Anna DeStefano's Blog, page 30

I Hear the Craziest Things: I'm NOT the weirdest author on the planet…

Who'd have thought that my odd ticks as a writer were tame in comparison to the masters of eccentricity?

Truman Copote wrote lying on a couch, with a drink in on hand and a pencil in the other.
A Newsweek reporter stripped down to his boxers to work so he didn't wrinkle his clothes.
An acclaimed female author writes facing a brick wall, saying among other things that it seems a fit metaphor for being a writer. Heh.
Hemingway created only 500 words a day, telling a friend he got one page of masterpiece for every 91 pages of sh**t.
And the list goes on.

Take a peak for yourself.

And, if you're a writer or artist of any kind, feel good about your own messed up process ;o)

Revising a Year: Falling In Love…

I fell in love again these last two weeks…  With how much I and other writers and editors and agents and readers still love story. Forget the doom and gloom about book publishing. Forget closing book stores. Forget the social media hype that book promo, not the story, is what matters most to readers. Spend a few weeks surrounded by those whose business is bringing creative inspiration to life, to the page, and to the market, and you'll fall in love again, too.

I'm always searching for the right stories, the right directions, the right voices to lose myself in. It's easy to look around at the rabble and rubble of our business and wonder what the readers want, thinking they have the answers. And shouldn't the industry professionals we look to to buy our books and get them to readers tell us where to put our energies next? Isn't that the way it works?

Except writers create what readers read, and the beating heart of that story, that relationship, is an affair that the establishment might feed into, but it doesn't control how and when the heart beats true. And that's what I've felt non-stop for weeks now, thanks to the inspiration and energy and love for connecting with readers that fills me and my fellow writers. The truth behind this race we're all running.

It's too easy to forget where we started. What needing to express what's inside can do to the mind, until you let it out. Where that release takes you once you get out of your story's way. Once you let the love of creating rein.

Whatever we're searching for in life, whatever our day jobs and responsibilities and family commitments, we're all put on this earth to create something beautiful with our lives. We all have gifts that bring just a bit more light and understanding to the world. It's a scary, vulnerable undertaking, breathing life into that kind of inspiration. And I just spent two weeks surrounded by brave artists who dare to create out loud, out in the world, so that others might see their dreams too.

I've fallen in love all over again with the strength and honesty and magnificence of writers. Thank God for them all, and for the readers that find our words take in our vision and fly…

You inspire me more than you know.

How We Write Wednesday: Putting the Writing First…

I've been asked to HoWW blog more about putting the writing first…even when we're being told (and seeing)  EVERYthing else in the business is more important. Especially the insanity we call social media (yesterday's topic, where I ranted about writing first, because who knows what's really making a difference on Facebook and Twitter anyway, no matter what the "experts" say).

It's funny, when you think about it. Blogging about not blogging or tweeting or FB statusing so much that you never groove on your craft. Your art. Your purpose to begin with for dipping your to in the Internet mustof "connecting." We try to carve out niche in this great beyond. #weWRITE is a great example, which Jen Talty and I started after a few months of HoWW blog posts, to get writers talking about writing alone on Twitter, not just pimping their books or blogs or promo platforms.

We work to be relevant and plugged in and visible. But why? To support our writing, yes. But we do that best BY writing. To support our career? Better. But many of the folks doing the social media thing most fervently don't have creative writing careers yet. They're following the advice of social medial gurus telling them that building a following and pseudo platform (before there's anything to sell from said stage) is more important to publishers these days than the product of the hard, daily, grinding writing work they've yet to do long enough to publish. To connect? That's more to the point, I think.

We write alone, as I said yesterday, most of the time. And social media is a great way to connect with other writers, those we admire in the business, and, yes, those we trust to advise us about our journey. But it's the massive scope of that very content we're daily struglling to take in that, in my opinion, begins to overtake the writing itself, unless we're very careful.

Because here's the thing for me–anyone, ANYone, telling you to spend any significant portion of your day doing anything BUT writing, is doing damage to your chances of publishing. Unless you're wanting a job in PR or advertising or as a social medial consultant, your job as a writer is NOT to build a social media empire. It's to write. Write a lot. Every day. Finish scenes, then chapters, then books. Then more scenes and chapters and books. And as you have several of them up for sale (either traditionally or independently or self-published), yes the hard work of promoting and building a solid following will consume more and more of your time. But even then, your primary job HAS to remain the writing. A lot. Every day.

You can't know how hard it is to promote one book, draft another, edit yet another, and work on proposals for another, all at the same time, unless you've been in that crazy place.I have. With a traditional publisher, at a time when social medial hadn't sunk its teeth into all of us yet. It's a difficult place for the creative person. It's a mind (s)uck (consonant redacted and replaced to keep blog post G-rated). It WILL burn you out, if you're not very careful.

Why would we do this kind of thing to ourselves, running a pointless treadmill of social media that has no real hope of going anywhere (because there's no publishing substance behind it yet), BEFORE we get our books completed and on the market?

Because someone tells us it's the only way?

Because it seems like a short cut?

Because we're desperate, and it seems easier than actually writing???

Ah.

Me thinks this smacks closer to the truth for many of us. A kind of, "if I can't sell on content alone, this will give me a leg up and maybe someone will notice me…" And I'm hear to say that social media, while a tool, is NOT THE WAY to get published. Getting better, every day, at your writing, at your craft and creativity and expression and emotion and characters, is the only way you're going to make your mark.

Remember. All these writers using social media successfully (well most of them, because there are always the excepts who write dreck and make millions regardless because of their notoriety or celebrity) first wrote some amazing books, THEN connected with readers who dig what they create. You have to protect the writing, while you learn about the social aspects of this business that will help you promote and sell it. You have to write every day, even if that means not blogging or tweeting or whatever as much. And your writing communities will understand and welcome you back when you return.

At least the writing communities that are about the cultivation of your writing, not just your social presence. Not your daily word count, so everyone can seeyou working hard. Or your skill at blasting the world with your views on publishing or craft or your personal life. Not the slew of successful blogs you scan and comment on every day to be visible or the tweeters you religiously retweet or the FB statuses you like, because it's important to like something (either meaningful or trendy) that others can see you liking.

Yes, these are all good techniques for establishing a social media presence, but they're not necessarily building you a writing community that will get you and your writing through the dry spells and the depression over being blocked and the frustration over the inherent slowness of this lonely business. In other words, focus your social media time on building community with what feeds your writing (even "fan" things that have nothing to do with writing and everything to do with inspiration) rather than spending all your time worrying about selling yourself and the writing you haven't yet completed.

That said, here it is, my very simple HoWW advice for staying focused on writing:

Write first. Every day.
Then work social media angles with other writers who are writing consistently. Surround yourself with those focused on what you want to stay focused on day in and day out. Not the business of selling and promoting. The business of creating.
Then be a fan of the types of things you like to write about. Build community with what inspires you (that's why I talk and comment so much about Dream Theory and the Psychic Realm and teenagers and shoes and such…because that's what feeds my creativity). Spend some of your precious social media time actually indulging in these areas, and who knows what can become of it…
THEN, once you're firmly grounded in all the rest, begin to lay tracks in the promotion side of the business you want to succeed in.

Not what most of the social media experts will tell you. Then again, experts, in my experience, are better at giving advice than actually carrying it out and producing any kind of sustainable results themselves.

Yes, we must all be our own best advocates. But social media promotion isn't its own end game. It's simply not. If you make it the point of all this, you're missing the point. You're believing the reality TV mantra that what others see is your real substance, not what you do when the world isn't watching.

Success in this business begins and ends with what you do, my friends, when it's just you and your keyboard or notepad or scrap of paper while you're sitting, writing poetry, on a boulder by the ocean (as I did this past week).

It's about the writing.

Period.

Don't forget that.

Publishing Isn't For Sissies: Social Media's Taking over…

RWA National's and the Thrillerfest workshop grids were amazing this year. So much variety, you couldn't keep up. Amazing depth. Still, on nearly every panel one topic reigned. Social Media. Almost like it's more important now than the writing and the books. How do publishers use it? How do they want their authors to use it? How do wannabe authors and publishers need to use it? You don't use it??? What's WRONG WITH YOU!

And no, I'm not exaggerating. I'm not just talking about the panels focusing specifically on the use of social medial for book promotion, though Shelia Clover English's panel at Thrillerfestwas absolutely the best of the bunch. Check her out. Download her talk, whenever they make the audio available on the TFest website. Get on board the train to your future…

When I say social media's taking over, what I mean is that everyone was talking about it, in practically every workshop, panel, and meeting I attended the last two weeks. As I said yesterday, no one knows for sure what's happening to the publishing industry, but EVERYone seems to think that the old way of promoting and reaching readers is evolving into something else, no one's really sure what, involving social media.

Several times a day, I had folks come up in the middle of hotel lobbies, once even walking around NY, to talk about how I do what little I do out here reaching out to readers and writers and fans of the kind of fantasy stuff I like to read and write. Seems I do more online than the average bear, even as I look around me on Twitter and Facebook and see others doing tons more than I have time to indulge in.

Every publisher panel began and ended with,"Find us on FB here," or "Check out our daily promotion specials on Twitter here," or "We're looking for savvy authors who are plugged in with their reader base and engaging with book buyers and bloggers and promoters here, here and here…"

Each meeting I was in, whether with other authors, editors or agents, was interrupted from time to time by emails or texts or whatever from the next meeting, or ended up talking about the craziness of how much time gets eaten up by online commitments each day.

And the workshops themselves were not immune to the frenzy. None of them. Everyone has to do something online these days to seem viable, but everyone's finding the experience, with rare exception, exhausting and they're conflicted. How much is too much? Which options are affective and which are self-indulgent wastes of time? Are we all just fooling ourselves, because all readers really want is giveaways and discounted books?

My "After The Show" workshop at RWA about how to continue your conference conversation once you get back home, how to make the most of what you learn and experience and expand the benefits of your time and financial conference investment into the next year, was the same. It started as a blog post out here and has become this amazing, inspirational workshop, even if I do say so myself, where I challenge attendees (mostly unpublished authors this time around, since I was chosen as a RWA PRO pick, which was an amazing boost to my attendance, so thanks RWA for believing in me!) to stay focused and organized on their business long after they return to their normal lives.

My interactive talk of course includes some social media suggestions and goals–but that's only a portion of my recommendation that conference attendees make a list of the follow-up tasks I talk about and a schedule of how they will implement each task and, of course, first on that list is WRITING the books and proposals they just pitched to publishers and agents. Nevertheless, guess what consumed most of the workshop once folks got comfortable enough to ask questions.

Social Media.

How do I do the paper.li newsletters that I release daily on Twitter? What is #weWRITE search tag about, and the How We Write Wednesday blog posts I do with Jenn Talty, and this PIFS series, and my Dream Theories and Psychic Realm posts… Who has time for all that? Why do I do it? Is it helping sales? Even basics like TweetDeck and the portable apps I use to keep up with everything on the road (which I didn't these last two weeks, you'll notice, partly because the hotels give awful 3G reception and I wasn't paying for Wifi and partly because I just needed a break from the exhaustion of keeping up with what I was encouraging everyone else to keep up with, so I could soak in the in-person content I'd come to take part in).

Yes, Social Media's taking over for now, but don't get lost in the flood of questions and sort-of definitive answers. Because, as with publishing, no one knows for sure what's working now, let alone what will work tomorrow.

My social media advice to workshop attendees and anyone who asked in between isn't all that new or different than any of the other active authors I respect.Be yourself. Be consistent. Be engaged in others more than you are yourself and your own promotion. Be aware of what you do and don't do well, and don't force a bad position/situation–readers and other writers are too savvy these days to be duped into believing you're an expert in something you're just starting to figure out or an active member of a group when you only show up around your book releases, etc. Be a WRITER first.

That's what I see social media taking over too often, the writing, and that's sad. And bad for business. Yes, I fell off the grid the last two weeks while I travelled. I needed to be in the moment I was experiencing, and now that I'm back I'll share what I didn't pull myself away from people to share while I travelled. And I haven't been as active the last month or so as I was earlier in the year, because I'm heads-down into new proposals and needed to find my writing rhythm. Now that I have, I'll be peaking out a little more.  Until I need to focus on the writer part of me more than the "social writer" part of me again, in which case, you'll once more notice me becoming a little scarce.

Because as social as we all are being told we need to be in a world where chatter is so prevalent, can anyone really hear a word we say?, we need to be writers first.It's what these conferences were supposed to be about, and the more closely I listened the more really good stuff I found beneath the social media buzz. We are in a solitary profession that no amount of "extrovert" necessity is going to change. We work alone, we work with what's inside us, and we work to express that to a world that can't fully understand us or what we create until it's finished and they experience the words we paint onto the page. Not on Twitter or Facebook or blogs. On the written, completed, page.

Until we have a story  to share (or the next story, for those of us already published), social media is more distraction than business savvy. Until we have a schedule for getting our inner worlds fully realized in our outward reality, we have no business spending large portions of our days (or our write conference experiences) talking about how to connect with the readers wanting to know us better. It's ridiculous, really, when you think of it that way. So many social media experts will tell you to get your online content up first, get your platform established, THEN worry about finishing and finding a home for you writing. It's the only way for things to happen as fast as they need to for a writer to be successful these days. Readers want quick and immediate and now, and they're not going to wait for you to figure out what you're really trying to say before you say it.

Really?

Yes, social media's taking over, but it's a choice we're making, not a forgone conclusion. And I think at times we're selling ourselves and our gifts short. We write. We create. We say what others want to hear. We're writers. We're not PR experts or salesmen, at least not most of us. We're thinkers and dreamers and feelers who share our deepest selves when we write and rewrite and craft story that doesn't play out in 144 characters or a hasty blog post that's like too many other blog posts in an endless sea of chatter no one really stops to connect with anymore.

Write. Write well. Write every day, as much as you can every day. And, yes, while you're at it, keep your eyes online and try to figure out who might be interested in what you're saying and how best to reach them. Take care of your business, of course. That's what my After the Show workshop is all about. But your business is story and character and taking readers on a journey they'll never forget. One that doesn't begin and end with an entertaining tweet or FB status update.

Be yourself. Be consistent. Be engaged. In your writing first. The rest will be there for you to plug into once you're grooving on your craft. But it's all about the writing.

Social media can't take that over. It can only get in your way.

Don't let it.

Write on!

Publishing Isn't For Sissies: The things you see… The things you saw… The things you miss…

Publishing Isn't for Sissies is one of my most popular blog threads. Two weeks away in NY, both at RWA Nationals and Thrillerfest, and everywhere I turned writers asked me to post more. So, first day back, what am I prattling about–What is New York publishing looking like/for?

Interestingly enough, I'm not sure anyone at either conference had a definitive answer.

There was lots of talk about new digital offerings, for example from Harlequin (Carina Press) and Harper Collins/Avon (Impulse). The major houses are very aware that the digital future of publishing is now, even though they're still not ready to pay authors an advance for dipping their toes into "traditional" experiments into the medium.

At the Avon spotlight,the editors were talking about quick turn around and prolific authors and getting excited about how quickly they could get your content up on their websites. Lots of assurances that you'd get great editing and covers and face time on a publisher site they say has heavy traffic, plus the books will be out there on Amazon, etc. But with so many titles going out the door, and the covers they were raving about honestly looked like something my teen could photoshop on his laptop, and talk of fast writing and editorial and revisions that sounds pretty close to flash fiction at times, you have to wonder how anything but their lead authors' books will get enough attention to sell well.

They do have a great plan for using the digital publishing of novellas and such to promo mass market paperback releases of the star authors. Those ebooks should get promoted out the ying yang, and it should help both the digital and print sales of the corresponding mass market releases. But the rest of the books, it seems, will pretty much be on their own.

Let me do the math for you, if this is the case. No advance. No heavy online promotion. No digital sales to speak of. No money. In other words, if you choose this path for your book release, be prepared to do all the heavy lifting yourself and be prepared to sell the same number of books you'd sell on your own, only if you did it on your own (on Amazon at least), you'd be making 75% per book in royalties, instead of what the digital publishes who hold your copyrights offer. Food for thought.

There were still lots of vampires and night creatures and dark and stormy stuff coming out from all the houses, but across the board what my agent was hearing the romance editors want now is…wait for it…contemporary romance. In fact, exactly the kind of romance I wrote six years ago at the beginning of my career that I couldn't get arrested for outside my home and family Harlequin line, because everyone wanted dark and stormy then. Interesting. And I'm not sure the pendulum has swung all the way in the other direction, but there's definitely a call for something different than what's currently being put on the market.

Note that I've written heavy suspense in that same home and family line for years, as well as two mainstream novels where I've wallowed in psychic dream fantasies much more thriller in nature than anything I'd have gotten to write for Harlequin at this stage of my career. That was kind of the point, actually. I needed to write those stories,  and I'm grateful to have had the chance. I'm happily working on a three-book proposal to continue my fantasy world, delving even more heavily into the metaphysics and parapsychology and psychic phenomenon than before.

But…now that we're on the subject, I'd already decided to take a gentler approach to my new "Legacy" characters. My life's been moving into a lighter place of late, thank Dog. I wanted that energy and momentum to play out on the page. Not that you won't be scared out of your seat from time to time, and I hope struck with the cool mystery of the contemporary worlds I'll paint. But enough with the dark and tragic for a while. I've been doing it a long time, and my agent and I decided months ago that maybe it had been long enough. I've missed what I started out writing, and I'm dying to see what those ideas can bring to my stories now. Seems that NY publishing might agree.

Which makes the four contemporary romance novels/proposals in varying degrees of completeness I've been toying with for years a lovely thing to have on the "Ideas" shelf behind my desk.I'll have to share a picture of that bookcase one day. It houses research books and binders with WIPS in it and pictures and other items that inspire me and my "keeper" shelf of top-dog authors whose voices transport me. I'm a happy girl, every time I peak around my monitor to see shelves full of ideas and inspiration, and now "publishable" novel ideas I'm dying to dive back into and rewrite until they shine.

No, publishing isn't for sissies, because no one knows anything for sure and there's so much change on a good day, and on days like the ones most authors are having this year, we all seem to know even less.

But…and this time it's a big BUT…the writer remains in control, as always.

It's all about what she wants to do with her business now, and how lovingly she stores away her ideas until it's the right time to take them out for a spin, and how hard she works every day to stay in that creative stream that I surround myself with inspiring images and research to maintain.

That's the overwhelming energy I brought back with me from both RWA Nationals and Thrillerfest (and have no fear, now that this stream of consciousness overview's out of the way, I'll be posting more details daily until I run out of notes from both weeks). It's a great time to be a writer.If you can't find a traditional publishing home for what you want to write, you can still write it well and publish it yourself. If you want to work you way up from the very bottom of a major house, there's more opportunity than ever out there, thanks to the new digital arms many publishers are starting up. If your natural voice refuses to write dark and stormy and you've been waiting for your chance to sell our lighter stories, you day has arrived in a big way. And the list goes on…

I'll say it again, my friends. Write what you love and what you know and what you want to know and what you feel. Find your heart and soul in your work and share it with the world in ways readers can't look away from. Believe your words will find their homes in the hearts of those who love to experience them. Never give up, never surrender…

And check back here tomorrow. I'm recharged and raring to go.Who knows, there might be some shoes and teenager snarkiness and writing craft and crazy things I heard in NY to share, too. You never knew what I'll come up with, after two weeks of fun and friends and sea (went to the beach in between conferences) and museums and absorbing NY's energy!

It's great to be back ;o)

RWA Nationals, Here We Come!!!

I'll be blogging, Tweeting, Facebooking daily again, now that I'm digging myself out of drafting a new book and catching a flight for the Romance Writers National Conference in NYC! Catch me if you can ;o)

Also, check out my RWA Con Today e-newsletter each morning, to stay in touch with what everyone at #rwa11 is doing all week. It's shaping up to be an amazing, busy adventure for everyone!

How We Write Wednesdays: Love Your Backstory, Make it Shine

How We Write's focus turns to backstory this Wednesday. Jenn and I have talked planning and plotting and revising and characters and story structure. But what about working what happens BEFORE, into your story's now? That can sometimes be as much work as all the rest–combined.

You may have noticed my blog's slowed down the last few weeks. Why? I'm heads down into the most complicated proposal I've written yet (and that's saying something considering I just finished Sara and Maddie Temple's story), and I'm trying to sort through everything I've been researching and planning for the next three books in the Legacy series and start the story, set the story, yet propel the characters through the first three chapters of the story without dampening the kick-ass pacing of the psychic thriller/magical realism my readers have come to crave.

I teach "free writing" to my students. To write to the end before you go back and revise. But I always qualify that I first get through the proposal stage. The initial 50 – 75 pages. The three chapters my agent needs (along with the BEST synopsis of the full story or series I can write) to sell my books to my publishers. Those first three chapters are an art form, a story, all to themselves. They need to establish your story not just for a reader, but for the editor you want to buy your manuscript.

You've heard me say it before–how you handle the inciting incident has plot and character ripples that flow through the middle and most importantly the dark moment and climax of your story. But it's not just that. Weaving in the backstory of your story, intriguing the reader without revealing too much, all while you're being sure to tell them enough at the exaxt moments they need to know… The finesse and delicacy in which you do this is part of your voice. And it has to change in subtle ways with each story. You can never be too careful or creative about how you handle it. You can't just dump in the "goodies," then get back to the creative work of telling your story. Some of the most creative writing you do comes when you craft the past into your on-the-page world.

Theres' no quick and easy way to describe how to handle the "no dumpage" mandate for backstory, or how to work around the "show don't tell" rule we've all had beaten into us. What a surprise!

There are no simple rules for backstory, any more than there are for anything else. If you don't give enough in the right places, you frustrate and lose your reader. If you throw to much at the story when it's not needed in ways that don't fit your characters and world, your pacing crawls to a painful halt.

I asked the dedicated writers following the #weWRITE Twitter hashtag their backstory questions and suggestions and received an array of wisdom in response. Which is both encouraging and expected.

Some write all the backstory in, then rewrite it out.
Some write the story without backstory and plug it in later.
Some just write and plan very little and let the past reveal itself as they actually write the story's present.
EVERYONE is aware of how difficult a topic it is to tackle, but, of course finding their own way.

My take? You have to be skilled at working with your story's origins, whatever your personal writing process is. And I think the reader's tolerance and expectation for how to handle backstory very much depends on the genre you're writing.Let me say that again–you have to skillfully offer the reader and the story the depth of backstory that's expected. It's not just you call, not if you're writing any type of genre fiction.

Which means we're circling back to another common piece of advice I give the writers I teach. Read. Read a lot. Read everything, study it all, then focus on the type of writer and writing you want to publish in. Deconstruct what others are doing and incorporate what's best about it into your own work. What does that mean for backstory?

I've done some heavy reading the last few months as I worked my way into this story, across genres, and this is what I've observed as I work on my new proposal:

Karin Slaughter's police thrillersopen in a victim or "bad guy" point of view, completely entrenched in the story's "now." But from typically the very next scene rely o, she feeds the reader a steady stream of backstory from the beginning until roughly the last third of the books (where she's pulling out all the stops and the answers to the mysteries are falling like dominoes). Her technique–revealing character by sharing with the reader vignettes from the characters' past. Characters remember important things about themselves and others by remembering key events that have happened before the book began that paint a three dimensional person onto the page, either parallelling something happening "now," or challenging it. Also, she tells backstory from an emotional standpoint–how or why a person is who they are. It's all about character for her, and believe me when I say there's a LOT of backstory in almost every scene. But it works better than just about anything else I've read.

Sarah Addison Allen's "sweet" magical realismopens on stage as well, where she's showing us the central character in her world where magic is just accepted and things are strange, but so strange it's impossible for the reader to buy that everyone's accepting the fantastical things going on from the get go. Then, like Slaughter, she begins to hit you with the how and why of these characters and happenings as she weaves you through the book's set up. I'd say the first third of her novels are heavy set up. But my heavy, I don't mean the degree that Slaughter "tells." A sentence here or there is all Addison takes, because it's all she has to. She's not weaving as intricate an external story as Slaughter. Her challenge for the reader is to understand the flickers of backstory she hints at here and there, so the internal journey of her characters rings true. She focuses on feelings and how they're tied to the external world and the past. She sets up the environment a lot as well, when she's telling you what's happened before the book opens. Hers is a more literary device, and everything she reveals has a pay off at the end of the story, just like in Slaughter's procedurals. Only her pay off is the explanation of how the magic and the reality of what she's created works together.

In Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere and American Gods(modern classics if I've ever read one), his fantastical worldbuilding (and heavy backstory) demands external information from the very start. He's taking you beyond your geographical borders and showing you contemporary characters that seem mythological. He's creating something that feels very real but very surreal at the same time. And the only way he can do that is to explain what and why things are happening around, again, the most intriguing, amazing characters you are dying to know everything about. So you don't mind the backstory. It doesn't affect the pacing, because you're turning the pages as fast as you can to learn more. I'm sensing a coming thread here. Emotion.Character. Yes, Gaiman's telling more than showing at times, like all the rest, but it's very skillfully done. And it's always about showing you a character you can't look away from.

David Weber's "Honor" sci-fi seriesis amazing alternate world building. We're on spaceships and there are alien species and we're on other planets and on missions that all begin and end with his imagination. He has to paint everything for us. He can't NOT tell. Showing wouldn't make sense without the heavy work he does planing backstory from the first page–because without his mind as a guide, we'd have no frame of reference from which to see things in our own. But again, he does it all in character. Shows us how everything we're being told and show affects Honor Harrington. And with all the above authors, the writer's wit bleeds into the characters lives and we're learning about them and their surroundings in ways so interesting and "real," it's like we're in their head and having an amazing time with them while we're discovering who they are.

That's just a sample of what I've been studying, but it gives you an idea of how important backstory is (in my opinion) to the amazing work of some of our most talented and successful modern authors.You have to love backstory, not dump it into corners and write away from it as quickly as you can. You have to tell the reader what's going on whenever they need to know. And, here's the kicker, they want to know. But you have to do it in a way that they don't notice how you're laying the tracks of the past into the present story. You have to build the central characters and themes and settings so masterfully from the past, that the reader's craving more. You can't let your technique pull the reader out of "now" or slow the momentum of the "A" story.

In short, you have to handle backstory masterfully. And that's some of the hardest work you'll do as you draft and revise your manuscript.

How do you handle your backstory?

Do you love it enough to craft it into your characters worlds so skillfully, you're reader will be begging you for more?

Nook FREE Friday Giveaway!!!

Dark Legacy's a Nook Unbound Blog FREE Giveaway  all day today.

Jeremy Cesarec says, "Fans of the blockbuster film Inception will love this week's Free Fridays selection: Dark Legacy … DeStefano's novel is an insightful psychological thriller of the first order."

Secret Legacy's still a $2.99 download on Kindle and other platforms.

It's been a busy week, keeping me away from blogging while I mascarade as  Super Mom AND write the first few chapters of Haunted Legacy, continuing my psychic fantasy series into the world of a new family of three gifted siblings with all new latent powers everyone's hunting for their own purposes. Look for an excerpt soon!

Enjoy Freebie Friday!

How We Write Wednesdays: Jenni's Upping the Stakes

By popular request, we're capping off my discussion last week about narrative structure and arching character through a novel, with Jenni's workshop on upping the external and internal stakes of a novel. Check her out. She's fabulouse when she teaches this.

Remember, it's all about character. And story. It's about both. Because they're the same thing in the end. When I focus too much on one, I know to take the other deeper. When one hits the wall of writer's block, the other is somewhere screaming for attention that I haven't given it.

That's how we write?

What's your process for discovering where your reader will go when he dives into your novel? Do you know? More importantly, have you put much thought into how you're going to take your way and make it better, with each character and each plot and each book…

Next week, come back here for the exciting roll out of our HoWW "guest blog" schedule. You're gonna love the authors who've signed up to come out and play over the summer–Phase 3 in our plan to get writers talking about about their craft and their journeys, so we can support each other without the hype and the promotion and the competition you find all over social media.

Phase 2, you ask? Check out our #weWRITE Twitter tag, where we continue the conversation every day!

Things My Teenager Says: The Invisible Break

My teenager doesn't know, until I tell him, that he's sitting behind the wheel of the car I drove while I was pregnant with him.

"This was your mom car?" he asks.

"My mini van."

How could I know back then that I'd never trade up for a bigger vehicle? That no matter how hard we tried, there would never be a need to give up this beautiful thing with a sports car's engine and sleek lines and roomy interior and leather seats, for something more practical and less appealing to the eye.

Yes, this car that protected and helped raise my baby has become my baby, too.

Just as we've taken care of "Bessie" (her name, because she's been paid for for over a decade and was designed to never let us down)–to the point that mechanics who work on her try to make deals with us every time we take her in, because they want to buy and keep her for themselves–we've nurtured him, so that we could reach this amazing moment and beyond.

"Stop pressing the invisible break, Mom." He's laughing at how tense I am as he prepares to take another lap around the neighborhood. "I'm not going to wreck the car."

No matter how hard I try to relax, the need to hold on and slow things down is at its worst when we near stop signs and drive by the countless cars  parked at the curb. Especially at the blind, uphill turns that oncoming traffic flocks to most while my boy drives by, slowly, but not as slowly as yesterday, because he's getting the hang of this so quickly. Too quickly.

He doesn't know that my reaction has very little to do with worrying about my precious Bessie.

Well, almost nothing.

Yes, this driving practice thing is hard for every parent.

But the panic I feel when he veers too close to mailboxes or speeds up when some well-intentioned but harried driver rides his bumper… None of it is invisible-break inducing.

Not even close.

He doesn't know that I'm remembering the long drive in this car to the hospital, me in the passenger seat then, too, when I was in labor. Bringing him home three days later, the car seat was installed for the first time with him carefully strapped inside, and a new life was pushing us into an adventure we couldn't fathom. The picture of a stork holding a baby in a blue blanket was waiting for us that day, staked into the front lawn right by where I park at the curb now, so he doesn't have to pull out of the driveway yet.

He doesn't remember all the times that I talked and sang and cried with him when he couldn't stand the rear-facing position of that car seat and screamed to be turned around so he could see the world racing toward him. He doesn't remember climbing into the back one Mother's Day and presenting me with a  hand-made craft project, complete with a crayon colored card (attached by curling ribbon) that I immediately hung over my rear view mirror, where it still swings today, faded and crinkled and incandescently beautiful. He brushes it aside each time he adjusts the mirror to his taller height, the way I've shown him to before he pulls away from our home.

He thinks I'm holding onto the dashboard, when it's the past I don't want to turn lose.  He thinks it's the car I wish I could slow down, when it's the pace of this letting go that's driving me to break time into its smallest pieces and hold every memory close again for every second I can.

Every fast food dinner on the way to practice and every laugh about school and each song on the radio we both loved and the hard talks we've had, because that turns out to be easier sometimes, with the distance of him in the back and me in the front softening the blow… All these pieces and more are part of us and Bessie. Part of the emotion of these drives for me, and how badly I want to slam that invisible break pedal to the floor and slow it all down.

Every time someone marvels at how carefully we've kept up her interior and exterior and engine, it mystifies me. Because she's everything. Everything we've done and loved and experienced and endured together for 16 years in this car is worth the extreme care we've taken with her.

But how could I know, all those hundreds of thousands of times that I held his hand on the way to this car, just how quickly this would come? 

Yet somehow, I did.

This responsibility of teaching him and encouraging him and smiling at him while I help him learn how to drive away from us has been my every reality with him. It's been the biggest part of us, inching closer with each new adventure we've shared.

I don't think I'm ready for any of it to end. But he does. So we drive, him taking the wheel. And I relax my grip. I inch my foot back. 

My reward? My teenager's practically bursting with pride on these drives at the freedom racing toward him. 

He doesn't know how long this journey has really been, or how hard it is to finally be here, or how very carefully I've soaked in all the moments of his childhood as they've rolled by and disappeared from view. And I'm glad.

He doesn't know anything but the wonderful places he's going, in this special car and beyond. It's my most prized possession, that blind, unquestioning sense of acceptance and approval he feels. Even as I tell myself I have to let it, and him, go.

"How about we get some ice cream?" I say, surprising him, pushing him, because he doesn't know he's ready.

But I do. So he drives out of the neighborhood for the first time, his grip knuckle-white on Bessie's wheel, heading for his favorite boyhood treat, this time as a young man in charge of his destination.

"You can do this." I smile for both him and myself. "Don't ride the breaks, honey. Accelerate. Don't worry about what's behind you. Just follow the road ahead."

I can't help it. I'm clinging to Bessie's armrest. 

"It's okay, Mom," my other baby says. That amazing, blind confidence is back. That easy laughter, usually at my expense, that calms him down.

Then he presses the gas, and we're on our way…