BookingIt

After my involvement in that accident, my grandma suggested I write out what happened as a healing exercise. I used to write in a diary all the time, but since getting married, that has fallen to the side. Even when I did it though, the words were subdued for fear that someone like me might walk into the room. To write about something that hurts to think about seems to me rather like picking at a scabbing wound. But I think for some writing out their hurts aides in the healing process. How do you release emotion? Do you think writing about a painful event is healthy or counterproductive? And do you journal? If so, what about?

Right now I'm waiting on line edits for my soon-to-be-pubbed (eeek!!!) book. I did a set of revisions before contract and a set after, but now the story is being sent to a different line editor. Even though authors from the same line gave me some encouragement about these edits, I'm still nervous. What will be changed? Will the editor like the story or hate it? Will the editor cross out all my "was"s? The suspense of not knowing what will happen is driving me to chocolate. Are you waiting for anything right now? How do you handle the suspense of the unknown? Are you prepared for the changes an editor might ask you to make?

A cool thing about Love Inspired is that authors are asked to give input into the covers of their books. The uncool thing is that I'm so NOT visual. Some writers have pictures of their scenes and characters taped to the walls. I don't. I have a vague idea, so when I was asked to supply pictures for cover ideas, I was befuddled. Thank goodness I have a friend who is the Queen of Visuality (you know who you are!). She supplied me with links to helpful websites where I could brainstorm who exactly my characters look like. Are you visual? Do you already have cover ideas? If you were a character, how would you be physically described?

I sold to Love Inspired Historical !!! Here's how it happened: " You should write a book. You'd make more money doing that." In 2006 my editor at the newspaper I freelanced for told me this. In that moment, a lightbulb went off in my head. Write for money? Sure, I'd written stories all my life, but to actually write a book and be paid for it was a concept that had never occurred to me. That same year, I started a historical romance. Why historical? Because Love Inspired was launching a historical line in 2007 and I was aiming for that. I also love reading historical romances. "The characters should be talking by now." So said agent Steve Laube at my first writer's conference in 2007. He'd gotten to page 7 and my heroine was still thinking of backstory. I made every newbie mistake with that first manuscript. So I read articles and did my best to make the manuscript shine. Then I submitted it to agents. Form rejections. I decided to submi...

I've been in the midst of judging contests since November and I'm starting to see a pattern with entries, enabling me to see what I need to work on in my own writing. RUE Resist the Urge to Explain This manifests as telling most of the time. Good showing needs no explanation. A grin says more than "she was happy." RUE doesn't just occur in telling though. Sometimes the sneaky bugger pops into narrative (and there's a fine line, imo, between internal narrative and telling). For example, something will be said in dialogue or shown in action, and then we like to jump in and drop a few lines explaining what just happened. Just like in life, sometimes it's better to RUE. Another weakness I'm coming across is lack of conflict . I think many writers (including myself) make the mistake of thinking that bad things happening to our main character equals conflict. I've been pondering it though, and I'm beginning to realize that conflict cannot e...

When I first started writing, I did a lot of research. One of the things I began to notice was how long it took for authors to get published. The average, if I remember right, was 3-5 years from the point of starting to the point of contract. The numbers boggled me. Could I write for that long? With no guarantee? Of course, I could. It helped to think of the first few years as college. Still, I was overwhelmed by the thought of how long it took so I decided to stop thinking about it and just write, query, etc. About a year ago, I suddenly realized I'd been writing for three years. Somehow the time had flown by. How? Well, the best thing about publishing is that while there's a wait, there's also always things changing. For example, after I finished my first manuscript it took time to write the query. Then time to figure out who to send it to. And then I started a new story as I waited for responses. Between all that was editing and critiquing and contests. Basically, I'...

First chapters are always fun for me. I love setting up the story and creating some juicy conflict. One thing I try to keep in mind is that I start the story right. There's a lot of advice to start the story with action, which is great, but I also think there's another important aspect to the first chapter and it has to do with character arc. The first chapter should start with your main character in their ordinary world. This is the world they've been in before the story started. The same problems, the same people, the same moral structure. Somewhere in chapter one, usually toward the end, something happens or some choice is made which propels the main character into a new world. A new job, a new challenge, or maybe new choices. This change that occurs should be something that challenges your hero or heroine's character. Thus, the character arc begins and chapter one ends with your main character in a struggle that will continue throughout the story and at the end of t...

Last post I talked about rules we readers would like to tell writers. Some rules we came up with: 1. Don't Bore Your Reader 2. Don't Annoy Your Reader 3. Don't Be Predictable 4. Misunderstandings don't make Good Conflict 5. Trust Your Reader 6. Make Your Reader Care 7. Be an Honest, Believable Writer 8. Keep Things Simple Unfortunately, while I can spot these things in books, somehow I miss them in my own stories. I'm always breaking rules and not realizing it! Thank goodness for my critique group. For my writing friends. For anonymous contest judges. Which "rules" have you broken? How do you keep yourself from doing it again? How do you feel about rules in general? (*grin* They're not my favorite thing, if you can tell)

I picked up a book that I'd heard good reviews about. The cover was cute, the voice engaging. I was totally into the book for about fifty pages...until I figured out the plot. HEAs are my thing. That's why I read romance. But there are still ways to surprise me and hook me into the characters' lives. With this book, the author set up a plot that could've been really good with lots of tension and snappy writing but somehow I realized that the whole crux of the plot is a misunderstanding. I didn't buy that the husband was cheating because I didn't see the evidence (could be other craft problems or could just be me). There was a scene where the heroine is riding with her boss's son (who the husband doesn't know about) in a car and sees her husband drive past with his beautiful co-worker beside him. That's where I stopped reading. The heroine is worrying about her husband cheating but she just did the same thing he did! Why is she allowed to ride in the ...

I'm back from Costa Rica. It was an absolutely amazing, wonderful trip. I saw so many different things. I'll try to post pics later. I'm not going to be blogging for a little while longer because a shark bit my right index finger off... Just kidding. It actually got smushed by the boat's toilet cover. *blushes* The poor thing is really gross and I can't type well, so I'll be back when the stinker heals up. Merry Christmas everyone! Feliz Navidad!

My stories don't always make my mother cry. Before she mentioned that my very sad contemporary romance made her cry, Mom told me on the phone that there were several parts where she laughed. Laughed? I think I scratched my head. Paced my kitchen. Lost focus on how I should respond. Desperately tried to think of what part of that story could have possibly been funny. I threw out different scenes that were lighter in nature. I tried to dig for information as if I hadn't just been completely befuddled by her comment. And then...jackpot. Here's a sentence that made my mother laugh: Greg Seaward grabbed at the contract from across their table at Denny’s, his sausage fingers quick to flip through the folder in search of Alec’s check. Apparently the description reminded her of what a melodramatic child I'd been. Has anyone ever told you that you look like someone you don't want to look like? Have you ever had a contest judge or reader give you a comment that left you puzzl...

Have you checked out my word meter? NO??? Well, don't feel bad. It hasn't moved because I'm stuck. There are various reasons for this pause in my writing and as I mentally sludge my way through this WIP torture, I read. Mostly historical romances. When you're stuck, what do you do? What's your favorite form of procrastination?

I'd like to introduce one of the first writer's I ever "met" back in my RWC critiquing days, Candi Wall . She's a very talented writer who writes super hunky heroes. Not only that, but she's a genuinely kind person whom I'm honored to have on here. Hi, Jessica! Thanks for having me. In true ‘Booking It’ form, I’m going to try to keep this thought provoking… Hello, my name is Candi Wall, and I’m an aspiring author. I’ve been aspiring 365 days a year for 16 years and every day is a battle. Being an aspiring author has made me do things I never thought I’d do but I find I can’t give it up. >grin My novel STAY is entered in the Next Best Celler Contest at TextNovel.com (Which means I write my novel in increments of approx. 500 words at a time, post them in mini chapters and hope to get enough votes to keep myself in the top twenty. The top twenty are then whittled down to ten, and out of the ten, Dorchester Editors will pick a winner who will receive a pu...

First, I hope all of you have a wonderful, relaxing Labor Day! For this post, I just thought I'd share a run-down of where I'm at in my writing. I have a proposal for an older manuscript with an agent, but she's had it a long time so I'm not sure if the interest is there. Hoping though, and still very excited that it's under consideration. :-) I'm almost done editing this WIP and then I'm going to give it to a few people to read over. This is also the WIP I'm planning to pitch at the conference in two weeks. Not only that, but I just got some contest results back on this WIP. *cringe* I'm smarting still, but mostly at my own stupidity. I forgot to change my synopsis to reflect the changes in my WIP. Therefore, my motivations didn't line up and both the judges caught discrepancies between what the plot was supposed to be and what the chapters were showing. There were also some other excellent suggestions, but overall my scores were low so that was...

Lately, there's been this suspicion that my writing is not where it should be. I read my words and wonder: Am I overwriting? Do I really need to say what the hero smells like? Do I need to describe the feelings that are overwhelming the heroine? Is it necessary to use metaphors? No one has said I overwrite. So why is my writer's conscious bugging me about it? I'm chalking it up to paranoia. Do you ever obsess over something in your writing, despite the lack of a solid foundation (crits) for your worry?

It happened again. Someone copied my work. Twenty years ago. That's right. Some of my favorite phrases in an unpublished manuscript of mine were plagiarized twenty years ago. Ack, I'm kidding! Here's what happened. I was reading an older romance when I stumbled across phrasing almost identical to the phrasing in my manuscript. It was weird. And humbling. Here I thought I came up with this deep and lovely prose, and another author already used it. One of my so-called original phrases include the term "her eyes silver pools of sorrow". BEEP. That's been used. Grrrrr..... Has this happened to you or am I just crazy (and unoriginal, lol)?

But I feel pretty good because the agent said she liked many elements of my project! Haha, that's definitely a boost. She'll be getting a thank you card. Anybody else get rejections in the mail? Requests? Share so I can be jealous :-) My queries out list is dwindling. It's time to search RWA's website for more agents to astound with my "astonishing work of genius". That's a mutilated quote taken from Randy Ingermanson but I can't find the original so am relying on my "genius" memory.

So I'm supposed to write a cover letter, which I believe is similar to a query letter. And I have to make a blurb. It hurts, it really hurts, trying to sum up my story in an exciting way using only five sentences. What I'd like to know is: who created the query letter? Whose idea was it? I keep putting this chore off because when I sit down to do it, everything I write sounds like. . .well, you know. Besides this painful situation, all else is well. My kids are down for a nap and I have an hour to myself. I really should go write. Being a professional means discipline. Eek, another ouch.