Check Out My Guest Blog on Using Screenwriting Tricks in Your Novel!

Apologies for the blogging hiatus, dear readers; one of my friends passed away a month ago, just before I went on a three-week roadtrip (during which I drove 4500 miles), and it has taken me awhile to get back into my regularly scheduled life. I will be active here again any day now -- but to tide you over, check out my guest post on the Ruby Slippered Sisterhood blog. I'm chatting with my fellow 2009 Golden Heart finalists about using screenwriting tricks to plot your novel -- please stop by and say hi!

Writing Life: I Wish I Could Be "Limitless"

I saw the Bradley Cooper vehicle "Limitless" a few weeks ago and loved it, despite the somewhat mixed reviews. Early in the movie, he starts taking a drug that grants access to the 9/10ths of the brain we supposedly don't use, and the first thing he did was overcome his writer's block and finish his novel in four days. He went on to do lots of other things unrelated to writing and entirely related to shady dealings, but for me, the writing fantasy was simply wonderful. And my fascination, despite the negative side effects the character suffered, certainly worried my friend -- she kept leaning over the armrest to whisper, "No! No drugs!"

Luckily, the drug was fictional, and given that I don't indulge in anything stronger than Diet Coke (and the occasional mojito or three), I'm not in serious danger. But I read a Salon book review today that brought it all rushing back. And if that book can cure my block without the side effects of a (fictional) drug, perhaps it's worth exploring.

The article is here; it briefly discusses "Limitless", but is more focused on a book called "The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer's Block, and the Creative Brain" by neurologist Alice Weaver Flaherty. This quote from the article stood out to me: "In other words, beyond a certain point, the more difficult a writing task, and the more you think it matters, the more likely you are to become blocked."

I'll have to buy that book and get back to you on the rest of it, but that pretty much sums up my writing experience to date. If I'm just writing for fun, or if I have a pressing deadline, the words come out automagically. But if there is no deadline, just an exhortation to write the best book possible, and if the idea I have is so wonderful that I despair of ever getting it onto the page, I end up curling up into a ball and staring at the ceiling, wishing that my calling was something less difficult and more lucrative, like dentistry or accounting. (note: no offense meant to dentists or accountants)

I eventually manage to get the story out of my head, once I get over the fear, but the fear stage is a dark one. And if someone offered me a pill and said that it would cure the block...

...I don't think I would take it. Not out of any sense of nobility or morality -- I'm not a saint. But I would question whether whatever I wrote was really me, whether the experience was an authentic one or was somehow twisted as the chemicals in my brain realigned themselves. And for all that I complain about the block, I love what I produce when I overcome it -- and overcoming it is just a part of my process, the same as proofreading or daydreaming or rewriting is.

Do you struggle with writer's block? How do you handle it? And would you take the magic pill or suffer on without it?

On Pulling A Book Out Of Thin Air

The glow of finaling in the Golden Heart is still strong, but I spent enough time celebrating over the weekend. The task for this week, my dear readers, is to write an outline for my next book (tentatively titled ONE NIGHT TO SURRENDER, although all titles are subject to change without notice). The challenge with writing the outline unfortunately extends beyond trying to remember whether to use uppercase or lowercase Roman numerals - and since it's more like a synopsis than an outline, Roman numerals never come into play. Rather, the challenge is that as of right now, all I really know is that the heroine is named Ellie and that the hero is Nicholas Claiborne, marquess of Folkestone. I'm on such a roll, right?

But despite the stress of coming up with a plot out of thin air, this is one of the most entertaining parts of the entire process, and I don't want to rush it. This is when you can fall in love with the characters, before they do something unexpected on page 150 and blow your carefully constructed plot-boat out of the water (to make a somewhat questionable metaphor). This is when you can brainstorm ridiculous plots and subplots (he's a pirate! no, he's a vampire! no, he's a were-whale!) without committing to anything. This is when it all looks like it's going to be an easy, effortless book, one that you can write in perfect bursts of productivity every afternoon before going out with friends and pretending to be a glamourous writer.

So, I intend to enjoy this week, and I will keep you posted as developments unfold. I also intend to get back into blogging now that I've emerged from my editing cave - if there are Regency topics you'd love to see addressed, please let me know!

On the Value of Non-Romance Writing Classes

I'm blogging today over at the Ruby Slippered Sisterhood (the wonderful group of ladies who were fellow Golden Heart finalists in 2009) about my experience with non-romance-related writing classes and one of my favorite techniques for exploring and developing your voice. Please stop by and join the conversation! Beyond that, I have very little of interest to report -- I'm still slogging through Madeleine and Ferguson's story (ONE NIGHT TO SCANDAL), while my agent slogs through the submission process for ONE NIGHT TO SEDUCTION. As soon as I have any news about either of them, you'll hear it here!

In Which Reality Has Fully Returned

So, as you may be able to guess from the fact that my last true blog post was over two months ago, it was perhaps a bit premature of me to claim that reality was coming back 'slowly.' In fact, I have essentially been beaten over the head with a big fat stick of reality ever since Nationals. I've switched apartments, attended two out-of-town weddings, planned an 800-person conference for the cursed day job, and tried desperately to maintain the eight hours of sleep a night that I need to feel like a functional human being. But, the biggest focus has been on getting back into my writing. I adore the characters that I am currently working with (Madeleine and Ferguson, tentatively titled ONE NIGHT TO SCANDAL). But perhaps because I adore them so much, I feel honor-bound to write them the best book possible; and so while my first book was much more of a seat-of-the-pants ordeal, I'm attempting to be more of a plotter with this book. I started out without a strong roadmap and wrote around 40,000 words, but over the past couple of weeks I've taken a step back, outlined what I had, and brainstormed virtually every angle of what will come in the last half of the book. This will of course necessitate rewrites of what I already have, but since it was a first draft, that's to be expected.

Allow me to embrace my inner technology dork (while I may be a Regency writer, I have a fascination with shiny electronics) and recommend Scrivener if you are a writer using a Mac. I downloaded it a week or two ago, and it has revolutionized my writing process. It has this cool corkboard feature that you can use to essentially write out brief synopses of every scene, categorize them by whether they're done, partially drafted, or not written, and then move the 'index cards' around if you want to reshuffle the order of scenes. Best of all, moving the index card on the corkboard automatically moves the actual written scene to the right place in the manuscript. Score! For me, this is huge -- since I can visualize the progress I've made, the balance of scenes in the female POV vs. the male POV, and what's left to accomplish, I have a much clearer understanding of where I will take this work.

Okay, technology dork moment over. The gist of this post is that I'm back in the game, looking forward to finishing the first draft of Madeleine and Ferguson by the end of November, and hoping to get back into the blogosphere just a bit more than I have been. If you are anyone other than my mother and you're still reading, thank you! (and Mom, you're of course always welcome :)

[also, for the purposes of those ridiculous FTC regulations around recommendations on blogs - I bought and paid for Scrivener myself, so this is an unbiased review]

Rereading AN INCONVENIENT MARRIAGE

I procrastinated as long as I could this morning (albeit with useful distractions, such as changing the sheets on my bed and cleaning my kitchen), but I spent the rest of the day rereading the entire manuscript of AN INCONVENIENT MARRIAGE. I had not read it all in its entirety since I submitted it for the Golden Heart contest in December; after the deadline, I spent a couple of months relaxing/seeing friends/working on my query letter, and then submitted to a few agents in February. I was hearing back from them at the same time that I heard back from the Golden Heart -- and while I'm thrilled to be a finalist in the Regency category, I haven't had the same luck with agents.

The verdict after a reread? I'm really happy with it overall, particularly with the last two-thirds of the book. But, with the space and distance of a few months spent doing other things, there are a few pieces that leap out to me and begged to be changed. In particular, there are a couple of scenes that I love -- but that I should have rewritten when I did second-draft rewrites of everything else, because while I love the idea of the scene, the style no longer fits the stronger, faster style of the rest of the book.

So, I'm not in despair mode; I'm actually pretty satisfied with what I have, and I'm confident in my ability to fix the pieces I'm not satisfied with. It will require a couple of cuts, a couple of new scenes, and a couple of rewrites of existing scenes -- but I'm setting a goal of being done by mid-May so that I can start querying again before the madness of summer hits in earnest.

Now I'm off -- I'm having dinner at a friend's house, which is a welcome respite from my hermitage, even if I took the unusual route of buying dessert (tiramisu cake from Whole Foods) rather than making it myself due to a) time constraints and b) a lack of ingredients already in the house. Theoretically I should buy some groceries, but the book comes first. Have a lovely weekend!

Historical vs. "Historical"

I wasn't as productive with the book tonight as I would have liked. I spent far too much time playing around on Wikipedia, abandoning my recent tactic of putting [CHECK] after any dubious or uncertain historical fact while writing the first draft. This tactic is a good one, since it encourages me to stay out of the interweb and away from doing a 'quick' lookup that leads into a three-hour journey down a variety of rabbit-holes. But I was debating whether to give Ferguson a fan, since the most over-the-top dandies seem to have some sort of ridiculous affectation, and that led to a lot of reading up on fashion websites.

The problem is that there is real history, in terms of contemporary accounts, well-researched nonfiction, etc. And then there is 'romance history' -- the world that Regency romance has built up over several decades, with 'rules' and 'facts' that are now accepted as the gold standard by most readers, but that just aren't very historically accurate. For instance, the waltz -- it wasn't danced at all in the early Regency, was still seen as very risque during the mid-Regency, and only came into wider acceptance in 1815 or 1816 (or later, depending on your source). But every Regency romance has the hero and heroine waltzing with each other, because the other dances of the time were more group-style (think country line-dancing, only without the boots, plaid, and awful music), and group dances where the hero and heroine are only together for bits and pieces aren't conducive to flirty conversations.

So now I have a dilemma on my hands. Do I write a romance that is as grounded in fact as possible, even if that means doing away with conventions that are accepted (and even expected) by most readers? Or do I ignore some of this and accept that these romances aren't historically accurate anyway, and just write stories that are fun and engaging? What do you prefer to read?