Meredith Bond's Blog, page 19

How does your garden grow?

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I’ve been working hard all day at my garden. I’ve planted shade loving flowers in the shade, sun tolerant flowers in the sunnier spots and tomatoes and green pepper in the vegetable garden. It’s been a long hard day of work, but I know it’ll be worth it. I just wish I could say that I planned my garden as well as I plan my books— but I don’t.

I’m afraid I’m a very lazy gardener. I plant whatever will work,  and sometimes I don’t plant anything at all if something else has come along and planted itself first. For example, I’ve got a strip of garden along the fence I share with my neighbor which is nothing but hibiscus trees and two hydrangea. The hibiscus planted itself about three years ago soon after I had cleared out the space and popped in the hydrangea. It’s now quite a forest with the hydrangea trying desperately to get some sun among its taller neighbors. The rest of the fence is lined with raspberry bushes which crept over from the neighbor’s yard. I didn’t do a thing but stake them up, but now I get tons of the sweet berries every summer and right into the fall.

But what would happen if I left my novel to grow so haphazardly? I’d probably end up with the same sort of untidy mess I’ve got in my garden. I’ve got a few beautiful specimens in there, but frequently they get lost among the weeds (or hibiscus, which while pretty, don’t really go with hydrangea).

No, I’m happy to say when it comes to planning a book,  I do my work right. I plan out what I will need to make the most impact, arrange things so that nothing is hidden and there isn’t anything overpowering where it doesn’t belong. I draw a map of my story to ensure that everything fits and works out just the way it should. And I make sure each piece is the right one – characters, setting, conflict,  and that they all blend and work to support each other.

If only I could garden as well as I write… But then, I suppose, I would have to devote more time to it, and I’m too busy with my writing to do that.

So,  how is your garden coming along this spring? If you want to see pictures of mine,  pop on over to my Facebook page (www.facebook.meredithbondauthor) where I’m posting pictures of my garden all this week.

A Hero’s Journey to the WRW Retreat

I feel like I’m going on a Hero’s Journey of a sort. I’m off today for my annual Washington Romance Writer’s Annual Retreat. In fact, when you read this (assuming you read it on Sunday when it’s posted), I’ll just be on my way home. So let me delve into this analogy, if you will.

We’ll begin in my Ordinary World – me, at home, working frantically to get A Dandy in Disguise in good enough shape so I can hand it off to my editor without being completely embarrassed by stupid mistakes – oh, and to make sure I actually did what I set out to do in my editing, which was to make my heroine stronger.

I’m avoiding my editing, because, to me, it’s the most tedious part of writing. So, I’m writing my blog and I’m preparing for the retreat.

I have been issued a Call To Adventure. It actually went out this past January when registration for the annual retreat opened. I did not Refuse the Call because, while there may be some nerve wracking things which could happen at the retreat, I don’t anticipate any big problems (stupid? Maybe.).

We’ll skip the Mentor part of the journey because I’ve been on this journey before. I no longer need a mentor. I know I can do this one all on my own.

I will cross the threshold – out of my house – and then another when I enter the hotel where the retreat is being held. It will be a magical crossing too. When I leave my house, I leave Merry the Mommy behind. Merry the Wife will be left there too. As will Merry the Teacher. I leave behind all of my alter-egos and take with me only my true self and my writerly self. That’s all that I’ll need on this journey — why be loaded down with unnecessary personas? I like to travel light.

When I reach the Retreat, I’ll be met with Allies. Many, many allies. All of my WRW friends will be there. People I haven’t seen since the meeting last month, and people I haven’t seen since the retreat last year. It’s really the people who make the retreat the wonderful experience it is.

Will I have enemies there? Possibly. But, hopefully, they’ll be tactful enough to not let me know that they’re my enemies. They’ll be kind and gracious and just try not to sit next to me at a meal. I’m good with that.

I will go through a couple of Ordeals while I’m there. I run the raffle through which we raise loads of money for literacy. And I’m going to be introducing Darynda Jones and moderating a Q&A with her – which means I’ve got to have enough questions ready for there not to be a lull in the talk. That could be nerve wracking if it doesn’t go off well.

And I will get a Reward while I’m there. It will be in the form of knowledge and friendship. It is the sharing of information in which we engage both inside the seminars and outside in the bar. It is in sharing a drink with friends and taking part in interesting, and quite often enlightening, conversations at meals where everyone sits wherever they want and everyone changes places at every meal in order to socialize with the most number of people possible.

Eventually (on Sunday early afternoon) I will take the Road Back to my home. My retreat will have been vanquished, and it’ll be time to return to my ordinary world.

As I enter my home again, Mommy, Wife and Teacher will be Resurrected from where I left them. My daughter will give me a good long hug and tell me she missed me. My husband will give me a kiss and do the same. My students will look expectantly at me on Monday night when I go into my classroom in the hopes of learning something new and useful to their own writing.

And, finally, I will return with my Elixer, my knowledge, which, to make the journey complete and worthwhile, I will share with my students, and quite possibly with you next Sunday. I will share how wonderful it was to make these connections. I will talk about all that I learned. And I’ll encourage everyone to go out and seek writer’s retreats of their own in their own genre so that they too can experience the wonderful excitement and rejuvenation that comes with attending a weekend like this.

Do you attend retreats? Conferences? Cons? Are they always as good as you expect them to be?

Time Well Spent?

How much time do you spend marketing? How much time do you spend going through your email?

When I turn on my computer, usually around 8 am, I usually have over thirty emails to go through. Most are things I can just delete right away without even opening, some are digests of Yahoo! loops I follow and require time to read through. Quite frequently, through these loops I find marketing opportunities which I need to take advantage of right away before either I forget or the deadline passes.

 

By the time I realize what’s happened, it’s 10:30 and my body is telling me that it’s time to get up, walk around, get a cup of tea, or generally take a break. That’s two and a half hours of just reading email and following up on marketing opportunities. That doesn’t include going out and finding any new ones on my own (usually), or checking on the ones I’ve already set in motion, not to mention spending time on Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter. To do that will take another hour or so, and then suddenly, it’s lunch time!

 

Where did my morning go? Why haven’t I gotten any writing done? I look around and am just stunned by the passage of time. This happens to me too many days to count.

 

I’m spending way too much time marketing and keeping up with social media. And yet, I know that that is the way to get my name out there, to connect with readers and build my brand.

 

On the other hand, I also know that writing my next book and putting it up for sale (after it’s been properly edited and beta read) is the absolute best form of marketing. Clearly, I’ve got to get a handle on my time here.

 

I am capable of doing so. I’ve done it before. I just don’t answer my email – except for the most urgent personal messages. And I don’t read all of my Yahoo! loops. I don’t check social media. I just leave it alone. I would do better if I completely disconnected my computer from the internet altogether, but that’s a much bigger step than I’ve been able to make so far (I still need to at least see what emails are coming in, even if I’m not answering them). So, when I’ve got a book I need to get done, I can buckle down and get it done, but it takes commitment, drive, will-power and all that other good stuff of which writers are made.

 

So, how do you do it? How long do you spend on your email or marketing or both?

I’m LinkedIn and making connections – I’m as happy as a young brain

Yesterday I did something I probably should have done a long time ago. I’ve been getting these requests from people to join LinkedIn. I thought they were spam and deleted them. But then a discussion began on one of the Yahoo! groups I’m a member of and some people made some very compelling arguments to join. (Some people have made some very compelling arguments against doing so, and I respect that and will be careful – apparently I might start getting a ton of spam, including some very nasty viruses through my email. I’ll keep an eye out and not open or download anything!)

What you get when you join LinkedIn is a feed much like you get in Facebook of posts from people you are “connected” to. So far, I’ve found a number of them to be very interesting (there’s one person who seems to post links to a lot of blogs, maybe by writers in her RWA chapter? I don’t know, but some are really interesting or could be a good place for me to visit if I can wrangle an invitation). There’s also your usual garbage, but I’ve gotten to used to that from Facebook so that it doesn’t bother me, I just move on.

There are also groups there, just like Yahoo! Groups. They specialize in something and then people post questions and comments. So far I’ve joined five groups all dealing with self-publishing or writing and already I’m learning stuff from what other people have asked and how others have responded – people are so wonderful and generous with their advice!

So, this is LinkedIn. It’s a place to make connections. It’s a place where you can meet people and learn from them. I’m very excited!

Yes, it’s another place for me to waste my time that I should be spending writing – this is not a good thing. I’m really into my writing right now and working off of the concept that the best marketing you can do is to write your next book, and make it fabulous.

But I also really enjoy learning from others, connecting and will soon, hopefully, merge into getting my name out there as well as I ask questions or commenting on the questions asked by others.

Right now, I’m still in lurk mode, trying to figure out the etiquette of this new-to-me social media platform. But I think it’s going to be something really useful – even if I do have to deal with some spam as a result of having joined.

So, how many of you are on LinkedIn? Do you like it? Any advice you can share with a novice?

Blood-letting

Last weekend I had the pleasure of hearing Bob Mayer speak at my local RWA chapter. He was with us for two days of intense seminars. Essentially, he covered all of the material in both of his wonderful books, The Novel Writer’s Toolkit and Write it Forward: From Writer to Successful Author. But there was one idea that I just didn’t get, and I’m not sure I agree with.

He thinks that people shouldn’t write novels that are essentially about themselves. He says in The Novel Writer’s Toolkit, “Your first novel should not be the journal you keep…” And he states that a novel is all about the reader, not the writer.

But why shouldn’t a novel be about the writer? Who else does a writer know as well as himself?

So many people write memoirs. That’s all about the writer. Why not fictionalize your memoir and call it a novel? As long as it’s entertaining, is there anything wrong with an author writing about their own life? Maya Angelou did it – in seven books!

If someone is strong enough to expose themselves in that way, why shouldn’t they?

For me, all a novel needs to be is an entertaining story in which I can lose myself for a few hours. Do I care if it’s something that actually happened to the author? No. I just want to be entertained.

In my writing classes, I get a lot of students who want to fictionalize their lives. I do warn them that they’ve got to be sure not to make the other characters in the book recognizable to the real people they’re modeled after (we don’t want any lawsuits, thank you very much). But some people have lived lives that are fascinating, or harrowing. They’ve experienced things that are the stuff of novels. So is there a reason why they shouldn’t make their life into a novel?

The difficulty, of course, will be the opening of that vein. Letting the blood flow. It’s going to be painful. Cathartic, but painful.

So what do you think? Is there something wrong with blood-letting, demon-slaying or taking revenge on the page? Should people only write completely fictional stories? Or is it okay to pull from one’s own life to create fiction?

Breaking down to grow

Well, folks,  it’s that time of year again. Spring. Have you put your characters through hell yet? Have you created as much conflict as you possibly can? Killed or nearly killed your protagonist? Made his or her life unbearable – it is that time of year.

What do you mean what does Spring have to do with conflict? Why,  it’s got everything to do with it, especially this time of the Spring.

This is The Time Of Conflict. Think of those poor little seeds you’re about to (or possibly already have) thrown into your garden. What are they doing? Yup,  they’re breaking apart so that they can then grow into a beautiful and/or nourishing plant.

Jews and Christians are looking forward to important holidays of death and destruction as well— Passover and Easter. They’re filled with conflict,  which makes them all the more fun and interesting.

What would Easter be without betrayal and death—Christ couldn’t have been resurrected if He hadn’t been killed first – and that was not an easy death! Talk about painful!

The Jews couldn’t have become free if they hadn’t been enslaved first. And what was the inciting event that kicked off the whole thing? Yup, good old Mosses killing an Egyptian slave-master. If he hadn’t done that, he wouldn’t have run away to Midian and had that little chat with You-Know-Who.

Even Hinduism flourishes in death and destruction when every eon or so, Shiva destroys the world so that Brahma can rebuild it again, shinier, newer and better.

The point is that people have to go through hell and/or die in order to get better, to grow, to learn. So, get you there and kill someone… er, wait, no. Get back to your work and make life really, really unpleasant for your protagonist… yeah, that’s it. We want to see your protagonist grow and become a better person so make their life hell.

Let’s hear it for conflict! Let’s enjoy our Spring. And a very happy Passover and Easter to all!

It hates me and I hate it, what’s complicated about that?

It hates me and I hate it, what’s complicated about that?

Some people might think that Grammar and I have a complicated relationship. I don’t think so. I hate it and it hates me… oh, all right. We just barely tolerate each other.  Every so often I follow its rules. Once in a while it lets me get away with breaking them while still allowing my meaning to come through.

I started off deploring Grammar. In high school, I was forced to diagram sentences for hours – and still those rules barely penetrated my brain. I just didn’t see the point. And then I started writing and all of a sudden I needed Grammar and it was nowhere to be found.

My husband laughed derisively at my run-on sentences, shook his head sadly when I didn’t know where to place a comma, and was galled by the fact that I didn’t – and still don’t – use semi-colons unless someone yells at me. And he wasn’t even raised in an English speaking country!! (Yes, he went to English medium schools and has been speaking the language – or some version of it – his whole life, but that’s neither here nor there.)

So I studied the damned thing. I took a class. I bought books. I read about it on web-sites. Now, I think, we’ve come to some sort of an understanding. I try to follow Grammar’s rules as best as I can. This is not so much because I believe in them, or even appreciate them, but more because I know that it’s important that I do so, so that my meaning can get across (and I don’t look like a total nincompoop claiming to be a writer but putting out unprofessional work). I even teach some grammar in my writing classes, because it’s just as important for my students to be able to use it properly as it is for me. I know I still make lots of mistakes (I can tell when my husband starts shaking his head as he reads through my work), but at least I can say that I make fewer than I did.

So, yes, it’s a difficult relationship we’ve got, Grammar and I. But, hopefully, if we continue to work at it, we might – dare I say it? – become friends someday.

 

*Addendum: My grammar-know-it-all daughter has read and approved (and corrected) this blog, but says she disagrees with the last sentence. L

Playing with POV

Why do some stories work better in one point of view than another? Why do you choose first over third, or vice-versa? It can be difficult sometimes to know in which point of view you should write a story. Sometimes you’ve just got to try it out – write the first few chapters in one point of view, then switch and rewrite them in another. See which feels better. But there are conventions for different genres, so the big question is, do you follow them?

If you’re writing YA, you’re probably going to be writing in first person. YA books tend to have a really strong voice, and it’s easier to get thoroughly involved in a story – really live it – if it’s written in first person. But it’s also limiting.

Which is why thrillers and mysteries are usually written in first person. You don’t want to give away too much information. You want your protagonist to, essentially, be standing in the dark and have no idea who is attacking her. If she knows who the antagonist is, it would spoil the mystery. The same goes for the reader – it’s so much more fun if they don’t know who the antagonist is either. They want the challenge of trying to figure out the mystery along with the protagonist, ergo, the story is written in the first person. The reader only knows as much as the protagonist does and the thrill and the mystery are sustained.

On the other hand, Regency romances are always written in the third person – and yet, I’ve written one in the first person which, I think is really different and fun. The heroine has a really strong voice and we live the story entirely through her eyes. It helps that there’s a bit of a mystery in it that I didn’t want my reader to be clued in to until the heroine had figured it out on her own. This book, is, unfortunately, one of those that are sitting on my shelf awaiting deep editing and rewriting and probably won’t see the light of day for another year or so. But it’s there, waiting for me oh-so patiently until I have the time to work on it that it deserves.

So, what do you think about books written in a non-standard POV? Is a mystery or thriller still as much fun if you write it in third person? If you write it in multiple third where the antagonist is one of the points of view, can it work?

Blub…blub…blurb

It’s always exciting bringing a new book into the world. After slaving away at the writing process, then going through the agony of the editing process, it’s a sheer joy to format a book. Of course, there’s always the fun and painstakingly detailed work that comes with attempting to create a cover (unless you go to safer, easier route and hire someone to do that for you). But the bane of my existence is writing the damned blurb.

How do you take a book that you’ve slaved over for months, carefully crafting dialogue, plot and subplots; working hard to create twists and turns and added complications, and then reduce it to a couple hundred words? Argh! And not only do you have to reduce this complicated story to a paragraph or two, but you’ve got to do it in a way that will entice someone else, who knows nothing about the intricacies of the story, to pick it up, buy it and read it. How do you do that?

Well, I got some great hints from a terrific blog I read last week (although I have to warn you, I’m a little behind in my blog reading – this one was posted in February). Anne R. Allen’s blog has some terrific articles, but in February she hosted Mark Edwards who went into the details of how to write a blurb. I won’t tell you want he said – you can go read it yourself here: http://annerallen.blogspot.com/2013/02/are-you-neglecting-this-important-book.html. But here’s what I got out of it: Hopefully, a new blurb for my new re-release of Love of My Life which is coming out next week under my new old title (ie, the title I originally gave the book), An Exotic Heir. So tell me what you think:

Cassandra Renwick has been called a nobody because her father is merely a baron. Julian Ritchie is given the cut direct because he’s half Indian. They both know what discrimination is and they both want revenge.

London society is shallow and cruel, sending Cassandra Renwick running to Calcutta, the exotic seat of the British Raj. It’s a fascinating place filled with interesting sights – including the dark and mysterious Julian Ritchie. But she never thought that an even greater heartbreak could be here in this alien and enchanting land.

Julian has always been discriminated against for being only half English. Embittered, he plots an intricate plan for vengeance with the innocent and lovely Cassandra as his pawn. But he soon finds that payback can be painful for the avenger as well when the threads of revenge unwittingly turn into the silken bonds of love.

Journey from Regency England to exotic Calcutta and back again to London where hearts are won, lost and won again, and revenge is the name of the game.

And don’t forget to look for An Exotic Heir coming to an e-retailer near you on March 8th. 

To Begin With…

With the release of Storm on the Horizon, the re-release of Love of My Life (to be retitled to its original title of An Exotic Heir), and some formatting work which I’ve gotten recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about exactly what goes into an ebook. I finally finished reading my Rita books, so I’ve been also looking for the next book I want to read – I’ve got a number sitting in my Kindle app waiting patiently for me to get to them, so I have the ability to think about this from both an author’s perspective and a reader’s.

What first hits me, I have to admit, is the nuisance I’m experiencing as a reader. I’ve got lots of books in my Kindle app. They’ve got great covers, and some terrific titles, but I bought them a month or more ago and, for the life of me, I can’t remember what they’re about! I need to go back into the Amazon store to look them up again to find out why I bought them and re-read the blurbs so that I can decide which one I feel like reading right now. What a pest! With my physical books, I’ve got a TBR bookshelf. When I want find a new book to read, I go to my bookshelf and pull out each book one-by-one and read the back cover. Easy! I’ll keep out the ones which sound like what I’m in the mood for and end up with two or three in my hand to choose from.

But I can’t do that with my ebooks! Why? Because all I’ve got is the cover of the book and then the book itself. I don’t have the back cover, the blurb.

I recently read a blog posting by Joe Konrath which gave me one of those “duh!” moments. Why don’t authors (and formatters, like me) put the blurb on the first page of the book? That way, I just click on the book cover in my Kindle app and open up to the blurb. Right there! So easy! Then I can open up all my books to their blurb and switch back and forth and decide what I feel like reading. Wouldn’t that be easier than searching Amazon for the book all over again? It just seems to make so much sense.

And what about reviews? Some authors put reviews on that first page. Does anyone really read them? I put them in An Exotic Heir (the reviews I’d gotten for Love of My Life). One person I just did formatting for put those she’d gotten for her previous book into her new one. But are they useful?

The copyright page? Does it have to be in the beginning of the book? Konrath thought it should go at the end. I’m torn on that one. I want it right there at the beginning so that any would-be pirates will see it and, hopefully, be reminded that the book is protected by law. But, on the other hand, are pirates really going to care? They know this. Everyone knows it. Do I need to have the copyright page at the beginning? Why can’t it go at the end, like Konrath suggests? I can’t decide where to put it. What do you think? Should the copyright page go at the beginning (to remind people that they should buy the book) or at the end (which, Konrath points out, leaves more space for the excerpt in Amazon’s “See Inside” feature)?

What do you think should be at the beginning of an ebook? Anyone willing to join me in putting the blurb on the first page? Would it look strange? Confuse readers? What do you think?