Me: “Working.”

I’ve been doing a lot of that kind of work lately. Hours and hours of it.

It’s directly related to the revise-and-resubmit letter I got from an editor a couple weeks ago. At first I focused on the minor revisions to fix some less-than-heroic actions on my hero’s part.

That was the easy stuff.

But I’m sure if it were that simple she would have said, “Fix these and I’ll send you a contract.”

How’s that for wishful thinking?

Unfortunately, she also mentioned this pesky thing about the internal conflict getting in the way of them working together toward a common goal. But wait, I thought, what about them trying to stay alive? Find her friend? Stay alive? Hide from the police? Stay alive?

Okay, but I also see where she’s coming from. An agent made a similar point last year. I think the problem is that they don’t start really working together until the second half of the book. They’re stuck together, hiding out together, but totally at odds with each other over a secret the hero’s keeping.

It works for me. My critique partners and beta readers didn’t have a problem with it. But, the industry folks—the ones who rep authors or buy their books, the ones I need to impress—do.

‘Nuff said.

An R&R is hard because there’s no editorial relationship. I can’t ask follow-up questions or push back. I have to go with what I think she meant in her one or two sentences of feedback and hope I know what the hell I’m doing.

So, I’m back to staring off into space a lot, followed by flurries of scribbling in bright colors on too-small whiteboards, and almost no actual writing. There’s nothing to write or revise when I haven’t yet figured out how to keep the essence of the story I love so much, while making it better.

Read: publishable.

All this hard thinking is the reason I started tracking my hours—though I don’t count the time I ponder my MS while driving, running, trying to sleep—in addition to my word count. If I had to gauge my progress by word count right now I’d be looking for a day job again.

Instead, I’ll go back the hard work of staring off into space.

Photo credit: Hansjorn [Public domain, GFDL (www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], via Wikimedia Commons

Writing’s been keeping me engaged for three years now. In fact, if you ignore the complete lack of pay, this is the longest I’ve held one job, um, ever.

I’m not lazy. I just crave constant mental challenge. Once I master my work I’m ready to move on, but writing is the one thing I can never fully master. Even if I were flawless in all aspects of craft—oh, if only!—there would always be a new story to challenge me, new plot points and characters to work through, research to be done.

Writing has held my attention over the last three years, but each year has had a different focus or feel to it. That keeps it interesting.

2009 was all about the joy of writing, happiness at finally finding something to keep my brain engaged, and getting to know other writers. I started learning how the industry worked, and began to see that it was changing rapidly.

2010 was the year of craft. I read as many books, blogs, and articles as I could get my hands on. I took online classes, attended my chapter meetings, worked with a critique partner, and entered contests. I attended my first national conference and volunteered at the national level.

2011 was the year I hit my stride as a writer. I got the Golden Heart nod and placed well in several contests, and I started getting requests for my full manuscript, rejections with feedback (including one revise-and-resubmit from an agent), and requests for my future work.

I took a leap and started teaching my online Scrivener class, getting back to something else I’ve always loved. But the other thing that happened in 2011? I faltered as a writer. I got too caught up in the craft and structure and forgot how to just write for the story first. I focused too much on my process, my stories’ publishability, and other people’s visions for my work. I got too involved in volunteering, email loops, and social media.

I went off track.

So, 2012 is the year I take back my writing. I’m scaling back my commitments to more manageable levels. As for my writing, this is the first year where I feel like I might actually be ready to deal successfully with a publishing offer. I even got my first revise-and-resubmit from an editor.

Now that I have all that craft swimming in my head and know (better) how to layer it in during the revision process, I’m focusing on the writing joy again.

Maybe this won’t be the year of the contract. And that’s okay too.

People who’ve never written before wonder how we can stand to wait three, four, five, or eleven years to get published. Sure, the anxiety and impatience are there, but the longer I’m in this game, the more I realize how ill-prepared I was in the early years, and how much more I still need to learn.

I have to believe that persistence will pay off. So, until I get the call, I’ll be happily working on my future backlist.

In fact, if you have an iPhone or iPod Touch, you’ve probably already done it on iOS 5.

Here’s how it works.

• Hold down the key for the appropriate letter (e.g. A if you want ä).
• A window of character options for that letter will pop up.

• Click the one you want, or press the corresponding number on the number keypad.

That’s it!

This should work with all compatible software (e.g. Word, Scrivener, TextEdit, Pages, Evernote), but it only applies to letters, not characters like © or ® or ∞.

If your OS version won’t let you access the characters as described above—or you need other types of special characters—this link has a good chart of shortcuts for special characters on Mac (and PC) keyboards.

And, of course, there’s always the Special Characters menu (Edit, Special Characters in Scrivener or Insert, Symbol in Word).

Ênjøÿ!

Photo credit: KEYBOARD-NO © Yusaku Takeda | Dreamstime.com

Ignore the rules?

When I started writing, three years—oh my God, three years—ago, I didn’t know anything. I had a story I wanted to tell, and I enjoyed sitting at the computer every day banging it out.

Ignorance is bliss.

I’ve learned a lot since then. Some of it’s been really useful stuff. POV, setting, hooks, active language, effective dialogue, pacing, conflict. Critique partners, agents, editors, and contest judges have provided excellent feedback on what does and doesn’t work.

They have also—for better or worse—passed along the “rules” of romance writing. Some good, others not so much, though all generally well-meaning. And every one of these is broken—and done well—in many of the bestselling books out there.

• The hero and heroine should meet in the first few pages.
• Once the H/H are together, they need to stay together as much as possible for the rest of the book.
• Keep the timespan of the story short for better pacing.
• No prologues.
• No head hopping in the same scene.
• Write mainly from the heroine’s point of view.
• Don’t let the H/H have sex too soon.

I’ve had editors and agents say things like, “The Caribbean? Oh, well, readers prefer books that are set in the U.S.” Or, “Military suspense is good as long as it’s not too involved in military day-to-day stuff.”

I need that thing Dumbledore has—a pensieve—where he can pull memories out of his head so he doesn’t have to deal with them. Something insidious happens as you learn “the rules”.

Like the child whose purple trees and orange grass slowly begin to conform as she progresses through school until she can’t conjure fantastical art anymore, a writer is in danger of losing the creative spark if she lets all those notions of what will and won’t work bog her down before she’s even started.

There’s no doubt that craft is imperative. My early manuscripts pretty much suck from lack of good craft, but the story was exactly what I wanted it to be by the time I was done.

I don’t want to self-edit before I even start typing! I already have enough unconscious filters at play already.

So, I’m not entirely sure how to get back to writing the book for myself first and everyone else second. For now, I’m trying to ask myself, “If I wrote this the way I really wanted to—as if no one else would read it—what would happen?”

Any suggestions for how to toss the “rules” and just write?

Photo credit: DO NOT ENTER SIGN © Aaron Kohr | Dreamstime.com

Except that time I used Shift+Delete (bypasses the Recycle Bin in Windows) on some photos of my kids…

So maybe you noticed in WordPress that you can now drag and drop photos into the Add Media box instead of clicking the Select Files button to retrieve them. I assumed this meant from Finder or Explorer, which it does.

But then one day in a fit of laziness, I tried dragging a picture directly from iPhoto. It worked! Hot diggety.

For example, what if I wanted to insert a photo of one of Bermuda’s many chickens that roamed our resort? Here’s what it would look like being dragged from iPhoto onto the WordPress Add Media window.

Dragging rooster pic from iPhoto to WordPress

And there’s the lovely rooster himself.

Well, then I got to thinking as I’m wont to do. Would it work on an attachment in an email? Why yes, yes it would.

What about a photo in an MS Word for Mac document? Um, no.

But hey, it was worth a try.

So, thanks to WordPress for giving us an easy way to add photos. Have you found any other programs that work with the drag-and-drop feature?

UPDATE 1/12/12: You can also drag from the Show Downloads button on Safari (upper right corner, circle with down arrow button). Super handy for adding media downloaded from stock photo sites!

There’s something to be said for accountability. Writing down how much I spend, eat, or write makes me more likely to stick to my goals.

In 2010, I only tracked my word count, but that didn’t tell the whole story. Some months I had almost no words, but I’d still been working hard. So for 2011, I tracked all of the hours that I deemed directly contributed toward publication or making money: revising, researching, reading craft books, preparing query letters and contest entries, taking workshops, and teaching Scrivener classes.

Because you wouldn’t expect anything less, here’s a snapshot of my productivity for 2011.

• Total (net) words written: 173,617 (14,468 words/month average)
• Total writing/revising hours worked: 377.25 (31.5 hours/month average)
• Total hours worked on all writing-related activities: 736.25 (61 hours/month average)

Words by Month - 2011

(Note: Word counts are net. During NaNo my manuscript contained 50,200+ words.)

Hours per Month (blue=writing/revs, red=total) - 2011

May and August have a low writing/total ratio because I was teaching classes. June was similar because of the RWA conference.

What’s not included is the time I spent on writing-related activities that don’t directly contribute to more words, better writing, or making money in some way: blogging, tweeting, checking my Facebook author page, reading/answering emails, volunteering for RWA groups/events, and Citizens Police Academy classes.

Hits:

• Golden Heart final, The Sandy Contest win, Between the Sheets Contest 2^nd place
• Attended RWA National Conference and pitched to an agent and editor, both of whom requested
• Received eight full requests and four partial requests
• Received four rejections with specific feedback, including one request for my next project
• Won NaNoWriMo
• Proposed and taught two Scrivener online classes, and figured out how to host the class myself in 2012

Misses:

• Only met hours-worked goals in four of 12 months
• Didn’t meet manuscript completion goals

Plans for 2012:

• 1500 words/day, 5 days/week when writing
• Two hours of revisions/day, 5 days/week when revising
• Complete and polish current manuscript, and one additional MS
• Stay off email, Facebook, Twitter, and blogs until writing/revising goals met
• Teach two Scrivener online classes
• Attend RWA National Conference and WRW Retreat
• Win NaNoWriMo

Photo credit: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Triskele-Symbol-spiral.svg

This year, we went to Bermuda. We knew it wouldn’t be 80 degrees like the Caribbean—70 still felt darn nice, by the way—but we’ve been wanting to check out the island for a while now.

The water is several amazing shades of blue, the island is clean and well-maintained, public transportation is convenient and extensive, and people are friendly. On the flip side, food is very expensive, and nearly everything shuts down for Christmas Day and Boxing Day (which were back-to-back). Oops.

Still, we discovered hidden caves, cute towns, interesting flora, and gorgeous ocean views at every turn. A few highlights (click for larger slideshow)…

I know I said the blog was on a holiday hiatus, but I’m so excited that I got my registration page up and running for my next Scrivener class, I just had to share. If you’ve been patiently—or anxiously—waiting for it, you can find out more and sign up on the Scrivener Online Classes page.

I hope to see you there. Happy holidays!

I’ll be back on December 29^th to review 2011 and look forward to 2012.

Photo credit: FIELD COVERD WITH SNOW © Simon Krzic | Dreamstime.com