A Writer's Diary

After one final read-through, and a few tiny edits, sent the proposal to Canada today. Now it is up to fate. And of course my revision skill or lack thereof. I expect this will take awhile. RWA just had their national conference and editors across North America are receiving “requested material” by the boat load.

Yesterday, I posted about my experience with bending the “no internal monologue” rule I’d  been following with these past two books. What I didn’t say, that in breaking that rule, I also broke the cardinal rule of writing fiction: show don’t tell.

The thing with rules is, they’re like the English language, there’s always an exception. And I’ve read lots of writers talk about how and when to effectively break the “show don’t tell” rule.  

It made sense to me, especially in summarzing, but I never really applied it mindfully to my own work until this past week. For me, illuminating character motivation in a short sentence or phrase during an active scene is one time when I found that I had to tell instead of show.

I can hear my critique partners shrieking even as I write this.

But the trick is, and this is why I’m waiting to review my revisions another day or two, I have to make sure I didn’t fall into the trap of doing both. You don’t want to show then tell where the showing is obvious. Like she’s crying and then you say she felt sad. Just to show crying is fine in that situation.

Telling can be useful in some scenes because character actions don’t always match their motivation. You really have to set that up. To use a simplistic example, if every time a character is stressed they put their hand on the back of their neck and rub it, well, that action doesn’t automatically indicate stress. (It could mean they’re tired, or they have an injury or whatever.) So with some gestures, you have to tell what they mean. Not every time she rubs her neck, just the first time.

“She rubbed her neck, a reflex she’d noticed happening whenever her body signaled stress.” 

That’s telling. It gives some added info that illuminates why the character does whatever she does next. Something happens that moves the plot forward, and it happens because she’s stressed. That’s motivation.

We might forgive her for acting like an idiot if we know she’s stressed. Especially if she tries to get her stress level under control but someone keeps pushing her buttons. If we don’t know she’s stressed, we might think, man, she’s an idiot. Why does she not even react to that jerk who keeps pushing her buttons? Why did she do X instead of Z? I can’t figure her out and I’m not so interested in trying…

And then, the writer has lost the reader, who is pulled out of the vivid, continuous dream.

The biggest suggestion I got from one agent was that my hero/heroine’s motivation was murky. She asked some specific questions to show what plot points and actions she had trouble deciphering. She said clearing up the motivation would smooth out the confusion and deepen the conflict between them.

Great advice, right? I thought so, too. There was only one problem. I had no idea how to make my characters’ motives any clearer to readers without using internal monologue. And I’d read that internal monologue is a no-no in Harlequin novellas.

So I did a little research into how to show motivation. I found out some surprising things, the most amazing of all right on Harlequin’s own website, which boldly states that internal conflict is the most important conflict in a story.

What? Wow. For me, as a reader, that absolutely rang true. But I didn’t think that was true for Harlequin romances. I had made the assumption that if they didn’t like internal monologues that must mean internal confict was less important than external circumstances. Nope. Wrong. Completely and utterly wrong.

Okay so how to work in the internal conflict if a character can’t think about what’s bothering them? This was especially tricky because I also read and intuitively agreed with the idea that most internal conflict comes from what has happened before the story starts. It’s in the past. It’s backstory–another huge no-no for contemporary romance.

What I figured out is that internal thought and internal monologue are two different things. One is long and takes place in a static situation. The other is short and inserted into an active scene.

Once I had that worked out, I went back through my first few chapters and added a line here and there, just where needed to clarify character motivation.

I admit I’ve been worried about it all summer. I did not want to stop the forward momentum of my current story to work on perfecting a revision of the story I’m trying to sell.

And yet. It had to be done. Published authors do it all the time, working on a new project and getting pages to edit from their publisher. I’ve heard them say they work on one in the morning and the other in the afternoon. How I admire that kind of flexibility.

As for me, I’m fairly rigid with my writing practice these days. But the watchword for me these first two weeks in August (via my horoscope) has been to remain calm and patiently attend to details before Mercury goes retrograde on the 20th.

By the 20th, I want to have the proposal out to Harlequin and the currrent WIP drafted. Retrogrades are good for revision (not so great for mailing a manuscript to a publisher) but I’d like to finish the first draft and save everything on my hard drive before the retrograde hits. I have to start school on the 23rd anyway, another reason to get my writing projects to a good place by the end of this week.

Which normally would make me panic and rush through everything. But I’m trying to stay calm and do my best work despite all the flutters with the agent advice and the switching between two stories and the self-imposed deadlines.  

So last week I gathered revision advice and thought about how to implement it on Story A while still writing my 1000 words a day on Story B. Then this week I switched to Story A Monday and Tuesday and felt good about the changes I made to the ms. This morning, I went back to Story B and did another 1000 words while I let Story A cool a few days before reading it over again. If it still sounds good, I’ll send it Friday or Saturday.

All of this and right in the middle of writing the black moment, too. But I am doing it, and it is not a problem. I know both stories so well that that it has been way easier than anticipated. As long as I remind myself continually to stay calm and on task with the details instead of doing the usual Aries headlong rush.

My agent search is unofficially over for now. I’m going with the advice of the agent who suggested I deal directly with Harlequin. Got more good advice from a couple other agents, too.

Usually if an agent rejects my ms, no matter how nice they are about it, no matter how many compliments they preface the “no” with, I send a polite thank you and head off to a dark corner to lick my wounds.

This time was different. This time I went out on a limb and asked questions. Soon emails were flying back and forth. Because I was a little gutsier than I normally am when dealing with agents, I got a handle on what to fix before I send those chapters to Harlequin.

Right now I am feeling so grateful for the generosity and kindness those agents showed me. And even though I didn’t land an agent (yet) I really feel like the stars are lining up for me.

The new moon in Leo on Monday August 9 means any and all new projects will get off to a roaring start. So, if you need to write that query, or have been wanting to begin a new story, initiate it on Monday for fabulous results.

Mercury retrogrades on August 20, but by then your new project should be well underway, which is good because retrogrades are notorious for mixed signals, miscommunication, and computer problems. Back up your WIP and be extra-super clear in emails and texts. Or, better yet, meet face-to-face. 

But it’s not all bad news: retrogrades, especially in Virgo like this one, are an excellent time to get serious about revision. Anything that takes careful attention to detail can be handled beautifully during this Virgo retrograde. So, continue your story, create a detailed outline, plot your heart out, and revise, revise, revise for stunning results.

And it was a very good letter asking to see three chapters and a synopsis. Snail mail, not email. There was a line about replies taking 3 or 5 months. Which is okay, because that’s about a semester, which is due to begin soon.

And my horoscope this month says to really be calm and professional and not to rush but give myself time to shine and nail this opportunity. Which is the exact opposite of what I usually do which is send requested material off in a mad rush.

It says a lot of other stuff that relates to this golden opportunity. This is apparently my month to go for it, career-wise and show the higher ups just what I can do. Did you get  your horoscope from Susan this month?

You can find the writing advice if you just look for it. Sometimes it’s right out there, sometimes it’s between the lines. But every month, for me, there’s something there. Maybe I’ll do a little “writer’s advice for all 12 signs” next. Well, the 11 I have neglected here at least.

I’ve always wanted to know: does my birth chart reflect my writing? Can my horoscope accurately predict how much success I will have in this career? Are there actions I can take to help me get published?

I’m an Aries, and we are creative, so I’ve always been hopeful that I’m on the right path. Still, I craved more information. In all the writing I’ve been doing on my birth chart, I found hopeful signs that writing is indeed a major part of my life’s purpose, but nowhere was I able to read the stars as clearly as in my nodes.

(I used Joanna Martine Woolfolk‘s The Only Astrology Book You’ll Ever Need for all my information on the nodes. The fabulous text also comes with a software program for casting birth charts. You need your birth chart to figure out what houses your nodes fall into.)

Birth charts give the north node–the glyph reminds me of a set of headphones. Your south node is the opposite house. The nodes affect our lives in two ways, positive qualities to develop and negative qualities to let go. Legend has it that we are born “head first” into the world with our north node qualities as potentials. Our south node qualities are what we trail behind us, and so we must work to leave them behind in this life.

My north node falls into my third house. Qualities of the third house are cheerfulness (in my writing this quality helps me stay upbeat when the rejections pour in), curiosity (I want to know what happens next in my plot), imagination (I concoct scenarios), commuication (I want to write things down and share them), intelligence (I have the necessary brainpower to do so), quick wit (I add a hint of the comic to my stories, I’m good at the unexpected twist), good people skills (I empathize with my characters), and verbal agility (I write believable dialogue).

I was astonished at how easily all my positive node qualities translated to writing. Of course it could all be wishful thinking on my part, because my south node in my 9th house indicates I have a tendency to be arrogant, conceited, insincere, and morally superior. Also, I can’t admit weakness.

Aries are not just creative, but we also tend to be self-involved. (!) This has worked out okay for me, because I tend to do a lot of work on myself. Years of therapy, hundreds of self-help books, every type of self-improvement course you can imagine: I’ve done it. So, I recognize those negative south node qualities as things I’ve confronted in myself in the past, and most of the time believe I have gotten over and through.

Again, that could just be a conceit. However, I firmly believe that a positive attitude toward life and self is more helpful than a negative one, so I choose to believe I’ve got what it takes to be a novelist. The stars say so!

This is the easiest book I have ever written. I thought I’d at least have trouble with the boys, because I usually don’t put young children in my stories, but once I got their names, everything else followed: their voices and personalities.

I haven’t written much about my experiences as a single mom of two little guys, but those years still stand out sharply in my mind, and while I’m writing I can vividly recall how it felt.

So this book seems to be writing itself, even the middle, which usually gives me endless grief. I just wake up every day and know what needs to happen next.

I used to think Hemingway was crazy becasuse he always left off his writing knowing his next scene, what would happen next. For me, I needed to get it all down, so I used to write until I was written out. Now I realize that what that did was burn me out, so that sometimes I didn’t feel like writing at all the next day. 

Another thing that resulted from writing myself out is that I’d skip all kinds of things. I never lingered to fill in the details. I just wanted to get the plot down. I was always in a hurry to finish.

And what’s funny is I’m limiting myself to a thousand or so words a day (sometimes I write more, but not more than two thousand) and I’m writing faster and building a better book. I’ve got less than ten thousand words left to hit my target of 55,000, and it feels like that’s about where I am in the story, pretty close to the black moment, pretty close to place where everything feels hopeless for the couple and you have to wonder how in the world they are ever going to get their happily ever after.

I can’t believe August (and school) are right around the corner, but I can believe that I’ll have this book wrapped up in ten days or less…

I had such a fun weekend–it feels churlish to complain just because it’s over. Al and I spent the entire weekend together, watching the rain pour down on Friday while eating take out pizza from our favorite place, going to the movies and out to dinner Saturday, puttering around the house and eating super-healthy Sunday.

Hmmm. Not sure why food is such a major issue in my weekend memories.

Yesterday was Mike and Jessica’s first anniversary. They’re in Hawaii where they did a triathalon together. It’s nice to think of them, doing things they love and being so in love with each other and together in a beautiful place under last night’s full moon.

 Plus I get to see them in August when they come to visit, and then Al and I are going to Texas to see Tim and Alicia in September. So, I have lots to be thankful for.

Then why exactly do I feel all mopey? Probably the latest agent rejection. It came Friday and I ignored it, or tried to, all weekend, but today I had to deal. Confidence shot to hell. Really, what makes me think I can even write novels? Especially novels anyone is interested in reading.

Sometime I think I’d be better off just sticking to reading them. Just finished Jennifer Weiner’s Fly Away Home, Jennifer Egan’s A Visit From the Goon Squad, and am in the midst of The Cookbook Collector by Allegra Goodman. Three really different but all lovely in their own way novels, and right in a row!

And then there’s the season premiere of Mad Men I taped last night…

Really, my life would be so much simplier, and I’m just guessing here, maybe even happier, if I didn’t try to write. Or if I just wrote and didn’t try to get published. That’s the tough part. Why am I still putting myself through it?

Then, after going through the usual litany of woe, I saw the Dalai Lama’s post on FB today where he said a mind full of negative thoughts is much weaker when you need to be strong. You can’t withstand the struggles as easily when you’re weighed down by negative thoughts. And then I remembered that I am not my thoughts, and I don’t need to carry them around.

It’s a never-ending process, though, to keep riding the waves of emotion, to not let riptides of negativity pull me too far off course, to keep coming back to this life and what I am doing with it. And maybe it isn’t always going to be writing. And that’s okay, too.