Tag Archives: newbie writers

August 23, 2014 · 4:43 pm

I need more time and less interruptions…

I never seem to have enough time in a day to write the way I want to write.  Make that, write the volume I want to write.

When I’m in the zone, I can sit at my laptop in my writing loft for the entire day and not do anything else but compose. If I am uninterrupted by phone calls, tweets and email announcements, I can pretty much chug along for the whole day. The longest I’ve ever gone is a solid 12 hours with a bathroom break every 2 hours to rid myself of the Diet Mountain Dew I imbibed like it was water.

Kinesiologists will tell you I am probably doing severe  damage to my legs, spinal cord, and butt from sitting in a dependent position all day, and there’s probably some truth to that. When I do get up I tend to be uberstiff and need to stretch all my long muscles to keep them from cramping.

But after I see the volume I’ve typed – the page count that’s been birthed – I know I can live with some muscle cramps if it means I am producing good work.

I hate to be interrupted.

I. Hate. It.

Especially when I am going along a great clip and the dialogue is flowing like pearls from my lips – yes, I speak aloud my dialogue when I write to make sure it sounds correct and like english – the descriptions are all dead on and the exposition isn’t filled with purple prose and platitudes. The plot is moving forward, the characters are growing appropriately and learning from scene to scene.  It feels good, this sense of accomplishment I get when the pages are racking up. I feel like I am putting together a coherent story  that can be followed by the reader, and – hopefully – liked.

But then reality sets in.

The door bell rings and it’s the hot UPS guy with a delivery. The phone pings and it’s a caller I have to talk to, not a telemarketer I can ignore. Dinner time rolls around and I have to cook for the family, not make reservations again for takeout or going out.

Twenty-four hours seems like a lot of time to a writer, but consider the time used in sleeping, eating, working ( if writing is not your means of support) family obligations, and anything else that can literally remove you from your word program. After all that, 24 hours isn’t so much.

If I get a solid hour or two on a working day, at least it’s something. On my days off, I strive for much more.

Sometimes I hit that goal, most times, not.

So, since I can’t wring out more than 24 hours in any given day, let’s try this instead: I won’t answer the phone – in fact I’ll put my cell to silent and then just check on it periodically. I’ll get all the chores of daily life done first and then devote the rest of my freedom to writing. I won’t answer emails, troll Facebook, or update my Twitter feed while I am writing. I will let it all go sideways, and straighten it out when I am done creating.

Sound like a plan?
Yeah, a really hard one to carryout…..sigh….

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August 21, 2014 · 9:05 am

How, exactly, do you do research for a Romance Novel?

Think about that question. Go ahead. I’ll give you a few minutes….

There are a thousand ways I can can answer it. Sarcastically, humbly, physiologically, literally…but you get it.

Author Jill Shalvis was recently asked this question in an interview and she did a pretty good job answering it. Because what, exactly, are people wanting to know when they ask that research question? We all have a pretty good idea. They don’t want to know how you got your info about being a master chef, the FBI, corporate raiding, or anything else that’s in your story. They want to know  how you did your research on…how you came to know about the…wait for it… SEX.

This is what the average lay person ( no pun!! Well…maybe) thinks a romance book really is. A sex novel. A book strife with page after page of position changes, body noises, multiple loud orgasms, and descriptions of unmentionable private body parts. The kinds most people don’t discuss aloud. But they do read about them. Frequently, if the romance novel selling stats are to be believed.

I’ve tried to answer this question as off handedly as I can when asked it. I really don’t know what people expect as an answer. Maybe they think I’ve visited a brothel and watched (Eeew!) the going’s on. Maybe then think I’m a secret porn video watcher, hidden in my bedroom, the lights and blinds drawn, the tv sound muted, just watching and categorizing what’s happening on the screen. Again, eeew! Maybe they think my husband and I are wild and crazy “swingers,” (Eeew, squared!) Whatever people think or believe, here’s the truth according to me, so therefore, here’s MY truth.

I’ve been a romance reader since my 20’s. I  like every kind of romance from sweet ( no sex) to sensual ( a little) to NC17( one step down from Erotica.) My research, for lack of a better word, has been done by reading the genre and getting to know the books and authors who write them.  And P.S. I am married and have had a child so I think I know how  the act is accomplished.

Sex is sex. It’s not hard ( insert pun), nor is it brain surgery. It’s a natural, beautiful expression of love, commitment, and basic biology. We need sex for propagation of the species, folks. We haven’t evolved into a species that reproduces its young in test tubes yet – please, God, that never happens.

What the book buying public has to be made aware of with regards to romance novels is that they are not about the sex. That is just a small component of the story. Romance novels are about the emotions of two people falling in love, the challenges they face along the way to their happily ever after, surviving those challenges and spending their lives together.  They are stories of commitment, emotional growth, self discovery, and yes, they have some variant of sex in them because they are about people and people have sex!

So the next time you meet an author who happens to write in the romance genre, DO NOT ask them how they do their research unless you are referring to how they learned to handle guns, rappel down a mountainside, drive a speedboat while being chased or came to understand survival training. Or anything else related to the story other than the sex question.

You can, simply, ask this: “So, what’s your book about?”

Believe me, the author will tell.

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Filed under Author, Contemporary Romance, love, research, Romance, Romance Books, RWA

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August 19, 2014 · 8:51 am

Summer update

At the beginning of the summer I set myself a goal to re-read some of my writing textbooks in order to help me rehash some basic writing tools. Kind of a refresher course for creating. Where to put dialogue tags, common punctuation concerns, even plotting points for setting and theme. The summer is almost gone – bummer! – and so is, I realized today, my time for doing this. I got so involved and wrapped up in preparing for the RWA conference, editing my WIP, and starting a new book,  not to mention my normal non-writing life, that the time I had set aside to devote to studying has gone the way of the dinosaur. Next weekend it will be Labor day. LABOR DAY! Where, oh where, did the summer go?

When I was a kid I remember vividly that summers were way too short. It seemed school just let out and already I was being hauled to the nearest department store to shop for supplies for the new semester. Back then I had no responsibilities other than relaxing and reading my required summer list for the next grade’s teacher. Days would meld into days. And before I knew it, the Jerry Lewis Labor Day telethon rolled around and school started the day after.

Now that I am older and have a lot of responsibilities to tear me away from doing the extra things I want to do, the summer just seems to have flown in front of me, flapping it’s wings and mocking me for my unattained goals as it passes by. I have read only half of one book of the four I chose as my refresher. That is, to put it bluntly, pathetic. If I was an actual student and needed to finish those books as required course work reading, I would be failing out of school right now.

I’m trying not to beat myself up too much about this. After all, I am a grownup,  school let out a  loooooooong time ago for me, and I really don’t have to answer to anyone but myself when it comes to being reprimanded for not doing a task.

But still…

What’s the next holiday after Labor Day? Veteran’s Day?  Halloween? Thanksgiving? I think I need a new goal time line.

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August 17, 2014 · 9:47 am

Blog block…

Is there such a thing? I’ve heard of writer’s block and I’ve been lucky enough to never have experienced it.

But Blog block? I think I may have contracted it. I’ve committed ( to myself) to write and post at least 3- 4 times per week on various writing topics. I’d been muddling along fine as can be until about a week ago. On a day I was due to put  up a post, I quite literally sat at the laptop for over an hour just staring out the window, wondering what the heck I could write about that anyone would want to read.

I re-read older posts, trying to get a glimmer of an idea spawn from one of them. No luck. I trolled other writing blogs I follow. Same thought; same result.

The blog well seemed to have run dry.

The nurse in me sat down and utilized my medical training to find a cause.

Here are my symptoms:

  1.  Mental clouding :  I  can’t seem to come up with a topic that I feel may be interesting enough to write and then read about.
  2. Lack of enthusiasm : I know I should be blogging, but I don’t want to.
  3. Lost chunks of time: I should be blogging, but I find myself : cleaning, doing laundry, grocery shopping, cooking, cleaning again, ironing, dusting, working at my paying job, more cleaning that now includes vacuuming, etc. Before I know it, HOURS have gone by and I’ve simply lost the time.
  4. Weight gain. Okay, this one isn’t really related to not writing. It’s related to not exercising, but that’s another topic.
  5. Life intervenes. See #3.

The  Psych Nurse in me wants to fully explore those symptoms to get the root of my inability to blog. I know there must be some deep rooted , emotional reason I am not able to put thought to laptop.

But…the writer in me just realized that even though I’m complaining about not being able to write, I am in fact writing right now. Yowza!

Cured!

So, blog block. Real or fake? You decide and let me know your thoughts.

 

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July 30, 2014 · 11:31 pm

Say it isn’t so…

One of the workshops I attended while at RWA 2014 was one on writing dialogue, taught by fabulous Julia  Quinn. Julia writes mainly historical romantic fiction and does very well at it, thank you very much. She’s appeared on the New York Times Bestseller list over 18 times and has a very faithful fan base. Her class on how to write effective dialogue was a goodie.

I realized ten minutes into the class that I had been doing a lot of things incorrectly with regards to my dialogue tags and beats. She showed, through simple placing of breaks, beats, and tags, how to establish a dialogue chain and keep it fresh and moving on the page without the reader having to go back a few lines or pages to see who, in fact, was speaking. By the use of  well placed TAGLINES, those little informative lines or words that indicate who is speaking, other than the standard “he said, she said” ones, you can keep the dialogue moving across the page at a pace that is easy for the reader to follow and comprehend. Remember, reading is not a visual  media, like watching television or a movie is, where you can visualize ( read, see) who is doing the speaking. Your reader must have total comprehension each time a line or chunk of dialogue is spoken in order to know to whom to attribute the words to.

ACTION TAGS are simply that. Little snippets of description that let you show the reader the tone of the character’s voice, the movement he/she is making and even how another character perceives him/her. Action tags always allow you to show rather than tell what your character is thinking and doing.

EMOTIONAL TAGS are again easily defined. They show what your character is feeling, or how your character is reacting to something in the scene. Showing character emotion is an excellent way of letting the reader know what is in the character’s head, why he is reacting the way he is, and what he is thinking. When interspersed with action tags and attributes, this allows the reader to fully comprehend the scene and understand the subtext in the dialogue you are writing.

Another great part of Julia’s workshop was the nuts and guts part of writing dialogue, such as where to place the punctuation, the correct way to do it, and the tricks you can use to convey a visual scene in a non-visual media.

All in all, the class could have gone on for hours, there was so much useful  and professional information in it. Maybe at the next RWA conference she can do a master class and give us more than an hour of her wisdom. I actually wrote that request on the course survey.

Let’s see if the powers-that-be listen to me!

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July 29, 2014 · 10:25 am

Branding and Marketing for Authors

At RWA 2014, one of the signature breakfast speakers this year was the marvelous Cindy Ratzlaff of Brand New, Brand You. She discussed – in vivid detail – her Social Book Marketing Strategy. Of course, I’m not going to go into extensive detail and list everything she said – you should click on the above link to get her full strategy – but I will hit the high points that resonated with me.

The most important aspect of this strategy is recognizing that you, the author, are the BRAND. You want to promote YOU. You are the creator of your books, but by promoting yourself as a brand, you capture reader and follower loyalty and get recognized by your name. Name recognition, like word of mouth, is a powerful product motivator for people to purchase what you are selling – namely, your books.

By utilizing FACEBOOK as a marketing tool you can develop what Cindy calls  “your ideal Tribe,” or the people who want to follow you.  Right now I have a regular Facebook page. I have “friends,” personal photos, etc, all the things you are supposed to have on the site to be socially connected with your friends and family. But, if you are a professional author and your name is your brand, you should have a professional Facebook page, devoted to you, the brand. Using myself, I would have a secondary page titled Peggy Jaeger, Author. On this page I would have all the information regarding my books – the ones that are currently out and in print and the ones that are coming up for publication ( Dearest God, are you listening to this?) Links to my blog, and my other sites would also be on this page so that anyone can find me and find out about me, the brand of Peggy Jaeger, Author. Apparently, Facebook is the number 1 social networking site, still. But your branding advertising isn’t isolated to just this site. Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Google+ even using You Tube, are all ways you can promote your brand.

Cindy’s lecture was fascinating. She described the scope and power the internet has in promoting yourself in ways that I don’t think I ever even considered, much less knew I could do.

Like everything else that I attended  at RWA 2014, Cindy Ratzlaff’s session will stick in my mind for years to come.

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July 28, 2014 · 11:16 am

Post RWA 2014 Update

So, I had really lousy internet in the hotel sand I didn’t get to blog for over three days.

Three days!

To say that I learned a great deal at the RWA 2014 conference would be a gross understatement. I literally learned something new in every class I took, from craft, to marketing, to publicity.

The speakers were amazing and all highly entertaining – they are romance writers after all. From Jayne Ann Krentz and Susan Elizabeth Phillips I learned things they wished they had known when just starting out and things they were glad they didn’t know. From Nora Roberts ( sigh!) I learned to write the book I want and not the book that I think will sell, or the one that an agent or an editor wants. No. Write the book I want . ( And I will!)

The fabulous Holly Jacobs taught me how to be a fan favorite just by being herself – warm, witty and funny. The girl could make a stoic laugh, I swear.

From the other attendees I learned quite a bit as well. For one thing, we are all in this boat together and as such we should all be helpful, respectful, and open to one another. The first night I was in the lobby, waiting to meet up with some of my NH chapter-mates, Shirley Jump approached me to ask if I was having a good time and were people being helpful to me. Shirley Jump! She is a current board member and a PAN liason and saw that my name badge indicated I was a first time attendee. She went out of her way to make sure I was doing okay and being taken care of. Amazing.

The courses I took were varied in scope and concept. Everything from how to instill conflict in a romantic situation, to how to write hot sex. That was the actual name of the course: How to write hot sex.

I can truly say that this was the best spent money I have ever spent on a conference. It wasn’t cheap –not by a long shot- but it was worth the expense and time.

To be in the presence of such a wide array of published and commercially successful authors in a genre that has not been accepted by the mainstream publishing community to the level it should, was uplifting spiritually, and as an artist.

I can safely say that I came away from this conference with much more than when I went in and that as a writer, I have grown.

I can’t wait until RWA 2015. It’s in NYC!!

 

 

 

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Filed under Contemporary Romance, female friends, Romance, Romance Books, RWA

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July 10, 2014 · 8:30 am

Why I re-read my “how to” books

Someone who read a recent blog of mine blog asked me “why do you re-read your old writing texts and “how to” books? Didn’t you get enough out of them the first time? Did you miss important stuff? Instead of answering the question directly, I asked this instead: “Haven’t you ever read something – a book,or an article – that was just so good you read it again just for the pleasure of it?” The answer I got back was typical of most people: “No. Once I read something, that’s it. I’m done.”

A sad, but a very common occurrence among  people. Most people will see a movie more than once if they like it – this is evidenced based fact: look at how many movie DVD’s are sold each and every day, not rented. Or, they will listen to a song endlessly. But to re-read a favored book? Not happening.

I’ve read Gone with the Wind  11 times. Cover to cover. And I could read it again tomorrow if I had the time to devote to it.

I’ve read To Kill A Mockingbird 8 times. I can quote descriptions and dialogue when prompted.

Last year I re-read every “In Death” book by J.D.Robb again, starting with the first one in the series, Naked in Death and finishing with the most current one Concealed in Death, straight out. I didn’t read anything else until I finished all of them. Re-reading the list in order, the way it was written, was very powerful for me.  I could see and watch how J.D.Robb grew her characters with each book, building on their personalities, using their individual backgrounds to advance the plot and the series characters themselves. It was  like taking a master class on how to develop character and plot arcs effectively. I gleamed so much valuable information and writing development wisdom from re-reading the series that has helped me enormously with my own writing.

To me, re-reading a favored book is more pleasurable than seeing a favored movie over and over again. Don’t get me wrong – I’ve seen The Birdcage at least two dozen times – and every time I laugh while I quote the dialogue! But to spend time to re-read a book, one that gave you such treasured hours of pleasure, one that, every time you read it, you learn something new, or find something new from, something you didn’t see before, is to me one of life’s most wonderful ways to spend a few hours.

Re-reading my writing craft books and texts brings me the same pleasure, because every time – EVERY TIME – I find something, some tidbit, some phrase of wisdom, I didn’t see when I read it the last time. And to me, that is time so valuably spent.

What’s your favorite book? When was the last time you read it? Why not get reacquainted and read it again? Believe me, you’ll be happy when you do.

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July 8, 2014 · 9:49 am

Summer reading list

Remember when we were all in school and at the end of every year we were given a summer reading list by next year’s English teacher? I was the dorky kid who actually liked getting that list because reading was, and still is, my favorite thing to do – during any season.

For the past two summers I’ve started up that summer reading list again for myself, but it’s not filled with literary classics, or modern contemporary fiction.  My reading lists now are filled with “how to” books or what I like to call the refresher  series. Those books that I read, every now and again, to remind me of the craft I love. The books that remind me how to “show,not tell,” the power of strong words not adverbs, the structure in plotting books, the dialogue helping books, and the general this is how you do it for “dummies” books.

Writing is a craft, an art, a talent, and a career. Like any career, you must learn the basics, the tools, and the procedures to be an effective worker. Sometimes, when I am lost in the throws of writing ecstasy,  I tend to forget the rules and just write what is in my head. When I edit, I remember the reason I should get rid of that “ly” word and replace it with a stronger one, the reason why saying “he thought” is probably redundant, and the reason saying “she turned her gaze..” instead of ” she turned her eyes..” is a better descriptor.

My crafting books are helpful in allowing me to remember the power of plotting, and how to do it so to reach a maximum of writing force. Plot structure, scene structure, and point of view refreshers are all helpful when I edit, and re-reading the basics of how to do each has benefited my writing enormously.

I love dialogue, probably because I love talking so much in real life. My dialogue refresher books are always helpful, especially when they help me find two words that will take the place of twenty.

Summer reading lists. Not just for kids, anymore.

Some of my favorite re-reads:

Plot and Structure,  James Scott Bell

Showing and Telling, Laurie Alberts

Writing for Emotional Impact, Karl Iglesias

The Emotional Thesaurus, Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi

G.M.C., Debra Dixon

Character Traits, Linda N. Edlestein, Ph.D

 

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July 4, 2014 · 10:06 am

Is your writing a hobby, a job, or a business?

The last habit in Barbara Wallace’s article “Seven Habits of Effective Writers” in the June 2014 edition of RWA Romance Writers Report magazine, is to treat your writing career as you would a small business. Businesses grow and do well when they evaluate what sells, market to it, continue to learn through conferences and networking, and give the public – (read READER here) what they want, and never stop producing.

My dream used to be to sell a book. One book. I figured I’d be happy with that. One book would be a legacy for me, proof that I’d done what I set out to do: write a good book and get it published.

I realize now this isn’t enough. When I get my first adult book into print ( notice I said when, not if!) I know I will not sit back and go gently into the good night, resting on my one publishing laurel. No. I will need to continue writing, continue marketing, continue networking, learning, and growing as an author. I will learn more about the changing publishing business – and it is a business, after all, because you want people to read your work and to do that they have to buy it – and will adapt, and change as an author myself along the way. This is a career for me. It is the next chapter in my life and I want to be as successful at it as I have with the previous chapters and endeavors.

Before my work is ever published, I already have my marketing plan for it in place. I have my networks, contacts, mailing lists. I’ve set up my website, my Facebook account, and lined up my Twitter followers. I’m LinkedIn and Pinned, Googled and Blogged. I have my capital budget set up and know the price of advertising. I’ve flirted already with interviews and guest bloggings, and I’m ready to launch a book tour – virtual and real.

When I get “the Call,” I will be ready. This is serious business to me. And it is serious business to every other successful, effective author.

Read the first chapter of my award winning new contemporary romance book Cooking with Kandy. Click on this link for a preview: https://peggyjaeger.com/about/read-all-about-it-2/

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