Anna DeStefano's Blog, page 12

The Woods Are Lovely Dark and Deep…

The Woods Are Lovely Dark and Deep ~Robert Frost

Nature drives us, when we revel in its mysteries. Earth, water and sky surround and inspire and guide and cloak. We build walls and roofs and pave over the dirt and install artificial climate and run electronic entertainment that drowns out a lot. But it’s there: the woods waiting for us to explore. The lovely, dark and deep surprises of living…

In between the distractions,  life insists that we focus. We’re so lucky that it does.

My life has insisted for the last couple of months. Attention had to be paid. I’m climbing back to the surface of all that’s “other.” Not the least of which because Three Days on Mimosa Lane launches next Tuesday, July 23rd.

In it, was supposed to be a collection of my favorite Robert Frost poems about the living that finds us when we least expect it. Hence the quote above, and the blogging I’ll be doing regularly again. Look for the Pinterest album that will collect them all as I chat about them. Come back and share what your favorites mean to you. I suspect I’m not the only RF fan out there.

The poems were removed from the final draft of the novel (one of the many surprises), because of copyright issues. But inspiration cannot be silenced. So let’s talk about the woods.

For me, they are full of wind and song and company, even when I’m there alone. Teaming with life and history and dreams and premonition, sometimes when I’m hiking interior to a waterfall or just a beautiful meadow someone’s told me about, I’m where I’ve always belonged, even though I’ve never been.

We don’t belong to the stress and the chaos and distractions of our every days. They are our days and we survive them, but they’re not our living. Our living is when we explore. Beyond home’s windows and comforts is the  the lovely, dark exploration that surprises us: the woods that our souls seek.

Unchained from my desk soon, I’ll be reveling in my woods. They feed me.

Where do you go, to find the mysteries that sustain you?

Fighters fight… But where do they hope and love?

When you’re a fighter, you fight. When others would fail or give up or collapse under the pressure, you fight. When you WANT to fail or give up or collapse under the pressure, you fight. You’re you’re own hero, when you desperately want someone else to step in and take over for a while. Sometimes, you refuse to relinquish that desperately controlling place, even when someone does step in. Because if you stop fighting, who will you become, what will you be, and will you survive the fall when the other person isn’t actually there the way you need them to be.

That’s what I write about in my Mimosa Lane series. Christmas on Mimosa Lane and my July release Three Days on Mimosa Lane are all about that, for my heroines. And Love on Mimosa Lane, which has kept me offline for a month and is currently now wrestling sleep and energy and courage out of me, so I can rewrite through my first round of developmental edits, is all about that. Most every heroine I’ve ever created has been all about that in their own unique ways. And, yeah, in very personal ways I’ll likely never share directly with anyone but those closest to me, I’m all about that. Otherwise, why would this be one of my recurring themes?

What keeps us from healing from past losses? And even more importantly, what do we deprive ourselves from having, if we never take that leap of faith and truly believe that someone besides ourselves can be there for us in the most intimate and meaningful ways we need them? These are the questions and messages that paint themselves all over the pages of my imagination.

I’ve needed a new hero these last few months, while challenges and conflict invaded my ordered, productive work world and mucked things up to the point that I’m now scrambling to complete edits for a book that should already be in production. I’ve found I couldn’t be that savior for myself this time. The closed fist hammering through adversity until it’s tamed simply wouldn’t work. I’ve found myself leaning on others in ways that scare me to death. Just like my heroines who are terrified to try again, I’ve reached my “eventually,” where I haven’t had any other choice.

So many people have stepped in to help, to believe in me, and to want me to succeed. I’m so lucky, and still so scared. And so I still fight, but this time not alone. I still write, but I’m not hammering through the work as if it’s all I have. And I still doubt, but myself more than others now. Because I want this success and promise and tomorrow so many have rushed to my side to promise I can have. Only…the real person in my journey who’s been most prepared to let me down all along, has been me.

If I can’t heal from this past that follows me and this present that scares me, the person who’s broken trust with me…is me. I have what I’ve always needed–to belong and to be wanted and to be supported even though I might very likely fail. Now, can I accept that and claim it and make it mine. Or will I return to fighting alone, because at least that feels safe and real and solid. Lonely might be a terrible reality, but it can be so much safer than believing and being disappointed again in the most personal of ways.

I’ll write through my exhaustion and panic and tight deadline, because I’m a fighter and I don’t know any other way. But will I let myself risk it all again–my heart and hope and dreams–and give up that very personal safety of clinging only to myself?

This is my fight.

I suspect it’s the fight of so many others, if reader reaction to my novels, particularly the Mimosa Lane series, is any indication. Is it yours? Can you empathize, the way I do with the heroines I write into the same emotional corner, regardless of their very different external circumstances from mine.

This is my blog topic, in varies ways, I promise, for some time to come. We’ll have fun and there will be more giveaways and goodies and excitement, hopefully, as TDoML comes out. But there will be talk of this universal journey of finding yourself and your internal hero, so you can open that self up and let others in to fight beside you.

When you’re a fighter you fight. When you’re a lover you love. And between those two extremes is where most of us find the hope that endures and gets us through anything. That’s simply what I know, or at least what I’m learning. It’s what I’m writing all over again into LoML, because maybe I haven’t learned enough yet. It’s what I’m living, because life evidently wants more for me than enduring alone and being afraid to need more.

Join me, won’t you?

Share your stories of inner courage and outer hope and the struggle between fighting onward alone and letting go so you can love…

I’ll meet you here, sharing mine.

How We Write: Day 5, One Step, One Leap at a time…

When you have to go back to the beginning, do your step outline. Steps and leaps are what we’re talking about today. When you’re rewriting and you can’t see where you’re going, it’s time to retrace your steps. Every step. Every leap. What have you had your characters doing? Why are they doing it. What’s in their way (conflict), stopping them from getting what they want (goal), and how does that change their goal or the reason they keep fighting (motivation)? In EVERY scene. In EVERY story turning point.

That’s what I’ve been doing for two days. We’re going to forget Day 3 and 4 like they never happened–because they didn’t for me, from a work standpoint. That’s how my life’s going these days. I can’t move forward, in the midst of chaos. But that doesn’t mean I stop working on my story. It means I find different ways to look at what I have so far–and this week, I’ve worked on another rewriting/manuscript deconstruction technique I’ve learned…step  outlining  what I’ve already written, to discover where my story AND character arcs need to be refined and deepened. Not just one or two scenes. Every scene. From the beginning. Until you realize what’s blocking the escalating conflict and flow of your characters and plot.

Yep. That’s a lot of work.

But it’s so worth the effort. It so pays off in the end. Promise. I’m teaching this weekend at the Virginia Romance Writers chapter, and I’m working on my Jan release every extra second I get. And if I can’t get a volunteer to share her story with the workshop, so we can apply this and other techniques during the 6 hours I have with the group, I’ll use Love on Mimosa Lane as an example. I’m not proud. I’m not shy. I don’t care. How many books I’ve sold or novels I’ve written, it’s just as hard for me to do this stuff as it is every other writer. I have to take this one step at a time, too…

An example from my WIP, to show you what I mean–let’s trace my steps for the protagonist/heroine, antagonist/hero, and the romance arc (which always gets its own analysis in my novels, because if the relationship doesn’t hit on all cylinders, readers won’t stick with me for all the rest).

Scene 1

———-

Heroine:

Goal–engage the single father she’s been avoiding without letting him know she’s smitten

Motivation–help the lost boy she’s responsible for, without losing her heart/the distance she needs from the town bad boy (antagonist)she shouldn’t want to know better as much as she does

Conflict–attraction/sparks as soon as protagonist is close, and he’s no happier about it than she is

Hero:

Goal–talk with heroine, only because he thinks its about his daughter, his only priority now, no matter the distance he’s carefully kept between himself and the ultra-conservative woman a man like him has no business wanting as badly as he does.

Motivation–he’s going to make sure his little girl knows she’s his only priority, no matter how much trouble his ex makes

Conflict–as sparks fly, her realizes the heroine isn’t so prim and proper after all and might be an even better fit for him–and therefor more of a threat to his hands-off policy for the women in their small town–than he thought

Romance:

Goal–protagonist and antagonist have been circling each other and avoiding personal contact, for very different reasons

Motivation–both suspect the potential danger the other poses to the distance they insistent on keeping between them and emotional connections they’ve learned only bring more damage to their lives

Conflict–Both are soul-deep defenders of the most vulnerable people in their lives (heroine is an assistant principal worried about hero’s daughter and the “lost boy” she needs him to help; hero is a worried single fat committed to helping his daughter, and instantly feeling a connection to the lost little boy who reminds him so much of himself). Because of that shared value, they’re connection to help the kids in their lives is an instant/unbreakable link they’re scrambling to deal with, while still retaining the the distance that keeps them safe.

So, that’s the opening scene. Just one scene. And I’m in the process of mapping the same for these characters and their relationship conflict for the first half of my novel–so I can see the work I need to do up to that crucial midpoint/point of no return for my story/character/relationship arcs.

Can you map the goal, motivation and conflict for your opening scene? How about the Inciting Incident???

How We Write: Day 2 of Rewriting Is my B**ch. Simple, right?

Yeah, I said it. Because part of what I teach is that at this point of the process–the rewriting of a full draft that rarely wants to be rewritten–your job isn’t easy. Either the overwhelming work to be done is going to win, or you’re going to win because you’re a professional writer. And the only way for you to win, is to take control and show the rewrites or the new draft or whatever stage you’re in, that you’re the boss.

The way to do that?

Simple.

No, the process isn’t simple. You have to keep it simple.

When you’re drafting with a plan (and you have a plan, right?) or rewriting with plan (because you revamp your plan for your story before you rewrite, right?), you stop the overwhelming, sinking feeling that you can’t succeed at something as complex as creating a novel–by focusing on one piece of the story at a time, until the whole manuscript finally begins to take shape.

I encourage students to do what I do…focus on the beginning, middle, and end of your characters’ journeys, as you plot or deconstruct or draft write a novel. I also teach students to pinpoint the emotional focus of a character at the inciting incident of a story, then at the black moment, and only then at the middle of the book. If you can define for yourself or me or a critique partner what your character’s internal journey will be at these three story points , you’ll never be writing or rewriting into a void.

An example?

My protagonist/heroine in my Mimosa Lane WIP (Book 3 of my Seasons of the Heart series) grew up in a dysfunctional family. That could have made her angry at the world and rebellious (as it does our hero, but that’s another blog post). Instead, while she’s wary of ever making family work for her, it’s made her a champion of other families and of the kids she teaches and cares for in her job (she’s an amazing assistant elementary school principal, whom you get to know in Seasons of the Heart Book 2, Three Days on Mimosa Lane). Sound interesting? I hope so.

But that’s only the beginning. It’s nowhere close to a full story arc. Not yet. And if I’m going to rewrite my muddled and wandering draft into the best story it can be, I need to understand my protagonist’s emotional/internal journey as I weave her in and out of the external story points I’ve already created–I need to motivate her carefully and throw the right conflict at her for the right reasons (using my hero and key secondary characters), so that she’ll change and grow and achieve a goal by the end of the book that she/we wouldn’t have thought possible at the beginning–claiming the happy family she’s always wanted, even if that family can never be the perfect thing she dreamed of as a little girl.

The simple part

(that’s taken me a long time to arrive at, longer than most other stories I’ve written, because of the complexity of the characters and community I’m writing about)

Heroine at the story Inciting Incident: She’s surround herself with love and family (other peoples’), focusing on her job and helping the ideal community she’s grateful to be a part of. Her success at her job helps other families and the children she’s responsible for thrive, and that makes her happy, or so she’s convinced herself.

Heroine at the story Midpoint: She can’t help two special children without working with and growing closer to the man and the family she’s secretly longed to know better. But inviting them into her life exposes her to the kind of chaos (and the chance of risking her heart) she’s refused to allow into her life since she left her own damaged family behind. She realizes that all this time she’s been “hiding in plane sight” and running from her past and fear of giving her heart to anyone again. She’s not equipped to handle the choices and risk that loving the hero and his daughter challenge her with–even though she can’t stop herself from fighting for them.

Heroine at the end of the story: The hero’s own damaged past and his secrets blow up in the most public, challenging, personal way–he is absolutely not the right man for an emotionally risk-averse person like our heroine.  But neither is anyone else, she’ s learned. All this time, she’s believed she’ll never find love, because loving someone will never be safe enough for her to handle. Only now she’s in love with the one person who should be the antithesis of safe to her–but she hasn’t been able to do anything all along but fight beside him and for him and his daughter. Has she learned enough to accept that this perfect family that has come to her will always be flawed and challenging and scary to her (because she loves them so much and can’t imagine losing them)–and that she can handle all of that, she can handle anything, as long as she has their love in her life?

As I rewrite, if I have these emotional turning points in mind as I work on every scene (and, you know, a thousand other details that I need to work out as well, because this series is so rich in setting and theme and secondary character arcs and community and so forth), I’ll keep my heroine on track and ever evolving and growing and changing from the amazing person she is at Page 1 to the even more amazing woman she becomes at the end of the story.

Simple, right?

June Three Days on Mimosa Lane Contest!

Three Days on Mimosa Lane is on its way (pre-order now for the July 23rd release)!

To celebrate, my June Blog Giveaway features this AMAZING Coach Daisy Applique Jewelry Box and a signed ARC of the book.

Look at the Rafflecopter widget below for super cute pics of one of my FAVORITE prizes ever!

My lovely assistant, Carla Gallway from Book Monster Promotions, has everything set up again.

There are tons of ways to earn points for a better chance to win.

So:

Read all the terms and conditions below.
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Click HERE for giveaway details and entry guidelines!

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Three Days on Mimosa Lane

One day can change your life forever…Three days can transform a painful past into a beautiful tomorrow…

Once, Sam Perry had it all. A loving marriage, an amazing job she adored as a preschool teacher, and a beautiful home. She was safe, happy and secure.

Then the unthinkable happened…

Watching his once carefree wife withdraw into herself was almost more than Brian Perry could handle. The only thing that kept him going was knowing that he loved her more than life itself. Moving her out of New York to Chandlerville, a small, quiet suburb of Atlanta, felt right. Anything, to get her away from the memories of the buildings, and her world, crashing around her.

Now, two sons and many years later, Sam cherishes the new life on Mimosa Lane that Brian built for them.

Until lightning strikes twice…

Called a hero by her small community, Sam feels more like a coward than ever. Instinct draws her into an altercation at her children’s school—an instinct that also drives her away from the warm cocoon of her family.

Brian refuses to lose his wife again. He agrees to give her the space she asks for, but he soon realizes space isn’t something they and their children can afford. He knows their love can still conquer all. But this time he’ll need their entire community to help him win his wife back.

ARC Up for Grabs…and MORE!

Head over to The Romance Reviews Sizzling Summer Reads June Event, for your chance to win a Three Days on Mimosa Lane ARC, plus a lot more, including the $100 Gift Card Grand Prize!

You’ll need to log in to access all the great games and Q&A giveaway opportunities. You won’t be sorry you did ;o)

Three Days is one of the sample Q&A’s today, so you can see it on the contest homepage, before you sign in. Plus it nabbed one of the banner spots at the top of the contest page. So show your love for my July release on TRR, and treat yourself to a chance to win.

BONUS I’ll be announcing my May Blog Contest COACH prize later today. Here’s what one of my great fans won:

BONUS+ June’s Blog Contest COACH prize goes live tomorrow! So check back. Here’s a sneak peak of June’s Blog prize…

BONUS++ I‘ll have THREE more Q&As up at TRR later this month, so there are more ARCS up for grabs, plus an Amazon Gift Certificate special day!

How We Write: The Ugly, Sleep-deprived Truth…

For the next 12 days, I’m writing ugly–revising ugly, mostly–and I’m blog posting every day about it. I taught a NC retreat weekend a few weeks ago and am teaching again this weekend coming up on what it means to draft and revise as a professional fiction writer. Students tend not to believe that it’s as hard for the pros as it is for them. I tend to believe and teach that it’s harder.

I say I work 15-20 hr days at this point in the process.

Because of personal issues, I’m so far behind with this deadline (and am working on an extension my publisher graciously gave me) that it’s going to be more like 20 hrs a day. No. Really. I have close to 100k words of meandering draft, with no end in sight, even though I know what I want the ending to be. Only the beginning and middle of this thing won’t take form enough for me to be able to finish it. So it’s back to the drawing/design board. I’m deconstructing again and revamping character/plot/story AGAIN, the way I teach other writers to.

And I’ll be recording daily here, for  anyone who’s in the same place or is interested in following a long for the hell of it. In the end, this is a job, as much as I love to create and spend time with my characters. I have a series and a book to do my very best to bring to life and finish. I have a publisher, editor and agent counting on me to fulfill my obligation, no matter the chaos going on in my personal life. I have a plan for my career that I don’t intend to let fizzle away because of some bumps in the road.

There will always be bumps in the road. I have the great pleasure and luck of doing what I love for a living–most of the time I love it, anyway. Sometimes this is simply my job–and my kid needs to go to college, so I do my job.

So for 12 days I’m working my ass off to turn this thing over to my editor on June 15th. You can do anything for 12 days, right?

Join me, won’t you?

For those who follow my process as I teach it, here’s the new plan (character-driven, of course), from the analysis I spent most of yesterday pulling together. Today, I’m ripping at the old draft, cutting and tuning things up and moving scenes/plot points as needed. Likely, that’ll be all I do this week–ALL on hard copy, because that’s how I see story best at this stage. It’s most of us see it best, not that I’m insisting you try it this way, unless you’re one of my students, and then, yeah, I’ll insist!

Story Themes (weave in from beginning, through the middle, to the end):

Love (family, friends, community, lover, self)
Family (born into, choose, trust, transformation)
Mistakes (living with them, overcoming, not being defined by them)
Music (a symbol of feeling again, opening up, starting over)
Selfishness/Selflessness (equally destructive in their extreme forms, somewhere in between is where we live)
Parental substance abuse (affect on children, addiction, recovery, living with, co-dependence)

Heroine’s Story GOAL (teacher/assistant principal): belonging to her community without risking too much (since her family imploded when she was a child); her success/happiness is found in helping real families thrive.

Heroine’s Story CONFLICT: Must reach out to the person who tempts her to make belonging personal (hero) in order to help two special children; challenging hero to help her opens the door to making him/his daughter her family, and all the risks that comes with how much she grows to want that.

Hero’s Story Goal (bartender/single-father/musician who hasn’t played since his life imploded): He will make his daughter’s life secure and free of chaos, no matter what he must sacrifice; play it safe for daughter’s sake, the way he didn’t when he hooked up with her mother and finished destroying his life; fighting ex dirty (the way she’s fighting him) will destroy daughter’s happiness, no matter how much he longs to, so he fights the bad boy instincts that have gotten him in trouble before.

Hero’s  Story Conflict: Chaos finds him and daughter, when a real fighter (heroine) blasts into their lives to “help” and refuses to play it safe/keep her distance; playing it safe will lose heroine and his daughter–who needs them both; fighting will reveal the last of his secrets and possibly damage his child even more

Heroine and Hero must reach out to each other (though they’ve kept their distance for years, to avoid the impulse to get closer) and fight together to save the children they care passionately about. They drive each other to break through the emotional walls keeping the world at a distance…

There’s more, but that’s the bare bones of what I’m weaving in. Wish me luck. Let me know if you’re equally fighting for story this week. Come back tomorrow for more sleep-deprived babbling!

The Soul of the Matter: Poetry is when you feel…

“Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.” ~~Robert Frost

That’s the poem that inspired my Three Days on Mimosa Lane. Because it’s another book about family and emotional journeys and finding your way through difficulty that mostly no one else knows you’re going through. And that’s poetry to me. I’ve never ceased to be amazed by what the human spirit can survive and conquer and thrive in the midst of. And I never forget, despite my own rocky journey as a child, what family and friendship and love can mean, when you allow the poetry of them into your life.

I don’t write poetry. Not professionally. But I do see emotion and feelings and how a writer, any writer, portrays them on the page as a unique form of poetry that changes from voice to voice.

I see the same thing in everyday life, as I observe everyday people and families.

How we create happiness and peace, or how we destroy both, is poetry personified.

We choose our path. We choose our reaction to the world. And our choices affect so much more than our own experience. The emotions we invite into our reality echo into others, and we either build up or we destroy the positive energy around us. We add to and give back to the world, despite its challenges, or we merely take, and we take for granted all the good beyond our struggles. We value every moment, and we help others do the same, or we declare that we don’t deserve better–and we limit those we love to the same meager existence.

I write about family, always have, always will. I write about relationships, always have, always will. And I write about poetry and love. Because, to me and my voice and my writing, it’s all the same.

Despite what we were born into or the circumstances conspiring to challenge use every day of our lives, we choose what or family and love and purpose and poetry will be. We choose which words and thoughts we pull together to craft the emotions that drive us.

THAT’s the story I tell over and over, I think. It’s the journey I’m bringing to readers again in Three Days on Mimosa Lane.

We either love, or our personal poetry becomes a dark, dead-end and yet endless thing.

We chose hope, or we condemn those who love us to share our hopelessness.

We fight to overcome and find that perfect combination of words and emotions and yearning that will take flight for us and our families, until it takes us beyond where we dreamed we could go.

Poetry is an unwritten theme in all our lives, not just my books, as we chose whether to follow either a magnificent vision or a limit-filled, meager existence.

What will your poetry say about you today?

Deadline Dementia=Shoes. Simple math. Right?

Yeah, it’s writing fifteen hours a day or so time. And I’m mom-sitting, while my mother recovers from minor surgery. So I need a break, every now and then. And breaks are made for shoe dreams, right?

I’ve heard from a lot of blog followers that I NEVER do Shoes are My Heroine anymore. And it’s not that I’m not still obsessed about the little dears, as much as it’s that I’m saving for college (not mine, but the kiddos) and doing things like buying insulated windows and siding and a new air conditioner for the house. And then there are the cars that we own outright, but they keep needing pesky repairs to stuff like the transmissions and so forth, because I REALLY dig not having a car payment, even more than I love shoes. Well, almost as much as I love shoes, anyway.

But, a girl with deadline dementia needs her some shoe dreams to get her through, and I’m on my fourth killer deadline in a year. I’m not complaining, mind you. I’m a lucky writer, and I don’t let a day go by that I don’t take a moment and revel in that. My good fortune, and my obsession with shoes.

So…this spring, I’m DYING for some new chunky heels.

And if I didn’t have looming college debt on my horizon, these pale pink, patent, Lucite-heeled beauties, SO modern-day Cinderella, would be mine so fast, you’d pull back a bloody stump if you tried to reach in front of me.

Or maybe I should be more practical…when you’re wearing your PJs all day, with Medusa hair to round out your look, while you’re being fanned by the cabana boy, who’s also peeling you grapes, some snake skin slides are a good way to go. Actually, snake-skin slides are always a good way to go.

But I have to say that THESE are so color blocked, sixties, PERFECT, that I can just picture myself taking a mind-melted break from drafting, say around 2 or 3 in the morning, and doing the Laugh In, Goldie Hawn dancing thing in the middle of my office. Who wants to join me?!

Which are your faves? Which should I buy?

Where would you be kicking them around? And what does your cabana boy look like? And, have you been following Shoes Are My Heroin long enough to guess who makes these amazing creations? It’s one of my favorite designers for events when I travel. Anyone? Anyone???

Okay (grumble, grumble). Back to the writing and mom-sitting…

GoodReads ARC Giveaway!

Want a FREE ARC?

Anyone?

Anyone???

Goodreads Book Giveaway


Three Days on Mimosa Lane
by Anna DeStefano

Giveaway ends May 31, 2013.

See the giveaway details

at Goodreads.

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