Ask Dr Jax - Dr Jax Responds Part 2

The good doctor responds to more questions...

Dr. Jax, do you think we're aware of the events in our past which have shaped us? Or is it more common to simply assume you're all right, and that you're more or less 'normal'?

Dr Jax: Yes, most people think they're okay. However, the things that shape us the most are the relationships we have with other people rather than events. And the most important relationships are the ones we have in the first two years of life - these echo throughout our lives. Yet we have no episodic memory of those years - or if we do, then we usually remember them wrong because episodic memory is unreliable. Of course, we are often aware of events in childhood and we may attach importance to those events but in reality single events shape us much less than relationships do.
Jackie's note: Here is where psychiatry and writing fiction diverges a little - as writers of course, we have to attach some importance to events as these are easily read signposts to the reader of our character's conflict. However, I think given how important relationships are to people, it's a good idea to examine an event that has happened in a character's life and make sure to assess how that event related/changed the relationships the character had with others, not just how the event changed the character themselves. As an example, the character with the abusive father - obviously the first time his father hit him will be a big event that will have an impact (no pun intended!) on him, but it's good to think about how that event affected his relationship not just with his father, but also with his mother (was she there? Did she see it? How did she react to it?) and brothers/sisters etc.

I have a question about my hero. He's a workaholic who can't acknowledge that he's capable of feeling love and believes that he doesn't want or need a permanent relationship--believes he's better off on his own. (loss in his childhood, father had stiff uper lip attitude and wouldn't talk about the loss so hero learnt to supress his emotions). The problem is that, going on this, this character doesn't sound much fun (very work- focussed and buttoned up) But I don't want him to be like that. I want him to be outgoing and full of charm. Is this inconsistent with the above? Would a man who's closed off emotionally (and scared to love) have culitvated an outgoing, charming image? What would his unconscious psycholigical motive be?

Dr Jax: Sounds like you want your hero to be two different types of people! However, you can make his behaviour more consistent. If his father was a stiff upper lip type of guy, then you need to decide whether your hero becomes like his father, or consciously tries to do the opposite. Perhaps he has developed a charming, debonair exterior as part of a decision not to let anything matter too much to him. Emotions are painful so he won't let himself feel too deeply, he just wants to have fun, float along the surface of life etc, etc. Unconsciously this is to protect himself from feeling because feeling equals pain, but consciously he perhaps would be telling himself it's because he doesn't want to be all buttoned up and stiff like his father.
Jackie's note: My chess hero has problem with emotion too. But I've chosen the opposite to charming and debonair. I've made him very serious and logical. No, he's not charming and flirty because he views being charming and flirty as pointless and he doesn't need it to get girls anyway. Consciously he is contemptuous of people who are emotional because it's logic that's important, emotion clouds thinking (he's like Dr Spock without the ears!). Unconsciously he is trying to protect himself from feeling because he is afraid of what happens when he lets himself feel - bad things happen when he gets angry. No, he's not the life of the party but that's part of his character arc - what happens when you give him a heroine who won't let him get away with being all serious and logical, forcing him out of his comfort zone?

So, I have a question. An overriding theme present in every one of my books is self-esteem (and I wonder what that says about me!?!). And all of my characters seem to define themselves through their work (or lost job, in some cases). I wonder how big of a role work plays in other people's lives. Is it common for people's self-esteem to be wrapped up in their job?

Dr Jax: Yes, very common, especially if this is the only part of your life that is going well. If other aspects of your life suck (such as love/social life) then work becomes extremely important to you because it helps you feel better about yourself. It gives you validation from the outside world etc.

So big heaps of thanks to the good Dr J!! Hope that was helpful to people. If there are more questions, I can do one more post so let me know. The doc is happy to answer any more - especially as he loves talking and hates the writing up so this is the perfect balance for him. :-)
If not, I'll run an Ask Dr Jax post next month.

Thanks all for your fabulous questions!

Ask Dr Jax - Dr Jax Responds Part 1

Got some great questions for Dr Jax - thanks everyone! I'll post some answers today and then some more tomorrow. If any of the responses prompt more questions, feel free to ask. I'll run this until the end of the week.

Have also decided to make the first Monday of each month a regular Ask Dr Jax Q&A. So if you haven't got a question this time, there's always next month.

Righto, before I launch into the answers, here is the usual disclaimer. Dr Jax is a psychiatrist, not a writer or editor, and any advice he gives is based on what would happen to real people in real life situations that may not be suitable for fiction.

Alrighty.... (Dr Jax's answers have been paraphrased)

Question 1: "I'm thinking oppression could break someone...or strengthen them to fight/rise up....does their personality type of other background play a part?

Dr Jax: Yes, background and personality do play a part. If their early experiences have taught them resiliency - ie good attachments to people, even if it was just one person who cared about them - then they would be more likely to deal resiliently to life's tragedies (fight in other words).

Question 2: Firstly, is it credible for a teenage boy to have a goal to be a volunteer doctor in third world countries, due to an unconscious need to prove his self worth following the deaths of his mother and brother in an accident? Secondly, is it credible for that boy, now a man, to leave Africa and his work as a volunteer doctor (and his unconscious quest for self worth) in order to return to the UK to be a father to a child he never knew he had? Or would he stay in Africa? Note: I've paraphrased this.

Dr Jax: Firstly, yes, it's credible for a teenage boy to have this goal - more plausible if he was the oldest brother (I met many people like this in med school!). To answer the second question, you need to consider what kind of person he is. As a kid was he serious? Or did he like to have fun? Was he curious? Or was he a cautious kind of person? What was he like at school? What were his favourite subjects at med school? etc, etc.
Then you need to look at that in conjunction with his past. How does he view fatherhood? Is being a good father important to him? Or does he put the needs of others before his own needs?
Also, consider how working in an under resourced third world country would have changed him. Because it would definitely change him.

Question 3: How do you start helping someone get over a phobia? Spiders for example.

Dr Jax: There are two ways of dealing with phobias. Flooding - which is sticking the person in a room full of tarantulas and keeping them in there until they're no longer scared. This works but is obviously very traumatic and not as effective as the second option. Systematic Desensitisation is the other way. This involves firstly learning deep breathing exercises and relaxation techniques (no mention of spiders at all). Then the 2nd step might be thinking about spiders as you practise your deep breathing. Third step might be talking about spiders- still deep breathing etc. Fourth might be looking at pictures of spiders while deep breathing, etc, etc. This goes on until you are able to look at real spiders and not feel scared. This process might cover a considerable period of time.
People's background and/or personality doesn't make any difference to the treatment.

Question 4: When figuring out conflict, we often use a character's early experiences with people to determine how they view life when the story opens. What I'd like to know is when they have these early experiences, how do people normally react? For example, if a character had an abusive father, would he become abusive himself or would he be more likely to abhor violence?

Dr Jax: People generally react in two ways to early experiences. They either identify with the treatment or they do the opposite. In this instance, your character may subconsciously decide that violence is okay and go on to be an abuser himself. Or he could decide that violence is never the answer and eschew it entirely. Note - when people do the opposite, they almost always do it in an angry way or in a way that makes a statement. For example, your character may tell his father angrily that violence is not the answer or deliberately not fight back as a way of making his point.

Okay, I'll post up Part 2 tomorrow. I have paraphrased people's questions and also Dr Jax's answers (let me know if I've got any of your questions wrong!). Feel free to post if you have any other questions, or use the contact tab just below my blog header!

Ask Dr Jax - Questions Please

All right, the people have spoken!

Bring your tricky conflict questions to Dr Jax! He's a qualified psychiatrist and can give real life advice on any thorny behavioural issues. Would your characters really act the way they do? Or would they do things differently? How do people generally respond to tragedies in their lives? Etc etc.

You can either ask your question as a comment or, if you don't want to post it, feel free to use the contact page (there's a form) just below my blog header and email me. If you're not comfortable with specifics, then just be as general as you like. But don't do the 'my friend is writing this story...' cos that's a dead giveaway. ;-)

Disclaimer: Dr Jax is a psychiatrist, not a writer or an editor. He gives real life advice on how real people behave, not fictional characters. However should your book go on to be published subsequent to his advice, feel free to pass on any royalties (or chocolate). ;-)

Dr Jax Helps Out

Was going to do a long and involved post today but since my youngest daughter broke her leg yesterday (jumping off a bunkbed trying to touch a light!), I am at her beck and call instead!

Still, thought I'd mention that I was talking to Dr Jax over the weekend and asked him if he might like to do a Q&A on conflict. We're told we have to be psychologists with our characters and their conflict so I thought conflict issues from the point of view of a bonafide psychiatrist might be kind of helpful. He was amenable so what do the rest of you think? Got any conflict questions you want to ask? A particular issue or how people behave in general? Let me know what you think would be most helpful!

Jackie Has Some Good News For a Change

Yes, my successes have been few and far between of late but I found out this morning that I have finalled in the RWNZ Great Beginnings Contest! Big woots for me!! I've entered this competition for the past three years with no luck but this time round hit the mark and I'm extremely pleased!

I'm even more pleased because the kind of writing I fluked for the High Five, I put consciously, using all I've learned about conflict and character, into this story. That didn't mean I expected it to come anywhere. The judges could easily have hated my story and my characters no matter how well they were written. But they certainly liked it enough to give it some good scores and I'm pretty damn thrilled about it.

The story isn't a Riva story, it's a Presents/Modern, which made it a nice change for me. Anyway, have no idea how the final judging will go, suffice to say that I'm pretty happy with what I've got already. :-)

Some wise people have told me to celebrate any success in this tough industry, so here's what I'm doing - Hoo is passing round some vintage Krug on a silver tray...please, help yourself. And while you're doing it, share some successes you've had lately. It doesn't matter what it is, big or small, let me know so I can raise a glass!

Carving Michelangelo's David

I feel a bit like Michelangelo trying to carve out David from a block of stone at the moment. I keep chipping away thinking I see the figure inside, but then realise that my David looks more of an ogre than a svelte young man. All the proportions are wrong and he's wearing clothes instead of a fig leaf. So I have to do some more hacking, some more cutting down and polishing. I'm hoping it'll be worth it.

Currently my Chess masterpiece is becoming the new never-ending story. A month and a half on the first three chapters. Longest. Time. Ever. And you know what? I think I may have to can those chapters. Why? Because they are based on an earlier incarnation of the conflict and now do not have any relevance to the rest of the story. They involve the heroine and hero working together. But they never work together again and their conflict is not based on a work situation. So why have I still got them working together?? How does it forward the conflict? It used to, but since I've fiddled with the heroine's conflict, it doesn't anymore. Argh!!

Sigh. This is becoming a watershed ms. I think I've learned more writing this than I have any other story. More about my process, more about what I've been doing wrong in previous stories, and more about how to fix the things I've been doing wrong. At least, I think I'm fixing things. I could be making it worse of course but the only way of knowing that is by sending it away. But I can't do that until I finish the damn thing.

This is why fixing an old ms can be harder than just writing something new, especially if the problem was character and conflict. I mean really, given the amount of rewriting I've been doing, I'll just say that in fact, this IS a new ms. Because changing a conflict or changing a character can have wide-ranging effects. A character that acted one way in the beginning, may not act that way after the change. And if the plot is based on what the character does - which is most category - then what the character does will in turn change the plot. Can anyone say nightmare?

Anyway, what else can I do but keep chipping away? And hope that soon my ogre will start looking less like this:


more and more like this:

Jackie's Year of Surviving Rejection

I've done a post on the Sisters' Blog in celebration of our blog's first birthday. It's on...drum roll.... surviving rejection! If you're keen for a bit of Chumbawamba, then head over. If you're still in denial about the possibility of being rejected then keep away... :-)

Character Lightbulbs!

Yeah, I'm finding I'm having lots of lightbulb moments with my chess ms. In fact, I'm beginning to think that my chess story is becoming a bit of a watershed ms. I am learning so much with this one. I knew at the beginning of the year that it was proving to be quite a learning experience but it's becoming even more of one now. Maybe it's because I'm taking my time with it and really thinking about it. Or maybe it's because my weaknesses are so much clearer now and I am working to fix them. I'm not sure. What I do know is that this story WILL be much stronger than anything I have written to date and that can be put down to the fact that I know my characters. This time round I have thought about their pasts in great detail and if there's something I don't know about them that I need to know, I can actually tell when that moment is and can stop and think about it.

What do I mean? Well, for example, whenever I am introducing a bit of conflict and find myself writing the same thing over and over again without really capturing what it is I want to get across, it's usually because I don't know what it is I'm trying to say! A specific example may be: 'He reminded her of her parents. Their lies, their judgements, the way they made her feel small'.
This does tell you something about her conflict. She had issues with her parents, they lied and judged her and made her feel small. But there are some questions unanswered: what did he do to make her think of her parents? What lies did her parents tell and did they tell them to her or to each other? What about their judgements? Did they judge her or each other? And what made her feel small? The lies or the judgements or both? And why did that make her feel small?
Obviously you don't answer all those questions immediately, they are revealed as the book goes along, but what you have to do as a writer is know the answers to the questions. And what I think really builds the characters, and what I have NOT been doing, is having an example to illustrate the answer.

So if her parents had lied to her, thinking about a specific lie at a specific time by a specific person, can tell you so much more about a character and their conflict that some vague generalisations. Example: When she was ten, her beloved cat went missing and her mother told her that the animal ran away from home. However that night, when she was supposed to be a asleep, she got up to get a glass of water and spotted her father in the backgarden digging a hole, her cat lying dead on the grass next to it.
Doesn't that tell us so much more about her and her parents and their relationship? And also gives us insight into the motivations of her parents too. It tells us she had a pet she loved. That her mother lied (to protect her maybe?) to her about what happened to it. That her father was in on it. And that by burying it at night when they knew she was alseep, they were trying to hide the cat's death from her. Perhaps this is a terrible moment for the heroine. Perhaps finding out that her parents are not always truthful causes her to subconsciously be suspicious of anything they might say. What is certain is that it gives us more information than 'her reminded her of her parents. Their lies, their judgements....etc'.

It's those little snapshots of pivotal moments in the characters lives that really - for me at least - build up a great picture of who that person is and what in their past might had led them to think the way they do. Of course, what I'm missing from that example and what it is just as important as the situation itself, is how the heroine acts in response to it. Did she not say anything to her parents about her cat or did she confront them?

So what helps you build character? Anyone got any useful examples?

Character Traits vs Conflict

Janet asked me an interesting question about my last blog post and since I'm scraping around trying to find things to blog about, I thought I'd actually give my answer as a post. This comes with the usual caveat that my answer is my thoughts about the subject, thoughts that could be totally erroneous, sadly misguideded or plain old wrong. On the other hand they could be so totally brilliant that you will want to bow before the power of my awesomeness (presents and small tokens of thanks are always appreciated). :-)

Okay, so Janet ask me to give an example of the difference between a character trait and conflict. This was in response to me saying that what I thought was conflict in my heroine, turned about to be a character trait. So what do I mean?

Well, we're told that asking the 'why' questions are really important to figuring out conflict. And it's true, you do need to ask those questions. But my problem is that I didn't know when to stop! My heroine - I thought - is an emotional girl so I kept asking myself, "This is her conflict so why is she emotional? Why? Why? Why?". I kept looking for a reason for my heroine to not hide how she felt but there wasn't one that fitted with the idea of her I had in my mind. So there comes a stage where the 'why' comes down to 'well, they were born that way'. And if they were born that way, it becomes a character trait, not the conflict. So one of my heroine's character traits is that she has no problem with telling everyone exactly how she feels.

Where the conflict comes into it is how this character trait makes the character behave in response to certain situtions in their lives. Not hiding how she feels is NOT the conflict, but it does affect how she responds to the conflict. Does that make any sense?

My hero, on the other hand, is emotionless - which of course is a big lie because he's not really. But being emotionless is his response to his conflict. He's actually just like her, feels things very deeply, but unlike her, his experience has taught him that such emotions are dangerous and he won't have a bar of them. So he's shut himself down.

Here's another example. Perhaps you might have a hero who really, really likes cars. He likes the way they look and the mechanics and the speed, he's just right into them. And perhaps there's no reason for it, he's just always been the kid who loves machines. So his liking of cars is NOT his conflict. It's part of his character. But say he had a car as a teenager he lovingly built from the ground up, spent years on it, spent lots of money on it, it was his baby. And say his father decided he spent too much time on his cars when he should be in school and so sold his beloved car without telling him.... This is where his love of cars interacts with what could potentially be some great conflict, because it's not really about how much he loves cars is it? It's about how he views his Dad. How he responds to this would be a character trait. Is he the type of guy to head straight into a confrontation with his father? Or is he more of a restrained, quiet type of guy, who would say nothing but spend every resource he had finding the car and getting it back...(no you can't have this example, I've decided I'm going to use it. Hehe!).

So that's how I view character traits and conflict. Anyone got any more advice cos God knows, I probably need it. :-)

Heroines Do My Head In

Ah crap, nearly another week has gone by. I do have an excuse though. I have been...drum roll....writing!

What you say? Jackie Ashenden actually writing? Unheard of!

Yeah, yeah, I'm being sarcastic. I never really stop writing to it's no surprise. But lately I have been turning off the net to concentrate wholly on what I'm doing. And good thing too because my poor Chessman needs the attention. His issues are turning out to be waaaay bigger than I thought. He's a very closed off guy, very cerebral and, naturally enough, there is a reason he's like this. Yes, that's right, ONE reason. Not fifty million in the way I usually always overcomplicate stuff, just one. And that's where the whole keep it simple, dig deep stuff comes into it. Taking that ONE reason and exploring it, not chucking in a whole lot of other stuff like I did, say, with the heroine...

Women. Honestly, why do I have such problems with women?? Maybe it's because I'm a complicated girl myself, I dunno, but some heroines just give me gip. I think it's due to the fact that I've focussed on one character trait for this particular heroine and turned it into conflict, whereas it just should have stayed as a character trait. Does that make sense. Anyway, thanks to awesome CPs, I think I've ironed out that little kink. Like the hero, I've taken ONE thing she does (not one aspect of who she is) and focussed on that as conflict instead. Which may be a breakthrough for me. Anyway, Comic Book girl now lives! Woohoo!

So, anyone else mistake a character trait for conflict or is it just me??? :-)

Jackie Discovers The Holy Trinity - Character, Conflict and Plot.

Wow, slack blogger Jackie! *slaps hand* It's been a week - nearly. Groan. In my defence, I should say that I'm not online so much for a reason. Being obsessed by writing hasn't been good for me so I'm reconnecting with non-writing things, and that means less time at the computer and more time doing other stuff. So apologies if I've been slack at visiting blogs. On the upside, I am gaining some much needed perspective (slowly) and that's got to be a good thing, right?

Anyway, so my new process is actually going quite well. If you can consider spending three weeks on the first chapter 'well'. My usual modus operandi is to write like the dickens until the whole thing first draft is done, so as you can imagine, 3 weeks on one chapter is torture. On the other hand, it does mean that instead of getting halfway through and figuring out what my characters are like, which means another round of rewriting, I am getting a really good idea of them beforehand. And, what's more, when I run into a problem, instead of pushing through and writing it out, I am stopping and thinking about it. This is working for me, I gotta say. I have about four stories in the planning stages and all this character groundwork is proving invaluable. Normally I begin with the characters as people without pasts, their pasts only becoming clear to me as I go along, but now they have pasts right at the beginning! I can't tell you the difference it makes to the story, and to my writing as well. Doh!

Because it is all about the character. At least, the kind of stories I want to write are about the character. I don't think I truly appreciated before quite how true this is. I saw the conflict, the character and the plot as three separate entities and I treated them as such. But of course they're not. All three are inextricably linked. And, in my opinion, character comes first. You start with your protagonist. You decide who they are. What type of person. Then you give them some conflict - and the type of conflict that will provide the most friction given the person they are. And after that comes the plot - the story is driven by the choices the character makes and the actions that they take. That's a character driven story.

Now the above is just my own musings and how it makes sense to me. I don't know whether it's right or not and since I have been waaaaay wrong in the past, I could be waaaay wrong now. But I'm putting this into practice with the Chessman. Yes, my lovely chess player who fell by the wayside. I learned quite a bit while writing that particular ms, most of all about moving your characters to suit your plot and not the other way around. It was also the ms that gave me the first intimations of what a dog's breakfast I'd made of my Hammerpants ms. As you can imagine, I have a love/hate relationship with it because of that. Anyway, the long and the short of it is that I re-read it last week and discovered it's actually not sh*t. The heroine's conflict needs tweaking but the hero's is all there. And I'm also at the best bit - the black moment! So I've stopped labouring over rewriting the old ms for a while and I've gone back to my Chessman to finish it. Not sure what I'll do with it when I finish it but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. The main thing is though, that it's character driven.

I think. :-)

So how about you? Like character driven stories? Or are you a plot person?

It's Not A Rolls Royce

Just got back from an Easter trip to a place called Pauanui, where all the nobs in Auckland go to spend their holidays by the beach. Strangest place. You might get a vast mansion with a helicopter out the back and a huge boat in the garage and then right next to it will be an empty section with only a rusty caravan parked on it and tents with people sitting in deckchairs. Presents possiblities perhaps? :-)

Anyway, got some great thinking time in. Have come to the conclusion that I need to change my process. Yep, the way I write has been great for twenty years but if I want to write something for publication, I need to do things differently. Not radically so, I hasten to add. I'm still a pantser at heart and probably always will be. But the thing I need to do is concentrate on my characters before I begin to write. Normally I have a scene in mind and I dive right in, only to come up against the 'what would he/she/it do now?'. And I stop right there because I don't know my characters well enough to know what they would do. For months I've been thinking that it's the conflict I haven't sorted but it's not, it's the characters. I know who they are in the present - when the story starts - but I don't know their pasts, what made them the people that they are. And when you're writing character driven stories, you kind of need to know those details.

The ways you can get to know your characters are many and varied - character sheets and interviews and writing out scenes from their lives - but I've tried them before and they've never actually worked for me. Thinking does though. When I'm in the shower or folding the washing or just tidying up, I've found that thinking about my characters, their childhoods, their relationships with others, the kind of people they are, really works. For example, I'm rewriting a story I wrote two years ago but the conflict never gelled and neither did the characters. But I spent a lot of Easter thinking about the hero and heroine, trying to figure out what their conflict was and whether it fitted with who they were at the beginning of the book. Normally once I'd got one aspect right, I'd quickly whip onto the pc and start writing. But I couldn't this time round and it's a good thing, because I thought I had it all sorted and then realised I hadn't considered another aspect of their backstory which then didn't fit with the actual premise of the book. Sigh.

I don't find this easy. I'm a very impatient sort. I want to get to the good stuff, the real, emotionally wrenching stuff. I love the torture and the black moments. The joy and despair. I don't want to write the set-up and introduce the characters and their conflict. But of course that part is almost the most important part of it because if you don't do it properly, how are your readers ever going to be invested in these characters? How are they ever going to care about what happens to them and their story if they're not fully realised people?

Dr Jax has a great saying that he is fond of when he's building or preparing something:
"It's not a Rolls Royce." This basically means not to sweat the details, it doesn't have to be perfect.

I've always really liked this saying - it suits my impatient personality. But I think that if I want my stories to be good ones, I'm going to have to change my thinking around them because when it comes to writing, the details do matter. And when it comes down to it, I want to write Rolls Royces not Daihatsu Miras.

Anyone else ever changed their process? Did it work for you?

Trying to Get Back Up Again

Well, I did think I would do a few more posts than this but my inspiration to write continues to go up and down like a lady of the night's underpants. Plus, my direction and confidence are wavering all over the place. It's frustrating. The worst part is not having anything else out there. If you haven't got anything on submission, it's like there isn't any hope and I hate that.

I do actually have a good many finished mss all stacked up on my harddrive but they all suffer from the same problem - chronic lack of coherent conflict. Yes, it's a medical condition. Incurable. Or given that the course of treatment is rewriting them completely, pretty much incurable. Am I being too hard on myself about them? Possibly. But I don't want to send anything that I'm not happy with. True, I'll always have doubts with whatever I send, but when I can see glaring faults, I just can't do it.

So what I'm left with is starting something new or rewriting. And at the moment, I am too daunted to do either. It all feels too hard. Especially writing plain old contemporary romance. Category makes this easy because that's all they publish. But if you don't write category or paranormal, or urban fantasy, or steampunk, or erotica, or suspense, how do you make your contemporary romance different to eveyone elses? Do publishers even want plain old contemporary, internal conflict driven romance? Or do you have to put a spin on it?

Sigh. Some days it's easier just to take to one's bed and eat chocolate. Happy Easter everyone.

Getting Back Up Again Or How Buying a Handbag Is Always a Good Thing

Okay, so I've been laying on the mat after the big KO for a while now. Plenty of you guys have told me to take it easy and be good to myself. Now, I'm not very good at doing that. My solution to feeling crappy about writing is just to keep writing. This is not a good solution. Not only does it only reinforce my feelings of crapness, but it doesn't help my writing either. Who writes well when they feel they suck? Not me.

So what did I do instead? I bought myself a handbag. There are two good things about my Hammerpants ms, the main one being prize money. Hehe. Here is a pic of the Handbag of Hope (Purse of Hope if you're American). It is blue, slouchy, soft and best of all, my phone doesn't get stuck waaaaay down the bottom so I don't hear it.

Oh and I said there was a second thing didn't I? Well, the second thing is that I'm pretty certain that I did something right in the first five pages of that ms. And I know what it is. I think I've said before that I suspected it was my conflict and character that was at issue and, yup, it is. The first five pages of the ms certainly sounded like I knew exactly who my characters were and what sort of conflict they had. The problem was, I actually didn't. Because I didn't think about it enough.

It's like when you do a mosaic. You set out some parts of it beautifully and it all looks good. But then you find some blank bits you didn't really see before. So you try to find bits to fit but they don't quite. They're the wrong size or the wrong colour. You jam them in somehow and from a distance it looks good but when you get up close, it's all wrong. The bits of you've jammed in don't work with the ones that are all set out beautifully. And the worst part is you kind of know you're wrong but you don't know quite why or how to fix it.

All my stories have been like this mosaic. They all look fine from a distance but when you get in close, there's a lot that doesn't fit, that doesn't work, that doesn't hang together nicely. So I have been trying to sort out all my pieces BEFORE I start the mosaic. This is - for me - extremely difficult because it's changing the writing habits of twenty years! Argh. Even the Handbag of Hope doesn't help much with this.

The result has been me spending at least a week on the first chapters of a number of stories. It's agonising to be honest because I'm desperate to get to the rest of the story, but I have to say, once all the bits of my mosaic have been worked out - the characters, the conflict, at least the inciting incident and a vague idea of the plot (pantser, yes, that's me) - it's amazing how much better that first chapter is. And I've come to the conclusion that if something doesn't quite feel right with a character - a bit of the conflict or an attribute or whatever - then I should NOT write until I've figured out what it is and put it right. Sigh.

Anyway, the main thing is that yes, I have been writing. I have a chapter ready to go for a contest that dear Dr Jax and my CPs think is better than anything I've done recently (yeah, I wanted to put that in there because God knows, you have to grab those lovely compliments when you can). I have another ms that I will rewrite for Carina. And then another couple of stories that I am just going to write and see where they take me.

I have my mosaics all laid out and right at this moment all the pieces fit. It's a good feeling to be able to fix that particular problem. Of course there will be other problems, others I don't know about yet but that's the wonderful thing about learning eh?

So for those of you who are looking for some positive stuff after you've had your heart cut from your chest while it's still beating. By a spoon. Here it is: there is life after rejection. It may take a while but there is still creativity. And there is a lesson to learn from it. Pretty much what you choose to learn is up to you but mine is this:



Yep, I drink a whisky drink....;-)

A Murder of Crows

It's been a while since the last post - I usually blog more than this. But to be honest, I'm trying to drum up some enthusiasm. I've got a cold, which doesn't help, but there's also a murder of doubt crows sitting on just about every available flat surface in my office. Some days it's just not even worth going in there.

I think the hardest thing about this particular point in time is going ahead when there is no glimmer on the horizon, not even a tiny spark. You hear people's miraculous stories about how, when they'd decided to give up writing for good, something would magically happen - a lost sub becomes found or a ms they'd forgotten they'd sent gets the nod - but you know, those things only happen to the lucky few. It's when there isn't the prospect of even the most minor of encouragement that it gets very, very tough.

My last blog post was pretty positive. But positivity is one of those wonderful things that seem to come and go - at this point, it's mostly go. You can't stay positive all the time. It requires a conscious effort and to be honest, it's bloody tiring.

It's probably not the best day for a blog post actually. Because if you're looking for some brave examples of how to pick yourself up after getting the big KO writing-wise, don't look at me. I still haven't managed to regain consciousness let alone pick myself up.

I guess the thing with being on the ground is that you can't fall any further.

Anyone got a scarecrow I can borrow?

Kicking Fear's Butt

So I've been contemplating this mountain thingy here and while I have, I've been thinking about my writing and all those bloody rejections. Especially the last two. I found it very interesting that in the ed's opinion, the Hammer Pants ms, the one I'd written 18 months ago, was stronger than the one I'd written 6 months ago. At first I was gutted about this - wasn't I supposed to be getting better not worse? But then, after I'd thought some more about it, I figured that actually, she was right. Why? Because I remember writing that first chapter. And I remember how I felt when I was writing it: I wanted to write without worrying about stuff, without worrying whether I was showing vs telling, without worrying whether the hero/heroine were sympathetic enough or whether I had enough conflict etc, etc. So I stopped worrying. I wrote it just for fun. And lo! it was good. Of course, by chapter 2 I realised my conflict problems had raised their ugly head again and I couldn't seem to untangle the difficulties, so I put it aside. But that's a whole other blog post. :-)

Writing without fear. That's what I was doing. And that's what I HAVEN'T been doing for the past year. Nope, the past year, I've been writing scared. Scared of getting it wrong, scared of messing it up somehow. Certainly all the Rs I'd got seemed to indicate that I wasn't getting something right and sure enough, that little belief kept getting reinforced and poor Jackie kept getting scareder and scareder. Her writing lost her spark. All the life got drained out of it. And, most important of all, she lost her joy. Nothing like a self-fulfilling prophecy huh?

Fear will do that to a writer. It'll suck the creativity right out of you. And it's a b*tch to overcome, let me tell you.

The good thing is that at least I have an idea of where I might, potentially, be going wrong. So at the moment I'm trying feel the fear and write it anyway. :-) I'm trying to recapture what I felt when I wrote the Hammer Pants ms. I'm trying to just be in the moment with my characters and not think about whether this ms works for Riva or Presents. Or whether my hero is being too alpha. Or whether my heroine is being too unsympathetic. Or what to do with it when I type The End. I just need to switch all that off, immerse myself in the story, and start enjoying it again. I need to stop writing for an editor, for a reader, for my CPs. I need to write for me first.

This is something that a lot of people have been saying to me. And it's not that I haven't listened, it's just that I haven't understood why it's important. Well, I do now.

So goodbye creepy fear. There is no place for you when I'm writing. You can haul your sorry skeletal carcass out of my study and you better do it before I go all Chuck Norris on your hide. Sure, I know you'll be back when I hit the send button again but hopefully by the time that happens, I'll have so many subs out that you won't know which one to attach yourself to. So asta la vista baby!

And while fear is making itself scarce, I shall leave you with the words of wisdom my five year old daughter gave to me. When I told her about my R she said, 'Were you writing quietly and carefully, mummy? You must always write quietly and carefully."

Anyone else writing quietly and carefully? Or alternatively, giving fear a good roundhouse kick to the head? :-)

The Fabulous Rach!

And one of my lovely CPs (name drop, name drop) has just sold her contempory romance to Carina Press!!!!

Break out the champers Hoo, we're having a sale party!!!!

Big huge, mega congrats, Rach my dear!! The story is awesome and so are you. :-)

Check out the call story here!

Jackie Contemplates the Mountain

So. Um. Hi. My name is Jackie and I'm a wannbe writer. A romance writer.

Extremely brief history: I started pursuing publication seriously three years ago. Since then, after a brief blaze of glory and the odd flash of brilliance, it's since been a gentle (not) slide into relative obscurity. Yay me.

So here I am, in obscurity, back at square one.

It doesn't look much different since the last time, the couch in the corner is still there and no one's cleaned up the empty dutch courage glasses. The view out the window has changed though. Before, there was a whole lot of fog preventing me from seeing the route I have to take, but it's crystal clear now and boy, that's a bloody HUGE mountain just sitting there. To be honest, it's giving me the sh*ts. In fact, for the past week I've been seriously considering whether I can climb it again. Whether I want to even start climbing it again.

But you know, just because you get a rejection, it doesn't stop the ideas from coming. You can take the writer away from the writing etc, etc. I have been writing for thirty years and I'm not going to stop now.

Still.

It's a pretty big mountain.

I might just sit here and contemplate it for a while.

Someone pass me another glass of dutch courage.

Blog! The Decision!

Thanks everyone who left a comment regarding this blog. It means such a lot to know everyone still likes what I put out there and that I'm helpful in some way, even though at the moment I feel like the biggest fraud in the world.

So, I guess I'd like to say that I'm going to keep going with this blog. Yes, at times, especially the bad times, it's a drain and I wish I didn't have to say I failed. But I think on the whole, it's a 'good' pressure. It's certainly helped me to keep going this far so stopping now, when I probably need to keep going the most, seems shortsighted. Plus, I'm afraid I like all you guys (and lurkers!) far too much to give you up. And yes, I do like writing it! In fact far more than I ever thought I would. So, sorry, you're stuck with me. :-)

There is a couple of things I want to say though because I think I need to say them. Firstly, there may be people who read my blog and wonder at my intensity about this writing business. Yes, I'm an emotional person and I do have a fondness for the dramatic but that's not the sole reason I have found this so very hard. About 8 years ago I lost a family member and afterwards - as you do when this kind of thing happens - I thought to hell with a life half lived, I need to follow my dream, if nothing else to make the pointlessness of the loss mean something (sidenote: hey, conflict alert! Quick, someone nick that as a conflict because if you don't, I will! hehe) . Now, unfortunately with this kind of decision, the dream ends up meaning more than it perhaps should which makes its failure that much harder. I don't know whether I need to step back from this or not, but I have to say, it has driven me much further than I thought I would ever be prepared to go. Still trying to figure out if that's a good thing or not.

Secondly, the Hammer Pants ms. Why was it R'd? Well, its faults were many and myriad. But they all stemmed from the same thing, the thing I have ALWAYS struggled with: it's the conflict stupid. No, the ed didn't say that specifically but she did point out issues in the characters' backstory that I skated over, that I should have dealt with and - as is always the way - you go, 'of course!' Why didn't I do that?' And I didn't because I didn't know what those issues were. Why didn't I know? Because I hadn't ever got a handle on the conflict.

And herein lies the big problem with my writing. I have not 'got' conflict. I've done everything the eds suggested - character biographies, interviews, writing out aspects of their backstories. Everything. I tried SO hard. And I learned heaps in the process. But it didn't work because I have been starting out wrong every time. I still have not understood simple, deep conflict.
And this - I think - is where I am hampered by two things: 1) Up until 2 years ago, I didn't read romance. All I read were fantasy/SF and literary fiction. 2) I like to do things my own way and I like to be different.
Issue number one means I do not have a background in the conventions of genre fiction. I didn't even know what conflict was, let alone the fact that romance novels have to have an HEA. I didn't know that heroes and heroines have to be sympathetic and aspirational and flawed and all those other things, because they don't have to be in literary fiction.
Issue number two means that I want to be different. I didn't want to write those stock conflicts - woman loses father, then loses husband and so is wary of love for example. I wanted my conflicts to be different. But of course, since I had no idea about what conflict was - or rather, I'd grasped some aspects of it, but not others - I didn't know how to make them different. Lastly, I didn't really understand that there's a reason those conflicts pop up again and again - because they work! Duh.

Sigh. So if you take that, add the fear of making things too dark, and you have a recipe for disaster. It's very sad because my dear old Hammer Pants ms was something I wrote 18 months ago. The characters do have life and energy that my most recent stuff doesn't have, which just goes to show how horrible the last year or so has been for my writing. But the main thing Hammer Pants didn't have was conflict. And I knew that. I just wasn't expecting it to win that contest, and I wasn't expecting a request. And I panicked with the partial. But, to be fair, I think even if I hadn't panicked and took the time to do it properly, I STILL wouldn't have got the conflict right. Maybe I needed this rejection in order to learn what I still don't know.

There are those who say I probably shouldn't list my problems like this so publically. That editors/agents may read this and view it poorly. Well, that may be the case. And if there are editors/agents reading this, know that this is me making every effort I can to learn my craft in order to make better stories. But I also wanted to let you guys reading now know that even after working with an editor for so long, there are some things that still don't fall into place. Maybe if I'd fluked one right ms, I may have had the added pressure of having to do a second book in order to handle the conflict issue with more speed. But whatever the case, I didn't fluke it and my luck ran out.

Anyway, so where do I go from here? I don't know. I need to learn about conflict because I suspect my problems with it are not specific to Mills and Boon but to the whole romance genre, and in which case, my other mss will not fly anywhere.

Whatever the case, I have been ordered by Dr Jax to take two weeks off writing. This is a horrible thought, especially as two new ideas popped into my head just yesterday (yeah, can't stop the ideas!) but I'm going to do it. I'll let the ideas percolate and sit there. And maybe if I'm still excited by them, I'll go ahead and write them. But until then, it's no writing for me.

I've also decided to take a week off blogging/blog reading too so apologies if I don't visit you or leave comments. Know that I will be back soon once I've cleared my head and the grief of the lost opportunities isn't quite so raw.

And once again, thank you all so much for reading and for your support. You are all wonderful.

What To Do With This Blog?

Okay, well, here I am. And wondering what the next step is. At this point, you can pretty much take my advice with a whole salt pan because clearly, I do not know what I am doing with my writing.

Actually no, that's bollocks, I DO know what I am doing. I've learned HEAPS in the past year. But what is clear is that the way I am doing it is not right. They say one door shuts and another closes. :-)

Anyway, this does lead me to question whether I want to continue with this blog. And for that I need you blog readers. I pretty much need to know if this crap I spew is of worth to people.

So my questions to you are thus:

1. Do you want to keep reading this blog?
2. If so, what do you like about it that keeps you coming back?
3. Is anything I say worthwhile and useful to you, and now that the M&B door has shut pretty firmly in my face, are you still interested in where I go from here?

Rock Bottom

Well, they didn't the Hammer Pants. I was right all along. It was pants. And the even worse news? It's back to the slush for me.

There really isn't any further to fall right now.

So. Really. Where do I go from here? Where do I want to go from here? Am I any good at all? Or is the universe trying to tell me something and I've been too stupid to listen?

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...

Ten Ways to Make Your Heroine Suffer - plus some Pimpin'

Right, I thought I'd do a companion piece to my hero torture list since fair's fair, turnabout etc. Time for the heroine to get her turn. Now, I do find writing teh ladeez a tad difficult - women are so complicated! - so if anyone wants to add to the list or disagree, feel free! And remember this is just a few things you can do to make your characters suffer. The ways are as endless and varied as the conflict... hehe...

1. Give her a hero who is the antithesis of everything she believes in. (He's arrogant and uncaring. I hate him).
2. Make him absolutely physically irresistable to her. (But man, he's soooo hot! Hateful male)
3. Give him one (or more) qualities that she can't help but admire (He's so arrogant! But...he really loves puppies and I can't but like a man who loves puppies).
4.Make him get in the way of her goal. (I want to be head of the corporation? Why is he so determined to stop me? Hateful male!)
5. Have him do something for her that changes the way she thinks about him. (Oh he's such an arrogant SOB. I hate him! But then, he donated all that money to the puppy shelter to keep it running...)
6. Make her fall in love with him. (I hate him so much! But the puppies...wait!...No!....I can't!....Noooooooo!!!)
7. Have him refuse to talk about his feelings (Why doesn't he want to talk about this? I can't understand it. Doesn't he know how important it is?? Hateful male).
8. Have him do something that makes her think he hasn't changed after all (he's completely destroyed my chances of promotion! Why would he do that?? Why do I STILL love him! Hateful male etc..)
9. Get her to make her declaration of love to him only to have it come flying back at her - because of course, it's all got to be on her terms. (He didn't want my ultimatum that I'll marry him only if he stops standing in my way of promotion? What? Why not? Hateful, arrogant male. Why do I still love him? Why???)
10. Make her realise that he isn't the only one who needs to change if she wants to be with him. (Wait! Is being with him more important than being the head of the corporation....? Why do I need to be head of the corporation anyway? I just want to be with him and the puppies! Uh oh...)

If you want to go get some awesome examples of both hero and heroine torture, then go no further than the fabulous Natalie Anderson. I'm doing a bit of pimping for her since she's a fellow Kiwi and her latest release kept me up till 12.30am last night! The End to Faking It was a really emotional, intense, sexy read and I just loved it. Anyway, if you want to go get it, you can from the M&B site or go to Nat's page on FB where she is doing an excellent giveaway. Cue the 'free stuff' woot! Details here.

And of course, if you're of a Modern bent, then Ms Maisey Yates is also a great torturer past compare. Marriage Made on Paper is now out and for really great hero torture, you can't go past The Inherited Bride.

So, anyone have any more handy tips for heroine torture?

My Heroine Hell

So there I was, whipping along with the Chessman, 15k in three days and thinking "I SO rock at this writing thing" etc, etc, when suddenly, at 39k, everything came to a crashing halt. And the problem? My heroine. As you who read this blog know, heroines make me want to tear my hair out. They have to be sympathetic yet flawed. Not so different that the reader can't identify with them, but different enough to stand out from all the other heroines in this world. They have to be aspirational. They have to be someone the reader can imagine being. They have to be strong. They have to be simple (for category, their motivations etc must be simple) and yet more complex than a stereotype. Oh and yes, they have to be original.

Easiest thing in the world. Not.

So, the problem of my heroine was this - I kind of knew bits of her, but there was an element that I was missing that would have solidified her on the page and in my head. Do you know what I mean? It's hard to describe. But the essence was that I realised that all she was doing was reacting to the hero. He'd do something, she'd react. And the problem with that is she wasn't actually taking charge of the plot. It was all being driven by him. Why by him? It's not just because he's an alpha. It's because I knew him. I know what he'd do in a situation, I know his conflict, I know his feelings about things. And so because I didn't really know her, he was taking over, the dear, sweet, darling man (yeah, baby, it's all about the hero).

Now, normally when this happens, I push through and finish the thing and then go back and fix the problem, but this time I figured I really had to stop and do something about my heroine. My black moment wasn't going to work, let alone the HEA, if I didn't know who the hell she was. So I had to figure her out which - as you all know - is not easy.

After much hair pulling, I think the reason why I couldn't get a handle on her is that my initial idea of her was actually too difficult pull off. She was a drifter, someone without any idea of what she wanted to do. She was goalless. The problem with a heroine like that is if she doesn't know what she's doing with her life or what she wants, then neither does the reader. And that's not particularly aspirational or sympathetic. It also plays merry hell with the pace. I'm not saying you can't have a character like this, it's just hard work. And God knows, getting this stuff right is hard enough without giving yourself a difficult character to pull off. Keep it simple stupid. :-)

So, figuring out characters... For me, I have write the whole first draft before I know them. Character interviews, all that kind of stuff doesn't work. It's not until I'm writing that I figure it out. Oh and discussing ideas with the CPs helps a treat too. And all it'll take for me is one suggestion and then suddenly it'll come right (like it did in this instance).

What about you guys? How do you figure out yours? Do you have to write the whole thing first and get to know them as you go along? Or do you know everything before you write?

Oh and my heroine? Yep, figured her out finally. She's a passionate artist who draws graphic novels. And no, they are NOT cartoons...

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!

A Very Sassy Correspondent

Hey everyone, just thought I'd let you know that we have a new feature on the Sisters' blog - the Sassy Correspondent. Jo Dixon is our correspondent and every Friday at the end of the month she will be doing a guest post. Today is her first post so do pop over and say hi. She is awesome and finalled with me in the RWAus High Five contest. She also has excellent taste in men. :-)

Oh and for those of you looking to achieve mastery in your writing, here is exactly how to do it (link courtesy of the most excellent Trish Wylie. Follow her on Twitter!).
The 30 Steps to Mastery.

For the record, I am at step 18.

Jackie's Character Defining Epiphany

Never let it be said that I am one to dwell (actually I do dwell but I am trying not to do so today). The R has happened, I am now officially over it. Moving right along.

And I am moving right along to a little epiphany I had while having coffee with an awesome writing friend last week. There I was, moaning about my R and generally having a good vent, and the conversation moved on - as it does with writers - to our latest WIPs. Well, I don't know about you but I could bore for New Zealand on the subject of my WIP. My poor friend probably couldn't get a word in edgeways about hers, I was too busy hogging the conversation with mine. Anyway, I digress...

This is my chess player WIP I'm talking about and it's a holiday fling/unexpected baby story. Now, the problem with these is that in order for the baby to happen you have to get the h&h together early (duh). And I could not get my h&h together. Lots of sexual tension but they just weren't feeling it - she wasn't feeling it actually. So my friend asked me a very sensible question. "Why would she sleep with him?" Simple huh? And you know what? All I could think of was 'because he's hot'. Can anyone see the dreaded 'sex without emotion' trap opening up to swallow me??

So, what I had to do was to think of a reason she would sleep with him. Why him, out of all the other hot guys in the world? Why is he the one who really floats her boat? What is it about him? And in thinking about this guy, I suddenly realised a problem that I have got into in the past year or so. I couldn't think of why the heroine would sleep with this guy because I hadn't defined him enough. He was hot, he was cerebral, he liked playing chess but that was about it. And that wasn't enough to make him special to the heroine.

And this is my problem. I've learned a lot of craft in the past year and to be honest, sometimes it paralyzes me. I've got my conflict simmering away in the back of my mind because I'm now deciding this before I write, and when I'm writing that vital first chapter I'm thinking 'now, here's this character's conflict, how does that make him the person he is today? How does he act? What does he think?'. So off I go, writing away, and then I write something down like 'He always hated people who were late'. Nice and definitive and - more importantly - character defining. But then, Jackie thinks 'hmmm, would his conflict make him hate people who are late? Or wouldn't he mind? I don't know'. And so I delete it so I can keep my options open, just in case it turns out that in fact, he doesn't mind people who are late. Can you see my problem here? Every one of these little sentences that define character and I am deleting them because I don't know whether that's how they would act or not. Which is why, when I'm halfway through, I run into the heinous problem of not knowing how my characters would act in a certain situation because I haven't defined them enough! Nightmare.

I like to keep my options open, that's why I've been doing it. What if I need the character to not mind someone being late? If I don't define it, then I can adjust it later. But you know what I'm doing? Dr Jax pointed it out to me - I am tweaking the character to suit the conflict. Making them be who I want them to be and not who they are. And in what are supposed to be character driven stories this is not a particularly good thing to do.

Another part of my worry is that perhaps the reader/editor won't accept a character's beliefs given their particular conflict. Thing is, at this point, I know everything about the character but the reader doesn't. All they know is what you choose to tell them. Hey, if your hero hates people being late then as far as they're concerned he does. They're not thinking 'hmmmm, not sure about that given his conflict.' As long as you give him a good enough reason for hating people who are late, then that's all good as far as the reader goes.

Which brings me to the part that I am hoping will go much better for me. If I define who my characters are - or at least signpost - in that first chapter, authoritatively and with confidence (not 'sometimes he didn't like people being late' or 'he kind of got annoyed with people being late'. Try 'he hated it when people were late') then I will know how they act in certain situations later on. I don't need to go 'wow, what would he do here?' and get stressed about the hundred different ways he could act because I left my options open. There is only one way he would act. The heroine is late and so the hero, because I told people in that first chapter that he hates people who are late, is annoyed with her. I don't need to think 'now, will he be annoyed? Or wouldn't he mind?'. Nope, he's annoyed.

Now, I do think about the mss that did well a lot. What did I do right that time and not in all the others? For the Hammer Pants that won that contest, I'm pretty sure part of it was because I defined the hero and heroine very strongly in those first five pages. Now I wrote that not caring about conflict, not worrying about keeping my options open. And clearly that worked. Of course, I ran into huge problems in chapter two because I hadn't got the conflict right but hey, I had two great characters in those first five pages!

So, what I need to do is find the happy medium. Have an idea of the conflict, but start with the characters. And when conflict and character meet up, tweak the conflict not fiddle with the character!

Dr Jax gave me this little thing piece of advice that probably many of you know already from school/university etc but I think it's great for writing. It serves as a good reminder to me that my job is to tell the reader about my characters right from the get go, so they will then want to read on, and do it in as clear and obvious a way as possible:

Tell them what you're going to tell them. Tell them. Then tell them what you've told them. :-)

SYTYCW - The Aftermath

Things to do with your form R:

1. Print it out then burn it.
2. Print it out, pull it to pieces very, very slowly. Then burn it piece by piece.
3. Print it out, frame it, stick it on your wall and stare at it every day, brooding on your revenge.
4. Print it out, put it on the ground and stamp all over it in sharp stilettos.
5. Print it out, wave your recent contest win certificate in its face screaming 'in your face, form rejection!'
6. Hit the delete key and send it to your Recycle bin, then take out the trash, baby.
7. Do nothing with it. Leave it in your inbox and never think of it again.

Okay, we can safely say that I did not do number 7.

First up, big heaping thanks, gratitude and endless supplies of your favourite tipple to all you lovely people for the hugs and suppportive comments. You guys are - honest to god - the reason I am still here, still writing, still waiting in Unpublished Author Waiting Limbo (UAWL). Without you and the CPs I would have given up and gone home.

Still, I won't lie. Getting a form R for SYTYCW has made me a stupid, blubbery, hopeless mess. It's made me feel like I haven't learned a thing. that I'm going backwards. Now, I know this isn't true. I know there are a hundred and one different reasons for forms, that they can have nothing to do with your writing or your story. That you can't let them get you down, that you need to get over it. I do know all those things. But those are all intellectual responses. It's the feelings that are the tough part to deal with because I am an emotional drama-queen kind of person.

With Rs, I know I have to get to the bottom before I can climb back up the other side. I have to wallow in the sense of failure, the doubt, and, yeah, the jealousy that others are doing better than I am. If I'm lucky my CPs will bear with me while I vent a little bit - because I have to do this as well otherwise it'll eat me up inside. But it's only once I've done all this that I can let it go and start feeling better about it. No, it's not an easy process but it's the way I am and I just have to go with it. Most of the time I come out the other side feeling positive and ready to tackle things again but sometimes the process goes on for longer than a couple of days and it takes me a while to let go of it.

Anyway, it's taken a while for me to let go of this. And I probably still haven't quite yet. It's thrown me into a huge spiral of doubt about my other submissions too. Because how can it not? If you don't get a reason for why something was rejected, then how do you know you haven't repeated it in your other submissions? But that aside, I've had lots of great advice from very wise people about what I should do with this particular sub. I'm still not quite sure where I'm going to take it just yet. I've heard that it's wise to change it if you're going to resub but as I don't know what's wrong with it in the first place, I'm not sure what to change. The writing I'm assuming is not the issue since (yes, I shall blow my own trumpet) the writing has netted several contest placings and a revisions on a full. So I can only assume it was the conflict/characters. Which means changing everything. And I don't know that I want to do that.

I guess I shouldn't pout too much about it though. The sub was me trying a new line, always a bit of a gamble. And it probably didn't help that I was trying to do things a bit differently. It's something I always try and think of when I'm writing a new story - how can I make my story different? The problem with doing different is that sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. Most of the time it hasn't but I guess the fact that I've still got an ed willing to work with me means that somewhere along the track, doing things differently has been a good thing.

In the meantime I have finished the rough draft of another partial, my chess player. Yes, that's something a bit different again, which will either work or it won't. But I guess that's my way of challenging myself. Anyway, that brings the grand total of rough partials to five. How's that for not giving up?

As for that form R, which of those options do you think I did? ;-)

SYTYCW? No, Apparently I Can't

Which means I got an R and a bog standard R at that. Thanks but no thanks, your story was 'not strong enough'. Now, of course, Rs are not new to me. But this has the dubious honour of being the first form R I've ever had. No, I've never had one. Welcome to the jungle, I hear you say. And fair enough, it's probably about time the negative karma comes round to me and balances things out. I have to be honest with you though, I like my own jungle where all my Rs have feedback!

Anyway, there are various negative ways of looking at this:

1. I have learned nothing in the three years I have been honing my craft.
2. My synopsis was NOT the best one I'd ever done, even though I thought it was pretty good (see number 1).
3. I got the line completely wrong.
4. I got the voice completely wrong.
5. The chapter sucked. The synopsis sucked. My writing sucks. I suck.

Or there are the positive ways:

1. They had so many entries and since mine was one of the last, they wanted to get rid of it as quickly as possible so a form was quickest.
2. The wrong editor read it and perhaps someone from the UK office would have been more favourable to it.
3. It was a gamble and it didn't work. Still have two other subs in...

Notice how the negatives outweigh the positives? Still trying to come up with some more positives!

What didn't help is that the ed I have been working with for my Riva subs let me know that she won't be able to get back to me till mid-March. It's not her fault and I'm really happy that she let me know but....man, I'm getting really sick of being in Unpublished Author Waiting Limbo!

Okay, so sucky day for me today. I'm still at the bottom of the well and currently have no idea how to climb out. Hugs appreciated though.

Valentine's Day in Limbo

Okay, so, since Elissa nailed shut the escape door in Unpublished Author Waiting Limbo, I am now trapped here. Which means you will all have to put up with me moaning about it until I manage to swim the lakes of fire, slay the two-headed dogs, manage to scale the nine hundred million mile high barbed-wire fence, and somehow unlock the fabulous double doors that lead to Published Author Waiting Limbo. So if you all get sick of me, blame her. ;-)

In the meantime, since it's Valentine's Day I am going to give all you wonderful blog friends a little gift for making Unpublished Author Waiting Limbo just a little more bearable (not to mention blocking all my cunning escape routes you evil wenches, hehe).

Now, I'm not feeling very Valentiney since all I got this morning was a cup of coffee and a stale croissant. However, the day is still young(ish) and Dr Jax may yet redeem himself. So, to that end, please enjoy this small inspiration on me. Hoo is making cocktails (Sex on the Beach if you must know) so feel free to settle in. For those of you who have already seen it (and I'm sure most of you have, do indulge again. Personally I think you can never have too much of a good thing. Especially if that good thing is David Gandy wearing next to nothing.



And I think it decides the argument about white speedos quite conclusively. Yes, they are sexy.

Happy Freaking Valentine's everyone. :-)

The View from the Bar in Unpublished Author Waiting Limbo

There is a special place that all unpublished authors wanting to submit to a publisher evenutally congregate in. It's called Unpublished Author Waiting Limbo. It's really not either heaven or hell but I'm going to designate it hell and give it it's very own special circle because Unpubbed Author Waiting Limbo can be torture. And it's not because Unpubbed Author Waiting Limbo is full of devils with pitchforks and crows pecking your eyes out. It's actually quite a nice place. There are comfy couches and seats. Magazines to read. A little library of books. There's a bar and music. A nice fire going. It seems comfortable. But that's just on the outside. Inside, every single author is torturing themselves with "what's happening to my submission?" Because that's the problem with Unpubbed Author Waiting Limbo. You don't know. And when we don't know, our brain makes up all kinds of stories about what is happening with your sub. Maybe it's taking so long because the ed loves it and is getting a second opinion? Maybe it's taking so long because the ms has gone missing? Maybe it's taking so long because the ed hasn't got to it yet? Maybe she hates it and it's gone in the bin and I didn't get the rejection email?
There are thousands of stories in Upubbed Author Waiting Limbo, all happening inside the authors heads. The human brain abhors not knowing and so when we don't know what's happening, it just goes ahead and makes stuff up for us.

Yay for brains.

Anyway, my brain is a master of making stuff up for me in the absence of not knowing. Currently, I have three subs out. Sub number one has been gone four and a half months now and since I have been passed to a new editor, I fear my Unpubbed Author Waiting Limbo clock has been reset back to sub number two, which has been gone six weeks. Sub number 3 is SYTYCW and two weeks after everyone else has had responses, I am still waiting for mine. I do not know why I haven't heard but currently my brain is telling me they either never got my entry or they've lost it. This is making Unpubbed Author Waiting Limbo a very unpleasant place to be right now and I wish I wasn't here.

I've got quite familiar with Unpubbed Author Waiting Limbo. It's actually become like home. I'm starting to put up pictures and photos, put a nice rug down, got my special pillow. But you know, it's not really home. I see people who have been here less time than me get that magical response which fires them up to heaven or down to hell, and I am jealous. I don't want to be here anymore. I want to move on to Published Author Waiting Limbo which is just through the fabulous double doors down the end of the hallway. The doors that are guarded by two-headed dogs, a lake of fire, and a 900 million foot high barbed wire fence.

Some days I am okay with being in UnPubbed Author Waiting Limbo. I've got friends here and the vodka is cheap and plentiful. But today is not one of those days. There is a way out though. There's a small doorway behind the bar that will let you crawl to freedom and I'm sitting at the bar contemplating that doorway right now. It's in the opposite direction to Published Author Waiting Limbo of course but there aren't any two-headed dogs or lakes of fire or fences. Just five minutes walk and I can open it and be free of Unpubbed Author Waiting Limbo forever. And it's starting look very, very attractive.

Yes, I know the best way to handle it is to write, and yes, some days that's what I do. But Unpubbed Author Waiting Limbo wears you down. It can sap your creativity. And no matter how hard you try, you just can't get your brain to stop thinking about why you haven't heard yet and devising various hideous scenarios about how lame your sub is and how your email filter is somehow deleting every email that could possibly be from an editor.

Today, as I am waiting for some sort of SYTYCW news and failing to get any, is a day of no creativity or inspiration. It's a day of frustration. It's a day where I think I will NEVER escape this place. I will be here for ever and ever and ever. It's a day of thinking that it isn't worth it and that it would be so easy to end the torture and just walk out the doorway at the back of the bar.

And right at this moment I want to.

Ten Ways to Make Your Hero Suffer

Still nothing from SYTYCW but apparently the last responses are going to be sent out this week. I am feeling extremely nervous as some Rs without feedback have already gone out so - like everything in this business - there are no guarantees.

Anyway, as a kind of distraction, I thought I'd turn my thoughts to torture. As you do. Hero torture in particular. Now call me a sadist but torturing my characters is one of my all time favourite things to do, especially torturing my heroes because let's face it, who doesn't love a tortured hero? Yeah, there is such a thing as too much angst, I know, so it's a fine line. But still....tortured heroes....mmmm...*drools*...

Ahem.

So, how does one torture one's hero? Well here's my top ten list of ways to get the best out of your hero's emotional pain. :)

1. Give him a heroine who is the antithesis of everything he believes in but then give her a couple of qualities that the he can't help admiring. Watch his agonies as he tries to tell himself he doesn't like her. Or admire her. No freaking (or other suitable F word) way!

2. Have your heroine be utterly irresistable physically to him so that he can't helping wanting badly, no matter how much his brain tells him don't go there. Oh wants...but shouldn't...but I do...but I can't...etc...

3. Make the heroine totally indifferent/unaware/derisive of his usual slick moves so that he has to behave differently and thus be out of his comfort zone if he wants this fabulous, fascinating woman. Dammit!

4. Have him tell himself that he doesn't really want her, that it's just physical. And then put him in a situation where he realises that actually, it isn't. Oh noes!!

5. If he's being overly alpha, have the heroine tell him he's being a jerk and if he doesn't stop behaving like an ass, she's outta there. No one tells me what to do! Ever! But she's leaving and I'll never... Double dammit!

6. Get him in a situation where he has to talk about his feelings with the heroine. Hey, he's a guy. Worst. Thing. Ever.

7. Make sure he's totally comfortable with the relationship he has with the heroine. It's just about sex. It's just about being friends. It's just about being work colleagues. It's cool. It's fine. Everything's dandy. Then watch him squirm when you make him realise that he's falling in love.

8. Put him in a scene where he thinks he's doing something nice for the heroine and then have it backfire on him because a) he's misjudged the heroine or b) the heroine's conflict means it's actually the worst possible thing he could have done (see heroine torture) or c) he still hasn't learned that he has to do things differently from the way he's always done them if he wants this, particular woman. Lots of bleeding potential here. Can also lead into number 6 for added torture. Or number 10 for maximum angst.

9. This is a risky maneouvre but you can have him do something alpha that makes the heroine laugh at him. This can be good for uptight, buttoned up heroes. And in fact, can be a real growing moment if he figures out that actually, being laughed at won't kill him and that sometimes laughing at oneself can be a good thing. Who doesn't love a hero who knows when he's being a d*ckhead?

10. Have him realise he's in love with the heroine and know that there is no way that he will ever - EVER! - be with her. (Unless he does something totally and completely way out like risking his heart and telling her he loves her).

Naturally all of this depends on the hero, his conflict and his motivation. And some of these may not apply to some heroes. Hey, there are guys who actually quite like talking about their feelings! But usually I find that if I put my heroes in any one of these situations, they don't like it. Don't like it at all. Just being cruel to be kind though. Because the more you torture your characters, the more emotion you get from your story, the more your characters learn and the more wonderful your HEA. :-) In this case, the end justifies the means. Hehe.

Anyone else got any good torture suggestions? Bring 'em on!

So You Think You Can Wait Part 2

I'm still in waiting room hell. Have heard nothing re SYTYCW this week. I'm almost wishing I'd got one of the Rs they sent out last week because then at least I'd know. But the worst part is that after waiting another week after everyone else, I STILL could get an R. Groan. Poor eds, they had flu and then a snow day, and no doubt are up to their eyeballs in lots of other stuff, but the timing sure does suck. At least I'm not the only one though. There are a bunch of us who haven't heard so that's something. Means I won't be getting too paranoid about whether they even received my entry!

Anyway, now I have to wait until NZ Tuesday before I find out anything. I know, drama queen right? Well, I'm afraid that's me. Drama queen extraordinaire. And when you know you're going to hear about a sub 'any day' you just can't just forget about it. At least, I can't. It has made writing this week very difficult (waking up at 5am every day to check your email gets a little tiring - and no, I didn't purposefully wake up at that time!). I've got 'waiting paralysis' basically. Plenty of stuff I should be getting on with but I keep coming up against the 'will they even want the rest of this?' barrier. Same with all my new ideas, especially since - when you're targeting Riva - you have no idea whether what they're looking for...

Well, that's my vent of the month. Anyone got any tips as to good distraction techniques?

Portrait of the Artist as a Young(ish) Romance Writer (TM)

In the absence of SYTYCW news (yes, still waiting), here's a picture of me being stupid.

A day or two ago, Joanne Coles suggested on Twitter that Maisey Yates needed bons bons and champagne and then she'd be a real romance writer. Following a discussion about stereotypes, Maisey instantly came back with this gorgeous pic of her as 'The Romance Writer'.

And since imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, here is Jackie Ashenden lounging on her day bed while she drinks champagne and eats chocolate, her faithful lapdog by her side.

Note: She is not wearing a gauzy dress but a gauzy top is de rigeur. She also had gold shoes. Ignore the jeans, though they are more Riva aren't they? Purists also may note that her glass is empty. That's because she's waiting for her buff and oiled manservant to pour her another. :-)


So, tell me faithful blog readers, what do you wear while you're writing? A gauzy, flowy dress? Chick-lit strappy sandals? Do you drink pink champagne and pet your toy poodle while you dictate to a minion? Or do you - heaven forfend - slop around in your pyjamas while you tap away?

My Chapter 8 Horror

In the absence of news from SYTYCW (due to a badly timed bout of flu - poor eds!) and, indeed, any news from anywhere else, I thought I'd do a post on that tricky beast pace.

First, let me set the scene:

Due to difficulties with a scene, Jackie asks Dr Jax to read the Hammer Pants ms for his opinion.

Dr Jax reads the entire thing and comes back with: "Chapter 8 is flat."

Jackie (hears 'your ms sucks completely and all of it is crap): "But there's some really important stuff in that chapter!" querelously.

Dr Jax: "There's too much exterraneous detail."

Jackie (hears: 'your dialogue sucks and so does your conflict'): "But I have to get over the conflict, the romantic connection, the past in that chapter! And they talk about important things!" reflects on awesome, emotional dialogue now deemed exterraneous detail.

Dr Jax: "Yeah but you could do all of that in half a paragraph."

Jackie (hears: 'The whole ms is terrible, you're a terrible writer, you'll never get this crap published'): "But how can I do that? I don't know what to do!!" wails, soul destroyed.

Dr Jax: "I don't know, you're the writer." callously.

Jackie flounces off in a huff.

Dr Jax: "But what about that scene you wanted to discuss?"

End of conversation.

Oh yes, I had lots of fun this weekend. But you know the real kicker? He was right!!! Chapter 8 was as flat as a pancake. There was no pace.

So what's pace? It's actually a tricky thing to describe and better people than me can say it better than I can but for me it's the sense of movement you get when you read something, the sense that the characters are driving you on to find out what's going to happen to them. There you go, see, I suck at explaining but when there is no pace, the scene feels like watching a dull play. Lots of people standing around talking and not much of anything happening.

And my chapter 8 was pretty much like that. The h&h were standing around discussing things but nothing was happening. Oh, they were discovering things about each other but really, the conflict wasn't being furthered in any way, shape or form. It kind of sucked.

How to fix it? Well, I've been steadily taking on board craft stuff for the past year and a half but the one thing I couldn't seem to get a handle on was Goal, Motivation, Conflict. I mean, I got the conflict part, and then I could understand motivation, but goal? Nope, that part of the jigsaw wouldn't fit. Until about the end of last year and you know when you have a lightbulb moment? Yep, I had one of those.

Anyway, chapter 8? No goals. The characters had nothing to strive for, no expectations about each other. This is not the big goals I'm talking about here, just the little ones. What did my heroine expect when she flew off to meet the hero? What did my hero expect when he came to meet her? I have no idea because I didn't put it in! He met her at the airport and they went straight to his house and had a lovely time. Oh and talked. Lots. But nothing really happened. Bah.

So, after a lovely chat with the CPs (who ARE writers so boo to you, Dr Jax!) I finally got a plan. I needed to figure out what my hero/heroine wanted/expected at the beginning of the chapter and how a response from one or the other of them would confound and frustrate those expectations. Example, what if the hero didn't meet the heroine at the airport like he'd told her? How would she feel/respond? And what would he do in response to that? And how would this change the relationship by the end of the chapter? Already I can think of a number of ways this would change things and make the chapter a lot more dynamic.

You notice that I'm doing this in retrospect? A good plotter would probaby have worked all this stuff out beforehand but I am a pantser from way back and this is just the way it has to be. Interestingly, this is the chapter that has always felt a bit lacklustre to me and thanks to Dr Jax and his crit, I now know why and thanks to the CPs, how!

Poor old Hammer Pants. It may not even get past the partial stage but it's been great in terms of learning stuff and identifying problems, I'll give it that.

Anyone else have any difficulties with pace? Do you know what you're doing when you write it or are you like me and only see it after the stupid thing is finished?

BTW, Kate Walker has done a fabulous post on voice. Go check it out if you're still unsure about what constitutes an author's voice.