One short day in the Emerald City…

Well, its more like three, long, arduous days actually. It is that time of year. The Emerald City Writers Conference is here again, and as I look back at the past year, I can’t believe how much I have grown as a writer. A published writer, not so much. But as far as craft is considered, I have gone from simple to sophisticated and complex. At least, I think so.

My goals are pretty much the same as they were last year, only this time I can sense that the stakes are higher. I’m pitching my superheroes. This is the book that I can feel down to my marrow could be big. I just need to find someone who is as passionate about it as I am. No easy feat. My query is set and I am determined to project as much positivity as possible, even when the nerves pull at my insides.

Also different is that this year I am on the conference committee. I know, thou shall not committee, but having this position has given me the opportunity to network that I didn’t have before. At this stage in my career, I find that it has been more than worth it. Just like many writers, I am incredibly shy. I  can hear the gasps, Anna? Shy? No, that can’t be, but seriously, I am. However, since I will be one of the first faces conference attendees will see when they check-in, I will be the most gracious hostess.  Hiding in the background will not be an option. If you see me hiding, poke me with a pencil. This business is all about the connections and I can not pass the opportunity by.

So, okay y’all, my bags are ready, my pages for the Margie Lawson workshop are printed, and I am packing breath mints. Will I sell a book this weekend? No, that’s not the point. What I will do is take another, all important step to publication.

See you there.

I’m here. Really. I’m alive and gasping for air as I briefly lift my head from my works in progress. Yes, I said works. What have I been doing these last few weeks? Writing, writing and more writing. Or I should say rewriting, rewriting and more rewriting. Mixed in with that is my usual June madness of end of school activities, birthdays, dance recitals, and online workshops. Yes, caffeine has been my friend.

As I was busy finishing my superhero novel, I received a request for my Scottish ghost story. Since the editor had critiqued the portion she read, I thought one last read through, using her suggestions, would be a good idea before I sent it off. Now, the last time I looked at this ms was back in November when I first started submitting it. At the time, I thought it was perfect to send out.

Good lord, what had I put on paper?

Needless to say, a complete reworking of the first few pages ensued, followed by more tweaking of the rest of the book. I can’t believe how I forget the endings on some of my words. Why would I do that? Well, I know why. Because I read the story like it’s a movie in my head. I don’t see word endings, or even prepositions when I read, hence why I sometimes leave them out of my writing. Not a good excuse, but that is the reason. And yes, I do struggle with missed words a lot.

What I’ve also discovered is that I write in what I call Willy Wonka speak. If you are into Sci-Fi that would be Yoda-talk, meaning I write backwards.

 For example: Concern etched his feature as he looked down at her.

I could have also written this as: He looked down at her with concerned etched on his features.

Why do I do that? Well, one, I don’t want to start every sentence with ‘he’, and two, that is how I talk. Its natural for me to think in this pattern. I don’t find one way more ‘right’ than the other, because in my head I see him looking at her in concern. The only words on the page could be ‘concern’, ‘look’, ‘down’ and ‘he’, and I would still picture the same image.

But, there are some people out there where order is a huge issue, so I am diligently cleaning up my manuscript before doing the exact same thing with my superheroes. This is just another part of writing. Learning, applying, learning, applying.

Just like I do with the rest of life’s lessons.

Between my day job, workshops and writing, I feel like I never stop. And that’s not about to end any time soon.

I’ve just completed a platform building workshop offered by Ann Charles and Jacquie Rodgers over at 1st Turning Point. I should now be an expert at marketing myself and my books. Keep in mind should be are the operative words. Actually, I learned a lot, so much that my mind is still wrapping around the information.

In June I will be participating in another workshop on website design. Yea! I hope to expand this site into something a little more exciting.

On the writing front, I pitched my superheroes to an editor on the spur of the moment. The object was to receive feedback on the pitch in preparation for Nationals. Low and behold, she requested the full! Another yea! Followed quickly by a, ooo- must get book finished.

For the next few weeks my nose will be permanently pointed at a monitor as I polish up my wip. This is a good thing. A test. Do I have the metal to pull off a pressing deadline? Oh yeah.

Welcome back to day two of the Write at Sea workshop on board Carnival Cruises Fun Ship Paradise.

After a night of revelry followed by endless tossing and turning as I ruminated on the new beginning of my story, I arrive at the Break into Fiction workshop ready for the next step- What happens after the first twist point.

My new start is rife with conflict. My subplot and secondary plot that I was flirting with weeks ago will fold in beautifully. But now I’m stuck on the details, or rather the tests. I need obstacles, things for my couple to do, and more importantly, create events that will lead them up to the next twist point.

Dianna’s favorite suggestions is “kill somebody.” Great, but I can’t kill off

Encenada

everybody. So I’m staring at the wall again. The ticking time bomb that is my brain has been activated

Think, think, think, think, think- BOOM!

I’ve fractured off again.

This is when a second person comes in really handy. As I start to rattle off where I’ve got the story going, Mary is plucking the threads out of my jumbled sentences and narrowing my focus. Now the secondary storyline has more importance than earlier. Fantastic! Thank you subconscious. Have I ever mentioned how much I love my subconscious?

At the end of the day I am mentally drained, but I now have a strong, fully plotted story that is fit for my shape shifter and his mate. The process was painful, but you know the saying, “If it was easy, everyone could do it.”

My next step now? Take the templates and go through the first story in the series. Do I see more internal bloodshed and frustrated tears? Yes. So why do it?

Because I don’t want to be a writer. I want to be a published author. And that requires more that just putting words on paper.

Ahoy matey! Welcome to my adventures on the Carnival Fun Ship Paradise.

I’ve just returned from a weekend at sea attending the Break into Fiction workshop taught by the fantastic team of Mary Buckham and Dianna Love, or as we lovingly referred to them as, The Punisher and the Evil Queen.

My voyage began with a few hours of me time relaxing by the pool with a book in one hand and the drink special of the day in the other. If I had only know about the arduous metamorphosis that awaited me the next day, I would have relished that time a lot more.

My roommate was the lovely Susan from Canada. Although she wrote YA and I paranormal, and we came from different backgrounds and were born in different decades, we had similar life experiences which gave us plenty to talk about.

There were sixteen of us on this maiden excursion of Write at Sea. Most of us wrote romance and there were several of my GSRWA mates in attendance. We had a few thriller and suspense writers as well. The class was geared towards commercial fiction, so there was plenty of opportunity for everyone to learn.

The project I brought to the workshop was the second installment in my superhero series, or as it’s called in my world, The Shape shifter and the Nurse. The reason I chose this novel over the first in the series was because I’m pretty much married to Max and Crystal’s storyline. In the second I knew who the H/H were, the first chapter, and a vague idea of the villain, or villains. After that I was opened to all ideas. I had the first chapter written. It had danger in it, angst, sexual tension and snappy dialogue. I thought I was off to a fantastic start.

Then I talked to Mary and the torture began.

She pointed out that while the concept and characters were good, there wasn’t enough conflict in the beginning to sustain throughout the book. They needed to collide sooner. I needed more.

Ah! Well crap. Now, I needed something new. Something spectacular. What followed next was thirty minutes of me staring at the wall, swaying to the rhythm of the rocking ship. My pre-cruise fear of not being able to come up with ideas quickly came to fruition as I sat and sat. Then I discovered that my brain is a ticking time bomb.

Think, think, think, think, think- BOOM!

Two ideas pop into my head, and each had three or four possible outcomes that splintered into several directions. My desk is now covered in creativity carnage.

Being suddenly smacked with multiple ideas is both a blessing and a curse. I have something to work with. Yay! But where do I place the focus? More staring at the wall. Unless I find a direction, I cannot go forward in the process.

So I do what anyone else does when they hit a wall whilst on a cruise ship. I went to the pool.

Laying out under the sunny rays off the coast of Mexico I let my mind wander. Tropical drink near by, I close my eyes as the pool band launches into a reggae version of Hugh Lewis’s The Heart of Rock N’ Roll.

She needs to witness something. Something bad. Of course. A murder? No. Drug runners? Been done to death. Human trafficking? Hard sell. Terrorism? Even harder sell.

My front starts to burn, so I flip over, mind still working.

Ooo, that could work. It’s different and definitely plausible. I can work with this.

I pop up in my lounge chair. “Susan, I’ve got a plan.”

She blinks at me in surprise over the top of her book. “Wow. You were brainstorming. I thought you were asleep. Good for you.”

“Thanks.”

Even through dinner, a comedy show and an Indian kid howling his way through Bohemian Rhapsody, my concept is percolating, growing, solidifying. My brain is working so much, I’m up at 5:30 in the morning writing on the Lido deck.

I feel like a fighter knocked down in the first round, struggling to their feet. I’m hurt, disorientated, but the will to fight flows through me. This will be a stronger story. A better story, A story that will sell.

I spent three hours today trying to find the right explosive to blow open the door on a bank vault. At the end of the day I still couldn’t figure it out. On the news they talk about how easy it is to find out how to make a bomb on the internet and I couldn’t do it. I don’t know if that is a good thing or a bad thing. Oh there was lots of information about explosives in general, this one is powerful, this one not so powerful, and a whole lot of mathematical formulas. But nothing that said this type blows up this material best. That was what I needed.

I tried looking up bank robberies to see what was used in the past. Apparently almost all bank robberies are carried out by either kidnapping the manager or the old note to the teller routine. While it was all very interesting,  I couldn’t find how to blow open the door.

So in the end I described the bomb as a bunch of cylinders taped together attached to colorful wires. The scene is from my heroine’s point of view, andshe’s not a bomb expert, so she wouldn’t know exactly what she was looking at either.

I guess you can’t learn everything from the internet. If you know differently, please let me know.

I finaled in the Greater Detroit’s RWA chapters Between the Sheets writing contest. It’s my first final, and it almost didn’t happen.

When I received my scores I was told that I was not a finalist. However when I reviewed my score sheets I had a total score of 117 out of 120. So close, yet so far. All day I stressed inside. How close had I gotten? I finally gathered my courage and sent a little message asking how out of the race was I. Much to my joy, I actually had finaled.

I have been in a daze all day. This is a big moment for me. Hopefully not the last. And also a valubale lesson in trusting my gut and question when need be.

“I write because I have to.”

I’ve heard many writers say that. Authors who posses an all consuming need to put words to paper. Over the year I worried that I didn’t have the heart to pursue a career that is a constant up- hill battle and knocks you around all of the time.  I wrote because I had stories inside that I thought people might like to read, but it wasn’t really a deep burning drive like others spoke about. It was a concept that I understood, but never attributed to myself. Until now.

This week was a self-imposed break between drafts to recharge my brain. Seven days of not touching my work in progress. I have taken these breaks before, but I would be working on two projects at once. This was the first time in a year that I wasn’t composing. By day three I knew something was off.

I would find myself staring out of the window every few minutes. I didn’t know what to do with my hands without a pencil between my fingers or typing. It was frightening to feel so disconnected to what had become the central part of who I am. I was a boat without a rudder just drifting through my day.

Not all of my time was spent zoning out. I did house work. Read. A lot. Played with my kids and joined Twitter. My days were full, but there was always a sense of something not being right. A piece of me was missing and I knew it was due to not writing.

My writing is the only thing in my life that is 100% completely mine. I didn’t have to discuss whether it was a lifestyle (and it is a lifestyle) that would fit in with anyone elses plans. It is my choice. My art that I work on and hone and craft with everything in me. Without it, I’m not whole. That spark was missing.

I know now what it means to write because I have to.

During my self imposed break from writing I’ve been reading graphic novels. My brother recommended Y the Last Man by Bryan K. Vaughn which follows the trials and tribulations of the last man on Earth. I also picked up volume one of the Ultimate Annuals and Green Lantern. You may ask what do graphic novels have to do with romance novels? Well, it’s all about telling the tale.

Graphic novels are the epitome of slash the fat storytelling. The author does not get the luxury of 80+ thousand words to tell their story. They get a hundred odd pages to convey a compelling tale with two-dimensional pictures, dialogue and little to no narrative. And I thought condensing a single title into a three page synopsis was hard.

It’s actually fantastic. I love the getting to the point and moving on pace. No repetitive retelling of information. If you don’t know what’s going on, tough, you should have paid attention when you read it the first time. Ah, there are some authors out there that really need to learn this concept. One thing I promised myself is that I would not fall into the repetative trap.

The dialogue is also very straight forward. Short conversations with simple phrases. Before people were consumed with television, comic books was the media that taught the masses to read, which is why they are so appealing, anyone can read them. I’m not saying dumb down your book, but don’t alienate readers either. As Thoreau said “simplify, simplify, simplify.” Just because you can insert half of Merriam-Webster’s dictionary in your book doesn’t mean you should.

On a side note- Ultimate Annuals vol. one, chapter two (I am being vague in case you haven’t read it and I don’t want to spoil anything). WTF?? Seriously? My favorite character since I was a kid and that’s how you do him?

*head hits desk and I observe a moment of silence. With a deep sigh I sit up and brush a lock of hair out of my teary eyes.

I’m just going to pretend that I never read that. Even though it might turn out that everything is all right, I don’t want to risk it. In my mind he is whole and healthy with that wicked smile and killer accent.  Right, mon cheri?

The end. Those are sweet words to a writer. Earlier this week I was able to type “The End” on the rough draft of my superhero story. Yeah!!!! So, do I immediately dive into re-writes? Noooo.

I have always equated writing to baking and decorating a cake with the rough draft being the cake layer. When you take a cake out of the oven, you don’t immediately start icing it. The filling would slide out and the icing would melt off. You have to let it cool. Same thing with the rough draft. You walk away and just let it be for a while, then come back to it with fresh eyes.

Now the question becomes what do I do while it’s cooling? I write constantly. I write when I drive and during my lunch break. I write when I’m brushing my teeth and putting on my make-up. I am rarely ever not writing. So how do I fill me time for the next week?

Well, of course I will read. I have the entire series of Y the Last Man on my nightstand.

I’ll work on my blog.

I’ll evaluate where my queries are at on my ghost story.

Workout more.

Fold some laundry.

Sleep. Yeah, sleep is a good idea.

That should fill a week nicely. Now if I could only stop thinking of new scenes to add until my self imposed vacation is over.