A Daily Dose of Romance

My favorite books to read are classics. I love Seton and Flaubert, Emerson, Twain. Stuff no one reads much anymore. And I think I’ve figured out why. At least in part.

Stories like Dragonwyck and Madame Bovary are not long stories by the word count, but they take some time to read. You don’t plow through one of those in an afternoon on the beach and still get into the depth of the characters and setting, let alone the plot and tragedy of it all. For years I have collected anciently published classics. And while I do not have nearly as much time as I used to, I will pull out certain books and read passages now and again.

Authors told stories differently back then. Not only in the vocabulary they used, but in the way they made setting and time come alive, almost actual characters in the story. By the time you finished reading the book, you knew every nook and cranny, every piece of furniture, every bend in the river…

I miss those kinds of stories. In today’s market, the action starts right under your nose on page one, no build-up, no backstory, no lengthy description. All we ever write is just enough to give the reader a sense of time and place. Elaboration is considered unnecessary, frivolous, not publishable.

Why? It is a matter of society. More people watch television for information now than read the newspaper. Video games, computers and movies are time-killers and methods of escapism, not so much with books anymore. Being educated well enough to read is no longer the exception, nor do families sit around a fire in the hearth and listen to a story, or to someone read from a book.

People have become accustomed to immediacy. Information is not something we wait for, we Google it. We are impatient. We want information, entertainment. And we want it now. Action movies and stories start out with a bang and a boom, or at the very least evil lurking in the opening arrangement of music. They do not begin softly - unless someone or something is seconds away from being torn to shreds right before our eyes, all blood and screams.

What ever happened to just telling the story? To delving into emotion and tragedy, the psyche. Why does everything have to go boom?

So, where do you do it? A padded chair? The back garden on a sunny day? Oh, I know, in a corner booth at the coffeshop…

Writing, of course! Or are you accustomed to sitting in front of your computer screen? Do you write long hand on paper and transcribe it later? Use a laptop and travel?

In my post yesterday, I mentioned my AlphaSmart. It’s a little word processor that weighs about two pounds, runs for many hundreds of hours (that’s right, I said hundreds) on three batteries, automatically saves…

Now, before I start sounding like some kind of advertisement, let me say there are other brands of the same sort of thing out there. This just happens to be the one I own.

What I like about this device most is that I can take it any where and write. I don’t even need to find an outlet to plug it into like laptops often need. Just turn it on and start typing. It allows me the freedom to get comfortable in any chair, in any room of the house, the coffee shop, back yard or where ever.

I can only see a few lines at a time, so it’s difficult to edit myself to any real degree. And I don’t have to stare at an entire blank, white page on my desk top computer screen. I just write.

My first drafts are always done this way. As I fill a file, it’s simply a matter of plugging in my little wordprocessor, hitting the send button and…whamo! there are my pages, formatted all neat and perfect, the cursor blinking at me from my desk top computer. Not to mention the lack of distraction - no spider solitaire, internet, email. The AlphaSmart is just for writing.

So, do you have a favorite creative location? A routine or ritual of getting your butt into the chair somehow to get those pages out and into the computer? If so, feel free to share. The creative process is a wily one, and if it works for you it just might work for someone else.

No doubt about it, it is tough to keep the word count going during the holidays. Especially when you are talking Thanksgiving and Christmas - the two big ones. Family, travel, friends, the parties to plan and attend, these are all very time consuming, stressful, and often necessary parts of the season. And then there’s all that shopping…ick.

I know. I’ve been there and done all of them.

One way that helps me keep the productivity progressing is to have some piece of what I’m working on with me when I am traveling. Sometimes it’s pages to edit, or research for my next story. If I’m actively writing, I’ll take along my AlphaSmart (word processor) so I can keep going.

Now don’t get me wrong, I never get a great deal done on holiday trips, but, the few minutes I can manage to sneak away and look at my story keeps it fresh in my mind. So even if I don’t get a single word written or edited, at least when I get back home and in my routine I am ready to pick right up with my story. I won’t need several days to re-read and refresh.

This year in particular, keeping my word count going is important. I have a novella to finish and turn in to my editor, as well as a three book proposal to write. All to be done over the holidays.

And this is the week when all the fun begins…

In keeping with the theme of ‘Process’ that seems to have emerged this week, I thought I would bring up the topic of music. Many of the writers I know have a play list of music they listen to when they write. The songs change with each story to fit the feel and emotion they are trying to convey.

I tried this method of motivation once, but it just didn’t work for me. Which I thought was strange, because I can write with the television on in the background, or most any other noise. Writing in the middle of a busy coffee shop doesn’t bother me in the least, I simply fall into my story world and all those talking, moving people around me fade away.

But put the radio on…poof, there goes my ability to pay attention to the written word.

There must be something about music that draws me in so completely - the rhythm of the musical notes, the words, the harmonic sound of the voices. No, I don’t listen to the really hard stuff, it hurts my head. For me, music is too hypnotic to use it as a tool for creativity.

Over the years, my muse and I have come to an understanding…she works best early in the morning (not my choice) and she can’t focus with music playing.

Do any of you have such a fickle muse to placate?

Progress. Or lack there of. You decide.

I want to finish the first draft of my novella this month. My goal is to then let it sit for a few days, edit and polish, ship it off to my critique partners for review, re-edit and send it to my editor all by the first of the year. January brings the start of a new single title (the first in a trilogy). So the timing of a challenge with my local writer’s group was perfect. During the entire month of November, we post our fresh pages every day, the competition spurring us on…

Now don’t get me wrong, my page counts aren’t terrible. I know I don’t do a fast first draft. In fact, my first drafts come out slow, but quite clean and I usually whip right through edits - an entire single title will usually take me only a week or so to edit and polish. That said, and the fact that I am NOT a plotter, I am by nature a character driven writer, I am half way through this first draft. And we are half way through the month.

I know my page count for yesterday was terrible. In fact, I’m not sure I wrote enough to have even a line count.

But on the up side, my characters did reveal some more about the story, and themselves. This I like. This is inspiring. This will get the fingers tapping atop the keyboard today. So as far as progress, I’d say yes and no.

What would you say?

Yesterday while I had a few minutes, I did a bit of surfing and read some other blogs. I found one where the author discussed rejection letters. Now I know I usually put up a couple of words and definitions, as it is Wednesday, but for some reason that feels boring to me today.

So instead, I thought I would skim through some of my rejection letters and share a bit. Now most of them say the standard ‘no thanks’ on a photocopied form letter, or ‘I don’t think I would be the best person to represent your work, good luck’. And that is fine. From the editor’s side of the rejection stack I’ve been told, ‘While the writing isn’t bad…the dark nature of…’ and then it goes further from there. And that was great, it was an informative rejection. It told me that specific editor likes stories that are on the lighter side, no dark personalities with even darker agendas.

Now in this business of writing, you develop a thick skin quickly, or you don’t continue to write and submit. You must be prepared to hear that your idea, or characters, or whatever just plain stinks. Okay, fine. I can deal with that because even when you do sell that story, and the editor loves it, once it goes into print - the world gets to read it. And not everyone will be singing your praises. After all, I don’t buy every book I pick up, turn over and read the back cover.

So despite the fact that I rarely need to brace myself anymore when that envelope comes back through the mailbox, this next clip from my rejection pile was the hardest to take. It came probably four years ago and still stings. The editor started the letter with the typical thank you for submitting, then went on to say, ‘I love your book, but I can’t buy it.’ Now that one was tough to swallow. I only sent them what they said they were acquiring…

I got over it. That book is not one I plan to give up on either. As soon as my deadlines are met on my current contract, it will come out of the file, meet with my red pen for a harsh edit and I will start sending it out again. Why? Well, that particular story is my favorite, even five years after writing it, I believe in it.

I’ll continue to keep every one of my rejection letters. This is a tough business and they are badges of courage.

What do you do when your characters quit on you?

I have encountered writer’s block a time or two, and been fortunate in that it did not last long. But it can be a terrible experience for some. Writers are not typically, by nature, confident people. That is why we write. We live in our stories, and if the story world we are creating stops spinning…

Well, it’s not always pretty.

During one of these times, I asked my local group of writer friends what they do to resolve writer’s block and I got lots and lots of wonderful advice. None of it helped me. But at least I wasn’t in uncharted territory. Other people had been there, too.

What ended up working for me at the time was to stop writing the story. I stepped away, did other things for a few days, read other people’s books, got caught up on house stuff, whatever I could find to do other than write. I just let the story go. And after a few days, when I reread my words, I could see the story was forced, plotted, planned. All those things that go against my nature as a writer.

So what did I do? I captured, cut, and saved in a different file all those non-fluid words. Then closed my eyes and trusted my characters again. This is not always an easy thing to do, especially if you are on a deadline and NEED that word count. For me, if I lose touch with my characters, try to change them or force the story to where I want it to go, they revolt and the world stops spinning.

Stepping away from the story might not be the answer for you, but it worked for me. The lesson in all of this? Understand your process. Know how you write, why you write, get right down to the teeth in each cog and widget of your process so when the wheels stop turning you can inspect each one and find out what is not working. 

For the first few years after I began writing seriously, I labored under the delusion I was doing it all wrong. All the other writers I knew had extensive research notes, pages and pages of plot outlines, character grids that listed physical and psychological traits, they knew what the ‘black moment’ of their book was before they wrote the opening sentence. I knew none of these things about my books.

Then one day, a multi-published writer I know revealed that she wrote the same way I did. No intricate plot outline just an idea and characters. Write that opening sentence and follow the characters from one page onto the next. Usually, as I go along the plot comes together, and yes, I’ll go back and start seeding things in earlier after I get it all figured out. But I realized that for me, if I wrote out all these pages of the plot, then I felt as though I’d already written the book. There was no point to write it all again.

I love the journey into the unknown. 

I love discovering what will happen next when I sit down to write. Just like the reader will when he/she sits down to read.

Knowing that now, I never try to plot particularly. I figure out my idea, in other words all the main character’s goals or motivations, then I turn them loose on the page and see where they take me.

No pages and pages of plot. No details all planned out. No black moment. I let the characters reveal it all to me as the story goes along. After all, it’s not an adventure if you don’t have a few surprises along the way. 

Many of the writers I know put together collages for their current writing projects. I do this too for my single titles, though not for the novellas. When I get magazines, I’ll clip out pictures of people and things, and while I’m researching a new story I’ll begin to put images to the story. I find pictures of how my characters look, or where they live, sometimes a particular piece of furniture that is mentioned in the story.

I use those paper-sized plastic inserts and mount them on construction paper. I find for the longer stories these images help keep me focused. Though I must admit, this is harder to do if you write historicals than if you pen contemporary stories. So for historicals I tend to use more in the way of scenery than images of actual people.

One of the hardest things about writing, is learning your process. What works for you, what doesn’t. Do you write better at a certain time of day? Do you write better at the computer or away from it? I even know some folks who still write in long hand on a pad of paper and type it in later. In the long run, the how is less important than the end result.

It is the writing that is important. So when you are stuck, listen to how others work, try their method, but you don’t have to live by it. Pick and choose, invent your own. But make your story real. Write it.

Next week I’ll share some of the advice I’ve asked for and received over the years in my attempts along the way to discovering my own process.

During a conversation last night, it came up that many people don’t realize that our attraction to the opposite sex is biological. There is a reason men enjoy looking at certain body parts so much, and the same goes for women, too.

Specific curves and proportions on a woman’s body trigger the male brain to want to mate. The reason for this goes back to the dawn of man, but we’ll use Mr. Neanderthal as an example. Large breasts, full hips and a plump bottom all send sparks flying around in Mr. Neanderthal’s brain and send him into chase mode. Why? Because a female with all those physical traits will be more likely to conceive, carry, give birth and feed a child successfully. Yep, whether he knows it or not, that is the goal of his body - to procreate. Children were necessary to keep the tribe alive. And if you think about it, by the time Mr. Neanderthal reached puberty, he was halfway through his life so he had no time to waste.

Now women are not immune to biological attraction. Men are the physically stronger sex, no doubt about that. And Miss Neanderthal needed a man who could hunt for her as well as protect her. That is why women enjoy the sight of a large chest, muscular legs and a tight tushy. A male with those specific physical traits would be able to offer her, and any children she had, the protection, food, and fur for clothing they would need to survive.

While our brains have increased their capacity to learn and men no longer need to hunt sabertooth tigers or mammoths, biologically, our bodies have not caught up to that evoutionary fact. So the next time you’re admiring that figure or physique standing across the street, you’ll know why you are looking.