Aug 31, 2006 | Uncategorized |
Lots of writers like to make collages of their works in progress. Alison Kent, for instance, gets pics of her hero and heroine and makes a board (or a notebook — I can't remember). Over on Murder She Writes, Allison Brennan was imagining who would play her characters if her books were movies.
I once went through a phase where I cut out clothes from a catalog and pasted them into a notebook, but I never got any farther than that. I love the idea of the collage (or notebook or storyboard), but for me it breaks down at the pictures of my hero level.
I feel like Kathleen Turner in Romancing the Stone. Her Jessie is always portrayed as a shadow man precisely because she doesn't know who he is. He's a figment of her imagination, and the man she secretly wants to find. He doesn't get a face until Michael Douglas comes along, and even then you're never sure until the end that MD will be the man of her dreams after all.
So while I flip through catalogs and Google Images, I just can't land on a photo of my current hero. This one is too young, or too gay, or too square-jawed, or too pretty. They just don't match. Now, if we chop the heads off and just look at the bodies, I have NO problem finding the perfect body……
Ahem, where was I?
Oh yeah. Heroes. Lots of men are attractive to me. Hugh Jackman is yummy, but he's Hugh Jackman, not Matt from my book. The guy who played Superman recently was pretty fine, but he's Superman, not Matt.
Imagine my surprise, however, to run across two photos today that gave me a glimmering of Matt. And the thing is, the really truly surprising thing, is that it's Ricky Martin. Ricky-freaking-Martin! I'm not a teenage girl and I don't go gaga over the Rickster. Never have.
But, holy moly, these two photos do wonders for my imagination. The arms and chest could be a bit bigger, more ripped, but I like the military haircut (facial hair out of regs, but who cares?) and the bad boy tattoo thing.
I'm just going to pretend like it's not Ricky Martin, okay? It's not quite Matt either, but it's close. How about you? Do you make collages or find pics of your characters? Or do you have difficulty imagining anyone as your hero or heroine?
(I probably won't have a blog post for the next few days, due to hubby being home for the holiday weekend and tomorrow morning's book group meeting, so I've posted twice today. Sure would love to hear from the writers about their story collages…..)
PS Edited to remove photos, which may or may not be copyrighted.
Aug 31, 2006 | Uncategorized
If you like category romance novels, be sure to stop by The Pink Heart Society blog September 1st for the launch party!
The Pink Heart Society members & all their friends are free to pop in here and rave about romance any time they please… So why not come join us and tell us all about you and what makes you love the books we love to read and write!!!
We have plans for Guest Bloggers/weekly updates to the Hero Database/articles/reviews/Blogs of the Week/Romance destinations/Rom-Com reviews/Romance Tips/Nominations for Shipper Shows/Competitions & Giveaways/Challenge of the Week and MUCH MUCH more…
Sounds exciting, right? 🙂
Aug 31, 2006 | Uncategorized |
It's amazing to me how I can stare at a scene, know it isn't working, wonder how to fix it, then decide to go take a shower since I'm stumped. And usually some sort of answer presents itself while I'm standing under the hot water. 🙂
I've been working on the rewrites to Seducing Evangeline, taking the revision suggestions I received from the Harl. editor and incorporating them into the story. Wow, I really like it too, especially now that I'm back to the point in the story where I was when I put the whole thing aside for the thesis.
Making changes is both fun and hard. It's fun when the lightbulb goes off and you get it. It's hard to decide what to axe and what to keep. It's also frustrating when you first get the revisions and don't quite know what to do with them. That's the point where you think you suck, your story sucks, your ideas suck, and you'll always suck and never sell this book or any other book, ever. I hate that part, but I love it when the aha moment happens and I get past that.
So, I went to the shower with this dilemma in my head: where to put this scene (already written, but feeling like it was in the wrong place) that explained something about one of the bad guys, a guy who unfortunately has to die very soon. As I stood there, it came to me. The scene is unnecessary. It's a bummer to have to cut all that work, but I was so relieved to realize the answer that I didn't care. I'm not so dumb as to cut forever, though. I have a “Discarded Scenes” file for every book, so I paste it into there. I never reuse them, but I like knowing they're there if I need to.
My DS file is over 200 pages (for one book — yes, I've cut quite a lot, including most of one previous version of the same story). The WIP file is right around 95 pages so far. 🙂 Ah well, that's the way it works.
What about you? Where do you get your WIP lightbulb moments? Shower? Walking? Gym? Grocery store? Do you have a DS file? Is it as big as mine? 🙂
Aug 29, 2006 | Uncategorized
My new addiction is reading Rachel Vater's blog. Rachel is a literary agent with Lowenstein-Yost Associates, and her blog is chock full of good info. Take, for instance, today's post. In it, she talks about a client's first query to her. There is a sample of the query and the first page, which Rachel passed on. The writer rewrote the story and the query and tried again six months later. This time, Rachel was interested. Another round of rewriting and layering, and the writer got an agent and a book deal.
Jeaniene Frost kindly volunteered her old query (which was rejected by all 10 she first sent it to) and her newer one, which first got my attention. I sold Jeaniene’s novel in a two book deal to HarperCollins / Avon this spring shortly after signing Jeaniene up as a client. But Jeaniene isn’t an “overnight success” because she worked hard for this. She reminded me recently that I passed on her work 3 times before taking her on as a client: The first time, she got a form response. She revamped her query and tried again, and this time I gave her encouraging notes and revision suggestions. She was so fast and so good at creatively implementing editorial suggestions I knew she was someone I could work with further. So I gave her some more notes. And then one more round. (Remarkably persistent! Very impressive!) But you can see how her work evolved, and how her query and sample pages improved.
The examples from Frost's pages are worth reading in order to see how a talented writer didn't give up and kept trying until she got it right. I thank God every day that writer's are so giving. Examples like this not only give me hope, but they also teach me something valuable.
Another great post today comes from Magical Musings. Here, Maria V. Snyder talks about the rejections she received before selling. Apparently, she got a LOT of rejections. But she didn't give up and she's proof that all it takes is one yes.
After 17 publishers said no – I finally, finally got a yes! And although I was thrilled to have an acceptance, there was a small (tiny, really) part of me that thought (with a smidgen of disappointment), “But I still have three publishers on my list!” And with all those rejects – I couldn’t help but feel the story was deficient in some way – I worried that I would get the “Oh, we’re sorry we made a mistake and we’re not going to publish you after all,” phone call. Instead, the publisher, Luna, decided to print the book in hard cover. It received a starred review from Publisher’s Weekly, won the 2006 Compton Crook award for best first novel, and was nominated for a Romance Writer’s RITA award.
Jeez, does it get any better than that? It's stories like this, and my own stubborness, that bring me back to the keyboard again and again. I may set the work aside for a couple of months (especially with an academic deadline staring me in the face), but I always always come back to it again. I don't want to quit. I just want someone to tell me how to fix what I need to fix.
Oh, wait, someone did that. And she works at a real publishing house buying and editing real manuscripts every day. I can't complain about that, can I? Back to work, then.
Aug 28, 2006 | Uncategorized |
I don't usually do book reviews, but this weekend I read two books by two new-to-me authors and they just knocked my socks off! (Okay, so I don't wear socks or shoes very often, but still. Maybe I should say they knocked my slippahs off.) First up was Over the Line by Cindy Gerard. Great romantic suspense with a very likeable hero and heroine. There was one thing toward the end that sort of stumped me, but otherwise I really enjoyed the book and will definitely pick up more books by Cindy Gerard.
The other book I read was Crazy Cool by Tara Janzen. I took it to the pool, started reading, and couldn't stop. I finished it in a few hours and completely enjoyed the ride. I will definitely be reading more of Tara Janzen's work too. Great romantic suspense. Her world building reminded me quite a bit of Suz Brockmann's world. Lots of connecting characters, lots of secondary POV, lots of building toward other romances you'd want to read about. There were just a couple of things I would have preferred were done differently, but that didn't detract from my enjoyment at all. Great hero, so sexy. Loved him.
I also picked up Roxanne St. Clair's Thrill Me to Death after reading her guest post over at Murder She Writes and I'm looking forward to it. This will be my first RSC book. I don't know how I float along through life and writing and manage not to read some of these authors for so long. I intend to, but get sidetracked with other books and other authors. Still, I'm so glad I found these three authors to read! Great fun with the first two, and I've already taken enough of a peek at Roxanne St. Clair's book to know I'm going to be hooked when I start it.
First, however, I think I've had a bit of a breakthrough with the WIP. I started working on it Wednesday, got my idea on Thursday, and then the hubby took Friday off. So, no working when he's home because it's play time. And did we play! Went to the pool over at the Hale Koa (resort hotel in Waikiki), swam, ordered poolside daiquiris, and had a good time. 🙂
But now it's back to work time, which is always so hard after a weekend of play. I'm actually looking forward to it, so maybe this idea will pan out. No way to find out other than to go do it. So aloha for now……
