Holly Robinson's Blog, page 11

When Writing, Sometimes All You Can Do Is Jump

The most important thing every writer has to do is take a leap of faith.

What does that mean, exactly? That, no matter how stuck you are at the start of a book, or how unwieldy your manuscript becomes as you wade deeper into it, you have to believe in yourself enough to keep writing.

You have to shut out the external noise—the articles about six-figure advances, the dire news about book sales plummeting, the whining rants by other writers about marketing, even the criticism from your own critique group—so you can hear your own voice.

Easier said than done, right? I consider myself an old workhorse of a writer. I’ve survived rejections aplenty, and I’ve trashed more manuscripts than I can count because they didn’t go anywhere. Yet, recently the Writing Gods handed me two new challenges that felt insurmountable: 1) my beloved editor is taking a leave from the publishing company due to personal issues, and 2) the project swimming in my brain is something completely different from anything I’ve ever written.

I tried starting the new book. Over and over again, I struggled to put words on the page. But I stuttered, limped, wheezed, and finally came to a complete, crippled halt. I could not write this book. It was too hard. And who would I show it to, anyway, especially when my agent was advising me to write the entire manuscript before submitting it?

“You want to see where it goes,” she urged, “because it’s so different from what you’ve done before.”

Good advice. Yet, I couldn’t follow it. I had lost my writing mojo. Every time I put my hands on the keyboard, my fingers refused to move. I was in despair about my editor and convinced I couldn’t pull off this book.

Whenever other authors have confided in me about their own writing blocks or crises, I’ve given all sorts of advice: Attend a writing conference for inspiration! Go outside and do some digging in your garden! Start the book from the middle instead of the beginning! Try a completely different point of view!

All of these things have worked for me in the past, but this time? Nothing. Nada. Zilch. All I could do was nonfiction—I’m immersed in a ghost writing project at the moment—and lie awake at night, thinking, “That’s it. My career as a fiction writer is over. I can’t write this book.”

And then I received a surprise package in the mail: a gorgeous journal from my stepson, Drew, who had picked it up in Thailand during his travels. It’s my favorite color, a deep teal, and it has a silver elephant on the cover. Other women have a thing for roosters or kittens, but me? Give me elephants, baby. I’ve had a thing for them every since I rode one in Nepal.

Coincidentally, my son Blaise showed me his own journal, where he has started a new novel. “The thing about writing fiction in a journal is that it feels safe,” he explained. “Nobody is going to see it but you, so you can play around.”

And that’s when it hit me: I was terrified of putting words into my laptop because somehow that felt official. If I started the novel there, it would go to my agent, and then on to editors, and people would judge it. It might be rejected. Writing it in this gorgeous cloth journal, on the other hand, with an elephant as my lucky stalwart companion, would remind me of everything that matters most: my loving kids and the joy I feel when I create a story.

 

And so I began, one sentence at a time, just as writers have always done. Writing fiction in a journal has forced me to slow down, both mentally and physically. I spend a lot of time drinking tea and looking out the window. Coincidentally, my new novel is only scribbles at the moment, but you know what? Some of those scribbles aren’t bad. I think I have begun. I have made that leap of faith again.

The post When Writing, Sometimes All You Can Do Is Jump appeared first on Holly Robinson.

Author Marin Thomas Talks about Writing through Doubt, Navigating Social Media, and What Basketball Taught Her about Writing

Author Marin Thomas has had an enviable career as a writer by any stretch, having published twenty-five romance novels with Harlequin before venturing into women’s fiction with her newest book, “The Promise of Forgiveness.” Here, she talks about everything from playing competitive sports to how to keep writing even when self doubt makes it tricky to keep putting words on the page.

 

 

Q. Many writers give up before making it to the finish line or run out of steam after a few books. What has kept you writing through the inevitable writer’s block, crises in confidence, and recent upheavals in the publishing industry?

Wearing blinders in this business always helps. But seriously, I think it’s important to set short- and long-term career goals. Meeting the short-term goals builds confidence and makes waiting for the long-term goals to pan out bearable. I also believe that staying in contract, and not allowing yourself to take a break to research your next book or catch your breath, forces you to learn how to produce pages through difficult times in your personal and professional life. Learning how to write on autopilot is imperative if you want to steadily produce books and grow your readership.

The best writing tip a published author gave me was to make sure I had a new proposal ready to submit right after I turned in the final book on my current contract, and then to immediately begin writing the “non-contracted” book while negotiating the next publishing deal. This helps narrow the gap between release dates and ensures readers don’t forget you.

 

Q. What was your inspiration for writing your newest book, “The Promise of Forgiveness?”

A “What if” question planted the seed for this novel. The main character in the book wears a ruby necklace, which plays an important role in this story. Years ago I came across a beautiful ruby necklace in an antique store, and as I stared at it in the glass case, I wondered to whom it had once belonged and how had it ended up in the store. When I sat down to plot this book, I decided to name the main character Ruby. That’s when I recalled the necklace from all those years ago…and then my imagination took off.

Q. Despite not being billed as a romance, “The Promise of Forgiveness” has a wonderful love story at the heart of it. Actually, more than one…how was the process of writing women’s fiction different from the process you use to write a romance novel?

My romance novels focus on the hero and heroine’s romantic relationship, which guides the story from beginning to end and both characters receive equal page time. With women’s fiction, I had to remind myself that the heroine’s growth as an individual came first, and as the story progressed, her growth opened the door for the possibility of a meaningful relationship.

I’ve always included serious issues and family drama in my romance novels, so it feels like a natural fit to write women’s fiction. And, having a higher word count allows me to delve deeper into these conflicts, which I’ve really enjoyed.

Q. One of the most interesting things in your background is the fact that you played Division I basketball in college. How do you think being an athlete prepared you for a writing career? Do you ever wish you were, you know, on a writing team instead of working alone? Or have you found teammates in writing?

I love this question! Having been a collegiate athlete in a nationally competitive program prepared me for a lot of things in life—a writing career is just one of them.

When you participate in a team sport, you have to earn playing time or you sit the bench. And one way to ensure you don’t collect splinters in your backside is to practice your skills. I spent a lot of time in the weight room, staying after practice to shoot free throws, and one summer I joined a men’s basketball league to help me become more comfortable getting banged around under the boards. You have to be a little crazy and a lot tough to take a hard elbow and keep playing—that ability came in handy when I received rejection letters after I first began querying editors. Once the initial sting passed, I got right back in the game, continued to hone my writing skills, and sent out more queries until I eventually got the call. Playing sports also taught me to believe that the only time you lose is if you quit trying, and that’s kept me going in this challenging business.

As for writing teams….I enjoy working on continuities with other authors, but I prefer having control of my own story, characters and plot. I also keep in mind that the author is only one part of the publishing team and it takes everyone in the group bringing their A game to make a book a success.

Q. One big change in the publishing industry is that book marketing is mostly done online rather than by sending authors out on tour or relying on print book reviews and advertisements. You seem particularly adept at using social media to connect with readers. Can you talk a little about your social media journey as an author?

I’ve always been open to trying new ways to promote my books, but I struggle with a couple of things: I’m technically challenged, and because I write more than one book a year, I have trouble finding the right balance between writing, promotion and having a life. Fortunately for me, one of my readers stepped forward a few years ago and asked if she could help promote my books. We’ve become great friends and I can’t imagine not having her as my author assistant, helping me spread the word about my books. It seems as soon as I master one social media platform, a new one pops up—it’s like playing a game of Whack-a-mole, trying to keep up with where readers are surfacing. I’m grateful to have someone helping me navigate the ever-changing world of social media.

Q. Any tried-and-true writing advice for writers who are just getting started in their careers?

Don’t listen to all the noise on social media. Take what others say about the publishing industry with a grain of salt. Everyone believes they’re an expert on getting published or writing the next best seller. That’s fine and good, but when all the noise begins to whittle away at your confidence, making you second-guess yourself and question decisions you’ve made about your writing career, then it’s time to tune it all out. Follow your gut and do what makes you happy, because nothing else matters if you don’t have a good story.

The post Author Marin Thomas Talks about Writing through Doubt, Navigating Social Media, and What Basketball Taught Her about Writing appeared first on Holly Robinson.

The 6 Biggest Surprises of a Writer’s Life

 

When a friend asked recently what I was working on, I was excited to share my publishing news: I had just delivered my new novel to my editor at Penguin, and now I’m deep into a fascinating ghostwriting project.

“So how much money do you get for a book?” she asked.

I hesitated. We Yankees are as apt to discuss money as other people are likely to talk about toe fungus. But she’s a good friend, so I told her.

She gasped. “That’s all? How can they pay you so little for a whole book?”

Granted, this friend of mine has an actual job as the CEO of a mid-sized company, but I went home with shoulders bowed in humiliation. What she said was entirely true: being a full-time writer means that you don’t live like most people with full-time jobs.

That conversation led me to consider some of the other big surprises of my writing life:

1. Unless Your Book Is a Bestseller, You Will Drive a Used Car. Forever.

When I sold my first book to a major publisher in 2009, I thought I’d finally made it. No more writing technical articles and medical books! I was a real writer now! I could live off my advances and royalties!

No such luck. Royalties, for most of us, are a myth: publishers are good at determining how many copies a book will sell and pay advances accordingly. Those advances are paid out in thirds, and if it takes two years for your book to make it into stores, you will wait two years and six months for that final third of your advance. After that, royalties only arrive every six months, and the amounts are so unpredictable that you can’t count on them as a living wage. So you’d better either have a roommate with a steady paycheck or have another income until you produce enough books to keep you going.

2. Book Tours Are a Thing of the Past.

Yes, some authors are sent on book tours—if their books are turned into movies, like J.K. Rowling, or TV shows, like George Martin—or if, per chance, they write bestselling murder mysteries in a series. Even that is increasingly unlikely: I once walked into a shopping mall to see Robert Parker sitting at a table in the mall by himself. And a friend of mine who has been nominated for multiple awards, including the National Book Award, counts herself lucky if she has half a dozen people show up for an event. Your publisher is unlikely to support any of your travel expenses because there’s little payback. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get out there and meet readers—only that the tour will be on your own dime.

3. Writers Aren’t All Drunks or Psychos

I used to worry that I was too happy to be a writer. How could I hope to succeed, if I had a loving husband and children I adored, when all of the writers I’d studied in school had gone off the rails either with drink or misery?

In fact, most of the writers I know are nearly normal. We get up and put on our sweat pants, walk the dog, work on a chapter, throw in the laundry, work on another chapter, pick the kids up from school, make dinner, and maybe do some editing at night. Treating your writing as a day job is the best way to produce steady, publishable work.

4. Most Books Aren’t Made Into Movies

Sure, we all dream about that movie option. But the reality is that pitifully few novels are made into movies—about thirty each year. And the ones that do get made into feature films aren’t always the best books. I’m sure you have your own list, but let’s just start with Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey and leave it at that.

 

5. Your New Book Won’t Necessarily Be Better Than Your Last

Oh, if only this were true, that each book we write sparkles brighter than our previous attempts. But, as with giving birth to children, a difficult labor does not guarantee that our new offspring will be smarter or more likable than the ones we brought into the world before. All you can do is write the book that’s in you at the time you’re writing, and pull out all the stops to give it your best effort. And whether your publisher wants another book after that one won’t be based on how good the books are, but on your numbers. Publishing is all about the bottom line.

6. Writers Are Social Creatures

For me, this was the biggest surprise of all: while it’s true that writers necessarily spend a lot of time alone at their desks, it’s also true that many are extremely social, gathering for workshops, conferences, craft classes, and retreats—or just hanging around on social media. Reach out to a fellow writer, and chances are good that you’ll find a friend. We treasure each other because nobody else quite understands—or values—this peculiar passion to assemble words that will bring the deepest possible pleasure and most profound truths to our readers.

The post The 6 Biggest Surprises of a Writer’s Life appeared first on Holly Robinson.

Confessions of a Ghost Writer: Pay No Attention To That Woman Behind the Curtain

 

 

Recently, I appeared on a radio show to promote a literary event. We were talking about my latest novel, but inevitably the host asked, “So you’re a ghostwriter, too? Who have you written for?”

I laughed and gave my standard answer: “Sorry. If I told you, I’d have to kill you.”

“But don’t you even care if your name’s not on the cover?” he asked, sounding offended on my behalf.

The truth? No. I write novels, essays, and articles under my own name, but when I’m ghostwriting, my job is to stand behind the curtain and channel a voice.

By now, I have ghosted over twenty books. I fell into the profession accidentally when my agent, who knew I’d studied biology in college, asked if I’d be interested in helping an editor fix a messy health book written by a doctor. In other words, I was the book doctor to the doctor. It was fun, and it paid enough that I started fantasizing about taking out smaller college loans for my kids.

Fixing that one book quickly led to another. The jobs seemed to fall into my lap. Ghostwriters may be invisible to the public, but editors know who’s behind the curtain. Gradually I expanded my projects from just health and science books to include memoirs by business executives, cookbook authors, and celebrities. I was being introduced to whole new worlds both on the page and off.

These projects also led me to develop more creative ways of working, since one reason celebrities make all of that money is because they never sit still. I interview my clients in person occasionally, but more often by phone, as the client rushes to the next TV shoot or salon appointment. One actress was so busy on a stage production that she had to answer my questions via Dropbox; I fed the questions to her talent agent, who then sent me audio files of her responses. Another actor could call me only late at night, after hosting his TV show.

“I bet you hate not being able to write fiction full-time,” a friend said recently, when I mentioned a new ghostwriting project. “I mean, it’s not like a book is really yours if you’re ghostwriting it, right?”

Yes, it’s a little surreal to walk into a bookstore during an author event, as I did recently, while someone else is reading a chapter I wrote—especially in a sonorous male voice very unlike my own. It’s often difficult for me to sit quietly in the audience without shouting, “Hey! Read from chapter four! That’s the really exciting part!”

But, once you finish ghosting a book, it’s not yours anymore. The book now belongs to your client, as well it should. And writing these books is a gold mine for a fiction writer like me who is interested in studying character development, new settings, and how to build narrative tension. “Ghostwriting” can mean anything from developing a messy partial manuscript to riding shotgun through another person’s life in real time. Sometimes I’m acting as a journalist, researching background material. More often, I’m in a therapist’s role, asking, “How did you feel when that happened? What impact did that have on your life?”

My goal is to ferret out the truth of a story. I love hearing a client say, “Wow, I can’t believe I just told you that,” because then I know we’ve got something raw and real that we can polish and share.

Once I’ve gathered the material I need, I become a quilter. I remember my grandmother laying out her swatches of fabric on the living room floor until she found patterns that pleased her. That’s what I do, too: I take these fascinating scraps of material from people’s lives and piece them into unique patterns. Yes, I might add my own touches with the hand stitching, but that is strictly ornamental. The tone and cadence should belong distinctly to my client, so that anyone who reads the book can recognize the voice.

The longer I do this work, the more honored I am. I have learned to banish my own experiences and expectations of what a story “should” look like. Instead, I let the pieces emerge and fall around me in an infinite variety of patterns, so that I can piece together powerful stories that deserve to be told.

The post Confessions of a Ghost Writer: Pay No Attention To That Woman Behind the Curtain appeared first on Holly Robinson.

What Is Your Purpose?

 

I often wake up in the middle of the night. Our children are scattered around the world now, so my typical insomnia starts when I wake and start wondering whether they’re safe. You know: the usual helpless parent’s rabbit hole of anxiety.

But last week something weirdly different happened. I was sound asleep when I heard a male voice—definitely not mine—asking, “What is your purpose?”

If I were religious, I would say it sounded like the voice of God. Or, better put, it sounded like the stereotypical voices of God you hear on TV shows, movies, and even cartoons. You know the kind of voice I mean—deep, authoritarian, sonorous.

But I don’t actually believe it was God’s voice, since I’m still on the fence when it comes to my belief system, practicing Buddhism or attending Unitarian services with equal enthusiasm. I’ve decided the voice must have emerged from deep within me, springing from that place where I am neither male nor female, but a simple human floundering with life’s big questions.

“What is my purpose?” I asked, panicked enough to sit up in bed and wake my husband, who made a befuddled Scooby Doo noise and promptly went back to sleep.

Not me, though. I sat up for another hour or so, pondering the question. In fact, the pondering continued for several days.

We humans are flawed enough to believe that we ought to have a purpose that goes beyond breathing, sleeping, eating, raising our kids, and keeping the hearth warm. If asked, most people say they find their purpose in work, family, and community. I would probably say the same. My husband and I have raised five children and, coincidentally, I’m wrapping up my fifth novel for Penguin.

I’ve done my bit to give back to the community, too, volunteering for schools, nursing homes, and libraries, and by donating money to larger causes. Still, I am constantly wondering if all of this is enough.

If we’re lucky, we manage to shoulder the work, health, and family responsibilities we’re dealt with and still have energy to spare. We can use that energy to help others less fortunate than ourselves. Even so, the world constantly seems to be spinning out of control around us, doesn’t it? There are starving refugees, mosquito plagues that cause birth defects in countries that forbid birth control, terrorist attacks, racial tensions, and political showdowns between presidential candidates who sound like your worst nightmare of drunk relatives at the Thanksgiving table.

Most of us get through our days one busy moment at a time. We go to work and the gym, get the oil changed in our cars, give money and time to the needy. We’re too busy to reflect. But, if we do slow down, this is the question that plagues us, whether we have religion in our lives or not: Why are we here?

If you do believe in God, how do you best serve Him? If you don’t, how do you live a charitable, fulfilling, generous, honorable life?

Our tasks seem too big at times. We retreat into NetFlix and glasses of wine, wishing we weren’t so busy, so tired, so overwhelmed. So freaked out by the sheer magnitude of the world and its problems.

Yet we cannot be human without continuing to reevaluate our purpose periodically, and we cannot be our best selves without striving to find a better answer to it every time.

This time around, I have decided to quit dodging the question and really reflect on it for a bit. So far, I am declaring that my purpose is threefold:

To embrace everyone around me with as much kindness and compassion as I can muster—whether those people are in my family or that guy on the corner begging for change
To continue writing, because that’s where my intellectual passion lies
To nourish my own spirit by slowing down whenever it all gets to be too much, so that I can ask and answer this question again, frequently.

How about you? What is your purpose? And have you found your answer?

The post What Is Your Purpose? appeared first on Holly Robinson.

Author Yona Zeldis McDonough Talks about Lucky Breaks and Following Your Writing Instincts

Yona Zeldis McDonough is the author of seven novels for adults. She is also an award-winning children’s book author with 26 children’s books to her credit, a journalist, an essayist, and a fiction editor who helps aspiring writers polish their manuscripts. This week, she took time out from launching her newest novel, “The House on Primrose Pond,” to chat with me about how she balances her writing life.

 

Q: You’ve worked as an editor, journalist, children’s book author, and novelist. How do you define yourself as a writer?

A: I find those definitions serve other people better than they serve me. I just see the writing I do as different aspects of a coherent whole; I don’t compartmentalize. Some stories are best told in an essay format; others need the transformative magic of fiction. There are topics that beg to be written for children and others that will only appeal to an older audience. I can’t say there is a formula or rule for this; somehow, I just know what feels right and let myself be led by my instincts.

Q: How do you see the process of writing fiction as being different from writing nonfiction? Which do you prefer?

A: I don’t seem them as all that different. The toolbox has a lot of the same components: plot, pacing, character, style. They are just deployed a bit differently. Non-fiction has the obligation of sticking to the facts, but even doing that offers a writer a lot of latitude. There are so many ways to tell a story, and whether it’s fact or fiction, we all love a story. The narrative impulse reigns supreme in both fiction and non-fiction. I’d say I prefer fiction to non-fiction, but creative non-fiction, particularly the personal essay, is a form that is near and dear to my writer’s heart.

 

Q: Your newest book, “The House on Primrose Pond,” is a novel about a contemporary woman struggling to manage her life as a single mother in a small town. It’s also a mystery of sorts, involving this woman’s search for the truth about her own family and about an eighteenth-century crime she’s researching for her own project. Which came first to you, as you thought about the novel, the main character, or the character and crime she was researching?

A: Actually, in a total departure for me, it was the setting that came first. In the past, I had always set my novels in an around New York City. This was less of an active decision and more of a default position. I was raised in NYC and with brief exceptions, have always lived there, so setting a novel in New York was easy. But I began to chafe at the relative ease and familiarity, so I pushed myself to find a new locale. New Hampshire came pretty naturally. My husband comes from Portsmouth, and I had spent a lot of time in the state. I knew it and it spoke to me. Once I had the setting, the characters began to form in my mind. But even that didn’t seem like quite enough. I wanted to go deeper and wider. So again, I turned to the place and let it guide me. I began to research things that might have happened in New Hampshire—fires, floods and the like. And I stumbled onto the tragic story of Ruth Blay who in 1768 was the last woman hanged in the state. She was accused of killing her newborn daughter but that was not proved; instead she was convicted of, and executed for, concealing the birth of an illegitimate child. I was riveted by this information and knew I had to incorporate it into the novel in some way.

Q: I imagine you had to do a lot of research for this novel. How did you go about the process? And how did you write the book so the research didn’t overtake or interrupt the main narrative tension?

A: I found an excellent source, The Hanging of Ruth Blay: An Eighteenth Century New Hampshire Tragedy by Carolyn Marvin. I devoured that book, and it led me to other sources, like the Historical Society in Portsmouth, where I was able to see—and touch!—a petticoat said to have been sewn by Blay, and the state archives in Concord, where I was handed actual documents from 1768. I also spent time in museums, looking at period furniture, dishes and the like, and I retraced Blay’s last steps, in

South Cemetery in Portsmouth, where she was hanged. With the aid of photos, I was able to find the spot where the hanging took place. Since the historical material only comprised about sixty pages of a four hundred-page novel, I did not worry too much about it overtaking the main story. And those pages do not appear together, but are interspersed throughout the narrative. The protagonist is gradually discovering the story, and the reader discovers it along with her.

Q: You’ve been a working writer and editor for many years now—one of the lucky few who manage to actually make a living doing what you love. What was your first lucky break?

A: It’s hard to pinpoint a single “lucky break” that was defining for my career. There was the editor at Mademoiselle who bought my very first article. It never did run, but that early acceptance meant so much. Then there was the Family Circle editor who bought a short story, and the editor at Doubleday who published my first two novels. Lucky breaks, all of them.

Q: What do you see as some of the most important changes in the publishing industry? And do those changes make you think the future for writers is brighter or bleaker than when you first started out?

A: I think publishers used to be more willing to invest in a writer and nurture a career. No one expected—or demanded—a best seller right out of the gate. Whereas now the pressure to sell both big, and quickly, has increased. But none of that matters really. You write because you have to. Or at least that’s why I write. If making money were the only goal, I would have figured out something else to do a long time ago.

Q: If you could offer just three rules for writing to aspiring novelists, what would they be?

A: Rule # 1: Commit to writing a small amount on a regular basis. For me, that was two pages a day, five days a week. Rule #2: Writing and editing are mutually exclusive processes. Write first; edit later. Rule #3: Find yourself a trusted writing buddy with whom you can share your work. This should not be a spouse/partner/best friend, but another writer, someone who faces the same struggles you face. Your buddy only knows what’s there on the page, not what you meant to say. And that is key. You can learn so much from an ongoing dialogue with another writer. Cherish the process.

The post Author Yona Zeldis McDonough Talks about Lucky Breaks and Following Your Writing Instincts appeared first on Holly Robinson.

How to Kill a Main Character Without Murdering Your Book

 

One of the worst mistakes I ever made as a green novelist was to ignore the advice of editors and friends who told me certain manuscripts needed overhauling.

I simply refused. I had put the plot on the page and given birth to the characters, and in my view these were so set in stone, I might as well have inscribed them into granite tablets. Instead of revising these earlier novels, I gave up and moved on to new manuscripts.

Luckily, in more recent years I’ve learned how completely some stories can—and should—be torn apart and stitched back together again if they’re going to actually work as novels. By now I know that sometimes I have to perform some drastic surgeries on my manuscripts if I’m going to breathe any life into them–especially when certain characters refuse to behave or won’t play nicely with others.

For instance, in the novel I’m finishing up now, “Folly Cove” (coming out in October 2016), I began with the story of three sisters growing up in an historic inn. Their father had disappeared some thirty years ago, so their mother, Sarah, ran the inn on her own. At the start of the novel, two of the grown daughters return due to circumstances in their own lives—the third daughter has stayed—and all kinds of dysfunctional family hell breaks out.

One year and five complete revisions later, the bones of the story remain intact. Yet, the book has undergone such a drastic transformation that the feel of it is very different (and, I hope, better). Basically, I got three-quarters of the way through the novel and discovered that, instead of just three voices telling the story, I needed four: Sarah, the mother of those opinionated daughters, had some very strong opinions of her own and needed to air them.

Back I went. I tore apart the book, inserted Sarah, and I was off and running again.

By the end of the novel, though, I discovered that another main character—Sarah’s husband—needed a drastically different narrative arc. I had to revise his entire life story and, by doing so, I had to begin the novel again.

So how do you add or kill off a main character without murdering your novel?

Here’s the secret: you can’t just change the scenes with that character in them. You must have the patience to go back to the very beginning of the book and revisit each scene, knowing what’s up ahead. Ask yourself, “How will this youngest daughter feel when she finds this out about her father later? What sort of person is she to begin with?” and write accordingly.

I’m nearly done now. Revising “Folly Cove” has been such an exhausting process that occasionally I’ve had to lie down in the middle of writing a chapter, or even a scene, and put a pillow over my head so I can focus on the simplest sentences.

But this is how writing a novel is done: one sentence at a time, or even one word. Then you go back and do it all over again. And again. And maybe once more for luck.

Perhaps I’m making it sound too onerous here. Let’s try another analogy: writing a novel is sometimes like that game, Jenga, where you and your opponents remove blocks from a wooden tower, vying to see who can do it with the most skill and keep the tower standing. When the tower crashes on your turn, you know you weren’t quite skillful enough. It’s time to build another tower—but, all along, you’re using the same blocks.

See? Doesn’t that sound like fun?

The post How to Kill a Main Character Without Murdering Your Book appeared first on Holly Robinson.

Author Laura Drake on Indie v.s. Traditional Publishing, Cowboys and Why She Loves Her Motorcycle

Laura Drake is in an enviable position as a writer, having sold her “Sweet on a Cowboy” series to Grand Central, winning a 2014 Romance Writers of America RITA© award in the “Best First Book” category, and then snagging another deal with Harlequin for her biker chick novels.

Yet, now she’s breaking out with a new novel, “Days Made of Glass,” that she defines as “women’s fiction” rather than romance, and she decided to do this book on her own, indie style. In the flurry of launch week, she was kind enough to sit down and let me pepper her with questions about how it feels to be a hybrid author and—more importantly—how this wife, mother and grandmother who grew up in the Detroit suburbs began writing about cowboys and biker chicks.

Q. What prompted you to make such radical changes in your writing life?

Before anyone thinks I’m some kind of rock star, prior to all this I spent 15 years writing three books and earning 417 rejections! No one would ever accuse me of being a fast learner.

Actually, writing women’s fiction after writing romance isn’t as huge a change as it sounds. I always wrote in the trench in between WF and romance. Half the editors who read “The Sweet Spot” thought it was WF, half Romance. It sold as a romance, so I had some changes to make, but not as many as I’d feared.

“Days Made of Glass” was different – a ‘one off’ book that NY wouldn’t be interested in, seeing the niche as too small (apparently westerns are great for Romance, not so much for WF). That didn’t matter to me. I wanted to tell the story. Had to tell the story.

I’m not done with NY (and thankfully, they’re not done with me). I have a proposal out for another book right now. But it was so freeing to have the option to put this book out on my own. More on that in a minute.

Q. I know that your own sister died of cancer, and that you wanted to write a novel as a tribute to her, which resulted in this tale about Harlie Cooper having to find a way to care for her sister Angel. I’m so sorry about your loss. Can you say a little more about the process of conceiving, developing and writing this novel? Do you think your sister was sitting on your shoulder as you wrote?

I wish I could tell you about the process. I have no idea how this all happens. I mean, my sister and I were raised in the Detroit suburbs! How that morphed to orphan sisters and rodeo, I’ll never know. But part of why I write is to find out what I think; and somehow, writing this book helped me, as well as the protagonist, learn to let go of what we can’t save. I think my sister would recognize us in the book, and be happy with the result.

Q. There is a lot of controversy about how “women’s fiction” is defined—and even disgruntlement that the term exists, since there’s no equivalent label for men. Now that you’ve tried writing a book you define as women’s fiction, how would you define the term?

I’m a pragmatist, so I let others argue semantics and equality. I just want to write books people like to read. I know it’s not in fashion, but to me, women’s fiction is a story that a woman would want to read. Women tend to like stories about life and how to survive it, emotionally as well as physically. That’s what I like to write. As long as readers who will like my books can find them, as far as I’m concerned they can call it whatever they’d like!

 

Q. How was writing “Days Made of Glass”—women’s fiction that you published yourself—different from the process of writing and publishing a romance with a traditional publisher?

The writing was the same (except the deadlines are self-imposed!), but after that, almost nothing was the same.

The responsibility for everything was on me. Mistakes in a NY published book? Not my bad. In this one? All my bad. And anyone who finds a mistake in the finished book will know it. But there were wonderful parts too – My cover! My blurb! My vision! Ahhhh.

My experience from traditional publishing was very helpful, though. I understood the types and quality of editing, and the philosophy behind keywords, blurbs, placement, etc. I even had contacts with book bloggers and reviewers, thanks to my traditional publishers. The bravery of those indies who self-publish without all that have my admiration—I wouldn’t have the guts!

Q. Since many of your books bring us into male-dominated professions and hobbies—bullfighting, motorcycle riding, etc.–I’m astonished to read that you grew up outside of Detroit and you’re a grandmother. Did your own lifestyle choices take you into this fictional terrain, or was it the other way around? Or, to put it another way: does your art imitate your life, or does your life imitate your art?

Great question—I’ve never thought about that! I’d have to say my art imitates my life. I’ve always been one to throw myself off cliffs. Not because I’m brave, but because I can’t stop myself; that’s how I learn best. Always a curious tomboy, I thought what the boys were doing was much more interesting than playing with Barbies. But I blame a lot of it on my Texas motorcycling husband. I rode behind him for 100,000 miles . . . then he bought me my own motorcycle for my fortieth birthday. I learned to ride, and I loved it!

That started me thinking: if I could ride a motorcycle (something I never thought I could do), what else had I not done because I told myself I couldn’t? When you stop saying, “I can’t,” amazing things happen! That’s when I got the courage to start writing. I’m always testing my limits and finding they’re farther out than I believed them to be. It makes for an interesting life. What would you try if you didn’t have the mindset that you couldn’t?

Q. You gave up a corporate job to write fiction full-time. Was that a huge leap of faith? How did you manage to find the courage to make that kind of leap?

Actually, that part wasn’t a leap at all. I was a career CFO (read: corporate bean-counter), and my husband has a Masters in Economics, so we planned our retirement for 25 years. We sold out in Southern California and moved to my husband’s home town. I’ve wanted to be a Texan most of my life, and in spite of not being your typical Southern Woman, they haven’t thrown me out yet!

Q. I imagine you’ve been in this writing and publishing game for long enough that you suffer crises in confidence and even pangs of envy like the rest of us do from time to time. What strategies do you use to keep pushing yourself to write during those dark hours of doubt?

Time to time? Ha! I’m afraid every single day that I sit down at the computer. Every. Single. Day. But to me, a worse fear is having a story inside me, and not having the guts to let it out. I have to look myself in the mirror every day, and if I make excuses not to write, I know it.

See, to me, the saddest thing that could happen to me would be this: to be sitting on a porch somewhere as an old woman, counting regrets. I wish I would have . . .

I’ve told my friends, if you hear that I died in a motorcycle accident, don’t feel badly – I went out doing what makes me happy – challenging myself.

Envy? Yes, that too. But when I catch myself, I turn my mind away from it, because it’s giving away my power. Think about it – you have zero power over someone else’s success (not that I’d want it). The only power I have is in writing the very best book I’m capable of, thereby putting myself in success’s path.

Even so, it might not touch me on the way by—I have no control of that, either—but at least I’ll end up with a book I’m proud of at the end.

Q. Obviously, the publishing industry has undergone some significant transformations in recent years, particularly with the way books are marketed and with the way authors interact with readers. Can you talk a little about how those changes have affected you most directly?

They’re the same ones that have affected every traditionally-published author. Decreasing shelf space means that if you don’t hit big – and I’m talking, Nora Roberts-Stephen King-Tom Clancy big, you’re not going to commandeer much of that space. They do take on debut authors, but only because they’re looking for those blockbusters. If your sales aren’t in that stratosphere, they move on to the next.

But when a door closes . . . Self-publishing has opened a wide window! I’m a huge extrovert who loves people. I enjoy hanging out on social media, meeting new people. That gave me a foothold to a platform before I had a book come out. Do friends on FB correspond to sales? I don’t know. This is my first self-published book. Ask me in six months!

Q. Any tried-and-true writing advice for writers who are just getting started in their careers?

Expectations are joy-killers. I know many good writers who quit, because they expected to be better, sooner. More successful, sooner.

I’ll bet that when you began writing, it wasn’t to publish, make a ton of money, get on Oprah. Don’t forget why you began. For me, it was to get something that was perfect in my head down on paper in a compelling way. When I get discouraged, I claw my way back to that mindset. It helps.

Would you love doing it, even if no one ever saw a word you wrote?

Yeah, me too.

The post Author Laura Drake on Indie v.s. Traditional Publishing, Cowboys and Why She Loves Her Motorcycle appeared first on Holly Robinson.

Vow to Write Better, Not Faster in 2016, Despite Our Binge-Loving Culture

 

Recently, I was skimming the front pages of the New York Times book review when I caught this item: Jonathan Safran Foer’s new novel, “Here I Am,” is coming out next fall. I’m looking forward to reading it—I admired his earlier novels, “Everything is Illuminated” and “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close”—but what really caught my eye was this line in the paper: “’Here I Am’ will be the onetime wunderkind’s first new novel in 11 years.”

This note, besides sounding snarky—a “onetime wunderkind?” Ouch!–neglects to mention the fact that Foer also published a memoir in 2010, “Eating Animals.” If I’m doing the math right, Foer therefore only took five or six years to write his newest novel.

Still, this fact is clear: Foer is a writer who takes his time. In this month of resolutions posted all over social media, where writers are vowing to commit to putting thousands of words on the page each day, I found this knowledge refreshing.

I’m considered a hybrid author—I self-published a novel before starting to publish fiction with Penguin Random House—so I have novelist friends who fall into both the indie and traditionally published camps. We are all driven by a love of story, and by some insane optimism that makes us believe our stories will reach readers. But, the more I listen to writers talking about how fast they’re producing their books, the more I worry that our fiction is suffering as a result.

Self-published authors have discovered that, if they write mysteries or romances or fantasy novels in a series, readers who like one book will immediately start gobbling up the backlist of books on their virtual bookshelf, which means money in their pockets. These are plot-driven books, of course, rather than character-driven, and shouldn’t be compared to what Foer writes. While I love the idea of earning money for fiction as much as the next writer, I have to think the quality of books that are written at such a breakneck pace could be improved if the writers had taken more time in producing them.

Traditionally published authors like myself are not immune from this new push to write faster. Publishers are scrambling to play financial catch-up now that so many genre writers have discovered they can do just as well on their own as with publishing houses—and often better, because they charge much less for ebooks and earn a larger percentage of their royalties. There is a new urgency, especially for writers of commercial fiction, to publish our novels at a faster clip (while still struggling to follow the edict from on high that we must keep up with social media and build our fan bases through newsletters, etc.)

I published two novels in 2015, a big jump from from having published one book each of the previous years. While I’m delighted to be blessed with a publisher and editor I love, I found the pace to be daunting. This year, I’m publishing only one novel, but even so, that gives me only eight months to write it.

Again, I’m not complaining—it took me two decades to get to this point in my career, so I know I’m lucky to have a publishing deadline at all—but I’m wondering what would happen if we all slowed the heck down and gave our fiction room to breathe.

This idea—to slow down when creating new stories—is a tough sell in 2016. We live in a binge-loving culture, where new things are trending every minute on Twitter, Instagram feeds are chock full of people having more fun than you are in more exotic places than you’ll ever be, and Netflix encourages us to gulp down an entire television series in one weekend.

But think about the books you loved reading this past year. One of my favorites was Elizabeth Gilbert’s “The Signature of All Things,” a whopping 512-page novel that sprawls across generations and delves into ideas about botany and history, spirituality and evolution. According to one interview I read with her in “The Believer” magazine, Gilbert writes only four hours a day.

Even before starting this particular novel, she “read hundreds and hundreds of books, for hours and hours a day.” The research paid off: when you are reading this novel, you’re completely immersed in the world of 18th- and 19th-century botanists.

Could Gilbert have written this book in a year? Hell, no.

So, my vow is not to write faster, but to write better. To truly write the books I want to write, the way I want to write them, because who knows what the market will be like next year, anyway?

My resolution for 2016 is to resist any outside pressure to speed up my fiction, whether it comes from the publishing world, my writer friends, or the marketplace. Instead, I will write the kind of fiction that feeds my soul and, I hope, sings for my readers, no matter how long it takes.

The post Vow to Write Better, Not Faster in 2016, Despite Our Binge-Loving Culture appeared first on Holly Robinson.

Why the Joyful Season Leaves Us So Blue

 

I had nothing to be blue about this season. Not really. True, only two of our five children could come home because the other three were going to be far away, and that made me sad. But everyone in our blended family of seven is well. Thriving, in fact: from my husband and myself on down to our youngest child, now a college freshman, we are in good health and doing things we are passionate about. We are blessed.

Why, then, did I feel so depressed? Not just this holiday season, but during nearly every one?

I am a joyful person. I have wonderful marriage and work that makes me happy. I have a roof over my head and plenty to eat. I exercise, see friends, and make time to do things I enjoy—knitting, hiking, yoga, the occasional Broadway splurge.

Yet, every holiday season, I find myself fighting off waves of grief, and even crying during rare private times. In the bathroom. Driving the car. Before I fall asleep at night, even, I might unexpectedly break down in tears.

Part of it is exhaustion. There is nothing as exhausting as Christmas, no matter how much fun it is. There are guests and laundry, grocery and gift shopping, cooking and cleaning up the kitchen, then doing it all over again.

I am also well aware of the expectations we all have. This is supposed to be the joyful season—joyful to the point of mania. Decorate the tree! Load up your credit card! Drink egg nog! See that new movie! Buy an even bigger roast beef! Send out those cards and gifts! Go to the Nutcracker! Are we having fun yet?

Sometimes. Other times, I felt this chilly shadow of grief falling over me. I could not understand why.

And then, quite by accident, I turned on the radio Sunday morning. Christmas was over. I was starting to recover from the festivities. I’d even managed to find the cards I forgot to mail the week before. A sermon was on the public radio station when I tuned in, and normally I would have flicked to another channel, found some music or a lively talk show.

Then the minister began talking about his own expectations of Christmas. He had grown up in a family as complex as ours, a blended family where we’re always feeling a little bit of culture clash as we split our children with our ex-spouses.

I was also a child of divorce and often felt torn between my mother and father and their two households during the holidays. What the minister said, quite simply, was that during every holiday, we invite joy, but sometimes unexpectedly find ourselves in a “crowd of sorrows” as we realize how much we miss the people who aren’t here, and mourn simpler times. We find ourselves wishing things could go back to the way they were.

I thought about this sermon for days. I remembered my grandmother and father, both of whom loved Christmas and are long gone, and I mourned the fact that my oldest children were traveling over the holidays with the father in Spain. I missed my stepdaughter, who is on her way to Brazil, and my stepmother, who was married to my father for a while, before he divorced her and remarried my mother.

My own mother is healthy, and I was glad to have her with me for the holidays this year, along with my youngest brother. At the same time, I missed my middle brother, who spent Christmas with his family in England. I also missed our youngest daughter, who is on her way to Brazil, though I was happy she could spend Christmas with my husband’s parents in Florida.

For every person gathered at our table this year, someone was missing. Or maybe two someones. Whether they were simply far away or departed forever, I wanted them all back: my grandparents, my father, my uncles and children. I wanted them all right here in my house during the holidays so that I could put my arms around them and say this: I love you, we are blessed.

The crowd of sorrows is real. Now that I understand it and am on the other side, I can see what I couldn’t before: that, despite the grief over those departed or missing during the holidays, the sorrow is a blessing, too. It means the love is still there in our hearts.

Happy New Year, everyone. May you be blessed with a crowd of sorrows, and a crowd of loved ones around you in the here and now, too.

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