M.L. Pennock's Blog, page 6

Devil in the details

I am full of self-doubt.

Okay, let’s take a step back.

When I first start out writing a chapter, or even a paragraph, I have most of it laid out in my head or on a piece of paper or in EverNote so I can stay on task. And it’s awesome. Everything about that chapter or paragraph is amazing and wonderful and I want to rename my first born after it. It’s like that for a lot of pieces in my writing puzzle, and if it isn’t right the first time … I edit it to death until it’s perfect for the moment and I can move on to the next one.

Until I finish a project and edit the entire thing. Then I am a failure and everything sucks and I change my daughter’s name back to what we originally named her.

Right now, though, I’m stuck. I finished writing To Hold on Nov. 19 and still haven’t completed the first round of edits because 1) I haven’t had more than an hour at a time to sit and work and 2) every time I do sit and reread/edit I feel like everything I touch turns to shit. Absolute shit. I know it’s because I’ve read all of this book a dozen times already and since I’ve read it so many times it all sounds blah and passe and overdone.

Like an idiot I worry about what readers will think, what a blogger might think, what my best friend will think, how my mom will react (which is stupid because there’s way less sex in this than the first one and my mom is well accustomed to my use of the word “fuck”), how anyone who has ever been in an abusive relationship or therapy will react, how anyone who has ever tried to drink away a bad day will react to certain scenes, how anyone who has ever been in love will try to dissect the pace of this romantic adventure Stephanie and Max are put on.

This book is slow. This book is not wishy-washy, though. This book tries to make sense of one girl’s thoughts and feelings and inadequacies. She’s a runner (both literal and figurative) and she doesn’t just succumb to the wonderful ways Max treats her. She worries she’s not good enough. She worries she doesn’t measure up, a lot.

But so. Does. He. He isn’t perfect. (Nor is he an alpha, so let me just put that out there now before people get their hands on this book and bitch about how they like their heroes to always have the upper hand. Just … stop).

In 84,000 words I attempt to take two bitter, angry, and broken people and piece them back together. I give them to each other because one can make the other a better person. The fictional nature of their “being” or their relationship doesn’t matter. Sometimes we find the most strength in those who are most broken.

Promoting? *shrug*

I’m not here to get my name on a list.

Sometimes I need to remind myself of that, particularly when my KDP reports look like this:

It’s difficult, though. I’m not going to lie. Now, I know what you might be thinking. “You’re not promoting enough.”

You’re right. I’m not promoting enough. But when I was promoting and posting book links and begging people to buy/read my book … I wasn’t writing.

Jasinda Wilder was recently featured along with other authors on the blog Become A Writer Today where the question “What’s the biggest challenge facing new writers who want to sell or market their first book and how can they overcome it?” was posed. This was just a portion of her response:

You just have to write the best damn book you can, put it out there, and write the next one. Don’t waste time or money on elaborate marketing campaigns for your first book.

Spend that time writing a second and a third and a fourth. The best advice I can give is that when push comes to shove, the best marketing you can do is to publish the next book.

There’s a lot of really good advice in that post for all of us starting out, but I’m taking a page from Wilder’s book without really realizing that’s what I’d done over the last few months. The last big push I did to increase sales or visibility of any sort was when I reduced the price of my first book for Labor Day. I don’t regret doing it (the sale or focusing so much on promoting it), but sometimes I feel like it was a wasted effort. Then as the kids were gearing up to start a new school year, I made a big push in the other direction … I’ve only on occasion dropped into the groups I joined to toss around my buy links.

Instead I’ve focused almost all of my attention on writing and finishing my second novel. Like a lot of writers, I have various ways to keep myself accountable – I use digital sticky notes to track my word counts, write the same information in my daily planner, started using this app called Write-O-Meter, and made sure to sign in for this year’s NaNoWriMo (even though I was close to finishing To Hold, NaNo was more about me keeping myself accountable). Making sure I was spending my “writing” time actually writing was important to me. If you read my last post (which was forever ago), you know I have the equivalent of about 10 hours a week to write without the kids at home. That’s not a lot of time. Then to add in trying to do some sort of promoting? It’s exhausting and rarely do I see anything from it.

But I’m not writing books to make a list. I may never write a best seller, and I’m not going to panic over it. I don’t plan to be a household name. Sometimes I wonder if the people in my own house know my name, so why would I let myself worry at this point if the people in yours know it? No, I’m writing books because it’s something I’ve always wanted to do and I think I’m kind of good at it. I like telling stories. I like giving people a happily ever after that you can believe in.

Even still, the best form of promotion is to focus on the next step, the next book, the next HEA and The End.

I started writing To Hold on March 18 and wrote The End on Nov. 19. Eight months + 1 day and 82,542 words before the editing started. Since the kids started school, though? I somehow was able to fit 57,602 words into my life that wouldn’t have happened if I had continued worrying about promoting the hell out of a first book. Why? Because promoting stresses me out.

And when I get stressed I am not writer productive. The house would have been fucking spotless, though.

With all of that said:

Coming sometime Spring 2016, To Hold will share Stephanie’s story. She has issues. She’s angry. She’d like to shut everyone out. She’s been hurt in enough ways that would make some girls become permanently broken. Steph isn’t the kind of girl who breaks, though.

Oh, and there’s this boy …

Challenge, accepted

I abandoned you, WordPress.

But I’m far from sorry.

My last entry left off with a challenge for myself – attempt to get my current manuscript to 50,000 words by the end of September. On most days I actually questioned my sanity because at the time I was under 35,000 words in, and while a lot of authors can easily pound out 5,000 or more words in a day, I can’t. Not without it being a weekend, my husband is home, and all planetary action aligns perfectly and angels can be heard singing from the heavens. I literally have two mostly uninterrupted hours a day to work, which means only about 10 hours a week (not counting what I try to get done on weekends and while my kids are at dance class) to accomplish what a lot of other writers could manage executing in a single day.

Most of the time, my two hours is cut down to one hour of trying to write, 30 minutes of typing frantically because the deadline to pick Charlotte up from pre-K looms on the horizon, and another 30 minutes of scavenging for food I don’t let my kids eat (hello, there, bag of gummy bears hidden in my office). Sometimes I allow myself a bathroom break, if we’re being realistic.

So, today is October 1 and now you’re wondering if I managed to complete my challenge, right? Here’s the breakdown:

In September I wrote 19 out of 30 days (not bad considering the two months prior)

Week 1: 1,083
Week 2: 3,972
Week 3: 7,631
Week 4: 4,585
Week 5: 4,490
Grand Total: 21,761 words
Manuscript Total: 53,003

Not bad for 19 days. Remind me to dedicate this book to my kid’s pre-K teacher, because without the baby being in school this year, I’d still be drowning at 35,000 words.

Next up: October.

Challenge, accepted.

School in session = writing time (and a sale!)

Brian and Stella’s story is on sale for a limited time while I try to muster the energy to work on To Hold instead of going to bed at 8 p.m. every night. If you’ve read To Have and enjoyed it, go ahead and point your friends in this direction (or to Amazon and Barnes & Noble).

I’m basically giving the book away at this price with the hope more people will read it and enjoy it. And if people don’t love it, it’s lendable … so lend it to a friend who just might like it and ask them to buy you a cup of coffee in return. Just don’t steal it. Stealing is bad, yo.

In the meantime, when I’m not breaking up fights between the kids or trying to convince them to go enjoy that scary place known as “outside” instead of slowly killing their brains with TV, I am attempting to get back into a solid writing routine. School is back in session next week, so I just might be on target to finish To Hold by the end of the year and have it in reader’s hands by early spring if I can focus in that two hours a day when I’m home alone. That’s my plan anyway.

I broke the 30,000-word barrier. It took a long time to get there from 25K. In August, I only had 12 days where I actually wrote and of those days four of them saw me write less than 100 words. The struggle was really real the day I managed a whole SIX words. But, they were still six additional words that weren’t there the day before, so I need to try to keep that in mind.

Now I’m going to go out on a limb and make the *very* lofty goal of hitting 50,000 by the end of September. No big. Right? I think my vision just blurred rereading that, so I did the math – 657 words a day.

Totally doable … maybe.

Processing things: book stuff and food

My first book signing was a week ago. I’m still trying to process it.

I hadn’t even left my parent’s house yet and had already sold nine books (and signed them all) to people who weren’t going to be able to attend the actual event, then when we arrived at the bookstore … there were people waiting for me and they weren’t all related to me.

I didn’t have any scrap paper and her name was spelled differently.

I took 26 books to the signing and left the store with six (and a new game for the kids and a woodworking book for my husband because none of us can go to a bookstore and leave empty handed). I came back to Syracuse the next day with four books that weren’t claimed. I’d call that a successful weekend. Overwhelming, but successful.

The problem with overwhelming weekends is I go into shutdown once they’re over. It’s great to get away for a couple days and see my family but throw in events and visiting with everyone I can over the course of 48 or so hours. I come back home needing a weekend to recover from the weekend.

Plum nectarine jam made with fresh fruit from farmers back home and homemade granola (half of which is already gone).

Consequently, in the last five days I’ve added 18 words to my current manuscript, made a batch of jam, made a couple batches of granola, went blueberry picking, canned blueberries and marinated green peppers (no, not together. gross.), and in general gotten a whole hell of a lot of nothing done. I’ve been in bed by 9 p.m. most nights. Accomplishing a lot hasn’t been on my list of things to do this week and while I feel guilty about that, I can’t let it eat at me because … what’s the point?

Puny batch of marinated green peppers.

What I’m going to do instead is, tonight, I’ll step over the messes that haven’t been picked up, make myself a mug of hot chai tea, and retreat to the quiet solitude of my office. I’ll turn off the dehumidifier for the time being and turn on my music, light a few candles, and breathe in the ability to sit there and bleed out my soul for your enjoyment. Max and Steph. Brian and Stella. Caryn and Greg. They’re all begging for attention.

It’s time I devote my evenings to them again.

P.S. Don’t forget I have a Goodreads giveaway going on until Aug. 28.

P.P.S. I’m going to have a Labor Day book sale, so if you’ve been holding off on buying the ebook of To Have it will be marked down for everyone who’s cheap like me.

Do I have to wear a dress?

I have my first book signing this weekend. It’s just a small affair during an event back home, but I’m freaking out for no good reason.

What if I mess it up? What if no one comes? What if people do come but then I stutter when I talk? What if my penmanship is totally illegible? Do I have to shake everyone’s hands? What if I forget my name!? Do I have to wear a dress? I’m definitely wearing flip flops and no one can stop me.

Not to mention, my list of things left to get done before Saturday is continuously growing. Instead of finishing the laundry so I can pack up my family and head two hours east of here, though, I’m just going to sit at the computer with my coffee (which is getting cold) and watch the neighbor’s turkeys across the street. They look delicious. I have plenty of time to pack, and really the important things are ready to go – my box of books, bookmarks, and that new Sharpie I bought the other day are sitting the my office hanging out until it’s time to put them in the car tomorrow.

But even having those things prepared won’t stop the worry I have.

Seriously, what if no one comes? I suppose if that’s the case I can just walk around the bookstore and sniff the merchandise, because books smell like home. They smell like memories of my childhood. I adore how smells trigger feelings from the past. Sometimes a song can do it, but smells … there is just something about them that weaves their way into the brain and pulls at the edges of a thought, a memory, a moment in time. I smell my grandmother’s V.C. Andrews books on a regular basis and am instantly transported back to my bedroom when I was 14 (I think? maybe 13) and that moment when I read Flowers in the Attic for the first time, feet propped up on the edge of my bed, reading in the quiet and being interrupted only because dinner was ready.

But now it’s not just me chilling in my pink bedroom reading a book. Now … I’m the one who wrote a book. And I have to go buy eyeliner and look presentable. I need to figure out what clothes I’m going to wear and what I’m going to do with my hair.

This shit is hard.

Book Two: You’re killin’ me

I love Post-It notes and making plans.

I’m horrible at follow through when it comes to my writing plans, though.

The first book was started because I was working on something and a single line popped into my head. I built from that, turned it into a line in a flashback scene, and the rest of the book took on a life of its own because my writing is basically stream-of-consciousness. At least that’s what I decided it is because otherwise it’s just a giant clusterfuck.

This is really where my lack of follow through comes into play. I tried to do the chapter planning for Book Two. I have notes all over the place – legal pads, random pieces of paper shoved in my planner, electronic notes, notes typed in my manuscript – but as much as I want to follow a formula, what I say is going to happen in Chapter Nine might never happen or will happen a few chapters later and be a completely different scenario.

It’s not that I can’t follow directions. I’m actually really good at following directions (maybe my kids should take note of this awesome ability I have). When I’m writing creatively, though, it’s a different story because words and chapters and characters are so fluid. Every time I sit down to write I go through the same process. First I read the last few paragraphs I wrote, then stare at the computer, wonder what the hell I was going to say next, take a deep breath, and let the first thing that comes mind be the first new thing I write. That “first new thing” usually gets edited to death and changed half a dozen times before I’m happy, but it’s a jumping off point for the rest of the story to flow until it’s all out.

My last post essentially complained about how nothing was getting written because it just wasn’t coming out. The weekend was a different story. Yesterday alone I wrote more than half of my weekly word goal because everything was clicking.

Book two, Stephanie’s story, is killing me though, and it’s not even her causing those feelings. It’s the boy. I can’t have him be perfect. He’s not meant to be perfect. In all actuality, when I introduced him in the first book, I made him broken because some of the best characters are, and it’s made a lot of people question what I’m doing with him because they just don’t know him well enough. There’s more tragedy in his life than I ever considered would be the case when I introduced him. I’m working on a section now that has taken him “home” and we’re introduced to his mom, we’re introduced to a difficult relationship between the two because there was too much hurt and he closed himself off from the one person left in his life he could always rely on. And she has tragedy and secrets, too, that he’s going to learn about.

But the words stopped flowing right when he was supposed to find out about his parent’s past, so instead of forcing the words to come and end up deleting them today or tomorrow, I left him standing there in the garage reading a letter his dad wrote while serving in the military. The “open in the event I don’t make it home letter.” His dad made it home, so it’s the first time the envelop has been opened since the letter was sealed inside.

I know this part is going to hurt to write, but sometimes the best things in life are painful. Sometimes … they’re worth it.

Writing when I can … and a giveaway

I’ve been doing more momming than authoring lately, and I can’t say I’m sad about that. It would be different if I were intentionally blowing off my responsibilities to reach word counts every week in lieu of water parks and going to the movies and whatever else families with older kids do.

That’s not the case.

I got a decent amount written when the girls did dance camp at the end of July, but that’s because they were doing the camp thing for two hours every morning. They were having a blast while I was hiding away in the non-air conditioned lobby upstairs Googling things like “Cemeteries near Cleveland” and “1969 Chevy Chevelle SS.” By the end of those four day of minimal working time I was up more than 3,000 words. It felt really good to make that kind of headway considering I wasn’t sure how I was going to write this particular section of the next book.

Since then I haven’t gotten as much done. Between trying to catch up on housework (anyone who’s working from home can understand the demands of “home” while also balancing “work” … which some people might not consider real work) and then a sick child, I’ve written all of 174 words this week. I mean, I wrote more in response to the interview questions I was sent by a reporter yesterday than I’ve written in two weeks in my manuscript. It’s a little insane – and it was weird being on the interviewee end of reporter life.

Despite all the writing I haven’t accomplished this week, I’m not going to stress about it. If solid ideas were coming, I’d be up until 2 a.m. working. They just aren’t and I expect it’s from running myself ragged. It happens. This is why I haven’t put a strict deadline on myself, which I’m aware might sound counter productive since I’m very much a write-on-deadline kind of person. Once school starts for the kids – since both are going this year – I’ll actually have a two hour window to work when the youngest is at Pre-K, and that’s what that time will be used for.

In some kind of related news, I have a copy of To Have up for grabs on Goodreads. The giveaway is open to US only (I wanted to see how this whole thing worked before doing anything to include international, so … sorry) and ends Aug. 28. If you like entering contests or winning free stuff, go enter.

Have a fantastic weekend!

Goodreads Book Giveaway


To Have
by M.L. Pennock

Released June 02 2015

Giveaway ends in 22 days (August 28, 2015)

1 copy available, 120 people requesting

giveaway details »

Enter Giveaway

Dear Stella,

When I first started writing Stella, she was just words. Words I threw down on a blank page I opened in Microsoft Word and saved as “MPennock – book.” She, essentially, was code. A bunch of zeroes and ones and nothing of significance.

I gave her Brian. I gave her Steph and Caryn. At the end of her tale, I gave her Tommy who struggles with his own demons in the final chapters as he’s kept a secret he promised to keep until it was time to share it with his brother.

And I gave Stella a whole lot of myself.

Some of those things are apparent to anyone who actually knows me, but most would think it’s simply the story, so I’m going to just jump right to it: I made her sad when she wasn’t pregnant … and then I gave her the pregnancies I lost. I gave her the baby I didn’t have in May, and the one I didn’t have in June. I wrote To Have through some of the most difficult months of my adult life as my family and I had to comprehend and attempt to understand not only miscarriage, but also molar pregnancy and all of the very scary realities that could come with gestational trophoblastic disease. I wrote through grief and hate and hurt. Stella was going to get pregnant regardless of the outcomes of the pregnancies I had last year, but it became so much more than just writing a tale.

Because Stella helped me heal.

She is the story behind the story that wasn’t supposed to be part of the story. Those things weren’t supposed to happen to help me. She wasn’t supposed to feel real to me and I wasn’t supposed to cry when she and her family cried. I did, though, and I laughed, too.

My writing, whether fiction or blogging, reflects real life. I take what can happen or does happen and put it out there. I have another blog that has nothing to do with writing. It’s about being a person. A mom. A wife. A person with autoimmune disease. A woman. A child.

The interesting thing is those posts could very well be like holding a mirror up to some pieces of fiction. An angry mother sitting in car line waiting to pick her kid up from pre-K who internalizes all the angst of watching other people not follow the rules. A woman dealing with anxiety and depression or hate or body image issues. The concern for a parent who, you realize as an adult child, is no longer a young man playing catch with you in the yard. The very idea that you will never ever get to the bottom of the laundry pile and when you do, there will he a dress with glitter on it thrown in with your husband’s dress shirts for work.

Life can be stranger than fiction, so when I wrote Stella, when I gave her Brian and Britt, I reflected on real life because I wanted people to connect and I wanted them to be normal … with normal problems. I gave him an ex-lover who never shared a side of herself (a side I hope to write about as part of the series) and I handed secrets to a brother who kept a promise. I don’t know any real life alpha men, and I don’t know as though they would get along with me if I did, so I didn’t write one. I wrote what I felt were characters others could relate to, and the overwhelming majority seem to have done just that.

There are plot twists in every day life, but sometimes if you put too many (which is up for debate) in a work of fiction it’s wrong of you. If you keep lovers from falling in love, you’re wrong. If they fall in love too swiftly, you know nothing about romance.

I’m okay with breaking the rules and I’m totally fine with not following a formula that’s been proven to work for other people. Doing things the hard way is kind of the story of my life.

I fell in love with my husband before I knew his name. I – me, a woman – asked him after six months of dating if he would marry me. He laughed. And then he. Made. Me. Wait. I waited and waited for that ring. I waited for a proposal. I waited through finishing my bachelor’s degree. Then I waited through the two and a half years it took me to finish my master’s degree.

And then I waited some more.

When my husband finally proposed to me I had just started my first job as the editor of my hometown newspaper. He was finally a full-fledged employee at the engineering company he works for. He made me wait until he had everything he could offer me as a husband … and then said, “I’m done waiting.”

You see, Brian waited and waited and waited to go back and try to find Stella because he NEEDED to prove he was worthy of her love. He needed to have his shit together so when he found her, if she could be his, he could give her everything he had.

Fiction mimics reality. At least, the fiction I want to write does.

Summer preparation

I’m overwhelmed by the reviews for To Have.

I can’t even come up with the words to tell you how much I dreaded people reading my book … because I’m hypercritical of my own work. Three of my beta readers were the first fresh eyes on the book, and I worried so much that it could have been a full-time job. That’s why I started writing the second book when I did. I was afraid I would drive myself mad waiting for comments.

Imagine my surprise when they loved it.

Now that it’s out there and people I don’t know are reading and reviewing the book, I’m surprised I haven’t formed an ulcer. This insanity is only temporary, though, and getting better because I’m learning to learn from the experience, which is something I haven’t had to do in a handful of years. Part of that is because I have some amazing people who have sent me messages or posted on my author page loving the story as much as I hoped they would.

The best part is they’re people I don’t know. It’s amazing and wonderful and I am so happy this book has found a home in their hearts. Seeing reviews on Amazon and Barnes & Noble and Goodreads are great and all, but it’s nothing like getting an email from someone saying how much they connected with the characters I created. I said in one of my first posts that if even one person felt that connection then I would know I did my job. Almost daily I am reminded that I was able to achieve that.

With summer officially in full swing and my brand new 5-year-old (she had a birthday last week so it’s still strange to say she’s 5 instead of 4) finishing up her last day of Pre-K today, I’ve mapped out the number of words I need to be writing every week between now and Dec. 31 in order to finish To Hold. I’m projecting an 80,000 word novel, but this is me we’re talking about. I love words. I love writing words. WORDS! Brian and Stella’s story was also an 80,000-word novel, and it ended at more than 93,000. In order to get Steph’s book to 80,000 by the end of the year, though, I need to have my ass planted in my office (read: anywhere my computer is) and writing 2,356 words a week.

Cake. Simple. Not even a number worth blinking at. I could write that in my sleep.

Until we figure in that school is about to be out for the summer and my kids like to drag me out of the dungeon in the middle of a creative moment.

Essentially what I’m saying is, if you see me playing on Facebook after 9 p.m. New York time and it’s not to post something about writing or that I’m thinking about writing or that I’m brainstorming with my critique partner … you are welcome to poke me in the ribs and tell me to get back to work.

Now I need to go be a mom because the little one has decided to sort a jar of seashells … on my desk. I think one just landed in my coffee.