sell. I have no doubt of that. We’ll reap the benefits of all those “I’m sorry, but it doesn’t suit our line because…” due to our analysis of the “because”s and how to implement changes in our manuscripts.

Ladies, my hat is off to you (metaphorically speaking of course–I suck at wearing hats) and the great example you represent for writers and students everywhere.

Cheers!

(Now, if I’m very lucky, that dreaded April Fool’s Day virus warning will have been a hoax and I’ll actually be able to keep all my work on my computer. LOL. Have a great day everyone!)

Skipping ahead

I judged contest entries last week. The first scene in one entry was backstory and info dumping. In another, the prologue was backstory and info dumping. Nothing that couldn’t be sprinkled into the rest of the book. I advised both of them to cut the scene and prologue. In neither case would it have been missed.

Friday night, about 10:30, I picked up a thick book I’d gotten from the library by a bestselling, RITA winning writer. I won’t name her, but she started in another genre, was a huge hit in historicals and now writes women’s fiction. Her historicals were auto buys for me, but I haven’t been excited about her women’s fiction, even though it’s a genre I enjoy. The recent judging helped me figure out why.

She started with with action … but as soon as the beginning problems played out, she switched to backstory and long scenes that showed character. I love character! I’m a character girl. But show me the character mixed with something happening and you have me. Show me the character with nothing happening and you’ve lost me.

Because the author is such a good writer — and I wasn’t ready to go to bed yet — I skipped whole chapters to a point where something happened. I thought I’d read a bit and go to bed. I ended up going to bed after one.

I finished the book the next day, and I never went back to read the chapters I skipped. I get the feeling in those chapters she told about her relationships with her parents and her brother, etc. But in the later chapters, I saw her interact with her father and brother, and that’s all I needed.

Though I ended up enjoying the book, I probably won’t pick up her next one. So whether you’re a bestseller or a newbie, it’s wise to follow Elmore Leonard’s most important rule of writing:

“Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.”

What about you? Do you have formerly favorite writers you’re no longer reading because they’re putting in the “skipping” parts? Have you stopped reading a book lately because of this?

Procrastination Continued

By Barbara Longley

I wracked my brain all day for a subject to blog about . . . a riveting subject that hasn’t already been covered.  The only thing I could come up with was a continuation of Jessica’s great list of procrastination tactics . . . which I really enjoyed. You got me thinking, Jessica. I’d like to add to that list:

* Seeing if dryer lint works as well as old newspaper for papier mâché (It doesn’t.)

* Cleaning. I’m not talking the vacuum/dust kind of cleaning. I’m talking emptying the refrigerator kind of cleaning, the upstairs never-go-there closet kind of cleaning, the nastiest corner of the basement kind of cleaning.

* Paying bills and balancing the checkbook. This is the checkbook that gets balanced maybe once a year.

* Chasing your dog around the house with a pair of nail clippers. That little sausage may have short legs, but let me tell you, she can move! Or better yet, mention the words “anal glands,” get out the latex gloves and see what happens . . .

* Create your own dictionary of naughty words to be used in your novels.

* Finally getting that root canal.

* Hot waxing yourself . . . anywhere on your body.

What kinds of things do we do to procrastinate writing on our WIPs when we’re stuck? My favorite procrastination technique is rereading my manuscript from the beginning to as far as I’ve gotten. I rationalize that I’m checking the pacing, the flow, continuity. The truth is . . . I’m really looking for inspiration, direction, my muse. I also take the pup for walks, and I read. How about you?

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