Kate Noble's Blog, page 27

New Winner! Again!

We have a new winner in my website contest!  And the lucky individual is…

PHYLLIS CRABTREE!

Congratulations, Phyllis!  You have won a copy of Compromised! We'll email, make sure you get it ASAP.  For those of you who didn't win – keep hope, there's still a few weeks left on the contest, and you are all still entered.  If you haven't entered yet – I am appalled by your tardiness.  But better late than never! Here are the rules:

1.     The contest will run for three months.

2.     A winner will be drawn every two weeks.

3.     To enter, all you have to do is fill out the form on the contest page.

4.     The prize is your choice of Compromised, Revealed, or The Summer of You.

5.     If you want to read more about the books you could win, go to the book page.

6.     If you've entered once, you will be entered for the length of the whole contest.  You do not need to enter again.

7.     One entry per person.

This coming week is going to be awesome – I'm going to get to share something awesome with you guys.  Something that mad me squeal with glee when I saw it.  But until then, sweets, happy reading!

How NOT to Go Crazy

"Writing is easy. You only need to stare at a piece of blank paper until your forehead bleeds."       – Douglas Adams

Writing is a problematic occupation.  Let's face it, most people, upon hearing voices in their heads, they run to a doctor, not to put pen to paper.  But it can be even worse when the voices don't come.  And in this day and age of digital distractions at one's fingertips, writing has become harder than ever.  So what is one to do, when you are only accountable to yourself, and the dog wants to go out and your friends call and ask you to come over and help them out with something (because after all, you don't have a real job) and there's a show on your DVR that you really want to watch?  Well, you can either scream into a pillow, or you can try a few easy tips on how not to go crazy as an author.

1.     Routine.

Invariably, there are people in your life, well-intentioned people, people who love you, who just Don't Get It.  They think writing is a hobby, that those hours you spend typing are fluid and since you don't have a boss monitoring you at an office, you are free to do whatever you like – or more to the point, whatever they would like to do with you, be it getting a pedicure, or going to a movie or watching their kids for an hour while they run out to the store.  The best way to combat this notion is with Routine.

Get up at the same time.  Get dressed.  Go to the office and work.  Granted, your office might be the kitchen table or it might be the Starbucks down the street.  Have a day job?  Same principle applies – just tag your writing time onto the beginning, end –  or if you have a nice quiet lunch break, middle — of your day.   Either way, make no mistake, you are showing up for work.   Work those same hours, in that same location every day and it will become your routine.  As long as you respect that, other people will too.

2.     Have Writer Friends.

The antidote to all those wonderful, loving people in your life who just Don't Get It are people who do.  Nine times out of ten, those people are also writers. Being that writing is a solitary profession, the difficulties and triumphs of it are solitary too.  But sometimes you need someone to talk to, someone that can help you figure out story if you're stuck on a plot point, or can understand the difficulties associated with being alone for most of your waking hours.  These friends are awesome.  Keep them close.  Make sure you get coffee together occasionally, if for no other reason than interaction with another human being will be good for your both. *

3.     A Strict "No Distractions" Policy.

Most distractions can be easily put aside.  If you follow rule #1, and adhere to a routine, the distractions friends and family provide fall away.  As for the television… it can be turned off, unplugged, and, if necessary, you can leave the house (note: while Starbucks will make you buy a coffee from them, the public library has no such qualms and will leave you well alone to type).  But, ah, the Internet.  That insidious distraction that sits on the very vessel by which you write.  (Unless you write longhand, in which case… bravo.  Better you than me.)  Hell, you even get to use it for research!  But this impulse must be curbed.  Be it via Freedom (an app that turns off your internet for a specific period of time) or going to the one spot on earth were there is no WiFi, you must remove yourself from the Internet.  And don't worry.  It'll still be there when you get back.

4.     Reward Reward Reward.

No feeling is greater than completing a project that you plunged your heart and soul into.  But the thing is – no one cares nearly as much as you do.  Sure, your editor and agent (if you have them) are happy, and your significant other/children/parents/pets/friends are relieved that for a short period of time, you'll be back to normal and maybe dinner won't be take out.  But they don't really get the significance.  So treat yourself!  You finish a book, chances are, you could use a pedicure.  A nice glass of wine with dinner.  A viewing of the complete series of Rome. Something that signifies, to you at least, that you've done good and are worthy of a treat.  Before you pick it back up and start all over again.

That's all for now – I have along week of work ahead of me, and have faith, I will take all those steps necessary to keeping my sanity.  Until next time, sweets, happy reading!

 

*want to find some writer friends but don't know where to start?  Well, if you're of a romantic bent, join RWA.  Their local chapters are a great resource for writing-type people.  If you're not of a romantic bent… I'm surprised to see you here, but welcome!

Winners, Winners, Everywhere.

As you all know, I've been running a contest on my website for the last few months, wherein I draw a winner once every two weeks.  Well, for those that have entered, this is a special day – the most recent winner never responded, so I am drawing two, yes, TWO names this week!  The chances for winning this week have just doubled!

And without further ado, those winners are –

NEDRA FADDIS and CYNTHIA VON HENTSCHEL!!!

Congratulations, ladies – you have both won a copy of your choice of Compromised, Revealed, or The Summer of You. I'll email you both to confirm details, so keep an eye out!

For those of you who didn't win – fear not, you are still entered, and will have a chance to win again in two weeks.  For those of you who haven't entered, what are you waiting for?  It's easy!  Here are the rules:

1.     The contest will run for three months.

2.     A winner will be drawn every two weeks.

3.     To enter, all you have to do is fill out the form on the contest page.

4.     The prize is your choice of Compromised, Revealed, or The Summer of You.

5.     If you want to read more about the books you could win, go to the book page.

6.     If you've entered once, you will be entered for the length of the whole contest.  You do not need to enter again.

7.     One entry per person.

That's all for this week – I'll be back next week to discuss my favorite ways to NOT go crazy as an author.  Until then, sweets, happy reading!

Decade.

I wrote the following two weeks after 9/11, when I was 22 years old, and working as a production assistant on a TV show.  I had to get what I saw and went through — what we all went through — down on paper, to try and make sense of what happened.

I thought it was going to be a nice day.

I had woken up relatively on time, only ten minutes after my alarms went off.  Pulled myself out of bed, saying come on Katie, you're doing it again- you don't want to be late again.  I got dressed and got out of the door by 8am sharp.  That in itself was rare.  I walked up the street, much like I would every other day, but it was lovely outside, and the day before Vienna, a girl who works near me and also lives in Hoboken, had told me that she takes the ferry-  and I thought, today would be the day to try it.  It was a warm, lovely, cloudless day.  The ferry was moving quickly, but I still got to breathe in the good mood I was putting myself in.  I looked the skyline.  New York's skyline is impressive.  The first time I saw it I was 16 and riding up the New Jersey Turnpike on a bus with my high school French club to go see Les Miserables.  Today I craned my neck to the south, past the World Trade Center towers, to see if the Statue of Liberty would come into view.   It did, just before we docked.   People always say she's smaller than they pictured, but I think she's pretty large, for a statue.

The Ferry docked in New York City at 38th Street and the West Side Highway.  From there, the Ferry system provides a free bus to take you into Manhattan, because to go anywhere office-like from the West Side Highway is a bit of a hike.  However, having never taken the ferry before I didn't know which bus to get on.  So by the time I figured it out, the buses were gone, and the next set of buses had to wait for the next ferry to arrive.  I work on 23rd Street and the West Side Highway, a complex called the Chelsea Piers.  It was a nice day, I had my sunglasses, I was wearing sneakers, I could hoof it.  Sometimes the best thing in the world is a calming walk, right before a long day at work.  It was 8:30.  I was due in at 9.  Time enough to connect with myself.

I did not see the first plane hit.  I was looking the other way, a bit inside myself enjoying the morning.  But I must have heard something, because my eyes immediately flew to the towers.  The towers are easily visible from right outside the Chelsea Piers and the pedestrian path on the West Side Highway.  What I saw was a slash of fire plume out of north side of the north tower, about three quarters of the way up.  From that view it looked like someone had taken a knife and made a jagged slash in some canvas.  Except that the canvas was a building of glass and steel.

"Holy Shit!"  was what I said.  I was actually very surprised that I said it out loud-  in New York, New Yorkers are supposed to be nonchalant about everything, and talking to yourself on the street was almost sinful- only vagrants got to do it with impunity.  But I did one thing that all New Yorkers do:  I went for my cell phone.

I called the office.

"Hello Production."

"Anita?"

"Yes, its me."

"Hey." ( I knew she knew my voice)

"Hey." (I bet she thought I was calling to say I'd be late)

"Um, did you guys know the World Trade Center is on fire?"

"Really?"

"I am not kidding.  I'll be in in five minutes, but get outside, you can see it from

here!"

"Ok."

"Ok. Bye."

I walked the rest of the way with my eyes on the Towers at all times.  They disappeared behind my building once, but came back into view if you stood to the side of it.  I went inside, it was about 8:50am.  Believe it or not, I was early.  As I went up the elevator to the third floor, I thought, did someone leave an appliance on, and it caused some WTC offices to catch fire?  An electrical thing that had been brewing all night?  It wasn't 9 o'clock yet, how many people were there?

In the office I walked in, and people were running around.  They had a radio blaring.  The first thing I heard was Anita saying it was a plane crash, not just a fire.

Plane crash — how could I have missed that?  Was it a big plane, a little one?  Passengers?  People went outside to see, almost everyone.  I shooed them out of the office.  Soon it was just me and Kayvan, the other production assistant.

"Don't you want to go outside?"  I said.

"I do", he said, with an unspoken 'but' trailing after.

"So go! I've seen it, I'll man the phones. Go."

With a little more shooing, he went.  The office was empty but for me.  The radio was still on, 1010 Wins.  A lady had called in from the roof of her apartment on North Moore Street saying she had seen the plane hit.

"It was a direct hit, I don't know how to describe it, but that's the only phrase I can think of.  People who have seen a head on car wreck know the sound what I'm talking about…"

The phone rang.  It was one of my bosses, who was currently scouting locations on Roosevelt Island.

"What's going on there?"

"Most everyone is outside looking at the World Trade Center.  A plane hit it."

"I know.  I know, I don't know what's going on here." my boss said in my ear.  "But I'll call back."

"OK."

I went into the kitchen and was able to get my morning soda.  A plane.  It was incomprehensible.

I wanted to tell someone else.  My family down in Maryland probably didn't know about this –  I mean, this would make the evening news, probably, but not right now.  I looked through my address book.  Damn.  The only work number I had on me was my brother-in-law's, Andy, in Bethesda.  I dialed it.

Rings twice.

"Hey Andy."

"Hey Katie Doll, what's going on?"

"Do you get any New York radio stations?"

"No.  Why?"

"A Plane just crashed into the World Trade Center."

"You're kidding."

"No I'm not."

"Was it a big plane?  A passenger plane?"

"I don't know.   It couldn't have been that big though."

"OK.  We can get CNN."

"OK.  Bye."

"Bye."

I hung up.

Anita came back.  She wanted to get in touch with the scout.  I somehow didn't remember that I had just talked to the scout, I was desperate to get outside and see what I could see.  To be with everyone else and not miss the excitement.

"I think it was a suicide bomber.  A Kamakazi thing."  Anita said, as I was heading out the door.

"Really?"

"Yeah, look at it, it was totally intentional."

I went outside.  There were dozens of people standing around, I found the people from my office.  Tamsin and Gerrit in accounting, Margaret and Kayvan from the office, Steve from the Props Department, Lisa and Jen from Art.  Joe and Rosanne from accounting also wandered up.  The writers were around.

"Hey do you think this could be a suicide crash?"

"Gerrit was just saying that," said Tamsin.

I don't remember what was said after that.  I know we chatted, speculated on what floors were burning, how many people could have been there, what this means for flight control and the airports.  Who was stupid enough to do this, or who wanted to crash into the trade center?  I mean, was the pilot high?

We were all standing there chatting, looking at the trade center smoking.  And I saw this other plane.  This other plane flying low and near and fast.  And I knew, a split second before, that it was going to hit.

Everyone, those dozens of people standing and looking could do nothing.  Nothing but watch.  It hit the south tower.  Gasps.  We could do nothing but gasp.  To us it looked like the plane entered from the right, and spurts of flame came out of the left.  I looked over to Margaret, who I was standing next to, and she had seen it too.  It wasn't a mirage.

She had her hands over her mouth and her eyes were wide.  I probably looked the same.  There was one thought going through my mind.  This was real.  This was intentional.  This was real. This is not an accident, the pilot didn't have a bad acid trip the night before, the guidance system wasn't screwy.

Someone decided to crash planes into buildings today.

I could only think of one thing to say.

"Yep.  My mom is going to call me tonight."

Kayvan said "Yeah.  That's exactly what I was thinking."

Margaret's eyes were still wide.  I asked her if she was all right.

"I'm sorry."  She said.  "That really actually shook me up.  I'm really shaken up."

I saw a coworker walk up to the crowd with his bag over his shoulder and a coffee in his hand.  Steve from Props was saying something about a conspiracy, that this is really a distraction, and they'll hit midtown next.  Because all of the emergency vehicles would be downtown, so hit 'em in midtown.  Sounded like the plot to a movie.

Slowly, people in button down blue shirts and slacks were walking north.  Walking North.  They passed our office building, they had been walking from downtown.  They were so calm.  Some on cell phones, but all were walking calmly away.  Surreal.

I mentioned to Margaret that we left Anita upstairs.  We should probably go relieve her.  In truth, I didn't want to see what would be happening next.  I wanted the radio, I need to hear what was going on.

Margaret and I went upstairs.  I think Kayvan might have followed us.  The first thing I did was called Andy.  Everyone was on the phone.

"Listen I need you to get in touch with my parents.  I don't have their work numbers.  I need you to call them and tell them I'm ok."

"Ok.  Where do they work."

I told him my sister, his wife, would know my dad's number, and I gave him the name of the school where my mother taught.

The radio was blaring.  Anita was trying to reach the scout-  I told her they had called earlier- I had forgotten.  Jen, one of the producer's assistants, came in.  She had just gotten here.  She needed someone to help her with getting a picture out of the empty stage.  We were all so confused, everyone was yelling on the phone, so I went and helped her get the picture.  I think I needed to work, to do something, or else I'd lose it.   We walked down to the stage, most everyone was still standing and watching.  The West Side highway was crowded with cars that had pulled aside, trying desperately to get out of the way of the emergency vehicles headed downtown.  We went into the dark stage, empty of any set, it hadn't been built yet.  We got the picture, and I'm sure I was yammering on about how it could have been a distraction, something else was going to happen and this isn't the end of it.

She smiled and nodded and soothed and agreed and we carried this very large picture out of the stage and upstairs.

Upstairs, the Pentagon had been attacked.  The Pentagon. There were reports of the Supreme Court having a car bomb outside of it.  And suddenly it seemed like the whole world was under attack.  I tried to call Andy, and couldn't get through.  Everyone was talking at the office. people came in and out of the office, trying to reach loved ones, trying to get information.  The phone rang-  it was Gerrit's girlfriend.  Gerrit was still downstairs so I went to get him.  A lot of these things seem out of sequence now, but I know they all happened.

The radio was still playing 1010 Wins.  Anita was standing by her desk.  People were talking.  Margaret was near me.  We were debating what to do, I think, whether or not we should stay or go home.  The person on the radio suddenly captured all of our attention:

"The Building just collapsed!  The Building just collapsed!"

BAM.  We all ran for the stairs.  Three of the guys were in front of me.  Gerrit, Kayvan and I can't think who else.  We weren't running for our lives, we were running because of the same gross need that has people slowing down to see a traffic accident.  We needed to make sure, we had to see, to count that there was only one tower, not two.

Running down the stairs, we were skipping steps and I… I tripped.  It's a very stupid girl thing to do, 'there was danger and then I fell'.  But fall I did-  I twisted my ankle.  Even more pathetic and girly.  But it hurt.  And I lost it.  Everything that was happening, my ankle, everyone I could possibly know possibly being in danger and I lost it.

"Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck FUCK."  My language wasn't particularly original.  Jen came up to me, and she and Margaret helped me down the stairs.  Limping and crying.  Once we got outside, I sniffled up all the other sobs.

It was gone.  There was ash and smoke and dust and only one tower.  I knew then that the next one would fall- it was only a matter of time.

The Chelsea Piers people were setting up table, and handing out water to the people in suits who were walking up from downtown.  Now there is somebody doing something, I thought.  I blindly offered our office supplies and anything else that was needed to help.  It didn't feel like I was doing anything.  It felt piddly.

We went back upstairs.  Anita said we all should go.  We all should get home.  Margaret and Jen were the New Jerseyites with me, and I wasn't leaving without them.  Margaret wanted to stay a little while, see if she could help Anita at all.  I couldn't call anyone — our phones were dead –  we were trying to get through to people on cell phones and that only worked half the time.

We emptied the coffee that was made that morning.  There was a basket of vegetables on the counter –  Bob from Art had left them for anyone — they were from his garden.  It felt so kind and innocent, and so from before. I claimed the whole basket.

My mind was confused and I don't remember many details of conversation, I just remember my reaction to hearing the second tower fell.  I turned to Margaret and said "Please, can we go know?  Can we go back to New Jersey?  I want to leave."  Margaret was trying to get through to her husband on her cell- it had a higher success rate than anyone else's phone.

She got through and told him we were leaving, I was so thankful.  We grabbed Jen and left.  Each of us had our cell phones in our hands, but I wanted a radio.  We decided the ferry was the only way to get home, the tunnels had been closed and the Path wasn't running.  And since I had taken it for the first time just that morning, I knew where to go. Jen, Margaret, the basket of veggies and I joined the mass of people walking north.

There was a man leaning against the railing looking to the south.  He stopped one person, someone he knew, and asked if she had seen Annie.  That man was going to wait there and wait there until Annie came.

Another mass of people were gather around a car, who's doors were open and was blaring the radio.

"What can we do?" I asked.

"What?" Margaret said.

"What can we do?  I feel like we should be doing something.  Help somehow."

"I dunno.  Give blood?"

"Yeah."

"Get out of the way," said Jen. "The best thing we can do is get out of the way."

We passed a CNN van, with its antennas up and suddenly, my phone rang.

We must have been able to get a signal off of the antennas.

"Hello?"  I answered as we crossed the street.

"Katie?"

"Kelly?"

My good friend from high school.  She lived in New Orleans now.

"Where are you?" she asked, as a firetruck when whizzing by, sirens blaring.

"I'm trying to get the hell out of Manhattan." I said.  That might have been over dramatic.

"It sounds like a war zone down there."

I looked around.  People in general were calm — or in shock, but it manifested as calm — all walking north.  The sun was shining, the sky was cloudless.  Well, at least the way we were facing.

"People are pretty calm, just trying to leave.  What's going on down there?"

"I got into work and everyone is gathered around the TV.  I can't believe what happened.  Are you ok?  How close are you?"

"I was pretty far away actually, a couple dozen blocks north. I'm just trying to get back to New Jersey. Listen Kelly, I'm probably going to lose you soon, but I'm ok, I'll talk to you later?"

"Yeah, ok, I just wanted to make sure you're all right. I love you."

How strange.  She just said she loved me.  But somehow, it made sense.

"Bye.  I love you too."

I hung up.  And explained the call to Jen and Margaret.

We found the line for the ferry.  It was very very very very very long.  Very.  Jen and Margaret kept laughing at my basket of veggies.  At least there was some comic relief.  When we were standing still my ankle kept hurting.  A plane buzzed overhead and everyone grew silent and looked up.  It was a US fighter plane.  Making sure we were ok.  Forty minute, an hour later, we finally managed to get on a ferry.  Going back to New Jersey, everyone looked to see what was remaining.  Downtown.  All we could see was smoke.  I looked at my watch.  It was about noon.  I looked for the Statue of Liberty.  I barely caught a glimpse of her before she was out of sight.

I won't bore you with the details of my sprained ankle.  Or how it took us an hour to get from Weehawken, where we docked, to Hoboken, about 2 miles away.  I got home and my roommate Sarah was packing, driving to her mom's in Massachusetts.  She asked if I wanted to come, but I didn't.  I couldn't.  I called my mom, my brother in law, my sister was home by that time, my friends Vicki, Kelly, any one I could think of.  Because no one got away clean from this.  There isn't a soul in the nation who didn't feel this.  All of my friends got out of harm's way, but god knows I know someone who knows someone.  Everyone here has a friend of a friend who falls into that horrible category of missing.  And as the days wore on, missing became presumed dead.  The next couple of weeks words were tossed over my head.  Osama Bin Laden.  Taliban.  Afghanistan.  Al Qaeda.  Terrorism.  War.  I buried myself in books.  I read from Dawn till dawn again.  Crappy romance books mostly.  I couldn't make myself do anything else.  I just wanted to get away, to get my mind away from this all, because if I thought, if I paid attention, I would think about the six thousand people 'missing'. I would think about my brother and sister — both in the Army — going off to war.  And after that I don't think I could stand to think anymore.  So I read my books, and spoke to my family, but mostly I thought about my beautiful city, and just how much everything was going to change.

***

Postscript — 2011

My New York is the post 9/11 New York.  I lived in that beautiful city for another 8 years after that day, until new opportunities took me across the country.   I spent my twenties there – sold my first book there (and second and third).  I have a thousand nights spent too late at work, and another thousand spent meeting my friends for drinks.  New people came in to my life, new jobs, new apartments. Both of my siblings went to war.  Both came home.  There were first dates and first kisses on corners late at night.  There were disappointments and hard times and changes in technology.  My discman turned into an iPod, which turned in to an iTouch, which turned into an iPhone.

But a lot more than technology changed that day, for me, and for the rest of the world.  Wars and memorials, people lost, grief, hate, solidarity.  Fractures of how we might have been otherwise, spinning out across time.  But that's not what I've decided to take from that day.  Instead, I've decided to take this:

I was living on the upper east side of Manhattan when the Northeastern blackout of 2003 occurred – the entire Northeast was without power, including all of New York City.  Some just over night, but most for a good few days in the middle of a heat wave in summer.  I remember being amazed by how everyone had a sense of getting along, helping out and a feeling of "hey, we'll get through this."  Two years after the shock of 9/11, that camaraderie still existed.  No one wanted to riot – instead, on my 90-block walk home, we saw civilians helping police direct traffic, and people handing out bottles of water and barbequing the contents of their freezers and having parties in candlelight on their neighborhood blocks.

Hey, we'll get through this.  We got though the last ten years together, and we'll get through the decades to come.  Because you're you, I'm me, and together, we are united, kind, and strong.

New Winner!

It's time for the next winner in my website contest.  So get your Kermit the Frog arms ready for flailing, because it's…

MARY TANNER!

Congrats, Mary!  You have won an autographed copy of Revealed! We'll email, get it to you ASAP.  If you didn't win, don't fret – there will be another winner drawn in two weeks time.  And if you're new to the contest – here's what you need to know!

THE RULES

1.     The contest will run for three months.

2.     A winner will be drawn every two weeks.

3.     To enter, all you have to do is fill out the form on the contest page.

4.     The prize is your choice of Compromised, Revealed, or The Summer of You.

5.     If you want to read more about the books you could win, go to the book page.

6.     If you've entered once, you will be entered for the length of the whole contest.  You do not need to enter again.

7.     One entry per person.

In other news, we are on the other side of Labor Day now, and thus, fall has well and truly begun.  I hope everyone has a marvelous fall semester/fantasy football season/orgy of leaf peeping ahead of them.  I will be working hard on two projects – finishing up one and just at the beginning of another.  More details to come at a later time!  Until next week, sweets – Happy Reading!

The Self-Imposed Deadline

I spent the past two weeks working furiously to hit a deadline.  I neglected my boyfriend, my apartment, my DVR, my gym regimen (er, if you call taking a class when I manage to get there on time a regimen).  They were all sacrificed to my deadline…

My self-imposed deadline, that is.

That's right – I did it to myself.  I didn't have anyone breathing down my neck, no one that had to rush my project into the machine of editing, typesetting, etc, so it would hit it's publication date.  Was someone expecting it?  Yes, of course.  But I'm the one who told him when it would be ready, not the other way around.

Why on earth would I do this?  Well, a while back, I discovered I work MUCH better when I'm under a deadline.  This trait likely comes from a school teacher mother who instilled early on that the worst possible thing I could do as a human being is not have my work done, and a father so punctual he's 15 minutes early for everything.

When I'm not under deadline, the lethargy of my feline-like natural pace, the siren call of the internet and television, or the little things that build up to everyday life serve as excellent distractions.  Oh, I'm always working – as someone in a creative field, I rarely have time off – but perhaps not with the same intensity and direction as when I have something due.  So when I really want to get something done, I set myself a deadline.

But be warned – if you are going to attempt a self-imposed deadline, there are some rules you must adhere to:

1.  Be Accountable to Someone.

"Hey Kate, how's that project going that we talked about?"

"Great, Alejandro*.  I'll have it to you by Friday."

"Excellent, looking forward to reading it."

Because you have someone waiting for it, you are now under a deadline.  Self-imposed, yes, but a deadline all the same.  Treat it as such.  Respect it.  Make it a priority.

2. The inmates can run the asylum for a couple days – they'll be fine.

When under a deadline, stuff gets neglected, delegated, or downright forgotten.  And that's fine.  Your friends, kids, significant other will survive for a little while without you.  And as for your shows – God invented DVRs for a reason.  (Although, I will admit to occasionally tuning in to the Weather Channel while on my deadline – but there was a hurricane, people!)

While guilt may overwhelm you, this can be turned into an advantage.  Think about it: "Honey, can you do the grocery shopping/vacuuming/twitter chat-hosting for me while I'm working?  Thanks, love you, bye!"

3. If you do miss your deadline…

Confession:  While my original self-imposed deadline was Friday, sometime while writing madly on Thursday, I knew I was going to either turn in something bad, or miss my target.  So I made a phone call:

"Judas*, this project is more complicated than previously thought.  Instead of Friday, I will turn in a complete draft on Sunday."

"Ok.  I'd rather have it late and good, than bad and on time."

If you are going to miss your deadline, own up to it, set a new, reasonable (I extended two days, not two weeks) target, and then HIT IT.  If you don't your self-imposed deadlines are arbitrary and worthless, not to mention you'll gain a reputation as someone who flakes on their commitments.

And oh yes, if it's going to be late, it had better be good.

And last but not least:

4. Once it's turned in, give yourself a day off – but only one.

When it's over, turned in, out of your hands, allow yourself to decompress.  Clean, go for a bike ride, make brownies, drink a wine cooler.  Watch everything on your DVR. But then, after 24 hours, get yourself back on your schedule – your writing/ gym regimen/ fulfilling your regular obligations schedule.  Because while the deadline might have juiced your adrenaline for a little while, the work itself never ends, and soon enough, there will be another deadline, so you might as well get a jump on things, right?

 

That's all for me today, until next week (where I'll be announcing another winner in my website contest), happy reading!

*names changed to Lady Gaga songs to protect the innocent.

The Ballots Have Been Counted!

These are the Boston Bruins -- they won something too!

The ballots have been counted, the results are in and the latest winner in my website contest is…

COLLEEN CONKLIN!

Congrats, Colleen!  You have won a copy of your choice of Compromised, Revealed, or The Summer of You! If you didn't win, fear not – I shall be drawing another winner in two short weeks, and your entry is, of course, still valid.  For those of you who want to enter, but are unfamiliar with the rules of the contest, no worries!  It's easy peasy.  To wit:

THE RULES

1.     The contest will run for three months.

2.     A winner will be drawn every two weeks.

3.     To enter, all you have to do is fill out the form on the contest page.

4.     The prize is your choice of Compromised, Revealed, or The Summer of You.

5.     If you want to read more about the books you could win, go to the book page.

6.     If you've entered once, you will be entered for the length of the whole contest.  You do not need to enter again.

7.     One entry per person.

In other news, see anything new and interesting on the page?  I've just had these awesome Order Buttons installed.  My web team at Waxcreative are geniuses – now it's a no brainer to order books in your preferred format from your favorite vendor – just click the button of your choice!

I feel the end of summer approaching, which always makes me think that I have to hurry up and get in as much fun as possible – so until next time sweets, Happy Reading!

The three best pieces of advice I've ever received.

One of the secret superpowers of most authors is advice-giving.  Especially in the romance industry!  I have time and again met with authors more than willing to sit down and offer up to wannabe writers (who we all were at one point in time) as well as our colleagues those pearls of wisdom gleaned from a long and hard road to where we are now.

Some advice, of course, will be more helpful than other advice – after all, there is no map for an author's career path (trust me, I've been looking).  But some things are universal, and really helpful when trying to remove the 'un' from in front of your 'published author.'  Thus, I give you:

Three Great Pieces of Advice I've Been Given about Writing

DON'T save it for the second book.

(source:  I got this piece of advice from a seminar at a conference.  I really wish I'd saved that hand-out.)

Tell me if this sounds familiar:

"Oh I just came up with the awesomest plot twist!"

"Fab – will it work in your WIP (work in progess)?"

"Yeah, but I'm not putting it into my WIP – I'm saving it for the next book."

Right about now, your friend is looking at you peculiarly, because you don't have a next book.  You only have this one work that you will hopefully finish and be sending out on submission.  Why are you holding back?

Like most writers, ideas come at me fast and furious, and generally, without much in the way of reasoning or form.  I can write them on note cards and store them away for later, but I find it far more productive to put those ideas into my current story and see where this new element will take me.  Case in point: when writing Revealed, I had this idea to set a story at the Sir John Soane museum in London – a townhouse stuffed with antiquities, to the point you have to walk single-file through the rooms.  But I thought it wouldn't fit into this book – it was too much of a mystery, Night at the Museum/Mrs. Basil E. Frankenweiler-style idea.  But I decided to give it a try anyway… and the scene where Marcus and Phillippa meet in a library overstuffed with antiquities, replete with sarcophagus, ended up being one of my favorites in the book, and setting the tone for my hero and heroine's relationship.

DO know your its from your it's.

(source: many, many copyeditors)

Confession time: I have terrible grammar.  For no other reason than I simply never bothered to learn the rules.  My most flagrant violation has always been writing "it's" when I mean "its", or vice versa.  It's such a small thing, I would say to myself. Honestly, who cares?

The truth is, I used to think that being a slave to grammar would mess with my natural 'flow.'  Besides, as the as-yet-unpublished-wannabe-writer-I-used-to-be would say, when the book finally sells, an outside copyeditor will go through and correct all of those pesky its/it's.

But here's the rub:  I have, on more than one occasion, turned in a manuscript and been chastised for my lack of adherence to that particular rule.  While I find the difference between its/it's negligible, the people who were being paid to assess whether my work was good enough for publication found it annoying, and worse, distracting.

This was a hard lesson learned, but learned it was: Pay attention to form.  Pay attention to the rules.  You want to submit the best possible product your can, and that means learning the rules everyone else knows.  Once, I corrected the its/it's in my manuscript, it was no longer distracting and those people reading it could focus better on the story.

There is a secondary benefit to paying attention to the rules: you learn to love them.  You learn to enjoy words and grammar and style.  You learn that stuff has names.  Syntax.  Lexical chains.  Diphthong.  You learn that what you thought of as your 'flow' is actually highly constructed, and when you recognize that construction, you can refine and repeat it in the same way symphony composers create phrases that repeat and build over the course of the piece – and suddenly, your writing becomes music.

DON'T give up.

(source: Virginia Kantra told me this at a conference before I was published, while she was signing a book for me.)

This is a piece of advice I have actually given before, but before I was the one doing the giving, I was the recipient of this particular gem.  And it is perhaps the most important of all.

While you are unpublished, the only person driving you to write is you.  You are going to get criticized.  You are going to get rejections.  You have to pick yourself up and keep going.

When I finished a complete draft of Compromised, I began submitting it to agents.  I had submitted to twenty agencies before I landed a 'yes.'  (For the full story of how that happened, read this.)  What if I had stopped at nineteen?  I wouldn't be a working writer today.

A caveat: when I say I finished a complete draft of Compromised, it in no way meant I was done writing.  While I was submitting, I was also refining and revising, entering chapter contests to get outside opinions, and revising some more.  Don't finish the first draft and think that you're done.  Don't give up on your manuscript, or yourself.

Again, these are pieces of advice that I have found useful, and latched onto in my quest for a writing career.  Of course your mileage may vary, but I hope you find them equally useful.  And remember, if you find yourself in a quagmire, and need a little advice, you are more than welcome to ask me in the comments.  I can't promise that what I tell you will work for you, but I promise any advice I give did, at one time, work for me.

Until next week, sweets, happy reading!

And the Latest Contest Winner is…

Well, two weeks have passed and it's time to draw another winner in my website contest!  So without further ado, the latest winner is….

SUSAN PARKER!!!

Congrats, Susan!  You have won a copy of Compromised!  For those of you who are not Susan, keep hope – the contest runs until October, so there's still plenty of time to win.  And for those of you who are new or forgetful, here's a quick reminder of the rules…

THE RULES

1.     The contest will run for three months.

2.     A winner will be drawn every two weeks.

3.     To enter, all you have to do is fill out the form on the contest page.

4.     The prize is your choice of Compromised, Revealed, or The Summer of You.

5.     If you want to read more about the books you could win, go to the book page.

6.     If you've entered once, you will be entered for the length of the whole contest.  You do not need to enter again.

7.     One entry per person.

In other news, this week promises to be an interesting one.  I'll be traveling and writing, and you should keep an eye our for some new, pretty graphics on the website – I hope they'll be up soon, I can't wait to hear what you guys think!  The hope is they will make shopping/reading/browsing more simple-and-therefore-awesome.

Until next week, sweets, happy reading!

Outlines. Why did it have to be outlines?

(Warning: this is a process blog entry.  I will talk about writing and how I go about doing it.  I admit I do prefer the blogs that involve pictures of food/kittens, or the fluff of movie reviews, but sometimes, I have to inject a little substance.  My apologies.)

One of the questions I constantly receive is "are you a plotter or are you a pantster?"  Which in layman's terms, means, do I plot out my stories in advance of actually writing them, or do I just sit down and type and see where the characters take me – aka, writing by the seat of my pants.  The answer is a little of both.  You see, gentle reader, what I do, is outline.

In fact, I have spent the last couple weeks, as we say in the biz, "on outline."  (In layman's terms, I've been… writing an outline.  OK, that one's not really too difficult to decipher.)    My outlines are really the bare bones of the story, just enough to explain to someone (sometimes my agent or editor, sometimes my future self) the basic steps of the plot.  The circumstances under which my Hero and Heroine meet, come together, break apart, and find their way through those circumstances to the Happily Ever After.  That's it.  No deep descriptions of the scenery, no layered symbolic meanings, Just the Story.

That doesn't mean that it's short.  My latest one, which I consider less plot-heavy than my previous works, is 18 pages long (double-spaced).  And I consider this fairly succinct.  Here's why it is the way it is, in my Kate Noble's Rules for how Kate Noble Writes an Outline, aka Its all about the Flow.

1.     Screw bullet points.

If you have bullet points in your outline, or chapter breaks, or numbers, you're not writing an outline.  You're writing a beat sheet.  It is in general far more detailed than I am willing to do for a book.  Part of the fun of writing novels is finding out something new along the way, which a rigid beat sheet doesn't make room for.  You need a little space to breathe.  The story should flow as easily as if you were telling it aloud.

2.     No descriptions.  Well, some descriptions.

You may know exactly what your hero looks like, down to which side he parts his hair on.  You may have landscaped the main setting in your mind to the smallest tree.  That's fine.  But it doesn't belong in your outline.  Just give the basics.  He's a handsome duke with a jolly temperament, or a war veteran with a limp and a permanent scowl.  The house is a grand country estate with wide sloping lawns.   If you get too bogged down in the details, the whole thing will stall.

3.     Don't worry about Voice.  Or historical accuracy therein.

When I speak, I don't sound like your average British aristocrat of the Regency period.  Why should my outline?  That is not to say that I inject "like" and "um" and "you know" into my outline.  I am turning this into my editors, after all.  But I do allow myself to write in a more contemporary voice, and to throw in contemporary references.  For example, in my outline for Follow My Lead, when George is tracking Winn and Jason across the German countryside, I wrote this:

Meanwhile, much like Prince Humperdink in The Princess Bride, George has managed to track Winn and Jason to the little town of Lupburg…

It's not a line I could have put anywhere in my historical romance novel, considering that movies, let alone The Princess Bride wouldn't be around for quite a while.  But for me, my editor and my agent, it is a quick and easy reference for exactly what George is doing, and the style in which I am going to present it in the book itself.

4.     It's all about the Movements!

Get the movements of the story on the page.  A. One thing happens, which leads to another B., which they decide to do C. about.  This is really what your outline is about, moving through the story.  Now, as noted above, my most recent outline was 18 pages long, which believe it or not, is my longest.  And I mentioned that I consider it far less plot-heavy that previous books.  The reason for this is that while the movements of the characters may not be extreme, but their emotional shifts are just as important to get on the page, as their physical ones.  Especially in a love story, which is quite naturally, all about the internal movements.  (Ew, not that.  Get your minds out of the toilet.  You're like a bunch of 12-year old boys, I swear.)

And that's it.  I am of course, very happy to be "off outline" now, and "on story," but the truth of the matter is, if I went on story without an outline, at least for me, madness would ensue.

But – and this is a huge But – not everyone is going to do it like I do.  And that's fine.  To each their own.  Whatever gets you to that story that you were meant to write, is the right way to go about it.

That's all for me this week, Happy reading everyone!