Peggy Jaeger, Author

I entered a romance-writing contest several months ago and received  my results back today via email. The contest was the first 10 pages of your WIP (work in progress) and a brief synopsis of the overall plot. I hate writing a synopsis and avoid it whenever I can. Unfortunately, for this contest, one was required, but the rules stated it would not be part of the overall judging.

Three judges and their scores combined gave you your overall score. One of the judges was a professional/published writer in romantic fiction, one a beta reader, and one an unpublished writer, but a retired teacher and editor. This last judge was the harshest, and I’ll say meanest of the three. He tore my work apart, and I mean  TORE it apart. He critiqued where I put commas, my dialogue – which he called “trite”, my heroine, which he said he didn’t like and nothing would convince him to, and my sentence structure.  And he said my synopsis sucked. He really did! The published author gave me very constructive criticism NICELY, and pointed out a few things that needed improvement. The beta reader wrote how much she loved the story, the characters and the setting, and also, nicely, pointed out a few things for improvement. She gave me the highest scores of all three. You can guess who graded me the lowest – and I mean low.

Now my ego is as strong as an ox. People who know me know that. I can take criticism, constructive or otherwise, and pull out the parts of it that will help me in the future. I did this with all three of these judges, because they all had valid points.  But I wondered why the editor/teacher judge was so harsh in his delivery. He didn’t know me, knew nothing about me except for the pages being judged, and he sincerely could have made his points succinctly without all the nastiness.

This hasn’t turned me off to entering contests at all, because with each one I do enter, I learn something valuable. What I learned from this contest was that the beta reader, a lover of romantic fiction such as I am, is the person I write for, not the judge. The reader wrote comments all over the entry, such as “Aww!” when she read something touching, and “I love that he said that,” to a dialogue for my hero.

This is the person I write for. Plus myself, of course.

And here’s the best part of this story: I entered the same 10pages in another contest and two editors from publishing houses notified me they liked what they’d read so much they wanted to see the entire manuscript.

So THERE! Mr. Smarty-pants judge!

The gentle art of procrastination has been many a writer’s downfall, mine included. I have such a limited writing life, time-wise, that there always seems to be something that can – and does – pull me away from the laptop. Self-discipline is a virtue I aspire to, but have, as of this moment in time, never fully attained. I can easily be swayed to go out to lunch with a friend, get my nails done, or finish the new Nora Roberts book because I’m at a critical point in the plot.

All of these are just flat excuses for the fact that I should be writing.

Life seems to intervene as well, though, when I’m trying to finish something, or working towards a deadline. There is always grocery shopping that needs to be done, laundry that needs to be washed, dust bunnies that need to be vacuumed, and errands that need to be run. These distractions, although necessary, can wreck havoc with a writing schedule. Having little children in the house who are not school age yet but too old to nap; doing the car pool shuffle to and from school for those that are; PTA meetings, book club meetings, play dates. All these things took me away from writing when my daughter was younger. When she got older, I needed to go back to work outside the home, so there went my dreams of a full day of writing while she was occupied with her life.

For eleven years I was basically divorced from my desire to write. Then 2013 hit and with it, I was downsized at work. What to do with the time I now had on my hands. Duh! No brainer, there.

New Year’s Eve of this year I made one resolution that I am trying ardently to stick to. On my days off from my paying job, I slot at least 6 hours of uninterrupted writing time per day. Most of that time is spent in front of the laptop, with me tapping my fingers in frustration, attempting to find the perfect words and phrases. But at least it is time that I am actively writing, not passively wishing I was. Our clothes are clean, we are not starving because there is no food in the house, and every now and then a dust bunny escapes to be dealt with another day, but the commitment to write is always present and accomplished. I even have it plotted on the calendar that hangs above my desk. Whenever I look at it, I am reminded that no matter what, this day I will writing something.

Today is my day off from work. And look what I’m doing! Success.

When penning a story, the setting, or the environment, the action takes place in can set the tone, mood, or even background for the entire story. Any editor will tell you where you put your characters is an important part of the makeup of a good book.

That got me to thinking about the environment in which you actually write the story. Does the space where you create have a positive or negative effect on your writing, how you write, and ultimately, if it all pulls together in the end?

When I first starting writing seriously (read that to mean for publication and money!) I had an old Brother typewriter that sat at my kitchen table in my two room apartment. No spell check, no online thesaurus and certainly no delete key. It would take me three or four or more tries to get an article perfect in every sense – no spelling, grammar, or punctuation mistakes included – before I would mail it to an editor. And by mail I mean walk to the Post Office. Not press a send key. I wrote this way for years.

Fast forward to the birth of my daughter. My husband bought our first computer and monitor with Corel Word 4 attached. At the time, this was Heaven for me. Now I had easy access to delete or correct something within the text. At this point in my life, my writing skyrocketed in volume just because I could type fast and edit as I went along. The computer sat in a spare bedroom we hysterically called, “our office.” The only problem with this setup was that we had one computer and two adults who needed access to it.  And again, I wrote this way for a decade plus five years.

Another trip into the time machine and we’re in real time. I have my own laptop (Yea!) and now, I actually have my own space to write, too. Our attic runs the length and width of the house so it’s two complete rooms. One is for storage, the other is for me. I have my own desk – okay it’s my daughter’s old desk, but she’s not living here any more – my own bookshelves that house all my reference books, a couch for stretching out in when my menopausal back and butt get numb from sitting for hours, and even a television if I need to reconnect with the outside world for a few moments. The desk sits in front of a beautiful big window where I’ve been watching the never-ending snow come down recently as I gaze off and think of the right word I want to type. To me, this is writing Nirvana. Private space, no noise and good natural lighting from the skylights in the roof. I now, hysterically, refer to my writing space as my “writer’s loft.” A little pretentious, yes, but hey, it works for me.

Is it any wonder my writing has improved so much lately that I actually have professionals wanting to see it? Hmmm. Makes you think, doesn’t it…

This is not me complaining: this is my reality.

I received word a few days ago that a publishing house is very interested in a story I’ve written, but that it needs a few edits and tweeks. The tweeks were lined out for me, but the editing is up to me alone. I’ll say this once, and it’s true: I am not now nor have I ever been exclusively married to my words.  Sentences get divorced, words undergo formal separations. I know every story is made stronger with good editing and refining. A word change here, a phrase turn there. It can only get better.

Here’s my dilemma, though, and the one I’ve struggled with forever as a writer. When is editing too much, and when is it not enough?

I like certain phrases, and I know I overuse them. Once is good writing, twice can be annoying, and anything more than that is outright non-imaginative. There are certain words I tend to use as descriptors, which in reality aren’t. Again, I know this and always try to find alternatives.

But it’s hard work.

When I was just writing because it gave me pleasure, I didn’t think about these things. I wrote phrases the way I liked them; I used words the way I wanted to. But since I’ve finally bitten the proverbial bullet and ventured into the world of publishing, I can no longer simply write just  to please myself. I realize I need to stick to certain grammatical rules and sentence structures. I understand the need to use active voice and not passive. I agree with sticking to one point of view at a time, even though every character’s thoughts are flowing through me simultaneously.

I know all this, and I accept I need to do it in order to get my work in front of a paying and adoring public.

But it’s hard work.

Who was it that said “anything worth doing is worth doing well?”