Christmas Again Already?

Unless you teach in the lower grades (or live south of the Equator), school calendars make it hard to get into the Christmas spirit. Students are stressed; papers start coming in late; grading becomes urgent; and exams need to be written, proctored, and graded, all on a very short timeline. My last exam is scheduled for December 19 and I'll have only a week to get grades in, since I leave December 27 for a work-related conference in D.C. So where does Christmas (or any of the other December holidays) fit into that schedule?

Short answer -- it doesn't. With my children grown, I do less and less each year. This year there will be only three of us for Christmas dinner, although my daughter will be home for a vist at New Year's. My extended family is strewn all across the country, and I do write lengthy Christmas cards to them and to my dearest friends -- but I write them while proctoring exams, which means this year they probably won't arrive until after the holidays are over. With luck the presents for my brother's family may arrive in time to be opened on Christmas. Or maybe not.

But, as we all know, the winter holidays aren't really about gifts or cards or fancy meals. They're about family, hope, and love. Which means there's room for them in even the busiest life, if we just take time to pause now and then to remember that simple fact.

My First Tweet

Recently I saw a message on one of the loops I follow that an editor was looking for completed. polished manuscripts to fill a hole in the production schedule. Her description (more detailed than that, of course) fit Games Without Rules, my GH story, to a "T".

The problem? The editor's message came via Twitter and the person who passed it along didn't know any other way to get in contact with her except by tweeting. Why a problem? Not only did I know nothing about Twitter, but I was on my way out the door to what I knew would be a very full day at work.

What to do? Well, initially, nothing. I went through my work day, picked up a few commiserations on the loop, and resigned myself to letting the opportunity pass me by. When I got home several hours later, however, one person on the loop, bless her, delivered a little much-needed "tough love," as she called it.

She told me how easy Twitter was and how it didn't make sense to give up this chance simply because I was too lazy or too afraid to tackle a new technology. (In fact, it was both). She told me exactly how to sign up for Twitter and even told me what to tweet back to the editor. So I did.

This is where everyone expects me to say, "And the editor tweeted me back to ask for the full manuscript of my book." No such luck. Not a peep, much less a tweet, from the editor. But I mastered (more or less) a technology that could be a useful promotion tool someday. And I now have a Twitter account -- @NancyHolland5. If you don't tweet yet, sign up. It's so easy, even I could do it.

Writing "Full Time"

As my bio says, I'm a teacher. That means I have my summers "off" (ignoring how much time I've spent since school was out finishing the paperwork from last year, how many meetings I've had since the end of the term, the days I'll spend before school starts getting ready for the new year, the time I've spent reading to keep up, and an endless flow of work-related email). This means that for a few months I can write "full time".

I've learned, however, that a writer's "full time" is not exactly forty hours a week of writing. First there's the revising, right now for several RWA® chapter contests. This means that I'm now intimately familiar with every comma and question mark in the first two chapters of both of the books I currently have on the contest circuit. Then there's the judging -- once you have some experience as a contestant, it's a good thing to give back by judging entries in other categories of the contests you're familiar with. Reading other people's entries can also teach you a lot about your own writing, but it takes time out of your "full time".

The thing that really cuts into my "full time", however, is the rhythm of my own writing process. First, after 1000-1500 words, it takes a real effort to write any more, no matter how excited I am about my story, or how easily the words have flowed to that point. Sometimes I can get past the 1500 word mark, and presumably after I sell I'll have to learn to be better at it, but for right now, most days it's an insurmountable roadblock.

Another complication is that in the summer most people prefer to do whatever work they have to do in the morning and have their afternoons free. This means lots of meetings and appointments during my prime working hours. I can write after lunch or even after dinner, and have several times so far this summer, but what I could write in an hour earlier in the day takes me two or three to write in the afternoon.

For all these reasons (plus a commitment to enjoy at least some of the summer with my family), my "full time" writing is closer to half-time, or less, but I am making progress. My current WIP is on schedule to be finished before I go back to work, and writing becomes my "part time" job once again.

Another Aha! Moment

It's been a while since I've updated this website, but I have some pretty great excuses: a request from one editor to revise and resubmit the full manuscript of one of my contemporary stories and a request from another publisher for the full manuscript of my fantasy romance, which needed a final edit before I sent it out. So for the last three months or more, I've been less a writer than a re-writer. I think/hope I've learned something in the process.

The biggest "aha!" moment was mid-way in the revision process of the contemporary. As I sped up the pace, went more deeply into my character's motivations, and made my heroine a lot less weepy, I finally asked myself why I hadn't done all this before I sent the requested full ms. out in the first place. Aha! Sure, now I knew more exactly what things the editor thought needed changing, but most of them were things I'd known about, suspected, or been told about before by critique partners. If I'd fixed them sooner, maybe my revise-and-resubmit would have been a sale-plus-some-edits".

Lesson learned, and assured that a delay in sending the requested full was okay with the editor, once the R&R ms. was sent, I went through much the same process with the second ms. And learned something else in the process. While one problem my beta reader found with the contemporary story was a tendency to include too many mundanities of my characters' lives ("They had chicken for dinner"), those same everyday details were an important part of building the world of my fantasy romance. What my characters would have for dinner told my reader a lot about how they lived ("He took his bow and killed a rabbit for their dinner"). Aha! While almost everything that I'd learned from revising the first story applied to the second, here was at least one exception. Which means, once again, that there are no rules, only guidelines, whether you're a pirate or a writer.

Riding the Roller Coaster

I had an interesting week last week, one that really brought home the roller coaster nature of a writer's career. It started with good news on Saturday. I got a "revise and resubmit" letter for the full manuscript an editor had requested last fall. Not a sale, but the next best things. That first big rise on the roller coaster.

Sunday I learned I hadn't won a contest after spending much of the day putting a final polish on two entries in another contest and sending them off. Plus I emailed both the agents who have full manuscripts of mine to let them know about the "R&R" letter. Call that a small down, a flat spot, and a small rise.

Monday was a snow day. Nothing happening in my town; nothing happening in my writing world. But a day off work to tackle those revisions. Call that another slight rise.

Tuesday I got an email from one of the agents saying "Didn't I ever get back to you?" I emailed her back: "Nope." Then I emailed my writing friends for some cyber hand-holding. Two hours later, the agent said she'd pass on the story she had and wasn't interested in seeing the one I was revising, either. I thanked her for her time. Call that a moderately big drop.

Over the four days, however, it added up to a pretty good-sized rise on the roller coaster. An editor is seriously interested in my work. I have contest entries out there again. And I learned one agent wasn't going to work out for me. So, I'm revising and keeping my fingers crossed as my writing careens around the next corner, heading for the next big up or the next big down. Maybe the excitement of not knowing which is part of why I keep writing.

Club 100

I don't know how Club 100 started. I do know you can't find it on Google (or at least I couldn't). I also know that it's changed my writing life, so I thought I'd explain how it works, in hopes that you can either link up with an existing Club 100 loop or start one of your own.

The basic principle behind Club 100 is that if you write 100 words a day for 100 days, you'll have 10,000 words written toward your book. My Club 100 loop is more flexible than that. We let everyone set their own daily minimum of words written or time put in on revisions and other writing-related stuff. We also let people decide how many days a week they have to write, or if they can take random days off when they need a break or life intervenes (that's what I do). We have an email loop and report in on how we're doing, cheer everyone's progress, support each other through dry spells and other hard times, and celebrate each other's 100 days and other success.

One important point -- the 100 words or whatever number you set is a MINIMUM. Writing more is strongly encouraged. But once you sit down and write that first 100 (or whatever), writing more can be amazingly easy.

If you belong to a chapter of RWA®, ask around to see if your chapter already has a Club 100. If not, see if people are interested in starting one. Even if you don't belong to an RWA® chapter, you can start a Club 100 with your writing friends. Two or three is enough at the beginning, and you can recruit more members later. Then choose a moderator, set up a email loop, and start writing.

Even if you have to start alone, the discipline of setting daily goals and tracking how well you do will be a big boost to your writing. At the risk of sounding like an infomercial, try Club 100. You'll be glad you did.

A Writer’s Most Important New Year’s Resolution

As I’ve chronicled here, my writing world has changed enormously in the last year. Partly that was because “Games Without Rules” was a finalist in the series contemporary category of the 2010 Golden Heart®. Being a finalist not only brought me new opportunities, but also a whole boatload of new writing friends in the other GH finalists. Even after all the GH hoopla was over, another of my stories, “The Christmas Pony”, won two major contests, garnering me requests for the full manuscript from an agent and an editor.

The thing is, I’ve won contests before. (In fact, I’ve won both of the two I won this year before.) I’ve had editors request full manuscripts before. (In fact, I’ve had the same editor request a full manuscript before.) And, while this was my first year as a GH finalist, I didn’t win “the big one.” While wonderful, the contest finals, the wins, the requests would probably not have changed how I see my writing and myself as a writer without one other vital element.

January 1, 2010, I sat at the dining table in a rented apartment in Paris and began my first day as a member of the Club 100 loop of my local RWA® chapter, Midwest Fiction Writers. In the past year, because of Club 100, I have written a minimum of 100 words or edited at least an hour everyday each of almost 300 days (with heavy travel days, heavy work days, and an occasional sick day off). In that time I’ve produced all of “The Christmas Pony”, a short novella, and most of a second novel; I’ve also made major revisions to “Games Without Rules” and a requested partial of a fantasy novel. In short, I’ve become a (semi-) professional writer (and made another batch of wonderful new writer friends), all because of Club 100.

Next month I’ll tell you more of the details about how Club 100 works, but don’t wait for that. Set yourself daily goals right now, decide how many days a week or month you can commit to your writing, and get started. You can tweak the details later.

The most important thing is that on January 1, 2011, you are going to sit down in your workspace and change your writing life, one 100-word day at a time.

Writing Through the Holidays

The holidays can be a paradoxical time for writers. Many, perhaps most, of us with day jobs will have time off, which offers the possibility of getting more writing done. Many of us, however, whether we have a day job or not will also have special social and family obligations -- guests, travel, etc. Those of us with children will have them home from school for two weeks or more. And almost all of us will have greeting cards to write and presents to buy, wrap, and send. Keeping focused through it can mean the difference between a month that is normally, if not extrodinarily productive and four week's worth of lost work time.

This is where I should have some magic answers about how to keep writing through all the joy and chaos of the season. I don't. What works for me, with two grown but unmarried children, won't work for someone with a house full of overexcited young kids or bored and resentful adolescents (been there, done that). Nor will it work for those overwhelmed with visitors from out of town, on the road, or worse in the air through all the mess of holiday travel. And it won't work for anyone whose job involves more hours and more stress at this time of year. We each have to find our own way through the season, and through our lives. Knowing we aren't alone as writers, however, even if we are all unique offers some hope of comfort.

The most important thing through it all, I've found, is balance. Keep writing, if only a few words day. That keeps your story fresh in your mind, and will make it easier to get started again when life goes back to normal. (I'll have more to say about that next month.) Devote some time to your loved ones everyday, whether by sitting down to a real meal at home or texting, emailing or phoning to some far-off place. Enjoy the season a little every day, too -- listen to holiday music, dig out the photos from past years, take a walk in the snow, eat a special food, read a favorite holiday story. Most important, take time for yourself every day, too. As my writer friends always say, you have to refill the well. Then, when January comes, you'll be ready to write more and better than before.

THE HAPPIEST OF HOLIDAYS TO ALL!

Putting Writing First

My schedule at work has been changed this year, making it possible for me to write before I go to work without having to get up too early in the morning. So far, the change has been great for my writing. Sitting down at the computer after just a cup of coffee and a quick scan of the front page of the newspaper means that I'm still half asleep when I start writing. That allows me to tap into something like a dream state. Not only do scenes and dialogue come to me more easily, but the pictures I see in my mind are richer, more filled with colors, tastes, and smells to make my writing richer, too. Plus it just feels good to know I've done my writing before my day really starts.

Despite its obvious benefits, however, writing first thing in the morning has a downside, too. When the writing is going well, it is very hard to pull myself away and do what needs to be done before I leave the house. I haven't quite been late to work yet, but some days it's been close. Another problem is that when I do get to the office, I sometimes feel as if I've already done a day's work, and I am always exhausted by the end of the day, which makes writing in the evening anymore almost impossible. Luckily, I can use that time to catch up on my email, read blogs, and sometimes even spend some time with the family!

I've always envied the dedicated souls who could get up at 5 a.m. to write, and I still do, but for those of us who find that more of a challenge, I'd strongly recommend getting up even half an hour earlier (my schedule change was only an hour) to see if putting writing first in your day makes as much of a positive difference for you as it has for me.

Following the Beacons as I Write

According to the RWA lingo, there are two kinds of writers – plotters, who plan their story out completely ahead of time, and pantsers (as in flying by the seat of your pants), who just jump in and write. The classic description of a pure pantser is Eloisa James article in Romance Writers’ Report® “Flying into the Mist”.

My writing style is something of a hybrid. I generally have the first chapter or two (the inciting incident) pretty clearly in mind before I start a new story, an outline of 2-3 major turning points, and a reasonably clear idea of how the story will end. This makes the process more like flying from beacon to beacon, with a clear destination and a clear starting point, but much vagueness in the middle.

Why explain all this? Well, this is my process and I have to own it, but it does give me lots of chances to bog down in writing a story. One place I bog down is love scenes, but that’s a story for another time. The more obvious place to bog down is all those spaces between the beacons when I haven’t a clue how my characters are going to get themselves from, say, point C to point D. In the story I’m writing now, I got so bogged down looking for how to get from one beacon to another that I had to rethink everything and ended up with one less turning point. Luckily, that change made my story much tighter, and I’ve been moving forward pretty well since then, until now.

The problem now is that I’m almost to the end of the story, and I know everything that’s going to happen and roughly how it’s going to happen. Frankly, I miss the excitement of discovering what my characters are going to do next.

The Princess Diaries, RWA®-Style

This year's meeting of the Romance Writers of America® was held in Orlando, Florida, after the floods last spring made the original site in Nashville, Tennessee, unavailable. I hadn't planned to attend, but once my entry had finaled in the Golden Heart® contest, I just couldn't not go. Everyone will treat you like a princess, people told me. Everyone will ask you what your GH story is about. You'll have a fabulous time.

Of those three promises, only the last was strictly true. I did have a fabulous time, and wouldn't have missed a minute of it. Treated like a princess, not so much. Maybe it was because I spent most of my time with just two groups of friends. One group was the other GH finalists, who were princesses (and one prince) themselves. The other was my chapter-mates from MFW who know me too well to treat me like anyone special. And, of course, there were four GH finalists from MFW in Orlando (and one who couldn't be there), so relatively speaking, I wasn't all that special.

As to everyone asking what my GH story was about, except for the agent and the editor I had scheduled appointments with, only one or two people did. Which was a relief, actually, since pitching a story on the fly isn't exactly my favorite indoor sport. On the other hand, it would have been nice if the two top-flight agents I shared elevator rides with had asked, instead of forcing me to make inane conversation to fill the silence.

At least my scheduled pitches went well enough that both the agent and the editor asked me to see my story, which is really the goal of the whole thing anyway. At a reception GH finalists, I also talked casually to another editor about another story, and she asked to see a partial of that, too, once I make the revisions on it that I know need to be made. So, being a GH finalist (but, alas, not a winner) and the trip to Orlando did pay off.

Much more important, however, were the connections I made with my fellow finalists, my sisters from MFW (miniature golf, anyone?), and even a few people--writers, agents, editors--whom I'd never met before. The RWA® is a community of vibrant, hard-working professionals, who also luckily know how to have a good time. If you ever have a chance to attend one of their annual meetings, GH finalist or not, just go. And enjoy.

Dipping My Toes in the Blogging Pool

I've been part of a group blog at the Ruby Slippered Sisterhood website twice recently, once as a 2010 Golden Heart® Finalist and once as part of the more select group of five 2010 finalists who are member of Midwest Fiction Writers. Although our Ruby Slippered Sisters actually wrote the blog, based on questions they asked us, we were asked to visit the website frequently during the day to respond to comments and questions. The result is that I'm even more reluctant to become a regular blogger than I was before.

Why is that? Isn't writing these updates for this website a lot like blogging? Well, yes and no. The big difference between the two that my very limited blogging experience brought home to me is a matter of time lag. When I write for the website, I can think, edit, and even delete and repost if I decide I don't like how what I write looks once it's posted. With blogging, it's all right now and all forever, with no do-overs.

Of course, having something published also doesn't allow for do-overs, but the time lag is completely different then. When my non-fiction writing is published, I get several chances to edit and correct it before it goes to press and, once it comes out months later, I'm far enough away from it that, if I have to say, "Oops, could have done that better", I don't feel like a total fool. And I assume the same will be true when my novels reach the publication stage.

Not on a blog. Feeling like a fool seems to be an intrinsic part of the experience, at least for me. There it is, whatever I wrote, in its almost unedited glory while I'm still attached to it, still engaged in the conversation it arose out of. And I do not like that, I've learned.

Another difference between blogs and published works is that neither my fiction nor my non-fiction writing is about me -- it's about my heroine and her hero, or about whatever non-fiction topic I chose to write about. Blogging is all about the blogger. When it falls flat, I fall flat. What it is misunderstood, I am misunderstood. And I don't like that, either. So, for the near future at least, I'll limit myself to occasional updates here and leave the blogging to those more able to deal with writing something that is all right now and all forever.

Always Trust in Love

Part of being a Golden Heart® finalist is being invited to join various groups of other finalists from the same year and other years. These email groups exchange information, applaud the success of their members as they move toward publication and beyond, and provide opportunities to network and volunteer at the annual RWA® meeting. Most of all they provide a supportive "siblinghood" (one of the finalists this year is a guy) of others who have either gone through it all before, or are going through it now with you.

These groups also push you to do things you might otherwise want to avoid (like setting up a website!). One of the things they've been encouraging newbies like me to do recently is to order business cards to have available to hand out to agents, editors, and other people we meet at RWA® national next month. The busines cards weren't the problem, however. I had no trouble finding a lovely design at a reasonable price.

No, my problem was what to put on the card, beside my name and web address. I needed what they call an "author brand." (Since my current story is about a cattle ranch, the idea of "author branding" has uncomfortable connotations for me right now, but that's what it's called). I actually had a "brand" once that I was pretty fond of, but it was long (two phrases, not one) and didn't fit the theme of this website or my business cards. So I needed to find a new one.

Easier said than done. To complicate matters, although I'm currently writing mostly short contemporary romances, I also write paranormal romance and longer fantasy romances, so I had to find a brand that fit all three genres. I turned, as I often do, to my critique partners for help and brainstormed with them. Finally, with their help, I came up with a theme that runs through all of my stories, of whatever kind -- trust. My stories take two people who have every reason not to trust each other and show how important trust is to their growing love and their "happily ever after."

Hence "Always trust in love." Good advice, and a pretty good brand, I've decided. What do you think?

My Golden Heart® Story

My series contemporary and fantasy romance stories have won several Romance Writers of America® chapter contests over the years, so in 2006 I started entering the RWA's own Golden Heart® contest. The first three years, my entries finished in the top 25%, but in 2009 my entry tanked, so I wasn’t sure about entering for 2010. I finally took the plunge, however, and quickly forgot about the whole thing in the rush of everyday life. When I thought about the GH at all, I fully expected to mark the passing of the notification date with a few minutes of mild regret before going on with my life, as I had the previous four years.

Then a 2009 Golden Heart® finalist from my chapter told us about the countdown to the GH announcement day that the Ruby Slippered Sisterhood was doing on their blog. Reading what she and her sisters had to say there, I began to remember all the good things about my story. Worse, I began to think I maybe had a chance, which led to a totally unexpected run of nearly sleepless nights. I’d been through this before – why had the contest suddenly taken over my life?

Flash forward to the big announcement day -- March 25, 2010. Everything the Ruby Slipper website said indicated that, if you were home and near a phone, you’d probably get "the call" fairly early in the morning. By the time I sat down at the computer, it was well after 9 a.m., so I had my usual moment of regret and started work on the day’s writing goal. I was about two-thirds of the way done with that when the phone rang. Hoping it was my critique partner telling me she was a GH finalist, since she’d confessed to really caring about the outcome, I sat down in a comfortable chair to answer it.

Good thing. It was a lovely lady with a Texas accent whose name I’m afraid I can’t remember telling me that "Games Without Rules" was a finalist in the series contemporary category of the Golden Heart®!

The rest of the day is a bit of a blur. I emailed everyone I could and delurked from the eharlequin forums with the news, made myself a cup of the expensive coffee we save for weekends, then sat down and somehow finished my writing goal. My memory of the celebratory dinner with my husband is even blurrier, probably due to the celebratory margaritas.

Since then, I’ve found myself with about 60 new friends in the other 2010 finalists, and about 100 emails a day from the loop one of them set up immediately. I’ve also stressed over a picture for the jumbotron (no, really, it’s huge) at the RWA® Awards Ceremony in Orlando, blown almost all my frequent flyer miles on tickets to the conference, and found the perfect dress. And I’ve been able to share the experience with one of my critique partners, who is also a finalist, and put up this fabulous website with the expert help of my other one. All in less than two months!

From everything I hear, it will continue to be a wild ride right through to the evening of July 31, and beyond. I’ll keep you posted on all the fun along the way.