The Best Time to Write

Dec 19, 2011 | Writing | 11 comments

Yesterday, I saw a link to this post on Twitter (Why Programmers Work at Night). I can't remember who tweeted it, but they compared it to writers — and a bell went off for me. Basically, the writer says that the mind is a busy thing and it's easy to get distracted during the day. But at night, when the mind is tired and everything is dark, it's easier to sit down and write code because you're too tired to play.

And I thought, Yeah, that sounds right. Because I've always seemed to work better at night than I do during the day. I can sit and stare at the computer, write some words, surf a bit — and then it's time for the hubby to come home and I'm making dinner, etc. If I'm on deadline, I go back to work after dinner. And work gets done. Much work.

When I first started writing, I was working retail and I had the usual crappy shift. I went to work at 1:00 PM and worked until we closed the store. This usually meant I got home sometime after 10:00. And then I went straight to my computer and often worked until 2 or 3 in the morning. If things were going really well, I'd be at it until 6 or 7. I got a lot done, but I hated the schedule.

Fast forward a few years, and thankfully that retail job is long gone. My schedule is my own. And yet, though I get up early and start to work, I often don't hit my stride until afternoon. And sometimes not until the evening.

So I sent this link to my husband and told him that this was so me. His response made my jaw drop — and made me think. He said, “Bullshit.” He pointed out, quite rightfully, that I work best under pressure. If I have a deadline, I will meet it. I will write non-stop until I do. (I always have a deadline these days, but how far away it is determines my level of panic and productivity.)

And then he pulled out the big guns. He said, and I'm still cursing him for it, “Nora Roberts would say that the best time to write is right now.”

Damn and double damn. I have apparently mentioned La Nora and her amazing schedule one too many times. He's right, curse him. The time to write is now. Not later, not when you feel like it, not when the sun and moon and stars are all in perfect harmony. You may have a natural rhythm, and that's fine — but you have to be able to adapt too. Sometimes your schedule gets thrown off — life gets in the way. Hubby says that if we all relied on the “right time” to accomplish tasks, nothing would ever get done.

He's so right. Doesn't mean I can't make the most of the times I feel super-productive, but it also doesn't mean I have to wait for those times. The best time to write is now. My only problem is getting this damn beginning right. Yes, I am still waffling over how and where to begin this latest book. Some books start perfectly, others reveal themselves slowly. This one is probably the slowest yet. But when it's right, it'll be RIGHT.

In other news, there are some sales on a few of my books. If you missed Behind the Palace Walls, or just want to give it as a gift, you can get it on your Kindle for $2.74 or in paperback for $2.88. And The Devil's Heart is an amazing $1.37 in Large Print paperback!

The Man With the Money is $2.70 on Kindle and $2.70 on Nook. And The Prince's Royal Concubine is free to borrow if you're a Kindle Prime member.

How's that for Happy Holiday shopping? 😉

The Beginning

Nov 29, 2011 | Writing | 17 comments

Yesterday, I started a new book. I had the perfect opening line, I knew where the scene occurred, and what was going to happen. But less than 200 words into it, something felt off. It took me a while to figure it out, but I'd started in the wrong place and the wrong POV. Even when I'd been thinking of it for days and was certain this was right, it wasn't.

Beginnings are tricky creatures. You have to establish so much in the first few lines. You have to establish that there's a problem and a sympathetic character. Sympathetic in that the reader wants to know more about this character and how he or she will handle the problem, not sympathetic in the respect that it's the world against the character (though that can certainly work too!).

In the short category format, you don't have a lot of room for build up. You have to establish the problem pretty early (like immediately) and get those characters moving toward the resolution. It's challenging, and so incredibly important to get right. Personally, I like to jump into the action with dialogue and the characters face to face — and yet in my published books, about half of them do that and half don't. Not because I didn't try, but because the story just didn't work that way. It doesn't always have to start with dialogue, or with the characters in the same room.

But it does need to start with a dilemma. In my first book, SPANISH MAGNATE, RED-HOT REVENGE (Aug 2009), the heroine has just gotten off the phone with someone who informed her that her company has been taken over. A few lines later, her phone rings again and it's the hero. Naturally, he's the one who bought her company — and they have a past together. By contrast, in THE DEVIL'S HEART (April 2011), the hero is being held at gunpoint by the heroine (not that he knows it's her) who was once married to him. In BEHIND THE PALACE WALLS (July 2011), Alexei hears a scream. A few minutes later, the heroine barrels into him as she's running across the dark, snowy cobbles of Red Square. In STRANGERS IN THE DESERT (March 2012), the hero learns that a woman resembling his dead wife, whose body was never found, is living halfway around the world and singing in bars.

See, instant trouble, whether or not it starts with dialogue or both characters together in the same space. No one is getting out of bed in the morning, getting into the shower, thinking about their day, making breakfast, driving to the office, etc. If your character needs to get out of bed to start the story, then maybe the other character needs to crash through their roof and land on the bed seconds later. (That's a joke.) 😉

Believe it or not, you have plenty of time to get the whys and wherefores into the story if you launch with immediate problems. You simply feed it in as necessary to establish what's going on. Think of it like this: if you were walking along in the mall and saw a fight break out in the food court, would you need to know why the fight was happening or would you be instantly intrigued? You, and a bunch of other people, would probably stop and watch while mall security raced to the scene to stop the fight. You'd listen to the participants yell at each other, watch the struggles as they tried to break free of security, and wonder what was going on.

You wouldn't need to know up front that these were former best friends who'd become enemies because one of them stole the other's husband, and that the husband and the thief were now getting married, and that the ex-wife has two children at home that belong to the husband. You wouldn't need to know the fight started because the thief taunted the ex-wife as she was walking by, or that the ex-wife is struggling to make ends meet and this was the last straw for her tonight.

You'd only need to see two women in each others' faces, shouting and coming to blows, to be intrigued.

Remember that. Start with a problem that hooks the reader in and then give them just enough information to keep them hooked. Don't show all your cards at the beginning, but don't hide everything either.

I'd started with the wrong character but I didn't know it until I wrote 200 words. It was fine, but not dramatic enough. So I moved the scene to a new location and put it into the hero's POV. This is a man who is supposed to be on top of the world, who has everything going for him, but who feels dead inside while everyone around him thinks he has the perfect life. He doesn't, and I needed the reader to know that before I could go on. The heroine is on the scene now, and everything is about to slide sideways. I love that moment, when the characters meet and nothing goes as they expect. It's so delicious it gives me a thrill to imagine what I'm going to do to these people today!

To recap:

1. Beginnings should be compelling enough to hook the reader in, but you don't have to hit them over the head with a fight or someone crashing through a roof. Problems, problems, problems – that's the key.

2. A sympathetic character isn't necessarily a character for whom everything is going wrong or who is downtrodden. No, a sympathetic character is also one for whom everything seemed fine (or nearly fine) until recently. Downtrodden works too, of course. The heroine who is homeless and has a baby to feed probably didn't get that way overnight (though it'd be interesting if she did!). You won't want to detail every step that got her here, but you'll want to hammer it home pretty quickly that she's in a bad spot. Likewise, a heroine who is on top of the world until she gets a phone call that her company has been bought out from under her is also sympathetic because we've just watched everything change in the space of a heartbeat. Change is the motor that drives the beginning.

3. Don't be afraid to shift the beginning if it's not working. Sometimes the perfect line is perfect — but not the right place to begin. The line I had for this story will remain, but it will be the first line of the scene in which I shift to the heroine's POV. Still there, but moved. Never be afraid to shift, or to start over completely if it's not working.

4. Trust your gut. If you find yourself piling on words in an effort to explain that perfect beginning, then maybe you need to listen hard and realize that it's not perfect and that you need something that doesn't require so much explaining. You need the metaphorical equivalent of that mall fight, something that intrigues and causes rubber-necking and the need to know what's happening.

5. Don't think up something huge and dramatic just to hook the reader and then the rest of the story isn't like that. The beginning needs to fit. Don't put in a car chase or a skydiving mishap and then the rest of the story has nothing to do with either of those things. Sometimes, the most dramatic opening isn't correct. In CAPTIVE BUT FORBIDDEN, out now in the UK, I originally started with the heroine at her father's funeral and the hero coming to kidnap her because of a threat against her (he's been hired to protect her). It was dramatic, but wrong for the characters. Now, the story starts with the heroine hiding from the public and her responsibilities, just for a few moments, but the hero intrudes on her private time. Before she can get rid of him, she's forced to rely on his expertise when the lights go out. A much more fitting opening to who they are and their situation.

And that's it for the moment! My wisdom, such as it is, on beginnings. Questions?

The Solitary Life

Nov 9, 2011 | Writing | 8 comments

Writing is such a solitary life that sometimes I go whole weeks without leaving the house. If not for my husband, I'd have no human interaction at all. This week, I'm revising my latest book so that I can turn it in to my editor and move on to the next story. For some reason, it's really hard this time. Not the revisions, which aren't that bad, but the sitting and working.

I want to go shopping. I want to have lunch with friends. I want to read and do some things around the house that need doing. I want to wake up and have the whole day free to myself.

I love what I do, make no mistake. But sometimes it's so lonely that I just want to pick up the phone and call a friend (and I'm not much of a telephone talker, I assure you). I think I'm also a bit irritated about things going on in publishing these days. It's an exciting time to be a writer. There are more opportunities than ever to get your work out there, but there's also a whole lot of gasbaggery going on in regards to the various publishing methods and who thinks they are right, right, right about which method is best.

All the white noise makes it hard to concentrate sometimes.

Perhaps there's so much discourse online because we're all living that solitary life, and that's where we turn for interaction. It's good to have that online connection, but it's also isolating in its own way. I know I should turn it off, and yet at times like this, I think if I turned it off I'd have no interaction at all.

And then there's the fear and uncertainty while working on a book. Is this the worst book ever written? Or is it pretty good? Will this one end my career? Or will I get fan mail telling me how much someone loved it? That's one of the hardest things to deal with, friends. The idea that you don't want to disappoint anyone, but knowing you will. Knowing that someone will hate your work no matter what you do and will take to the internet to say bad things about you, the book, and your poor cat too.

You can't write with the aim to please everyone, and I promise you I don't, but it's difficult sometimes to imagine all the crap you're going to get for that virgin heroine, or the secret baby, or the bodyguard hero. There's a lot of second-guessing in the writerly life, I think. There is for me, though I've never changed something or done something just to make it easier for someone to stomach.

So, I'm back to these revisions while turning my head to stare out the window from time to time and sighing wistfully. (Yes, I know I just spent two weeks in Europe, and maybe that's part of the problem — like going from 100mph to a full stop in the space of a second.) In the meantime, I'm going to think about the upcoming holiday, the fact my in-laws will be visiting, and all the yummy things we're going to eat. And then I get to look forward to a friend's visit where we will discuss books and plots and all things writerly for one nice long weekend.

Yes, writing is a solitary life — but it's also a pretty darn good one. I'm writing this in my pajamas and there is no commute. 😉