Chicks-n-Scratching

Archive for the ‘writing’ Category

I am. Seriously. Shaking in my big girl panties.

Why??

Lemme give you the scoop, c’mere.

Okay, first my debut JINXED comes out in *gulp*Sqeeeee* four days. Four. F. O. U. R.

Second, I am playing guest blog hopper for promo and face it, I am really not that interesting. What am I going to write about? I have no clue.

Third, I am running my first ever contest on my website starting on the 9th and uhm, I haven’t figured out what to do yet. Shhhhh, don’t tell anyone.

Fourth, today is the first day of summer vacation meaning, I have three children under foot, two of which are Kindy age. So yeah, they require…stuff. Like food. and drinks. And playtime and…time.

Fifth, I have a deadline approaching (At the speed of light on acid) and see #4. It is very very hard to write intense, life altering sex when your knees are being used as the drawbridge for a hostile pirate ambush.

Sixth, My husband informed me we are hosting his family reunion picnic. Joy. *insert sarcasm at random*

Seventh, that deadline thing, kinda a new story deal for me, different approach. So far it is working but the risk is real too. It will either work or not but not knowing before hand is scary.

Eighth, waiting on word from a publisher. *fingers crossed* Side note: did you know it is capable of sending a grown woman into a panic when she realizes she has not refreshed her email for 30 whole minutes? doesn’t matter thatit may take months to get that return email but if she misses a 30 minute block, it makes her heart thud out of her chest because you just never know.

Ninth, Repeat #4

Tenth, repeat #1

Repetitively.

A writer has several of THOSE moments. The minute you hit the last period in a manuscript and sit back and go “oh wow, I’m done.”

Uhm, no you’re not, you are done the draft. Now you reread and fix and edit and smooth and splice and erase and add and doctor and polish and reread and start it all over again. A few times. A manuscript is never done until you cannot get your hands on it anymore. THEN and only then is it done. By that time, many writers are so sick of that story they are like THANK YOU, JESUS, I AM DONE!

Then there is the moment when you sell your first story, be it epubbed or NY or whatever. Something you wrote sold! For me, I sat and stared at the email from my editor at Samhain (realizing I could now say I HAD an editor) and then promptly threw up. I shamefully did. If I had to compare the feeling to something a non writer might understand, I felt remarkably similar to the instant I looked at that first EPT and saw two lines. There was  split second of Wait, what? Then a rush of dizzying OMG followed quickly by Holy shit I did it. My hands shook so badly it took nearly ten minutes to type the response email back accepting the offer.

I called my husband. And got his voice mail. Bummer.

I called my mother. That’s great, do you have my tupperware cake carrier? Who gives a fuck about your tupperware, I sold a book here! ggrrrrr

I call my best friend at work. She is in the middle of a 911 emergency call (she is a dispatcher). Even as excited as I was, I understood that, you know, life and limb come before my book sale, told her to call me later. Bummer.

So I go to a message board I know and love(Hi Twinshock ladies), full of supporting cyber friends. THEY went nuts for me. Finally SOMEBODY to celebrate with! YAY! This was the first place I went when I sold my second book. I learned who really mattered, huh?

Then I went to my writers’ board and THEY were full of good jobs and accolades, knowing what it really meant.

Then I threw up again and did some laundry.

A different MOMENT came when I got the THE CALL from my agent. I missed it. I was picking up my kids from school and forgot my cell phone. When I came home and saw the name and number(gotta love caller ID), see the EPT reaction above and repeat. Now I wanted to return the call but do you know how noisy three young kids can be immediately after school?

I pulled off one of my proudest parenting moments, I explained to the oldest (10 at the time) and supplied her with an entire package of chocolate chip cookies, three Capri Sun drinks, a forbidden Spongebob DVD and had her take the twins to her room. I made my call in complete quiet. One glorious hour to talk with the woman I would later sign on with.

The entire conversation, I literally had to remind myself to breathe, speak slower and not vomit while on the phone. After I hung up, I sat in total stillness for about three minutes and just listened to my blood race. This thing, this dream, this illusive often times lonely path I picked was heading somewhere and damn it was scary and exciting and boy did I need to throw up again.

I have a nervous stomach thing.

Now, I hope and pray I have several more moments in my career. I long for the call saying I sold to NY. Dare I dream of anything higher?

Sure, I can dream and work hard toward those goals but I can pretty much be sure of one thing. I will vomit.

I love the Dead Milkmen. I do. They have some of the most fantastic politically and socially satirical lyrics in the universe. Truly fantastic.

Why am I telling you this?

Because I recently began a little thingamajig on Twitter (#eroticsatireOMG) wherein we (by we I mean whoever the heck wants to, but mainly a core group of about five of us) endeavor to parody really awful erotic romance. And we’ve been having a lot of fun with it. How can you not have fun when your hero (a billionaire Greek vampire) is named Shaftos? And he has a dread vampire plague. That can only be cured by the love-juice of a virgin vampire slayer. Come on. That’s comic gold right there. You’re laughing, aren’t you?

So, to the point of this little exercise. I started calling it satire, but satire implies political or social purpose that isn’t extant in this fun little romp. It’s a parody, the joyous poking of fun and lampooning of a genre. But over the course of the discussion, it’s pointed up some interesting stereotypes in romance writing.  The persistence of some tropes is truly astonishing (we’re trying to figure out how to manage a secret baby even if she’s a virgin. we’ll figure it out eventually….). And it’s been interesting what we don’t think we can do. How there are lines that just don’t want to be crossed. Things that make the characters too far from human to be pallatable, I suppose.

How far can you let your imagination take you in your writing? Have you written things and then gone “Oh, hell, no, I can’t use that. That’s just going to far.”? I don’t think I have. But I think that’s more because I censor it before it hits the page. I have this idea – an idea that keeps popping up – that is so far beyond the pale that I simply cannot commit it to the screen. But I think one day I’ll give in and write it. Then what will I do?

Any wonderful journey begins with a single step. Voirey Linger, a friend and aspiring author, has spearheaded a SUMMER READING TRAIL on her website. Basically, each step is a free read, a step toward discovering a whole bunch of ew authors out there you might never have heard of or tried otherwise.

The first day of every month this summer, the trail gets a new breath of life, meaning a whole new set of steps and stories to read. You read JANE AUTHOR. one her site is a link to JOAN AUTHOR. On her site is a link to MABEL AUTHOR and so on and so forth. You can read at your leisure. For free. No blisters on your feet. Skip the ones you have no interest in. discover a fresh voice you enjoy. It is all good.

Here is how Voirey describes it:

Follow this trail and discover great new writers this summer. These free reads include short stories, serial installments, deleted scenes and book excerpts from published and unpublished authors. This trail will run from the beginning of June through the end of September, and stops will be updated on the first of every month, so you can enjoy a summer of reading. You are encouraged to explore authors’ websites and blogs, to take a moment to leave them a comment and to bookmark sites and visit often.

Alina Morgan – Severed Spirits Rising, Part 1
J. Hali Steele – WITH EXTRA CREAM
Joely Sue Burkhart – The Shadowed Blood
Emily Ryan-Davis and Elise Logan – GMS: MERCY

HAPPY TRAILS!!

So, I was thinking – from a craft perspective – about all those little things that we authors use for writing exercises.  Exercises in character, exercises in plot, exercises in scene detail, exercises in who knows what all. In any case, I was thinking I could do something similar. Here’s a pitch exercise.  I give you a point of departure and you have to come up with a story idea for it – or rather, you come up with a pitch for it. Let’s say no longer than 75 words. You only have to pick one to pitch. And, just to make it fun, I’ll give away a copy of my e-book, Dining In to a randomly selected entry. So… here are the 13 points of departure. Tell me which one you are using, then give us the pitch!

1. Two middle-aged women are brawling in Macy’s.

2. A man in a fedora leans against a rainwashed brick wall.

3. A beautiful woman lies passed out in an alley – fully clothed, but missing a single shoe.

4. Two men in an upscale bar have their eye on the same woman.

5. Three friends are shopping for funeral plots.

6. A rodent runs over the outstretched hand of a man lying prone in the grass.

7. It’s 1822, and a young French lady has just discovered a cache of buried jewelry.

8. It’s 2348 and a young man is leaving home for the first time.

9. A dragon attacks Chicago, Illinois.

10. The mayor of Fagen, Mississippi [fictional location, so far as I know] is held hostage.

11. A woman’s mother reveals the truth of the woman’s birth.

12.  A man’s cufflinks are floating in his scotch.

13. A couple on a cruise stumbles across a smuggling ring.

Have fun!

Okay, face it. Writers, we’re nuts. Every single one of us, batty as a bell tower, just in very specific, very controlled ways.

We hear voices no one else can hear yet, we take no medication for this. In fact, we grumble when the voices DON’T talk to us.

Our entire writing day is filled with us, staring at the screen and interacting with imaginary friend. We like those people more than most real-life people, too.

A two dimension being of our creation can surprise us and leave us gawking at the screen going “Say what? Where did that come from?”

There are files and compartments in our brains that scientist would love to study. Each one hold some random idea, quirk or thought that one day will grow into 80-100K words.

We rely on strange substances, like chocolate, caffeine, cheesey chips and occasionally alcohol and call this necessary. Every writer has one quirk food choice, some just hide it better.

Getting out of a warm bed at 3AM because inspiration struck is not unheard of. Many many tales have been completed in the wee hours of the morning by some writer in their pajamas, hair all askew. Those people them suddenly look up at the bright morning sky and are stunned to find out morning has come, their day job awaits and they have had 2 hours sleep.

Our spouses have, at least once, been in the mood, looked at our fingers flying over the keyboard and gone to sleep without while we have an intimate relationship with an invisible man.

If offered the choice between an enema and edits, 95% of writers would choose enema.

Children look toward a weekend as a break from school, other adults look forward to it as a time of leisure. Writers lust for them for more work hours they might never get paid for.

Want to see a writer freeze? Offer simultaneous discussions with an  editor or a dream agent. The writer’s eyes glaze over like a deer in a headlight and all brain function ceases except for the loop of OMG OMG OMG OMG DOES NOT COMPUTE MELTDOWN

Even better (or more evil) offer them a choice between a 4 book deal and winning the lottery. Actually, these are the same thing, right?

There is but one climax per story yet there can be many orgasms. hmmm

Yes, one word can take a half hour and 100 words can take five minutes.

Working out an action scene requires movement and if you catch an author at the right moment, you may find them brandishing a celery stick sword at an invisible foe. Carry your camera.

Listen to a convo between two writers:

W1: I wanted to smack my MC. I mean, why would he do that? It means I have to go back and re-arc him sooner. And why won’t he go deep POV so I can uncover what his problem is?

W2:He’s holding out for a reveal. Just watch your middle hump and trust him.

W1:Trust him? He just pulled a hidden ex-wife who poisoned his mother out of no where and you want me to trust him?

W2: Don’t you?

W1: Yeah, I just want to delete his butt half the time.

NOT NORMAL!

God, I love this crazy job!!

Yeah, this is me.

First, let me explain since Jodie (Who is AWOL at UNI) dwells in a land down under and had never heard of this American Expression.

To eat crow means ‘to suffer humiliation’, and specifically ‘to be forced to admit to having made an error, as by retracting an emphatic statement’. An example from the mystery writer “Ellery Queen” in 1930: “I should merely be making an ass of myself if I accused someone and then had to eat crow.”

Crows are notoriously disagreeable birds, in every respect. Scavengers, they are not suitable for eating. An old joke among outdoorsmen holds that if you get lost in the woods without any food and manage to catch a crow, you should put it in a pot with one of your boots, boil it for a week, and then eat the boot. Eating crow, therefore, is an especially unpleasant and humiliating thing to have to do.  The Maven’s Word of the day

See, once upon a time, like a year ago, I swore to many people I was different. As a writer, I needed focus and could not fathom writing more than one story at a time. Other writers amazed me with their four, eight or even ten on-going and CURRENT stories. How could they get in the right mindset? Keeping literally dozens of characters individuals and with distinct personalities took devotion and dedication. I love my heroes and could not comprehend the mere thought of *gasp* cheating on them with another hero.

Multiple projects? Me? Never happen.

Pass that salt, will ya?

Things I have worked on in the past week:

ML – in revisions

Cop a Kiss Freebie Series – one done, two started

Anthology – working

Final Edits done on Myla by Moonlight

two other unnamed projects

I think this bird needs a bit of garlic and maybe some onion.

Why the switch? Obligations and deadlines for one. I have promised certain things to certain people and must deliver if I want this career to actually, I dunno, WORK!

Secondly, It has been a rough week in the Oh-gawd-I-have-a personal-life forum, so Comedy was not always that free flowing. Angst however flowed like a river. Grab what mindset you have and milk it like a cow!

Thirdly and probably most importantly, I grew. (This is the part of the bird hardest to choke down, you know, admitting that you are not perfect. Hand me that BBQ sauce.) Where once I had to funnel my brainpower into one book, now I find myself funneling in a few directions and know what? It is working! No, I am not pouring out the word count I did when possessed by one story but now, the roughs are cleaner, the editing less and the content stronger. I spend less time staring at a blank screen and less time going WHAT IF? I still don’t plot as such but yeah, I know where the train is heading and where the scenic overlooks are.

More projects but my time used more efficiently. Who woulda thunk it??  Not me.

So here I sit, eating crow and happy about it. Makes me wonder just what else I can learn about this journey…and will this bird taste any different if it is poached in a red wine sauce.

This is me. well, I think this is most writers at some point in time. 2008 was the year of word spillage. I poured out four complete manuscripts, started a few others, finished a couple short things and got most of them edited. I also lost nearly half of one when my flash drive gave up the ghost. Of those four MS, two have sold to Samhain and two are in NY making rounds.

And I wait.

On covers
on feedback
on BETA reads
on Final line edits
on first round edits
on my agent
on publishers’ decisions
on the laundry fairy (Hey, I can dream)

wait wait wait wait

I am not a good waiter. i think the microwaves is too slow.

The incredible push to get a story done is still there and of course, I am still writing but…hello, closure?? I guess I will get that first with JINXED in June but until then, I wait.
Will Monster Love make it in NY? Will WITCHMARK? What will Myla by Moonlight’s cover end up looking like? Did the revision I implemented make the story better or more convoluted? CAN JUNE JUST HURRY UP ALREADY?!?!

I have promo chats schedule,waiting on them. I have an idea file bursting at the seams, waiting to see which direction is a better use of my time. I have an anthology piece I am working on plus a few freebies for my series written. Waiting on the right time periods to put them out there.

I hate waiting.

My mother says I need a hobby. Writing is my hobby so, yeah, not working there. maybe i need to learn how to knit or something.

SWING!!

You have to step up to the plate ready to whack the hell out of the ball. You may strike out, you may get a foul or you may hit a homer. Who knows? But you can’t do diddly until there is a pitch.

Share your pitch attempts with me. 3 sentences. I want to see how your brain works.

Wow.

Yeah, I know, I am not a REAL author until someone BUYS a copy of my book(Come on, June!) but I DO have some freebies out now as kinda introductory teasers. And I got fan mail! Talk about knock me over with a feather. I couldn’t believe the first one (actually chalked it up to possibly be a writer on Romance Divas and assumed I just didn’t know her real name) but then, I got more. Like MORE! Wow. I am still in awe that *I* got fan mail.

As a reader, I do send fan mail if the story has impacted me enough. And THAT is an accomplishment. I read. A LOT! So for a book to make me sit back and even think about emailing a fan letter, the writer did a good thing. For me to Actually DO IT, well, have an extra donut, you deserve it. I even went through hoops of fire (okay, not really but it felt like it) to track down one author whose website was down for over a week for maintenance.

I have emailed some writers who responded politely with form letters and that is fine, I understand that. But the ones who responded back personally IMMEDIATE FAN GIRL here. I automatically move them higher up in my mind and yes, I do recall that when I go book buying.

So I know what I will do in my future.

No, I do not consider myself FRIENDS with that author but they have made a connection with me in their writing and then they strengthen it when they reply in person. So if you could only buy one book, who would you buy from– A writer who writes well and tells a good story or a writer who writes well, tells a good story and seems open enough to their readers to say thanks?

No Brainer to me.

As a writer, fan mail is like getting whistled at by a hunky construction worker, it puts an extra little perk in your step. The more you get, the better you feel about yourself and your writing. Feedback feeds an author’s soul. So I am on sabbatical but still, that quick note someone sent into the cyberweb last night makes me want to sit and write, for them, for the next person who may get something out of the words I string together. I have the file open and I write, simple words ringing in my ears that SOMEONE enjoyed it other than me.

And seriously, how cool is that??