Since the last time I posted, there has been a lot of change in my life. Death, birth (not mine, my sister’s latest munchkin), severe illness… and in all the chaos, my book kept slipping lower and lower down the priority list.

I felt the pull of MAYBE I DO calling me back, and one tiny revision at a time, I tweaked and tinkered with words and sentences.

Unlocking the Magic Code

Then I did something that made me feel like a real writer. Yes, Virginia, despite the 110,000 word novel I have written, I still did not feel like a ‘real writer’. Anyway, the point is that I joined the RWA (Romance Writers of America).

From that moment forward, it was full steam ahead with another full manuscript edit (huge thank you to my brilliant editor for meeting my deadline) – and with one day to spare, I entered it into the RWA’s Golden Heart awards for unpublished romance novels.

Now, I don’t have a hope in hell of winning. My romantic comedy didn’t really fit neatly into one of their categories, so I ended up in ‘novel with strong romantic elements’. Which isn’t quite right but the closest option. Comedy is no longer in vogue.  Maybe I’ll try paranormal comedy next.

My heart won’t be broken if I don’t place, although that would be lovely.  I entered because I needed a kick in the deadline pants to start this thing back up. I’m nowhere near finished with MAYBE I DO. I’ve got 99 rejection emails to collect.

And that was it. I feel like I have put as much into it as I can, and now it’s ready to show the world. I even *gasp* let my husband read it!

I have the print version of the Writer’s Market, which comes with a little scratch-off box that gives you access to the online version for a year. And now it’s time. I’ve done my query letter, had it professionally critiqued, and it’s ready to send.

Pardon me while I grab a nickel. Look out, Canadian agents. You’re first.

One of the pitfalls I encountered as I was writing my book was coming up with names. So I decided to not worry about that, use the first name that came to mind, and fix it in revisions.

Needless to say, I ended up naming secondary characters after the people I interacted with on a daily basis. The characters weren’t patterned after anyone in particular, but when I needed a new name, I wrote the first thing that popped into my head.

I feel like it’s kind of selfish of me to have commandeered their names to suit my needs, and I think that leaving them in the book could be risky. What happens if they hate the book?

So I grew accustomed to those names, to the point where I almost couldn’t bear to change them because my characters were built around them. I explained my dilemma to my boss (whose name I also stole), and she said she didn’t mind at all. But what about everyone else? Is it safe to use real names in your story, or must you always create that distance between your fiction and the real people in your life?

Where do you draw the line?

Let’s say you have a date to go see a film that Rotten Tomatoes decreed virtually unwatchable. You’re bored, or said yes without looking up the ratings, or maybe trying to make a good  impression on your companion who chose the movie in the first place.

What do you do once you’re seated in the very middle of the middle row, surrounded by people munching popcorn and slurping enormous cups of diet Coke?

100  Minutes You’ll Never Get Back

First off, lower your expectations. This is now research, not entertainment. You’re here to pick up clues that you can apply to your own writing.

Identifying what bothers you about the movie is a good place to start.

• Is the pace too slow? Too fast and complicated?
• Does the dialogue suck? Does it try too hard?
• Do they use sub-plots to intensify and contribute to the main storyline?

Pay attention to how the movie changes from one scene to the next. Which transitions feel the most natural?

While you’re patiently waiting for the damn thing to be over, try to hone in on techniques that you can steal and stick into your novel. I don’t mean ripping off someone else’s story, just learning from the mechanics of telling the story well.

Does Your Writing Play Like A Movie in the Reader’s Mind?

Watch how camera angles can alter a scene’s perspective. How the film handles backstory (where applicable). You’re striving to give your readers a vivid mental picture of the world you’ve created. You want your characters to be understood, your scenery to have just enough detail to let the reader fill in the blanks with their imagination.

By examining where the movie fails, you can create a fairly comprehensive checklist. Where did it go wrong? Are there plot devices that could propel your story forward? Out of those 100 minutes, did you take away at least one relevant filter that you can run your own story through?

I adore going to the movies, particularly ones with clever dialogue. I’d like to think that it has improved my own dialogue and sense of pacing. So, as long as I have my butt in the chair, popcorn in hand and an open mind, I just paid $12 for a lesson in not-so-great storytelling. That’s a pretty sweet deal.

If you are one of the lucky few who are talented in more than one creative outlet, I envy you. If, however, you’re more like me and have just one true creative passion to nurture, I recommend working in a completely different media some of the time. My experiments have included being a singer/songwriter, photographer, and watercolour painter. I find this especially helpful when I’m stuck on my WiP or can’t get my mind off my day job.

It’s About The Process, Not the Result

I’m not great at any of those little sideways detours on the path to publishing my novel, but I don’t need to be. I can’t draw to save my life, but I’ve created two paintings I am proud of. I’d be crazy to think I could repeat that process every time. Most of the time, being mindful of the process is enough to bring me back to a state in which I can create. So it doesn’t matter that my art will never be hung in a gallery – what matters is the way the colours spread off my brush, the physical act of mixing paint, the rough texture of the paper. The act of getting the proper tools out is a meditation in and of itself.

I take thousands of pictures a year, just because I like the way something looks. They’re weird little shots of random objects that don’t mean anything to anyone but me. But when I’m stuck on my writing I can skim through them all and see if I can work a description of one of the photos into the scene I’m working on. I enjoy the process of lining up the subject of a photo with just the right amount of light. My work won’t be published or sold or licensed, but I don’t aspire to be a photographer. Fiddling with the lenses on my camera and experimenting with all the different settings is so different than sitting down to write, and yet it helps me to regain my focus.

A World of Creative Endeavours to Choose From

We can all choose to unleash our creativity in a new or unusual format. No one says you can only be a writer or glazier or sculptor. The trick is to give yourself permission to be in the moment while creating and to remain in touch with the embers of your creative fire. The fire doesn’t care how you keep it burning – it will run on any fuel you feed it. So break out your crayons or paintbrushes or cameras or whatever else you think you’d like to try and, at the very least, give it a shot.

As a working creative, I find it pays off to have something in between the full time job and the writing. It gives me permission to let go of whatever work projects I’ve got running around in my head and just be.  Just be attentive and receptive to the desire to create something and to find the small doses of joy that accompany the creative process, regardless of the art form chosen.

What about you? Do you have more than one creative outlet? If not, do you think you could benefit from giving it a try?

The Magic Idea Box

I began my book as a pantster. I had the inciting incident well mapped out in my head, notions of who these characters were and how they were all related, and a few ideas that might work for the ending. But I didn’t have an outline or a well-defined plot by any stretch of the imagination. I loved the way each writing session brought new and exciting scenes into existence out of thin air.

Sometimes it was a battle to locate the exact words needed to construct each sentence, but the momentum built and I felt like my story was going places. In fact, my brain started sending me flashes of places the characters could go, phrases they could use, ways they could interact… until it all started to feel muddled and I was afraid I would lose these little flashes of inspiration.

Committing to the Notebook

I went to the bookstore and bought myself a small black notebook with a flexible cover, one that was portable enough to stick in the sleeve with my netbook to keep with me for writing sessions. I decided I needed to start writing things down, starting with the daily specials at the bakery above which my main character lived.

I made a page for each character and filled it with both pertinent and irrelevant details about their lives and personalities. I divided the book into sections, and the last two-thirds I devoted to “What Happens Next”, where I jotted down notes about potential scenes as they came to me. I did this for about a week, trying to nail down an outline that I could use as a structure for writing the rest of the book.

I wouldn’t say it was a waste of time… ok, it was a waste of time. When I went back to start writing, the organic way my story evolved moved it out of the realm of the outline in a matter of days and into scenes I hadn’t thought of. The first third of my notebook, the reference part, was useful, but the last section was increasingly meaningless with each word I typed.

Yet I was still afraid of losing those little bits of inspiration.

Enter the Recipe Cards

I decided that a non-linear approach would work better for capturing these ideas. I got a set of little 3×5 cue cards (recipe cards) on which I wrote one sentence describing the main action or point of a scene, or a decision made by a character, or a line of dialogue that popped into my head. I put them in a lovely little black-and-white box, and every so often I would spread them out on the kitchen counter and move them around into possible plot sequences.

I highlighted those that I knew I MUST have in the book, but there were many “this might happen” or “this would be clever” bits that never made their way into the story. It was still helpful to move them around and place them in between the must-haves – even if I never told those bits of story, I knew that they had happened to my characters and it changed how they related to each other.

I would write organically for a couple of weeks and then go back to the box, open it up and see if there was anything I could use or anything I’d forgotten. I’d jot down any ideas I’d had that the book wasn’t yet ready for. And then I would put the little box back on the shelf and go back to the business of stringing paragraphs together to get on with telling the story.

Magic Idea Box

Eventually, as I neared the end of my book, I had such a clear vision of what was meant to happen that I rarely opened my little magic idea box. It’s still sitting on a shelf in my bedroom. I’m almost afraid to open it in case there was some clever bit that I wrote on a card that I never did manage to work into my novel.

Oh well. Maybe there’s something I can use in the next one.

What about you – are you a hybrid writer like me? Do you outline meticulously or only once you get in over your head so you don’t forget things?

1. 

   Img by Brenda Starr

   It’s reached an internal temperature of no-adverb degrees.

2. A toothpick inserted into your USB stick comes out cliché-free.
3. You understand the recipe but have given it your own unique flavour.
4. It bounces back when you poke it gently with a query.
5. Your synopsis has been marinated in the present tense.
6. It contains no empty calories; every scene moves the plot forward.
7. You’ve devoured every book on the craft of writing that you can get your hands on.
8. You let it simmer unattended before serving it up to proofread.
9. Four hungry readers tell you it’s delicious and they can’t wait for a second helping.

And yes, I did write this over lunch. Why do you ask?

P.S.

A lovely blogger/author named Lisa Lawmaster Hess popped by and liked this blog so much she included it in her list of stylish blogs! You can read her post here: The Porch Swing Chronicles.

Thanks Lisa!