86 Days

86 Days until the RWA conference in New York. What can you do in 86 days?

582 words a day = 50,000 words = short contemporary
1,164 words a day = 100,000 words = single title

1lb week for 12 weeks = 12 lbs

I'm currently working on a Presents, hoping to have it completed and a proposal sent to the London office well before the conference. I also plan to have at least half of a Desire finished by the time conference rolls around so I have something to pitch. Crossing my fingers for an editor appointment with one of the Desire editors. I want to finish up my website this week and start thinking about business cards. I start a digital design class next month so I'm hoping to hold off so I can design them myself.

I'm trying to find a convenient walking club so I can ditch the gym which I've grown to dislike after ten years and still get the motivation I need to exercise. But I'm not having much luck. Might have to start one of my own.  How does one do that?

What's on your agenda for the next three months before the hot weather hits and the kids are out of school?

Missed Opportunities

When I first joined RWA, over a dozen years ago, my writing was all over the place, writing a little of this and a little of that, not finishing anything or having any clear idea of what kind of writer I wanted to be. I knew that wasn't the road to success but I think for many writers it's a familiar path. I have a lot of ideas for different genres but I write slowly ( might have mentioned that once or twice before LOL)

About three years ago I decided to concentrate on short contemporary romance for Harlequin. I've had a bit of positive reinforcement with requests for fulls, like your writing but not this one, send us something else, etc. So, I've kept my head down and continued to write short contemporary - but I'm still slow as molasses. And, I write somewhere between the tone of a Desire and a Presents so I'm writing books for each line. Intellectually I know it makes more sense to focus on just one line but somehow the books just turn out to be a fit for one or the other. They're both short contemporaries so I can revise for the other line if they get rejected.

I wrote the first draft of After Hours With the CEO last year and sent the partial to Desire in Dec 2010. I'm just past the three month waiting mark and hopefully will have a response before the conference.  I started to write my next short contemporary and it has a very "Presents" feel. So, when Desire announced an online pitch, but the MS has to be finished, I have nothing to pitch. Missed Opportunity.

I went to a retreat two years ago with my Dream agent who reps mysteries, planning to have a mystery to pitch. But ended up giving up my pitch appt to a friend because I'd had a request for a full from one of my short contemporaries and just couldn't get something together at the same time.  Missed Opportunity.

We've had editors visit our local chapter and I've had to skip the pitch appointment because I have nothing to pitch. We have an editor coming to our chapter in Sept and I want to have something to pitch but the MS I'm working on doesn't fit with her.

91 days until national conference. My first one. Besides being expensive, and inconvenient when you're a single parent of teenagers, I wouldn't allow myself to go until I felt I deserved to. And that meant having completed MS to pitch.

I've joined an online group of Pro's - 50k by Nationals. I have an online critique group, an inperson critique group, online goals group for our chapter, a "Success Team" group. I give talks on self-defeating behaviors and finding time to write.  And still I have only a little over 10,000 words on my current MS.

I don't want to miss any more opportunities. Anyone have any tips for me? How do you find the discipline to just "do it." Any advise on  how to write faster?

Conflict and Category Romance

One of the most essential elements of a category romance is conflict. External conflict is difficult to create in a modern contemporary because there are very few valid reasons to keep two people who love each other apart. This often results in us, as authors, creating convoluted (often unbelievable) plots to keep our hero and heroine apart. But try writing a straight romance, without a murder or suspense element, and you'll find very quickly how difficult it is to write without strong motivation to drive the character's action and a believable conflict that keeps them from acting on that immediate attraction. And yes, in a 50,000 word romance, that attraction has to be almost instant since we don't have much space to lolly gag around.

It's difficult to buy into a heroine lusting after the hot hero when he's just threatened to ruin her company, family, reputation, the community...So, the conflict and his actions can't be so cruel that you can't understand how a reasonable woman would ever fall in love with someone who treats her like she's dim witted - or a prostitute. The mountain of character growth can't be too hard to climb that it can't be resolved in a 200 pg book. Once two reasonably intelligent characters decide they want to be together in a contemporary setting, they can usually come up with a way to resolve that external conflict. That's when the internal conflict comes in and keeps them apart.

The internal conflict is really the reason why they can't be together. This is the heart of the entire book. And this is where I would often get stuck. My elaborate external plots would just shudder to a complete stop.

I use two valuable resources that have helped me tremendously. Before I came across these I always felt like I was floundering, that something was missing from my stories.

The first was recommended to me my Cat Shield,  Harlequin Desire's newest author and it's a conference session given by Susan Meier, called Let Conflict Tell Your Story for You  . Follow the link and you can download the session. It's an hour and 40 minutes that, take my word for it, will change the way you look at internal conflict. Susan talks about the heart of an internal conflict being an "incorrect core belief." Magic.( As an aside, I've taken several online courses from Susan and they have all been gold.)

The second resource is from Kathy Carmichael's, Writing the Short Synopsis. Her website has lots of great advice and instruction. The fill-in-the-blank PDF form can be found here: http://www.kathycarmichael.com/VorhausStoryStructure.pdf .  I use it before I start any story. Keeps me focused on the conflict and gives me a nice, tight story.

These two resources changed the way I approach my writing. They are both simple but powerful.

Do you have any resources, online or otherwise, that helped you significantly with your writing?

106 Days

I know it's been ages since I updated this blog. I'm still on my internet diet and trying to write and use my time more productively.


106 days until the National Conference starts.
472 words a day will add up to 50,000 by June 28th.
944 words a day will give me 100,000 words by the Conference - for me that's two short contemporaries. Seems very doable, doesn't it?

And the fact that I'm not feeling the current manuscript? According to my writing pals, that's normal. They all say they hate their work at some point during the writing process. Well, that's a relief.

However, someone else told me if it were as hard as I found it, they would find something else to do. That took me back a step. I had to mull it over. Perhaps I wasn't cut out for this writing business, after all?

Then I listened to Nora from last year's RWA conference where she says "It's supposed to be hard. If it wasn't hard everyone would be doing it."  Do you know what conclusion I drew from all of that?

Everyone is different. Ha! So simple.

In more productive news I designed a friend's website - and I LIKE it. LOL. Take a look www.michellehelliwell.com

So, do you hate your MS at any point during your writing process?