CONFESSIONS OF A ROMANCE WRITER FROM NATIONAL’S: part 1 of part 2

I confessed twice yesterday that should tell you something.

1. I’m not a thief or anything, but I’m trying to figure out a way to stuff the down comforter on my bed into my luggage. That thing is wonderful. Since I don’t steal I’m going to buy one.

2. This hotel tries to charge you for breathing. It’s really starting to get irritating.

3. Oh, this morning I needed Tylenol and coffee in that order. If I tell you why I’d have to kill ya.

4. Okay, I’ll confess I met up with some Divas last night and had a kicking Margarita. Those things are going to make me an alcoholic.

5. I know I’m going to need it again tomorrow because not only am I meeting up with 70 something Divas, but I’m meeting some fan-tab Cherries.

6. I plan to have Pam, my bestest bud, paged to the front desk if I don’t see her by tomorrow. *shh, don’t tell her. I want it to be a surprise.*

7. That’s all I’ve got for you. I’ll be back with juicy stuff. Trust me.

SINCE IT’S REALLY NOT A CONFESSIONS

Here are some photos from the Literacy Signing. Here are the names in order of the pictures shown. I’m sorry if some of the spelling is wrong.
Diane Holquist
Alyssa Holliday
Elizabeth Hoyt*love her books*
Christina Dodd
Jill, The First Cherry
Jayne Ann Krentz
Susan Elizabeth Phillips
Anne Stuart*I’ll probably start her book tonight. She’s that good.*
Nora Roberts
Michelle Willangham *I know I’m spelling her last name wrong, but if you love historicals she is FAN-TAB.
Jayne Ann Krentz

CONFESSIONS OF A ROMANCE WRITER FROM NATIONAL’S: part 1 of part 1

It has been 24 hours since I last confessed….

1. No matter the time in the morning I must look fabulous. And if that means slapping on sunglasses to hide the fact the bags under my eyes may be heavier than the 50 pound limit on Amtrak…then that’s what I do.

2.Because when it comes to being a writer Discipline is next getting and staying Published I wrote during the entire five hour trip.

3. Of course since I’m cultured and well traveled I didn’t start snapping pictures like a tourist at the first sight of San Francisco. I took note of it, but it’s not like I went wild or anything. Okay, maybe a little

4. But I did not jump on this. I’m a grown up. *snort*

5. My last confession. I will be making a voodoo of the guy who checked me in. He charged me $200 more than he was supposed. I spent two hours trying to get that mess fixed. You suck. You will be stuck with pens. And I will tell all my writer friends. Let’s see who ends up dead in a romantic suspense.

That is all. Must go to the bar.

CONFESSIONS OF A ROMANCE AUTHOR AT NATIONAL’S: The prelude

*I’ve decided to do my tales of conference in confessional style.*

It has been such a very, very long time since I last confessed…..

1. My mother is ready to shoot me to put herself out of her misery. What she doesn’t know is that my level of excitement is only going to get worse.

2. Related to number 1: I know it wrong to wake someone up at 6:50 a.m. in the morning just to say,” This time tomorrow I’ll be on the train. Squee!!!”

3. It’s even worse to call that same person at 11:30 to say, “This time tomorrow I’ll be in San Francisco.”

4. 30 minutes later,” I’ll be in my hotel room.”

5. 30 minutes later,” I’ll be registered for the conference. Ooooh, I wonder what books they’ll put in the bag this year.”

6. 30 minutes later leaving a message on the person’s phone. (Yes, they have stopped answering the phone. I have no idea why.) “I’ll be drinking in the bar.”

7. In between these moments of pure excitement are moments of panic for many, many reasons. *Pam* My hair is sooo not done. At the moment I look like Buckwheat. I need to wash the rest of the clothes I’m going to wear. I need to double check that I’ve got everything. And really I’m going to conference and am aware I’m liable to put my foot in my mouth. Or get stuck with the Bitter Author. I did last year and saw no one to help me escape.

But I digress.

8. Uh, just a word of advice don’t take a class in summer school if you plan to go to conference. I have to take a final today. Which would normally not put me in a dither. Either you know it or you don’t by this time. But because of my little near death experience I missed a lot of class. So…there is a lot I don’t know. Cue panic button.

9. Okay, this is my last confession and I might as well admit something so…well…here it is: When I get home and the day is over I’m going to unpack just to repack so that I can feel the excitement of “I’m going to National’s” again. I’m sick I know, but I’m still doing it.

You can confess in the comments. Just do a few hail mary’s and you’re forgiven.

WRITING FOREPLAY

Sounds kinky, but it isn’t. I have my first real writer life deadline. Everything before this was self-imposed. Now I’ve got someone on the other end waiting for me to produce some words. Unfortunately it’s not on the WIP I’m working through now. So fortunately that means I’m pushing myself to finish this one to get to the other story.

Clear as mud?

So, the goal is to finish a very rough draft of Diary of a Food Addict (yup, that’s the new title. The other one was crap and I knew it, but didn’t know what else to call it. I digress.) at the very end of August, early September. Right now I’m not even thinking of a final word count. I’m just getting the story down, because it’s important that I finish this story.

Now why am I calling this post Writing Foreplay?

Because I’m working out the details in the story due in December. It’ll be a novella. I do need to be aware how many words I need to have. (27k-30k.)I want it to be cooking in the back of my head. So, I’ve sat down and picked names for the hero and heroine. I’ve worked out half of the plot. I know what the hero will be doing, but not quite sure how to make the heroine’s part of the plot tangible. Right now it’s “She wants to have a real vacation.” Not tangible. Maybe if I have her doing stuff, but how many things can you do on vacation?

Ha and that’s where the foreplay begins, because I’ve now learned I can’t seal the deal until all the plot points fall into place. Which also means I need to find out more about these characters. So, I’ve got a composition book and I’ll be writing out backstory. Writing pieces of dialogue that come to me, because for me that’s a huge one. I have to hear the character’s voice in my head.

Complete sidenote: My son woke up and went straight for Grandma. He lifted the cover and poked his head under it until he saw her face and said, “Good Morning!!!” It was 6:30 a.m. I laughed then said, “Welcome to my world.” Can’t wait for National’s where I’ll be able to sleep in.

UPDATES: New National’s To Do List

On my prior list I had:

2. Clean Out Books
3. Buy Shoes
4. Buy New Clothes
5. Order Things to Go into the Goody Room
6. Get Some Hair to Wear
7. Do a deep house clean
8. Buy Batteries for Camera
9. Bug Amtrak for Ticket

Now I’ve had almost two weeks to do all this stuff. It should all be done, right?

WRONG!

We are talking about me here. The ultimate procrastinator. I could teach on class on the one million ways you can NOT do the things you need to do. I have done 3, 4, and 7. But you know you can always buy more clothes and shoes. That’s what I plan to do.

Number 2 won’t get done any time soon. 8 and 9 will be done by tomorrow. 5 isn’t looking so hot at the moment.

Now I need to add stuff to this list:

1. Pedicure.

My feet don’t look like Flintstone feet anymore. (I’ve been scrubbing and wearing socks.) But you know I’ve had this flower painted on my toes for a very, very long time. I’m too embarrassed to say how long, but trust me it’s been a very, very long time.

1a. Get my eyebrows waxed. I looked in the mirror the other day. I’m on the verge of having a onezie.

2. Buy Pajamas for the Eharlequin Pajama Party.

I went last year and had a blast. Why break tradition.

3. Finish packing.

I’ve actually gotten a pretty good start on this. My Rita/GH dress and shoes are packed. Shirts and some pants. I need to wash everything else, because it was just too cute to wait and wear to National’s.

4. Buy some books for the train ride.

I hate traveling. I don’t care if it’s only an hour drive, but if I weren’t the driver I’d be asking “ARE WE THERE YET?!!!!!!!”

5. For the same reason above I need to buy a shiny new notebook and some pens.

God, I love Office Maxx, but I’ll restrain myself this time. I’m on a budget.

6. Scream occasionally “I’M GOING TO NATIONAL’S!!!!!” because my goodness “I’M GOING TO NATIONAL’S!!!!”

5 days and I’m sooooo there.

If you were wondering: I hit 14k this morning in the WIP. YAY!!!

LEARNING TO WRITE OPENINGS BY WATCHING MOVIES

One of my favorite romantic comedy’s is How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days. It’s brillant on so many levels, but this time when I watched I came at with a writer’s eye. I just finished judging contest entries. Out of the five I read, two started in the right place. One writer had minimal backstory and infodump. I love him/her for it. But as the opening scenes of How To opened I realized this movie did the same thing.

Yes, the little magazines float by and you see snippets of her acting out the research for her articles. Yet in the first ten minutes you know the goal, the motivation, and the conflict on the horizon.

Now I’m not saying being succint is best for every story. Some need to start slow. Like Gods in Alabama by Joshilyn Jackson. With the writer’s eye I can tell you the NOW story doesn’t start until the very bottom of page two. But up until that point she’s building you up for the rest of story. The tone. The underlining conflict. Heck, characterization and understanding how the character ticks. For the life of me I can’t see how she could have grabbed me with “Burt had his feet propped up on my battered coffee table….” VS. “There are Gods in Alabama…” *Now if you haven’t read this book please do. It’s a book that I wish deep down in my writer’s bones that I wrote. That some good writing. Also, it shut the writer in me up. Again, that’s some good writing.*

Now what am I really saying?

Don’t think your job is done once you’ve written a fabulous hook. Make me stay around for the story. You know how you can do that? By not boring me to death with backstory or infodump. Please I’m asking you as a reader. Just don’t.

Am I guilty of this?

Of course, but I’m not reformed. I’ll just bore you with backstory later. Just not in the first chapter. I promise.

SOMETIMES YOU HAVE TO STEP BACK TO REALLY SEE

I’ve preached to you about voice before. I’ll do it another million times until it sinks in or until someone tells me to shut up. Yet, voice is like the brain. One of the most amazing things known to man that really can’t be explained on how it works or how it doesn’t work. You can give advice on how to make it better. How to let it just be. It’s also much like the brain because the more you learn (experience) the more refined it gets.

I found something on my hardrive last night that just blew my socks off. It could be that I’m writing my first crap draft and nothing I write impresses me. That’s fine. I’m just trying to get to the end. I’m trying to do the whole “Write the first draft from your heart” thing. *Finding Forrester (sp?) reference* I’m worried about a million things. Most importantly I’m worried is my voice coming out. I know I tend to stifle heck out of mine. So, I was avoiding the WIP. I’d written for the day already. I could do more, but I just didn’t want to.

So, what I do in times like this? I tempt myself by opening incomplete mss. (Am I the only writer who does this?) I found one labeled “Short Story”. I’m thinking it’s the one I wrote for a contest ages ago. I open it and find this instead:

“Most people believe that life starts the moment you leave the womb, your first shaky breath; or much further in time than that, when the egg meets the sperm. I disagree. For me, life starts the moment reality is no longer an idea, but the truth as you know it.”

Hmm, interesting. I do not remembering writing this. *here’s the key, sit up* But it SOUNDS like me. I kept reading:

“When you are standing in a supermarket line and your mind is filled with worries and then your gaze meets the cashier you see the same troubled expression you’re wearing. You might think to yourself, “it’s not just me.” That realization to me is much more poignant than when you take your first breath. In a way it is no longer about you, it’s about human kind. That may be a grandiose idea to some, but to me it’s my reality.”

Yup, that’s me. Run-on sentences were my favorite back in the day. Plus, someone call the grammar police. I’m about the only person I know who would use grandiose, because I like the way it rolls off the tongue. But now I’m intrigued. What in the heck was I writing this for?:

“The day my life really started I was sixteen. Going about my life like most teenagers. Death always in the near future if I didn’t get the ‘it’ shoes of the week or if my boyfriend continued to refuse to take me to go see the latest chick movie. All of it so insignificantly unimportant, but before my life began it was all I knew.”

A YA? Did Pam not just squeal? But really, me and a YA? I must have been drunk. Again, I’m the only person who will use “insignificantly unimportant” in the same sentence. It’s the whole roll off your tongue thing. I’m not that big of a fan of “omit useless words”. That’s a word choice thing that can be used effectively when done right and not done too often.

But again what in the fifth ring of hell was I writing this for?:

“My parents were a means to an end. Cardboard characters who either stood in my way of what I wanted or providers of my every whim. It was that summer of ‘96 that once again they gave me life without meaning to.”

Hmmmmmmmm, sounds literary. Plus, am I the only one who noticed that shabby transition? Anyway, I must have been having one of those freaky Girls From the Basement moments. For a newbie I had a hold on foreshadowing? And hot damn, I hear me. I haven’t really heard me in a very long time. That’s something to celebrate even thought I don’t remember writing this for the life of me, but I know just by reading it IT’s me. Hot diggity dog:

“My mother, a quiet woman, strong in some ways and weak in many others, committed suicide.”

WHAT THE HOLY HELL FROM MOUNT ZION? Outside of the overuse in commas that’s pretty damn grabbing. It’s not just the idea of a sixteen year old dealing with her mother’s suicide. It’s how it’s presented. The word choice. Heck her world view. Thank you, GITB. *Girls in the Basement*

This post may have sounded vain to you up until this point, but seriously I learned something from reading these 250 words. I shut up that internal editor. I can tell you now that I’ve had aspirations to write YA. *Pam, you can stop squealing now* But I have no idea how to go about writing one. When I penned these words I had to be trying something new. Or a scene hit me in a flash and I rushed to write it down. I’m not sure if this has ever happened to you, but it’s kind of like a part of you shuts down. The words are coming faster than you can write them. It’s scary. It’s exhilarating. It’s the only time that question in the back of your mind “is my voice coming through” doesn’t even register. Which is usually when your voice shines the brightest.

The point *you know it takes me forever to get to one* my friends is that I didn’t write this with the rules grammar, craft, or genre in mind. I just wrote. To be honest those things *craft, grammar and genre* can be fixed, but you cannot fix something that isn’t broke.

That folks is voice.

Go dig deep on your hardrive and tell me what you found. (I’m hoping your voice)

So, I’m off to take my own advice.

FINDING LA NORA

Last night I had a dream. I sat in a room along with other writers. I could almost hear my heart pounding in my chest. All eyes were transfixed on the podium. Like an adolescent waiting for her first kiss, I held my breath with anticipation. The air seemed to hum with it.

And then she began to speak…
“Quit your whining and just write.”
“My oldest son’s purpose in life was to kill his younger brother.”
“Blood and fire rule. Teach it.”
“Quit your whining, Melissa and just write dammit.”

I jolted up from my bed back into reality. My heart pounding just like in the dream, but time because I realized there is only 9 more days until A Chat With Nora Roberts.

I can’t freaking wait. I’m going to National’s baby.

I’D RATHER BE FUNNY THAN DEAD

WARNING LONG EMOTIONAL AND SLIGHTLY DEPRESSING POST AHEAD:

Erica Orloff blog is amazing one. She’s post every day and it’s always something that leaves me with food for thought. Today, it made me think about how grateful I am to be writing again.

I don’t know about you, but it’s a very scary thing to have the stories in your head disappear. In September it’ll be four years since I started writing. A lot has happened since then, but this year has been different. And I have to say I just had an overload. All of sudden I was published. Then I had two books coming out. I still had edits. I also had to promote. *Let’s not forget I’m a mother who goes to school and work* Juggling, juggling, juggling. Then my cousin’s six week old baby died. Her baby’s funeral was the same day my book released. None of it seemed to matter. What was the point of writing happy books when things like this happens?

I can now say honestly, without shame, that I lost my love for writing. It didn’t have a purpose for me anymore. I didn’t enjoy it. Writing became a chore right up there with washing dishes. I avoid washing dishes. I buy plastic forks and spoons and paperplates just so I don’t have to wash dishes. I treated writing the same way and because of that the stories in my head faded. The drive to hunt them down and write them went away. To me that’s what makes the real difference in who finishes a novel and who doesn’t. It’s not that you have a better hold on your story’s plot. Or that you have a character that won’t shut up. It’s the drive, the passion to get it all down. It’s the same drive and passion that makes you keep submitting despite the no’s. The same one that makes you learn your craft and hone it. The same one that makes you revise until your novel sparkles.

So, what made me get that spunk back?

I started to miss the hell out of my happy place. Writing is my happy place. Yeah, I have others, but there is something about creating something outside yourself and seeing it all come together. You sit up taller. You speak with authority. You probably even have a damn sparkle in your eyes. Really, I was tired seeing nothing but the dark side of life. I needed to find the light again.

Plus, not to sound vain, I started to get feedback on my book. It made people laugh. It made them cry. It made someone’s crappy day a little bit better. But let’s cirlce back to “I made someone laugh” for a moment. I don’t know about you, but the sound of laughter is the most beautiful thing for me. It’s such a damn happy sound. I don’t know about you, but the sound of someone crying is the most heartbreaking thing to listen to. Yes, it may be what they need, but your eyes start to prickle and you know if you don’t leave the room soon you’ll be sobbing with them.

And then I had my near death experience. All those somber faces surrounded me. The ones with actual fear in them scared me more. Then I realized if I’m going to die today I’m going to do it laughing. Hand to God I started a one woman comedy show in that hospital. It could have been the morphine, but I felt better.

And the moral of the story is?

Laughter, that right there is how I found my purpose to write again. If only for one moment I can make someone laugh then I’ve done my job as a writer. I can’t do that if I’m not writing. I may not be saving the world one laugh at a time, but dammit it’s enough to get my ass in a chair every day.

What gives you purpose?