A journey into the wilderness of authorhood
Vacation begins. Posting will be erratic until after Labor Day. I may pop in now and again if it’s pouring down rain and I happen to have internet access at the same time. But I’ll be back for sure Tuesday after Labor Day.
See you soon.
I recently received a sample chapter of Alison Kent’s book The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Writing Erotic Romance which is due to hit shelves September 5th. Judging by the contents of Chapter 9, this looks like a book that I will have to buy.
Most of you are probably already aware of the series and familiar with the structure that all the books have in common. Alison has done a great job of adapting that structure to a writer’s guide. Sprinkled liberally throughout are “Naughty, Naughty” boxes (warnings) and ”Scorchers” (keys), with an occassional table or two.
Chapter 9 - The Building Blocks of Story People - is about creating believable characters who act according to their… well, um, character. The discussion is applicable regardless of which genre you write. I suspect there are several other discussions in the book where this is true. We all carry with us the experiences of our lives that help define who we are and how we react in certain situations. Our characters’ phobias and motivators need to come from someplace also. Alison stresses the importance of giving our characters a history, the where did they come from? and how did they get here? It was enough of a kick in the pants to make me want to put a spreadsheet together for my characters.
In addition to reminding us that our characters need a history, and that all of the details need not necessarily be revealed to the reader, Alison closes Chapter 9 with this gem:
Internal motivations are often so deeply seated, a character may not even be aware of what is driving him toward his internal goal.
Judging from just this chapter, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Writing Erotic Romance will be on my shelf in September.
I would say that I’m not posting today except that I’m posting this, so I can’t. Tomorrow will be a major post, but after that it will probably be September before you hear from me again unless I have some down time and internet access at the same time.
I got some more slides back today. So once I get back I might put up some pictures of SS. Plus I hope to get tons of writing done, so I’ll post some word counts. Have a great two weeks folks.
Too much to do. Not enough time to do it in.
Arrgh.
Vacation is almost upon me but it’s almost like I have to work twice as hard in order to be ready to go, and I’m sure I’ll have to work twice as hard to catch up once I’m back.
Does anyone know anybody hiring beach bums? I think I could do that for about $70,000 a year and be happy. I wouldn’t even need a vacation the first year.
I’ve had a weird dream going for weeks that has nothing to do with any of my WIPs. It’s weird because of the content, but also because of the fact that I never dream a dream that I can remember unless it’s about a WIP. Another odd thing about this dream is that it has been progressing in sync with the Real Life calendar. What’s up with that?
The dream started off a few months ago as a job interview. It felt like interviews from my previous career. The details are hazy now because I don’t write down the unimportant dreams, the dreams that don’t help me with WIPs, but I remember that the job interview went well and it was a job I didn’t feel like I was qualified for. So I have to explain something here… first, I’ve no intention or desire to leave my current job. Second, my old career was as a systems analyst, which is another way of saying that I was a software designer. I wrote programs, yes, but I also wrote networks of programs that communicated with each other and I wrote specs for programs that I would then have other programmers write. But I’ve been out of that field for years now and the technology has left me behind.
With that said, I thought I was dreaming about trying to get back into the tech field. I was wrong.
As the calendar, and this dream, progressed, I was getting more and more anxious with this interview process even as it became apparent that I was either not as unqualified as I thought I was, or I was very good at smoke and sunshine. And then came last night. My first day at my new job.
I noticed the landscaping first, which is a weird reference to a stint I had when I was between contracts and not bartending or selling lingerie (didn’t like the way things were pruned and there were weeds everywhere). Then I went inside the office. The second thing I noticed was that it was all women. The women were of various types, some quite attractive, some not so much, but they were witty and creative and fun. And quite open. A few changed clothes right in front of me as they got ready for a meeting. Odd. But not uncomfortable. Not tittilating either. It was very casual with just a hint of innocent tease.
Have you figured out what the dream is about yet?
I’m writing romance novels. I’m a man in a woman’s world listening in on the locker room-esque conversations and even taking part. I have doubts about my qualifications, yet I continue to get positive feedback from every corner on the net, on the phone, and even in person. And today is August 15th, my self imposed deadline that is not going to be met.
I’m comfortable here.
What about the coffe mug, you ask? Well, that’s not really part of the dream, but as I sit here typing I’m drinking coffee from a fifteen year old mug that I received when I was working for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis. My IBM vendor used to bring my boss all sorts of goodies with IBM logos on them. One day I said to her “I know he’s the one who spends all the money, but when there’s a problem, who do you come to to help you solve it? I don’t even have a coffee mug.” The next time she came she brought me an IBM coffee mug. I love her, man.
Anyway, I still have and use that coffee mug. Speaking of which, it’s time for a refill, so let me post and get ready to start my day.
I was reading over The Big Seduction scene last night and came to an uncomfortable realization. The seduction was very close to what happened in Real Life between me and TK several years ago. To this day, she and I have very different views on how it happened, and neither of us has any regrets (well, as of the last time I talked to her; it’s been a few years now). Suffice it to say that I think she seduced me and she insists it was the other way around.
I actually like that aspect of it, and I’d like to keep that same sense in the scene I wrote. But in order to keep a healthy distance between me and my characters, I think it would be best to change some of the details. Besides, TK might not want to have her mother reading about that night. Or me, mine, for that matter.
I wrote a sex scene last night… or more accurately, I wrote everything that led up to the sex scene and then stopped. Gabby’s looking at me like I’m crazy. I was on a tear yesterday. I wrote and wrote and wrote. I was being very productive. And Amber was ready… but I wasn’t.
I think the problem was that I skip around so much while I’m writing. This scene is later in the story, after Jason and Amber are doing things together outside the rehab facility, but I haven’t really written much where they actually get along together. In my mind, they are still in an antagonistic phase. It’s too early for them to succumb to temptation when I haven’t written any temptation between them yet.
So I stopped.
And left Amber hanging!
And left Amber hanging. I know it’s not nice, but I wasn’t ready for the scene yet. I need to write some things in the middle, then I’ll come back and let the scene come to a cli… uh, I’ll satis… we’ll wrap things up.
You’re so cruel. You’d better not do that to me in my story!
I have a clear memory that comes to me any time I hear the Beatles tune Here Comes the Sun. That song is burned into the same brain cells as a scene from the novel Logan’s Run by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson, the scene where Logan-5 and Jessica-6 escape from the ice cave and see the sun for the first time in their lives. This happens to me fairly frequently when I listen to music while reading; that music becomes linked with the story.
The entire B side of the Yellow Submarine album (yes I listened on vinyl) is linked to the original Dragonlance series by Margaret Weiss & Tracy Hickman.
Sometimes I wonder ifwhen, what music will be become linked with my stories?
One of the things I’ve been doing the last couple years as a way to… I don’t know… better myself? Improve my quality of life? Enjoy and embrace my singlehoodness? Whatever, I’ve been learning to cook. I already know how to cook, but I’ve wanted to learn how to cook well. The kind of cooking that you do and people come over and say “This is fabulous”.
I’ve got a few things I do well now. I’m trying to teach myself a few more. One of the things I plan to do next year is take a couple classes across the street. You see, one of my neighbors is a cooking supply store (I get coffee there just about every morning). The store is great because in addition to pots and pans and knives, they cater, they have a lunch menu every day, they have excellent wines and import beer. And they have coffee… can’t forget the coffee.
But a half dozen times a year, they bring in a chef and have a cooking class.
I’m going to sign up for a couple next year.
So what got me thinking about cooking of all things?
Last night I was working on one of my specialties… chili. Now, before you panic and think to yourself here’s a guy who thinks he can cook because he can make chili, hear me out. This is special chili. When I was in my twenties making chili was about how hot you could make it and still be able to eat it. Now it’s about perfecting the ingredients. I put six different spices in it and only one of them is chili powder. It’s been declared fantastic by some of the most sensitive palates I know.
But holy crap, when the temperature is in the 90’s and you have one window air conditioner for your studio apartment and the kitchen is about as far from the air conditioner as you can get while still being in the same apartment and the AC is on it’s last legs anyway, the thirty minutes it takes to get it going is like being in a sauna. I’m not doing that again until winter.
I’ve spent much of this year wishing it was over. There are many reasons for this but, to sum it up, mainly it’s because next year is going to be better. It’s not just a feeling… it’s a certainty. Specifically, I’m looking forward to January 15th.
But in the process of wishing the year away, I’ve essentially put much of my life on hold. There are things that I want to do that I can’t do or won’t do until after January 15th. Which means, more than usual, I find myself looking at the previous seven months wondering where the time has gone. It’s an odd feeling. Relief and nostalgia in equal measure.
I’ve done some things worthwhile. I finally started to take my writing seriously, though I’m now working on a project that didn’t even exist in May, and there is no way in hell that I’ll make my self-imposed deadline of August 15th… I feel good about my writing, and while I haven’t done as much as I would like on the photography front, what I have done has been worthwhile as well.
So, it’s been an interesting year. I can’t wait until it’s finally over, but when it is I’ll be asking where the time went.
I was watching the director’s commentary for this movie over the weekend during one of my breaks from writing. At one point Robert Rodriguez was discussing how he started writing it. Putting aside the fact that he promised the studio it was done almost before he started writing, the thing that struck me was that he writes like me (or I, like him).
One of the early scenes has Sands (Johnny Depp) and Belini (Cheech Marin) sitting at a table having a conversation. Rodriguez said he wrote that by putting them at the table and then having them talk. He didn’t really know in advance where the story would go, and some of the things that were revealed to him actually surprised him a bit.
Like Rodriguez, I start with the conversation and see where it leads. Sometimes it takes the story in unexpected directions.
Watch the movie sometime, as well as my other favorite Rodriguez pictures Desperado, Sin City, and if you can find it, El Mariachi.
You’d think that for that kind of money you’d have to make at least two trips up the stairs in order to get all your groceries in. You’d be wrong. I know I skewed the weight to dollar ratio a bit by buying razor blades, but still, there’s another $102 to be accounted for.
I think toiletries in general are overpriced based on weight. I mean toothpaste is probably okay… that’s a solid hunk of… whatever the hell it is, but the toothbrush? That’s overpriced.
And why is cumin so much more expensive than oregano? They’re in identical bottles.
Oh, well. At least I have an easy blog topic today.
And for those of you interested, yes, I bought bananas. Now there’s a deal. I bet if I spent $112.77 on bananas I woulda had to make two trips.
So, what are we going to blog about today?
I have no idea.
Well, what did you do yesterday?
I worked.
Oh.
…
What are you going to do today?
Write.
Any progress there?
I don’t know. I haven’t done it yet.
Oh.
…
Anything else?
I might have to go to the grocery store. We’re out of food.
Ooh, can we get some bananas?
Um, sure.
…
…
So, what are we going to blog about today?
It’s a good thing I’ve got one coming up in… 16 days. WooHoo!
I’m going to read, and write, and fish, and take pictures. Can’t wait.
It’s not that anything extra specially different is happening now. It’s just that I’m tired and I don’t have enough time to do the things I want to do. Hint: I mentioned them up there ^^. Oh, and golf. I doubt I’ll do that on vacation, but that’s another thing I haven’t done lately that I want to do.
I’ll be calling T tonight.
In her last e-mail to me, she’d mentioned that she thought it might be easier to talk through the emotions she was going through rather than write them down. This woman is one complex carbohydrate… to me, it seems talking about it would be harder than writing about it. T must be an amazingly strong person. I can’t wait to meet her face to face.
Amber has got to do her justice.
No, not that… jeez.
We’re talking about writing here, remember?
I’ve gone back to the old way now, without the self-doubt and, amazingly, without the frustration of not knowing what’s going to happen next. But what is my writing method? How do I do it? And does anybody else do it the same way?
The first thing that happens is I see something or hear something or read something that gets my mind ticking. I think I’ve mentioned that Second Chances was actually sparked by something I’d read in a Nevada Barr mystery. One of the secondary characters in that book was confined to a wheelchair after a climbing accident.
Well my brain took a one paragraph description of the character’s recovery, threw in a little romantic tension, and came up with the idea for an entire book. The only similarity between Nevada Barr’s character and mine is the location of the injury, the third lumbar vertabrae, but as I researched spinal cord injuries, that was about the highest point in the spine that I could go which still left my character with the abilities I wanted her to have.
So my mind stews on this idea for quite a while. The general story path (my pseudo-plot that has been a source of frustration for some time) developes and as I continue to think it over specific scenes begin to evolve.
When I first start to write them down, I usually start with the scene I’ve been thinking about the most and work out the dialog. In Second Chances, after the End Of The Block, the first scene I wrote was a conversation between Jason and Dr. Martin, the director of the rehab facility where Amber is living. Amber has “fired” Jason. But Jason has a plan. He’s pruning Crepe Myrtles waiting for Amber to come to him. And Dr. Martin is wondering why Jason is pruning Crepe Myrtles rather than talking to Amber.
Well, that’s what’s happening… but I didn’t write any of that. I wrote the conversation. In over 1,000 words that I wrote longhand, there are fifteen words that are not in quotation marks. After Dr. Martin says “Look, I know Amber can be a bitch sometimes…” I have the word “ANGRY” circled above Jason’s response. At this point, there is no motion, no description, no inflection other than the words being spoken. Nobody shakes his head, or runs his fingers through his hair. Jason doesn’t even cut any branches. It’s just the dialog.
I’m still not done with the scene, but as I return to it I add all these things. I also add new dialog, thoughts, observations, etc. as I write. So these 1,000 words will be anywhere from 1,500 to 3,000 words by the time I’m done with the scene. If I’m not in the mood to write new scenes I can return to this and improve it. Otherwise, I go to the next scene in my head, which in this case takes place much later in the story and is a scene between Amber and Jason, and I write the dialog for that.
Now at some point, everything that needs to be said will have been said, and then it will be time to start pulling together the pieces and making a whole story. I’ve never actually written the words THE END before, so down the line I will have to create a process for finishing. But for now, this is what works and this is what I’m doing.
It’s how I do it.
