Life Happens...
But the Deadline Has to be Met Anyway

LOOMING DEADLINE... DEADLINE HELL...  MANUSCRIPT IS DUE... MANUSCRIPT IS LATE...

We’ve heard these words whispered, shouted, muttered, groaned and spoken in a voice tortured with the pain of creative bondage.  They are the hated mantra of the published and the frightening bogeyman of the unpublished.

Unfortunately...this article isn’t about how to get rid of deadlines.  I think, that like taxes and marriage partners...they’re with us until death do us part.   But, they don’t have to loom as the writer’s nemesis.  Let’s leave that role for the taxman.

The deadlines aren’t our enemies...procrastination and lack of planning are.  Let me repeat a profound truth...life happens.  Published, or unpublished... the mother-in-law shows up for a surprise visit, kids get sick, emergencies at our day job take us away from our writing, family and friends vie for our attention, hard drives crash and new relationships demand time.

We can moan and groan about these realities, or we can write through them.  Easy?  No.  Necessary?  Yes

During the Spotlight on Avon at the RWA National Conference in Denver, Lucia Macro made the comment that it gave her pause when an author told her the manuscript she wanted to submit had taken her five years to write.  Lucia said she had to wonder if the next one was going to take as long.  Since most single title publishers want one book a year from their writers, this would be a major problem.

So...if you are unpublished – set your own deadlines and stick to them.  You can train your creative muse to function under the pressure of deadline.  If you are published, give yourself a break.  Figure out the best writing schedule for yourself and stick to it.  You are the only person who knows how long it takes you to write a book, so you’re the only one who knows what deadline to set for yourself or negotiate into your contract.

I’ve come to believe that writing is equal parts creativity and self-discipline.  Yes, I want my work to shine with creativity, but one perfect paragraph in a book only half-finished remains very pretty words on a page that can never touch a reader’s heart because those words will never see a printing press...unless that book gets done.

So, give yourself permission to push your muse and write consistently, balancing the beauty of creation with the pragmatism of self-discipline.

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Suggested Questions for a Book Discussion

If you can:  List the order in which they appear in the book.

When do they meet?  Chapter and page and scene #.

Describe their character to the best of your ability, using no more than five one word adjectives.

If you can:  List the order in which they appear in the book.

Describe their character to the best of your ability, using no more than five one word adjectives.

If you can:  List as many as you can think of in chronological order as they are revealed in the book.

Do this for both the main characters and the secondary characters.

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Layering the Onion

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about story development.  I’m what you might call a schizophrenic writer.  Sometimes I’m pure “seat of the pants” and other times I plot to the last scene in a book, but all of the books I’ve written have one thing in common.

They started with a story idea.  This could be a scene, a premise, a series of scenes or simply a plot device (like revenge) that my mind starts playing around with.  When I first started writing I truly believed that story idea was it...it was the book.  I also believed that if a scene sparked the creative process for a book that scene would end up in the book.

I’ve come to realize that I’m wrong on both counts.  The story idea is the center of the onion, needing layers added to it to make it full and pungent.  That layering comes from characterization.  The better I know my characters and the more they are conflicted inwardly, the more layered my story becomes.

A question I constantly ask myself now is, “How can I make this deeper?”

She’s hurting because her first marriage didn’t work out and she’s in love with a man who despises her.  How can I deepen this story?  What if she left her first husband because he’d turned violent and she now fears physical intimacy with a man?  What if the man she loves despises her because guilt from his own forbidden love for her makes him susceptible to the lies told about her by her former husband?

Those were just the beginning of a series of “what ifs” that led to “The Greek Tycoon’s Ultimatum” and my first sale.

Some writers get to know their characters as they write; some do in depth characterization sketches prior to beginning a book.  The what if questions either happen before the book gets written or along the way.  It doesn’t matter which approach a writer takes as long as they reach the same place...a story idea that has been layered deeply enough to be a compelling and emotional read.

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Life After Your First Sale

People said my life would go on much as before after my first sale, but it didn’t.  It got way, way more busy.  I had a website to put up, html code to learn (very rudimentary), book promotion to do, more books to write and sell.  For me, the change was huge.

Instead of spending four to six hours a day on my writing, I was spending ten to twelve.  Instead of writing on spec, I was writing books my editor wanted and expected.  I guess I was in the minority that I sold books two and three almost immediately, but for me, it was imperative I have something for my editor right away.  I wanted to prove I could write more than one salable book.

Do you know, I’ve sold five more now and I still wonder with every one of them if my editor will like them, amazing isn’t it?  I call that the writer worry gene.  According to Lori Foster and Kate Walker, it never goes away.

I fell apart inside with my first two revision letters after my sale.  I suppose I was afraid me editor would think I was the world’s worst writer because my books needed “fixing” – but again, friends came through.  Meg Chittenden and Theresa Scott reminded me that most writers get revision letters, even seasoned ones.

I try not to second-guess my editor anymore, because I’m frequently wrong.  I like knowing I have four books out in 2004 and a minimum of three books out in 2005, but now I worry I’ll dry up creatively.  It hasn’t happened yet and truly I don’t think it will, but that dumb writer worry gene will always find something to fixate on.

I’ve learned that not everyone is happy for me, but enough people are to make it all good.

Life does change when you sell a book.  Yes, there are still the same old chores to do, but there is so much more.  Not just more work, but more affirmation of your goals, more excitement about your stories – they are going to be read and you know it.  That adds something to writing the book.  It’s a wild ride and I do mean wild.  My husband says that he’s still hanging onto the safety bar, trying not to fall out of the roller coaster as it twists and dips.  I feel that way too.

Life changes for both you and your family.  Be prepared for it.  Embrace it.  And enjoy it.  They will too, if you let them.

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Romance...A force worth reckoning

Romance...is it chocolate box fiction or a genre so powerful, it can change lives?

If you know anything about me at all, you know I can only answer that question one way. I believe that romance fiction is bigger than entertainment, but it undoubtedly entertainment. I think it is bigger than books written mostly by women for a predominately female market, though it is that as well. It is, in truth, so powerful, so big that it *does* change lives...the lives of its readers and the lives of the authors who do or seek to make their living writing it.

This article came about because Tessa Rallis read an email I posted on JoAnn Ross's Writer's Group about some neat things that were happening with one of my books, "Blackmailed into Marriage." In this book, the heroine suffers from Vaginismus, a not so uncommon but rarely talked about sexual dysfunction among women that makes it difficult or impossible for the suffere to engage in intercourse. It wasn't easy getting this book published. It started out as a single title that my editor at Kensington rejected - or at least the Vaginistic element. She said get rid of it and I did. But I couldn't let this heroine go...so I pitched the idea to my editor in Richmond and she said go for it.

She and the editorial director took a chance on this book as romance editors have been taking chances for decades and some very cool things happened. When the book first came out, sales were good...it was on Waldenbooks bestsellers list for three weeks, but the neatest thing about it was the letters I got from readers. Some, who had suffered vag or another sexual dysfunction, I didn't share on my website. Others, were by readers who were really glad to have had their eyes opened about a condition that even medical doctors tend to be ignorant about.

But then some other unexpected things started happening. A student at Northwestern contacted me. She wanted to do her dissertation, using BIM as a central theme. Then a counselor for Vaginismus.com contacted me. She wanted to interview me for the website because that little book had given so many women hope. I agreed to do the interview and then actually got to meet with the founders for the site who had written a book and workbook used for treatment. They asked me if I was interested in teaching a workshop on "recapturing the passion" for seminar attendees. My answer was, "Yes, of course."

But it didn't end there. They felt so strongly about BIM and the positive message it gives that they wanted to include it in all their post treatment packets. Unfortunately, because Harlequin could not provide an adequate supply of the book, this idea had to be scrapped. That does not alter the fact that this little book made a difference in the lives of a lot of women.

Romance does that...by its very nature. I tend to be an issues writer, but it doesn't take something like shedding light on women's issues to make our books powerful. They are that simply because of what they are. The victorious endings, the stories about men and women who are willing to work to make a relationship happen and the power of love touch lives in a positive way every day. I'm very proud to be a romance writer and I hope you are too.

We sow seeds of hope into a world that has far too much hopelessness. The world needs our books. Our readers are more than consumers, they are people's whose lives we touch and step into with our stories. I'll never hear from most of mine, but I know that if a woman read one of my books, she and I connected at a heart level because my heart is in my stories and hers is there when she reads them.

Long live romance and the positive power of hope it gives to the world!

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