The Magic Moment

It's a magic moment really. The moment when the manuscript you wrote with such excitement, the characters you thought were so fabulous, the conflict you just knew was SO different, the story you lovingly crafted into a work of art, suddenly turns to crap in the space of a second.

Something silly might have triggered it off. A sudden doubt about the reaction of your heroine. Or maybe the feeling that your hero's Big Secret is too big secrety.  Or even the fact that you've never really got that ending parargraph just the way you like it. But whatever it is, something somewhere has abruptly rendered your story into a heap of steaming ordure.

If you think I'm going to tell you wonderful things about how to overcome that moment then you're sadly mistaken. I just wanted to complain about it. Mainly because my lovely chess ms, that I loved when I wrote my black moment, suddenly became The Worst Story in the History of the World. I don't know why. I suddenly thought that my hero was too dark. Too much of a b*stard. Too unsympathetic. There wasn't enough glamour in it to make it Presents. My heroine's conflict was waaaaay too light and unexplored, and she was also too shouty. The plot just dumb.

The crazy thing is that this all this could be true. I just don't know. All I know is that there came a moment where I fell out of love with it and wanted to rewrite the whole damn thing.

But I guess that's the moment where you either stop working on it and send it off. Or you put it away.  Either action determines the worth of the story. Sending it away magically makes the story even worse than you thought it was. Putting it in the drawer somehow makes it fabulous again. Because when you take that story out and read it again after a week or four, it's amazing how amazing it turns out to be. And you wonder how you ever doubted it.

Then you send it off and it magically becomes crap again.

Writers are magicians.

So do you work your magic on your mss too? Or is it just me?

Distracting Myself From Pressing Send

It's subbing eve. Soon I will have two stories out there. Soon I'll be back on that big 'ole rollercoaster, viewing my inbox with trepidation, nay with horror. But what's a girl to do?

I had two really great pieces of advice when I confessed my subbing fear at the Auckland chapter group meeting last week. The first from the lovely Nalini Singh (namedrop, namedrop) who suggested getting out all the lovely things people have told me about my writing from contests etc and re-reading them. The second was from the also very lovely Yvonne Lindsay (more namedropping) who asked me whether I thought people deserved to read my stories. And my gut feeling was....hell yes!

Anyway, to distract myself from subbing fear, I am reading a book called One Day by David Nicholls. Not only is it a romance it is also awesome. At least so far - I haven't finished it yet. It charts the relationship of two people over the space of twenty years by concentrating on one day every year. So far the two protagonists are best friends (they start off as lovers) and as friends-to-lovers is my favourite trope in the whole wide world, I am loving it!

In fact, it's the story I wanted to write back when I was still a baby writer. In fact, I did kind of write it. Before I decided to concentrate on publication, the last story I wrote was a friends to lovers story over the space of twenty years. Coincidence? I think not!
However sadly the twist of writing one day every year didn't occur to me. And I suck at literary writing. And although I loved writing it and still adore the characters, there was SO much wrong with it it's not funny. For a start it's over 300k long. Then there's the fact that the heroine had no conflict. The hero did though I didn't explore it. There's also infidelity (hero/heroine), mountain climbing, a threesome (hero), drug taking (hero), lots of cussing, almost rape (heroine), overdoses (heroine plus others), ectopic pregnancy (heroine) and death by pulmonary embolism.

It was awesome.

Perhaps I should get it out, polish it up and send that out too. :-)

When You're Afraid of Your Own Story

Alrighty, I have now finished the partial requested by Mills and Boon, and also the full I need to send to to Carina. All I need to do is a final polish on both and then a synopses each. Easy.

Well, okay apart from actually writing the synopses.

And the HUGE subbing fear that is currently lurking around in my brain.

Yep, easy all right.

I think this might be a good time to remind myself of the speech Jane Porter gave at the close of the Romance Writers of Australia conference. She was incredibly inspirational and what she said really struck home to me at the time. She spoke about how long it too her to get published and the ups and downs of the industry. Then she then went on to describe a little incident with her son about how he was learning how to play baseball and how his coach was talking to him as he prepared to hit the ball, how the coach was telling him he owned the ball, this one was his, this one had his name written all over it, he could do it. The kid struck out about three times but the coach was constantly telling him how he could do it. How he could hit this one out of the park. And on the third time he did it.
She mentioned this in the context of how wonderful it is to have support when you're doing something hard, but I got something out of it that was a little different. Because it gelled with something else that someone had told me earlier on in the conference - that we are the experts in our stories. No one else knows our stories like we do. No one else knows our characters like we do.

And I thought to myself that yep, I'm that kid. I'm standing there with a bat in my hand. And that ball? That ball is my story and I've been afraid of it. Afraid I'll get it wrong somehow, that my characters will be wrong, that my conflict will be wrong, that my plot will be wrong. And for the past year, I've been kind of taking punts at the balls that keep being thrown at me, but I'm so afraid of them, I don't even try swinging. Because deep down, I'm not sure I can hit them.

I am not owning my stories. They are owning me.

Well, at the end of her speech, Jane spoke about not giving in to despair. That your journey is your own, it's not anyone else's. That all you've got is you - but that's the biggest strength there is.

And I thought 'yeah, she's bloody right'. I need to stop giving in to despair. Stop being afraid of my own stupid stories. Stop letting them own me. Because I am the expert here, not them. I write them, they don't write me. I own them. They're mine. And the more I own them, the greater the chance will be that I'll hit one of them out of the ballpark.

It may not be the ones I've just written. But one day, one of those stories will, literally, have my name written all over it.

So there, inspirational speech/pep talk/coach for the week. Just remind me of it when the time comes to hit send! :-)

Unpublished! Why It's Awesome

I'm coming up to the mid-March you'll hear back deadline. And I've got that whole love/hate relationship thing going on with the Inbox of Doom. It's mostly hate at the moment, followed by brief, intense bouts of love. Such as waking to find there is NO email from the editor in the mornings - love that! And then, five minutes later, 'argh, there is NO email from the editor! argh! But I need to know!' etc. Hate that.

Anyway, pretty much convinced myself that my submissions totally suck. Both of them. No, truly. Don't get me wrong, I love my Hammer Pants ms. I love my hero who is soooo very bad and love my heroine who gives him what for. But since writing the Chessman, I have learned a whole lot more about letting my characters do what they will, and I'm not sure that has happened with MC Hammer Pants. I hate chapter 3 for example. I want to rewrite that completely and as for the rest of the ms... I'd like to think I've done okay for a full request but, fact is, I may have stuffed up again like I did with the previous ms and they won't want the rest. And I'll be kicked back to the slush.

Doubt is vile.

So to pass the time in Unpublished Author Hell and distract myself from my submission doubt, I've decided to list all the positive things about still being unpublished.

1. I can write what I want.
2. I can write when I want.
3. I have NO deadlines.
4. I don't care what my readers think about my story because I have no readers.
5. I can write a story with characters who don't have to be sympathetic/aspirational/original/flawed. Or not.
6. I can have has much external conflict as I like. And aliens. And guns. And pirates. And a little pink pig called Mavis (and she can be the freaking heroine!).
7. I can have no conflict at all if I want and the story can be two pages long.
8. I can stop writing forever and take up morris dancing instead and no one would care.
9. I can toss my WIP in the bin and it wouldn't matter.
10. I don't have to obssess about whether my book is outselling other people's or worry about royalties or marketing or whether I have enough ideas for another book or whether my second book will be as good as my first or whether I'll be a one hit wonder or whether I'll even sell another book ever again.

Oh and here is a link about why being unpublished is awesome (if you can't handle teh swearz, then don't click it).

Any other currently unpublished peoples out there who can think of some reason why this isn't a bad state to be in? Gotta take the positives where we can huh?





PS. Okay, I'm totally lying, you know that, right? Here's why I'm actually desperate to be published...

Attack of the Killer Blahs or I Suck

Blah. Such a great word. Sums up so many things in such a short space. Also correctly and precisely describes my feelings about the tsunami of submission doubt that has dumped itself on my head. I'm at the point where you know you're going to hear back soonish and am trying to resist the lure of re-reading my subs to check things. Re-reading does one of two things: 1. It plunges me into the depths of despair since the sub was obviously crap and why on earth did I think it was any good in the first place? Or 2. It makes me feel incredibly satisfied since the sub is clearly excellent and I will instantly get a contract and why are they taking so long?

Neither of these options are useful, espcially when the last time I settled on option 2 I got a form R. What also doesn't help is the fact that the Hammer Pants ms is now different to the synopsis I sent in. Now apparently this doesn't matter too much since eds know synopses change etc, etc. Well, can I say now that that is wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Your synopsis does matter. It matters a lot. And my synopses usually aren't that great in the first place. Why is it you only see such things AFTER the sub has gone? Blah, I say.

Anyway, one thing that isn't blah is The Chessman. If you will note the word meter at the right hand side of the screen, you will see that it has climbed appreciably. Basically in the past three days I have written 15k. Yes, I will be smug a moment since this is the only thing that seems to be doing well. In fact, I'm amazed at how fast the thing is going down. I think there is a reason for it but I might save that for another blog post. Especially as the reason its going down fast is another reason to be down about my Hammer Pants. Argh!

So what do you do when you have a blah moment? Shop? Drink? Eat? Hug random strangers? All four at once?

PS. Big congrats to Leah Ashton who sold her NV book. Good for you, Leah!

So You Think You Can Write? Or Does My Butt Look Big in This? (Plus Congrats!)

Who else is feeling like they can write? I should clarify, this is for those of us who are taking the SYTYCW trip and are expecting to hear back this week. Are you excited? Nervous? Couldn't care less? NTAI? Personally I'm feeling like I can vomit.

I actually thought I would be okay with this. Mainly because I subbed something different to what I normally write and so therefore if it gets the old heave ho, I can safely say to myself, 'Oh well, it was my first sub for this line and it's not what I wanted to write anyway." But you know, I don't think I am okay with it! I'm bl**dy nervous! My poor old Frenchman is subbed as a Modern/Presents and I am quite concerned. Writing MH/Riva is like an old pair of comfortable, flattering jeans. I love wearing them and I think I look good in them. Modern/Presents is a pair of new jeans with stiff denim and in a style I'm not sure suits me. Does my butt look big in this?
I do NOT want to hear 'Of course your butt looks massive. What were you thinking?!'
What I DO want to hear is 'Darling, you look fab. Have you lost weight?'

Really, waiting and anticipating NEVER gets any easier. And I'm sure the pubbed authors among you will say the same thing. I've been doing this for three years now (I know, I'm just a baby submitter) and the Inbox of Doom remains the Inbox of Doom and not the Inbox of Win. On that happy note, at least it's certain that news of some kind will make it's way to me at some stage during this week (Will they let us know on the day? The week before? Who knows??).

Anyway, the most annoying thing about all of this is that I am letting my NTAI nerves paralyse me. I don't know what to keep writing. There is the Frenchman whom I'm certain will get the thumbs down (SYTYCW), there's the Hammer Pants ms which I actually love and want to keep editing but simply don't know whether to keep doing so or not. And lastly the soldier story (remember that?) which I subbed in October last year. In my handover email from the ed, she told me she'd read the soldier and also the my winning High Five entry (Hammer Pants) and had had a chat with the ed I am now working with about 'which one to proceed with'. But she gave no hint as to which she liked! Which she wouldn't of course but still! Anyway, I guess 'which one to proceed with' does seem to indicate that one will be proceeded with. But which one??? Just my luck it won't be the one I want to proceed with...

Right, that's enough of my ramblings. Wanted to say HUGE CONGRATS to Susan Wilson for her sale to Medicals!!!! You rock, Susan!!

So how's everyone else holding up for SYTYCW? Got any NTAI strategies you want to share?

How Badly Do You Want It?

Okay, so I'm a sad case, but this is something I ask myself quite regularly. Especially this weekend as I wandered around feeling sick as a dog with submission doubt. Is my heroine acting out of character or over the top again? Is my hero way too nice? Did I keep my conflict simple enough? Is there enough of it the first chapter? Are their motivations clear?

It's kind of exhausting feeling like that. As is the rollercoaster of hope and despair that the writer's journey seems to consist of. And sometimes I think that perhaps I care TOO much about it.

I've never had a blinding ambition to be anything. I was librarian for 15 years because a) I liked books and b) I could never get into publishing. And being a librarian suited me very well because it wasn't too stressful and at the end of the day it meant I could come home and write.
Actually, when I say I never had a blinding ambition to be anything, that's a small lie. I have always wanted to be a writer. But it wasn't ever something I thought I would be. It was just one of those nice dreams.
But in the last few years, I've realised that perhaps I could be one after all. That perhaps it doesn't just have to be a nice dream. And whaddya know? It turns out I have ambition after all. And boy does my ambition want this. It wants it SO bad! It cares so deeply about it, that some days I have difficulty switching it off.

The downside of this means that I am a writing bore. I write every day and get grumpy when I don't. I think about writing obsessively. When it's not going well, nothing goes well and it's all bad. I have a love/hate relationship with my inbox and I feel like throwing up every time I get an email from the ed. When I get an R it's DEVASTATING. When I get a 'you'll have to rewrite it from the top', I'm ECSTATIC. It's exhausting.
On the upside wanting it badly, caring too much means that I channel all that drama back into my writing. Which does make for lovely, emotional scenes. It also means that giving up is much harder. And....I'm sure there was another upside but maybe not!

So I don't know, admitting how badly you want something isn't fashionable these days. You've got be 'well, whatever, I'll give it a go and if it doesn't work out, so what' kind of thing. Some days I wish I did have that attitude. It would be so much easier. But the thing is, that kind of attitude would mean that I probably wouldn't still be here on sub number 6. I'd have stopped after sub number 1.

Anyway, I've tried not to care, believe me. To make this whole process easier on myself and my family. I've tried to think, 'oh well, if it happens it happens and if it doesn't, it doesn't'. But you know what? That doesn't work. No amount of trying will make me care any less about it. So I think I'll just have to accept that I want this badly. That I care about it very much. That I'll never be a 'meh, whatever' kind of person. And that I'll just have to live with the hope and despair that comes along with caring far too much for my own good.

Lucky Dr Jax. Ah well, he always knew he was getting a drama queen for a wife. :-)

So what about all the rest of you? How badly do you want it?

Post Birthday Blues

Took a short blog hiatus over the weekend. Had a fantastic birthday where Dr Jax whisked me away to our wonderful capital city - Wellington - for a weekend of a swish hotel, fine champagne, nice food and, best of all, no kids! My birthday present was a lovely bit of bling, something that surprised me because I'm not a blingy type of girl and yet I found myself choosing a rather gorgeous bit of sparkle. Poor Dr Jax hasn't quite recovered from the cost I fear. ;-) Also took lots of scene-setting pics since - happily - Wellington is also the setting for a new WIP. Even found my hero's apartment overlooking the waterfront! All good.

But now I'm feeling blah. Post birthday blues maybe. Now the fun of the birthday is over, I have more angst and waiting to look forward to. Do we ever get over our need for reassurance do you think? In a normal job we'd have performance appraisals, we'd have a boss to ask about whether we're performing our jobs adquately, we'd have promotions, we'd have a wage! But with writing for publication we don't get any of that. We get silence. Sometimes we'll get encouragement in the form of a letter asking for more work but more often than not we get a rejection. It's a little bit soul destroying after a while.

I guess this qualifies as my vent of the month. I was hoping to save it until further on but what the hey! Anyway, am doubting my submission, doubting the rest of the manuscript - which is complete pants let me tell you, doubting pretty much everything. Don't have any emotional reserves left to deal with the long wait. My mojo has packed her bags and gone on a long holiday into the bargain. Boring huh? Perhaps I need some more NTAI shoes...

On the up side, I have lovely CPs who deal patiently with my constant need for reassurance, though sometimes I feel like a baby bird in a nest with its mouth constantly open... ;-) How do the rest of you deal with it? Do you whine like me? Go shopping? Or is it stiff upper lip all the way?

Nothing to Say

I keep delaying my posts in the hope that I have something to tell you.

But I have nothing to tell you.

So to keep me going and to keep the crows at bay, here is Jean Claude Van Damme with my own personal mantra.




Maybe it'll be this week.

The Importance of Being Nervous

Why am I nervous? Because I've heard from the editor that I've been working with and she's told me that she should be getting to my partial in the next couple of weeks. Argh!!! And I've gone from impatient waiting to nervous twitching instead. Perhaps it's nicer not knowing. Because when you don't know, you can entertain all kinds of wonderful thoughts such as they love it so much they want your full manuscript instantly. Or that they offer you a fifty book contract on the spot. Or just that they like it but they want you to change a few things. I'd be happy with anything that isn't a flat-out no at this stage. :-)

The problem is that I've learned heaps in the past six months. Especially the past three. Which means that the partial I sent three months ago is probably not the partial I would send now. Sigh. But hindsight is a wonderful thing. I 'think' the conflict is okay - certainly the character biographies I sent through were approved of - so that should help, but ultimately you never know until the editor gives you the magic yes. I still like my partial, I still think it was good. There are things I would change now but that's just to do with pace. In spite of all of that, I may get the flat-out no. And in which case - here's the important thing - I do have another manuscript ready to go. I'm not giving up until I get the 'please do not submit to us again' letter*.

No retreat, no surrender right?

*Note: There is no such letter (that I know of). :-)

Hard Slog

Well, coming into the home straight with my re-write of my climber story, but it feels at the moment like wading through treacle. Not quite sure why. I'm really having to force myself to keep going with this one. Initially I was quite excited about it but the last third of the book has been a struggle. Maybe it's because although I know where the conflict is going, the action feels slow and - yes, go on, say it - boring. Or maybe it's just having to wrestle with my submission doubt and wishing I would hear back about it so I can get some clear direction about how to proceed. No chance of that in the near future!

It doesn't help having a bright and shiny new idea that's calling to me. It feels wrong to leave the climber story unfinished while I immerse myself in the excitement of a new story. Then again, a change is as good as a rest huh? Hmmm, might just go and do a quick synopsis... ;-)