I'm revising my latest book for Harlequin. I have help. Here, she's sitting on my lap while I'm at the computer, looking up at me. Makes it hard to type, but I wouldn't have it any other way. We almost lost her this past summer, and her days are numbered because she has chronic heart failure, so I'm all about enjoying her while I have her. Isn't she cute? 😉
The good folks at Harlequin have given me a widget so that you can browse the first chapter of Marriage Behind the Facade! Isn't it cool? You can also share it, and you can buy direct from Harlequin if you like.
Just a note on this New Year's Eve, the last day of 2012, to say thanks for everything you've done for me. You buy my books and you make it possible for me to have this awesome job where I get to write about sexy alpha males and the women who are tough enough and strong enough to be their equals. I love what I do, and I love that you enjoy reading my stories!
Since I got that magical call in 2008, I've written a lot of books and learned a lot of things. I've sold nearly 2 million books worldwide, which is incredible to me, and I get mail from so many wonderful people who've enjoyed something I've written. Truthfully, writing is such an odd word for what happens when an author sits down to tell a story. Yes, we write the words onto the page — but it's so much more than that. We live that story in our heads. I see it play like a movie reel, and I have no idea why.
I used to think it was weird to do that, before I started writing the stories down. I used to think there was a part of me that had never grown up and never would. When I was a kid, I told myself stories in my head to go to sleep — and I kept doing it as an adult. I didn't know I was supposed to write down what I saw. That took a few years to figure out.
But once I did — wow, everything made sense! And now you make it possible for me to keep doing this dreaming I do. 🙂
2012 was an awesome year, but here's hoping 2013 is even more so. I wish you all peace and happiness and prosperity!
As the new year begins, I'll be doing some new things. First, I'm planning to bring you a military romance series! The first book should be available quite soon, and if you want to be kept up to date on that, you can sign up for my newsletter here. (To read the prologue and first chapter of HOT PURSUIT, the first book in the series, go here.)
Secondly, I'm starting a Street Team. If you want to be a part of the LRH League, send me an email at Lynn AT LynnRayeHarris DOT com to be added to the list! I'll be sharing exclusive news and goodies with my team as we go forward. This is meant to be a fun way to connect and to share news about my books with other readers, so I'd love to have you join in!
Once more, thank you for everything you do and I wish you a happy, pleasant, awesome New Year!
Well, today is the Mayan Apocalypse. I haven't put a lot of stock in that idea, ever, but I know some people have. I'm encouraged by the fact that Australia is still there and it's tomorrow already. Surely that counts for something, right? 😉
But if today is not the last day, and you still need to buy Christmas presents, I have a website specifically for the billionaire in your life. At The Billionaire Shop, you can buy such things as a private island, a yacht, a million dollar watch, jets, and pricey New York views.
I have quite a few billionaires in my life, but fortunately they are all my creations. They should be giving me gifts, right? 😉 My latest billionaire will be hitting store shelves in a little over a week. Sheikh Malik Al Dhakir is sexy as hell–and a bit uncertain when it comes to expressing his feelings. In fact, he's downright tongue-tied. You can read more about Sheikh Malik here.
I hope your weekend is lovely, and your Christmas preparations are going smoothly! Happy Holidays!
You know what the speed of light is, right? It's 186,000 miles per second. PER SECOND. That's pretty damn fast. Still, even at that speed, it takes the light from distant stars thousands upon thousands of years to travel to where you see it in the night sky.
So why I am nattering about the speed of light? I'm a writer, not a scientist, right? Right. But I do love me some science (the bits I understand, anyway, and that's one of them). I digress.
No, the reason I'm writing about speed is because, increasingly, I am seeing writers worried about the speed with which they write. Those who write super fast seem to be the ideal, right?
Maybe. Maybe not.
It's true that writing a book fast doesn't make it a bad book. It's also true that it doesn't make it a good book. What makes a book good or bad is what the readers think. Sorry, but an author doesn't get to say that she wrote her book in only 2 weeks and it's a damn good book because she only writes damn good books. (Same thing if it took her 2 years, btw.)
Only the readers get to say that. If the majority of readers say it's a damn good book, then guess what? It probably is. 🙂 If there are a lot of comments about “light,” “fluffy,” “shallow,” “could have used more thought,” well, guess what again? That author might have lost an opportunity to make an okay book great because she was in such a rush.
It's not about writing lots and lots of words and telling everyone how fast you are. Ten thousand word days aren't necessary in order to have a career at this. Remember the tortoise and the hare?
I'm gonna tell you a little story about that. First, I am generally a pretty fast writer. I've written a complete category romance in as little as 3 weeks. (I still think that book could have benefited from more time, btw, but I am a bit of a perfectionist.) I usually write a category romance in 5 or 6 weeks. I like at least that much time. That's still pretty fast, all things considered. At that pace, if I started one right after the other, I could write eight books a year — and that's assuming I take a full 6 weeks to write them. Less time means more books, right?
Now here's the story. I was doing 1K1Hr on Twitter with another author a few months ago. We both had 50K word books due, though her deadline was a couple of months after mine. I started the book with 5 weeks to go until D-day. So we were doing 1K1Hr together, several times a day.
Every time, she'd come back with huge word counts: 1200, 1500, 2000 words while I was lucky in that one hour to hit 1K — and often didn't. I started to feel depressed at the end of the day that she'd written 5 to 7K and I'd been lucky to get 3K.
But guess what happened? Slow (if you call a book in 5 weeks slow) and steady won the race. I finished my book and turned it in, and while she'd racked up huge word counts, she was a rewriter. Meaning she wrote the book all the way through, fast, and then threw most of it away and started over.
That's no way to work — or at least not for me. (If rewriting is your process, and it works for you, great. It does not work for me.)
All I am telling you is this: if you're on Twitter or Facebook and you keep seeing writers talking about their huge days with 5K or 7K written and you're getting depressed with your measly 1K (or less) and you're thinking about hanging up the keyboard because clearly you can't keep up and only the super fast writers are successful these days, I'm telling you to think again.
Speed doesn't equal quality. It also doesn't NOT equal quality. All it means is the book takes as long as it takes. I've read books where I knew the author wrote it fast and been blown away. I've also read books where they wrote it fast and it was clear, to me at least, that another hard look at the story would have resulted in a deeper, more rounded book that touched me rather than irritated me with the shoddiness of the work.
You do not have to write fast to succeed. You need to write an awesome book. And then another and another and another. That's how you succeed. Sit down and write your book. 1K a day will get you a 90K book in 3 months. If you take weekends off, it'll take a little longer. But that's nothing to sneeze at, folks.
Do NOT let the idea that you have to write fast stop you from writing at all. If you keep seeing all these writers racking up terrific word counts and it makes you depressed, stop looking at their stats. Just log off of social media altogether for a while. No, you probably shouldn't spend two years rewriting the same 50K words, but you also shouldn't be depressed because you need four months to write those 50K words.
Write the book. It takes as long as it takes. Some take longer, some go faster. But if you aren't writing 5K a day, don't sweat it. It's perfectly fine. The goal is to write a good book, not to write a fast book (which is not to say those two are mutually exclusive). And the more consistently you work, the more often you put your butt in the chair, you might just find yourself getting faster as certain aspects of your process start to make themselves more recognizable to you.
Write the darn book, y'all. Don't worry about the fact Suzie Q. Author wrote her latest novel in one booze and chocolate fueled weekend. You aren't her. She's not you. And there's room enough for you both. 🙂 Now get your butt in the chair!
