Writing

I work alone… but I don’t. The writing is definitely done alone, but I like to talk over my ideas and discuss possibilities and more importantly – problems. Several of my friends and beta readers are involved in this process. The discussion often begins with my friend Jennifer. I’ll tell her what I’m working on, and ask her what she thinks about something or someone. The resulting discussion usually helps me sort out the who or what issue that I’m working on. In one book, I was stuck with how the lead character would decompress at the end of the day. While I like to drink heavily and break things to relieve my stress, that wouldn’t be something this character would do. We talked for a little while about the character’s job and the role of the character in the book and Jen said, “She’d get on her elliptical with her iPod and tune out her day.” It’s a tiny part of the book, but a huge key to this character. With that comment, I saw the character as a whole person for the first time.

Arwen and I took a road trip two years ago and I brought my notebook along. I was trying to figure out why someone would put out a contract on my lead character. We spent at least an hour tossing ideas back and forth. I knew what I wanted as soon as I heard her say, “…a son in prison.” We discussed many other things, but in the end, I went back to that one comment and focused on it. As soon as I typed the words, “Joe’s testimony had been key in sending him to prison,” the entire backstory played out in my head. All I had to do was write it down.

My friend Dave is often the catalyst for some interesting turns in a story. Dave was in the Marine Corps for some years and he always has a unique take on behavior. Many of his smart a** comments in our discussions become the basis for things in my books. In a recent email, he was telling me about his platoon sergeant, who was really a corporal – I’ve bleeped his language.

“He was a wiry, black guy who also happened to be a Recon Marine (go figure, right?) Had his Marine Corps jump wings and scuba bubble and everything. F***er loved to P.T. and ran our 18-year old d***s into the dirt. Also taught us a lot of cool, useful s***. Lots of good tactical grunt s***. (Of course, he also told us to check for d**** on the hooks if we ever got to the P.I., how to check to see if our San Miguel was ‘green’, that Trobicin was your best friend, and which fat broads to stay away from at the Del Mar E-club). He was also a HUGE fan of Monty Python, The Black Adder, Rudyard Kippling, Warren Zevon and skinny, tall, slightly-dikey, white girls. We all thought he was pretty cool.”

Just in case you’re confused – he thinks this corporal walked on water. So what did I get from that email? I have a clear picture of one of my side characters and an immediate idea for a scene in my book about two very different generations of Marines and the connection that music provides. Sometimes, when I’m getting ready to write a specific passage in which one of my Marines is talking, I’ll call Dave and talk to him for a few minutes. He has a very military cadence to his speech. It’s like watching westerns when you’re going to write a conversation involving a Texan. All you’re looking for is the rhythm.

And then, there’s my friend Pat. He’s my devil’s advocate. I tell him what I’m doing, he makes fun of me, and then he picks apart my idea. He asks really tough questions and neither of us is offended when the other one calls us an idiot. It’s not a book until we disagree on at least two things and sort out the details. He once prefaced his written comments with, “Okay, take a breath, read my comments, walk away and scream – then call me and we’ll talk.” I didn’t scream, but we had a “lively” discussion. Pat also firmly believes that I like Marines way too much to have ever worked with them, and I remind him that I’ve known him for over twenty years and still like him.

The point of all this is that I like to toss the ideas around with my team. Some things sound really good in my head, but not so great when I say them aloud. Sometimes, my friends will say something that sends me down another path from where I was going when we discuss the idea of what could happen versus what should happen. These conversations are often question and answer periods about the character or the location in which I have to defend and justify my character’s behavior and reasoning.

Most often, the conversations tell me what I don’t want to do. I’m able to clarify my characters and plots by saying, “No. He wouldn’t do that. He’s the type of man who would do this.” Because sometimes, knowing what is not happening is more important than knowing what is happening. Did that make sense? Well, it did in my head. See why I need a team.

There are characters who flash through my head like wild bikers. They zip in and out, cutting off other characters, and laughing with impunity at their own devil may care behavior. They have no regard for the plot or the timing. But the roar of their Harley combined with the flash of their grins makes them irresistible to me, and I try to grab onto their stories and jot them down before they disappear. I don’t always know how they will fit in the story arc, but I never ignore them when they show up.

Other characters peek out from behind something, only letting me catch only glimpses of their true selves. They aren’t ready to venture into the spotlight or stand up and announce themselves at the weekly support group meeting. “Hello, my name is Ichabod. And I’m a goofy character in Lynne’s imaginary world.” They are developing into real people, but they aren’t there yet.

Most of my characters simply wander into my head and pull up a chair to the table. I know who they are the minute they walk in, and I know which story they fit in. They show up fully developed with a rucksack full of back-stories and attitude. The primary role players are usually in place as soon as the first ideas flash through my head. I often don’t know their names, but I know them.

Casting a book must be similar to casting a movie. I find myself muttering things aloud as I work out a character, “He’s like Peter Lorre without the bug eyes.” Or, “He needs a sidekick. Like Tom Arnold to Arnold Schwarzenegger in True Lies.”

Many of the characters in my head are like actors who audition for roles in my books. Am I looking for short or tall, thin or fat, funny or morose? Some of them can do it all, but a few are those character actors that appear in show after show. The ones you can’t name, but you know their face. “You know. That guy. He’s in everything for God’s sake! What the hell is his name?”

In the concept for the new book, my first image was of a young military woman who’d worked her butt off to get a certain job in a certain place. I saw a single scene in my head between this woman and an unpleasant individual and I knew I’d write this book.

From the moment I had the idea, I saw her in my head. I could describe her, I understood her, I knew her. But for over two weeks, she didn’t tell me her name. I simply knew her as Sergeant. Only when I sat down and wrote the opening paragraphs did she tell me her name. USMC Sergeant C.J. MacLean, hometown Niles, Ohio. I still don’t know if the C.J. stands for anything or not – no one has asked her and she hasn’t volunteered the information to me. Knowing who she is as a person doesn’t mean that she’s revealed all her secrets yet. That’s what makes this so fun – I don’t know where C.J. will lead me yet. But I keep hearing an explosion in the back of my head so something bad is going to happen to somebody.

Well, I’m seven days in and I feel pretty good about the opening. The first words are down and I am ready for some real trouble to start. Something will be going boom soon. Sadly, the opening and some ideas are all I have right now. I can feel the story building, and I think I know where I’m going, but I’m not convinced that I have all the details right.

Sometimes when I have a story idea, the whole thing unfolds before me. It’s a bit like shaking out a tablecloth. When you look at a stack of tablecloths in the linen cabinet, you only see a tiny slice of the cloth. Yellow. Yes, that’s the color I want today. But when you pull it from the cabinet, you see a larger segment of the cloth and realize that it’s yellow with some embroidery along the edges. It’s suddenly so much more than just a rectangle of yellow cloth. Then, when you shake the cloth open to spread on the table, you find the center is full of beautifully detailed stitching. Flowers and birds create an intricate pattern across the table. Each flower and each bird is its own character in the larger scene.

When I sat down to write Protecting Parker, I saw the whole tablecloth at once. I may not have seen all the embroidery in detail, but I saw the entire thing. As I worked and reworked the story, the details became clear and I was able to share them. When I started A Shared Fear, I saw maybe half of the cloth and hoped that the rest would be just as rich when I spread the tablecloth. There was a lot more work involved in creating that book.

In this story, I have only seen the opening – the slice of yellow in the stack of tablecloths. My experience tells me there’s some great needlework on that cloth. Now if I can just get that darn cloth out from under all the other ones without tipping over the stack and getting distracted by all the other pretty colors…

I have discovered that I’m not happy unless I have a project. It really doesn’t matter what the project is – I’m just a person who has to be working toward some type of goal. Mr. Scott is simply pleased that I’ve quit with the home improvement projects and moved on to genealogy and writing. Neither of those pursuits require his participation or the unexpected expense of a qualified electrician.

After the challenge of the NaNo Write, I took some time off from new writing projects. By the end of last November, I had four novels published and four more written. That was eight novels in about sixteen months. The four books waiting for edit were in various stages of beta read and two were nowhere near ready to go to the editor. I wasn’t burnt out, but I did need to regroup and take stock of where I was going. I had too many story lines and too many characters in my head to do a great job on the finish work.

Both of my editors have real lives and weren’t interested in working over the holidays, so we happily put everything on hold until mid-January. I stepped away from the books and worked on my genealogy for several weeks and then returned to the books with fresh eyes before sending them to the editors. Edits are their own source of stress and a different type of work. Rewriting is simply not as much fun as the original creation. But if you can get along with your editor, the work can be rewarding and the book is better because of that hard work. I like my editors and I appreciate what a challenge my writing can be for them. I am still overly fond of commas and simply uninterested in the proper use of the semicolon.

However, I’m now feeling the need to write something more than blurbs and blog posts. I think I have a story to tell and I have the opening. So, how to challenge myself this time? I have the basics, but not the details. I think I know where this new story is going, but I have no clue how it ends.

I’m giving myself sixty days. That’s starting with a basic idea of a character, a location, and a potential story line. I need to work my way through the character and story development and then do the outline. We know that I can write the basic book in about thirty days, but that was when I already had the story plotted and outlined. I’d had Saving Emily rolling around in my head for almost a year before I sat down and told it. I’ve had the beginning of this story in my head for all of about two weeks. That gives me until 15 May.

Yup! Crazy runs in the family and I’m about to prove I got my fair share…

Sixty days to get from the idea of the opening to completion of the first draft.
Target goal 65-75,000 words.
Yup! Crazy.

Referring to item seven and eight in my previous post, I have spent more than one morning on Amazon looking at product descriptions simply trying to figure out what I think makes a good blurb. What I discovered was that blurbs are like covers – some were great works of art and some were so God-awful they made me point and giggle. Blurbs vary greatly by genre as you might expect. After all the emotionally charged words that would intrigue a romance reader would hardly work well for a military action novel. I also discovered that some of the biggest writers in the world don’t even have a damn blurb.

I did find this to be an entertaining way to spend a morning. I decided to look at several different genres to see how the blurbs vary. I started with romance, knowing that the pointing and giggling would put me in a good humor. It did. However, it was also an incredible revelation to the variety of styles. As I went through the other genres I found many of the same unusual things. I’ll use romance as the examples – and no it’s not to pick on them, it’s because we all get the story line, so there’s no confusion.

Standard blurb:
Girl meets boy, reason they can’t be together, will their love be strong enough to survive the situation?”

Non-standard blurbs:

Bullet statements – I kid you not. I saw several instances where rather than write a paragraph, the author (or publisher) simply made a list of story points. I found this in several genres.
Ex:
Susie Q is rich and willful, but is unhappy because (fill in a reason)
Derek P is a self-made man who’s sick of the rich and willful.
John Q thinks his daughter Susie needs a life lesson and cuts her off.
Derek P hires Susie Q and sparks ensue when he finds out who she really is.
I have nothing against the book – it’s probably a well written romance, but this is not a blurb. This is a pitch to an editor: “I’ve written this story…” and then the four lines above. That may sell an editor, but it’s a lousy sales pitch for me as a reader.

The snippet: The author picks a particular bit of their story to use as their blurb. This is not a new style of blurb. We’ve been seeing this for years, but it’s still not the norm. Sometimes in romance, it’s a steamy lead in or a moment of conflict. In military or action, it’s the moment where the hero either faces his nemesis or is in danger of not surviving the conflict. I’d much rather see this than the bullet statement style. At least with this style, I can see if the writer is okay or just a superlative junkie.

The non-blurb:
The most annoying of all product descriptions is the one that doesn’t exist. This is where either the author (or more likely the editor) has inserted a review of the book.
Ex:
(Insert author name) has written another sweeping historical romance that will leave you breathless. More pretty prose about the author’s style and past magnificence, but nothing about the damn book.

If I already know the author I may not really need a blurb, but it annoys me to be stuck with a bunch of reviews and backslapping instead of something about the story.

Dear authors and publishers – a non-blurb is just freaking rude. If you think you don’t need one fine, don’t enter one, but don’t shove someone’s happy smoke up my tailpipe. That’s not a description. There’s a review section for that crap.

The only time I have ever found this useful is if the review is negative. I recently clicked onto an author’s new book to find a review in the product description that began with, “Mr. (author’s name) normally writes taut and exciting thrillers. This is not one of them.” I actually read the rest of the review then. The reviewer went on to say that the author (who he had become quite fond of from his earlier books) had become “hit or miss” in his recent releases and this was not one of the good ones. Now, what nimrod publisher posted that in the product description instead of the blurb? If I was the author, I’d be changing publishers.

After a long morning, I came to the simple conclusion that less is more when it comes to a blurb. Two to three sentences should be enough to get the reader interested. But, I also believe that simple is better. All the adjectives and adverbs in the world will not make your blurb better if you don’t have something interesting to begin with.

There are few things in the world that I hate more than writing the “product description” for my books. Better known as the blurb, this is that annoying little paragraph that we put on the back cover of our books so prospective readers have an idea what the book is about. It’s the most difficult task in the novel process as far as I’m concerned. What I believe I need is a professional blurb writer. Someone who can read my 80,000 words and condense my novel down to a short paragraph that is an interesting and exciting tease for my book. Of course, due to budget constraints, that simply isn’t going to happen.

So, what’s a girl to do? Well, I fell back on what’s worked for me in the past when I want to learn something:

1. Bitch, moan, and complain about my lack of skill.
2. Fall into a small depression about my lack of skill. Nothing serious, but a little brooding never hurt anyone.
3. Attempt to take the easy way out by simply writing something and seeing if my fat cat lazy muse will show up and help out.
4. Bitch, moan, and complain about my lack of skill and the muse’s vacation schedule.
5. Try multiple more times to create something interesting.
6. Complain on Facebook to my sympathetic friends about my lack of skill.
7. Spend a morning on Amazon looking at other people’s blurbs.
8. Denigrate the blurbs as possibly being worse than the one I wrote.
9. Bitch, moan, and complain about my lack of skill.
10. Throw everything out and write two sentences that sum up where the book is going without giving anything away.

So, let’s back up just a bit in the list to number five. I could recite many happy sayings about trying and failing, and how failure makes you stronger, and all that other goody two-shoes crap, but the truth is that I have never met an author who wrote a great blurb on the first try. We are simply too close to our work when we begin this process. We’ve spent a lot of times, writing and rewriting. Now we’re expected to compress all that work and time into a few sentences. That is so not happening for most of us.

Perhaps I’m doing this in the wrong order. Maybe I should write the blurb before I write the book. I can often tell someone what the book will be about before I write it and become overwhelmed by my characters. I know more than one writer who works this way, so perhaps I should give it a shot. Write the blurb and then put it away until the book is complete.

I’ll be talking about items number seven and eight in a separate post. There is simply too much to share about those steps to add into this post.