Ginger Voight's Blog, page 11

#Nanowrimo Day Fifteen: The Halfway Point Pep Talk

It’s early morning November 15, 2015, and if you’re anything like me you’re marveling how quickly the month is zipping by. Part of that, for me at least, is a product of aging; the years are passing along a lot faster than they used to. Seems like we just started 2015 yesterday, and now we’re almost to the end already. Again.

If you’ve taken on the task of writing a 50,000-word novel in 30 days, the days zip along a little quicker than that. Odds are you’ve added something different to your routine, by regularly planting your heinie in the chair to get your word requirements done daily or at least semi-daily. Some of you have given up quite a bit of your daily routine to get your writing done, and I commend any effort made to prioritize your writing.

Whether you’ve reached your 25,000 words yet or not, that in itself makes you a winner. You’ve realized that writing a book is a difficult task but not an impossible one. With one word at a time, you’ve made admirable progress towards a completed goal. No matter how many words you've written, you're a few steps further than you were before when it came to finishing your book. Every great journey is filled with a bunch of tiny steps. Sometimes just a little extra effort can turn into big, big things.



No matter where you are in the process, you still have the same two weeks as everyone else to put this beast to bed. Hopefully by now you’ve taught yourself that you are capable of doing that, simply by getting into that ugly, messy first draft and getting your hands a little dirty. Hopefully by now you’ve discovered that two weeks is a lot of writing time that can get you even further along the track.

Whether you finish or not, that’s the objective. Start writing. Keep writing. Finish a project.

I, for one, believe you totally have it within you to do that. Whether you do it in 30 days or not is not really the question. You were given a month simply because it’s a definite period of time. You have a beginning. You have an end. You have thirty whole days, 720 hours, 43,200 minutes… 2,592,000 seconds. That’s a whole lot of time to write 50,000 teeny, tiny words.

Hopefully by now you’ve realized that it’s not how much time you’re given, but how you use it.

Learn that little trick, and you’ll never be intimidated by another deadline ever again.

Pressured, yes. Stressed out by, sure. But scared?

Never again.

You build confidence by doing, and that’s what you’ve been doing every single time you wrote even one little word that wasn’t there before. Whether you have 25,000 words or 250, you’re still a step further than a lot of people who merely wish they could write a book. Maybe that even included you fifteen days ago.

Wishes are for dreamers. You’re a doer. You’re an ass-kicking, take-no-prisoners, Nanowrimo superstar. I don’t care where you are or how many words you’ve done. If you’ve started, you’re one of us now. Own that. Hold your head up high.

Imagine how much better that is going to feel when you cross the finish line.

Like I said, you have two weeks left, and a lot can happen in two weeks.

As for me, I’ll be turning my attention more towards the craft of not only finishing/enhancing your first draft, but tips how to edit future drafts. We have a whole lot of work ahead of us, and I’m going to assume by now that if you’ve made it to the halfway point, you’re in it for the long haul. We’ve already covered most excuses that people typically use to give up. If any of that even remotely applied to you, you’d have told me to get stuffed by the first week and gone back to your regular day-to-day, spared the chaos and stress of doing the impossible: writing a 50,000-word book in a month.

For everyone else, you’re still here for a reason. You suspect that it’s not impossible at all to complete 50,000 words. Other people have done it. You think maybe you’d like to do it, too. Down deep inside you still want to cross that finish line. And deep inside, you suspect you have what it takes to do just that.

You're right.



I can show you how to get there. You’ll still have to do the hard work yourself, but again… I totally think you can do it.

And you should believe it, too. The first step towards accomplishing anything in life is the belief that you can. Otherwise it would be pointless to try. You’d bail at the very first failure, and that’s not how you get anything done. Besides, it’s not you anyway. If you wanted to quit, you’d have taken those same excuses that derail everyone else, the ones I handed you day after day in the beginning. The fact that you’re still here, eager or willing to learn how to bust through the blocks and barriers, means giving up isn’t an option for you.

The good news is that’s exactly what kind of moxie it takes to finish a book, whether you do it in a month or not.

In case I’m being too subtle, “not going to finish in time,” is yet another excuse to quit. I’m telling you in no uncertain terms that is not acceptable.

You may have started Nano to “win” it, which is to say you wanted to write a 50,000-word book (or 50,000 words towards a longer book) in a month, but your objective is much bigger than winning some bragging rights. The point of Nano is to turn “I wish” into “I did.” What you’ll learn in this process is invaluable. Whether you write 50,000 words or 500, you will learn how to take what is in your head and put it on the page, no matter what it turns into in the process. Sometimes that’s a mess, and you’ll learn to be okay with that. I’d much rather see you attempt and fail than fear trying at all. Only one will get you to the finish line no matter how you define it.

If you’ve fallen behind, this is your challenge to get right back in the thick of it. It’s not about completing 50,000 in 15 days anymore. It’s about staying in the game and wringing everything out of the experience you can, no matter where you end up on November 30. Aim for your own bulls’ eye. Maybe you can’t complete 50,000 anymore, but you can complete 25,000. You can complete 10,000. You can get further than where you are now, and that’s sort of the point.

So keep going.

For those of you who are right on schedule, kudos. You’ve resisted every excuse and made writing your priority, getting in your word counts even when circumstances were stacked against you to do that very thing. Life doesn’t skip over you during the month of November simply because you’ve undertaken this challenge. It doesn’t show up on your doorstep, carrying calamity and discord, and then say, “Oops, sorry. I didn’t see you were doing Nano. My bad. I’ll come back later.” You’ve added Nano to your life, and if you’ve managed to keep on track that’s a major accomplishment. You’re on track to be one of a very small percentage of “winners.” Yay, you!

Now keep going.

If you’ve already “won,” by writing your 50,000 words already just to get ahead of the game, congratulations. You’ve taken what others have said is impossible and made it look easy, even when it wasn’t. You’ve proven you are a Nano Ninja Warrior, and I have to say I like your style. You have determination and drive, and you know how to channel that into action. Writers like you challenge me to up my own game. “Deadlines? I don’t need no stinking deadlines!” No excuses, no limitations. You’ve got what it takes to go very far indeed.

So keep going.

The next part of the book will give you the tools you need to start turning that lump of clay into a masterpiece. We’ll even get into marketing and publishing a little later on. There’s a lot of ground yet to cover to get you ever closer to that next step in your journey.

In the meantime, take a moment to revel in the accomplishment, because it’s pretty huge. I’m proud of how far you’ve come, no matter how far that is. Tomorrow we get back into the nuts and bolts of writing.

Today we celebrate how far we’ve come, no matter how far that is, and we regroup for what comes next.

It ain’t over. It's only beginning.



Started First Draft: November 15, 2015 8:00am PST
Completed First draft: November 15, 2015 8:52am PST
Word Count of first draft: 1,372
Completed revisions: November 15, 2015 9:40am PST
Updated WC: 1,516/54,868

#Nanowrimo Day Fourteen: When Life Pushes the Pause Button

We’ve covered a lot of ground so far as what can be considered an “excuse” to stop writing. Writer’s “block.” Ineffective plotting/planning. The fear of inadequacy. The flighty nature of the muse.

None of these are acceptable excuses to stop writing because they’re all things that will plague you the rest of your writer life. The only difference between a hobbyist and a professional is that one allows these things to stop them, and the other does not. If you want to turn this into a job, you have to learn how to manage these things and power through.

I’ll admit I’ve been pretty hard on everyone, cracking that whip like I’m known to do. I do it to myself all the time, which is why I’ve been able to accomplish what I’ve been able to accomplish.

Sometimes, though, life comes knocking at the door and cannot be ignored. Many times this unwelcome visitor comes bearing unexpected gifts, like chaos that you’ll have to manage first and foremost so that you can get back to writing.

It’s inevitable, really. Life has a habit of making a mockery of all your best-laid plans.

Knowing this, I had already outlined a spot for it during the midway part of the month just to show how this works in practice, fitting into an actual working writer’s life.

Sadly, I’ve been expecting real life to pay me an unwelcome call this month, due at any moment. My mother has been put into hospice care and is not doing well, which means I’m not doing all that well. Most times, including a couple of times this year already, the Grim Reaper doesn’t give me a heads' up. Of all the (many) deaths of my loved ones, most have been a complete shock/surprise. (My dad when I was 11, my uncle when I was 13. My 2-year-old niece when I was 14. My 9-day old son, my first husband, my sweet and wonderful friend James.) Only with my Aunt Eleanor, my Uncle Mac and my mother has there been any warning.

It’s almost worse somehow. The mourning period has begun, even though – technically speaking – there’s nothing quite yet to mourn. She’s still here but she isn’t. And I’ve had a bitch of a time managing how I feel about it.

Mostly I’ve been powering through, keeping myself busy and focused on the Nano project as a means to cope. But I knew that there would be a day (at least) at some point this month that I’d want to call a Time Out. Plus there’s my birthday, there’s Thanksgiving… real life is happening all over the place, and it’s up to me to figure out where to fit the writing into it.

The deadline is set. The word requirement is set. Our lives? Not so much. Things happen, and that’s just the reality.

I wanted to show that in practice, too. Though I respect Stephen King to the moon and back, I’ve never been an “X-number of words a day” writer. My life, such as it is, has always demanded a more fluid schedule, and that’s never been truer than when I became a full-time writer.

I wanted to use this chapter to show you how to keep balance. To show that sometimes it’s necessary (and okay) to walk away from the material. If you’re writing something heavy and you need to skip a day to mentally regroup, there’s nothing at all wrong with that approach. To complete Nanowrimo, you simply need to finish 50,000 words in a month. How you fit them into that month is up to you.

I prefer to stay ahead of the game, writing as much as I can when I can, to allow for this time off that I know I’ll need or suspect I’ll need. Instead of writing 2,000 words per day every day, some days I’ll write 5,000 and some days I’ll write nothing at all. Some days it’s like pulling teeth just to reach 1,000 words, and that’s never a fun experience.

I double up whenever possible to make room for those days. I don’t know when I’ll need them, just that I’ll need them, and I like to be prepared, even for those things for which you can never prepare.

Then, Friday 13, 2015 happened. Then Paris happened. And I really don’t think I need to add any more on how priorities can shift on a dime.

We’re going to take a break today, and it’s going to be okay. We may have to double our output tomorrow, and that’s okay, too. This is all part of the process.

Sometimes it can even work in your favor. Instead of one bad day where you have to pull a bunch of crap words out of your keister with a rusty pair of needle-nose pliers, you can take a break and come back in that ring swinging. You’ll throw down a thousand words or two without any effort at all, just because you took a few moments to sit on that stool and refocus.

Even though you won’t be producing content, your mind will be hard at work on your WIP anyway. Let it simmer in your subconscious. Much of what you do as a creative artist is mental, as your beautiful mind ticks away with all sorts of ideas that it can consider and discard before you ever commit anything to paper.

This time away from the keyboard will develop that muscle. Pro-tip, though. Take notes of anything that does come to you in the down time. If you’re lucky, your characters will keep whispering to you in those quiet moments when you regroup, which will encourage you to jump back into it as soon as you’re ready and able.

In the meantime, find a way to reclaim your zen. I personally like walks at the park, around nature, where it’s green. Exercise works well. Listen to music. Go to a museum or art gallery, immerse yourself in other forms of creative expression to renew the soul. Sometimes just catching a silly movie with your bestie is all the shot in the arm you need. Meditate. Try hypnotherapy. Even better, read. I usually find that I can’t make it a page or two before I jump back into my WIP, inspired and renewed to finish my own project.

Whatever you need to do to take care of you needs no permission or apology.

Life will hit the pause button every now and again, and that's okay.

Do whatever you can, to be ready, to take control, so that you can resume "play" tomorrow.

Started First Draft: November 14, 2015 4:01pm PST
Completed First draft: November 14, 2015 5:06pm PST
Word Count of first draft: 1,008
Completed revisions: November 14, 2015 5:49pm PST
Updated WC: 1,129/53,350

#Nanowrimo Day Thirteen: Slaying the Competion

Welcome to Day Thirteen. This particular year it falls on a Friday, which is an interesting day to cross over the 50,000-word mark to say the least. Technically that means I’ll have “won” Nanowrimo, even though the book isn’t finished. Even if I had written an entire book by now, it isn’t finished.

Everyone together now: A FIRST DRAFT ISN’T READY FOR PUBLICATION.

I can’t write a Nano book and not address all the hard work you need to put in after that first draft is done. We have a lot more ground to cover, and cover it we shall.

But what better day to handle the idea of competition than the day that I arguably “defeat” it?

I feel your feathers ruffling already. But stick with me, I have a point.

Nanowrimo spurs the competitive streak within us all, to come out on top of the pack. If only 20% of participants cross the finish line on any given year, those who are driven to be the best of the best will do whatever they can do to meet that challenge, to claim that coveted status.

One of my favorite “reality” shows is “American Ninja Warrior.” Inspired by a Japanese athletic competition called “Sasuke,” ANW features a ridiculously difficult obstacle course run in four stages of increasing difficulty.



To tell you how impossible this challenge can be, it took seven years for anyone to reach stage 4.

We were watching a show for seven seasons that literally had no “winner," if you count "winning" as completing the entire course.

But that didn’t take anything away from the show. Not by a long shot. The fact that it was so hard to master made us root for these athletes even more. It made those athletes train even harder. The fact that it had proven impossible didn’t matter one iota to any of us.

We wanted to see someone do the impossible. That was why we tuned in.

The best part about this show was that the athletes themselves rooted just as hard for their competitors as they did for themselves. They understood how difficult the course was. Anyone who conquered a course demanded their immediate respect.

Though they each competed for the million-dollar prize at the end, they knew their ultimate competition wasn’t the guy or girl standing next to them. It was the athlete inside that wanted to beast that course just to prove they could.

That’s kind of how I look at Nano, without (most of) the personal injury.

It’s one more chance to prove we can do something that others dismiss as impossible.

I know that’s why I personally respond so well to it, and perhaps what drives those who do win to keep going until they cross the finish line. Of the hundreds of thousands who start, only a small fraction ever finishes this obstacle course, which – for any writer at least–is just as daunting as an ANW course. It demands your very best on a daily basis, and not everyone is willing or able to meet that challenge.

The same could be said of anything worth doing.

Whether Nano, ANW or getting a promotion at your job, here’s the real truth: the only people we compete against during any challenge are ourselves. It’s not a matter of being “better” than anyone else. It’s proving we have what it takes to meet insane challenges that prove the impossible is possible. And that will be true for you your whole career as a professional writer. If money is the true mark of success, around the same number who complete Nano make any kind of money selling their books, and even fewer “crack the code” to become notable doing it.

The reason isn’t because there’s a limited amount of money to be spent on books. There’s an unlimited amount of money to be spent on books. It’s an industry worth billions of dollars. It isn’t because readers only have a slot or two open for the writers they’ll read. Some read every single book they can get their hands on. They love to read. They love to find new authors to read. New authors equal new books. For bibliophiles, there’s really nothing better than the idea of a new book. Why do you think we all walk into bookstores like we’ve reached our own personal Nirvana? Show of hands how many of you could spend hours prowling a bookstore, whether a big, three-story Barnes & Nobel or that dinky little used bookstore just around the corner.

Show of hands of people who have done both, usually within the last year.



This isn’t about who beats whom. If you write a book, and you publish a book, and you sell a book that a reader then reads and enjoys the book, you’ve won. You’ve done what they told you could not be done, because the odds are so stacked against you. It is a victory against anyone who ever told you that you should have a Plan B, because making it in this business was an impossible dream.

When I complete Nano on time or early, it isn’t to rub it in the face of any other participant who isn’t there yet. It’s to thumb my nose at all the people who say that it can’t be done, that it’s too hard, that it’s impossible.

It isn't impossible, because I just did it. That was what this experiment set out to prove.

It’s difficult, granted. It takes time and effort and focus and determination, but it’s not impossible.

All of my heroes are writing powerhouses, none of whom need the kick in the ass that Nano provides; they were just driven to create something concrete.

We talked somewhat about my adoration of John Hughes. I honestly don’t think the 1980s would have been the same without him. He’s the one who inspired me to put heart into my stories, whatever they happened to be. His were stories about human connection, about family and friendship and love, and the triumph of the human spirit. Yeah, sometimes, most times, they came dressed up in juvenile humor, but it was humor with a heart. And that will always, always, always inspire me to make each and every story I write as emotionally significant.



I want to write something that, in thirty years, younger generations will still remember, and respect.





Not bad for a movie written over a weekend. Just sayin.'

I’ll never be John Hughes, and that’s okay. It’s not my job to be him or to beat him. My only obligation in this business is to be myself, and offer what no other writer can: Me. It’s up to me to up my game and run my own race, since that’s the only way I’ll ever “win” in the first place.

Our business is one where the outsiders like to compare us to each other, but it’s sheer creative suicide if we do it to ourselves. The reason we write isn’t to be better than anyone else. Though we have to fight for each and every dollar we make, we’re not in competition with each other for that dollar. It’s not like each reader only has one slot to fill for the books that they read, the money that they spend or the authors that they love. Just because I have a dozen favorites doesn’t mean that I’ll shut off reading anyone else. I’m excited to find new books to read and new authors to enjoy. There’s room for all of us. And we can all be successful, if we just concentrate on winning our own race and making each book we write the very best it can be.

Then, and only then, will we “crack the code,” finding our own little corner of the universe to rule.

There’s a reader for every book. Some readers read hundreds of books a year, and seek out new authors to read constantly. It isn’t about being better than another writer. It’s being so good that the audience buys two books instead of one.



If you get into the nasty little habit of comparing yourself against every other writer, be prepared for a lot of bitterness and resentment. Though we all do the same work, opportunity and chance are fickle mistresses who light upon whomever they choose for no reason at all. You can put in the time, do everything right, and watch someone who “took shortcuts” or “didn’t take the craft as seriously” or “sell out” race ahead of you, making more money than you could ever imagine, while your book languishes in digital purgatory somewhere, some forgotten link on Amazon.

You’re not automatically rewarded in this business by the hard work and effort you put into it, which is what makes it so frustrating. There are no Paint-By-Numbers guidelines anywhere that guarantee your success. Your success is not guaranteed, certainly in the ways that most define it (monetary compensation and recognition.) Your “success,” whether it’s writing a bestselling book or doing this as a full-time job or winning awards, usually depends on someone else entirely, namely all the readers out there who just want a good book to read that they can connect with.

You can control one, but not the other.

All you can control is what you produce. Each book is a brand new opportunity to teach yourself something new, to stretch outside your boundaries… to grow, so that you can find that magical connection one day.

Often you do this by grasping the hands of other writers who have gotten a little ahead of you in the journey, so they can guide you where you need to go. They aren’t your enemy, not by a long shot. They’re the only ones who truly understand you and your journey, and to set yourself up in competition of them is unwise and even self-destructive.



We aren’t mired in some competition, ready to take each other down in some battle to the death. We’re blessed to be a community, who hold each other up on the shoulders of greatness, a greatness we had to fight for one word at a time like everyone else.

I wouldn’t be where I am today if it hadn’t been for other writers. One of the greatest influences of my professional career is my very good friend, Marie D. Jones. We met in the 1990s when I worked for a photographer, who conducted business out of her personal apartment. Marie happened to live in that apartment building and, ever so fortuitously, was looking for a job. She came to work with us, where we bonded immediately over shared creative vision. She was an aspiring writer/screenwriter, too. In fact, she was the first one to tell me, outside of my agent at least, that I could totally write a screenplay if I wanted, when such an idea seemed so far-fetched at the time.

I had no idea how to write a screenplay, even if I had plenty of ideas what to write for one.

In 2010, she was the one who gave me the “No Plan B,” advice that [50,000-limit officially reached] ignited my own professional writing career. She’s the one who ultimately introduced me to my agent, and remained a bug in her ear for years to tell her that I was good enough to represent until that’s exactly what happened.

She’s the one who read all those sophomoric attempts that should have embarrassed me to show anyone, since they were so raw and incomplete, but she didn’t see the flaws like I did. She saw the potential, and encouraged me to reach for it, giving me hints, advice and support to do it. Simply put: I wouldn’t have grown into the writer I am today had she not been there to guide the path.

This is why it’s so important to foster relationships with other writers. Join a writing club. Join organizations. Participate in groups. Share your work. Commiserate. Lean on one another.

These are the only people who truly understand what you’re going through.

Like I said, there are no guidelines. No one gets up the mountain exactly the same way. You never know what is going to work until it does, and who better to offer suggestions than someone who is already a little further up that mountain than you?

When I started writing screenplays, I found myself a community full of people who were in the very same boat I was in. We all wanted to crack the code and get our foot in the door, so we all helped each other wherever we could. We’d post pages for feedback from others. We’d give feedback on those pages posted by someone else.

Some of the people in that group did indeed crack the code. That was where I chatted with screenwriter Gary Whitta about zombies in the early 2000s, way before he made a name for himself writing “The Book of Eli.”

That was where I met William C. Martell, a ridiculously prolific screenwriter with dozens of films to his credit. He shared his wisdom then, he shares it now.

That was where I met a cowriter who put me in contact with a director he knew, who was looking for a vampire script to produce. Even though my option fell through, I learned more from those five months of screenwriting than I ever could have learned from any book or course.

It’s important to foster this community. It’s important to utilize it, as a source of education and inspiration. It’s important to embrace it, not as a battle to be won. There is room for everyone at the table.

Art is subjective. This is not something you get into in order to “be better than.” Your success depends on your own personal excellence, not whether or not you can best another writer. You may think you're better than [insert name of hacky, overrated writer here] and some readers may agree. Others may inhale whatever [hacky overrated writer] produces like a can of potato chips. We like what we like, and that's just the way it is. When they pick up your book, readers want to know only one thing. Can you write a great book? By great, I mean a book that someone pays money for and loves and remembers, because that’s the only measure of greatness that really counts in this business.

This personal excellence doesn’t depend on squashing someone else underfoot, and if it does... that doesn't speak too highly of your confidence in your own writing. If you've written the best book you can as effectively as you can, you don't worry about what anyone else is doing. You know that you've done the very best you could, producing a book only you could produce, and ultimately it will find an audience based on its own merit, not the rise and fall of anyone else.

I didn’t start participating in Nano to beat the ones who didn’t/couldn’t finish. Since that's what is commonly expected, you get a ribbon just for giving it a whirl. I wanted more than a participation ribbon. I started participating so I could stand shoulder to shoulder with those who did, because that is what everyone thinks is impossible.

I wanted to belong to the club, and I knew I would have to earn my place by doing what others say cannot be done.

Trust me, you’re going to see people succeed that you don’t think are any "good," or – the more sinful admission – “as good as you.” One of the most successful books in the last decade was widely panned for being poorly written. Yet it made money hand over fist, which can piss off anyone who has devoted years of their lives to get their books as perfect as they can possibly get them.

It didn’t matter what the critics said. The book reached an audience who passionately embraced it, and that’s a win. That it launched other careers by other talented unknowns is an ever bigger win, for all of us. It turned people onto reading, which pumped billions of dollars into our industry and sold millions of books, a few of my own included.

How can I hate on that?

If you place yourself in competition with other people, you’re going to set yourself up for bitter disappointment. This is a business where no two races to the top are identical. You can’t get mired down with what other people are doing, because it’s simply unfair to compare. What worked for them may not work for you. And that’s okay. What you have to offer is so radically different anyway, simply because it came from you.

Why do you think I speak out so vehemently about those who want to impose their own personal limitations on other writers?

“You can’t write a book in a month.”

No, you can’t write a book in a month. That doesn’t mean it can’t be done. Writers do it all the time. And those books sell, by the way. Those books go on to be bestselling books, as well as money-making movies. Sara Gruen’s “Water for Elephants” started as a Nanowrimo project. Charles Dickens wrote “A Christmas Carol” in six weeks, to get it on the market in time for the holidays, as egregious as any money-grab that these naysayers constantly condemn as “hackish” behavior.

Yet it’s a classic. It’s beloved and revered, and it is retold again and again, revisited again and again, because each new generation just can’t get enough of it.

Not bad for a hack. Just sayin.’

I’m more of a “possibilities” kind of gal. I don’t like restrictions. If someone tells me I can’t do something, I’m immediately inspired to prove them wrong. I like knowing that the world is as infinite as my power to make my place in it.

I’m not worried about being better than Danielle Steel or EL James or Nicholas Sparks. I’m focused on being the best Ginger Voight I can be, so that her name can be found among them one day.

Getting there. Slowly. I'm so focused on getting up that mountain that I don't really have the time or energy to worry about what other people are doing or not doing. I’m doing it my way, because I get to. You can do it your way, because you get to. Neither way is right or wrong, and can be as different as you can possibly imagine.

Why would we ever want to compare the two?

Believe in yourself and what you can do. Prove it to yourself on a daily basis. When possible, go beyond that invisible line and surprise yourself with how amazing you can be. It’s totally within your power to do that, and you should go for broke whenever the opportunity presents itself. In anything, not just the writing.

Yeah, sometimes you’ll fall flat on your face, which gets a whole lot harder to do as more and more people take notice and start watching. But every single time you get up, you’re learning something new about yourself.



Most of all, you’re learning how much this dream means to you, and how much crap you’re willing to wade through to make it happen.

For some of us, that means writing a book in 30 days just to prove that we can. Whether or not it’s a good book… shrug. As always, that’s for the audience to decide.

All you can control is what you do, which has dick to do with what anyone else is doing.

At the end of the day, you’re the only one on the hook for your own accomplishments. So run your own race. And, wherever possible, support others as they run theirs.

Your homework tonight is finding/renting/watching “Authors Anonymous,” the 2014 movie starring Kaley Cuoco, which highlights in painfully comedic ways how silly it is to compete against other writers, even though that's often exactly what we do.

Tomorrow we continue the race to finish a book in 30 days. Not everyone can do that, but if you’re still with me, fighting for each and every word, staying in this race and not giving up, daring to prove the impossible is possible, I’ve got an inkling you just may.

Let’s do this.

Together.

Started First Draft: November 13, 2015 1:16pm PST
Completed First draft: November 12, 2015 2:19pm PST
Word Count of first draft: 2,037
Completed revisions: November 12, 2015 4:21pm PST
Updated WC: 3,203/52,211

#Nanowrimo Day Twelve: Writer's Block Doesn't Exist

So it’s Day 12, which means we’re inching ever closer to the halfway point in the month. Some of you may be right on track, getting ever nearer to 25,000 words. Others might have sailed past that entirely. Others may be staring at their cursor, feeling November slip away by the minute.

Hopefully you’re all still riding on the same wave of enthusiasm you enjoyed at the beginning of this process, and you’re meeting your writing goals more often than not.

If not, the last few chapters have concentrated on any potential problem that might be gumming up the works, with suggestions how to overcome any perceived “writer’s block.”

You’ll notice that I refer to the term in quotations. I think it’s pretty clear that I dismiss this perceived evil as the paper dragon that it is. When you’re a professional writer, you don’t have time to entertain writer’s block. It’s more like a writer’s pause, usually indicating that there’s a problem somewhere that you need to fix. Instead of a block, it becomes an opportunity.

So we’re not going to say that you’re blocked. We’re going to say that you’re “stuck.” If you’re stuck, you can get unstuck. You just have to know how, which is what this chapter is here to teach you. There are a lot of things you can do to get yourself “unstuck.” Much of what we’re going to cover actually falls under the heading of prep work, so you can get all this done ahead of time next year, which should make the process a lot easier for you.

In the meantime, there’s no law or rule that says any of the following has to be done prior to starting your manuscript. If you’re stuck, these little exercises can help you approach your Work in Progress (WIP) in a new way.

It will even help you learn how to pitch your story later, when it’s time to shop it around.

But, first things first, you need to finish your manuscript.

We’ve already talked about outlines, which I strongly favor whenever writing anything on a deadline. If you have to be to an appointment on time and you can’t be late, you’re not going to rely on pure instinct to take you someplace you’ve never been. You’re going to get directions you need so you can navigate efficiently.

Same principle works with the writing. With an outline, you have a roadmap that will prevent you from getting lost.

And you don’t have to do this prior to writing your WIP, by the way. You haven’t “missed” your opportunity to utilize this tool. You can do it at any point, for any reason.

I said before that my books take on a life of their own when I’m writing, always diverging (sometimes wildly) from the outline. I’ve actually had to scrap outlines and redo them due to these changes. If I’m unclear what my next chapter should accomplish because my characters have gone off script, I take the time to outline the rest of the story all over again, starting where I am.

Yes, it takes time, but that time will pass anyway. Might as well be proactive, to make the rest of my time more efficiently spent.

In fact the outline for this project has been very fluid as I try to organize my thoughts in a way that makes the most sense for anyone who is trudging along the Nano trail with me. I want to give you the information you need right when you’re likely to need it the most, hence why most of the “writer’s block” stuff comes right around the time you will likely face the behemoth that is Act II.



As you can see, I've already gone off the outline. I'll likely keep going off the outline, considering most of those topics were mere suggestions how to get from one step to the other. Some topics I've covered well, and will shed future chapters that discuss them in favor of something I haven't yet covered. Since nothing we do is set in stone, I can amend accordingly. I can ditch what doesn't work. I can add what does.

An outline doesn't crush your creativity. It gives you new ways to approach it. It works in conjunction with your manuscript, as fluid as the book itself.

It’s never too late to outline and it’s never unwise to outline. So if you’re stuck, you might want to give it a try, even if you’re a dyed-in-the-wool Seat-of-Your-Pantser. Since outlines are what you do solely for you, it can even be your own little secret. Who cares how you get there, as long as you do?

Look into the future of your story and just jot down what you feel needs to happen, chapter by chapter. If you take the hour or so it takes to do this (depending on how much you have left written that you need to outline,) it will save hours of frustration later.

And besides… you’re “blocked” from writing anything else. Might as well find some way to be productive, right?

This is the work part of the job. You don’t just get to take a vacay because your muse does. She’s a flaky bitch who will leave you hanging when it’s most inconvenient. This is your chance to show her who’s really in control. In the end, it’s your butt on the line. Readers, agents, publishes and producers don’t give a rat’s ass about your Muse’s schedule. Time is money. How you spend that time is what makes you valuable as a professional.

The clock still ticks away whether she shows up or not. You can either use it to your advantage or you can lean on that old standby “writer’s block.” It’s such a well-known beastie that no one will judge you for bumping up against it, or using as an excuse to stop writing. It’s an inevitable part of the process, right?

For hobbyists, maybe. Working writers, not so much.



If you want this to be your job, then approach it as such. You don’t just call it a day when a problem arises at “your real job.” You fix the problem. And you get better at your job every single time you do.

Writing is no different. It forces you to deal with your creative difficulty in creative ways, which will hone your skills as a professional.

This is why I say screw “writer’s block.” It doesn’t exist aside from an excuse not to write. For the next 18 days, it is no longer a part of your vocabulary.

Instead we’re going to focus on workarounds. Some are tedious. Some are fun. But all of them force you to get more involved with your material so that you can better communicate it to the world.

Typically I would recommend doing these things before you ever start your book, but like I said, there’s no real time table. These tools are (mostly) for you, so you get to use them however you choose.

Let’s get started. Don’t be scared. It’ll be okay.

START SMALL.

Since you need to be very clear on the story you’re telling, it’s always a good idea to figure out what exactly you’re trying to say. There are some promotional things that will help you pinpoint and identify the main hook, that thing that turns you on and keeps you invested along the journey. The first is the pitch, which usually works out to be a sentence or two.

For many a writer, myself included, the shorter format the writing, the more stressful it is to write. This proves true with a pitch, where so much is riding on a snappy little two sentence tease, the whole purpose of which is to entice one into wanting to know more.

Usually it’s directed at the people who could put money behind the idea and make it a huge success, but the challenge of writing a pitch, (i.e., breaking your story down to its fundamental hook,) can help keep you focused on what is marketable about your story. Essentially you’re crafting what will become your patented response whenever anyone asks, “You’ve written a book? Cool! What’s it about?”

You could tell them everything, or you could give them a tiny little tidbit, forcing them to check out the book if they really want to know more. If you plan to sell your books on the marketplace someday, this will be a skill you need to develop early and well.

If you’re in the early stages of development, this can often show you if the story is even worth pursuing in the first place, based on how easy it would be to sell. Not every idea is marketable, and you generally won’t know which is which until you’ve developed your pitch.

If you’ve worked with an agent, you know what I mean. I’ve pitched several ideas that I thought were killer to my agent, only to be reined in with the reality of the industry. Since I’m a hybrid author, who sells both traditionally and independently, I don’t usually stop there. I pitch my idea to those closest to me, and gauge its marketability by their response. If they’re excited about a project, it gets me excited about a project.

This is true, also, when someone pitches an idea to me. When you’re a working writer, you become an idea “catch-all” for people who want to tell stories, but leave the “writing” part up to the professionals.

When I was approached by a director to write a vampire script, he presented it as a pitch. He wanted “Se7en” meets “Interview with a Vampire.” If you’re familiar with these movies, this kind of pitch gives an immediately image of what is expected of the story. This got me excited enough to pursue where it was going, by asking those important “What if?” questions.

Where there are possibilities, there are opportunities.

If you know what makes your story marketable, what gets you excited to tell it, then you can redirect your focus on those things that will strengthen it when the time comes to sell it to someone else.

A step above the pitch is the blurb, that 200-word overview of your story that you’d find on the back of the book. Blurbs come with their own complications. You have a few more words to convey what makes your story stand out from the rest, but often there still aren’t enough words to fully cover what makes your story special, at least to you.

You’re not unlike the excited new mom with dozens of photos on her phone, detailing every single thing her newborn does that is so amazing. To the stranger passing her on the street, they don’t care to know all these details.

Same holds true for the book.

Trying to whittle anything down to a 200-word blurb in order to sell it, particularly when it fills an entire book, will make you rethink writer’s block in longer prose. Instead of worrying you won’t fill the 200-word requirement, you’ll probably find that you have to work really hard to limit your story to its baser selling points. It’s a skill that demands experience to master, so get used to this part of the process, no matter if you write the blurb before, during or after you’ve completed your manuscript.

You’ll have to do it every single time, regardless.

It still boils down to this: What makes your story worth telling? Reignite the flame on your own rocket by selling your idea first to you.

THINK LONG TERM.

If you’re one of those Seat-of-Pantsers who absolutely, positively, unequivocally will not outline, think instead of tools you can use long term, when it comes time to sell your work. A common tool that you will likely be asked to use is a synopsis. This breaks down your story to its core, without bothering with all the minutiae it takes to bring it to life on the page. You’re not worried about details or dialog here, just the main parts of the story that take you from point A to point B. Odds are you’re going to be asked to write this whenever you send your work out to agents, publishers or producers, who don’t have a lot of time to spend to read an entire book. They want a complete overview (including the ending) to see if the project merits any more of their precious time.

Many writers write the synopsis first, just so they can have that overview themselves. It’s not a detailed outline, but it’s still a pretty good roadmap that can keep you focused and on point throughout the writing process. Aim for a page, but if you get really ambitious you can extend it up to five pages. The most effective synopses will avoid adding all the minor details, like secondary characters that don’t play into the main narrative. Instead, focus on the meat and potatoes of your story. Use active voice. Write sparsely and clear. Detail only those emotions that advance the story. Assert your own personality without being too cutesy in effort to demonstrate “voice.” Don’t use this tool to “sell” the hook, or to tease. This is just a nuts and bolts overview of what makes your story work.

As such, it gives you a pretty clear idea what doesn’t. You will be able to spot any glaring problems with your plotting right in the synopsis. You’ll see what works best in what order. If you need to, write the main scenes or plot points on index cards so that you can rearrange them prior to typing out your synopsis.

I’ll warn you ahead of time, synopses are not fun to write. It’s a little more work than your outline, which you’ve done mostly for you, so it can be as ugly as you like. The synopsis is a selling tool, which is used in place of your brilliant manuscript to get someone to fall in love with it. That’s a lot of pressure. It still all comes back to this: how do you sell your book to you?

If you can’t, that might be part of the reason why you’re “stuck.”

DIG DEEPER.

Another tool that writers use prior to starting a project is a thorough character breakdown for each character. You can find templates online, which ask detailed questions about your characters in order to bring them to life. You may never use all the things you discover about your character in this process, but it more fully forms these stick figures into fleshed out, three-dimensional people. Aside from basic appearance, such as eye color, hair color, height and weight, deeper questions not only tell you about your character but offer you plenty of opportunity to “show” rather than “tell” the reader about them, which can inspire key scenes throughout your book.

Does your character have a tattoo? If so, what kind? What does it mean? When did they get it, and why? What kinds of clothes does your character wear? Is he or she fashionable, keeping up with the trends? Or does he or she flout convention, right down to every stitch of clothing?

Do they have an accent specific to where they were raised? Is this a working class Boston accent? A lazy Southern drawl? A terse, no-nonsense Jersey accent? Is their vocabulary littered with slang, or more formal, denoting a higher education or upper class upbringing?

When is their birthday? What astrological sign are they born under? Are they a passionate, mysterious, calculating Scorpio? Or a sweet, more docile Pisces homebody? Do they burst onto the scene like an Aries or a Taurus, or seek the spotlight like a Leo? Are they control freaks like a Capricorn or Aquarius? Or a flighty, more unpredictable Gemini?

Even if you don’t believe in astrology, these archetypes put the flesh on your character’s bones. If you’re writing a romance, go online and put the two signs together to see how they might interact with each other, so you can seek out that all-important conflict that drives the story.

Again, you may use none of this in the narrative. Maybe you’re the only one who knows what sign your characters were born under, or what makes them act the way that they do. In my last series, I made my lead, Devlin Masters, a Scorpio, which fed into his possessiveness and his secretive, manipulative behavior. It made him a master of sex, but one helluva difficult stallion to corral. I only mention it once or twice, first when I show his Scorpion tattoo, and the second during a notable scene where he takes a Scorpion shot in Las Vegas, to demonstrate how far he was willing to go to go off the grid. (I started small.) Even though I know my heroine’s sign, and how that might make their chemistry more combustible, I never spell it out in the book.

You’re not going to use every single thing you learn, but it’s helpful to know it. These little details can inspire scenes that you didn’t see coming in the outline, such as the Scorpion shot, which developed character.

If you’re one of those Pantsers who wants nothing whatsoever to do with formal tools that stifle the creative flow, like a detailed character analysis, perhaps a better way to go is to “interview” your characters. This allows you to create on the fly, with your character fully in charge of telling you who he is. Ask your character deeper questions, like favorite childhood memory, worst moment of humiliation, ambitions from childhood, best friend in childhood, first love. These events shaped your character. You may never need that kind of detail to tell your current story, but it will offer shade and dimension, which will make your character more authentic and dynamic.

If you’re stuck, allow your own creation to “unstick” you. Your story is a living, breathing thing, and the first draft is your exploratory process to get to know why it needs to breathe at all. Later edits will trim the fat. Right now it’s your job to get everything in place that makes your story as clear to you as it can possibly be.

As you gain experience, you will likely lean on these tools less and less, but they are great for beginners to keep you on track, Pantsers and non-Pantsers alike, particularly if you’ve undertaken the challenge of Nanowrio. There’s no time for writer’s block when you need to cross the finish line in 30 days. Staying blocked is no longer an option for you. When you’re writing on a deadline, sometimes you have to approach your work from alternate angles, and that’s okay. As long as it more fully develops your story, none of the time spent exploring the details is wasted, even if it doesn’t make it to the final draft.

Instead, turn your “blocks” turn into opportunities. If you’re blocked, it’s because your instincts are telling you something isn’t working. It’s up to you to dig a little deeper and find out what that is.

Every single day, make it a point to get back into your WIP. Reread your last chapter if you need to, just to get back “in the zone.” Think about your characters. Wonder what they’re up to. Make it your focus, make it your priority.

You’ll likely find that your Muse is more likely to show up when you do. So report for duty, soldier. You still have eighteen days left to go.

Started First Draft: November 12, 2015 8:50am PST
Paused First Draft: November 12, 2015 9:20am PST
Resumed First Draft: November 12, 2015 3:19pm PST
Completed First draft: November 12, 2015 4:24pm PST
Word Count of first draft: 2,432
Completed revisions: November 12, 2015 5:49pm PST
Updated WC: 3,213/48,813

#Nanowrimo Day Eleven: Turn the Monsters Loose

One of the common culprits for “writer’s block” is a lack of conflict. This is why Act II, which is nothing but a shit storm of conflict from start to finish for your characters, can prove so daunting, particularly when it stretches on so long through the story.

The reason for this is simple. Conflict hurts. Conflict takes what you want and keeps it out of reach, and delaying gratification is a painful process.

Most new writers back away from this because they don't want to piss off their readers. You need readers to like your work or else you don't sell books, right?

We all tread that line cautiously, even when it comes to what we do to ourselves.

As the first readers of these books, we really don’t want to witness this cavalcade of crap for the characters we loved enough to tell their story in the first place. The temptation is strong to back away from the line instead of jumping right over it. As newbies to anything, humans tend to err on the side of caution. We are mostly conservative by nature, figuring it’s safer and better to not go far enough rather than go too far. I once watched a cooking competition where the (pardon the pun) seasoned chef commented that she could tell a new cook by how little spices they used in their recipes. That lack of boldness was a dead giveaway of their inexperience. Same holds true for writing, I think. There are some writers who are audacious from the get-go, but they’re usually the exception that proves the rule. Most writers will pull back, afraid of “going too far,” because they fear they can never get back if they do.

Honestly, that doesn’t hold true just for new writers. I have a book releasing this month that seriously makes me want to wet myself for just how far I go, which is so much farther than I’ve ever gone before. Funny thing happens every single time you hop over that line. The line keeps moving.

If you look at your writing career as one that challenges you and changes you and refines you into a writer of any real significance, there’s a part of you that should be terrified to cross that line, but prepared to dangle your toe over it anyway.

Write scared. Otherwise, why write at all?

Usually, “going too far” is just far enough. In order to give your readers a memorable story, you have to make it hurt. For them. For your characters. For yourself. Angst and conflict drive the best stories, no matter the genre. Essentially you are denying your reader satisfaction with every turn of the page, until you lead them bruised and bloody over the finish line, giving them what they never even knew that they needed, even if it wasn’t exactly what they wanted.

You’re not looking to fill custom orders here. You’re seeking to communicate and connect.

Hopefully this journey will be worth it to them. But you can’t allow yourself to get too hung up on that, otherwise you’ll never write another word. Worrying how the audience will react to something you do is the death of creativity. You should write scared. You should write terrified. Worry how far you’re going to go. Worry that they won’t like it. Boldness comes with risk, and you have to be willing to take those risks if you plan to do anything that anyone will remember. Thousands upon thousands of books are released every year. Readers move along this copious buffet, tasting morsels as they go. You can offer something bland and inoffensive to them as they briefly stop at your table, or you can spice up the dish in a taste explosion, with a flavor so bold it punches them right in the face and stopping them momentarily to recover.

Whether they like it or whether they don’t, which do you think they’ll remember at the end?

I write romance, as I’ve said. This is a rather formulaic genre, despite the fact that it’s broad. There are all sorts of sub-genres in romance, piecing them out by categories like contemporary, chick lit, suspense, mystery, historical, erotic, paranormal, young adult; the list goes on and on. Despite how many variances there are, romance is a genre that by its very definition demands a very specific outcome.

Readers want to end happy.

There are some readers who will skip all the way to the end to make sure the couple ends up together before they’ll invest themselves in the story. They have said, time and again, that they get enough unhappy endings in their real lives. They depend on romance to provide the fantasy of a happily ever after.

As a result, thousands upon thousands of books release annually that provide that happy ending dressed up in all sorts of ways, setting up this expectation that it will always happen this way.

I hate that restriction more than any other in the genre, simply because it torpedoes conflict. The whole time your reader reads the story, there’s a safeguard in place saying, “Don’t worry. It’s going to be okay. There’s gotta be a happy ending at the end of all this.” This, to me, undermines whatever conflict you happen to throw their way. One of the biggest questions you ask throughout the book is, “Will this couple get their happily ever after?” If the answer is implied, or known, then that takes away that sense of urgency to turn page after page just to see what happens next.

The only reason that conflict can truly exist is if some books buck convention and offer a less than happy ending. You may not remember every single thing that ever made you laugh, but you’ll remember things that made you cry. You remember pain and disappointment because that’s where you learn. Likewise, that’s where your characters learn, too, hence the need for conflict.

There are readers who want a litany of “trigger” warnings on books for things that piss them off in any way. While I understand the need for a little heads up when you broach topics that could set off anxiety in someone suffering something like PTSD, like sexual or emotional abuse, violence of any sort, death of a character, drug abuse, eating disorders and the like, the need to warn against the “triggers” of unhappiness or disappointment (i.e., like cliffhangers or the lack of a happily ever,) squashes any sense of urgency for readers to finish your book. Books introduce questions to answer. Answering these questions before someone ever reads it effectively spoils what any storyteller is trying to do.

Imagine if “The Walking Dead” began each and every episode with, “By the way, guys, you may want to prepare yourself. So-and-so is gonna die at the end of the episode. Brace yourself. It’s gonna hurt.” No. The only warning you get is, “This show contains some material unsuitable for some viewers.” They don’t promise they won’t go too far, because they often do go too far, killing off beloved characters regularly because it’s the freaking zombie apocalypse for cripes’ sake. In order for you to know how dangerous this world is, you have to feel the pain sometimes.

Those of us who are brave enough to tune in sit on the edges of our seats the whole damned episode to make sure our favorites are alive to fight one more day.



“But Ginger… that’s a TV show. About zombies. It’s not even your genre. Romance needs a happy ending or else.”

Oh, yeah? I tell you what. You get yourself a copy of the most successful romance novel written in the last decade, the one that flew off the shelves, selling a bazillion copies, spawning a movie, creating such a buzz that almost every single person on the planet knows about it just by its reputation, whether they read romance or not… whether they read or not. You read that book all the way to the end and you tell me whether or not that author followed or defied convention.

Go on. I’ll wait.

Going too far works. Well. Circumventing the expectations of your readers, taking them by surprise, is necessary. Otherwise you become one of many they’ll browse and forget.

That may be the career you want, inoffensively selling a steady stream of books that are universally beloved by readers who know you will give them what you want. But the competition for that is pretty darned steep, which is why standing apart from the pack is where the secret to success truly lies. Like I said, you want to be remembered. Liked, disliked, doesn’t matter. You can either have this be said about your book…

“Yeah, I think I read it. It was okay. Don’t remember it much.”

Or you could have this said about your book…

“OMG It gutted me! I was so mad I wanted to throw my tablet right at that author’s head.”

In order to be remembered, you need to go where other people are unwilling to go. This is especially true in a genre where more books are released than will ever be read. If you’re easily forgotten, you’re easily sunk. This industry is driven by word of mouth. Voracious readers, who tally up hundreds of books read per year, need something outstanding to recommend. Coasting ain’t gonna cut it.

If you’re afraid to piss people off, your conflict will suffer as a result. Your writing will suffer as a result. Most of the times I’ve been legitimately blocked as a writer, it has been because I knew what I needed to do for the story, but it flew in the face of what I wanted to do as a human. I'm a nice person. I don’t want to piss people off. I want people to like me. I’m a people pleaser to the nth degree. My hand shakes when I hit “publish” on a book where I’m afraid of “going too far,” and every single time I check a review, I’m terrified that people will fire up their torches and sharpen their pitchforks because I colored just a shade out of the line.

I’ll admit that I’m not all that thrilled when I get to the end of the book and things are unresolved, and I have to wait for satisfaction. But if I’m excited about those characters, I’ll roll with it, even if I have to wait years to get it. I know what a rare and beautiful gift it is to care about these fictional people in the first place. If I give a damn what happens, enough to get pissed when I’m denied finding out exactly what that is, that’s a win in my book. Kudos to the storyteller on a job well done.

Not everyone feels that way. I’ve pissed off many a reader in my day. The ones who love me for it will send me a note telling me how they yelled at their e-reader (or practically smashed it against the wall,) when the conflict I put my characters through nearly made the reader tear their hair out. Oddly enough, that complaint is found more in the 5-star reviews than the 1-star reviews, so make of that what you will.

The reason my most devoted readers love me the most is because they don’t know what I’m going to do next, and they can’t wait to find out. They love the gut-twisting angst I put them through. Granted, there are those who have had to utter their safe word and exit the Ginger Express. That’s okay, too. I know I’m an acquired taste. If you like what I do, great. If you don’t, godspeed. I wish you well, no hard feelings.

But if you lock into my ride, we’re going where I say. So hang on tight and I’ll get you there (mostly) in one piece.

It is just a book, after all. These characters aren’t real. These situations are all fictional. It’s the safest roller coaster in the world because your feet never leave the ground.

If you feel like you’ve been thrown arse over teakettle by the end of it all anyway, as if you have met these people and lived through these experiences, then I’ve done my job. I’ve communicated an idea in a way that you could connect with it.

Again, I consider this a win.

It got to the point where the only “warning” I’d put on my books stated, “If you need a warning to read a book, this author’s books are not for you.” Not only do I write about things that would justify legitimate trigger warning labels, like sexual or emotional abuse, violence of any sort, death of a character, drug abuse, eating disorders and the like, I also happily, boldly and unapologetically put my characters (and my readers) through things like cheaters, triangles, cliffhangers, and the worst sin of all: unhappy endings.

If the story calls for it, I’m going to do it. And I’m not going to tell you ahead of time, because I trust that you can handle it, if you trust me enough to get you there.

Here’s the good news. Most readers do trust the writer to lead them wherever they go. Most readers are just like me, willing to strap ourselves blindly in the ride, without any hint or idea what’s coming, just so we can watch the whole beautiful story unfold the way the author intended. Most of us are willing to roll with the punches provided we get emotional payoff in the end, which doesn’t always have to end on a high note if notable bestselling novels are to be believed.

You can go further than you think.

I learned this lesson with my GROUPIE saga.

We already talked about my decision to write a rock and roll romance. I was going through some stuff, needed to work it out, so I decided to play in the sand with a sexy rock star for a while. It was my full intention to write a story where, at the end of all, my douche bag hero would figure out that he was a douche bag and right all the wrongs he had done to my long-suffering heroine.

The problem arose from the conflict of the story, when my heroine met another potential suitor, one who was a much better match. He had money, he offered security; he was romantic and respectful. He was steadfast in his support of her, even when she was torn up in knots about someone else. And the fact that he was a viable option at all (arguably a better one at that,) made my hero flounder, rather than rise to the challenge. (Hence: conflict.) The closer and closer I got to the end of that book, the more I realized that I couldn’t end it the way I had originally planned, which was (spoiler alert) with a happily ever after.

Because of the conflict that had grown organically in the book, I could no longer sell that ending to myself. It may have started as a fantasy romp between the sheets with a sexy rock star, but it still needed to make sense to me. And it didn’t make any sense whatsoever that a heroine like Andy would just ride off into the sunset with someone who had made her life hell for three years, just because he had an epiphany in a crisis.

He wasn’t good enough for her yet, and likely wouldn’t be for a while… much longer than a one 100,000-word book, anyway.

I talked to Steven about it, because he’s one of my biggest sounding boards to bounce story ideas off of. He had been reading along, like he always did, and he let me know in no uncertain terms that if I ended it the way I had planned, it would cheapen the story.

In my gut I knew he was right. I examined my options. I could end it the way I planned and just send it off into the ether, content to take my knocks for half-assing the story, or… I could end the book unresolved since the story itself wasn’t resolved.

I knew I had a lot more ground to cover before I could sell any sort of happily ever after to myself, which meant that book may have ended, but the story wasn’t over. Not by a long shot.

A few tweaks later and (spoiler alert) I ended it unresolved, on a cliffhanger, with a plan for two more books to tell the story the best way I knew how. Like I said, my hero Vanni wasn’t ready for his HEA (Happily Ever After) by the end of book one. He had a lot to learn. In doing so, he had a long way to fall. The second book worked out like a second act of the whole story arc, which was nothing but ugly conflict start to finish.

I knew I was flirting with disaster. I researched romance reader forums high and low to decide how firm that HEA requirement was. The more I read, the more discouraged I got. This was where I first found those readers who read the last page first, which was unthinkable to me. The whole point of a book is to find out how it ends. Why do I need to read hundreds of pages if I already know the answer?

Granted, I’m a bit of an angst whore, which might explain why “The Walking Dead” and “Doctor Who” are a couple of my favorite shows. I grew up on “General Hospital,” where storylines took years to pay off. I was there for Luke and Laura from the beginning. I remember every single time I ran to the TV just to see if that day was the day they’d finally get together. “Moonlighting” was my favorite show in the 1980s, at least until Maddie and David answered the question of “will they/won’t they?”

I started my own soap opera in 1980, when I got my first Ken* doll to add to my growing stable of Barbies. Now that I had a doll of the opposite sex, I could tell all kinds of new, exciting stories, and I totally did. Like I said, I was heavily influenced by “General Hospital” at the time, so the minute my girl dolls had a boy to play with, the angst of unresolved love stories drove my playtime.

If my girl characters got pregnant, and they did, I would let that play out in real time. As they began to “show,” I would tape tissue paper to the teeny tiny waists of my dolls to show the incremental growth of a real pregnancy. I took my time, even when I took it to extremes.

One of my characters, Jenny Gold, was a successful model and happily married to a character named Robert, played by a discarded Superman doll with a missing hand. They were very much in love and married fairly quickly, but that wasn’t the end of their love story.

In 1981, Jenny met photographer Kevin Sherwood through her modeling work. He was good-looking, kind of arrogant, a bit of a jerk. My first real “bad boy,” as it were. He was instantly besotted by this beautiful woman, who was every bit as sweet as she was lovely. Kevin, who had gone through some stuff, decided that she was the one who would save him from his biggest enemy: himself. He became obsessed with her, to the point that she didn’t want anything to do with him. He crossed her boundaries, forcing his affection on her even though she was happily married. And of course she was far too honorable to give in to his charm.

He realized that as long as Bobby was in her life, she’d never be free to love him. So he decided to fake her death and take her away to a remote island, where they could be together at last. She begged him to let her go, that she had just found out she was pregnant with her second child. For Kevin, though, that was even more reason to keep her. In his warped mind, they could have a HEA together, the three of them.

Meanwhile, back home, Bobby tries to get through day after dark day as a widower and single dad.

For eight long months, I carried out this story line day after day. Of course, I knew where I was going with it, but I played along like I didn’t. I ate up all that angst with relish. Finally, right before Jenny was due to give birth, Kevin got his change of heart. After months together, she had finally gotten through to him that love didn’t demand its own way. It gave wherever it could, putting the happiness of the loved one above the love of self.

(Like I said, she was both sweet and lovely.)

He finally brought her back to Los Angeles (where they happened to live) just in time for Bobby to reunite with her during the birth of their son. She was so grateful to him and so impressed with his change of heart that she didn’t turn him in, and instead made peace with Kevin so that they could all move forward with their lives.

Voila. Happy ending. It just took a helluva lot of crap to get there.

Did I mention I was eleven/twelve when all this played out? (And yes, that means two consecutive years.)

It took another two years for Kevin to find legitimate love for himself, after a disastrous marriage to a conniving model who took advantage of his vulnerability for his own personal gain. After they married, she cheated on him left and right, with anyone who would advance her career, or simply piss him off. He was caught in the middle of that quagmire of a relationship when he met Karen, a woman so traumatized by her abusive past that she had severe selective mutism and hadn’t spoken a word to anyone other than her brother since she was five years old. (I came up with this thing before I even knew that was a legitimate “thing,” by the way.)

Like Jenny, Karen was sweet and lovely, and instantly appealed to Kevin. With his help, she was slowly allowed to heal enough to connect, once again, to another person.

If I wrote this story today, it would be a whole series of books. It would have to be. In order to fully tell Kevin’s story with maximum emotional payoff, I would need to set up the romance between Bobby and Jenny in book one, to establish why Jenny would never be the right woman for him. In book two, he’d be (literally) balls deep in his contemptuous marriage with Bambi (yes, that was her name.) There he’d meet Karen, and that relationship would put him at a crossroads by the end of book two, so that book three finally answers the question that drove us to pursue the story for so long: will Kevin Sherwood ever be able to truly find love for himself, especially after he sacrificed everything that he wanted to find it?

This is the kind of storyteller I am. I take my time. I go to extremes. I dive into controversy and chaos with both feet, and have since I was nine years old. That was the summer that my teenaged Fisher Price Little Person* left her comfortable Tudor home to run away to the big city with her black boyfriend after her conservative parents forbade her from seeing him.

If it’s just for me, I’m not afraid to go there. Gaining that confidence with an audience was a little trickier, particularly when the audience is as rabid as in the genre I happen to write. If you get paid to create, the people who buy your product expect their needs/wants/expectations to be met, and woe to the writer who circumvents those expectations.

But circumvent those expectations you must, or else the work will suffer.

One of my idols is the late, great John Hughes. If you grew up in the 1980s, you know John Hughes. He was the creator behind all the Brat Pack movies, and wrote teen angst better than just about anyone in the era. “The Breakfast Club” is sheer gospel to me, as well as all the generations who have related to the timeless film ever since it released in 1985.

For those of us in the 1980s, there’s a certain possessiveness there. You may understand what Mr. Hughes was talking about, but we lived it.

(Oh, and by the way, did I happen to mention “The Breakfast Club” was written over a weekend? Take that, “Can’t Write Anything Great in a Short Amount of Time” Skeptics!)

I loved almost everything that John Hughes did, with the exception of “Weird Science.” Only one movie, however, ticked me off.

I didn’t like “Pretty in Pink.” There. I said it. And I feel better having done so.

I didn’t like it then for a variety of pretty superficial reasons. One, I was never a huge Molly Ringwald fan. Aside from “Sixteen Candles,” which marginally put me in her corner just because of how heinous her world was at the time, I just didn’t really connect with the characters she played. This was true of Andie, who, even though she was dirt poor like I was at the time, played the role a little more sullen than her roles in the past. I didn’t find the patented petulance endearing.

I also didn’t care much for Andrew McCarthy’s Blane, the weak rich boy who didn’t quite understand the complexities of their conflict to grow a pair and stand up for her when she needed him most.

It was a much drearier and drab backdrop in comparison to other Hughes films, “Weird Science” excluded. This virtually stole all the charm and innocence typically juxtaposed with the angst in all the other films, which juggled the bright boldness of the decade with the angst of adolescence. 1986 was a rough year for me anyway. “Pretty in Pink” put a pretty ugly headstone on it.

It hurts a ton when your idols fall from the pedestals on which you place them.

The only real redeeming part of the movie was Duckie, as played by Jon Cryer. He brought light and levity to an otherwise maudlin tale of the Haves vs. the Have Nots. He was also completely and totally dedicated to his best friend, Andie, who was so blinded by shiny Blane that she couldn’t see that her best friend was crazy in love with her, even when he was willing to stand up to the rich bullies to defend her – something Blane proved unable/unwilling to do.

To me, the choice was clear. In order for me to have a happy ending, Andie needed to pick Duckie. They needed to go to the prom together and show all those snooty rich people they weren’t better than them just because they had money. Love wins.

Except love didn’t win. Andie picked the more self-involved Blane. The way it was written, I was probably more devastated about that than Duckie was, who accepted her choice because that was how much he loved her.

It was such an unsatisfying ending for me I shunned watching the movie. I watch “The Breakfast Club” at least twice a year, and have since the 1980s. I’ve watched “Pretty in Pink” twice.

The only reason I watched it twice was because I found out something about the movie I didn’t know before.

What we saw is not what John Hughes wrote.

(Whew. Idol – pedestal, restored.)

The reason I needed Andie to end up with Duckie was because it had originally been written that way. Every single scene was constructed to guide us all towards a HEA that, if not exactly like I wanted, was pretty darned close.

So what happened?

Prior to its release, they screened the movie in front of their target audience: teen girls. Those teen girls decided they wanted Andie to choose Blane, because that was more of the “fairy tale.” Poor girl gets rich guy who doesn’t quite deserve her, but her love will save him and make him better in the end.

In a last-ditch scramble to “fix” this “problem,” they brought everyone back to reshoot the ending, which is the one you can see today.

The reason it was unsatisfying was because it wasn’t organic. The conflict guided these characters to a whole other resolution entirely.

I knew that GROUPIE would have worked out the same way, even if I gave the majority of the audience what I knew they wanted.

I decided not to go that route. I decided to let the story grow and develop naturally, even if it meant breaking a few rules along the way.

My boldness paid off. Unlike my other, more typical romances, the GROUPIE saga virtually launched my career, such as it is. I’m not schmoozing with Danielle Steel, but that one series helped me break through the pack to the top 20% of indie writers and stay there.

The series where I dared to kill of a lead broke me into the top 10%.

In fact, of all my romance novels, the ones that defied convention were the most successful, despite their most vocal critics who hated how I broke the contract expected of me as a romance writer.

Conflict sells because conflict turns pages. If they inhaled your book in one setting because they couldn’t wait to see what happened next, they’re going to tell all their friends about it. They’re going to get excited about it. You make them feel something, and they will love you forever, even if they hate you for hurting them.

If you ask someone what their favorite book is, odds are it will be one that had a visceral, emotional reaction. I read stacks and stacks of romance novel where Boy Met Girl, Boy Wooed Girl, Boy Got Girl, and I can barely tell you one basic plot from any of them. But ask me about any book I’ve read of Danielle Steel’s, where she put her characters through the ringer and back, and I can talk your ear off all day. And” The Fault in Our Stars”… I can’t even.

Don’t be afraid of conflict. Don’t be afraid of pushing the envelope. There are some readers that the more they hate you, the more they love you. The only way you fail is if they don’t care at all and they stop reading. I’d much rather have a 1-star review where they rant and rave about my characters as if they were real people than a DNF (did not finish) tag.

I want the audience that will read my book twice a year for the next 30 years. I aim to be a “Breakfast Club,” not a “Pretty in Pink.”

Not everyone will like your books, and that’s an unreasonable goal to shoot for. There’s a saying that you could be the juiciest, ripest, sweetest peach on the tree, but there will always be those who don’t like peaches. It’s a given. You will find critics who will 1-star your books because you didn’t give them what they wanted, no matter how much you tried.

It’s inevitable. Even classics have their critics.

That is why you can’t write solely for the audience. Not really. Be bold enough not to care. The whole reason you decided to write a book was to tell the story only you could tell. Instead of having a long line of chefs walking through your kitchen, adding to and taking from your pot until it resembles nothing like you whatsoever, you could assert that, as the book’s first reader, you have to pass your own standard first. If you can take it, I’m sure your audience can handle it.

In fact, I’m relatively sure your audience will love you for it, even if they say they don’t. Don’t let their bitching fool you. They love the angst and the push and pull every bit as much as you do. That’s why books with cliffhangers or character deaths are the ones people talk about the most. If they’re talking, you’re selling books. That’s how it works.

Another colleague of mine said that she wanted her readers to go in blind, scared shitless as they got locked into her ride, and she was going to take them wherever the hell she thought they needed to go.

This colleague is a successful, published writer, which proves she knows what she’s talking about.

Even Stephen King says he likes to get you attached to his characters before he “turns the monsters loose.” He’s going to make you hurt. That’s part of the process. If you hurt, you care. If you care, you turn the page. If you turn the page, you finish the book. And if you felt anything at all, you will remember it, and the writer who did it.

“Here, show us on the doll where Stephen King/Danielle Steel/John Green/George RR Martin/Steven Moffat/Robert Kirkland/EL James/JK Rowling et al. hurt you.”



If you are blocked because you’re worried the audience will be mad if you “go too far,” I guarantee you that you’re not going far enough. Reexamine your conflict and then turn it up a few decibels. Make yourself uncomfortable. Go down the dark passageways where you normally fear to tread. If you don’t feel it, whatever “it” is – fear, anger, frustration, relief, joy – then your readers aren’t going to feel it either.

Dial up the conflict knowing that no matter what you do, it can be changed if it doesn't work. You’re still in the first draft. And what is the first draft?

(All together now:) THE FIRST DRAFT IS NOT READY FOR PUBLICATION.

This is your chance to go as far as you possibly can because there’s nobody but you to stop you. If you take that next step and it doesn’t work, you can scrap it and try something else. There’s no real downside and very little risk.

Believe me, you’ll know if you hit it or if you miss. And when the time is right, you’ll publish your book with the knocking knees we all do, waiting to see if your gamble pays off.

It may, it may not. As long as you hold true to your story, you’ve created something to be proud of.

So push yourself. Lock yourself in and brace for the wildest ride you can imagine. Follow the story, not any perceived audience.

Tomorrow we’ll talk about the specifics of mining for opportunities.

Today, get comfortable with the idea that if you want to do something truly memorable, truly remarkable, truly and fully realized, you’re going to have to step outside of your comfort zone.

Turn those monsters loose. Your readers will love you more if you do. And you’ll hate yourself if you don’t.

Started First Draft: November 11, 2015 11:42am PST
Completed First draft: November 11, 2015 1:58pm PST
Word Count of first draft: 4,187
Began revisions: November 11, 2015 6:15pm PST
Completed revisions: November 11, 2015 7:49pm PST
Updated WC: 5,899/45,600

#Nanowrimo Day Ten: Write What You (Don't) Know

Pat advice given to new writers everywhere is “Write what you know.” As we learned yesterday, our personal experiences are often fertile ground to toil when looking for inspiration to craft, and properly tell, our stories.

Also like we learned yesterday, the problem with this well-meaning advice is that it is incomplete. Its usefulness boils down mostly to where you happen to put your emphasis. Writing what YOU know, as opposed to, write what you KNOW. You can and should bring your unique perspective and experiences into everything you write. If you’re a writer, I believe that is what you were put on this earth to do.

But if you only write from your own personal experience, it will limit you on what kinds of tales you tell. Frankly, that kind of thing pisses your Muse off. She’ll storm off in a hissy and she’ll disappear (or worse, taunt you with a fleeting presence once and a while,) until you get a clue.



If you write fiction, you need to be open to writing those things you don’t know.

If you write nonfiction, you need to be open to writing those things you don’t know.

When I started freelancing, there were jobs I took based on interest alone, just so that I could delve even deeper to learn about a topic. Some jobs I took even when I didn’t have much interest at all. I just had the pressing need for another paid article. When you have bills to pay, you can’t wait around for inspiration to strike. You have to actively pursue it. That often begins with research, whether conscious or subconscious.

I’ve always felt that intelligence isn’t having all the answers but knowing how to find them. As a result of my freelance years, I became what my family affectionately calls “The Research Queen.” If anyone in my house has a question, they will come to me to find the answers. Not because I’m exceptionally wise, but because I know how to seek out and pinpoint correct answers to their questions.

Part of this I learned with my brief stint in college in the 2000s, when I took a pretty standard critical thinking class right from the beginning. Critical thinking is key to your research, especially when you have to dig for it on the Internet. Research doesn’t look like it did when I was a teenager, when I had to mosey down to my local library and scour through books and magazines and yes, microfilm, to get the information I sought. You don’t know research until you’ve had to physically navigate the Dewey Decimal System to find your little needles in a haystack to complete an assignment on a deadline.

(Those of us who know what the DDS is will pause briefly to allow those who have never heard the term before to take the 10 seconds or so it takes for them to search for that information on their browser. Note: We may or may not be bitter as we do so.)

The Internet is another beast entirely. You can literally find any information you want, even when you don’t want it. Show of hands of anyone who started to Google* a question or a topic, only to have the pull-down selection of options shock you with strange combinations that you never would have put together in a million years. And God forbid you actually open those links.

I can’t have been the only writer lost in a Research Hole.

Through practice, you become rather adept at knowing which information to keep and which to discard. If you’ve only got five days to deliver an authoritative article, presenting your information in a very concise, accurate way, you become rather adept at finding this information quickly. Hence why people in my house come to me when they can't find this information quickly on their own.

In 2005, when I was challenged to write a film set in Romania, I had never stepped foot in Romania. But I knew that in order to get the job, I had to “fake it” well enough to make it look as though I had. Since the director I was working with was actually from Romania, and the studio seeking to purchase the project was in Romania, there was no half-assing the research. I had to nail it. I researched it online. I watched documentaries, particularly those that dealt with the history of vampire lore in Romania, and how it related back to Vlad the Impaler, whom modern Romanians revere for how he led the country and protected them, and their religion, against oppressive invaders. I researched before I wrote the first draft. I researched while I wrote the first draft. By the end of it, I produced such a convincing tale that it ultimately was ultimately optioned.

That initial success with TASTE OF BLOOD never would have happened if I had been restricted to writing something I knew. Only by getting down and dirty in the research could I craft the rest of the story, which was peppered thoroughly with enough history and substance that I could convince people that I knew about a place I had never been.

Research is such a breeding ground for growth that much of it you’ll start to do it unconsciously, in the background, all the time. You read stories about those things that you’ve never done or experienced. You scour news reports. You eavesdrop on casual conversations that you hear from other people you pass on the street, to see how they use dialog, inflection or detail to communicate.

Whether you’re aware of it or not, there’s this little gremlin in your brain furiously taking notes of all of it. Neither of you know when inspiration is going to spark and catch with your Muse, so you have to wade through it all to find what you didn’t even know she was looking for. This will broaden your scope as a storyteller in ways you never saw coming.

Be prepared, though. Because we writers are beat over the head with the “Write what you know” mantra, whenever you convincingly write anything that is outside your general scope of knowledge, people start to wonder about you.

Steven’s grandmother is probably one of my biggest fans. She is a storyteller herself, so she loves, loves, loves to read, and it tickles her silly that she has a writer, and another storyteller, in her family to support.

Support me she does. She has read practically every single book I’ve ever written, even the sexy-sexy stuff.

Granted, she skips those parts, and when we talk about it later I get that reproachful side-eye as she shakes her head. No matter how much she loves me or my books, she’s still grandma.

When she read CHASING THUNDER, where my heroine is a badass biker chick who must pinpoint a sadistic serial killer before he strikes again, she worried about what kinds of personal experiences I might have had that allowed me to write such a story so convincingly.

Though it was born from my own experiences as a homeless teenager on the streets of Los Angeles, fortunately I didn’t have the kinds of experiences that Baby, my runaway in CHASING THUNDER, did. I didn’t step off a bus in downtown L.A., alone, afraid and abused. I wasn’t approached by a “spotter” to enlist me into the sex trade because I was an easy target. I didn’t run afoul of a powerful crime lord in the Hollywood Hills, who would pursue me so that I couldn’t spill any of his nefarious secrets and ultimately threaten to take down his empire. I didn’t meet a biker that skid to a stop in an alley in the middle of Hollywood, who vaulted off said bike and effortlessly took out three thugs who wanted to do me harm. None of that actually happened in my experience. All of that had to be researched.

I started with what I knew and I turned it up into something a little more exciting than sitting in the back seat of my car on some forgotten side street next to a train track, writing about such things because I didn't have a TV to watch.

That’s not to say that I didn’t have negative experiences throughout my life that shaded these important scenes. I’m a girl. I grew up beating off the beasties just out of self-defense. When I was four, I was taken from my front yard and sexually assaulted by a grown man. When I was eight, a leering preacher used our time alone to lean in close, his arm along the back of the pew, practically pinning me to the corner, to tell me about Jesus and talk about the state of my sinful, sinful soul. When I was twelve, there were two instances where two different men tried to get me into their cars as I was walking alone, once to school, and once to church. When I was 15, I went to a mechanic shop, where an old man grabbed my boobs just because I happened to stand too close. When I was 18, I was stopped by a sketchy police officer, who isolated me alone in his squad car, where he nervously waited to act upon an impulse I instinctively knew was going to be bad, but fortunately the dispatcher distracted him with something he had to attend to, so he released me before I could see what happened next.

Some things you don't want to know. Ever.

I understand predatory behavior. I took what I knew and put it into a story that was far enough removed from me that I felt safe enough to tell it. When I first wrote CHASING THUNDER a gazillion years ago, I leaned more on what I knew than what I didn’t know. I didn’t do any extensive research per se. I had seen the movies and TV shows, including, I would assume, an afternoon special or two, which described how dangerous it was to be a teen runaway in Hollywood. All of that had been absorbed by my gremlin, who threw it in a blender with my own experience so my Muse and I could figure out how to fit it into a book. A few years later I sent that half-baked book to an agent. When she sent it back, with her generously provided edits included, one tip kept repeating itself.

Research. Research. Research.

Research takes the flat line of what you know and blends it with that plot line you’ve completely made up. If you’ve done your job properly, it will be so seamless that your grandmother will call you to find out exactly which part you created and which part you recounted.

Research gives your story texture. These are the details you can only find if you dig a little deeper.

Consider the following passage:

Julie stepped onto the porch and rang the bell. It rang once. Twice. Finally a third time. There was no answer. She checked her watch. It was just after one-thirty. She glanced both ways down the street, but there wasn’t a car in sight. Was she early? With a sigh, she withdrew the file from her attaché to see if maybe she got the dates wrong. Just as she was about to give up, a tiny hand pulled back the lace curtain, and she could see the blackened eye of four-year-old Bailey Johnson. Julie heaved a relieved sigh. She wasn’t too late. She was right on time.

(Word count: 107)

Now consider where you can beef up that passage, digging just a little deeper below the surface:

Julie’s late model sedan eased down the quiet street in the lower-class neighborhood of rundown houses, which was deceptively hidden under a canopy of [research] beautiful jacaranda trees. The purple blooms floated easily to the ground below, creating a shower of color as Julie parked her car and stepped out in front of [research] the 1928 Craftsman home in mild disrepair.

The concrete steps were cracked and crumbling under her [research] two-toned black and white Oxfords as she stepped onto the porch and rang the bell. Its haunting melody was as lovely as the jacaranda trees lining the street. The tune stretched on, ringing once, twice, and finally a third time. There was no answer.

Julie checked her watch. It was just after one-thirty. She glanced both ways down the street, but there wasn’t a car in sight. Was she early? With a sigh, she withdrew the file from her scuffed attaché to see if maybe she got the dates wrong. Just as she was about to give up, a tiny hand pulled back the curtain made of [research] vintage baroque lace, stained yellow by years of neglect. Through the sliver, she spotted the blackened eye of four-year-old Bailey Johnson staring back up at her. Julie heaved a relieved sigh. She wasn’t too late. She was right on time.

(Word count: 219)

Researching little details allows you to “show” rather than tell your story. With a little research, you can plant a picture in the readers mind as he or she identifies what kind of house it is, or where this neighborhood might be located simply by the presence of a particular tree you might find lining the street. The reader can also see how Julie stands out by the shoes she wears or the car she drives, giving the scene dimension. And by adding those few details to “picture” the scene in my own head, it inspired me to detail a few other things in the scene as well, such as showing her attaché was scuffed, indicating that Julie had been at her job a while.

You’ll also notice that it beefed up the word count by more than 100 words, which gets you 112 words closer to your goal.

If you’re stuck trying to figure out what to write next, a little research can often provide a shortcut around all those perceived writer’s blocks. You may not keep everything that you add. No one needs to be verbose for the sake of verbosity itself, which we’ll cover in another chapter a little later. But as we’ve already learned, nothing is chiseled in stone. The first draft is the best place to throw every single detail you need to tell your story. And I guarantee you that you’ll need to extensively research in order to do that. Someone somewhere is going to have to believe the story you're telling. Might as well start with you.

In my latest series, my MASTERS SAGA, I write about male escorts. I write about hiring them, I write about having sex with them. In this non-Grandma approved series, I get down and dirty with the idea of gigolos and the sizzling hot fantasies only a true professional could provide, no strings attached. (And, of course, because it’s me and I write hyper-reality, I add a lot of other contemporary complications as well. #pleasedontjudgemybrowserhistory)

When I decided I wanted to write this story, I didn’t know dick about male escorts, pun intended. I had never met one (that I knew of, anyway.) I had certainly never hired or dated one. So my first order of business was researching how easy it would be to do this, and how exactly this process would work.

I told Steven that if I had the hundreds of dollars to spare that most of these guys get per hour, I’d probably want to hire one just to talk to him, to get his stories, to get a feel for how the process works for him. Because you can’t “sell” sex, legitimate escort services don’t offer it as part of the package. You are paying for companionship alone, and then it’s up to the escort and his client how exactly that time was spent. I figured that meant I could have a no-sex appointment where we could just chat for an hour or two.

Steven was quick to put the kibosh on that little idea. My husband is not a dominant person. He’s usually very open-minded and easy-going. I’ve chased a male comedian all over creation since 2005, and that was never a problem. He knows he can trust me. He knows I’m not out to score with anyone else. He’s secure in the relationship and generally not jealous or possessive at all. We are, as we have always been, rock solid.

But when it came to this particular research, he had very strong opinions on the matter. Though I’m not a typical “obey your spouse” kind of wife, I respected his wishes and conducted my necessary research through other, less personal ways.

Fortunately Showtime had already done a lot of the research for me. Their show “Gigolos,” which has been renewed for its sixth season, gave me a lot of material to review. It is billed as “reality TV,” so I figured it was a safe way to get to know these guys and their process, and, thanks to it being a cable TV show, I got to see a lot more than I probably wanted about their sexual encounters.

You see them in action, as it were.

Frankly, I didn’t find it all that hot. Here I had this lascivious concept I wanted to explore, about finding a man whose sole focus is bringing your fantasy to life, and the reality proved that getting paid for sex is rather impersonal and cold, even if you have very sexy men at your beck and call. They’re just doing a job, you’re just a client, and it comes off that way.

It's a good thing, I guess, that I didn't pay $400 an hour to figure that out. (Thank you, Showtime.)

This particular series revolves around a handful of guys who worked for the same agency. Some appear nice. Others, not so much. Some approach it as a means to pay the bills. Some approach it as a mission or honor to provide the fantasy for the women they claim to love. They all approach the sex in very guy-like ways, reminding me of what I learned about male sexuality when I was watching “Queer as Folk,” back in the day. How men approach sex and how women approach sex is often very different, and you never realize how different it is until you take the woman out of the equation.

Pretty soon, I felt my enthusiasm for my own project abate, especially when I saw how they had to ‘power through’ having sex with women whom they found undesirable. Since my heroine ended up being a size-14/16, I wasn’t so sure I wanted one of these guys to suck it up and just power through having sex with her, like they sometimes demonstrated on the show. Unfortunately, I do have personal experience with what that’s like, and there’s nothing sexy about it.

Did I really want to center one of my series around a guy like this?

I wasn’t completely sold on my own concept until Chapter Three of Book 1, MASTERS FOR HIRE, when my heroine made me fall in love with her. After that I decided to use minor details only, and craft my hero however the hell I wanted to. She was paying big money for him to bring her fantasy (and, to an extent, mine) to life, and by God I was going to make that happen for her.

If someone “in the business” reads my book and tells me, “Hey, that’s not all that realistic,” I know they’re probably telling the truth. But I don’t care. I didn’t set out to write some expose on what it’s like to be a gigolo. This is fiction, and romance fiction at that. This means I have to keep my toe in reality, not my whole damned foot. (And thank GOD.)

I honestly did way more research on what made Dev a complex human than what made him a gigolo. When Devlin let me know he was a classically trained pianist, I ran to Google* every chance I got to research classical pieces, the pianos themselves, or where he might have gone for an education, because this new tidbit about him demanded I up my game to figure all that out.

The conversation went something like this:

ME: Okay guys. Here is the suite we're going to use, one that I found while I researched Las Vegas hotels to use for our setting this week. It has a view, a bar, antique French furniture and, for some reason, a piano. Don't ask me, it just came with the room.
DEVLIN: I can play the piano, you know.
ME: No, I didn’t know.
DEVLIN: Well, now you do. Make it work.

He then sat down and played Pachelbel’s Canon in D, one of the few classical tunes I actually knew, forcing me to run immediately to YouTube* and listen along. I knew in an instant that no novice could play like that, which means he didn’t just play piano. He really was a master.

ME: Wow. You’re really going to force me out of my comfort zone, aren’t you, Devlin?
DEVLIN: You have no idea, darlin.’

He then launched into the Beatles, and I knew in an instant the gigolo I had crafted as a one-dimensional blank slate wasn’t really a blank slate at all.

Devlin Masters was/is completely 3-D.

Not only did that one little detail instantly make him more interesting to me beyond a penis for hire, it opened up an entirely new subplot that would change the trajectory for my final book, like sliding a puzzle piece into place.

And it never would have happened at all had I not gone online the second my characters flew to Vegas for a week, because I needed to research a place to put them.

If I had written just what I knew, this story would have remained sadly unrealized, like my original concept. In Book One, Draft One, I had the freedom to play around a bit, to see how this fledgling concept could live up to its full potential. It’s exploratory, and research guides you down new paths you may not have found on your own.

Without the most trivial research, this story wouldn’t have stretched me out of my comfort zone or taught me anything new. It doesn’t enlighten you as much just to revisit the same source material over and over again, simply rearranged in different situations.

You’re still going to write what YOU know, because how YOU react to these new details is completely from your perspective.

You’re just going to expand what you know by writing about things you don’t. As a result, you’ll teach yourself some things along the way. And that’s a beautiful thing.

If you’ve reached Day 10 and you’re a little stuck where to go from here, I highly recommend that you research things a little deeper to unearth those hidden gems just waiting to be discovered. You never know what your characters and your story have yet to teach you, or where you might go from here.

Queue up your gremlin, open up your browser and just follow where it goes.

*Again, using this place mark because though referencing Google may work in a blog, I may have to do more research in whether or not I can now use this in a published work. For those of you who have been paying attention, most of the time I use (*) is to indicate more research is needed.

Started First Draft: November 10, 2015 2:22pm PST
Completed First draft: November 10, 2015 4:02pm PST
Word Count of first draft: 3,280
Completed revisions: November 10, 2015 5:49pm PST
Updated WC: 3,972/39,699

#Nanowrimo Day Nine: Do What They Can't Do

It’s day nine and if you’re on schedule or thereabouts, you should have written just a smidge over 15,000 words so far. For a 50,000-word book, this would land you around the beginnings of Act II, where you will be writing the bulk of your story. You’ve got your beginning, you likely know your ending, now you just need to bridge the two together with all the tension and suspense your reader needs to keep turning the page to find out what’s going to happen next.

Hopefully you know, but it’s possible you won’t.

Two things might be happening here. Best case scenario, you’ve done the prep work, you’ve written the setup and now you’re being pushed along by the momentum of your story. It’s still work to develop it slowly, word by word, but opportunities are growing right from the page, allowing you to craft scenes that build naturally and organically through the development of your characters.

Worst case scenario? You’re staring at the vast wasteland of Act II wonder what the hell you need to write next to meet your word requirement.

These next few chapters will deal with that, with suggestions that you can use to cross this chasm. The next 25,000 or so words that make up Act II can be quite intimidating. It stretches out in front of you, all these pages to fill with all these words you’ve yet to find. This is a daunting task, even if you’re prepared for it.

This chapter will show how using your individual perspective as a human will help you mine for material as a writer. In other words, when you pull your hair out in Act II wondering what the heck you’re going to do, I say that you do what another person can never do: Do you.

Let’s face it. The old adage, “There’s nothing new under the sun,” often applies to the stories we tell. I write romance, so, Boy Meets Girl hasn’t changed a whole lot throughout the millennia. It’s all about the quest for a happily ever after with the person of your dreams. This has held true for as long as I’ve been reading romance.

Even though modern characters are often hooking up (often and enthusiastically) before their happily ever after, which wasn’t that common in the 1970s and 1980s when I started reading romance, the whole reason we turn the page is to find out if that boy gets the girl for real and forever.

How a writer does this is key, especially if he or she wants to be remembered. Stories kind of blend together after a while, thanks to the glut of material that has been written over the years. Many of these have already exhausted practically every trope known to the genre.

Whether you’re writing a book about a marriage of convenience, a surprise baby, some billionaire boss who walks the line between dominant and controlling, or a vampire who has fallen in love with a mortal, best friends who find love, worst enemies that find love, cowboys, bikers or forbidden bad boys, most of these tropes have been mined well in some form or fashion by authors before you, to varying degrees of success.

Thousands of those books are published every year about all those things. Some might even eerily mirror what you’ve decided is a beyond-brilliant idea that no one else has ever done anywhere.

Parallel development is real, and it’s hell.

You can play around with the plot a bit, just to toy with convention, in your attempt to stand out from the pack.

“Hey, did I mention that in my story there’s a purple hippo dancing the merengue?”

“No kidding. I’ve never heard of that before.”

Your plot is important. No doubt about it. But what’s more important is the filter through which you see your plot. See, that’s what the other authors can’t write, even if they wanted to. You bring to the story a certain perspective. If you’re successful conveying that in your books, then anyone who reads it will be able to see the world, for a short time at least, through your eyes.

So how do you do this? How do you … do you?

You start by telling a story only you can tell. Temptation is strong to chase trends when developing a plot, because it feels like a way to either make easy money or a chance to get read by a larger audience. This is what everyone clamors to read, so clearly you have the best shot to break in by enticing them with a similar story all your own.

If you want to catch this “express,” it’s totally your prerogative. You take a risk blending in with the other authors who might be following suit, who have a larger fan base, who have more experience, who will stand shoulder to shoulder in front of you, obscuring both you and your book as the express whizzes by in a second, chasing that trend until it dissipates into a cloud of smoke when The Next Big Thing rolls around.

You’re going to have to work extra hard to be seen, no matter if you ride a trend or not. My advice? Don’t worry about the sale right now. Consume yourself instead with the passion to tell the story only you can tell, even if it echoes those books that came before it.

Why are you the author who absolutely, positively has to write this book?

This is an important question to ask yourself. When it comes to the sale, much later on, the reader will be asking the same question. “I’ve already read about a shape-shifting vampire who falls in love with a billionaire cowboy alpha, but marries her worst enemy out of convenience because she’s hiding a secret baby from her stepbrother. What makes THIS book so special?”

You do. You make it special.

You may write a book because you fell in love with that particular trope and want to take it for a test drive yourself. This way you aren’t swept along with the tide of someone else’s vision. You can do what you want, say what you want and have what you want, your terms.

Maybe you’ve read a lot of books about that subject simply because you enjoy revisiting the fantasy. You may read a book about a rock star and decide, “Hey. Yeah. That’d be fun,” and create your own little fairy tale as a result with all the things that turn you on.

When I wrote GROUPIE, there were already bookshelves full of successful, bestselling rock star romances, including a few notable indies. That wasn’t new. Hot rock stars, and the hapless, star-struck “good girls” who found themselves falling for their swagger, have provided common breeding ground for many a writer who wants to delve into the fantasy of falling for a musician/singer/rock star.

The reason the trope exists at all is because many women have this fantasy, and have since they first mooned over posters on their wall of whatever rock star that sparked their desire to go from groupie to girlfriend.

We didn’t just want to listen to the songs. We wanted to be the subject of them.



The good news here is that pursuing this kind of timelessly popular storyline means you’ll have a better chance finding readers for your material. Instead of it being a “trend” that pops up out of nowhere and takes the reading world by storm, these are tested plot devices that can hook the reader just on concept alone. You have a built-in reader base just dying to get their hands on another juicy rock star book.

The bad news is that popular tropes tend to exhaust every type of plot in existence because you are tasked with doing what other people haven’t done, lest you be skewered for copying another book or another author.

Plagiarism is every bit as real as parallel development. Unlike parallel development, however, it’s not about who does it best. It’s about who created it first. Guard yourself, and guard other writers, too.

There’s nothing to gain proving that you can do what they do. You build your career doing what they can’t do.

Eager readers will skim your blurb and decide in an instant if this has enough originality to hook them, or if it’s just like every other generic rock star book on the market. They’re not going to pay $2.99 or more on an e-book they’ve already read, by authors who have already earned their loyalty by writing good books.

I never set out to compete with authors like Jasinda Wilder or S.C. Stephens, both of whom had published massively successful rock star romances by the time I wrote mine. It was irrelevant to me what they had written, because I wasn’t chasing after them to make some quick money.

I wrote GROUPIE originally solely for my own enjoyment, and my own therapy.

When I decided to write a rock star book, the popularity of it played a pretty small part in my development of the plot. I wasn’t out to write something that someone else had written. Instead, I decided to insert myself all over that book, since that was what was missing from all the others.

What do I find sexy about this particular trope?

For me, it’s all about the angst. I had no real desire to write some episodic sex fest tied up in a neat little bow at the end, domesticating the bad boy after hundreds of pages of good lovin.’

That type of story didn’t work for me. It didn’t excite me. It didn’t turn me on. I didn’t find it a realistic enough plot to sell to myself, so I knew there was absolutely no way I could sell it to anyone else.

Because of my own unique life experience, I’ve danced pretty close to the forbidden flame of celebrity thanks to my exposure to several fandoms. I’ve met musicians and singers. I know several personally. I’ve seen their world from the back of darkened dive bars, where fidelity often goes to die.

I grew up a groupie, no doubt about it. But the closer you get to your idols, the less they shine. They become human. Mere mortals. Flawed, just like everyone else. Sometimes even more epically so, considering that performers experience life ratcheted up to levels of intensity most of us can only imagine.

That’s what makes them so darned sexy.

It is the very same thing that makes them dangerous, which makes them even sexier.

This is what made me want to write about them, and this was why I believed I was the only writer who could pen this particular story.

Yeah, it’s sexy to be pursued by a rock star… but what if you actually got him? What then? What’s the conflict? The juicy, angsty, can’t-stop-turning-the-page conflict? It’s not so much about the happy ending for me. If my couples get a happily ever after, they have to work for it. Then, and only then, is the reward that much sweeter.

Conflict should entice you to write your book, since that’s the reason you tell your story in the first place. Boy meets girl? Whatever. How does boy get girl? That is the story.

That, by the way, is often the question that drives Act II. It’s the question everyone wants answered, so they keep turning the page. If you’ve done your job properly, you will have enough conflict in Act II to carry you all the way to the climax and resolution in Act III.

I had plenty of material to mine when I sat down to write GROUPIE. At the time I was ovaries deep in a fandom, where I had the rare and often regrettable opportunity to peek behind the curtain of fame. I saw the opportunities and excess available to people in that world, particularly when they were successful. I got to see where public image and reality collided, often with disappointing or devastating results. I also got to see, first hand, what people were willing to do to get closer to those who actually were successful. This can prove to be a toxic, explosive combination.

When I found it turning things upside down in my world, I did what I always did. I decided to write about it.

I had no intention whatsoever to write some fluffy little romance that just so happened to star a rocker. I wanted to tear down all the illusion around celebrity like tissue paper, to talk about what it was like to fall in love with someone who needs the love of the entire world, who will never completely belong to any one person, and you're expected to be okay with that because he’s a rock star. It’s a crazy, mixed-up world that turns fairy tales on their ears.

This is what spoke to me in 2011.

Since I couldn’t write about what I was going through, I decided instead to craft a fictional story and put my characters through even worse stuff. The more extreme, the better. I took what I knew to be true and just added liberal splashes of Ginger everywhere. The first and most important part of that, I put myself in the lead character, even though I, personally, had never pursued or landed anyone famous.

I, personally, didn’t dream of a happily ever after with a rock star, because at that time I was 100% certain that was impossible. You can get him into bed, that's no trick. Building a worthwhile relationship with someone who needs and wants the adoration of fans the world over is much, much trickier. This complication not only ended up driving the plot for the first book, it spawned two more.

Since I’d already decided to take a detour with the message of the book, I decided to make my lead a little more unconventional as well. I felt it was unrealistic to turn a bad boy rocker into a devoted, faithful boyfriend, so I did what everyone else thought was unrealistic as well. I used a woman of size to attract him in the first place.

I came of age in the 1980s, so I was part of that inaugural MTV generation. I watched music videos all night long till my eyeballs bled, so I was pretty familiar with the kinds of girls who typically attracted rock stars. I’d seen Bret Michaels and the women he tried to romance on “Rock of Love.” I knew the deal.

I simply didn’t care about the deal. Not one tiny, teeny weeny, itsy bitsy little bit.

What I brought to that story was my own unique perspective. By 2011, when I wrote this book, I had come to the conclusion that being one of the many ports of call for these scandalous rock stars wasn’t that far removed from being “the fat girl.”

For those of you unfamiliar, there are certain men in this world that treat women differently based on their size. To the world, they set the standard of what kind of woman they deem worthy to be their companion, with beautiful women on their arm at every opportunity. Behind closed doors, however, they seduce all the weirdoes and freaks they’d never be caught dead with in public, just because they can.

I knew something about that, thanks to my own history. I was all too familiar with the kinds of guys who would sleep with you because the opportunity presented itself for an easy score, only to be publicly linked with girls more socially acceptable as a mate.

And, just like far too many “fat girls,” groupies will accept these crumbs eagerly and happily because the opportunity to get with a hot guy who acts like he wants them just doesn’t come along every day. If you’re backstage with your idol, and he decides to take you back to his hotel for a little sis-boom-bah, you’re going to freaking go, consequences be damned.

If the guy is truly an asshole, then he’ll test the limits with you, just to see how much he can get away with, simply because you’re so desperate for his attention. The stories are legendary, and disheartening.

It’s almost as if these kinds of guys resent you for having to settle for you, so they make you pay even while they get their rocks off. They’re doing you a favor, so you get to do them a few favors too, including all the other stuff that girls with standards wouldn’t do.

Some rock stars are notorious for this kind of despicable behavior.

It was as natural as breathing to cast a fat girl as the “groupie” in question – the sweet, innocent good girl who just had the misfortune for falling for a rock star’s act. Their entire purpose on the planet is to attract you with their song. Many are masters of this, who make women fall in love with them on the regular.

Who they love in return, we don’t always know. We only see what they want to show us. This is part of the appeal, which is why getting them behind closed doors is so enticing. We need to figure out what part of their act is real, and which part is fake, and how – exactly – we can fit into it.

Since this was my show, I cast it with a size-16 heroine, a real downhome Tennessee girl who didn’t give a rat’s ass if someone didn’t like her because of her size. Ultimately this was what attracted the rock star in question. Confidence is sexy. She dared to show him she wouldn’t be an easy conquest, regardless of her size or the fact she saw him for the first time when he was up on stage and she was down in the audience. This attracted him even more.

Conflict is never easy. And that was the conflict that drove the story. The more she made him chase her, the more he wanted the conquest. When she finally caved, that’s when the true second act began. That’s when I explored the themes I wanted to explore, such as being careful what you wish for, because you just might get it.

My experiences crafted the plot. My unique perspective as a woman of size developed my heroine, and my own personal tastes with my own idols, fallen and otherwise, crafted my hero. Because of this, he wasn’t that much of a hero at the start. He was a douche, who just wanted–needed–the whole world to love him.

Just like that, I did what other rocker romance writers couldn’t do. I did me. I wrote what I saw from my own life experience. Not only did I craft characters based on people I knew in real life (Iris is real, y’all, and she’s every bit as awesome as she was in the book,) but I used stories I had heard from other fans to inspire all sorts of sexy, or even scary, scenes that placed one brick upon the other, setting up a story, flushing it out, bit by bit and piece by piece, until you had a book that only I could have written.

Likewise I used some rather negative experiences I had encountered in fandoms to create the villain, with a crazy stalker who didn’t recognize or respect boundaries. Unfortunately I had more experience with those types of girls than anyone who doesn’t actually get in front of an audience to sing should ever have to. To this day I can’t read the Talia parts of the first book. I did my time with all that in real life. It’s over now, and I’d rather keep it contained to chapters I can skip. The poison has been sucked out, and I plan to keep it that way.

, you probably see how that influenced the work.

And that’s kind of the point. If someone knows me, they can pick up any single book I’ve read and pinpoint exactly where I’ve placed myself like my own little Easter egg.

In THE LEFTOVER CLUB, a story about the oft-explored trope of unrequited love, I crafted a plot around another curvy girl who came of age in the 1980s like I did. I told the story in a series of flashbacks, from the 1970s to the 2000s, where my character Roni led a life often very similar to my own. (Big surprise, right?)

I wasn’t out to write an autobiography. I kind of, sort of did that for Nano in 2006, when I started out crafting a story using two core memories that had guided my life (for good or bad,) and ended up writing my own memoir instead.

That book is so raw and revealing that even though it’s complete, it’ll never be released.

Not every book you write will be. Some will be just for you. The others you leave like little nuggets of immortality you can leave behind as part of your legacy. That was what THE LEFTOVER CLUB really was to me. It was the opportunity to leave pretty big chunks of me and my life behind, so it will serve as a memorial to those experiences long after I’m gone.

I took my personal experience of growing up as a “fat girl” in the 1980s, and all that meant when it came to interacting with the opposite sex, and turned the knob up to 11. From the first kiss to the run-in with the gym teacher, my own experiences were tweaked and adjusted to fit right into my story. Through my characters I relived some of my childhood by using the same house I grew up in, the same music I listened to, the same movies and TV I watched. Even relationships I had with my childhood friends were immortalized in some way in the book.

As long as these things are remembered, we will live on forever. And that’s a pretty amazing thing.

It was also a scary thing. Though I had a wealth of memories to mine as I crafted my scenes, I found things got a little too real sometimes, particularly when Roni did stupid stuff. I had grown past that awkward teenager and unhappy twenty-something wife and mother who realized, too late, that her happily ever after wasn’t going to work out exactly like she had planned. Going back to revisit it was painful. And tough.

THE LEFTOVER CLUB was so not a Nano project, and in fact took me about six months to finish, with a two-month break right in the middle so I could write another project in another genre altogether. I had the material. I had the outline and the plot. I just lost my nerve. It took me months to get back into it and finagle it into something I felt was worth publishing.

It ain’t always pretty, but it’s 100% me.

Even my first “Rubenesque” romance, or romance novel starring a woman who is heavier than what was considered the norm, had me all over it. It had to, that was the reason I planted my ass to write it in the first place. There was a particular kind of book I wanted to read, and in 2007, it was pretty damned hard to come by.

This left me only one choice. I had to write it.

I was beyond done reading about all the thin, beautiful girls who found love by virtue of being so beautiful. Is it really that hard for a man to fall in love with a beautiful girl? From the books I’ve read to the movies and TV shows I’ve watched, that’s kind of happening all the time. Isn’t that the ideal in our world?

While it’s a story, it’s not the story, as proven by the fact that I myself had been romanced, wood, married and loved, even though I was *gasp* a double-digit size. What else could I do but put myself and my experiences right smack dab in the middle of LOVE PLUS ONE, which mixed “best friends,” “fish-out-of-water,” “fame/celebrity,” with a splash of “cowboy” thrown in for good measure.

I even made my heroine a writer. Sometimes I’m not even all that subtle how much Ginger I add to the plot cocktail, which in this case centered completely around an atypical beauty who had to compete for love in a public forum where everyone, including her, assumed she'd lose.

Even this book has my specific fingerprint all over it. Countless writers write writing books, but only I can write a book about my personal journey, which features Nano prominently in my growth as a writer, which established the foundation for my career as an indie. This isn't just about getting you through the month of November. This is giving you the tools you'll need to navigate the waters I've already sailed across, which will hopefully make the ride a little less choppy for you.

It it also serves to document my career as well, which further establishes my brand. That is why this book has what no other book on the subject will. Me.

They tell you to write what you know, but trick of getting that advice right is knowing which word to emphasize. Write what you know. Write what you think. Write what you feel. Write what you’ve experienced.

You… do you.

Trust me, the second you do that, the words will fly as long as you’re brave enough to let them.

This is your job as an artist. The reason that your story is different is that it comes from you. It’s shaded in with your own personal palette of experiences and perspectives that no one else can convey but you. Your stories are your opportunities to do that. If you’re looking for inspiration, you needn’t look any further than your own life. Work through the crappiest stuff and immortalize those little nuggets of truth that will shade in your manuscript with hues of authenticity only you can provide.

If you’re stuck right now, staring into the abyss of Act II, then turn your focus inward. Figure out how you can relate to your characters, and how your own life experiences might have crafted them to be the way they are. Use those experiences. Put your characters through some of these same paces. Watch what they do when you have the courage to insert a little bit of yourself into them. This will make them real and three-dimensional, which will make them more appealing for a general audience once you’re ready for one.

Now, we can’t really talk about individuality here without addressing the tendency for writers to chase trends. Like I mentioned above, every now and then a book will blow up in the marketplace and an avalanche of copycat books will flood the market as a result as everyone races to cash in on the gravy train before it zooms on past.

This is particularly true in romance, where readers are more attached to trope than to your personal experiences. “Hey, do you guys know where I can get a book where [fill in trope here].” Or, “Hey, I really love books about [fill in trope here.] Know where I can find one?”

Individuality is still highly regarded, but there’s a comfort in reading books that satisfy an itch left behind some crazy wild ride the reader never even knew they wanted. They can't get enough. They never want that feeling to end. Hence why trends exist in the first place.

Maybe you can make money from this. Maybe you can’t. It still depends on you and what you bring to the table. If you're a brand new writer or an unknown, I don't know if it's all that much, since bigger names often ride trends as well.

I once picked up a book from a bestselling writer that had all the people in my particular corner of the book world going absolutely bugshit over the release of its sequel. I decided to read the book to find out what all the fuss was about, but gave up on it fairly early in. When I was telling my best friend about it later, and told him about what had happened until the spot I stopped, he told me that it was almost identical to another popular book, a much bigger seller than the one I had abandoned. (And I knew it was a bigger seller, because I had heard of that book and that author outside of the romance world.)

It floored me to think that two such identical books could not only be released, but sell as much as they did.

This might suggest to new writers that all you need to do to become a successful, bestselling writer is to follow trends that are already on the market.

Anyone can do that. People do it all the time. Some are successful. Most are forgettable.

I challenge you not to follow trends, but to set them. It’s not the easier road, not by a long shot. But if you want a career of any importance, it is what you have to do. Otherwise your book falls into the stack with all the other wannabes that may sell some copies, it may even sell a lot of copies, but you will always be considered second to the book that started the trend in the first place. It’s up to you whether you want to win a gold medal, or if you’d be happy coming in second, third, fifth, twentieth down the list. Of the two books I mentioned, I only knew the author of one, who was light years more successful than the second simply because her book broke ground. She used her own personal fantasy and preferences to drive the story. As luck would have it, this turned out to be a latent fantasy for millions of readers worldwide. They ate it up. It changed the book world as a result.

The second one? It sold books, usually to an audience that would have bought/read them anyway. The first book was such a juggernaut that people who didn’t read at all were grabbing a copy. I'll let you figure out which one was the first (and so far only) one to make it to the screen for an even wider audience.

That is the power of individuality.

“But Ginger, how am I supposed to predict a trend?”

That is the question, isn’t it? The sad truth is that no one can. No one knows what will work until it does. Every single release is a gamble. Remember the stats on show business? Out of ten movies, only one is a blockbuster. But all ten are pitched, written, produced, filmed, distributed and marketed as if they’re going to be “the one.” You don’t know which is which and won’t know until it lands in front of the audience and they decide your winner for you.

The audience alone decides for itself what will soar and what will fall flat. The only thing you control is writing the strongest book you can, that only you can.

Take control of the only thing you can. Do what other writers can’t do. Do you.

Started First Draft: November 9, 2015 10:15am PST
Completed First draft: November 9, 2015 12:41pm PST
Word Count of first draft: 3,638
Began first revisions: November 9, 2015 01:35pm PST
Completed first revisions: November 9, 2015 2:12pm PST
Began second revisions: November 9, 2015 04:46pm PST
Completed second revisions: November 9, 2015 6:01pm PST
Updated WC: 5,329/35,724

#Nanowrimo Day Eight: Paging Moses

One of the greatest pieces of advice I ever got regarding my career as a writer was, “Don’t get it right. Get it written.”

This was revelatory when I heard it. Damn near poetic. I wanted to put it in fortune cookies immediately. It spoke like absolute truth to my soul.

That this advice came from a working screenwriter, who had a legitimate career of his own, gave it even more weight.

For most writers, there is nothing more painful than writing a passage that doesn’t sing. There are a couple of reasons for this, but it boils down to arrogance and stupidity.

There’s a certain arrogance that comes from possessing a talent that other people don’t have, particularly if it is one that they envy. “You’ve written a book? I always wanted to write a book. How awesome! You’re awesome.” And though you may shake your head and say, “Oh, no,” humbly like you’re supposed to, inside you have to admit there’s a part of you going, “You know what? I am kind of awesome.”

To do what other people don’t or can’t do means you stand out. You’re special.

As such, you’re expected to be special. All. The. Time.

And you are special. It's a rare gift to possess a talent that speaks to other people. But, truth be told, you’ll be great, at least as great as you want to be, only some of the time. Not every song is a hit. Not every book tops the NY Times. Not every movie is a blockbuster.

No matter how special we think we might be, we all flirt with mediocrity on a regular basis. This may be why it scares us so bad.

When we read something that we’ve written, and it’s good, truly, really, undeniably good, we know it. There’s a rush that goes along with it. Like you’re in line with the universe and every good gift it has to offer. You almost have to stop for a second and revel in the magic of it all. There are times I’ve written a line or a scene, and I’m so amazed and humbled it came from my fingers that I need to walk away from it for a second just to hold onto that feeling. It’s too good to wreck with all the feelings of inadequacy that will invariably come a passage or two later, when I’m once again struggling to find the words that say what I want them to say.

And it’s stupid to feel this way. It’s useless, pointless and stupid to fight those moments of inadequacy. Only by powering through them will we reach the next great passage.

The romantic notion is that truly great writers get that truly great feeling all of the time. Obviously, right? That's why they're great.

That is not the reality, however.

Let’s go back to Harper Lee, whose career was built and sustained on one book alone, one that just so happened to win a Pulitzer. Because her career revolved around one beautiful, important, award-winning book, we have this idea that she hand-picked her brilliant words like daisies, arranging them ever so deliberately and thoughtfully in a vase that she presented to a lucky publisher, who clearly must have snatched it up and published it right away because clearly, clearly, this book was something special.

I mean, it had to be, right? She had taken a year to write the thing, relying on the generosity of her friends to pay her bills so that she could concentrate solely on her writing. Her first draft certainly had to be killer as a result, right? I mean she did it the way we’re all told it should be done. Focus. Dedicate yourself to the process. Respect it. Respect yourself.

Take. The. Time. Get it right.



Then and only then will you have something great.

If you dare to produce mediocrity, then that’s where you deserve to wallow, you shameless hack.

Eh, not so fast. When Harper Lee presented the first draft of this book to a publisher, it was considered a good start, but not publication-ready. The editor felt it was more a “series of anecdotes” rather than a novel. That means it was considered special because of its potential, not necessarily its content, though she took a whole year to get it right. Lee went on record saying she “deplored” American fiction for its lack of craftsmanship. This is a writer who believed strongly in preserving the love of language, and likely spent arduous hours, days and months to make her first draft the strongest she could before she submitted it.

She may indeed have picked every single word carefully, but it still wasn’t good enough to do what this book ultimately ended up doing. If you don’t believe me, then you can simply read “Go Set a Watchman,” which was essentially the first draft of “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

This was essentially the novel they spent two years plucking and refining to get it into the shape TKAM is today, turning a group of charming ideas into an actual story. If you read them back to back, you get an idea of where an idea becomes an actual book, because you will have two drafts to compare to each other.

One won the Pulitzer. One didn’t. I’ll let you figure out which was which.

In other words, the “craftsmanship” didn’t depend solely on her first draft, which showed promise, but it wasn’t completely realized, no matter how much time she had spent to get it right.

Simply put, she didn’t.

Thankfully for her, it wasn’t carved in stone. It could be manipulated, like clay, until all the imperfections were addressed. Then, and only then, was it in fighting shape to literally mold her destiny based on the strength of one book.

No matter how hard it is sometimes to pull those words out of your keister, nothing that we ever write is written in stone.

Unless, of course, you’re chiseling in stone tablets, in which case – you do your own thing. This chapter won’t apply to you.

For the rest of us, the process is a little more flexible. And thank God. Otherwise none of us would have ever read “To Kill a Mockingbird” at all. But we wouldn’t have TKAM if it weren’t for “Go Set a Watchman,” which, as a first draft, wasn’t fit for publication. Though imperfect, it still had value. If she hadn’t have written it, she wouldn’t have sent it in. If she hadn’t sent it in, no one would have seen the potential of what she had set out to do, or got behind her and helped her do it.

It’s irrational to fear your first draft being imperfect. You might as well fear the sun rising every morning. Your first draft will be fraught with imperfections that will need to be addressed if you want to publish it. Even a blog post… even a Facebook comment… all these things we writers put out into the word generally go through a thorough screening process.

That’s what it means to honor the craft and love the language. A writer who doesn’t take pride in what she writes, even in the smallest, most casual context shows the world that she doesn’t give a crap about the stuff she peddles on the open market.

Your rep starts and ends with what you publish.

This is why I obsessively self-edit even the smallest responses, which can even include text messages if I’m honest. I’m one of those word snobs that will not text you back if you send me text shorthand. The only way I’ll forgive changing “you” to “u” or “to/two/too” to “2” or for to “4” is if your name is Prince.

Even when I had to use flip phones and cycled through each number to get the letter I needed to spell it out correctly, that’s exactly what I did, which was why I didn’t text that much.

I don’t text much now because autocorrect is my arch nemesis. I type fast, as you can tell, so I’ll craft a quick text and I often don’t do a second read through until my finger has already hit send, where I’ll spot that autocorrect fail with a sinking gut, instantly shamed that anything I might have written when out in the world with known errors.



If I know another person is going to read what I write, I am a tad neurotic about getting it right.

The only real exception to this rule is when I instant message my best friend. We’ve been instant messaging each other every single night since the 1990s, and while I will go out of my way to correct errors before I hit send, my best friend simply doesn’t care. He knows what I mean when I talk, yet I still want to present my best work, even in casual conversation.

I’ve gotten better, but I’m still fairly neurotic.

As a result, I fiercely protect first drafts. Those drafts are for me and no one else. No one reads them, not even my beta readers. Hell, I don’t even read them. I write and move on, write and move on, until I cross the finish line. I don’t worry about the second draft until I’m completely done with the first. As such, I give myself permission to do whatever I want with Draft 1. When we get to the chapter on editing, much later, when we’re ready for it, I’ll finally release an example of a first draft, and then I’ll edit it and show you how I correct it into something I feel more comfortable publishing.

For the purposes of this experiment, what you’ve been reading are the second or third drafts, depending on how much time I have to spend on it and how obsessive I want to be that day.

They’re still not perfect, though. Because of this, these second and third drafts that you’re reading will undergo a few more editing passes before I would ever think to publish them in a book. The reason for this is the same brand protection I mentioned above. You develop your reputation with everything you put out into the world, whether it be a blog post, a Facebook comment or even a 140-character tweet.

Nothing ruins your rep faster than publishing something before it’s ready.

A first draft is not ready.

Say it with me: A first draft is not ready.

One more time with feeling: A FIRST DRAFT IS NOT READY.

Got it?

Good.

It’s okay to be imperfect because it’s inevitable. Freaking out about it is a total waste of time. You’ll never be perfect, not without some help, and this is not the time you need to worry about perfection anyway. You have one job and one job only: finish a first draft.

Which…?

(Say it with me kids: A FIRST DRAFT IS NOT READY FOR PUBLICATION.)

I seriously think we need a jingle complete with a bouncy ball to reinforce this. Someone get on that.

Okay. So. Harper Lee wasn’t perfect out of the gate. Stephen King, the prolific, bestselling, iconic master of horror himself, likewise threw away the first few pages of his novel, “Carrie,” which his wife had to fish out of the garbage and insist that he finish. He decided to do so because he didn’t have any other ideas to work on at the time. He took what started as a short story, to prove that he could write a female character, and expanded it into a novel.

Though it was his fourth to write, it was his first to publish. I’m 100% sure it went through rigorous editing as a result. That first draft, which he nearly abandoned himself, was not the book you can buy at a bookstore today, which, (sorry Stephen,) is one of his weakest works.

(A weak Stephen King book is still a pretty good book, proving, once again, perfection is overrated.)

He never would have been “Stephen King” had he not forced himself to work through the imperfections and just get it written.

Thus a career was born.

Are you starting to see, now, the value of finishing an imperfect work?

You will note that I tend to overwrite, and much of that I’m leaving intact for the moment, even if I’m going to delete a lot of it later, once I get a clearer idea of the exact message I want to get across in each chapter, and how it fits into the overall book.

The only reason I’m showing you this much is to show you what it takes to get from Word 1 to Word 50,000 and beyond. You do it by writing one word at a time, even if it’s less than perfect. The fact that none of the chapters are perfect is kind of the point of the experiment.

None of this is written in stone. I can fix whatever problems there are later, in the editing process.

Like I’m supposed to.



The first draft is your chance to get to know your story and fall truly in love with it. The second draft and beyond is to cut it down with a fine-edged sword to do it justice.

Write now. Fix later. Even if it’s a clunky passage you only write to bridge one scene to another, just because you’re not exactly sure how to piece it all together yet, you can delete what doesn’t work for you later on.



“Delete.” It’s both the scariest and most liberating word for any writer in the 21st century. It’s scary because you know that you will inevitably be faced with chopping your poor little darlings to bits, and nothing hurts worse than finely crafting a sentence only to realize you don’t even need it when it’s all said and done.

It’s liberating because you are now free to explore whatever ideas you want to, even though not all of them will serve you.

And they won’t. Get used to that now. Not every brilliant piece of dialog needs to be spoken. Not every single idea needs to be expressed. Not every single sub-plot needs to be explored. And worse… not every single book you write will meet the muster for publication, certainly not in the beginning. If you let that stop you, you’ll never be a published writer. Real writers find a reason to write, not an excuse to quit.

If you can quit, you should, because this life is not built for those who aren’t willing to give it their all and go for broke every single time they sit at a computer. If you’re afraid of writing poorly, you’ll never develop the skills to become great. Confidence and competency come by doing.



Power through that first draft. Get something concrete in your hands. Then give it to someone who knows more than you do about writing and let them show you where things that fell flat, or didn’t connect, or failed to land. As you fix these problems, you learn what to do, what not to do, what to keep and what not to keep. This will make you stronger. This will make you better.

This is a step in the right direction, not your only chance to scale the Grand Canyon. You may one day, soaring through the sky boosted by the rocket on your back powered by a bestselling book or a Pulitzer award. But you’re not going to get there unless you’re willing to get through that first draft.

If it’s still crap at the end, it’s not the end of the world. You can always start over from scratch. Out of 32 books written, I’ve done four page-one rewrites, which means I started the whole thing over from scratch. I wasn’t just tweaking and revising. I discarded everything because I knew that it would never do the story justice as it was.

For those keeping score, three of those page-one rewrites were my first three books.

For a new writer especially, it seems unthinkable that you could write pages and pages and pages and pages – and then throw it all away. We toil and fret so hard over each and every word that it’s often physically painful to file 13 any of it.

When we were younger, my best friend Jeff told me that a well-known author (I want to say Sidney Sheldon) was notorious for writing pages and pages and pages only to throw them all away the day after he wrote them.

I found this incomprehensible. He threw them away?? How is that even possible? I have a plastic tub FULL of things that I have written over the years, kept in the very shape I created them, on notebook paper or anything else I could fill with words. I even have poetry written on the backs of Burger King paper tray liners. As any writer will tell you, the Muse is not a conscientious guest. She’ll show up when she damn well feels like it, whether you’re ready or not.



I’d jot down verses as they came to me, even if it was when I worked a double shift at a restaurant. I kept every single remnant. Each word was a part of me.

And you want me to throw them away?

Are you MAD, man?

I keep everything, even if it’s a first draft on my computer. You can’t have them. They’re mine. I gave birth to them and I love each and every one, even if I can never read them again because I’ll cringe into a full-body cramp.

There’s a reason why all those embryonic ideas are sitting in a big plastic bin in my closet, or tucked away never to be found on my computer. The first draft of anything is a starting point of greatness, not greatness itself.

This is true even if you feel great as you write it. Writing is very cathartic. You have ideas rambling around in your head all the time. Putting them on paper is a bit of a release of sorts. There is often a rush that occurs as a result. That’s why new writers are so excited about a premature draft to the point that they’ll send it out, as is, to seek representation. (Or publish it without benefit of running it past a whole new set of eyes to catch any errors.)

Since I’ve done the former, I avoid like hell the latter.

A first draft can be good enough to show potential, but it’s a hint of that potential only. If you want to sell what you write, you need to make peace with the idea that every single thing written must be revised. Every. Single. Thing. Even your pretty, precious baby will face the cold red death of the editor’s pen. It has to. If you want your writing to cut like a sword, you have to be willing to forge it in fire.

Writing the first draft is just the first step of this process.

Truth be told, this is the most liberating place you could be.

The act of creation allows you carte blanche to tell your story your way. It is allowed to be clunky. It is forgiven for being imperfect. It’s the seed of your idea, not the complete harvest. In the creation process, you can say, “Screw the rules!” and write whatever you want to write. If you want to stick a purple hippo doing the merengue in the middle of your story, who’s to stop you? This is your playground. You can do whatever you want.

Now is not the time to worry about the agents or publication, or movie rights, or book signings. You don’t even have to worry about the edit. Just open up your work in progress (WIP) and let her rip. Do your thing. Tell the story in a way that you thoroughly understand it. Say every single thing you want to say.

If you’re lucky, you’ll be able to keep three out of every ten. If you’re really lucky, you’ll find a couple of tasty little morsels of brilliance somewhere along the buffet.

You won’t know which is which until you get it written.

This is not the time to worry about perfection. This is not the time to fret over every single word as if it is chiseled out of stone, delivered right from the hand of God himself. If you craft every sentence in such a way, it’s no wonder it takes months and years to complete a draft.

“Well, Ginger, that’s how you produce quality content.”

OR…

You could write knowing that every single word is tenuously placed, a mere suggestion that may or may not make it to the final draft, and that’s okay. Stephen King is a writer same as you. The only reason he doesn’t let “writer’s block” stop him from clocking in his word requirements every day is because he doesn’t let the fear of imperfect writing block him.

To get through your set writing goals per day, you’re going to have to make peace with the idea you’re going to write some clunkers, some stinkers, and a lot of stuff that will fall on the floor in the editing process.

It happens to Every. Single. Thing. Everything. Whether it’s a movie or a book or a freaking greeting card, every single thing you write for consumption will be revised.

I already mentioned my time spent as a freelancer, where I produced quite a bit of content over short periods of time for a paycheck. These all went through the editing process. Most of the time, I didn’t get anything back. I’d say roughly 85% of my content went on to publication without my seeing it again.

That doesn’t mean it wasn’t edited, tweaked or revised. It just means that the editor didn’t need my input on what needed to be changed. Whether it was a typo or correcting a sentence or getting rid of unnecessary words, anything that didn’t require my rubber stamp to make the change was changed for me, and then released to the public.

Was I simply more careful with 85% of my content, picking and choosing every single word and magically finding the combination that fit? No. I wrote every single article with the same focus and care. Some editors may have been pickier than others, granted. A lot of the editing process boils down to that one person’s perception of the content. As you can tell from reader reviews, no one reads the same content, even if they see all the words in exactly the same order.

The editing process is a filter, to whittle away what doesn’t serve the content, to make the statement more concise and accessible. An outside source, who doesn’t know where your story is going, who needs to understand what is going on from only the material presented, rather than your intent, will be able to spot where it fails on both of those fronts. That’s what editing does. It makes what you intend to say what you do say, where everyone else can understand it.

Its function is different from the act of creation because it has to be. It takes something that has that spark of potential and polishes it, refines it, makes it pretty, makes it strong.

The editing process turns that potential of greatness into a reality.

This is not your job right now. That is not your focus right now. You can’t ice a cake unless it has been baked. No one can edit what isn’t on the page. Even if you have to throw away ten pages December 1, write five pages today. It doesn’t matter if they’re crappy. It doesn’t matter if they’re imperfect. With every word you write, your story, your characters and your message comes more fully into focus.

Here’s the best news of all. These imperfections are where you learn. My husband always says, “If nobody tells you what you’re doing wrong, how will you know?” You’ll learn what you did that was wrong and you’ll learn what to do to fix it, and these are the skills you need to acquire. The more skilled you are, the easier it is to sink the basket on the first throw. The more experience you have, the stronger and better your content will be.

It will still never be completely perfect, but the rewrite/editing work you do on the back end won’t be as monumental as the creation process that’s ahead of you now.*

Creation is hard, which is why 80% of Nanowrimoers usually abandon their projects. Writing a book, one little ol’ word at a time, is daunting, even if you’ve done it before. I have 32 books under my belt, yet the first 20,000 – 30,000 words of any new project I write are always the hardest. It’s an uphill climb no matter how experienced you are.

But if you’ve done your job properly, setting up a plot and characters that will sustain themselves organically towards your ultimate destination, it’ll be a whole lot easier (and more fun) to swoop down that first drop and loop through the rest of your roller coaster, carried along by your own momentum. And if it’s not perfect, who cares? The first draft is not who you are as a writer. It’s a part of who you’re going to be.

So take some of the pressure off yourself, Moses. Put down your chisel. It’s not time for that yet. It’s time for you play around in the sandbox for a while. If your castles aren’t perfect, don’t worry. You can “start over” again all the way up until you hit publish, and it’s a virtual certainty that you will.

Don’t get it right.

Get it written.

Your time starts… now.



*I’m going to show you the “first draft” of that paragraph above, just because the irony is too delicious. Enjoy:



Started First Draft: November 8, 2015 12:47pm PST
Completed First draft: November 8, 2015 3:05pm PST
Word Count of first draft: 3,528
Completed revisions: November 8, 2015 4:04pm PST
Updated WC: 4,361/30,363

#Nanowrimo Day Seven: No Excuses

So it’s Day Seven and I’ve made it almost halfway through the challenge, word-count wise anyway. The way the project is outlined, I’ll still have further to go once I reach the 50,000-word threshold if I want to complete the book, which puts me right on schedule. If I want to finish a book, which for me runs more like 80,000 words, then I’ll have to keep going even after I “win” by the word count, in order to truly finish the book by the end of November. A memoir, which is what this is oddly shaping up to be, typically runs about that length, so that gives me a goal beyond Nano. And that’s not a bad thing to have, especially if you’re a planner like me.

Part of the reason why I have reached this benchmark is because I am a full-time writer who can devote solid chunks of time to actual writing. When you’re not a full-time writer, you daydream what it would be like to crawl into your hole under the bridge and pound out word after word for at least eight hours a day, getting paid to create full-time like a perfect writing job would allow.

But as you can see, most of my writing sessions are over after about four hours, even with revisions. If I weren’t doing a cursory edit prior to publishing these chapters on the blog, it’d be even less time. Or I’d write even more, clocking in two chapters a day instead of only one. Unless I’m approaching a deadline, that’s typically the norm. My average content ranges anywhere from 3000 words to 5000 words written per day. Imagine how many books I could write if writing was all I did.

For most independently published writers, large chunks of time devoted solely to writing are a pipe dream. When you’re a novelist, you get paid to write books. But in order to get paid, you have to worry about all the marketing side of things, too. You’re constantly doing PR work for yourself, setting aside the time to work on social media and building your brand. If you’re in between projects you’re preparing for whatever project comes next, because indie publishing is a numbers game that forces you to be forward thinking.

You’re also doing all the real life stuff that gets shoved to the side whenever you’re racing to complete a deadline.

If I could break up my job throughout the day in specific categories, creating content only takes up probably 25% of the time. The rest is spent marketing, researching, bookkeeping and other assorted administrative work. As an indie, I wear a lot of hats. The buck pretty much starts and ends with me. This means I’m my own boss, but, to be honest with you… I’m a bit of a hardass. This is why, even though my schedule is chock-full, with a book to read, an edit to finish, ARCs to prepare, an interview to go to, paperwork to notarize, housework to do, chauffeur duties and general living stuff like showering, eating and sleeping, if I dare *whisper* that I don't think I can do this Nano project, which is not something I'm doing for profit or pay, I'm quick to remind myself...



I’m one of those bosses who knows where her employee’s limits are and pushes her to them every chance I get.

I’m also the kind of boss who can see through any bullshit excuses if those goals and deadlines aren’t met. Big ambition requires lots more discipline, remember. And I demand it of myself, even when I’m juggling at least fifteen other chainsaws that day. Even if it’s a holiday, birthday or anniversary. Even if I’m sick. Even if I’m so stressed out I can’t sleep at night.

I’ll open up my computer and start writing, because there’s no excuse I’ll accept why I don’t.

For those who don’t know, I’m a huge fan of the show “Empire.” This Fox drama centers on the Lyon family, who head up a highly successful record label called “Empire.” That is truly what it is, and patriarch Lucious Lyon (Terrence Howard) rules just like an emperor would.

In a recent episode, he was working on a song with his son, Jamal (Jussie Smollett.) Due to some personal upheaval in his life, Jamal wasn’t feeling it. Lucious looked him point blank in the face and told him to put all the chaos, confusion, frustration and heartache into the music.

Chaos was how “Empire” was founded, with Lucious paving the way to success with a #NoExcuses attitude that meant business comes first, and bullshit comes dead last.

Given that bullshit, chaos, confusion, frustration and heartache have singlehandedly driven my writing career even before I could legitimately say I had one, this line spoke to me.

2015 has not been the easiest year for me. Like far too many indies, I’ve been swept away with the changing tide of our publishing world, changes that virtually derailed my momentum six months after I caught my first real express to success.

Given I had waited 33 years to catch it, I was extraordinarily bummed to find it only lasted for a good six months before I had to transfer, once again, back to Slow Poke station. This business is feast or famine, like I told you. We’ve discussed the statistics before. Only 20% of indies make over $1000 a year, which means some folks make $1001 and some people make millions.

Most come closer to the first number than they do the second. Statistics indicate that the biggest chunk of these writers make around the $10,000 mark annually, if you’re using $10,000 annually as the base.

In case you were wondering, a full-time job working at a fast food restaurant for minimum wage at the federal level is $15,080.

This keeps writers motivated to keep going, particularly when writing is their only job.

There’s no excuse for me, then, to not produce content. It’s either this or McDonalds, and the day that McDonald’s pays more, I may have some hard choices to make.

Until then, I’m fending off the wolves at the door with every word I write.

Hence why I write so many.

So even when my personal life has imploded around me all year, I’ve had to ignore all the bullets whizzing past my head and keep plodding forward. If I fell down, I didn’t allow myself the luxury of staying down. If I had a bad day, or a bad week, or a bad month, I had to suck it up and get back in the ring, even if there was blood in my eyes from the last sucker punch.

There was nothing left to do but put it in the content.

When I was homeless, I put all the fear and the uncertainty into the content. After my youngest son died, I put all the sadness and heartache into the content. When I found myself embroiled in a saga that involved a world where everything I encountered was as fake, and worthless, as Monopoly* money, friendships included, I put the frustration and the angst into the content.

The most significant writing I’ve done always happened at times of chaos.

So even though my mother is in hospice three states away with very little time left to live, and a half-sibling just passed away, and I’m getting closer and closer to, “You want fries with that?” I have no excuses to piss away a project.

Honestly if I wasn’t working, I’d likely be falling apart.

For most of you, the circumstances aren’t quite so dire. For some, it’s a matter of fitting in your writing project around family and full-time jobs. I completed four of my nine past Nanos doing that very thing. So I know it can be done. I can tell you how to do it. I just can’t do it for you. It’s up to you to decide if it’s worth it.

Because that’s what it all boils down to. If you want something, you make it happen. If you don’t, you make an excuse.

I do that weekly with the exercise. I want to get more fit, but that’s going to take a lot of work, and some days it’s easier to blow it off and just say, “I’ll do it tomorrow,” even though I’m relatively sure I won’t.

The time is going to pass either way. If I don’t reach my goals because I didn’t use it wisely, there’s really no excuse that covers it. Not really. So let’s run down some common excuses that you can torpedo the second they try to march into your brain.

EXCUSE NUMBER 1: YOU CAN’T WRITE A BOOK IN A MONTH.

If you look at the stats, hundreds of thousands** of people have participated in Nanowrimo since it began in 1999. Usually around only 20% actually complete the task annually. This proves that it’s quite difficult to write a 50,000-word book in a month, but it’s not impossible.

We need to stop treating it like it’s some mystical thing that happens to some and not others by virtue of luck. It is an accomplishment, not some errant miracle. Accomplishments take time, focus and dedication; most people are capable of all three.

You can write 50,000 thousand words in a month. It’s completely doable. Stephen King, whose daily count is around 2000 words per day, writes about 60,000 a month without the benefit of Nano at all.

If this is what you want to do for a full-time job one day, you’re going to have to treat it as such. Teach yourself the discipline first. Writer is not a title you’re given, it’s a title you earn. That comes only by doing. It’s up to you to do.

So why aren’t you?

EXCUSE #2: I DON’T HAVE THE TIME

This one I can kinda sorta give you, because it’s legitimate. It takes time to write 1,667 words a day. Even if you were merely transcribing 1,667 words a day, this would take time and effort. So I’m not going to blow sunshine up your butt here and say there is any shortcut around taking that time. It’s going to take what it takes and it’s up to you to figure out how to wedge it in.

It’s like the exercise bike. I only ride for 30 minutes at a stretch, but some days those 30 minutes are easier to fit in than others.

And that is why the whole time thing still falls under the heading of an excuse, even when it’s often a valid reason.

Time is what you make of it. We’re all given the same 24 hours every single day. It is how we choose to spend it that will determine our fate.

If you’ve decided to commit to Nano, it’s up to you to make the time. It’s up to you to fit the writing somewhere into your daily routine, even if it’s getting up an hour earlier and going to bed an hour later.

The whole point of Nano is to train you how to complete a project. If you’re a hobbyist or an aspiring writer who joins just to see if you could write a book in a month, you might not care if you complete it or not. As such, you’re not going to jump through any real hoops to do it. You’re not going to discomfort yourself. You’ll fit it in where you can and just wait to see what happens in the community frenzy that is Nanowrimo.

Perfectly valid, by the way. Make it work for you however you can.

If, however, you want to make this your full-time job, then you have to approach it like career, building one block at a time. For you, Nano isn’t some experiment. It’s a practice run. It’s your training ground. Just like the person who juggles going to college with work and family to prepare for their future careers, your ‘education’ involves all the same sacrifices. You will have to fit it in where you can, and find ways to fit it in where you can’t. This may mean giving up a Saturday or two for marathons to get you caught up, taking advantage of your rare downtime to rack up some serious word counts. It may mean giving up an hour of TV a night, or whipping out your notepad and writing on your breaks at work or school. If you’re a parent, particular of smaller kids, you’ll need to work around naps and playtime and family time and school. While your kids are doing their homework, do some of yours.

Better still, get your kids involved in the creative process if they’re so inclined. Enlist them as writing buddies, or artistic buddies. Challenge them to write stories or draw pictures when you’re writing your 1,667 for the day. Set an example. Encourage creativity. Get everyone in your family in on your goal so that it’s every bit their victory as it is yours at month’s end.

If you want to make this your dream career, your sacrifices and accomplishments are ultimately going to be theirs as well. Might as well get them used to it now. If it means that much to you, they’ll understand.

Look for opportunities, rather than excuses. Writing is one of the few jobs where you can do it anywhere, even if it looks like you’re doing nothing at all. You can even mentally prepare for what you need to do in your next chapter while you’re stuck in traffic. Use voice notes and scratch paper and jot down anything and everything that will make your next writing session a little easier.

This is where outlines prove the most useful. If you go into every writing session with a definite goal to accomplish, it’s going to go a lot smoother than just flying by the seat of your pants, praying that the words will come when you’re not exactly sure your Muse is going to report for duty that day.

Which brings us to…

EXCUSE #3: I HAVE WRITER’S BLOCK.

Yeah. No, you don’t. And even if you did, it’s not a valid excuse to stop writing.

I get that some days the words come easier than other days. Some days, it’s like pulling teeth to write a sentence. Some days, every single letter you type feels wrong. It just doesn’t sit well. It nags at your spirit and just brings you down, wondering why you ever wanted to be a writer in the first place.



Some days you’re going to stare at a blinking cursor for long minutes at a stretch as you mentally craft and discard sentences before they ever make it to the page. Some days you might not even reach that threshold of 1,667 words.

This makes it even more important to write every single day. Some days will be crap writing days. But some won’t. Some days it’ll be like your muse turned on a faucet and each perfect word just magically drops from heaven above. On those days, you’ll not only reach your threshold, you’ll pass it. The feeling is so euphoric that you won’t want to stop. You may stay up an extra hour that night, writing a thousand extra words, just because you could. And you should.

I love those days. Those days allow for the crap days. Since I know I need to average 1,667 words a day, the days I write 3,334 words virtually give me a day for free. I like that. I like being ahead of the game.

I’m a gold-star kinda girl, and have been since I was chasing honors in elementary school. I always want to do more than what is expected of me. If I only wrote 1,667 words a day and didn’t have that pretty blue progress bar way ahead of where it needed to be, it would stress me out. I would feel the pressure of the deadline. I would know that there wasn’t any wiggle room for a bad day where life reared its ugly head, or a crap writing day were I was lucky to reach a thousand words, much less the minimum.

If you struggle to meet that writing goal on a regular basis, it could be as simple as you not understanding the story you want to tell. This is also where the outlines come in handy, because you know the direction you’re going before you ever get started. Once you train yourself to do that, writer’s block will no longer intimidate you. You’ll have all the materials you need to build your chapters and reach your minimums.

Maybe your story is inherently flawed, without enough conflict to sustain it, where it fades out like a candle that has run out of wick. Maybe you don’t really know your characters all that well. This is where prep work will prove most useful, because a lot of this can be fleshed out before you even start your project. We’ll go into details about those later, and how you can use that to defeat the paper dragon known as Writer’s Block. Suffice it to say, it can be done. You just have to want to do it.

EXCUSE #4: IT’S CRAP. I’M CRAP. NANOWRIMO IS CRAP. UGG!!

What did I just tell you yesterday? It’s okay to suck in a first draft. It’s not going to be pretty and perfect, no matter how carefully you want to plan every single word. Give yourself the permission to write crap. Be verbose. Be pedantic. Use improper grammar. All that can be fixed later. It’s up to you to get the basic structure in place, and sometimes there’s no other way to do it than one crappy word at a time.

If you were building a house, your first draft would basically be the beams that make up the framework of the house. These show you were the walls and doors and windows will go. Eventually. Stop worrying about the shade of the curtains and pound those nails in wherever they are needed to fortify your foundation. Yes, it may be ugly at first, but I’d rather see a crappy first draft of a book than hear all the beautiful, unrealized ideas of a book no one has the balls to stick their neck out and actually write.

Show me you want it, and I’m behind you every step of the way.

If you want it, here’s the good news. You can “win” Nanowrimo. If it’s something you really want, there’s no excuse you will personally accept to prevent you from reaching that finish line.

If you don’t want it, every opportunity will present itself as an escape door. You don’t even have to go looking for them. They’ll just magically appear. If you decide to open them, then that’s on you. It’s okay not to want to finish. Nano isn’t for everybody.

That’s not a judgment call, by the way. If you decide you don’t want to finish, who am I to judge you? You get to pass your time your way. If you want to write a book, by all means, write a book. If you have other priorities, by all means, tend to your life the way you see fit.

But if you really, really want to finish Nano, the only thing that is stopping you is you. Kick off the excuses and make it happen.

You totally can.

You totally should, if nothing more than to show yourself how much you can do when you dare to declare #NOEXCUSES.

Now if you’ll excuse me. I have an exercise bike to ride. (Or a mall to walk. Either way: NO EXCUSES!)

*Another place marker to indicate that these brand names might need to be changed for publication. Once you publish a book for profit, you have to be cautious about all the specific legalities about copyrights and trademarks. I find it best never to refer to any brand name at all in my published work. Blogs work a little different though, so this is just a reminder to myself to fix this in the editing process.

**This place marker indicates that I need to research this data further. I need to dig a little to provide more accurate data, which wasn’t coming up easily in a cursory Google search as I was writing. Since I can’t spend a whole lot of time on that today due to my own limited schedule, I decided to place a little notation so I could move past it and move on.

Started First Draft: November 7, 2015 11:36am PST
Completed First draft: November 7, 2015 1:27pm PST
Word Count of first draft: 2,911
Completed revisions: November 7, 2015 2:11pm PST
Updated WC: 3,398/25,923

#Nanowrimo Day Six: You Will Suck. (And that's okay.)

One of the greatest gifts my husband Steven ever gave to me was a hardbound copy of one of my books. It surprises me still to this day that it is one of my greatest gifts, because I knew what was coming and I was relatively certain that I was going to hate it.

Back then the idea of becoming a published writer was still fairly abstract. It was a dream only, something I hoped would happen someday in my future, but I knew without any shadow of a doubt I wasn’t prepared for it by Christmas of 2005.

Granted, I had written quite a bit by then, with five books and six screenplays under my belt, including the one I had optioned. But it was clear that having anything published or produced was still pretty far into the future. (Six years to be exact.) I had a lot to learn. And I had a lot more work to do.

Steven decided I shouldn’t have to wait to see my name in print, and decided that for Christmas, he’d have one of my books professionally bound. Normally this would be a killer present for an unpublished author. And it would have been, had it not been for one teeny tiny problem.

The reason I just knew I would hate it was because of the version of the book he chose to–pardon the pun–immortalize. He decided he wanted to use the first draft of my novel, MY IMMORTAL, which I had written the year before for Nano.

This was how I managed to figure out what he was up to, no matter how sly he thought he was being. He had to get this draft from me somehow, and, like most writers, I was quite unwilling to give it up.

This made me 100% certain I’d hate the gift when he finally presented it to me.

By then I had worked through subsequent drafts, so I knew just how badly written that first draft was. You never realize that at the end of the draft, when you crawl, bloody and broken, over the finish line, with just enough stamina to thrust your fist in the air like you're stuck in a John Hughes movie.

I told him, ever so gently, in my sweet Southern way, that a snowball had a better chance in hell than he did getting that first draft. It, like every other first draft in existence, sucked way too much to be published as it was.

But he was insistent. He didn’t seem to care that this draft sucked the big one, and how much it would physically pain me to revisit it even if it was hardbound in leather. He wanted to honor my accomplishment of writing a book, any book, even a sucky one.

One thing you should know about my husband. When he decides he wants to do something a certain way, he’s fairly obnoxious about it. Personally I think that’s why we get along so well. We’re both the kind of people that, when we dig our heels in, it’s because we really, really, really believe in what we are doing, making us impossible to deter.

Long story short: he badgered me until I caved.

Finally I just plugged my nose and handed over that stinky, cruddy, awful, error-filled, verbose, overwritten, hastily written piece of suckatude and let him do his thing. It clearly meant more to him than it did to me, and letting him do what he wanted was kind of my Christmas gift to him.

I was certain I’d have to feign any kind of enthusiasm for the gift all the way up until I opened the box and saw the book for the first time.

I didn’t know how badly I wanted to see my name in print until the first time I did. I promptly burst into tears, deciding in about a second that this was the best gift ever.

That book has had a special place on our bookshelf every year since.



Now ask me how many times I’ve cracked it open to read it. Ask me how many times anyone has read it. I’ll give you a hint; it’s the same number.

It’s also the same number of people will be able to read it going into the future.

You’re basically going to have to pry the book out of my cold, dead hands, because no one gets to read it while there is still breath in my body. Nope. Nada. Can’t help you. No one is ever going to read it. Ever, ever, ever.

Why?

It sucked.

Even though it was book #4, written 23 years after that first Halloween writing assignment, it sucked. Even though I live-blogged it as I wrote it, publishing a chapter a day with minimal editing for a wide MySpace audience, who read along enthusiastically, enthralled by the sophomoric attempt, as well as my ambitious endeavor to write a book in a month, it sucked.

It sucked, it sucked, it sucked.



It sucked because it was a first draft. It sucked because, even with those 23 years, four novels and six screenplays under my belt, I was still figuring out who I was as a writer. It sucked because I was feeling my way along, trying and discarding new ideas, experimenting, and, more often than not, falling right on my face.

Fortunately that’s what those first few books are for. They exist for the sole purpose of learning how not to suck. It’s a gauntlet, if you will. An obstacle course you must navigate in order to get better.

Ironically, that’s also the reason that so many people never turn “I wish,” into “I did.”

Too many writers are afraid to suck.

Worse, we like to give them a gold star for it. We nod in agreement that writing a bad book is a waste of time. Too many bad books exist already, written and even published by those who clearly aren’t as self-aware as these careful, thoughtful writers who respect the process way too much to do something as heinous as write a bad book. On purpose. Anyone who would willingly write a sucky book is obviously a hack looking to make a fast buck, someone who doesn’t take the process seriously. Somewhere along the line we decided it showed disciplined when a writer recognized his or her limitations and curbed their enthusiasm to write accordingly.

Funny thing about writing within such limitations. It doesn’t give you much room to grow.

The best gift that Steven gave me that year was the permission to suck. It was okay. It was necessary.

No matter what you do in life, you're usually not going to ace it on the first try. In my book BACK FOR SECONDS, my heroine had to start her life over after a bitter, unexpected divorce. She threw herself into her cooking, where she used the challenge of creating delectable treats that were iced to perfection to renew her confidence. She didn't succeed the first try. In fact there was one notable scene where she had a minor meltdown, crushing those cookies into a fine powder because she couldn't get it right, not the way she wanted it.

The bigger your dream, the higher your standards.

Like anyone else who has accomplished anything great, she didn't use that suckatude as an excuse to stop. She saw it as an opportunity to get better, to learn from her mistakes. She didn't stop just because she sucked. She kept going, because perfecting this task meant more to her.

Writing a sucky book doesn't mean you don't care about or respect the process. It means you're not about to let something as temporary as sucking stop you from doing what it is you want to do.

And it didn’t stop me, at all, from seeing my dream realized. In fact, it inspired me to work a lot harder on the next book, just so it would suck less. It was the only way I’d see my name in print “for real.”

Writing a great book starts with writing rotten ones, and that’s just the truth. The first book you write will always be the worst book you write, even if you’re a writing prodigy. Raw talent likely got you into the game, but only skill can take you from a wide-eyed wannabe to an accomplished author. The only way you gain that skill is through experience. Lots and lots of experience. To learn how to write you must write… and you must write a lot. Even if it’s bad. Even if it sucks. You have to crawl before you learn how to walk and all that.

Don't take my word for it. The great Stephen King has said there are only two things you need to do to become a writer. Read a lot and write a lot.

Most of us can handle the reading part. A wordsmith typically starts as a bibliophile. We love everything about the written word. We consume all types of books and absorb all sorts of things from all types of stories and storytellers, even when we’re not aware that’s what we are doing.

Indeed, many writers start their journey assimilating what they’ve read and trying to duplicate it, which is one of the reasons so many of those first few attempts suck so badly. It’s not completely genuine or authentic. You’re simply rehashing what you’ve read in the past, forcing it through your own inexperienced filter until it resembles anything even remotely bookish.

That’s how it happened for me, anyway.

It’s kind of inevitable, really. When you’re a new writer, you’re still figuring out who you are. You have an idea what you want to say, and you lean on all the books you’ve ever read to show you how to say it.

And that’s great. You should read a ton of books. Lots and lots.

The more you read, the better you’ll write. It’s inevitable.

But here’s the part about that lesson we all miss. We are often spared all the yucky, sucky parts. We don’t get to see the first fledgling drafts of these novels, the ones that the publishers or agents said, “Yeah… it’s a’ight, but we’re going to have to put some work into it before it can go to market.”

Every great book has gone through some sort of editing process, which exists solely to minimize the suckatude. What you hold in your hand is a finished product. It is not where that writer started, not by a long shot.

We’ve all been judging our first efforts by the finished product of others as if they are the same thing, and they’re just not.

This sets up an unrealistic expectation for your own work. When you produce your first draft and you realize yourself that it doesn’t stand up to all the books you’ve read, it can be a real killjoy that will strike you right in the heart of your insecurities. This can make you shelve your projects, hidden away in some dark drawer, never to see the light of day, because you’d be mortified if anyone knew just how badly you suck. You need to be aware of and recognize your limitations, and amend yourself accordingly.

That’s how I always approached it, anyway.

Maybe that was why I could write five books and six screenplays and still be horribly mortified by the suckatude. I valued perfection over progress, and really didn’t get anywhere as a result.

It’s a sobering discovery when you learn that no matter how badly you want that gold star, or to be recognized for your spark, that bright creative genius we’ve talked about time and again, that thing that makes you special and sets you apart from everyone else, you start out sucking every bit as much as everyone else.

Every creative type will struggle with this at some point, particularly at the beginning of their careers. This is when you suck harder than you will ever suck.

At some point your inexperience will frustrate you, because you will not be able to do your brilliant ideas justice.

Yeah. That happened to me.

Nothing shuts your dreams down faster. Many writers are unwilling, and often discouraged, from writing a bad book, even when it’s a necessary part of writing a great one.

Ray Bradbury once advised writers to write 52 stories over 52 weeks, contending that it is impossible to write 52 bad stories in a row. Like any underdeveloped muscle, you have to work it out in order to get the kind of results you want. No one wakes up with a six-pack just because they really, really want them. You have to put in the time. You have to do the work.

It is in the suckatude that you learn how not to suck. And every single writer has gone through this process, whether you got to see it or not.

Even the great Harper Lee, whose book “To Kill a Mockingbird” was an award-winning classic that sustained her entire career on only one novel, sucked at first. When she sent in the book that would become TKAM, it wasn’t ready for publication at all. It had a spark of genius, but it was mired in just enough suckatude to throw the brakes on the whole thing until they could fix it.

You didn’t get to see that part. You didn’t get to see the long hours of sitting in front of a typewriter, toiling over each word choice. You didn’t get to see the back and forth with the editors, where Ms. Lee worked over the period of two years to turn that sow's ear into a silk purse. All you see is the polished, award-winning classic sitting on the bookshelf. Every word she wrote was not, as it turns out, pure gold, and she needed a little help from other people to learn how to shake off the suckatude.

As we all do.

Every new writer will ultimately face this. You’re going to suck. I sucked. Stephen King sucked. Harper Lee sucked. We all had to start somewhere in order to learn how not to suck.

Since everyone assumes that anything written in 30 days must suck by default, I say use Nanowrimo as your excuse to suck… with style.



Since you can't avoid it, you might as well learn to embrace the suckatude. Go into each writing session knowing that you might suck that day, but that’s okay. If you keep at it, day by day, word by word, you’re going to suck a little less by month’s end, simply because you’re working out that muscle.

Not every word you write will drip with honey. My typical book runs anywhere from 80,000 – 100,000 words, and of those words, there are probably ten to twenty really great passages, the kind that are so good they actually make me question whether I could have written them. When I edit the work, however, I’m ready to throw about 70% of it back, endlessly tweaking and fidgeting to get it just so.



In fact, much of your output will frustrate you. It is not an easy thing to arrange words on a page. Often they will feel inadequate in the sheer scope of what you're trying to do. Writing a book is hard. Anyone who tells you otherwise most likely hasn’t written one, particularly one that doesn’t suck. (Because that's even harder.)

Writing anything is hard, short format, long format, doesn’t matter. Every word you cast onto the page is like a piece of spaghetti flung on a wall. You never know what is going to stick until it does. It is a learning experience as you struggle to find “the right” word, or the right combination of words. You’ll find yourself scowling every single time you write the word “said,” because it won’t properly convey the emotion of the scene, which you feel should be transcribed to the letter. You’ll refer to your thesaurus more than once, to find a prettier word, a more writer-y word, to say what you want to say with style, ultimately exhausting every synonym for said in the space of a chapter. You’ll stare at a paragraph for an hour, thinking it’s clunky and confusing, but unsure how to whittle it down into something more succinct and concise. You’ll change sentence order, you’ll fiddle with sentence structure; you’ll delete words and insert words, only to wipe away the whole passage entirely in a fit of impotent despair.

In fact, this chapter itself feels sucky to me. Thanks to real life stuff, I’m up earlier than usual. Since I have a deadline to meet, I decided to get my daily writing requirement out of the way early. This forces me to write when I don’t feel my brain is firing on all cylinders. Each word feels inadequate. Nothing is flowing like I want it to flow.*

Believe me, as a writer you’re every bit as aware of when you get it right as when you get it wrong. You’ll feel it down to your bones.

You’ll be painfully aware when you suck, even decades into your writing career. Some days you just need to write through the suckatude, knowing that no matter how bad it is, it doesn’t have to stay that way.

That’s what the rewrite process is for.

That this is happening on the day I had outlined to talk about sucking actually works out perfectly, so you can see that yes… it can suck… but you will both move past it and learn from it. I may feel like I’m forcing every word this morning, but it’s not stopping me from getting the words onto the page. Deadlines don’t go away just because you can’t find the right word. Use “said,” and move on. Put the pieces in place. You can fiddle with getting them perfect later. It’s your job to keep plodding along, installing the space for your chapter, knowing that when you go back through it later, you can address whatever weaknesses you felt were there and make it stronger, even if it’s rewriting the thing entirely.

Suckatude is no excuse to stop. Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to complete your first draft, regardless of if it sucks.

Spoiler: it’s going to. Like I said, first is always worst, even within specific projects.

Here’s the thing, though. You have permission to suck. It’s okay. It’s necessary. Once you learn how to separate the wheat from the chaff by doing it on a regular basis, you’re going to suck a whole lot less.

You just need to muster the courage to be imperfect for a while.

Writers who are afraid of sucking usually never write their way out from under it. Writers who realize that sucking is an inherent part of the process will inevitably use each and every failure to climb out of the suckatude, building a skillset that will take them wherever they need to go. This comes from learning what not to do every bit as learning what to do.

The best education I ever got in screenwriting came from joining websites where other newbies like me could share our work and engage in peer-to-peer reviews to polish our screenplays. This started with Zoetrope, a virtual studio for Francis Ford Coppola’s American Zoetrope, one where writers can both give and receive feedback to refine their craft.

Back when I started, you had to review something like three screenplays in order to submit one of your own. Sounds simple enough, right?

That’s what I thought too, until I realized that these were not the polished screenplays that actually made it to the screen, not by a long shot. These were early drafts from clueless, new writers, many of whom were at different developmental stages of their career, which often made it a chore to get through.

In a very real way, you stop reading for pleasure when you start writing professionally. You start picking things apart. You’re more critical. You can spot where things hit the mark and when they fall flat. You’ll do this all the time, even when you don’t realize you’re doing it. You’ll do it for published/produced material, things that were deemed OK to release to the masses. And you’ll most definitely do it in peer-to-peer reviews, where you are tasked with helping your fellow writer get one step closer to that ultimate goal of being sold.

If you’ve never done this, I highly recommend finding a writer group and adding this to your to-do list. By reading only published/produced material, you’re only getting half the picture. You need to see what doesn’t work every bit as what does. This way you’ll more easily spot the flaws and the problems in your own writing.

That wasn’t the real challenge, though. The real challenge was finding a positive and constructive way to break down the screenplay and tell the writer what didn’t work as well as what did. This requires knowledge of what makes a sucky book or screenplay suck so hard, and you can’t really identify those things without being familiar with both good material and bad material.

You must educate yourself about those things, especially if you’re a new writer yourself. It’s not enough just to decide you don’t like something, which might work for a casual reader but is never excusable for someone who wants to be a professional. You need to identify why you didn’t like it. You have to break it down. You have to solve it, kind of like a riddle. Maybe the first and only thing you can think of is, “Well. It sucked.” But that writer can’t do too much with that. Did it suck because you have personal biases you took into it? Maybe it was juvenile humor and you don’t like juvenile humor. Maybe the main character is unlikable. This often boils down to personal preference, but technical execution can also play a part. Did it suck because it was improperly formatted? Did it suck because it bored you, indicating there might be something wrong with the pacing?

Be specific. Why did it suck? What went wrong?

When you learn to answer these questions, you’ll learn how to avoid these pitfalls in your own writing.

This is why it’s kind of necessary to suck.

The challenge, then, is learning how not to suck. This comes from fearless experimentation and relentless repetition. Every writing session is a workout, flexing and training your creative muscle so that one day, over time, it becomes toned and refined. Just like going to the gym to train your body, some days you just have to grin and bear it as you write word after inferior word, no matter how frustrated you might be that you’re not quite communicating the message the way you want to. You can’t see the progress because you’re mired down in the swamp of suckatude, wading through the muck every single time you have to write a bunch of crappy paragraphs you just know you’re going to have to whittle down later into something more palatable. And, just like the gym, you’ll discover that the more you flex that muscle, the more confidence you will develop over time. After a month, or six months, or a year, you’ll finally see the progress in your body, turning it into the masterpiece you always knew it could be.

You write enough words, you’ll find that they suck less and less. Like Mr. Bradbury said, it’s impossible that they’re all bad, or that they will all suck, if you just keep going.

But you’ll never get to that place as long as you use the fear of sucking as an excuse not to try.

Leaning a bit harder on the fitness analogy, I’ll put it this way. I am a big girl. My body is not where I want it to be. In order to get where I want to be, I know I’m going to have to put in a whole lot of work. This isn’t something I can finish in 30 days, or even six months, maybe even one year. To get to where I want to go, I’ll have to exercise when I don’t feel like it. I’ll have to say no to yummy food when I really want it. I’ll have to use enormous amounts of discipline I currently don’t possess, or at least utilize for that particular task. If I want something different, I’m going to have to do something different. It’s the only way to get in fighting shape as it were.

Because this task is so overwhelming, and the demands of which are daunting, my first human instinct is to make excuses not to try. This irrational fear is wagers my success against how likely it is I will fail. The odds are not stacked in my favor. Most people have been perpetually dieting in some form or another for decades and still struggle with it. I know that the road ahead of me is not an easy one, and it’s inevitable that I will suck at meeting this challenge.

This past year, I dedicated myself to a fitness journey. I had hoped to make a huge dent in the weight I had to lose, but I only lost 23 pounds. I have plenty of excuses on why I sucked at transforming my body. I don’t want to join a gym. I don’t like working out in front of anyone, much less the kind of people who have already mastered the kind of discipline I haven’t yet developed. Even in my own house, I have to have absolute privacy to work out, which I often don’t have.

But I want that privacy because I don’t want to feel inadequate. No one does.

Whether I worked at this goal or not, the time passed regardless. Here it is a year later and I’m not all that much closer to my goal than I was when I started.

If in another year I’m still in the same exact spot I am now, I have no one to blame but myself. I could have dared to fail, dared to suck, dared to be inadequate and work through it, or I could choose not to. (Like every OTHER year of my life.)

In other words, if I’m not where I want to be, it’s kind of my choice.

To do anything of any importance, from the time you learn to walk to the time you dare to fly, you have to be willing to suck.

And if you want to do something big, you have to be willing to suck just as epically.

My son Timothy once said to me, “Your discipline must match your ambition.” This is absolutely 100% true. If you want to write a great book, you need the discipline to churn out a few stinkers along the way. You have to hold your nose and power through those books that will never sell in order to get to the ones that will.

The more you write, the more you’ll be able to tell the difference.

It’s going to take some time, but that’s okay. The time is going to pass either way. It’s up to you how you use it. You can develop that creative muscle and get yourself in fighting shape, or you can shrug it off and let the time pass without doing one damn thing to improve. The bad news is that we all suck at the beginning.

The better news is that we can improve drastically if we dare to write anyway.

The best news it that there’s no downside to writing books that suck. So your book sucks. So what? Shelve it and start on the next one, which I can guarantee you will suck a little less.

Never, ever, ever, ever, ever use the suckatude as an excuse to stop writing. Only writing itself will get you past this awkward, ugly, inadequate phase that every single writer before you has found themselves in.

Not everyone will get past it.

But you can.

And you should.

So go forth and suck, my lovelies. Write stinkers of sentences, paragraphs, chapters and books. Line your walls with the page after inadequate page. Let every awkward word mock you from the screen, challenging you–daring you–to work through the crap in order to reach your full potential.

And one day, when you’re a huge success, and people are clamoring to know your secret, you can just smile wide and tell them, “I wasn’t afraid to suck.”

*As you can see from the time taken to revise this chapter, as well as the jump in the word count, I did fidget with this one a little more than the rest, simply because it sucked, and I didn't care to post it live in the condition it was in. It still isn't perfect, but I'll be able to move on to my next chapter tomorrow. In the rewrite process, who knows what might happen? I might scrap it entirely.

Odds are, however, I'll just tighten it up and sharpen the message of the content. At least the basic ideas are in place, and that's all I needed to move forward.

It still kinda sucks, but that's okay. Most of what we write is not carved in stone, so suckatude is a temporary state at best.

But that's a lesson for another day.



Started First Draft: November 6, 2015 8:31am PST
Completed First draft: November 6, 2015 10:57am PST
Word Count of first draft: 3,503
Completed revisions: November 6, 2015 1:15pm PST
Updated WC: 4,776/22,300