The Story So Far

Here we are, more than halfway through September. I should be more than halfway through my novel for Harlequin Nocturne. Yeah. Let’s emphasize “should.” I believe I’ve mentioned here and elsewhere what a slow writer I am. I’m around 25,000 words in at this point. Only 60,000 to go! If I just knew which words they were, things would go a lot more easily.

Since I can count on several hundred “ands,” “thes,” “hes,” “shes,” and “buts” (not to mention “butts,” since this is a romance), that knocks at least 1500 off the final tally. That’s still quite a bit, but now I feel better about it.

There is some good news. I’m getting ideas for scenes and I sort of know which way the plot is headed. I already know my ending; I had that before I started, which is always helpful. Now I just have to get from Point A through that long, dreary morass of Point B to the finish line at Point C. Good thing we’ve got a rainy weekend coming up.

In the interests of writing (of course), I took last Sunday off for a trip to Gettysburg, and research. That’s the upside of setting a book or a story in your home town or somewhere close to it: research is easy and you get to take road trips. I’ve set stories in Philadelphia for the same reason. I found the restaurant my heroine works in and the bookstore her close friend works in. They’re right up the street from each other, just like in my plot. Damn, I’m good. I cruised around the battlefield and re-acquainted myself with the location of the Irish Brigade monument. Good thing; my memory was faulty and the scene I’d written was almost totally wrong. Visiting the site gave me several new ideas. Now when I do the second draft it’ll sound more authentic and I won’t get angry letters from Civil War buffs telling me how badly I effed up. I can use ghosts and demons and things like that in a book to my heart’s content, but put a monument in the wrong spot in a national park and people get bent out of shape. Readers are a strange breed of cat.

(Quick aside: if you’re near southcentral Pennsylvania around Halloween and have a hankering to take an after-dark ghost tour, Gettysburg’s your town. Every third shop on Steinwehr Avenue was offering some kind of ghost tour. It was like t-shirt shops on a Jersey Shore boardwalk. I even passed a store that sells ghost-hunting equipment. I should have gone in. Who knows, that by itself might have provided fodder for a future story.)

Of course, there’s also a downside to research: you have to utilize it to make your story sound real. Like I said, I found a couple locations that’ll stand in for businesses in the book, and took notes on a real site that figures in a fight scene. Stupid me, I jumped the gun and wrote those scenes already. Now I’ll have to rewrite them based on what I learned on Sunday. More work for me. However, the new scenes will reek of reality, and will probably take more words. I just cut down on my word count again! Every little bit helps.

Only four chapters in, I’ve already decided to change names. Solara, if you’re reading this, you were right. I already recognized the problem. I’ve got a main character named Travis and a secondary character named Tyler. Unfortunately they’re friends and have a lot of scenes together. Even I started getting confused. Today’s writing tip: unless you’re writing a ménage involving a gang of randy brothers, try to give your characters names that start with different letters. (Nobody cares about names in a ménage.) Once again I got lucky: the secondary character’s name was Tyler Owens. Now it’s Owen Tyler. I call him by his first name. Problem solved. I’m going to start giving all my characters switchable names so this never happens again.

None of this is helping to get the draft finished, but I’ve got a cure for that too: the submission window for the contest opens on Monday, September 23. I have my first chapter, and it shouldn’t take me long to come up with the 100-word blurb. That’s all they require at this point. As soon as I send in my entry, I’ll be obligated to finish the book. If I don’t, they’ll pick me as a semifinalist and I’ll be up the creek. My luck seems to run that way.

Can I do it? Can I get the first draft done in time to do the badly-needed second draft? Will I have something publishable finished by the time they start calling for fulls? Will I get blindsided by another idea and get sidetracked into writing something else? Tune in again next week! Same write time, same write channel.

PS: If you're smarter than I am and already have a book finished, here's the contest site again: www.soyouthinkyoucanwrite.com. Good luck!

What the Hell Was I Thinking?

Writers are nuts. This month I’m proving it.

Around the end of August I found out Harlequin is running its “So You Think You Can Write” contest. The object is to write a novel for one of Harlequin’s category lines. The winner (and maybe some of the other finalists) gets published. What the hell, here’s the link: www.soyouthinkyoucanwrite.com.

I’m sure every romance writer out there has looked at Harlequin’s monthly entries on the bookstore shelves or in Kmart and dreamed of seeing their byline on a cover. Harlequin is the romance market. They’re at the top of the food chain, the McDonald’s of romance publishing. Take that any way you want. Never mind the accusations of the company short-changing their authors. Publication with them is still the Holy Grail for a lot of romance writers. Success in this contest could help a beginning or lower-tier writer get her name out to the masses.

Which is why I decided to enter. I’ve toyed with the notion of subbing to Harlequin’s Nocturne line off and on over the years. I read the books. I have a couple ideas that might fit. I started one about three years back, and wrote maybe two and a half chapters before I lost interest and tucked it into the closet for safekeeping. So the first hurdle’s down: I already have the required first chapter for when the entry window opens on September 23. All I need is the rest of the book.

Let me repeat that. All I need to enter the contest is a finished, ready-to-sub manuscript of 80,000-85,000 words (standard length of a Nocturne), written, edited and polished in roughly a month. Piece of cake.

Have I ever mentioned what a slow writer I am? Look up “procrastination” and “undisciplined” in the dictionary. That’s me waving in the picture. If I might quote Dr. Phil here: “What the hell were you thinking?”

Theoretically, it can be done. It’s possible to write 1000 words in an hour. If you write 3000 words a day for 30 days, by the end of a month you’ll have written 90,000 words, enough to make up a regular book and more than enough for a Nocturne. I spend more than three hours a day watching TV. Just turn off the TV and I should be able to do this. You in the back, no snickering.

So what if the plot didn’t come to me until I was two chapters in? At least I’ve got one now. I’m still not sure who the characters are, but I’ll know by the end of the book. This is why I want to get the first draft done fast, so I’ll have time for a second. I’m breaking with tradition and drafting the book directly on the laptop so I won’t have to retype. I can email myself chapters and print them out for a hard copy backup.

Why the big push and the pressure? All they want to start with is the first chapter. They won’t ask for the full until the middle of October. The odds I’ll be one of the 50 semifinalists are still pretty nebulous; that’ll depend on the number and quality of the entries. Chances are I won’t be.

That’s what I figured the last time I entered a contest, American Title IV. Then I got the email I was a finalist and they wanted the full manuscript. My “full manuscript” at the time was handwritten pages. I cut work for a day and a half and typed like a madwoman to get it to them by the end of the week. Then I got eliminated in the first round. And lost my job, but it was temp anyway, so no big. The point is, I wasn’t expecting to be chosen and got caught with my ass hanging out. That’s not going to happen again. I’m going to have a finished novel by the middle of October whether I’m selected or not. So there.

The question is, will it be a Nocturne? Wellllllll … it’ll be a paranormal, and there’s romance in it. That’s all I can say at the moment. I’m re-reading the stack of Nocturnes I already have to get a feel for the line. Even with study and the best of intentions, I suspect I’ll end up writing my book and not Harlequin’s. That’s just how it goes.

Here’s a for instance: the heroine finds out she’s (can’t say; it’s a spoiler). She is not pleased. “I’m not a (spoiler)! I’m a waitress, dammit!” She then blasts the bad guy six ways from Sunday. “You want fries with that, you son of a bitch?” she screams at him.

I don’t know for sure if that scene will make it into the final version. Right now I’m leaning that way. It’s how I write. I know Siren would let me get away with it. Maybe so would a couple other publishers. Maybe even Harlequin’s Carina imprint. But one of their category books? No way. Not only is the damsel swearing and tossing around Bruce Willis-style quips, she’s way too proactive for a conservative Harlequin category romance. The monthly series books are the Big Macs of romance: same pickles, special sauce and onions every time. Play with the winning formula and the readers might get testy.

Y’know what? Screw it. I’m holding my own contest. I’m going to write a full-length novel by the end of September. That’s 85,000 words in what is now less than a month. Maybe it’ll even look like a Nocturne. I’m not concerned with that. I just want to finish a book. I’m going to see if I can stick to a schedule, achieve daily writing goals and make a deadline. To motivate myself, I’m entering my first chapter. That should drive me to complete and polish the book by October 10. This time if a publisher emails me, I’ll be ready.

If they don’t, no loss. I’ll still have a paranormal romance novel finished and ready to market. If nobody bites, there’s always self-publishing. I come out ahead no matter what.

Now all I have to do is write the thing. I knew there was a catch. Back to the keyboard and the caffeine. If I can stay awake, I’ll keep you posted.