Outstanding Blog Title

I just saw a blog entry called "How to Write a Novel in 9000 Complicated Steps."  Great title.  Kind of says it all.

Candy Heart Conversation

Brenda Davis

I just spent a wonderful morning at a meeting of the Wisconsin Romance Writers of America. This month's meeting included a workshop given by Brenda Davis on "How to Fire Up Your Muse," which was wonderful.

Brenda talked about the "Butt in the Chair" approach to meeting your writing goals, which is as straightforward as it sounds - get your butt in your chair and write. But once you've sat your butt down, it helps to engage your imagination, which is not as easy to sit in front of a keyboard as your butt is. So she presented a couple of exercises that were simple, creative, and effective.

I got the biggest kick out of the Candy Heart Conversation exercise. Brenda gave each member a baggy full of those candy hearts that have words printed on them. Then she gave us 4 possible dialog scenarios: a couple having an argument, flirting, reminiscing, or joking around. The exercise was to pick a scenario, and using your candy hearts (and other words too,) write a dialog.


Here's what my hearts said:

• get real
• awesome
• yes
• first kiss
• love you
• love me
• soul mate
• kiss me
• u go girl
• yes
• dare you
• xoxo
• just one
• you rock

At first the exercise seemed ridiculous and impossible. Then it started to seem like fun. There was a huge variety in the resulting dialogs, from the steamy to the silly.  Here's the dialog I finally came up with. It's a little argument.

"I'm going to teach you a lesson!"
"Get real!"
"You know I love you."
"Yes."
"And I know that you love me."
"Yes."
"So, kiss me."
"What?"
"I said kiss me."
"Why?"
"Would you just do it?"
xoxo
"Now, don't speak yet. Just let yourself feel. And then tell me one thing that you're feeling. Just one."
"You rock."
"That's not a feeling. Try harder. This is important."
"That was awesome."
"You can do better than that. You claim to be my soul mate, so prove it. I dare you."
"OK. OK. You want to know what I really feel? I'll tell you. Even after all this time, every time I kiss you, it takes me back to our very first kiss."
"Really?"
"Yes."
xoxo

Now wasn't that fun?

Defending My Manuscript

I just read this and loved it.  So I'm quoting it in its entirety:

One of the first things I've had to tell anyone I critique or anyone in any critique group I've ever been in, or when I was working my way through school as a writing tutor, was "Do not defend your manuscript."

Unless you plan to stand over the shoulder of everyone reading your book and explain to them what you meant to write, you'd be better off just writing what you meant to write. I hate it when I tell someone "This isn't working" and she comes back with five minutes explaining to me why it should work, why I'm too stupid to understand the great art she was striving to achieve, and how unenlightened I must be (and, I'd note, everyone else).

In one of my writing classes in college, the professor imposed a "cone of silence" on the person whose story was being critiqued in order to prevent exactly this because while defending, we're not listening.

It was written by Philangelus, as a comment in response to a posting on a wonderful blog written by a literary agent (which is a wonderful read in its own right.)

Yesterday I had coffee with my friend and critique partner Renee, who had in one hand the latest chapter of my manuscript, and in the other hand a stack of blank paper and a pen.  Turns out she thought my chapter needed work, and of course she was right.  I'm great at writing dialog, and not so great at writing description.  So, scene by scene, she took me through the chapter, making me close my eyes and envision the scene, and then talk to her about what I was seeing, hearing, or smelling.  Then she would make me open my eyes and write it down.

Thanks to Renee's persistence, that chapter is going to be much better.  But I'll bet it took five minutes for her to bulldoze through my defensiveness before I was ready to get down to work.  The funny thing is that at no point during that five minutes did I think she was wrong.  It's just that it's very intimidating to have to face that the chapter that I thought was pretty good needed some serious reworking. 

Then I read the excerpt that I quoted up above.  I think I may try the cone of silence the next time someone is critiquing my story, and make sure I'm really listening.  I'm curious to see whether that works.

More on Writing Love Scenes

I just read an old romance novel, something my friend Gail found in a box in her garage. It was terribly dated, which is another way of saying that it was terrible. But it was also terribly interesting, because of the glimpses it gave into life only a few decades ago.

The hero was mean and rude, and was always complaining. He also had anger-management and control issues. I'm no psychologist, but this guy had some serious, diagnosable problems. I think he was supposed to seem sexy, powerful, masterful, and attractively remote. Yeah, right.

The heroine described herself as "liberated," because she attended college, and had friends who had chosen to sleep with their boyfriends. She had not, of course. Much was made of her innocence. Then she quit college to get married without the slightest hesitation.

In the course of the story, the hero treated the heroine very badly. She reacted by apologizing, and trying to learn to be better at accepting and loving him. Eventually, an improbable set of circumstances led them to get married, despite the fact that neither of them wanted to. And then, on their wedding night, they finally consummated the relationship, in a scene that takes place entirely on a blank line.

I was incredulous. The only sex in the book was implied. The ideals for male and female behavior have clearly changed in three decades. But so, apparently, has the appetite for sex scenes in romance novels. The characters were on the bed. They kissed. Then he parted her robe. Then there was a blank line. And then it was morning. They woke up happy. They kissed a little. Then there was a blank line. Then they ate a late breakfast.

I was so envious. It would be so easy to write a sex scene if the only thing I had to do was press the Enter key twice. It almost made me wish I were back in that decade. Not really.

On Writing Love Scenes

Well, the writing is going well, which is a good thing. I've hit my stride with the novel I'm working on, and I've been steadily producing. But it means that sooner, rather than later, I'm going to have to write a sex scene. (Actually, we romance authors prefer to call them 'love scenes.') And that is terrifying.

My friend Shelly gave me a book called The Joy of Writing Sex. It's a wonderful read.  The author interviewed a whole lot of authors of literary fiction to find out their approaches to writing sex scenes. One of the questions she asked was how they dealt with the thought of critics while they wrote, particularly critics that they know, such as their grandmothers, or parents, or lovers.

One author responded that he didn't produce most of his best work until after his parents died.  Another said she asked her parents not to read one of her books. She said that her father agreed, but her mother didn't.  But her mother did agree never to speak of it.  Another said that his mother was devoutly religious, and offended by explicit sex scenes, but very supportive of him.  She read his books, but when it looked like a sex scene was approaching, she just skipped ahead. 

Another author said that you can't think about the reader when you write the scenes.  You just have to write the scenes, and worry about the repercussions later.  He was an English professor who wrote a book with a particularly graphic love scene.  One day a student approached him to tell him how much she loved the book.  His first horrified thought was, "Oh my God!  She read that scene!"

My parents have sometimes been compared to Ward and June Cleaver, wonderful parents, but not people you'd easily imagine sitting down with for a frank talk about sex.  But my mother cleared the air right away.  She's excited that I'm writing a book, and she's very supportive.  She told me, "I know your book will have to have sex scenes, so go ahead and write them.  But just make sure that when the book is done, if you took those scenes out, you would still have a good story."   And you know, it really does help not to have to worry about my parents.  Now I only have to worry about the rest of the world.

Writing from the Middle

I've discovered that I like to start writing a story in the middle. I'll start with some compelling, strongly emotional scene. (And that's not a euphemism for love scene.) Then I'll start pushing at the edges of it to figure out what would happen next, or what would happen before this to bring the characters to this scene. Once I start thinking about those things, I start to see the characters more clearly. And then the entire story arc starts to form.

When I've tried to write a story from the beginning, I've gotten bogged down. Too many background details. Too much slogging through introductory stuff to get to the interesting stuff. Of course, that's bad for the reader too. But I'm finding that when I start in the middle, then it's easier to go back and create an interesting beginning.

I was just talking to my friend Gaby, who's an artist, who says she approaches paintings in the same way. I found that interesting, and surprising, because I'd never seen a similarity between writing and painting before.

Day Count: 8

Writing Routine

I'm trying to establish a writing routine.

This morning I read a scene in The Ghost Writer, by Philip Roth, where a character who is a famous author describes his writing routine:

"I turn sentences around. That's my life. I write a sentence and then I turn it around. Then I look at it and I turn it around again. Then I have lunch. Then I come back in and write another sentence. Then I have tea and turn the new sentence around. Then I read the two sentences over and turn them both around. Then I lie down on my sofa and think. Then I get up and throw them out and start from the beginning."

OK, so I don't want that routine.

Writers I admire put in 8 hours days of writing. I don't seem to be able to do that. I goof around for a while before I get started. Then, once I start, I can write about 2500 words in one sitting, or one scene, or about two to three hours. But then I trail off. I have a hard time getting started in another scene on the same day.

The good news is that I've started planning other things I'll get done in a day, so I'm not wasting my non-writing hours staring at the screen wishing I were writing, or screwing around on the Internet. I hope it's like working out, that I'll start to be able to do more in a day as I work at it.

Day Count: 4

Starting to Write a Novel

I've decided to write a romance novel. It's not something I'd ever aspired to. But I went back to school for a couple of years, had a long commute and a couple of very boring classes, and then one day, I realized I had an entire book in my mind.

This actually happened once before, a year ago, and I never did anything about it, and then I forgot the story line. So this time, I decided to see what would happen if I wrote some of it down.

What happened is that I had a wonderful time. What came out on paper was very much like what I had in my head. And then I discovered that I would rather write my schlocky romance novel than finish my school projects. So I set the novel aside for a few months to finish school. But I graduated on Saturday. And now it's time to pick up the book again.

Of course, I lost track of where I was, and the characters aren't so lively in my mind as they once were. I'm hoping it will come back to me once I pick up writing again.

And I have a plan. I went to a conference put on by the Wisconsin chapter of Romance Writers of America. Great conference. And someone told me about a club called the 100 x 100 club. Members commit to writing at least 100 words a day, for 100 days. If you miss a day, you have to start your day count over. Of course, I would rather write several thousand words a day, and I imagine I will. But I can see now the value in not ever missing a day. So here I go.

Day Count: 0