Category Archives: Writing

Brain Fried . . . Rebooting

I was thinking about a scene in one of my favorite 80’s movies, Real Genius starring Val Kilmer (for those who have seen or might remember).  The story is about a bunch of genius kids at a prep-college.  Val plays the lead who’s gone on to buck the system and is teaching the young newbie how to ‘ungeek’.  In this particular scene, in which I am referring to, it’s a montage of everyone cramming for end of the year exams. One student in particular (an extra) stands up from the study hall table and just yells.  He is just freaking out and runs from the room.  Everyone else takes a brief moment to look– at him as he has his ‘meltdown’, and returns to their studies–unfazed.

Lately, I feel like that poor kid.  It’s what I call brain overload.  Sometimes we just get to the point where everything we are focusing on just overwhelms us to the point nothing makes sense–no matter how many angles you try and approach the problem.  The other day I had that moment . . . with my story.

Yes, the one thing I usually find joy in (my escape if you will) became a torment.  I’m not published so there is no deadline (other than my own) so what is the problem? My problem is this story, a paranormal romance, has haunted me for five years.  I’ve tried it in various stages, even finished the first draft three years ago and went on to a sequel and plotted out two more for the series.  I thought I had it made.  But every contest, critique I’ve had on it came up lacking–so I revised it, not once but twice.  I put it to the side while I worked on a ghost story/romance last year but once that was finished my heart went back to the paranormal.

When I presented it to my critique group (whom I trust and value their insight implicitly) it confused them since they knew I could write better.  There were so many things wrong with it.  So I went home and started fresh.  Two months later . . . still nothing.  So I thought maybe using plotting guides a friend of mine sent me would help.  Traditionally, I’m a pants-er . . . not a plotter.

I haven’t sat down to actually plot. I realized going over everything again was just mind boggling–and so the ‘meltdown’ this past week.  I’m taking a few weeks off and stepping away from the books and writing to see if I can ‘reboot’ my brain.  I don’t want my favorite pastime to become a dreaded reality.  Not a good thing for a creative mind. 😛

So instead, I’ve decided (as I’m writing this post) I am going to work on my house (God knows I’ve neglected my duties as a domestic engineer lately), catch up on my ‘to read pile’ and see if the worksheets my friend sent me on plotting/GMC will help guide me from being a total pants-er to a plotter, too.

What do you do to ‘reboot’ when your brain is fried?

 

Our Winner of Gail Barrett’s, High-Stakes Affair

I am not one to apologize either at the beginning of a blog but I will today.  I was left at the mercy of circumstances  away from home the past few days so I wasn’t able to be on-line much.

So, sorry for not being able to respond most of the weekend.  I was away where there wasn’t any Wi-Fi connection —eeeekkkkk!  I did have  access to a tablet occasionally with some connection but couldn’t log on to some areas on-line. I was able to respond off and on Friday but not yesterday so I am posting the winner today now that I’m home again.

I was so excited to have Gail Barrett with us and all the great comments from everyone.  I want to thank Gail for the wonderful opportunity for stopping by and talking to us here in Mermaid Lagoon.

After  selecting a name from our magic conch shell, we have a winner!  Desere Steenberg is the winner of Gail’s book, High-Stakes Affair.  Congratulations, Desere! 

Thanks to everyone who stopped by and said hello!  I had a great time! Have a great week!

Hugs!  🙂

Harlequin Romantic Suspense Author Gail Barrett Swims with the Mermaids

I am so excited to have my critique partner, favorite suspense romance writer and good friend, Gail Barrett with us today!

She is the author of nine Harlequin/Silhouette Romantic Suspense novels and a Silhouette Special Edition which won the Golden Heart.  Gail says she always knew she’d be a writer, and after living everywhere from Spain to the Bahamas, earning a graduate degree in linguistics, and teaching high school Spanish for years, she finally fulfilled that lifelong goal.

Now a former RITA® and Daphne finalist, Gail’s books have won the Book Buyer’s Best Award, the Holt Medallion, the Booksellers Best, National Readers’ Choice, and numerous other awards. Her September 2011 Harlequin Romantic Suspense novel, Cowboy Under Siege, is a 2011 Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice nominee. Visit her webpage: www.gailbarrett.com.

Her latest book in her Stealth Knights series, High-Stakes Affair is out and what a book it is!  Gail has a way of capturing our hearts with bad-boy heroes and the women who come to love them.

Gail, we’re honored and delighted that you took the time to join us today here in Mermaid Lagoon.

Tell us a little more about your inspiration for your latest series, Stealth Knights and latest book in the series, High-Stakes Affair.

Thanks so much for inviting me!  It’s truly an honor to be here!  The Stealth Knights came about when I was brainstorming ideas for a new miniseries for Harlequin Romantic Suspense. I didn’t want to take the traditional route and base my series on a fictitious military agency or other conventional group — SWAT teams, cold case detectives, Black Ops or Navy SEALS. Although those kinds of heroes are great, they’ve been done so frequently — and so well — that I wasn’t sure I had anything unique to add.  And honestly, I’ve always been more intrigued by men who don’t obey the rules — those darker, murkier characters who follow their own moral principles, meting out justice as they see fit. So I decided to go against the norm and invent a more offbeat group, a secretive, loosely affiliated association of thieves, spies, and rogues who operate in that gray area between right and wrong — usually outside the law. Of course, since these are romantic heroes, they really are the good guys, albeit in a less obvious way.

Harlequin loved the idea.  They named the group The Stealth Knights and gave them slogan: The Stealth Knights: powerful, passionate heroes with their own code of law.  They also created a cool little “flash” logo which consists of a shield with swords.

 

So far, there are two books in the series — HIGH-RISK REUNION, which came out in November 2011 and HIGH-STAKES AFFAIR, which is out right now.  They both take place in an old world, Pyrenees Mountain kingdom called País Vell.  Centuries ago, País Vell conquered its neighbor, Reino Antiguo, which the people of Reino Antiguo still resent.  They’ve formed a separatist movement to win back their independence any way they can.

The hero of the latest book, HIGH-STAKES AFFAIR, is not only a rebel from Reino Antiguo, he’s the most infamous of them all — “el Fantasma,” a Robin Hood-type thief adored by his people and the sworn enemy of the crown. Of course, the heroine, Princess Paloma Vergara, isn’t aware of that. She needs Dante’s help to break into a casino and confiscate some incriminating blackmail evidence that could damage her family and provoke dangerously violent unrest. What she doesn’t know is that she’s about to hand their worst enemy the power to bring them down.

What inspires you to write about such unique topics for your characters to endure?

I’m something of a news junkie, so I usually get ideas for my stories by reading about current events.  There are so many nefarious activities going on in the world that it’s pretty easy to come up with something diabolical for my villains to do.   It probably helps that I tend to be a rather cynical and suspicious person, so it doesn’t take much for me to imagine the worst.

What’s your schedule like lately and how do you find the time to write such intriguing suspense stories?

Ideally, I start writing by 7am every weekday. I’m a very early riser, so by 7am I’ve had my coffee and breakfast, showered and answered emails, and am ready to go.  I take a brief exercise break at around 9am to wake myself up, and then a longer exercise break in the early afternoon.  I don’t do much writing after that unless I’m on deadline.  I’m much more of a morning person. I also work on the weekends, but usually I go for a long walk with my husband in the morning, and then write for a bit in the afternoons.

As a writer, do you find yourself more of a ‘pantser’ or a ‘plotter’ when you sit down to write your next novel?  Do you have a general idea and work from there or do you just write and have the ideas come to you?

By nature, I’m a plotter.  I like to know who my main characters are, what their conflicts will be, and especially what will happen in the black period to tear them apart before I begin writing the book.  I pretty much plot toward that.  Also, since I’m writing romantic suspense I have to know what the villains are up to.   I try not to plot each scene too extensively in advance because I want to give the characters a chance to surprise me, but I think romantic suspense demands a lot of plotting up front. I also revise as I go, so by the time I’ve arrived at the last chapter, I’m pretty much done.  I don’t do extensive rewrites.

You’ve written ten novels (at print) so far. Did you always intend for most of your novels to be of the suspense genre?  Do you read suspense for pleasure and who are some of your favorite authors?

When I got serious about writing commercial fiction, the first thing I did was to analyze what I liked to read.  I realized that the elements I liked most in books were the mysteries and romance.  That’s how I settled on writing romantic suspense.  So yes, I think I gravitated toward that from the start.  But my real goal was to write emotionally compelling stories, whether or not they contained suspense.   I wanted to write stories that resonated with the readers, that would linger in their minds, not just create a clever plot.  For recreational reading, I read everything from mysteries and comedies to suspense.  As far as my favorite suspense authors go, Daphne du Maurier is a classic, of course.  Sandra Brown is another writer I really respect.  I also like Douglas Preston.  He’s a master at raising the stakes and making each character’s predicament get progressively worse.

Let’s say you are working on your next novel—what do you have around you besides your computer?

Nothing very exciting, I’m afraid.  My first goal is not to let myself get distracted, so next to me I have water or tea, a nail file, hand lotion, tissues, some sort of healthy snack (vegetable or fruit) and anything else I think I might suddenly crave or need.  I also have my thesaurus and notes for the story (usually mountains of those), and other reference books.   That’s about it.

Let’s pretend: You are sitting in your favorite place in the entire world— describe what it does to your senses. What do you see, hear, and feel?

I’m sitting just outside the medieval wall in Avila, Spain on a hill facing west.  It’s evening, and dusk has begun shadowing the golden fields and silvery olive trees in the valley below.  The dwindling sun still warms the wooden slats of the bench I’m sitting on.  Swallows swoop past and careen overhead as they wheel around the ancient stone wall.  An elderly couple strolls by, arm in arm, their steps measured, practiced, and slow.  The man wears a traditional cardigan sweater and a black beret on his balding head.  The woman’s head is erect, her expression proud.  She has on her best knee-length, woolen skirt, sturdy pumps, and meticulously ironed blouse.   My husband lounges beside me with his eyes closed, and I feel content.  Everything is right in my world.

That is amazing, Gail.  What a beautiful setting. 

Your books have won many awards over the years.  Is there one in particular that excited you—or shocked you when you won?

Honestly, just being nominated for an award is a huge honor, particularly at the published level because the competition is so fierce.  So even making the finals is very exciting.  As far as the contests I’ve won, I was completely blown away when Where He Belongs won the Book Buyers’ Best Award.  It not only won its category, but the overall competition as well.  I totally did not expect that.  In fact, I nearly didn’t attend the award ceremony because it was late in the evening and I didn’t think my book had any chance to win.  Getting the National Readers’ Choice Award for To Protect A Princess was also an enormous honor, one I still treasure greatly since it came from readers.  And of course, the Holt Medallion for His 7-Day Fiancée was thrilling as well.

Having won the prestigious Golden Heart with your first book, Silhouette Special Edition, Where He Belongs, what advice would you give others who are hoping to possibly achieve that award in their near future?

About the only advice I can give is to persevere.  Where He Belongs was the sixth full-length book I’d completed.  I’d been writing toward publication for twelve, long years at that point.  But no matter how many rejections I got, I kept plugging away, trying to get better and incorporate everything I’d learned into my writing.  I think that’s the key, to just keep learning and growing as a writer.  And don’t give up!  I sold Where He Belongs at the same time that it won the Golden Heart.

Thank you so much Gail for joining us today here in our beautiful lagoon. All the best to you!  It’s been a real pleasure to talk with you.

One lucky commenter will  win a copy of Gail’s,  High-Stakes Affair. All comments must be received by 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time, Friday, March 2, 2012.

Check out Gail’s latest, High-Stakes Affair in her recent Stealth Knights series. You can find her books through the following links:

Amazon paperback:

http://www.amazon.com/High-Stakes-Affair-Harlequin-Romantic-Suspense/dp/0373277679/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1330439352&sr=8-1

Amazon kindle:

http://www.amazon.com/High-Stakes-Harlequin-Romantic-Suspense-ebook/dp/B006QAF06C/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1330439352&sr=8-2

Both the Barnes and Noble paperback and nook are at this link:

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/high-stakes-affair-gail-barrett/1105681523?ean=9780373277674&itm=1&usri=gail+barrett+high+stakes+affair

No Wankers! Praise for Savvy Authors Editpalooza 2012

Savvy Authors: “Wouldn’t it be great to have an editor available to help you polish your manuscript? Wouldn’t it be great to learn to self-edit like an editor?”

Me: Oh boy…yes, yes, yes!!!

Savvy Authors: “Because at Savvy Authors we feel, and share, your pain and we know exactly what you need…. EditPalooza!”

Me: You do know what I need…I’m feeling this, you totally get me!

Savvy Authors: “We will teach you how to edit like a professional! We’ll be pairing you up in groups of 5 (or more) to work with our team of guest Editors as they walk you through self-editing your novel to a best-seller’s shine.”

Me: You had me at “Wouldn’t”…where do I sign up?

41 days later (the editors extended our class length to ensure we had plenty of time to complete our lessons) and I feel like a new writer.  My editor (it felt oh so good to say that for the month!), Kerri-Leigh Grady, Associate Editor at Entangled Publishing, was phenomenal and my group members, ranging from paranormal to contemporary, YA to adult fiction, couldn’t have been better resources.

“To keep your experience as close to the real deal as possible, we will be utilizing the three pass editing process used by most publishing houses. We’ll spend two weeks on the first pass, where we’ll focus on characterization, plot, and scene structure, as well as major craft issues that might be stifling your voice. We’ll then spend the remaining two weeks on our second pass which will further focus on voice, dialogue, tightening language, and polishing your prose. And finally, you’ll be given the tools to do a third pass on your own, or perhaps stay with your crit buddy after the thirty days to finally fix remaining mechanical issues and those pesky commas.”—Liz Pelletier, Publisher & Senior Editor Entangled Publishing www.EntangledPublishing.com

This was my January/February in a nutshell.  It was like nothing I’ve ever experienced before but something I will use each and every time I finish a draft from here on out.  You may be like me, having taken classes and workshops on craft in the past.  I had the tools prior to participating in this year’s Editpalooza, but now I’ve gained working knowledge of how to evaluate each of my scenes to ensure those elements are present and doing their job to give me (and my reader!) the best story possible.

What do I believe made the difference?  That’s easy.  In Editpalooza, you work with one of your very own manuscripts, applying everything you learn to your story, and you’re not alone.  I can’t tell you how valuable it was to have Kerri-Leigh and my group members read my assignments and tell me exactly what was working and just as helpfully, what wasn’t.  And then how to fix it, the way a professional editor would.  How liberating it felt to have Kerri-Leigh say things to me like, “Good call, Carlene” (in reference to identifying chunks of backstory or “inner-wangsting” (see NO WANKERS pic below) that I admitted needed tossing or the way a plot line could be tweaked to add more conflict) and “Your story sounds meaty and intense.”  That was a priceless feeling, that one there.

To the right is my “NO WANKERS” t-shirt from Old Kings Road pub in Santa Barbara, which I have vowed to wear as moral support whenever revising future manuscripts! 

The best news, it was a ton of hard work, but it was sensible and applicable and so many wonderful things happened to my story and clicked in my head as I completed the exercises.

If you missed this year’s Editpalooza, be on the lookout for next year’s.  And check out Savvy Authors for tons of great opportunities!

 

I Read the Golden Heart Winner

That’s right, come rub up against me just to be near the awesomeness that was one of the Golden Heart entries I read. Know now that if it’s not one of the winners, I am going to stomp my feet and scream into the wind while pulling out my blue hair.

How do I know it was the winner? Because when I reached the end I was ticked off that I didn’t get to read the rest of it – as in I groaned out loud and then started telling Mr. Flynn all about it while he was trying to watch hockey. As anyone married to a sports nut will tell you, that is the last moment in time when you want to try to talk to your dear heart. But I couldn’t help myself, it was that good.

The trope is not one I’d normally be drawn to as I’m more of an everything-is-about-to-blow-up-but-I-can’t-stop-myself-from-ripping-off-your-pants kind of girl. This plot was more realistic than that, but the tension (sexual and otherwise) was divinely written. The hero was yummy like molten lava chocolate cake. The heroine was someone I really liked and could empathize with. And the plot? I became so invested in it in 50 pages that I devoured the synopsis, then got pissed off all over again because I didn’t get to read the rest of the story.

And isn’t that what a great Golden Heart winning story is suppose to do?

Rachel Aaron — How I Went From Writing 2,000 Words a Day to 10,000 Words a Day

Back in December, when I was sick and not feeling very productive, I stumbled across this wonderful blog post by Rachel Aaron, author of The Legend of Eli Monpress novels. Rachel has found a way to manage her writing goals and increase her productivity dramatically. I was so wowed by Rachel’s no-nonsense approach I asked if I could share it here. She has graciously agreed, so join us as she discusses her process of discovery and path to success.

This is a long read, but if you haven’t seen it before you’ll be glad you took the time. If you don’t have time now, please stop back when you can or go to Rachel’s blog for the original post.

And don’t forget to join us here tomorrow, when I will have the honor of interviewing the very talented Rachel Aaron.

 

How I Went From Writing 2,000 Words a Day to 10,000 Words a Day

When I started writing The Spirit War (Eli novel #4), I had a bit of a problem. I had a brand new baby and my life (like every new mother’s life) was constantly on the verge of shambles. I paid for a sitter four times a week so I could get some writing time, and I guarded these hours like a mama bear guards her cubs – with ferocity and hiker-mauling violence. To keep my schedule and make my deadlines, I needed to write 4000 words during each of these carefully arranged sessions. I thought this would be simple. After all, before I quit my job to write full time I’d been writing 2k a day in the three hours before work. Surely with 6 hours of baby free writing time, 4k a day would be nothing….

I guarded these hours like a mama bear guards her cubs – with ferocity and hiker-mauling violence. To keep my schedule and make my deadlines, I needed to write 4000 words during each of these carefully arranged sessions. I thought this would be simple. After all, before I quit my job to write full time I’d been writing 2k a day in the three hours before work. Surely with 6 hours of baby free writing time, 4k a day would be nothing….

But (of course), things didn’t work out like that. Every day I’d sit down to add 4000 words to my new manuscript. I was determined, I was experienced, I knew my world. There was no reason I couldn’t get 4k down. But every night when I hauled myself away, my word count had only increased by 2k, the same number of words I’d been getting before I quit my day job.

Needless to say, I felt like a failure. Here I was, a professional writer with three books about to come out, and I couldn’t even beat the writing I’d done before I went pro. At first I made excuses, this novel was the most complicated of all the Eli books I’d written, I was tired because my son thinks 4am is an awesome time to play, etc. etc. But the truth was there was no excuse. I had to find a way to boost my word count, and with months of 2k a day dragging me down, I had to do it fast. So I got scientific. I gathered data and tried experiments, and ultimately ended up boosting my word count to heights far beyond what I’d thought was possible, and I did it while making my writing better than ever before.

When I told people at ConCarolinas that I’d gone from writing 2k to 10k per day, I got a huge response. Everyone wanted to know how I’d done it, and I finally got so sick of telling the same story over and over again that I decided to write it down here.

So, once and for all, here’s the story of how I went from writing 500 words an hour to over 1500, and (hopefully) how you can too:

A quick note: There are many fine, successful writers out there who equate writing quickly with being a hack. I firmly disagree. My methods remove the dross, the time spent tooling around lost in your daily writing, not the time spent making plot decisions or word choices. This is not a choice between ruminating on art or churning out the novels for gross commercialism (though I happen to like commercial novels), it’s about not wasting your time for whatever sort of novels you want to write.

Drastically increasing your words per day is actually pretty easy, all it takes is a shift in perspective and the ability to be honest with yourself (which is the hardest part). Because I’m a giant nerd, I ended up creating a metric, a triangle with three core requirements: Knowledge, Time, and Enthusiasm. Any one of these can noticeably boost your daily output, but all three together can turn you into a word machine. I never start writing these days unless I can hit all three.

Update! The talented Vicky Teinaki made a graphic of this metric and let me use it! She is awesome!

Side 1: Knowledge, or Know What You’re Writing Before You Write It

The first big boost to my daily wordcount happened almost by accident. Used to be I would just pop open the laptop and start writing. Now, I wasn’t a total make-it-up-as-you-go writer. I had a general plot outline, but my scene notes were things like “Miranda and Banage argue” or “Eli steals the king.” Not very useful, but I knew generally what direction I was writing in, and I liked to let the characters decide how the scene would go. Unfortunately, this meant I wasted a lot of time rewriting and backtracking when the scene veered off course.

This was how I had always written, it felt natural to me. But then one day I got mired in a real mess. I had spent three days knee deep in the same horrible scene. I was drastically behind on my wordcount, and I was facing the real possibility of missing my deadline… again. It was the perfect storm of all my insecurities, the thought of letting people down mixed with the fear that I really didn’t know what I was doing, that I wasn’t a real writer at all, just an amateur pretending to be one. But as I got angrier and angrier with myself, I looked down at my novel and suddenly realized that I was being an absolute idiot. Here I was, desperate for time, floundering in a scene, and yet I was doing the hardest work of writing (figuring out exactly what needs to happen to move the scene forward in the most dramatic and exciting way) in the most time consuming way possible (ie, in the middle of the writing itself).

As soon as I realized this, I stopped. I closed my laptop and got out my pad of paper. Then, instead of trying to write the scene in the novel as I had been, I started scribbling a very short hand, truncated version the scene on the paper. I didn’t describe anything, I didn’t do transitions. I wasn’t writing, I was simply noting down what I would write when the time came. It took me about five minutes and three pages of notebook paper to untangle my seemingly unfixable scene, the one that had just eaten three days of my life before I tried this new approach. Better still, after I’d worked everything out in shorthand I was able to dive back into the scene and finish it in record time. The words flew onto the screen, and at the end of that session I’d written 3000 words rather than 2000, most of them in that last hour and a half.

Looking back, it was so simple I feel stupid for not thinking of it sooner. If you want to write faster, the first step is to know what you’re writing before you write it. I’m not even talking about macro plot stuff, I mean working out the back and forth exchanges of an argument between characters, blocking out fights, writing up fast descriptions. Writing this stuff out in words you actually want other people to read, especially if you’re making everything up as you go along, takes FOREVER. It’s horribly inefficient and when you get yourself in a dead end, you end up trashing hundreds, sometimes thousands of words to get out. But jotting it down on a pad? Takes no time at all. If the scene you’re sketching out starts to go the wrong way, you see it immedeatly, and all you have to do is cross out the parts that went sour and start again at the beginning. That’s it. No words lost, no time wasted. It was god damn beautiful.

Every writing session after this realization, I dedicated five minutes (sometimes more, never less) and wrote out a quick description of what I was going to write. Sometimes it wasn’t even a paragraph, just a list of this happens then this then this. This simple change, these five stupid minutes, boosted my wordcount enormously. I went from writing 2k a day to writing 5k a day within a week without increasing my 5 hour writing block. Some days I even finished early.

Of the three sides of the triangle, I consider knowledge to be the most important. This step alone more than doubled my word count. If you only want to try one change at a time, this is the one I recommend the most.

Side 2: Time

Now that I’d had such a huge boost from one minor change, I started to wonder what else I could do to jack my numbers up even higher. But as I looked for other things I could tweak, I quickly realized that I knew embarrassingly little about how I actually wrote my novels. I’d kept no records of my progress, I couldn’t even tell you how long it took me to write any of my last three novels beyond broad guesstimations, celebratory blog posts, and vague memories of past word counts. It was like I started every book by throwing myself at the keyboard and praying for a novel to shoot out of my fingers before the deadline. And keep in mind this is my business. Can you imagine a bakery or a freelance designer working this way? Never tracking hours or keeping a record of how long it took me to actually produce the thing I was selling? Yeah, pretty stupid way to work.

If I was going to boost my output (or know how long it took me to actually write a freaking novel), I had to know what I was outputting in the first place. So, I started keeping records. Every day I had a writing session I would note the time I started, the time I stopped, how many words I wrote, and where I was writing on a spreadsheet. I did this for two months, and then I looked for patterns.

Several things were immediately clear. First, my productivity was at its highest when I was in a place other than my home. That is to say, a place without internet. The afternoons I wrote at the coffee shop with no wireless were twice as productive as the mornings I wrote at home. I also saw that, while butt in chair time is the root of all writing, not all butt in chair time is equal. For example, those days where I only got one hour to write I never managed more than five hundred words in that hour. By contrast, those days I got five hours of solid writing I was clearing close to 1500 words an hour. The numbers were clear: the longer I wrote, the faster I wrote (and I believe the better I wrote, certainly the writing got easier the longer I went). This corresponding rise of wordcount and writing hours only worked up to a point, though. There was a definite words per hour drop off around hour 7 when I was simply too brain fried to go on.

But these numbers are very personal, the point I’m trying to make is that by recording my progress every day I had the data I needed to start optimizing my daily writing. Once I had my data in hand, I rearranged my schedule to make sure my writing time was always in the afternoon (my most prolific time according to my sheet, which was a real discovery. I would have bet money I was better in the morning.), always at my coffee shop with no internet, and always at least 4 hours long. Once I set my time, I guarded it viciously, and low and behold my words per day shot up again. This time to an average of 6k-7k per writing day, and all without adding any extra hours. All I had to do was discover what made good writing time for me and then make sure the good writing time was the time I fought hardest to get.

Even if you don’t have the luxury of 4 uninterrupted hours at your prime time of day, I highly suggest measuring your writing in the times you do have to write. Even if you only have 1 free hour a day, trying that hour in the morning some days and the evening on others and tracking the results can make sure you aren’t wasting your precious writing time on avoidable inefficiencies. Time really does matter.

Side 3: Enthusiasm

I was flying high on my new discoveries. Over the course of two months I’d jacked my daily writing from 2k per day to 7k with just a few simple changes and was now actually running ahead of schedule for the first time in my writing career. But I wasn’t done yet. I was absolutely determined I was going to break the 10k a day barrier.

I’d actually broken it before. Using Knowledge and Time, I’d already managed a few 10k+ days, including one where I wrote 12,689 words, or two chapters, in 7 hours. To be fair, I had been writing outside of my usual writing window in addition to my normal writing on those days, so it wasn’t a total words-per-hour efficiency jump. But that’s the great thing about going this fast, the novel starts to eat you and you find yourself writing any time you can just for the pure joy of it. Even better, on the days where I broke 10k, I was also pulling fantastic words-per-hour numbers, 1600 – 2000 words per hour as opposed to my usual 1500. It was clear these days were special, but I didn’t know how. I did know that I wanted those days to become the norm rather than the exception, so I went back to my records (which I now kept meticulously) to find out what made the 10k days different.

The answer was head-slappingly obvious. Those days I broke 10k were the days I was writing scenes I’d been dying to write since I planned the book. They were the candy bar scenes, the scenes I wrote all that other stuff to get to. By contrast, my slow days (days where I was struggling to break 5k) corresponded to the scenes I wasn’t that crazy about.

This was a duh moment for me, but it also brought up a troubling new problem. If I had scenes that were boring enough that I didn’t want to write them, then there was no way in hell anyone would want to read them. This was my novel, after all. If I didn’t love it, no one would.

Fortunately, the solution turned out to be, yet again, stupidly simple. Every day, while I was writing out my little description of what I was going to write for the knowledge component of the triangle, I would play the scene through in my mind and try to get excited about it. I’d look for all the cool little hooks, the parts that interested me most, and focus on those since they were obviously what made the scene cool. If I couldn’t find anything to get excited over, then I would change the scene, or get rid of it entirely. I decided then and there that, no matter how useful a scene might be for my plot, boring scenes had no place in my novels.

This discovery turned out to be a fantastic one for my writing. I trashed and rewrote several otherwise perfectly good scenes, and the effect on the novel was amazing. Plus, my daily wordcount numbers shot up again because I was always excited about my work. Double bonus!

Life On 10k A Day

With all three sides of my triangle now in place, I was routinely pulling 10-12k per day by the time I finished Spirits’ End, the fifth Eli novel. I was almost 2 months ahead of where I’d thought I’d be, and the novel had only taken me 3 months to write rather than the 7 months I’d burned on the Spirit War (facts I knew now that I was keeping records). I was ahead of schedule with plenty of time to do revisions before I needed to hand the novel in to my editor, and I was happier with my writing than ever before. There were several days toward the end when I’d close my laptop and stumble out of the coffee shop feeling almost drunk on writing. I felt like I was on top of the world, utterly invincible and happier than I’ve ever been. Writing that much that quickly was like taking some kind of weird success opiate, and I was thoroughly addicted. Once you’ve hit 10k a day for a week straight, anything less feels like your story is crawling.

Now, again, 10k a day is my high point as a professional author whose child is now in daycare (PRICELESS). I write 6 – 7 hours a day, usually 2 in the morning and 4-5 in the afternoon, five days a week. Honestly, I don’t see how anyone other than a full time novelist could pull those kind of hours, but that doesn’t mean you have to be a pro to drastically increase your daily word count.

So 10k might be the high end of the spectrum, but of the people I’ve told about this (a lot) who’ve gotten back to me (not nearly as many), most have doubled their word counts by striving to hit all three sides of the triangle every time they write. This means some have gone from 1k a day to 2k, or 2k to 4k. Some of my great success with increasing my wordcount is undoubtedly a product of experience, as I also hit my million word mark somewhere in the fifth Eli novel. Even so, I believe most of the big leaps in efficiency came from changing the way I approached my writing. Just as changing your lifestyle can help you lose a hundred pounds, changing they way you sit down to write can boost your words per hour in astonishing ways.

If you’re looking to get more out of your writing time, I really hope you try my triangle. If you do, please write me (or comment below) and let me know. Even if it doesn’t work (especially if it doesn’t work) I’d love to hear about it. Also, if you find another efficiency hack for writing, let me know about that too! There’s no reason our triangle can’t be a square, and I’m always looking for a way to hit 15k a day :D.

Again, I really hope this helps you hit your goals. Good luck with your writing!

– Rachel Aaron

 

Thanks again, Rachel. I’m more encouraged than ever to keep up with the goals I’ve set and, thanks to you, I think I can achieve even more. Join us here tomorrow to find out more about Rachel Aaron and her new release.

In the meantime, you should check out Rachel Aaron’s website and here are a couple of places you can purchase her The Legend of Eli Monpress novels.

http://www.amazon.com/Spirit-Thief-Legend-Eli-Monpress/dp/0316069051/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1281028971&sr=8-1

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/legend-of-eli-monpress-rachel-aaron/1100737227?ean=9780316193573&itm=1&usri=the+legend+of+eli+monpress

 

 

Look Ma! I have a process!

I was torn about what to write about today. Life has been crazy for me lately and I’ve not had a lot of time to think about blogging here today.

Now, the stuff I’ve been doing is the fun stuff:  incorporating myself as a writing business, signing my contract with Entangled, getting new headshots taken (see one to the right), and filling out the cover art fact sheet for my book (my favorite question was the one that asked what I didn’t want on my book cover.  (The first thing that came to mind was, “cowboys, babies, and the Cialis bathtubs”)

I also received a rejection. Not fun. But after a one-night pity party with the Mermaids, I got back up on Seabiscuit and got to work. I sent that manuscript to another publisher and now I wait.

And the EDJ (evil day job) . . .  let’s not go there.  In fact, I don’t want to go there right now. Again, working through some stuff which will likely work out but it’s a pain getting there.

But, even with all this stuff needing to get done the thing I was struggling with was writing.  And, it was driving me crazy! See, I decided that I needed to change how I did this writing thing.

Why?

Not.  A. Clue.

So, I decided to monkey with the system and do it differently. Change it up. Get jiggy with it.

And, I couldn’t get it done. Couldn’t make progress. Nothing.

So, in a moment of brilliance I trashed everything I had done and went back to the tried a true.  I wrote my bulletized plot outline. I started on page one instead of in the middle. And . . . voila! . . . I was writing!

So, what’s the moral of that story?

Don’t mess with what’s working.  There is no set way to write a book. No right way. No wrong way

Just my way.

What’s yours?

Robin

 

 

 

 

 

UPDATE: Since so many people commented on my boots. Here they are up close. I love them . . .

Book Review: The Guardian by Sherrilyn Kenyon

I don’t currently own a copy of Sherrilyn Kenyon’s The Guardian.  A book this special must be shared and so I have sent mine to a good friend and by the end of this weekend, I will have gone to buy myself another copy.  While I’m there, I’ll pick up an extra for one random commenter to this review.

The reason?  That’s easy.  Emotion.

Seth and Lydia’s story will evoke it from you, twist your heart and wring you of everything before it’s finished.  Notice I said before it’s finished with you and not the other way around.

Sherrilyn does not waste a second of your time in this book and neither will I trying to simply fill the page.  If you’re a writer, this is a great example of how it’s sometimes necessary to tell a story that’s going to break and then heal your reader’s heart.  Don’t be afraid to go there if you must.  If you’re a reader, hold on tight.  It’s going to be a devastatingly beautiful ride.  Trust me, you’re in good hands.

From Sherrilyn Kenyon’s website:

As a Dream-Hunter, Lydia has been charged with the most sacred and dangerous of missions. She’s to descend into the Nether Realm and find the missing god of dreams before he betrays the secrets that could kill all of them. What she never expects is to be taken prisoner by the Realm’s most vicious guardian.

Seth’s time is running out. If he can’t hand over the key to Olympus and the heart of Zeus, then his own life and soul will be forfeit. No matter the torture, he hasn’t been able to break the god in his custody. But when a rescuer appears, he decides to try a new tactic.

When these two lock wills, one of them must give. But Lydia isn’t just guarding the gates of Olympus, she’s holding back the darkest of powers. If she fails, an ancient evil will roam the earth once more and no one…

I give this one 5 out of 5 mermaid flippers and a GIGANTIC red heart!  If you’d like to be entered into the drawing for a copy of this wonderful book, just say so in the comments section by midnight EST February 10, 2012.

Happy Almost Valentines Day,

Carlene Mermaid ;&

Instant Gratification…NOW!

 

          We live in a world where we expect everything to happen immediately. There’s no waiting involved. The element of surprise and wonder has been replaced with knowledge, which is good, right?
          I remember a time when I would come home and wonder if someone had called me. The wondering was fun, exciting. I could daydream about what the conversation would have been like if I had been home to answer the phone. Maybe he called a hundred times. Maybe just once. He could have without any embarrassment because I wouldn’t have known any better. Those were the days before caller ID.
          Not so much today. We know exactly how many times someone has called because we check the caller ID. We know the exact times. We know if they left a message. We know everything. But where is the wonder? Where is the excitement in knowing?
          We live in a time of instant gratification. We want everything and we want it now. People don’t chat in the checkout line because the customers stomp their feet in protest of having to wait. Get more people behind the registers! Stat!
How many times have we called someone’s home only to roll our eyes when they don’t answer? How could they not be there? We immediately call their cell phones. Still no answer? Send them a text message. Find out if they’re on Facebook. Where could they be? It’s been a whole three minutes!
          Writing is the same way nowadays. We want our stories published and we want it done today. What happened to the times when we waited it out? When we waited for our stories to reach a standard that deserved to be published?
I’m just as guilty as the next person. I want my stories published, and I want those books on the shelves immediately. But am I truly ready? Granted, I have only sent out one query in the last year, but I still expect someone to arrive on my doorstep with a gigantic check, roses and champagne, telling me that my books are the best out there.
          I love to write. I love to create stories in my mind and see them on paper or the computer screen. I love my characters, and they become real to me. But, I gyp them. I create them and love them and wish the best for them, and then I send them on their merry way, far away from me. I certainly don’t like to fix their problems. I don’t like to see the holes in the story. Let’s face it. I don’t like to revise.
          Some masochists out there love to get down and dirty and completely restructure their stories. Some decide to even switch the POV or even move from a first person narrative to the third person. I can’t stand these people. 
          I’m only partly joking. Those are the people who stick with their story and see their characters through their problems together. I’m jealous. That’s the simple truth.

          Part of the problem is wanting to get published right away. And so I give up on the book I just finished and start another one because it’s much easier for me to create new characters and fresh problems than to fix the ones in unrevised books.

          Because we want everything immediately. We want things to be easy. Life shouldn’t be hard. It shouldn’t be complicated. But isn’t making it to the goal more exciting when we hurdle the obstacles?
           It’s sad, really. How much are we missing in a world where we have everything at our fingertips? There’s no time to relax. There’s no time to appreciate life and the world around us because we’re too busy texting someone who hasn’t bothered to call us back after two minutes. We’re too busy complaining about standing in line with three other people to appreciate getting to know a stranger. Maybe that stranger would have become a friend in another time. A less hectic time. A time where we might have been content to wait together.