OMG, I just got the call that my military romantic suspense manuscript, HOT PURSUIT, is a finalist in the Contemporary Series Romance: Suspense/Adventure category!!!!!
I've never finaled before, though I think this was my 4th time entering. Y'all, it CAN happen!
UPDATE: The finalist list can be found at Romance Writers of America.
Okay, so I worked today. Wrote about 1500 words. I had a panicky moment where I thought I'd never get into the groove, but then it came. Sometimes, it's like pulling teeth. Other times, you're rolling along so good you don't even want to stop and eat. I had both sensations today. 🙂
Some of it, I'm sure, was performance anxiety. I've never had to actually sit down and produce pages for anyone but me (if you don't count college work, lol). This is a new feeling. One I can totally get used to. 🙂 I told the hubby that it felt like the first day at a new job (in a strange kind of way). It's exciting and thrilling and odd all at once.
Tuesday's goal: 1500 words.
Thanks again to everyone who came to congratulate me. 🙂 I appreciate it so much. You kept me smiling and feeling great for days. 🙂
Y'all, I'm so excited I can hardly stand it! I found out yesterday that I won the Harlequin Presents Instant Seduction contest!!! I have won an editor for a year. I'm still in shock. And I've already talked to her on the phone, and she's fabulous. I'm looking forward to working with her on making THE SPANISH MAGNATE'S REVENGE into the best book I can.
I know it's not my usual military romantic suspense, but Presents novels have always been special to me. They were the first romances I ever read, and I've always wanted to write for them. I got up the courage to try when the contest was announced. I never thought I'd win, and certainly not over 599 other entries. I'm so happy and humbled by the experience.
What next? Get to work on the book, of course. 🙂 Now I feel like I have a real deadline and people not to disappoint. It's no longer about me writing for me. I have an editor and a goal. I have a great critique partner, an awesome RWA chapter, and a supportive family. Somebody pinch me. 🙂
I dug into the photos to pull out this one of a (I think) torch ginger from Kauai. Love the vibrant colors of the flowers in Hawaii!
Anyway, it's Spring Break this week. Which means next to nothing for me. I don't have kiddies out of school. I'm not a coed anymore.
But, strangely, I have Spring-Break-itis of the mind. My head is not in the game this week. I've stared at my WIP(s), typed a few words here and there, but had no major break throughs. For one, I had a stupid moment where I misread the KOD Daphne requirements. I wanted to get two entries in, and I thought I had until March 15 to enter electronically. Nope, no electronic entry. You could pay with PayPal, which is what threw me, and then you had to send in your hard copy to reach the coordinators by March 15. I realized this on March 13. Not good.
Stupid brain. :/
Whenever it gets a little warm out right after cold winter days, my mind turns to spring cleaning. I get these urges to vacuum and wash things. House projects start to crowd my head. Landscaping here, curtains there, paint that room, reorganize that closet, etc. I recognize that these are creative endeavors of a sort, and that it takes energy away from writing, but sometimes you gotta let the mind wander.
So, this week, I'm wandering. I bought some house plants. Hubby and I did a couple of small projects in the house. We're talking landscape, looking at plans, thinking about what we want.
There's always more to do, and I can't spend all my time away from the computer. But this week, I'm letting myself relax. No WIP pressure, no sit-at-the-desk-all-day-or-be-a-failure recriminations. I'm having a Spring Break of the mind. Don't you agree it's a good idea from time to time? 🙂
This morning, I was driving hubby to an appointment when something on NPR caught my attention. The report was called “Put Your Money Where Your Girth Is.” The gist of it is that people who put money on the line to lose weight tend to do better than people who simply decide to reward themselves when they reach their goal.
“There are a significant portion of people who have an explicit preference for commitment,” says Karlan. The commitment, or the stakes, help people act in their own self-interest. The contract helps them stay the course.
Karlan describes a recent effort in the Philippines to help smokers quit. Through a local bank, the smokers signed agreements to put their cigarette money into savings accounts and agreed to urine tests. At the end of six months, if the tests showed they had nicotine in their system, their savings were lost — given to charity.
Basically, people respond more to the idea of losing money than of making money. You know this got me thinking, right? 😉
The holy grail for most fiction writers is to sell their novels, whether it's the first novel or the next series of novels on a new contract. We do all kinds of things to keep ourselves writing. We promise ourselves rewards in addition to the reward of selling. New clothes, a trip, a spa day — whatever it takes, right?
But what about losing something instead of winning? What if instead of promising myself an evening of watching television if I write 5 pages, I pay myself a salary. A salary I will lose if I don't meet the goal I've set for myself.
I'm not talking about 5-page-a-day goals, or novel-in-a-month goals, but realistic goals like those I will face when I get the contract. If my hypothetical contract specifies I will turn in a novel two months from now, then I will pay myself for two months while I work on that novel. And if I miss the deadline, the money either goes to charity or it goes to my hubby to buy whatever he wants for himself. I don't have to pay myself a lot (obviously there's a budget), but enough that it will add up in the end to a sum I really don't want to give up.
I'm still working on this thought, turning it over in my head, but I kind of like the concept. I was the girl who never failed to turn in a paper for college because I had two things in mind: loss of an A grade and loss of the money the class cost if I were to withdraw or fail in any way. The first thing was personal, but the second was, surprise, about money. Money is a good motivator for me.
“What we know about incentives is that people work a lot harder to avoid losing $10 than they will work to gain $10,” explains Ayres. “So something that's framed as a loss is really effective at changing behavior.”
So what do you think? Is it effective to think in terms of loss rather than gain when trying to write a novel? A statement like if I finish this novel, I can sell it (I hope) and make X dollars (I hope) becomes if I don't finish this novel on time, I will lose X dollars for sure. I think it could work, but maybe that's because I know I'm already oriented toward preventing real $$ loss. Hypothetical bucks won't do it for me. It has to be real. Think hubby will notice if I pay myself $50 a week?
Today, we have a commercial for Mac. Specifically, for a Mac application called Scrivener. Oh, the love I feel! The L-O-V-E. Really, I could break out in an interpretive dance here (if I could dance).
I am a Pantser. Meaning I sit down with an idea, a character or two, and start writing with no rhyme or reason or idea where things are headed. Wish I could outline, but frankly, the thought of outlining freezes me into a catatonic state of inertia (is that possible, or have I just won the prize for most amazing redundancy?).
Anywho, Mac + Scrivener = love. And here is why.
The corkboard, ladies and gentlemen. You can break all your chapters down, make notes about each, and then pin them to the corkboard. You can color the pins any color you want — like red for romance, blue for suspense, etc. When you lay out those index cards with the pins (click of the mouse), you can then see your plot progression and how much you are devoting to each aspect of the novel.
The corkboard also can be viewed in outline format. Notice the colors of the outline. You can have your outline display the colors you chose for different aspects of your plot. At a glance you can see the progression and how much you are devoting to romance or suspense or subplot A, B, etc.
Another cool thing is the research area. You can pull in photos, webpages, etc, and make notes about characters or settings. I've started putting photos into my research area. When I want to get the mood of the swamp or of a plantation home, I click on my research tab.
The skinny: the Scrivener folks will let you download the application to try for 30 days. After that, if you want to keep it, it's $39.95 — and anyone with MS Office knows what a bargain that is.
The truth: I downloaded the program months ago, played with it (but didn't take the tutorial on how to really use it), and didn't buy it. I figured I didn't need it, even with these cool features, because I had Word and would be writing in Word because it cost so much. But, I came across a blog post the other day where someone was talking about the infamous plotting board. I'd tried it before, getting a big dry erase board and colorful stickies and graphing out the plot. It was okay for me, but I hate messing with all that real estate, you know?
So I thought about Scrivener again. And this time, I took the time to actually DO the tutorial. It's not long, and it helps you see the full capabilities. That's when I realized how cool the program is. I do NOT write in it, btw. I write in Word, I paste the document in chapter chunks, and then I go for the labeling and notes. I have both programs open and I go between them. It works for me. You can import a complete document into it, which I did, and you can break it out into chapters — which really helps for the labeling. I'm not sure this program will work for me in the writing stage, but in the revising stage, it's perfect.
