Editing

Just a quick post because I have been busy all day with trying to squeeze time in to finish my editing on the book.  I don't have much more 'write' in me tonight. I did a lot of fixes, deleted commas, added some descriptors, and just wrote a needed transition scene.  I'll go back and re-read that tomorrow when I'm rested.
So far the process has been fine.  My only frustration comes from the fact that I have no time without interruptions or obligations.  And I feel trapped in the house because the weather is foul.  Now if I was trapped her by myself it would be fine because I could devote myself to writing but I happen to live with other human being who require my attention. I am definitely not treated like an artist in my house.

Chapter Breaks

Guess what?  I didn't put any chapter breaks in my book.  That's right, I have been reading books for nearly forty years and completely forgot about chapters.  I blame the fact that I have been reading picture books to my son for the past few years.  Those don't have chapter breaks.
So I got my edited copy of Bent Boot Road yesterday and had to put in some chapter breaks which meant I sat down with the thing last night and tried to divide it up in some way.  My editor advised me to stop chapters at 'cliffhanger' spots and that I what I kinda-sorta did.  I hope they seem logical.
Next will be fixing stuff in the writing which I am almost looking forward to because if/when I am interrupted, it will be much easier to get back to it rather than when I am trying to crank words out on a blank page.

Notebooks

I have a thing for notebooks; leather-bound travel journals, black and white speckled composition books, stacks of spiral bound notebooks waiting on the store shelves for excited back to school shoppers.  I even have some books on how to make your own books.  So I have a predisposition for paper bound up between hard covers that you are supposed to write all over.

Now that I am writing I carry a notebook everywhere I go.  There is one in my backpack and one by my bed and several scattered around the house.  I start a new composition book with every story and use it to make character notes, block out scenes, write back-story, and jot down blocks of dialogue.  I get excited when I have enough percolating around in my head that I NEED to start writing it down in a fresh notebook.

And I started one last night for a new story.  My female protagonist doesn’t have a name yet, but she is sitting at a bar having a drink because she doesn’t want to go home after a stressful day at work and a man sits next to her and starts to chat using some atrocious pick up lines.  The trick is, he is the owner of the establishment and when he asks her what she is drinking, he is just doing market research.  They are going to have so much fun together.

Let's Talk about Sex...

I write sex scenes.  There, I admitted it.  They are fictional sex scenes to be sure, but I have written them and soon enough some will be published in my book.  Hopefully a few people will read my book and at least some of them will not skip the sexy parts so my writing will not have been in vain.

In my new immersion into the romance publishing world, I have learned that there is a continuum of description when it comes to sex.  Some books merely allude to it and the protagonists perhaps share a kiss before they go behind closed doors and unwritten pages.  Other scenes are full-blown-pages-long explicit scenes that include every grunt and shift in position.  Mine fall somewhere in the middle.  I think.

All of this comes up because as I wrote earlier, my publisher Secret Cravings, asked me to categorize my scenes as either one flame/no sex all the way up to five flames/multiple partners and detailed erotic description.  I chose three flames since my characters think about having sex before they do, they enjoy having sex when they do, and they want to have sex again after they do.  Kind of like real life.  But I don’t use explicit* words because my characters don’t talk like that, and neither do I.  It’s a fine line.

Some might wonder why I write them at all; if it is a good enough story you don’t need them, do you?  My answer is this; my characters experience stress and emotion in their stories.  They enjoy food and drink.  Sometimes they are injured or betrayed.  And they have moments of joy and laughter.  All of these experiences are challenging to capture with words and paragraphs and pages.  I don’t think that their experiences with sex should be treated any differently.  I dared myself to write my first one and now I love getting my protagonists hot and bothered enough fill a few pages with their passion.

*Not that I am judging other authors using what I consider explicit terms to describe body parts.  A character’s vocabulary helps the reader understand that character.  So far, none of my characters has wanted to talk dirty to another.  When one of them does, we’ll see how I adapt!

Working and working

A quick hit of news and then I might be silent for a while. 

I just finished final revisions on my second contemporary romance and have been crafting a synopsis and query letter for it, as well as doing some research on publishers.  I plan to submit it to at least three publishers this weekend.  I wanted to get this done two weeks ago because I knew that my first book would be coming back to me soon for edits.  And I heard from my editor (whee, I have an editor!) that she hoped to have the manuscript to me this weekend for me to do whatever I needed to do since it is supposed to be done (done! Whee!) by February 11.

Since I have no idea what is involved in this process, I thought it would be best to polish up another MS before I had to edit, and I have.  Now I just have to work up the courage to actually send it to editors.  It is very nerve-wracking to follow the submission guidelines for different publishers.  And after you've read and re-read and edited something over and over again, you start to think it is not at all original or interesting or even readable.  So I am going to have to just take deep breaths and hit that send button a few times this weekend. 

I will update the blog when I have actually sent it off, and if anyone is interested I will put up some excerpts or character descriptions later.  And I have plans to post a blog entry or two on writing sex scenes.  When I'm not editing, of course.

Just Finished

Eight minutes ago I finished editing/rewriting another one of my manuscripts.  It took about two weeks to go through it and I cut about five thousand words and decided not to do a few extra things but I really like it now.  I need to come up with a final, declarative scene and then I will be well within my goal of being able to send it out to some publishers by the end of the week.  Whew!

In mid-December I decided to go ahead and spend some time polishing one of my completed pieces rather that continue to mess around with my current WIP because those characters were just circling around each other feeling angsty and not getting anywhere.  So I printed out the first one hundred pages of my first manuscript and started to go through it but it just felt 'ugh'. There was just too much to do with it and I stopped after the first twenty pages, already exhausted by the task.  Then I felt like a weak sister and I decided to go over one of my other pieces and that one just started to sing as soon as I began to polish it.  I flew through it and finished today.  Yeah for me! James and Evelyn go through a lot together in this book and they were such fun characters to get to know. I hope that it will be published some day and other people can get to know them as well.

Now I have to decide what editors to contact and prepare myself for the waiting and rejection game.  It is just a lovely feeling to have your work on display to people you don't know and then check your email every day with a combination of anticipation and dread for weeks and weeks.

But there has been a good side-effect of this editing; I now have several ideas and scenes set for my previous WIP and I am anxious to get back to it and see where it goes.  It is forty thousand words long at this point and my poor characters deserve something good to happen to them soon!

Tag Lines are Torture

I found out last week that I need to add a tag line and a flame rating to my cover art questionnaire for my publisher.  Since I didn't know what either of those were, I had to look them up and the tag line requirement was intimidating.  I needed to distill a nearly 80,000 word book into twenty five words or less.  Words that would make someone intrigued enough to buy it outright, or at least intrigued enough to read the blurb that I have already posted here.  Gagh!  I thought writing a one hundred and fifty page blurb was hard.
After much moaning and groaning (and not the good kind), I came up with this:

She's lost her friend.
He's there to find him.
What they discover will change their lives.

It sets up conflict and goals for my protagonists and it's under the word limit.  I can't decide if I should include the character's names or not.  At this point I'm thinking it's better without them.  More punchy.
Next will be determining the flame rating.  I'll let you know how that goes once I get some guidance from my publisher.