I have the time in Papeete, Tahiti on my computer. Seriously. You know why? Because the parents of the heroine in the proposal my agent is shopping around are in Tahiti during the book.
Weird, huh?
But I do stuff like this all the time while I'm writing. When I was working on The Power of Two, I was checking into whether or not Americans can travel to Vietnam because Cai, the heroine, was a quarter Vietnamese. I developed a fascination with Japan when I was writing my Japanese-American heroines in Through a Crimson Veil and Shards of Crimson.
I pick up the way my characters talk. If one of them has a favorite word, even one I rarely if ever used before writing their story, I end up with that word as a regular part of my vocabulary. I've started listening to the same music my heroes listen to. I never liked hard, edgy music, but now I have a large collection of metal. My taste in music has always been eclectic, but thanks to my guys, it's become even stranger. :-/
And it just keeps on. If I see something while I'm browsing online that one of my characters would love, I have a hell of a time stopping myself from buying it. Why? I have no idea. A lot of this is stuff I would never have a use for myself. Sometimes I can't stop myself from buying it. The wind chime in Eternal Nights? Yeah, I own one of them now. Thanks, Kendall. At least it's pretty and I have it hanging in my bedroom, but still...
And my interest in a lot of these things have waned. I no longer think about traveling to Vietnam or have my fascination with Japanese culture. (I nearly took a class on their tea service.) Maybe the books/characters were long enough in the past that it's faded or maybe my new characters and their interests have pushed the others aside. I don't know.
What I do know is that I have heroes interested in motorcycles. Thank goodness I live in Minnesota and am scared of the things because otherwise I have this feeling I'd be pricing Harley-Davidsons. ;-)
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Sharing the Giddiness
I wasn't a good athlete when I was growing up. I was one of the last picked for every team in grade school and things never got any better. Now I think kids can letter for excellent grades or community service, but when I was in school only athletes got letter jackets and trophies.
Spending every quarter on the honor roll, being a member of the National Honor Society, or editor of the yearbook didn't get me anything to show off. Maybe this is why I get so excited now when I do win something that gives me a plaque or some other kind of award. It's a big deal for me because I had none of these things as a teenager. Sure, the NHS gave a cool pin, but hey, it's not the same. Really.
So I hope y'all will indulge me while I share a picture of the Midwest Fiction Writer of the Year Award. Yes, I did take time away from writing to position it at the right time of day to make sure the lettering showed up. Right now, the award is on top of my entertainment center and I can see it every time I look up for the laptop. I know, I'm a geek, but this is a big deal for me. :-)
Spending every quarter on the honor roll, being a member of the National Honor Society, or editor of the yearbook didn't get me anything to show off. Maybe this is why I get so excited now when I do win something that gives me a plaque or some other kind of award. It's a big deal for me because I had none of these things as a teenager. Sure, the NHS gave a cool pin, but hey, it's not the same. Really.
So I hope y'all will indulge me while I share a picture of the Midwest Fiction Writer of the Year Award. Yes, I did take time away from writing to position it at the right time of day to make sure the lettering showed up. Right now, the award is on top of my entertainment center and I can see it every time I look up for the laptop. I know, I'm a geek, but this is a big deal for me. :-)
Thursday, January 07, 2010
I'm Not In Charge
Once upon a time, before I ever started writing (which was in 8th grade), I believed the author had complete control over her stories and her characters. Then I put pen to notebook and discovered that my characters were the ones in control. I didn't worry about it too much, but I did check out every book the library had on how to be a writer.
I found out I was doing everything wrong. Instead of sitting down and just writing, I needed to color code index cards and pin them to my corkboard in the order that I would be putting the scenes. I was told to take different colored highlighters, pull out my favorite books, and highlight the different parts--like dialogue, introspection, narrative, etc. There was more stuff along these lines, however, most of it didn't stick in my memory like the terrifying (and imagination draining) 3x5 cards did.
As I struggled to adapt to what these books by real authors said I had to do, I realized I hated writing. I tossed my index cards in a drawer and said, maybe I'll never be a successful writer, but I have to do it my way where the characters are in control or I won't write at all.
It was years and years later before I learned there are seat of the pants writers (me!) and plotters (the authors of all those books I read on how to write) and that both ways work. Actually, I'm more of a pantser/plotter hybrid, and since being published, I've moved more toward center, but no one will ever mistake me for a plotter.
Because, you see, my characters still have control. I don't pick their names--they tell me their names. If I don't like it, that's just too damn bad. I'm not kidding about that. This mostly pertains to their first names, almost never their last names, but still, I see other authors blog about choosing names for their heroes and heroines and I'm like, wow, some authors really get to pick? Amazing. :-) One of my heroines pronounces her name "wrong." Or at least she pronounces it different than standard. I have no choice about that either.
I have no choice on who my characters pair up with. One day, I'll have a single character. The next day, I'll have scenes of him/her with his/her hero or heroine. It is a fait accompli.
When I was having incredible trouble with Maia and Creed, I thought maybe they'd been wrong and they didn't belong together. I tried first to match Maia up with someone else. Then I tried to match Creed. And I got nothing. Absolutely nothing. They had to be together or there was no story.
I don't get to make up my characters' backstories. Those, too, are presented to me as done deals. Sometimes I don't even know their backstories when I start a book. I had absolutely zero idea what was haunting Damon in Ravyn's Flight until I was nearly halfway through the first draft. Then he dropped it on me like a bombshell. I had to go back and add all kinds of foreshadowing because I couldn't hint at what he hadn't told me.
Or take Kel from In the Darkest Night, coming out in April. I knew he'd been captured and tortured, but I didn't know by whom or why. I knew something beyond that had happened while he'd been held prisoner, something he considered so bad, he refused to share it with me. I didn't find out what it was until we were well into the book.
I have no control over my characters' personalities. I hear them in my head and that's what I'm caught with. I originally thought Shona from Edge of Dawn was a confident, extroverted party girl because the first scene I saw of her was in a crowded bar. That's how I tried to write her...and I spun my wheels until I accepted that she wasn't how I envisioned her.
You see, that's the thing. Maybe plotters have control, but not all writers work that way. I can't work that way. I heard someone report another writer said that her characters never surprise her. I found that idea horrifying. No surprises? Why bother to write?
I want surprises. I want my characters to tell me who they are and who their hero/heroine is. I want them to tell me what happened to them in the past that shaped who they are today.
It's a good thing I feel this way, because every single time that I've strayed away from how my characters would behave, I can't write forward. Maybe I'll make it a little ways beyond the point where it happens (sometimes just far enough that I don't know where the mistake occurred), but I always end up stuck. I sat for five weeks on Eternal Nights because of a kiss. Sigh. I had Wyatt knowingly kiss Kendall. Found out after I wrote and cut, wrote and cut, and wrote and cut for five weeks, that he wouldn't do that. He knows how easy she spooks. I went back and rewrote the scene so that he unknowingly kissed Kendall (he was mostly unconscious) and was able to write the entire rest of the book.
So the next time you read a book and wonder why the author did something, keep in mind that in some cases it's the characters, not the author who is running things.
I found out I was doing everything wrong. Instead of sitting down and just writing, I needed to color code index cards and pin them to my corkboard in the order that I would be putting the scenes. I was told to take different colored highlighters, pull out my favorite books, and highlight the different parts--like dialogue, introspection, narrative, etc. There was more stuff along these lines, however, most of it didn't stick in my memory like the terrifying (and imagination draining) 3x5 cards did.
As I struggled to adapt to what these books by real authors said I had to do, I realized I hated writing. I tossed my index cards in a drawer and said, maybe I'll never be a successful writer, but I have to do it my way where the characters are in control or I won't write at all.
It was years and years later before I learned there are seat of the pants writers (me!) and plotters (the authors of all those books I read on how to write) and that both ways work. Actually, I'm more of a pantser/plotter hybrid, and since being published, I've moved more toward center, but no one will ever mistake me for a plotter.
Because, you see, my characters still have control. I don't pick their names--they tell me their names. If I don't like it, that's just too damn bad. I'm not kidding about that. This mostly pertains to their first names, almost never their last names, but still, I see other authors blog about choosing names for their heroes and heroines and I'm like, wow, some authors really get to pick? Amazing. :-) One of my heroines pronounces her name "wrong." Or at least she pronounces it different than standard. I have no choice about that either.
I have no choice on who my characters pair up with. One day, I'll have a single character. The next day, I'll have scenes of him/her with his/her hero or heroine. It is a fait accompli.
When I was having incredible trouble with Maia and Creed, I thought maybe they'd been wrong and they didn't belong together. I tried first to match Maia up with someone else. Then I tried to match Creed. And I got nothing. Absolutely nothing. They had to be together or there was no story.
I don't get to make up my characters' backstories. Those, too, are presented to me as done deals. Sometimes I don't even know their backstories when I start a book. I had absolutely zero idea what was haunting Damon in Ravyn's Flight until I was nearly halfway through the first draft. Then he dropped it on me like a bombshell. I had to go back and add all kinds of foreshadowing because I couldn't hint at what he hadn't told me.
Or take Kel from In the Darkest Night, coming out in April. I knew he'd been captured and tortured, but I didn't know by whom or why. I knew something beyond that had happened while he'd been held prisoner, something he considered so bad, he refused to share it with me. I didn't find out what it was until we were well into the book.
I have no control over my characters' personalities. I hear them in my head and that's what I'm caught with. I originally thought Shona from Edge of Dawn was a confident, extroverted party girl because the first scene I saw of her was in a crowded bar. That's how I tried to write her...and I spun my wheels until I accepted that she wasn't how I envisioned her.
You see, that's the thing. Maybe plotters have control, but not all writers work that way. I can't work that way. I heard someone report another writer said that her characters never surprise her. I found that idea horrifying. No surprises? Why bother to write?
I want surprises. I want my characters to tell me who they are and who their hero/heroine is. I want them to tell me what happened to them in the past that shaped who they are today.
It's a good thing I feel this way, because every single time that I've strayed away from how my characters would behave, I can't write forward. Maybe I'll make it a little ways beyond the point where it happens (sometimes just far enough that I don't know where the mistake occurred), but I always end up stuck. I sat for five weeks on Eternal Nights because of a kiss. Sigh. I had Wyatt knowingly kiss Kendall. Found out after I wrote and cut, wrote and cut, and wrote and cut for five weeks, that he wouldn't do that. He knows how easy she spooks. I went back and rewrote the scene so that he unknowingly kissed Kendall (he was mostly unconscious) and was able to write the entire rest of the book.
So the next time you read a book and wonder why the author did something, keep in mind that in some cases it's the characters, not the author who is running things.
Tuesday, January 05, 2010
Snip, Snip, Snip
I finished the first draft of my short story for Nocturne Bites on Sunday night. That was the goal, and though I had to push to reach it, I did succeed. I also thought that I was 2000 words over maximum word count and I'm like, okay, there are lots of places I can get, including an overly long fight scene in chapter 2, but 2000 words? That's like 14% of the story!
I wasn't quite frantic, but I was concerned. Mentally, I ran through the story, trying to think of places where I could do some major trimming. And then I glanced down at my notes, saw I'd remembered the word count wrong and breathed a sigh of relief. It's 10,000 to 15,000 words at just shy of 14,000, I'm okay. The really great thing? I can cut or add as much as I need without worrying about word count, not when I have this much room to maneuver. This ended up being a big yea!
Monday I did a read through of the story and made notes on things that jumped out at me as needing to be fixed. Normally when I write, I tend to reread and smooth before going forward, but this time I didn't do much of that--I just wrote forward. That left me with some rough transitions that need fixing.
Lots of them.
Chapter one was pretty polished since that was part of the submission package, so all that was required was a little tweak to fix a logic flaw. Chapter two, though, is the one that needs the most work. And the most cutting. So what did I do? I added instead.
All right, some of what I put in was to smooth things out and make it all flow better, but I should have cut more than I added. I didn't.
Today, I worked off hard copy and managed to cut 1500 words that needed to go. I don't know why I could cut on paper and not on screen, but sometimes writers need to play head games with themselves.
I wasn't quite frantic, but I was concerned. Mentally, I ran through the story, trying to think of places where I could do some major trimming. And then I glanced down at my notes, saw I'd remembered the word count wrong and breathed a sigh of relief. It's 10,000 to 15,000 words at just shy of 14,000, I'm okay. The really great thing? I can cut or add as much as I need without worrying about word count, not when I have this much room to maneuver. This ended up being a big yea!
Monday I did a read through of the story and made notes on things that jumped out at me as needing to be fixed. Normally when I write, I tend to reread and smooth before going forward, but this time I didn't do much of that--I just wrote forward. That left me with some rough transitions that need fixing.
Lots of them.
Chapter one was pretty polished since that was part of the submission package, so all that was required was a little tweak to fix a logic flaw. Chapter two, though, is the one that needs the most work. And the most cutting. So what did I do? I added instead.
All right, some of what I put in was to smooth things out and make it all flow better, but I should have cut more than I added. I didn't.
Today, I worked off hard copy and managed to cut 1500 words that needed to go. I don't know why I could cut on paper and not on screen, but sometimes writers need to play head games with themselves.
Sunday, January 03, 2010
Making Room For More
I snuck in a reread of Eternal Nights this week. While I do reread my stories when they first come out (or when I get ARCs), it's rare for me to reread an older book unless I need a specific bit of information from it. I had to scan through both EN and Ravyn's Flight real quickly before writing The Troll Bridge for The Mammoth Book of Time Travel Romance because I wasn't 100% sure of a couple of things, but it sure wasn't a reread. I was looking for specific facts I needed to verify.
This week, though, I read almost everything. Probably because it has been such a long time since I last picked up this book. And as a thank you for this, Cam showed up and started talking. (Cam is Ravyn and Damon's son. In EN, he's around 2 years old, but when he arrived, he was all grown up.)
It isn't a good time for another character to talk--my head is actually jam-packed right now as is the schedule I have in my head--but that didn't stop him. He's grown up now and in Special Forces like his father was.
This isn't the first time Cam's talked. He's shown up a few other times and I always kind of had in the back of my mind that after I wrote the stories for Wyatt's team, I'd do Cam's story. Heaven knows my mom has been pushing me to write Cam. When I started EN, her first question was if the hero was Cam and she asked again when I told her about my time travel story (that hero is Troll Maglaya). I guess telling her I had an idea for Cam way back when was a mistake.
Anyway, Cam's back. On Thursday morning, I had a nice scene in my head of a conversation between him and Damon. I'm really tempted to write it out real quick--it's not a long scene--and post it on my website as an extra. The problem with that is that I'm on deadline for January 15th, and I don't know if I can afford to fragment my attention like that. It's hard for me to bounce around, and once I'm deep into a story, I like to stay there.
And on top of that, I have a few proposals I'd really like to work on after I finish my Nocturne Bites and turn it in. This is where my jam-packed head comes into play. I have so many characters from so many stories right now that it's like standing room only. :-) They're not all talking at the same time, but it doesn't take much to get them started. All I really need to do is think about them, and boom! They pipe up. Of course, if I wanted to write them, they wouldn't be this helpful. They only do this to frustrate me, which is why I'm a proponent of torturing characters.
This week, though, I read almost everything. Probably because it has been such a long time since I last picked up this book. And as a thank you for this, Cam showed up and started talking. (Cam is Ravyn and Damon's son. In EN, he's around 2 years old, but when he arrived, he was all grown up.)
It isn't a good time for another character to talk--my head is actually jam-packed right now as is the schedule I have in my head--but that didn't stop him. He's grown up now and in Special Forces like his father was.
This isn't the first time Cam's talked. He's shown up a few other times and I always kind of had in the back of my mind that after I wrote the stories for Wyatt's team, I'd do Cam's story. Heaven knows my mom has been pushing me to write Cam. When I started EN, her first question was if the hero was Cam and she asked again when I told her about my time travel story (that hero is Troll Maglaya). I guess telling her I had an idea for Cam way back when was a mistake.
Anyway, Cam's back. On Thursday morning, I had a nice scene in my head of a conversation between him and Damon. I'm really tempted to write it out real quick--it's not a long scene--and post it on my website as an extra. The problem with that is that I'm on deadline for January 15th, and I don't know if I can afford to fragment my attention like that. It's hard for me to bounce around, and once I'm deep into a story, I like to stay there.
And on top of that, I have a few proposals I'd really like to work on after I finish my Nocturne Bites and turn it in. This is where my jam-packed head comes into play. I have so many characters from so many stories right now that it's like standing room only. :-) They're not all talking at the same time, but it doesn't take much to get them started. All I really need to do is think about them, and boom! They pipe up. Of course, if I wanted to write them, they wouldn't be this helpful. They only do this to frustrate me, which is why I'm a proponent of torturing characters.
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