Getting ready for RWA National

Hair? Cut.

Dresses? Bought.

Dress shoes? Check.

Sweaters/tops? Ditto.

Luggage? Yup.

Tan? Never.

I did waffle about a pair of tights, but ended up going with them. We’ll see how that turns out. I’m going to spend the next week in a frantic state trying to finish two weeks’ worth of work in 1 week, slowly, sloooowly packing stuff so I don’t have to wash it again before wearing it, and generally remembering to bring everything. I hope.

My schedule is made, room plans are done, tickets are bought, and I don’t think I’m leaving anything to the last minute except maybe travel toothpaste. I wasn’t sure what to expect last year but this year I have a general idea.

(now if my promo materials could just get here so i can squee over them)

If we were supposed to meet up for breakfast/lunch/whatever and we have not talked, EMAIL me because I am booked, yo.

Anyone else got last minute prep for Nationals?

Copyedits have landed

If I’m quiet lately, it’s because I’m busy. I started a side project just for fun, and sure enough, as soon as I launch into that particular project…copyedits arrive!

That’s all right, though, because I’m quite happy to get my copyedits out of the way.

It’s funny, because when copyedits were originally mentioned to me, I had the notion that someone would send me a big long print-out of changes to make to the manuscript. Then, I’d have to take each page and make the changes on my document. After all the endless changes were done, I’d print out a fresh one and send it back to my publisher.

Apparently, I was not the only one with this misconception. The letter on top of my manuscript says, quite clearly (and possibly in bold AND capslock) – make the changes on this document. Do not print a fresh document. We need this document back. Lose it and die.

(Okay, so maybe the last part is not on there)

I was also provided (very thoughtfully!) with a green pencil. At first, this amused me. They’re sending my copyedits…AND a green pencil? Some sort of weird two-fer deal? But the green pencil is very important. My copyedits are marked up with red, grey, and blue already. I have to use a different color so my changes stand out.

Armed with my green pencil, I dive in to see what a copyedit is all about. Turns out…it’s about reading other people’s marks to my manuscript to see if they make sense. Some of them are punctuation related. Once upon a time (and even today) I loved me some extra commas or em-dashes. My copyeditor does not like them so much, so there’s a lot of them marked out. Other punctuation changes. Deleting unnecessary words and sentence tags (there’s an embarrassing wealth of this).

I also have in the margins several notes about things to clarify. “On page 12, you said it was a diner. On this page you say it’s a café. Which is it?” So I correct the item and write ‘fixed’ over the note. The bigger changes, I’m making a note to go back and fix at the end. For now, I’m still re-reading.

Did I mention this is a long, time consuming process? The first few days, I had no clue what I was doing and didn’t know what half the marks meant. Took me 2 days to get through 25 pages. (Did I mention I have to have this turned in ASAP?) Luckily, I’m getting more confident with the changes as I go, and was able to make a big leap in progress yesterday. I should have no problems finishing on time, which is nice.

After all this is turned in, about a month later, I get galleys! I have to admit, I’m really excited about seeing galleys. That’s when all the fonts and styles are set, and the book starts to look like a real book instead of just my old manuscript.

More stuff I can’t show you.

I got cover art for my second book last night! It made me squee in all the right places. Love my publisher – Pocket does really amazing romance covers, and it makes me sosososo happy to see mine.

But I can’t show you. At least, not until I get approval. BUT! I can show you a little something that is going on the cover…

“Laugh-out-loud scenes, scorching eroticism, and pulse-pounding adventure.” — Kresley Cole, New York Times bestselling author of Kiss of a Demon King

Perhaps you did not read that closely enough. I’ll wait here while you read it again.

KRESLEY FREAKING COLE BLURBED MY BOOK YOU GUYS.

(Perhaps you recall last RWA, when I mentioned I might meet Kresley? And I was excited? And posted this picture?)

That’s right. She was nice enough to make my day year decade and blurb my book.

You so want to read it now, don’t you? Yeah. Me too.

(But I get to! Because I am getting copyedits this week! And I’ll get to read — and edit — the whole thing AGAIN. Oh writer’s life, you are a glamorous one.)

Anyhow, there was some great link salad going on around and about the interwebs, most of it related to writing. Here ya go:

http://m-stiefvater.livejournal.com/111221.html <-- On writers and self confidence, and how being confident in your work does not equal ego. At least, not always. (Maggie has an awesome journal, guys. You should be reading it.)

http://beth-bernobich.livejournal.com/282487.html <-- Beth Bernobich talks about poisonous writers on the web. Can I get an amen?

http://jimhines.livejournal.com/450145.html < -- Jim Hines talks about writers with 'real' jobs vs writers without real jobs. Excellent post. Jim's posts on the business side of writing are an absolute must.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JK7IKSfyLE < -- Earworm of the day (not the real video, just the song)

http://mymilktoof.blogspot.com/ < — Cutest blog ever. EVER.

And that’s all I got for now.

A rant on word count

So. Wordcount. (Yes, I’m struggling for things to blog about, and Moonrat just posted something awesome on her blog and it reminded me that I wanted to talk about this.)

Here’s a great post from an editor:

http://romanticreads.net/2009/03/12/the-economics-of-word-count-requirements/

Here’s another great post from Moonrat (who is also an editor):

http://editorialass.blogspot.com/2009/06/is-there-word-count-cap-for-debut-novel.html

Here’s another great post from an agent:

http://theswivet.blogspot.com/2008/03/on-word-counts-and-novel-length.html

Okay. Did you read those three? All three of them mention word count. Did you also notice how small the word counts are? 80k. 85k. 90k max.

There seems to be this mythical unicorn of a concept that longer books still sell! Stephenie Meyer’s TWILIGHT was 700 pages long! JK Rowling’s books were enormous! Diana Gabaldon’s OUTLANDER is a brick of a book!

All right then. Let’s recap:

1) Did you make 50 million dollars last year like Meyer?
2) Are you JK Rowling?
3) Did you write OUTLANDER?

If you answered “Yes” to any of those questions, then please do ignore word count (and me!).

If you answered “No” like most everyone else, it’s something to pay attention to.

Bloated word count costs your publisher money. I’m sorry, but there it is. You can fit three fat books on a shelf where six slimmer ones might fit. You get paid the same for both. Would you rather sell three or six? Would you rather B&N or Borders order 3 copies of your book or six? What about Wal-Mart?

I buy a lot of books at the grocery store. My favorite one has the mini-racks – little black wire brackets that are made to cup the paperbacks. They can squeeze usually about five or so books in there. Last fall they reprinted GONE WITH THE WIND, gave it a snazzy new cover, and put it on the racks. Guess how many copies of GWTW could fit in each slot? One.

When I turned in GENTLEMEN PREFER SUCCUBI, I seem to recall the word count being around 95k or so. According to Amazon, my book is 384 pages long, and I still have no acknowledgements/author notes and I haven’t gone through copyedits. It could potentially keep growing:

Word count for my book!

I had no idea my book was so freaking long, you guys! But there it is. And maybe if my book would have been 70 pages shorter or something, B&N might buy 6 instead of 5 to put on the shelf. But it is what it is. And my book might cost my publisher just a little bit more than the last guy’s because my page count might be longer than Book X. Or my print run will be smaller. You can be darn sure that your print run is going to be smaller if your book is 500 pages long. Why? Because you’re going to require a lot more space on the shelf. And unless your first three initials are G. R. R. (and add an M), space is at a premium.

You want those pretty co-op slots at the front of Barnes & Noble. You want as many of your books squeezed into those slots. If your doorstopper makes it to co-op and you only have two on the shelf, and both sell, do you think they’re going to re-stock your book right away, or do you think an employee is going to wander past and just fill the blank slots with whatever is closest?

I visit a lot of writing boards. And word count ALWAYS ALWAYS comes up. And there seems to be this common misconception that “It’s okay for a fantasy novel to run longer!” or “Romance novels that are 500 pages still sell!” Usually these misconceptions come from one of three things:

1) Writing guides or writing books that are 20 years out of date, when the cost of paper wasn’t an issue, and when bookstores weren’t optimizing space like they are today.
2) The books that are 500 pages long were actually from authors that continue to have a backlist in print because they’ve sold so well for a dozen years (see OUTLANDER or GWTW).
3) That book is just that damn good.

And hey, maybe you’ve got #3. I’ve got confidence in my writing, but I know if I went back to my editor and said “Book 2 is going to be about 200k, is that all right?” she would probably need a drink. Or three. And then start writing me a tough letter about how I needed to chop my word count. Because she can’t go to marketing and say “About that book 2? Yeah. It’s going to be 700 pages long.” Marketing won’t like that. Publishing is all about the numbers, and you just threw off your profit margin by a landslide.

There was a great post from Anna Genoese a few years back about how every book considered for acquisition is immediately entered into a P&L spreadsheet to see how much money the company can make. I don’t have the link anymore (unfortunately) but it’s a real eye opener. You’re not writing a work of art for the publisher – you’re pitching a product to them. It’s all about the bottom dollar, baby.

Don’t get me wrong. Longer books still sell. Someone’s always going to pop on the message board and say “I sold my 170k book for a six figure advance!”

Wow, that’s awesome! Lucky you! You just hit the equivalent of the publishing lottery!

Some people also get 7 figure deals right out of the gate! Or tons of promo and publicity! And a 20 city book tour and a blurb by Stephen King!

And then there’s the rest of us.

What I’m trying to say here…if you’d rather have the odds in your favor, take a long, hard look at your word count and see if you can’t shrink it a little.

When I queried my first book, the word count was 110k. I got nowhere, so I revised and dropped it to 100k. Got some interest. I *really* got interest when I mentioned that my book was in the lower 90s. Agents want something they can sell, and I imagine something that’s an easy sale makes it that much easier to get an agent. A long word count is automatically going to put you in the ‘long shot’ territory.

(And wow, this got totally Ranty McRanterson, didn’t it? My apologies!)

Plotting. You either take it in the front, or in the rear.

So, plotting. Some people ‘pants’ their way through a novel, without an outline except what’s running through their heads. Some people religiously outline before starting a book. There’s really no wrong way to write a novel, but I know that a lot of people will tell you that if you are a pantser, you’d better learn how to plot once you get contracted! Or else! And I think I’ve even said that before myself.

But here’s the thing. It’s not like if you’re a pantser, you turn in this random mess of garbage to your editor. You don’t claim that 25 independent chapters are a book, and weird shit happens on page 3 and then we switch narrators on page 300. Or maybe we do. Anyhow. I’m a pantser. I shamelessly admit this. I don’t like to know where a novel is going until we’ve shaken hands and possibly gone out on a first date. This is about page 50 or so.

This post gets really, really long right about here (fair warning).

I digress – I did want to share plotting out book 2 for my succubus series. When we had editor interest, my agent said “Can you come up with a concept for book 2?” So I sent her back a paragraph blurb about what I thought book 2 would be about. My agent wanted more info, so I actually came up with an extended ‘back blurb’ pitch. I phrased it like the back of a book, got into a little more detail about who would be doing what, and included some plot points that were key and a few funny scenes I was interested in writing. The whole thing was about a page. Not an outline by any stretch of the imagination.

Still, it was all I had when we sold the two book deal and got the go ahead to write it. I wrote the entire novel in about a month and a half, did an edit pass, and returned it to my editor. Because my book got rescheduled, it took a while for me to get edits because I got bumped.

But! The day of glorious edits came, and my editor had only small tweaks. Things like, “You’re not showing us why this character is likeable” or “I like this plot! Can we see more of it?” and just general clean-up. So I read through the book again (and it had been a while since I’d even thought about this book) to see what I thought of it as a reader.

And wow. What a surprise. I’d dropped entire story threads and characters back and forth in the book, and so when they popped up again on the back end, *I* was surprised. I’m the author!

This is not good.

About this time, Caitlin Kittredge posted her plot board for The Witch’s Alphabet . This looked inspiring to me, and organized! So I created one of my own, which you can see here.

Wall of Notes - Before

Let me explain what you’re looking at. I broke the book up into chapters. For each chapter, there’s a white notecard and my main character’s interal conflict and external conflict. Mind you, since I’m a pantser, I had no idea what these conflicts were until I finished the book. So they needed tweaking as well.

At any rate, the white notecards are for the main character (Jackie). Since it’s 1st person POV, every chapter is in her POV so I don’t have to worry about her not being in the chapter. Each other color post-it is for someone else that interacts with her in the storyline, and each has their own motivation and subplot. One color post-it is actually for Jackie’s ‘growth’ arc. I wanted to make sure I built that across the story as well. This may look like a bunch of garbage, but if you pick apart the colors (like, say, pink), you’ll notice that there’s long spans of book where the character and their plotline doesn’t show up.

To me, this is bad. That means this character/plot isn’t even on the radar.

So I added notes to myself on how it should look when I’m done. I filled in notecards for the ‘missing’ plot holes and wrote such helpful things on the post-its like “ADD STUFF HERE STUPID”. Here’s the end board:

Wall of Notes - After!

The colors are much more even, aren’t they?

Too bad these boards didn’t help me. Well, not really.

I mean, I tried really, really hard to be organized. I took my changes from this plot board and wrote them all out on an outline. For Chapter 3, I needed to add more X! Sprinkle in Y! Set up the plot for Z! And I was going to go chapter by chapter. First the page edits (which I always do, cleaning up phrasing and tweaking reactions). And then my editor’s edits! And then my notecards! And then I could finally move on to the next chapter!

And this was freaking overwhelming, y’all, it really was. I was going back over the same chapter over and over and over again without looking at the entire story’s cohesiveness and it was driving me crazy. Took me a week to just do one chapter. Obviously this wasn’t working for me.

So I went back to my old method. I made a list of things I wanted to fix. Things like this:

1) Make X more sympathetic.
2) Give Y a subplot! What’s his/her motivation?
3) Foreshadow Z a lot more!

And I treated each one as a separate draft. For the first draft, I’d work on nothing but #1 on the list, and making X more sympathetic. That was my entire goal. This might take 5 minutes, or it might take 4 days and re-tweaking every page. But that was my goal. Once that was done, I flipped back to the beginning of the manuscript, and started with #2. Rinse and repeat until I hit all bulletpoints. There were about 15 on my list, of various sizes. So this meant I re-read my manuscript over and over again, but it was far easier for me to tackle one aspect of revisions at a time than 20 all at once.

And when that was done, I printed out the manuscript one more time and read to make sure that it flowed as seamlessly on paper as it did in my brain.

And I liked it. I’m very happy with it, and I felt confident about turning it in. It might have taken me a dozen drafts and far more reads than I preferred, but that was my method, and it worked for me. Everyone’s methods are going to be different. The trick is finding what works for you.

Here’s the thing. I could have saved myself a lot of time (a LOT) by outlining the book ahead of time. Right? It would help if I was organized and knew that by Chapter 4, L needed to show up and cause trouble. And to foreshadow something by Chapter 7. But I didn’t, because that’s not my method.

I guess what I’m trying to say here is that being a pantser does not make you WRONG on how you write your book. It does not make your book less ‘well thought out’ than a plotter’s book. It does not make your work shoddy. It makes you have to do your editing and plotting on the back end of the book, rather than the front. I can edit and build plot and give the character a redeeming arc, but I have to have the groundwork laid first.

Make sense?

(And you may be that rare unicorn that can pants out a book with zero edits in the end, but I am not a unicorn. More of a donkey.)

Dropping off the face of the earth again

Just when I seem to have gotten a handle on my time again, it runs away from me once more. Sorry I haven’t posted! Now that I’ve turned in edits on Book 2, I’m…knee deep in edits for a project that my agent is helping me with. It never ends over here. But that’s a good thing, really, because I’m cranky and obnoxious when I’m not working on a project. Trust me. You do not want to be around me when I’m between books.

In other news, that crazy idea I told myself that I wouldn’t write keeps showing up, and it shows up better than ever every single time. Argh. Maybe I’ll write it. Just a little. Just to see how it goes.

(This is how they all start, isn’t it? Subversion.)

Purple things to buy today…

Start with this:

And move on to this:

You know you want to. Purple is the new black. And won’t your bookshelf look cutting-edge and slimming with these two on it? I thought so.

Finding Your Inner Squee

Someone asked how I come up with the elements/themes of a book that bring out my inner geek. Long story.

So, once upon a time there was this valkyrie book. This author absolutely loved this book, but it had flaws. For one, it was poorly written with a character that liked to talk with exclamation points!!! And talked to herself because that was how she was explaining the story to the reader. Noob mistakes. Happens to the best of us. But this author loved this book so much that she decided to rewrite it. And decided to update a few things in it. The first version had a funny, talking horse that the author loved – gone. That romantic interest that shows up in the second half of the book? Gone too. The wacky shenanigans? Gone. This was going to be a serious, extremely dark urban fantasy. Gritty. Dark. Noir. Despairing with just a touch of hope. The love interest would still be in the story, but the love plot wouldn’t come in this book. The author made him a junkie instead, because that was edgy.

I’m sure you can guess who wrote that second valkyrie book. And you know what? Writing that book really sucked.

Oh, it wasn’t a total loss. There were a few cool worldbuildy things I liked, and some neat twists I’d given the story. But writing it was a total slog, and by the time I was done with it, the end result was much better, grammatically, but I’d given up on it mentally. One crit partner told me that the second one was a better book, but it had no spirit. The first one was the one with the spirit.

So where did I go wrong?

I was so frustrated after finishing that book (and believe me, it took forever just to finish the first draft) that I turned to comfort reads instead. The Elfquest comic book series. Julie Garwood’s THE SECRET. Jude Deveraux’s A KNIGHT IN SHINING ARMOR. Sharon Shinn’s ARCHANGEL. And as I re-read each of these, it stewed in the back of my mind. What did these books have that I loved so much? So I made a list.

Elfquest:
1) Prehistoric fantasy (you have to admit that’s neat)
2) ‘Stranger in a strange land’ theme
3) The epic quest
4) Soulmates (I’m a nerd, I love this trope) & Romance
5) Exploring old ruins & learning forgotten history (Book 4)
6) Factions warring with each other (Go backs vs Wolfriders, etc)
7) Animal bonds (another nerdy trope I’m a sucker for)
8.) Moments of light-hearted humor

Julie Garwood’s THE SECRET
1) Medieval England & Scotland setting
2) Heroine is a ‘stranger in their strange land’
3) Humorous circumstances involving the heroine and her efforts to ‘help’
4) The warring clan factions
5) The heroine’s quest for her own history
6) Romance between the gruff clan leader and the cheerful heroine

Jude Deveraux’s KNIGHT IN SHINING ARMOR
1) Time travel (love this trope too)
2) Heroine is a stranger in a strange land
3) Humorous circumstances involving the time travel and the heroine’s lack of knowledge
4) Elizabethan period
5) Romance between the strong hero and the weaker heroine

Sharon Shinn’s ARCHANGEL
1) The warring factions of slaves (edori) vs angelic society
2) The soulmate thing
3) The heroine is a stranger in the hero’s society
4) Romance between the strong asshole hero and the equally asshole heroine
5) Angels!

So. These are some pretty different books. One’s a time travel. One’s a fantasy. One’s a ‘classic’ medieval romance. One’s a freaking comic book (which I love, but are a little different from the norm). But there are a couple of themes that happened in all 4 of these stories.

1) Every story had some sort of faction/group pitted against another
2) Every story had the ‘stranger in a strange land’ trope
3) Romance

These are the ones that popped up repeatedly, but not every time:
1) Fantastical elements (time travel, angels)
2) Soulmates
3) Humor

Okay. Then I looked back at my first valkyrie manuscript. It contained the following:

1) Stranger in a strange land
2) Two factions fighting each other
3) Romance
4) Fantastical elements (norse mythology, hello)
5) Humor

Sure, there wasn’t a way for me to squeeze a soulmate or two out of it, but not for lack of trying! Then I looked at the second valkyrie manuscript to see what elements were in there:

1) Stranger in a strange land
2) Two factions fighting each other
3) Fantastical elements

No romance. No humor.

I had no idea those two things were so important to me as a writer, but it was a stark contrast between one manuscript that I wrote in six weeks (and loved every moment) and one that I struggled with for six months. I figured I was on to something, so I went back and looked at a few other manuscripts that I’d written. Ones that were missing the humor? Major fail. The romance? Fail again. Some didn’t have the theme of the ‘stranger in the strange land’. Equally fail.

For me to get excited about a project, it needed to have pretty much 4 out of 5. All 5 was like mental jackpot. 4 out of 5 means I’m happy with it. 3 out of 5 means that I can put my finger on it that something is not quite right, but it’s hard to identify. 2 out of 5? I’ll be lucky if I even finish the darn thing.

After all, 2 out of 5 doesn’t press my internal squee button hard enough.

You can play this game with your own stuff, or a few of your favorite comfort reads. Moreover, you can apply it to your writing. Does your current manuscript hit 5 of squee points? Or are you further down the food chain?

Think of your writing as, well, a wagon at the top of a bumpy hill. The bumpy hill is the path you take to complete your project. The wagon is your book. If you let it coast down on its own, it’ll eventually get to the bottom. Consider each of your squee-points as weights. We can toss those weights into our wagon. One will definitely add to our momentum, but five will make it race down that hill like, well, like a racing wagon. A racing wagon gets to the bottom a lot faster and might not go off on track as much as a slow one with lots of minor path corrections along the way. And a racing wagon is far, far more thrilling than a plodding one.

I think we all want the racing wagon.

(PS – GENTLEMEN PREFER SUCCUBI contains all 5 squee elements. /plug)

How do you write AND hold down a full-time job?

Some authors can afford to work on writing full-time, and some have day jobs. It’s just the nature of the business. There are so many factors in play (health insurance is a big one) that sometimes having a job is a safety net you just can’t do without. So how do you manage to squeeze in writing time after working the 40-hours-a-week day job?

Here’s what I do:

1) Have no children. Opt to be known as the ‘crazy cat lady’ when you get older.

2) Don’t clean the house. Seriously. Don’t bother. It’s just going to get messy again. And the cats like the mystery of random piles of junk in the living room.

3) Make use of your lunch break. I used to edit on my lunch break (back when I took one). Bring a laptop or alpha-smart with you, or go over what you wrote the night before with a red pen. This can be difficult if you have a shared kitchen at work, but I find snarling at co-workers that approach and muttering to myself does the trick nicely.

4) Suck at social networking. I have a twitter window of, oh, about an hour. My LJ gets neglected when I can’t take a lunch at work. I don’t even remember how to log in to MySpace and I haven’t seen my Facebook in weeks. I might reply to your email…someday.

5) Don’t have hobbies other than writing. All work and no play makes Jill a dull girl, but she hits her deadlines.

6) Catholic Guilt. It’s a great motivator.

In all seriousness…there are lots of ways to squeeze in writing. Sometimes you’re more successful at it, and sometimes you’re not. The trick is to recognize what your strengths are and what your weaknesses are.

My biggest weakness is the internet. I’m a compulsive, A.D.D. browser. Even at work (shhhh). I can’t work on a project for longer than 5 minutes before I feel the need to click over to something else. I’ve gone to look up a state capital on Wikipedia and emerged 5 hours later after reading up on the Black Death. Seriously. Don’t let this happen to you. When I find myself sucking all my writing time away on Facebook, I set up the (non-internet-connected) laptop in the living room, or grab my alphasmart. A good time to write? My small window of reading time just before bed. I can crank out a few pages in 20 minutes and feel virtuous that I wrote.

But the biggest thing that will stop you from writing?

Do you want to write it?

No, seriously. Wanting to write a novel for the sake of writing a novel is very different than writing THAT novel because you are so excited to put the words on the page that you can hardly stand it, and you race home and race through dinner so you can give yourself a few more minutes with your book. That’s the kind of writing we all want, right? Not just putting pen to paper because you NEED to have output? (I am so guilty of that at times)

I used to have that crazy obsession with fanfiction. I used to have that insane NEED to write with some of my early novels. Somewhere between there and here, I lost it for a while. I was writing stuff that felt like homework, and I hated it when it was done. I couldn’t figure out what was wrong.

So I sat down and figured out what geeked me about the fanfiction, and what geeked me about the geeky novels. I wrote lists. What did I like about this? What made me squee? Some common elements came up, and I decided that I needed to start including these things in my new projects. Even if they’re subtly hidden in the background (major props if you *really* think I’m subtle), they’re there in one way or another.

That’s my recipe for success, in this order:

1) Sloth.
2) Ixnay on interwebzay
3) Geekiness

If you do those, you’ll find the time to write. Oh, and waking up early on a Saturday morning for a write-a-thon helps things too. Or a husband that watches hockey and you, say, don’t want to watch hockey. But mostly the above three.

Still on hiatus for most of March, but wanted to share…

Someone’s on Amazon! Yaaay!

Click here to pre-order, because you know you want to.

Official Release Date? December 29, 2009.

YAY!

(Will update my page shortly, and a snippet is still forthcoming, promise.)