Emilie Richards's Blog, page 77

September 7, 2015

Finishing a Novel: The Old Is Made New Again

When you read this I’ll be on my way home to Florida. Since I’m clearly in a car and not at my computer I thought I schedule a blog from a previous September to share with you instead. I found this one, published first in September 2011 when I was finishing One Mountain Away,  and it seemed so appropriate. Once again I’m finishing a novel, When We Were Sisters, and feeling all the anxiety that comes with it.  I’ll confess that packing up and traveling home when I only have three chapters left is not particularly helpful either.


Still, it was helpful to remember that this, too, shall end. It ended before–many times, in fact–and it will again. In fact this quote from Karen Salmansohn just popped up on my computer:


When feeling overwhelmed by a faraway goal, repeat the following: I have it within me right now, to get me to where I want to be later.”


As I repeat that line over and over again, please read on. I’ll see you here next Tuesday.


Waiting and Praying

In my house it’s easy to tell how close I am to turning in a book.


1–We eat takeout and frozen foods from the last decade.


2–I begin to wear clothing that under normal circumstances I would use to dust my furniture.


3–I can’t remember the date, often even the month, since it does NOT coincide with the month I’m writing about.


4–When the neighbors actually catch sight of me, they ask if I’ve been away.


5–I ask doctors and dentists if I’ll survive until October 31st if I don’t have that root canal or pesky laser treatment on my retina.


6–I wake up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night.


Lately cold sweat and I have become friends.  I’ve even contemplated counting cold sweat as a shower and thereby saving myself the minutes it takes to stand in a real one.  I am nearing a deadline and I still have ten chapters to write.


Deadlines are never fun, but some are worse than others.  One Mountain Away, which comes out next August has been a difficult book to write.  Some books are like that, and the truth is, after publication how hard or easy it was is never clear to anyone but me-and all those poor souls who listened to me complain.  Books I’ve cold-sweated over and books that just seemed to write themselves are either good or not-so, simply because they are.  Never because I worried more or less as I wrote them.


By the time all the pieces of this book began to fall into place, months had drooped by. Now I’m working at high speed.  Yesterday I finally took a break to outline the end.  After lots of work I’d gotten the first two-thirds of it outlined, but there was still the last third to go.  Of course, I didn’t know the remainder was the final one-third.  I hoped it was the final one-fourth.  But no such luck.  After carefully counting all the threads I had to tie, ten chapters emerged.  Now, granted, they may be short chapters.  I am, in fact, praying they will be.  Everything’s been set up.  We don’t need scenery or in-depth characterization now.  We need to find out what happens.


Endings are tricky.  Because I’ve wrestled so hard with these characters, they’re now old friends.  I know how they feel, how they think, how they’ll react.  I also know that when I finally get the end I’m seeking, I will be sad to say goodbye.


The good news?  This is the first book of a series.  Next year many of these characters and I will be together again, sweating, prodding each other, hoping for a happy ending.  And you know what?  I’ll probably be thrilled.  Writing a book is like having a baby.  Once we hold the little darling in our arms, we’re overtaken by amnesia.  We just can’t wait to do it again.


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Published on September 07, 2015 22:51

September 5, 2015

Sunday Inspiration: I’ll Find It At Home

I'll Find It At HomeI’m on the road home to Florida today, and this inspirational quote from Rumi seemed perfect. That’s Sarasota’s Myakka River in the background.


Have you ever found satisfaction after a trip away taught you the true pleasures of home? I’m lucky I have two places I love, but I am always thrilled to find meaning waiting in each one.


Summer has ended and you may be traveling on this Labor Day weekend, too. Safe travels and deep satisfaction wherever you are.


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Published on September 05, 2015 22:49

August 31, 2015

Book Titles, and Why They So Often Sound Alike

Back in March I told you about my struggles finding a title for my book in progress.

book titlesHere were some of the contenders:



Really, Truly Sisters
Life After Love
More Than Sisters
Sisters Once Removed
Joined At the Heart

Well, really? Now that I look at them, I can see why my editors weren’t doing back flips after I made these suggestions. When Nemo and I came up with the winner, the response was much warmer. In fact my editor swears it’s the best title I’ve ever had.


When We Were Sisters will be out in June. I’m finishing the first draft now.


In spring 2012 I blogged about title problems with another book. I said that for me, titles needed to



Fit the genre
Capture my imagination
Be the right length to be memorable.

In your comments you chimed in to add that titles should:



Evoke the story
Be short
Highlight emotion
Be different enough to grab attention

Don’t I have great readers?


This week I got an interesting blog post from BookBub Partners. BookBub is a service that features “sale” e-books. The books range anywhere from free to $3.99, and I have bought and downloaded many to my Kindle. I also get their blog with tips for authors.


This time the blog included word clouds for thirty different genres, everything from horror to middle-grade children’s books. The clouds are made up of words that are often found in titles for that particular genre. BookBub downloaded and categorized every title of the 10,000 books they’ve featured, so the data is particularly interesting. These are not the bestselling but the most frequently used words. Here are some of the results in three genres I’ve written in:


Women’s Fiction:

Home, Summer, Color, House, Life, Good, Wedding, Finding, Mother, Daughters, Sister. . . and many  more.


Checking my most upcoming and last six titles and highlighting words that appear in the cloud I found: When We Were Sisters. The Color of Light. No River Too Wide. Somewhere Between Luck and Trust. One Mountain Away. Sunset Bridge. Fortunate Harbor. Happiness Key. Water words (river, creek, water, upstream, sail) appeared over and over. Mountains? Nope, not even hill. Luck, Trust? Fortunate? Surprisingly, no. But most surprising? Neither happiness nor key.


“Light” does appear in the Christian Fiction cloud. Since I’m fond of all those titles, including the ones with words not in the cloud? I draw no conclusions.


Contemporary Romance:

Billionaire, Love, Bride, Texas, Wedding, Cowboy, Married, Forever, Heat. . . and many more.


Since I’ve revised a few of my contemporary romances–the genre I started in–and put them online as ebooks, I thought I would check those titles against the contemporary romance cloud. I’ve highlighted the words from that cloud: Once More With Feeling, Twice Upon A Time, From Glowing Embers, Smoke Screen, Rainbow Fire, Out of the Ashes, The Unmasking, and Season of Miracles.


Don’t adjust your screen. None of the cloud words appeared.


Mysteries:

I wrote five mysteries in the Ministry is Murder series. Obviously Murder was in the cloud. But of all my titles, only the fourth, A Lie for a Lie was included on the cloud. Even Suspects was missing.


So what does any of this mean? Mostly it means I had fun checking, and then creating the word cloud at the top from my own titles. I didn’t always use words that were common enough to be included in the many selections that BookBub has advertised. You tell me if that means the titles are wonderfully unique or if readers will be less apt to pick up my books. I think the jury is out on that one.


I will note that the word “sister” or “sisters” appears on several different lists. I’ll assume that’s a good sign for the new book.


If you want to see more of my titles? You can find all my books listed here.


Do you like a title that includes words that suggest a type of story? Or do you prefer an unusual title that makes you open the book to see what it’s about? I would love to know.


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Published on August 31, 2015 22:05

August 29, 2015

Sunday Inspiration: Operation Inasmuch


After reading my latest novel, The Color of Light, one of my readers sent me the link to an organization called Operation Inasmuch. Their name comes from these words from Jesus: “In as much as you did it for the least of these, you did it for me.” The reader believed this group was in the spirit of my heroine Analiese Wagner, the minister of an Asheville congregation that struggles with how to help a homeless family.


Calling themselves a compassion revolution, Operation Inasmuch trains faith communities to effectively reach out to those who are suffering from lack of resources and support. They work with people from a wide variety of congregations, believing that denominations should unite us in compassion and not divide us in fear.


Several years ago I  traveled to Guatemala to connect with the Mayan community there that was devastated by a civil war. I especially appreciated a project that brought several congregations together to prepare and ship 250,000 meals for the poor of Guatemala. They have also fed the hungry in our own country and have given assistance to countless people who needed a helping hand.


I always find it inspirational when people work together to practice compassion not for any reward for themselves but simply to be loving human beings. In the words of Albert Schweitzer, “The purpose of human life is to serve, and to show compassion and the will to help others.”


What would you like to do for the compassion revolution? Do you have a project that would mean something special to you? Do you know a church like one of these that is working to bring justice to your community? So many are. I salute each and every one of them.


 


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Published on August 29, 2015 22:11

August 26, 2015

The Writing Process 2015: Writer’s Block

A day late here. Blogger writer’s block? Quite possibly. Why not my blog along with everything else?

Writer's BlockI’ll confess I’m not a big fan of the phrase “writer’s block.” For a long time I’ve believed that it might be shorthand for: “I’m interested in other things right now.” Or possibly: “The story’s not coming easily anymore so it wasn’t meant to be.” Or even: “Writing is a lot harder than I expected, so I think I’ll work on my quilt.”


Don’t worry, I’m not poking fun at my fellow writers. I’ve said all those things myself and meant them. Luckily I’ve always had deadlines and the knowledge that my income as a writer is important to my family. So those “other things” often had to wait, and I had to tough out the story that wasn’t “coming easily” and tuck that quilt away for another time.


Am I better than anybody else because I finished the occasional book-from-hell? Definitely not. Each writer is different. Some of us can perform when the whip is snapping over our heads and some just can’t. Some of us can slog toward an ending through muck and mire, and for some of us writing is such a delicate process that the slightest jolt shakes our confidence, creativity and fortitude, and we are suddenly so far off course we can’t move forward.


Frankly, I think this is more the luck of the draw than anything else. We sloggers aren’t better writers, or even more determined. We are just lucky to be able to write when the writing gets tough. We can ignore the voices of doom, the sands falling through the hourglass, the many other temptations that life offers, and get the job done. Somehow we stay on the path. Muck and all.


In my personal life story this week can be filed neatly under “Emilie Struggled with Writer’s Block.” In my last Writing Process 2015 I told you how I was nearing the ending of When We Were Sisters, and asked how many happily-ever-afters you needed as a reader. After I posted that entry I received a very lovely comment about the ending of The Color of Light. The reader was unhappy at a choice one of my characters, Isaiah, makes at the end. I remember writer’s block at nearly the same time last year when I was writing that very ending. The reason? I had planned to end the novel differently, but I couldn’t make myself do it. Just couldn’t. The characters I had portrayed, the scenes I had set up? Both demanded something different. With every word I wrote, I had changed the outcome of the novel. Even knowing that my new ending would make some readers unhappy.


This time the problem is a bit different. Once again I know I must change my ending. But this time I need to figure out a complicated scenario to make the new ending happen. New ending+complicated scenario=Writer’s Block. I have been stuck all week.


Through seventy-something novels and thirty years of writing, I have developed a fallback strategy when this happens. So let me share. It’s quite possible these can help solve different kinds of blocks in your life.



Remember the block is temporary and it will pass.
Take a rest and do something else so the unconscious can take over.
Break the problem into steps–in this case scenes.
Brainstorm different outcomes for each step (scene) and write them down. Sometimes the curve in the road that seems strangest will be, on second glance, the best route.
Write down the problems that might be encountered with every possibility, then see if solutions exist.
Go for the simplest solution whenever possible.
And finally, once again because it’s so important, have faith the problem will resolve itself with work and reflection.

Yesterday I think I found the missing key to my story. I knew it was always right there–and it was–but first I had to clear the landscape to see it. The more complex I made things and the more I worried, the more tangled my story became and the more unlikely. Simplicity won the day.


My job now will be to finish the book using the ideas I came up when my writer’s block gave way. I may experience more.But it’s important to understand that this is part of the writing process. We start, we stop, we rest, we move forward. There’s nothing to fear.


Have you experienced a creative block? Not just as a writer, but as an artist, a quilter, a crafter, a needleworker, a musician? Do you have a secret to share about how you moved forward?


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Published on August 26, 2015 07:34

August 22, 2015

Sunday Inspiration: What makes you come alive?

Come alive


So, what makes you come alive?

Perhaps it’s cooking or raising children. Maybe it’s traveling or your job or maybe even changing the world.


I became a novelist because writing makes me come alive. I love creating characters who discover what makes them come alive, then watching them leap off the pages.


What brings you to life? Do you have a way to do more of it? Can you make choices that make you feel even more alive? I’ll be thinking about that this week. After all, we each have one life. Why not live it to the fullest and in the process motivate others to do the same? Happiness and fulfillment are catching.


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Published on August 22, 2015 22:29

August 17, 2015

The Writing Process 2015: Do We Need A Happily-Ever-After?

If you’re new to The Writing Process 2015, these posts are a chance to share my journey through my latest novel, starting at ground zero.

happily-ever-afterAs I head into the final section of When We Were Sisters, the ending is now clearly in view. I’m delighted something is clear because how I’m going to get there? Right now, the scenes leading up to the climax–which I can visualize–are hidden deep in fog.


Every novel is different. When I’m asked how I write, I can give a fair approximation for most books. I am a plotter, not a pantser (plotting by the seat of your pants). I like knowing where I’m going. I’ve been known to write outlines with each chapter carefully plotted. I find this the easiest way not to overwrite, and no, it’s not boring because–ta da–I’m the one who came up with the story! And figuring out how to portray it on paper demands enough creativity to keep me moving.


That said, I will repeat, every novel is different. When We Were Sisters began with:



An idea
Long character sketches, some of which I’ll share closer to the debut next June.
A carefully constructed timeline
Acres of research
A plot well-rounded enough to interest my editor
A brainstorming session with my friends

Notice the word outline doesn’t appear? Instead this book asked me not to outline, but to simply list scenes and revelations the characters must have. Then put them in some sort of order and let the characters do the rest.


This has worked out beautifully. Since the book is in first-person point of view what the characters think and know is primary and they’ve led me along like a puppy on a leash. I haven’t always been happy, but there was no way to escape.


Now,  I’m closing in on the end, and I will need an outline. There’s so much to accomplish I need to put scenes in order, figure out where and how they occur, and how my characters react. Otherwise we might need camel caravan to get this book to your door. We can’t have that.


As I was contemplating my ending this morning I found a comment about one of my other books on a previous blog. The comment’s author was unhappy that I hadn’t spelled out the happily-ever-after of Fox River.


Remember Fox River? It’s one of my favorites and Publisher’s Weekly gave it a starred review. I’d made sure my readers knew things were going to turn out well for Julia and Christian, the two major characters, and probably for Maisy, Julia’s mother, also major to the story. But I hadn’t shown every scene that followed.


Why hadn’t I? I trusted my readers to know what would happen. I wanted them to imagine the details of that happily-ever-after or at least an approximation.  By that point they knew the characters as well as I did. And what fun to imagine the goings-on after the book itself ended.


As writers we know that when our ending is achieved, we should bow out quickly. But knowing this, strongly believing this, I’m now faced with how much of the ending should I tell in my new book? I’d planned to end with a certain revelation. Then, as the book moved forward, I decided to add another. Now? Well, for the past week I’ve been wondering if I need to show a bit of my characters’ futures because maybe we all need to know what happens to them when life settled down a bit.


Genre fiction (think fiction that fits snugly in a certain section of your bookstore) usually ends with a satisfactory conclusion to the central conflict. We often call that the “happily-ever-after.” But how much “after” does a reader need? How much happily? Does every conflict need to be tied up neatly? Do the bad guys have to repent? Do the good guys have to find a winning lottery ticket in the final chapter? In a romance the couple must get together, but in women’s fiction–what we loosely call the novels I write–there are different kinds of conflicts, more characters, often more complicated plots. Must every aspect of the book end satisfactorily?


The answer, simply, is no. At a certain point too many happy endings in one story make my teeth ache. I want a little realism with my fantasy. But how much?


And how the heck do I get there?


Tune in next time to see if I’ve made any progress. Meantime, how much happily-ever-after do you need? Let us know.


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Published on August 17, 2015 22:45

August 15, 2015

Sunday Inspiration: “There’s a crack in everything”

Crack This quote from a song by Leonard Cohen was one of my inspirations for my latest book The Color of Light.


The quote reminds me of a story by Rachel Naomi Remen in her book, My Grandfather’s Blessings. Remen is a physician as well as a therapist, and one of her patients was a young man with osteogenic sarcoma of the leg. Sadly there was no choice; the leg had to be removed. The man went through a period of depression but finally with Remen’s help began to heal and find reasons to be grateful.


Two years later the man met with Remen again, and she took out a picture he had drawn during his darkest hours. The picture was a vase with a crack down the middle. With a black crayon he had drawn the crack over and over to express his image of his body. The vase would never hold water.


When the man saw the picture, he told Remen that it wasn’t finished, and he pulled out a yellow crayon and colored around the black crack. Then he said: “You see here. . . this is where the light comes through.”


In The Color of Light at Amazon some of my characters also learn that there’s a crack in everything, but light can come through the places inside us that are cracked by pain, grief and loneliness.


Where does the light come through for you?


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Published on August 15, 2015 22:05

August 11, 2015

Profanity: A Relief Denied Even to Prayer.

ProfanityUnder certain circumstances, urgent circumstances, desperate circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer.” Mark Twain

Sooner or later, in this age of email, Amazon reviews and Twitter, today’s novelist will turn on her computer and discover that an unhappy reader is complaining about her language.  The emails follow a pattern. I read your book and found XX word(s) and I will never read you again. My good friend Casey Daniels/Kylie Logan received an email like that and had to scour the book in question to find the single use of the word that had so infuriated and upset the reader.


The word? Damn.


When this happens to me, I’m fine. I support that reader’s decision to find other authors she can enjoy and wish her well–and yes, those readers usually are women. If a word or two is upsetting enough to dash off an angry email, the reader should only buy books that are clearly marketed as inspirational, which has rules all its own, no profanity of any kind among them.


Profanity, of course, is subjective. I remember calling a truck a “pick-up” in Australia and being taken aside and told that trucks are called “utes.” A “pick-up” was a woman selling herself on the street corner. I, of course, was taken aback when told that Australian erasers are called rubbers. While neither of those examples are actually profanity, you get the gist. Meanings change. Words are, after all, simply combinations of vowels and consonants that are even pronounced differently in different places.


What makes a word profane? At least for the people who are counting and reporting? Three possibilities.



The idea behind the word. The object or action it represents.
Words that suggest sexual acts.
Words that blaspheme God or religion.

According to Dictionary.com to curse someone is “to wish or invoke evil, calamity, injury, or destruction upon.” No wonder cursing has such a bad reputation.


Writers who may or may not use profanity in their daily life, are often in a quandary when it comes to using it in their novels. Why is this an issue? Why not just avoid it?



The author is positive that the person he or she has created and knows intimately would use profanity in moments of stress or even as a way to impress or outrage others.
Substituting “Oh, fudge,” or “Golly, gee,” for more realistic and graphic alternatives would be silly and inject humor into a serious interchange.
One episode of swearing from a character who hasn’t sworn to that point will demonstrate how outraged that character is.
Profanity demonstrates in only a few words what a character is feeling.

Novelists are tasked with creating believable and sympathetic characters. They don’t have to be perfect; they don’t even have to be good. But as the story develops, the reader wants to know those characters inside and out. For the most part this goal means that characters have to be grounded in reality. It’s our job as novelists to convey those characters well in believable ways.


One of the characters in my novel When We Were Sisters is an internationally famous pop star. The major character of my last novel, The Color of Light, newly at bookstores, is a Protestant minister.


Now, you tell me? Which of these two women is more likely to use profanity? Time’s up, and you got it right. Analiese most likely pruned her vocabulary after years as a television news reporter and now, as a minister, is careful with words. But Cecilia in When We Were Sisters is a completely different story. Her world is different. Her background? Couldn’t be more different. Her philosophy? You got it.


Different.


So, while profanity is delicately scattered through the novel in progress, and I studiously avoid the worst of it by not repeating everything we’re told Cecilia is saying, I will still likely get a letter or two from readers who, like Casey/Kylie’s choose never to read me again.


And you know what? That’s okay.


Where do you stand? Will you set aside a novel if you find a word you object to? Or do you even notice? Or care?


Ernest Hemingway addressed this subject many years ago. Thanks, E.H. for the perfect ending.


“I’ve tried to reduce profanity but I reduced so much profanity when writing the book that I’m afraid not much could come out. Perhaps we will have to consider it simply as a profane book and hope that the next book will be less profane or perhaps more sacred.”  Ernest Hemingway

 


 


 


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Published on August 11, 2015 12:16

August 8, 2015

Sunday Inspiration: Perseverance

My new book, The Color of Light, illuminates the lives of several people living in Asheville, North Carolina, who are undergoing struggles of different kinds, all of which have to do with perseverance in one way or another.


One of the most heart-wrenching struggles is a family who has become homeless through no fault of their own. The mother, father, and two children are trapped in a catch-22 of circumstances where they are without resources or help, and the future looks hopeless — until a brave soul reaches out to help.


This short video about Liz Murray, who was left homeless at the age of 15 reminds me of the perseverance that homeless people need to survive and thrive in such trying times and the perseverance needed by those who want to help but are not sure how. Please watch and I think you will be inspired as I was.



 


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Published on August 08, 2015 22:08