On New News, Repeating Mistakes and Slumps
I’ve been around the interwebz, lurking on blogs (maybe yours!) and I’ve seen a lot of people who are very frustrating with this whole getting published process, and, even more, with themselves.
Now, this is a hard business. Writing requires you to invest your heart into something that you’ll likely have to tear apart (multiple times…holla!) and then it could still get rejected. So yeah, that right there, in a nutshell…well, that’s what hard is really. There’s no diminishing it, there’s no pretending it isn’t.
Getting revisions still takes the wind outta my sails, even though at this point I’m familiar with the process and I know they’re an inevitable part of the process I can’t, and shouldn’t, avoid.
I got revisions yesterday. And this brings me to the part about repeating mistakes, and people being hard on themselves for doing it. Guess what I did, guys? Guess! I didn’t have enough dialogue in my beginning. My heroine was limp and unbelievable and there was too much focus on the external elements. I’ve sold, and revised, four books before this one, and I still did all of that.
You don’t have to stop making mistakes to get published, you just have to be able to fix them. And you really can’t beat yourself up for it. Writing is a learning process, before the Call and far beyond it. Don’t expect to be perfect, just endeavor to be better than you were before. Take advice onboard, and…(and this brings us to the new news!) trust your voice.
We had a bit of news this week out of Romance HQ. I wasn’t terribly surprised to hear it, because it’s been in every revisions letter I’ve had to date, but this was sort of the official word:
The focus is to be on writers and their unique voice, the stories, focused on the characters on the central romance. (character, character, character, ya’ll…note to Maisey: character and not jewelry and private trains…mmkay?) The core promises of the line (glamour, passion, seduction) remain the same, and of course they want those alpha heroes and some modern, feisty heroines. (note: feisty does not mean, stomps her foot and thrusts her chin in the air at every opportunity)
So what does it mean and what does it come down to? Your voice is going to be what makes you stand out, pre and post publication. That means be you, don’t copy what you’ve seen other people do, don’t us an expression just because someone else uses it, don’t have your heroine give a cry if she wouldn’t. (guilty)
And as for ensuring your MS is character driven? This is what I’ve had to do: see what external elements can be stripped away. In the case of my Sheikh (Now titled The Inherited Bride) that meant: no terrorists, no threat on the princess’s life, no bouncing from one place to another to keep everyone and everything (except for the relationship…) moving. And when I lost all of that, I was left with the word count to just tell the story of my Sheikh and his Inherited Bride. (do you see what I did there?) I was able to take more time to explore their relationship, their conflicts, and how they were going to solve them, and grow together as a couple. And that’s a win, win, win!
Okay, got any new news for me? And what do you do when you’re thinking of giving up? And…well, it’s your comment, you can say what you want. 😉
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Hey, great post, m’dear! As you know, I have not been frustrated. Nope, not at all. And I have no news, as you also know. As to what to do when I’m thinking of giving up… I vent to CPs and hope they’ll tell me not to. 😉 I also think about it and say it a whole lot – which is my way of daring the universe a little – but it kind of lasts for one day and then, with all the support from other understanding people, I claw back a little sanity and decide that maybe I was a bit hasty. 🙂
Love what you’re saying about the character. And you know what? I reckon that’s what makes category so damn difficult. You can’t just throw in a car chase or whatever. Even for me, who loves emotional conflict, I find it difficult to keep the focus on the character!
This post is quite timely for me. I was just thinking of tossing in an external scene to liven up my MS.
Here’s my deal. I’ve finished 3 books. Two of them are very rough (one being the first one I ever finished… and I really, really didn’t know what I was doing). I have had one read and returned by Special Edition (rejection) and the other is a follow up to the rejection… so I had to move on.
This new MS is giving me such grief. I just went through with my proverbial red ink pen and have edited it to death. After peeling away all the needless description and boring parts (kill your darlings!), I realized what you touched on: since my h & H have been together and now are apart, they are having trouble (read: I am having trouble) finding what it was that they loved about each other in the first place.
A romance with no love. Good one, me. *sarcasm*
*sigh* I press on. I’m not giving up even though 3 other partially written stories beckon me. I’m committed. The hardest thing is not having anything in anywhere. After being asked for a MS, I want to be asked for another!
Here’s the bit of advice that I take when I get discouraged:
“Finish a book. Writing beginnings won’t teach you how to write middles and endings.” ~Karina Bliss
Jackie, of course you were on my mind when I posted. 🙂 And yeah, that IS what makes category difficult. It’s taking 50K words and making it a satisfying read. The thing about that length is, when you clutter with the external it takes away from the romance, and in a book that length, too much and it’s eery easy to make the reader feel like they haven’t gotten a true, fully realized romance. (ruh-roh, Shaggy!) and that’s my tendency for sure! I like *things* and in just about every MS (Land Stud excluded) I’ve had to back way-da-heck off all of the ‘things’ so I could focus on substance.
Jessica, that’s fantastic advice. And your problems are fixable I’m sure, but not by a big external event! LOL. Why do your characters love each other? (or why WILL they?) what needs to happen in order for them to grow closer (or to grow apart, depending on where you’re going?) that’s how I try to tack scenes these days. What do I need to accomplish and how will this scene help me do that?
All good questions, Maisey! Thank you! I’m going to tape that to my computer so I don’t lose sight of that. I’ve rewritten quite a bit today and I can see my little story growing up. (Aww)
Attend a writing conference 🙂
That’s my advice for anyone wanting to give up. I’m inspired just thinking about attending RNA, but praying I manage not to drool all over my favourite authors or, worse, smile so inanely and continuously they think I am a crazed stalker.
Jo, I’m hoping I can manage not to drool on authors…especially when I’m invited to dinner with them. 🙂
Yep, we’re all a bunch of whingers ;).
What if you know what’s wrong with your MS but you just can’t fix it (have done a great job in making it worse though…)? There’s no hope for me is there? *wails* 🙂
Lacey, yeah, I was thinking of you too. 😉 Okay, so you know what’s wrong…you might have to go back a little further to identify the source of where it went awry. For me to fix the end of His Virgin Acquisition, I had to go back to…oh…around page eighty and delete 30K. It hurt, but it was necessary. Once I had the freedom to just…do what I wanted, I was able to change the problems enough so that I wasn’t working from a template that was just boxing me in and keeping the MS from living up to its potential. Make sense? I hope it does…I do TRY to make sense…LOL
This is great advice Maisie. I have a tendency to throw everything but the kitchen sink into my books. I’m in that muddy middle right now and I wrote a scene where she hits a deer on the highway… Why did I write that scene? It has nothing to do with anything. It was just more fun to write then a tense discussion between the hero and heroine. So, I deleted it and actually had the hero and heroine TALK! Imagine that.
Maisey, excellent post. The thing that I found interesting is that you’re repeating mistakes, because that’s part of how you write. And it must be reassuring to know that okay, it needs revisions, but its the same sort of revisions that you’ve done 4 times already, and NAILED. I always have to write it first, then edit it. Because that’s the way it flows, and that’s the way that my character’s like it. I wish I could write it right first time, but I have to go and focus on character and pare stuff down. The recent online course I did with Shirley Jump had some great advice along the lines of ‘every scene should have a goal, and there should be pros and cons to each decision on the way to goal achievement. And its most effective if they don’t succeed.’ Taking this on board makes it easier for me to strip out the ‘will the sharks get her before the hero saves her’ scenes that inevitably creep in!
Anne, I absolutely find that’s a good way to go about things. Not hitting a deer. But having them talk. Sometimes I get to where I’m enjoying my exposition (which isn’t even my strength, TBH) and I realize, they could have had a conversation about it instead and I would have accomplished so much ore.
Sally, this time when I got revisions, there was a level on confidence I’ve never felt before. But I had continued to write and so I was in the middle of the first draft and I think not getting to finish my original vision and really lay it to rest messed with my head a bit. But I’m not indulging myself. I compartmentalize, part of me is sooking (thanks to my Aussie friend for the cool word) and the other part has put on her big girl pants and just started dealing with it. 🙂
Thanks Maisey! I think your whole family should be proud of you for deleting 30K and not crying hysterically. I’m pretty sure I’m going to be visiting strop land (truth be told I might already be there 😉 ).
I won’t lie, Lacey, the second before I hit delete, when all of those words were highlighted…I was terrified. And ten minutes before when Jilly Aston, my CP told me…yeah, rewrite the sucker…that was terrifying. But when I actually deleted it, and I was left with Chapter Six and then…nothing. I felt…liberated. I was free. I was no longer boxed in by what I had done before. I was free to make it the best it could be, and I wasn’t going to stop me from doing it by sticking to the parameters I’d previously set for myself.
And I’ve never been afraid to rewrite since!
MAISEY!!!! THEY WERE TALKING ABOUT YOU!!
And yes, I did mean to shout. The M & B Editors did a talk at the conference and they showed which new authors they’d bought for different lines and they showed two of your covers!!! And they talked about your voice and how you caught their attention. So Maisey I just wanted to let you know that you’re famous!!
*swoon* OMG!! Are you serious? Can I get transcripts??? Cuz…that’s info I don’t even have!!