The Unbearable Lightness of an Old MS

This week has been a nightmare. School holidays, massive colds for both children, a broken leg that's taking ages to get better, and a husband who also has a cold... Argh. Where's my holiday??

As per usual I want to write and am frustrated by not being able to. Also frustrating are the doubt crows circling my desk. Some days I honestly don't know why I bother to push on. The successes are so few and far between that it seems like a masochist's game to keep at it.

Anyway, in the interests of keeping up some kind of momentum, and after a bracing round of thumping by the CPs (no, not actual thumping but the online equivalent) I have hauled out an old ms to give it a good going over before sending it out to another publisher. The one I thought I'd work on is one that Harlequin really liked and one I completely and utterly stuffed up the revisions for. :-( Hindsight is a bloody awful thing. I haven't looked at this particular ms for a couple of years because it was the 'one that could have been' and that's kind of painful. It's one that I did all kinds of things right but because it all happened completely by accident and not intent, I didn't know what those things were enough to be able to repeat them. In essence, the ms was rejected because my heroine didn't have enough conflict. They thought she was 'lovely' and the hero 'perfect' but conflict for her? Uh huh.

Getting it out and reading it again was bittersweet. Bitter because of all the 'what ifs'. What if I had known what I was doing? What if I'd managed to rewrite it better? What if I'd really understood what the problem was? And sweet because, you know, it's STILL a pretty good story. At least, even two years later and having learned all that I learned, I think it works.

But the problem? Oy! I saw it immediately in the first chapter where I had written 'she just wanted to be accepted for who she was'. Now that right there is the heroine's character arc. And it should be what she realises at the mid-point of the story or even towards the end, not what she understands in the first chapter! Can anyone say too self aware??? And that, in a nutshell, is why she didn't have any conflict. Because where else can she go from there? What more can she learn about herself? If she knew she just wanted to be accepted for who she was, then why didn't she go and do something about it? Why did I make her pretend to be someone else? Characters are supposed to think they're fine at the beginning of the book and part of their journey is figuring out they're not as fine as they think they are. At least, that's what I've been taught about character arc.

Sigh.

I guess the good thing about this is that the rewriting is not nearly as bad as I thought it would be. I just have to make her less self aware. I have to make her think she's fine as she is. She doesn't need acceptance, pshaw, what a silly thing to think, etc, etc. Oh yes and need to beef up her actual conflict (because she actually did have some, it just wasn't very clear). And then...then I guess I will have to think about subbing it. Somewhere.

Anyone else hauled out an old piece of writing? Was it as bad as you thought? (c'mon, we ALL think that right?) Or were you pleasantly surprised?

Ask Dr Jax

This is a very late post. I plead a wedding, a 40th birthday party and a cold all in the space of nearly two weeks. Oh and not forgetting school holidays. Yay. Not.

Anyway, time for the good doctor.

Question: How correct is it to say that one painful event can shape a person's life?

Answer: Like I said in a previous post, it's not really events that shape people so much as the relationships people have with one another. It's true that people do attach importance to certain events but most of the time, it's not really the event in particular that's the problem, though the event can certainly be a catalyst. Generally speaking, if, for example, a man is cheated on by his wife, that won't put him off all women forever even though it is certainly a painful event. But if, say, he had a difficult relationship with his mother - perhaps she cheated on his father - then that could influence how he views women in general. In isolation, events are just events. It's when you look at them in conjunction with the relationships people have in their lives that they take on meaning.

Thank you the good doctor!

And I shall leave you with the golden rule that Dr Jax keeps telling me about having characters that are too self aware.

If you think they're too self aware, then they probably are. :-)

Problems and Other Miscellaneous Announcements

Quick post to blow my own trumpet about a little pre-conference RWNZ contest which I finalled in! Yay! Entries go off to Lucy Gilmour at M&B for a final placing and when she arrives in NZ in August, I get to have a 10 minute face to face pitch session with her. I'm really thrilled about it but nervous - the ms has a heroine who is a bit different and not sure I'll be able to pull it off. Oh well, can only try eh?

Also Dr Jax is proving hard to pin down to answer my questions. I think he's avoiding me. Mostly due to the fact that I have spent the past two weeks moaning to him about my chess WIP. He definitely does NOT want to hear anything more about my writing, I'm sure of it. He can pretty much tell that if I start hanging around him when he gets home from work, doing things like half-heartedly sweeping the floor or moving crumbs from one side of the bench to the other, then I want to talk about my WIP. I never come out and say it you see, I want him to ask me how it's going. And I do that mostly because I'm a one note record and I know how boring I'm being but I just can't HELP IT! When I have a problem with my WIP, g0ing away and thinking about something else never works. I HAVE solve it first. It's like an itch that HAS to be scratched and I can't concentrate on anything else until I've scratched it. It's kind of tiresome. Part of what makes it tiresome is the fact that I have to talk out my WIP problems. Often he doesn't even need to say anything, I solve it just by telling him what the problem is. But that can make it difficult when he's not around to talk to (and no, talking to the air does not help).

So - what do you guys do when you have WIP problems? Talk it out? Walk it out? Shower endlessly??

PS And speaking of the Chess wip - I have finished it!!! And now it will go in a drawer where it will NEVER be seen again - at least not until I've got up the courage to edit the stupid thing.

Being Different

Okay so I'm going to say straight up that I have no idea what constitutes 'different'. Actually, no, I do have some idea, but whether my idea squares with an editors idea is something that hasn't been determined yet...

Um, no, that's not quite right either. So far my idea of different has NOT squared yet. In fact, I have been tarred with the cliche brush. Purely my own fault. Note to self: Do not have the hero make the heroine come to work for him unless it's part of his character and NOT just because I wanted them in proximity to each other...

Ahem. So anyway, different. I think a really good example of this is Maisey's latest release. Yes, this is a small plug for my lovely CP (BUYBUYBUYBUY), but it's also because it's got a different hero who has a very contentious (for romance readers) conflict.
For a start, in the The Highest Price To Pay the hero is black. The first Presents/Modern black hero. AND, what's more, he's black on the cover of the UK edition. Considering they hardly ever feature blonde heroes on the covers, having a very obviously black hero on the cover is a fantastic move. Now, he also has a conflict that is very different too. Different in that it's a thorny one, I think, for romance readers. I won't give it away by telling you what it is but it's one that I think is difficult to pull off and yet, IMHO, Maisey manages it.
The story itself is still very Presents - hero is alpha, the settings are glamorous, the heroine is strong and glam too. All the elements that make Presents what it is are there, but with just that little bit of difference.

Being different in category romance - hell, in all romance! - is really hard to pull off in my opinion. But not impossible. The trick is, I think, to not go overboard. Don't make your Presents hero a secret alien in disguise. They may never have had an alien/werewolf/vampire hero in Presents but that doesn't mean they're going to start doing it now! Be different in ways that are a little bit outside the box but not so much that you crush the box entirely. And it MUST be in character. Otherwise it's not going to work.

Anyone read a romance lately that you found different? What was it about it that was different?

BTW, I realise I am late with my Ask Dr Jax post so if you have any conflict questions, let me know!