Meredith Bond's Blog, page 6

Building A Better Hero

The one thing I did when I went back to revise Wooing Miss Whatley (which I’ve just republished as A Rake’s Reward), was to rebuild my characters into more likeable people. To be honest, they—well, really my heroine—was a pretty awful person (I think I might have mentioned that in a previous post). So I thought I’d go over what I did to make my characters more likeable, since I’m beginning to do the same thing with the characters I my new WIP, Falling.

We all know that to have sympathetic characters, someone who we can understand and empathize with, there are those basic rules. They need to have at least two of the following characteristics:

Be in jeopardy, or have a threat of jeopardy
Be funny
Be powerful
Be likeable
Have some misfortune

 

Sara, the heroine in Rake, had a misfortune (her family is poor because Reath had won the family’s estate in a game of cards) and… That was it. She was not in jeopardy, she wasn’t funny or powerful and she certainly wasn’t likeable. She clearly needed work.

I gave her a sense of humor—even better, I gave her the ability to laugh at herself. She needed to be nice. She is strongly opinionated (as a result of her upbringing), but has an unfortunate tendency to blurt out her opinions at inopportune moments and to the wrong people—but then she’ll realize what she’s done wrong and apologize for it and not do it again (she’s smart too).

I also gave her flaws, which immediately makes her someone real, someone we can all relate to (how often have you said the wrong thing to the wrong person and then kicked yourself for it afterward?  If I had a dime for every time I’ve done that I’d be a very wealthy person).

I turned someone who wasn’t nice or relatable into a fully developed, sympathetic, character—someone whose story you could care about.

I also did some minor fixes to Reath, the hero, taking him off the hook for having kept Sara’s family’s estate for ten years instead of giving it right back, which would have been the right thing to do. I blamed that awful behavior on his father and even added some more nastiness to Reath Senior, which, in turn, made my hero look like an even nicer person.

Now, as I’m preparing to delve back in to writing Falling, I’m starting to do something similar to these characters. I’m searching for clues as to who the hero and heroine are because, frankly, the first time I started writing this book, the hero and heroine are merely blank foils for my interesting plot. Neither of them have very distinct or interesting characters. That’s about to change.

The heroine, Erin, is the youngest of seven children. I’m sure you know how that would affect someone! Can you imagine the chaos in such a household—seven strong, outgoing, closely spaced children? And then put on top of that that she’s destined to be the most powerful magical person (Vallen) in the world. It might just make her parents more inclined to put pressure on her to do well in school and, well, in everything that she does. Naturally, if her parents expect her to be perfect, she can expect no less of herself.

Already I’m building a deep, three dimensional person here.

I consider what she would be like as a friend. How she would live as an adult. What she would do in a crisis, how she would react. These are all important things I need to know about Erin, because they all determine how she’ll behave throughout the story.

I’ll then do the same thing for my hero, who, naturally, had a completely different sort of life growing up and has had significant life-altering experiences. He’s got his own flaws (think superman complex) as well as good points and he’ll be as interesting and well-fleshed out as Erin with his own distinctive voice (he’s a lawyer, it’s a strong one).

I’m building my characters.

What do you do to build your characters, or do they just pop out of your brain fully formed?

And don’t forget to pick up your copy of A Rake’s Reward for 99 cents while that price

lasts–I’ll be raising it to its normal price of 3.99 next week! Click here to read the first chapter.

Deja Vu All Over Again

Shout out to Yogi Berra, who sadly passed away this week! I have lived by his wisdom my whole life (yes, when there was a fork in the road, I would take it).

As I mentioned last week, I’m starting to write a new book. The catch is that it’s not really a new book, at least, not to me.

This is, in fact, a rather old book—I actually started writing it in 2009. The thing is, it really wasn’t working. Not for me. To be honest, I can’t quite tell you why it wasn’t working, but I do remember that after I wrote the first five chapters of the book, my interest in it just fizzled out. And if I’m not interested in writing the book, you can be sure no one will be interested in reading it. So, I stopped writing it and went on to another project.

But the concept was a good one—a young woman, terrified of falling, is forced to rent and live in an apartment where one whole wall is just windows. She can’t even step into the apartment without feeling like she’s going to fall out of it. It’s terrifying. But she has to live there (blackmailed by her boss to cover up an illicit affair of his). In order to rid herself of this fear, her best friend asks a co-worker who can hypnotize people to put the heroine under. He does, and she travels back in time to a previous life. From there we learn how she got this fear of falling.

It’s really a fun and interesting story; time-travels are always different and entertaining. And, of course, the book fits into my Vallen world very nicely (I’ll tell you about that next week).  Because of all this, I just haven’t been able to get the book out of my mind in all these years. I’ve kept telling myself that I would dig into the story and my preparations for it and find out why it wasn’t working, why I lost interest in writing it. I promised myself that I would write this book.

So, here I am, keeping my promise. As I do so, though, not only am I having fun rediscovering the characters I created earlier (not too bad, if I say so myself), and I’m recreating and deepening the plot I had sketched out earlier. As I’m doing so, I’m making sure that my characters are deep, three-dimensional people with plenty of good points and bad, and I’m complicating my plot as well.

I’m thinking that that might have been my problem before—the plot wasn’t very well thought out. Oh, most of it was. The main concept was very well developed. But the subplots, which, in this case, are the supports of the main concept, were not. They were too predictable. Too easy. I’m making sure that that’s no longer the case.

Of course, the hardest part about writing this story for me is that most of the action takes place in modern day Washington, DC. I have the hardest time writing contemporary stories. The problem is that I’m writing about a world we all know, so if I screw something up everyone is going see it and call me out on it (or worse, the book will become a wall-banger). I’m also worried about dating my story.

Already, what I’d written is dated—I have my hero checking his Blackberry. Why? Because five years ago you couldn’t imagine a lawyer without one! Today? Not so much. So, I changed that to be a generic phone. But what if something else comes out five years from now. Immediately, my story will become old and outdated—laughingly so! Unfortunately, there isn’t anything I can do about that, but it worries me. At least when I write a historical what I’m writing is deliberately outdated. It’s supposed to be that way. This is a good thing. Not so with contemporaries. Yikes!

So, here I am breathing new life into an old story and hoping for a miracle to happen and it turns into something wonderful. What about you? Have you resurrected old stories from their graves? How did that turn out for you?

It’s Done–Now What?

I am so thrilled! Last Sunday I worked my tail off and finished A Rake’s Reward the last of my Merry Men Quartet books. I’ve been working on that book for a lot longer than I had originally intended, mainly because I had to take a few months off to deal with moving, but also because the edits to the original book (Wooing Miss Whately published by Zebra Books) ended up being a lot more intensive than I had originally planned.

But it’s done! Yay!

Um… Now what?

What do you do when you finish a book? Do you take a few days off? Or do you jump right in to your next book?

I jumped, slowly.

It’s been a busy week for me in terms of formatting jobs, and I’ve also had quite a few evening activities which have taken me from my work much earlier than I usually quit for the day, so I’ve started my next project out slowly.

Oddly—for me—the first thing I did for my new project was start with the characters. Thinking about them, reading what I had already written about them (I’m going back to a previously begun book, which I got about 1/4 of the way into writing before stopping to work on something else—which I thing is another blog post topic all on its own).

My husband complains mightily that, for a writer of character driven books, I always start with my plot, so for Rake and now for Falling (my new WIP), I’m starting with the characters. Who are they, what do they want and how are those goals and desires going to drive my story?

Right now those questions are being answered in generalities rather than specific, concrete needs: “My hero wants to save the world, one kid at a time” instead of  “My hero wants to help save Shawn, a kid wrongly accused of selling drugs”. (Um, yeah, I know that sounds really strange coming from a writer of historical romances, but this book is a time-travel, which bops back and forth between contemporary Washington, DC and Medieval England and the majority of time is spent in the contemporary world. In other words, it’s going to be really different from anything I’ve ever written (I promise, I’m going to explore that in my next post).) The point is that I’ve got to get specific. I’ve got to figure out not the broad ideas—saving the world—but specifics which will drive my plot… No, which will be my plot.

This is what I’m beginning to work on. As I go, I’m figuring out how I’d like to organize myself for this book. I tried 3×5 card on a bulletin board for Rake, but it was more work to fill out the cards than to just write the scene, so I don’t think I’ll try that again.

My old standard “W” plot line is going to be essential, but for this book I’m actually going to need four overlapping Ws for my four, no, five plot lines(!)–and now I begin to understand why I stopped writing this book. It’s a little overwhelming, but I’ll get it straightened out and tell you all about next week.

My big point here is that I’ve just finished writing a book and I can hardly wait to delve straight into the next one. It’s tugging at me. Yes, I would kind of like a bit of a break, especially since my non-writing life is really busy right now, but it all comes down to the essence of me: I’m a writer. I spin stories and create characters in my head and I’ve got to figure them out and write them down. That is who I am and what I do.

How about you? Do you jump right in to your next project when you finish one, or do you take some time off?

Oh, and while you’re here, take look at my front page and see what you think! I’d love to hear your comments on how the site is shaping up. There’s still a good bit of work left to do, but I’m taking it, like my new book, slowly.

Guest Post-The Making of a Writer

I’m sure you all remember that a few weeks ago I said I was thinking of having guest posters every so often on this blog. My dearest, most devoted readers (who always comment on my posts–thank you, ladies!) were not so thrilled with the idea (for some reason they like reading what I write — really, really love you guys!), but I think the ink had hardly dried on the screen when I received an email from another reader who was raising her hand shouting, “Me! Me! Ooooh, pick me! I want to guest blog!” (Okay, not literally in those words, but close enough.) So, today I present to you Carmen Stefanescu. She has written a lovely post on the joys (trials and tribulations) of a new writer and all that one needs to do when one is a new writer. So I ask you to be kind, encourage this new writer and make her feel welcome, and she’s written what sounds like a really fun book (I’m absolutely going to have to hop over to an e-retailer and pick up a copy for myself–she has very nicely provided links at the end of her blog to make that easy for us). Thanks and enjoy!

The Making of a Writer

The day you sign the contract with a publisher, don’t imagine you’ll have no worries left. The hard work you put into writing your book is not over yet. And I don’t mean the editing, deleting or rewriting you’ll do under the attentive eye of your assigned editor. You need to gain more visibility on the internet, brand yourself as an author and enhance your profile.

Get the word out!

Getting your name and your book out there is vital to growing your audience and increasing your sales. Marketing becomes a very important stage even before having your book released.

A website and a blog are the first steps towards these aims. They are the best tools for you to connect up with your audience. It informs people on what you are working, how your book is doing and allows readers to connect with you. You can choose your author name or pen name or the title of your book for your website/blog. You can do things such as Giveaways, contests and guest posts that stimulate people to talk about your book and buy it.

Once your website is established you can add it or its link to your business cards, email signature.

Having a book trailer is another important element. It tells the audience a bit about your book, the characters and with additional components like transition effects and music it can really enhance your product. Once the book trailer is done you should add this video to your website or blog.

Word of mouth through social networking – twitter, pinterest, triberr, facebook,  linkedin – helps your book get noticed.

Promote your book on Goodreads.com, askDavid.com, Author Marketing Club, Authorsden.com, Book Blogs, etc.

Reviews are always helpful when starting out as a new author. Asking people to review your book gives you more visibility on the search engines and, more importantly, gets people talking about you and your book. There are people who first read the reviews before buying a new book by an author theyaren’t  familiar with.

And first and above all, give readers stories that blow them away every time and they’ll become your loyal generators of sales and make  your career success appear effortless.  In fact, the best promotion is between the covers of the book.

These are the things I did to promote myself and draw attention to my book Shadows of the Past, released by the USA publisher Wild Child Publishing on 4th December 2012, which for me, a non-native English speaker, living all my life in Romania, better  known as Dracula’s country, is a great accomplishment.

I wanted to share with everyone out there, either new or established author, whether traditionally published, or self published these highly important steps after having written The End on the page of your manuscript.

And one last thing, I’ve always wanted to be a writer, but take my word, unless you are another J. K. Rowling or Stephen King, it wouldn’t pay the rent! So I became a teacher instead.

I also want to thank the friendly host, Meredith, for allowing me to share these pieces of information with everyone interested.

Author, Carmen Stefanescu’s  Site:

http://shadowspastmystery.blogspot.ro/

https://twitter.com/Carmen_Books

http://www.pinterest.com/carmens007/

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Carmen-Stefanescu-Books/499245716760283

http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6624397.Carmen_Stefanescu

https://plus.google.com/117216040843648957646/posts

http://www.amazon.com/Carmen-Stefanescu/e/B00APVDGAA/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_pop_1

http://nawomenrise.com/

http://coldcoffeecafe.com/profile/CarmenStefanescu

 

Buy Links:

Wild Child Publishing:  http://www.wildchildpublishing.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=84&products_id=410

All Romance:  https://www.allromanceebooks.com/product-shadowsofthepast-1013184-140.html

Amazon:  http://www.amazon.com/Shadows-of-the-Past-ebook/dp/B00AK2D9I8/ref=sr_1_15?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1354874514&sr=1-15&keywords=shadows+of+the+past

Barnes & Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/shadows-of-the-past-carmen-stefanescu/1113910162?ean=2940015715026

Author bio:

Carmen Stefanescu was born in Romania, the native country of the infamous vampire Count Dracula, but where, for about 50 years of communist dictatorship, just speaking about God, faith, reincarnation or paranormal phenomena could have led someone to great trouble – the psychiatric hospital if not to prison.

Teacher of English and German in her native country and mother of two daughters, Carmen Stefanescu survived the grim years of oppression, by escaping in a parallel world, that of the books.

She has dreamt all her life to become a writer, but many of the things she wrote during those years remained just drawer projects. The fall of the Ceausescu’s regime in 1989 and the opening of the country to the world meant a new beginning for her. She started publishing. Poems first, and then prose. Both in English.

Blurb
Shadows of the Past

Publish date: 4th December 2012

Publisher: Wild Child Publishing

Genre: paranormal/light romance/light horror/ light historical.

Anne’s relationship with her boyfriend Neil has disintegrated. After a two-year separation, they pack for a week vacation in hopes of reconciling. But fate has other plans for them.

The discovery of a bejeweled cross and ancient human bones opens a door to a new and frightening world–one where the ghost of a medieval nun named Genevieve will not let Anne rest. This new world threatens not only to ruin Anne and Neil’s vacation but to end all hopes of reconciliation as Anne feels compelled to help free Genevieve’s soul from its torment.

Can Anne save her relationship and help Genevieve find her eternal rest?

The twists and turns in this paranormal tale keep the reader guessing up to the end and weave themselves together into a quest to rekindle love.

 

 

 

What’s your brand?

It seems like everyone is jumping into the rebranding pool just now. Over this summer I’ve had three clients who have had me reformat all of their back list as they re-release their books with a new cleaner look and new book covers. I’ve heard from and about many authors who are redoing their website, and others who, like me are also revamping their brand (I’m hopeful to have my new site and banner done very soon, I’ve just got to work a bit more on my graphics but I’ve got the gist of it up).

So while all this is going on, I thought it would be an appropriate time to pause and think about what branding is and how we use it.

Branding is what people think of when they think of your name. It’s who you are. It’s what you write. It’s your voice and all that you show to the world at large.

Think of Nike. When you do, you think of the swoosh, the sneakers, the athletes who wear them. You think of being athletic and having fun doing so. That is all that Nike is. That’s their brand.

What do people think of when they hear your name? When they hear mine?

Well, that’s what I’ve been thinking about in my re-branding/updating effort.

I want people to think Regency. I want them to think about settling back in a calming atmosphere and reading a good book; a sweet romance perhaps with a little magic in it. So, I want something that feels that way to represent me on the web. I want my website to be clean and calming. I want my banner to feel Regency and bookish. And, because I collect antique pens, I want there to be a pen in all the graphics that represent me.

The hardest part about all this is finding an artist who can represent all that. I lucked into one who actually, somehow (and I think that the how is part of her own special magic) got this–on the first try!! And just to name drop, I used Syneca Featherstone who created the beautiful banner you see here.

She wasn’t the first artist I contacted. The first one didn’t understand what I wanted and when I gave her feedback on what she’d done for me she got very rude and nasty and told me that I didn’t understand branding. I didn’t need that, so I kindly told her that I didn’t think we would work well together. She agreed.

The point is that you need to find an artist who “gets” you and understands what you want. I don’t quite know how Syneca did that with so little information–I gave her my website and social media information and some pictures of pens from my collection (upon her request) and she came back with what you see above. I love it. It think it captures my brand–Regency, books, pens, and a little magic. It doesn’t make it very easy to see my name and that’s the bit I’m thinking about and working on.

So, think about your brand. What image do you want people to imagine when they think of you and your writing? I want to bring people to a happy, soothing place with some excitement, a little angst, perhaps a touch of mystery, and magic–all of these things are in my books. All of these things are, I think reflected in my new banner (okay, maybe not the angst, but I’m not sure I want to advertise that, it’s not that important to my brand–but, maybe, if you’re writing YA, angst should be reflected in your brand, in your banner).

What do you think? Does your banner, the pictures on your website and in your social media front reflect your brand and who you are?

The Word of the Day: Volatility

Today I want to explore a word I’ve been hearing a lot in the news (thanks to the Chinese Stock Exchange): Volatility. It’s a word that’s used in an amazingly varied number of ways. Here’s the definition from Dictionary.com along with my take on that definition of the word:

evaporating rapidly; passing off readily in the form of vapor: That would be an idea for a book or the answer to a problem you’ve been struggling with in your book. It’s absolutely the perfect answer to your problem but it disappears along with the steam from your hot shower the minute you turn off the water.

Acetone is a volatile solvent.

tending or threatening to break out into open violence; explosive:

An author who is constantly being interrupted by her clueless children (despite the fact that she has explained to them any number of times that “Mommy is working”) and then her husband comes home and asks what’s for dinner.

It would also be my friend’s daughter and too many of our young adult children who are suffering from severe depression and not getting the help they need because they’re too scared or don’t know how to ask for it.

a volatile political situation.

changeable; mercurial; flighty: that’s the book market now and always. Today paranormal is hot, yesterday it was all historicals, maybe tomorrow it will be westerns, who knows! Are zombies still in? What about steampunk, is anyone still reading that? Readers are a finicky lot. Their tastes change constantly. Does that mean we have to change what we’re writing? Absolutely not! Write what you love, the market will come around to meet it, eventually.

a volatile disposition.

(of prices, values, etc.) tending to fluctuate sharply and regularly: the stock market has been having a roller coaster week, does that mean we all need to throw our hands up in the air and scream? No. It’ll even out and so will all of the other volatility which I’m talking about today.

This is also my emotions of late. One day I’m flying high, enjoying the presence of my daughter, laughing with her as we dance and sing along to music as we fold the laundry together. Life couldn’t be better! And the next moment I’m nearly in tears as I think about the fact that she’ll be back at school even as you read this and I’ll be alone once more with my husband here and then gone as his business trips have multiplied so that he’s going to be away every third week this fall for a week or more at a time.

I want my daughter to grow, learn, have fun, spread her wings and fly on her own–and I want her to stay close to me where I can watch over her and make sure she eats right, stays healthy and safe. Such is a parent’s dilemma (I won’t say mother’s dilemma because I’m sure that fathers feel the same way about their children).

volatile market conditions.

fleeting; transient: that would be today’s crisis (isn’t there one nearly every day?). It will pass. We just have to breathe slowly and evenly, taking one day at a time.

My anxiety about my daughter will pass as I hear from her how happy she is at school, how much she’s learning and loving her classes, her roommate, and all of her extracurricular activities. And I will soon love being on my own, able to write whenever I want, or going out and being an “adult” with my husband whenever he’s home and the feeling strikes us.

volatile beauty.

of or relating to storage that does not retain data when electrical power is turned off or fails. This reminds me that we are not computers. No matter how badly we fail, we do retain that data, that memory, and this is a good thing. This is how we learn, how we grow.


able to fly or flying. That’s what I wish for all of us. To fly with good fortune. To try new things and brave the fall should it come. For our books to sell and our children to soar and excel at all that they wish to do with their lives.

 

And that’s the word of the day, volatility. Such a great word! Who knew?

Guest Blogging

What do you think of guest blogs? There are a couple of different angles I’d like to look at when thinking about this topic today. Ready?

A number of authors and bloggers have used guest blogs for a while and for a number of reasons:

For authors:

Guest blogs are a great way to get exposure for their writing/most recent release.
You get exposure to a whole new audience and have an opportunity to turn a new group of people into readers of your work.


For bloggers:

You get the opportunity to take a week off from writing your own blogs
Potentially, you get a new audience who come over to see what your guest (whom this audience already knows) has to say. Hopefully, they’ll then take a look around at what you’ve written and then come back for more.

And then there are the blogs which show up regularly on blog tours which are there solely for authors to promote their work. I haven’t quite figured these blogs out. Who looks at them? Anybody besides raffle junkies? Do people actually read the posting the author worked so hard to write (especially for those blogs which say that they only publish original content)?

I’ve done a couple of paid blog tours and I’ve never had any success in either selling books or getting reviews from them.

On the other hand, when I’ve guest blogged on the blogs of other authors, I have seen both sales and a spike in visits to my own website. Blogs hosted by authors which have substance and aren’t just there for promotional purposes do the best in terms of marketing and promotion—or so I’ve found.

With those thoughts in mind, I’m thinking of opening up my blog—yes, this one, which I’ve written entirely by myself every single week for four years—to other authors. What do you think, my devoted readers? Should I do this? Would you like to post here?

I would, naturally, only post blogs related to my theme of writing and self-publishing, but I feel that many of you have had a lot of experience in these areas and I’d love to hear what you have to say and I bet everyone else here would as well.

I’m thinking that I’d post one guest post a month. So, would you like to be first? Email me if you’d like to guest post here. If no one does, then you’ll all have to just continue to put up with whatever I’ve got to say, but I think it would be really interesting to hear from others, so, join in!

Getting to the end

After a great weekend at the Mid-Atlantic Fiction Writers conference last week, something I heard on a podcast of Neil Gaiman speaking on writing really struck me.

Um, yeah, did you follow that one? Let me explain…

The MAFWI conference was especially wonderful, I felt (and I think a lot of the attendees would agree with me), because of the variety of presenters. There was Jason Tinney, who came from a theatre background and really writes character sketches more than novels; Robert Bidinotto, who writes mysteries with a focus on justice; a writer of historical fiction, Jim Rada; JP Sloan who writes urban fantasy; Tess Gerritson, who writes medical thrillers (she created Rizolli and Isles), many others, and me.

From the very first panel discussion on how you start and write a book, right through the entire weekend, one thing that really stood out was the fact that although we’re all writers with a passion for what we do, we all do it very differently.

Some of the writers came from an editorial background and make sure every word they right is exactly correct. They analyze each scene after it is written before going on to the next. They write a chapter and make sure the character and story development is progressing in just the way they want it to. The are not only plotters, they edit as they go so that their first draft is nearly perfect and they might have to write just one more draft before the book is finished.

And then there are the writers at the other extreme of the spectrum like Tess Garritson who is a doctor with—self-proclaimed—illegible handwriting. She hand-writes her entire book on a pad of paper first. According to her, her handwriting is so bad, she couldn’t go back to edit it even if she wanted to. She then spends a great deal of time transcribing her book, typing it into her computer (that would be her second draft) and then will write usually another two or three drafts after that before she’s satisfied with her work. The one thing she does do, though, is a ton of research before she ever begins writing.

And then there was everything in between, including one writer who didn’t even know what a pantser was—after the concept was explained to him, he came to the conclusion that he was a pantser and went around giggling the entire weekend telling everyone that he was a pantser (it was too funny!).

The point is that we all have very different styles of writing. We all get to the end in very different ways–which brings me to the podcast interview I heard where Neil Gaiman answered the question “How do you become a writer?” He answered with “You just put one word after another until you get to the end”. Because in the end that’s how we all do it.

We just write one word after another. We form sentences, the sentences form paragraphs. When we go back and edit those paragraphs really doesn’t matter, as long as you do so at some point in the process, and then ,of course, you have to have someone else do it again to catch the things you missed. But it is after all, just one word after another until you get to the end. Sounds so simple, doesn’t it? J

Stopping for a check

I’ve got a strange thing I do as I write each of my books. I plot out my book in detail creating an outline and sketching out my W plot line. If the W doesn’t work that well, I might fill out one of my Michael Hauge plot worksheets and build my outline from there. I then develop my characters filling out worksheets and writing paragraphs on each of my main characters all before I start to write. I then slip all of that work into a folder or a binder and just write the book from my broad outline making sure I hit all the important plot points.

I need my outline so that I know what's going t happen next and that's fine. I'm a plotter. I'm no good at flying by the seat of my pants. Well, let me rephrase that, I do fly. I write pretty quickly, usually a scene a day and I try not to look back at where I've come from, but only ahead at where I'm going… Until I come to about the middle of the book, and then I pause and reassess where my characters are in their journey.

That’s where I am right now in Rake. I’m just about to hit that lovely high point where the hero and heroine have that lovely romantic moment and all is right with the world. You, the reader, know it’s not going to last. In fact, we all know that it’s all going to go down hill from here (until it shoots back up at the end). But still, this is a place where I like to linger a little bit. The problem is, as I’m lingering and enjoying the romantic moment, my characters are actually going through an internal struggle. Well, they’ve been going through one the entire book, but now they’re beginning to realize it or have to actually acknowledge it. It’s got to be something my character is fighting against (because we all like the status quo. We don’t want to change!). But change they must because they’ve got to grow and learn and it’s going to be difficult, if not outright painful.

So I need to stop the forward momentum of my writing to make sure that my characters are doing what they should be doing (growing). I was doing this today.

Of course, I realized that while my heroine is doing all sorts of wonderful growing and fighting against such growth, my hero has remained pretty stagnant. I'm not quite sure where, if anywhere, he is going. I know that he should be going somewhere, I'm just not seeing it and I’m not quite sure I remember where it is I decided he needs to go (yeah, he’s pretty wonderful to start with—that might be one of my problems).

So I'll pause and reassess and look through my old notes and figure out what he's supposed to be doing and then, hopefully, I'll be able to get him back on track again.

   So do you do this? Do you need to stop and reassess or so you just plow through and then figure out what you've got at the end and then fix things afterward?

 

Romancing the Upgrade

I’m a romance writer and I love a good long, drawn-out romance. In my books you won’t find a lot sex—quite frequently none at all. Why is that? Because it’s the romance of the relationship, the leading up to intimacy that I love. It’s the touch of a hand, the gaze into the eyes, the admiration of physique from afar, two people talking and getting to know each other. The anticipation.

It’s for this reason that I’m not upgrading to Windows 10 just yet.

Wait, what?

What does upgrading my computer have to do with romance? Well, it’s actually very similar. Upgrading is like having sex. You’re committing. You’re exposing yourself. You’re laying bare all of your secrets and putting yourself out there for this new operating system to come in and take over your life, er, I mean your computer (eh, same thing).

The thing is, I’m an early adopter when it comes to technology. My husband just shakes his head sadly (but, then, oddly enough enables me to do this). I love new toys (technology). I love trying new things (see last week's article on my new notebook for organizing my writing). Of course I’m going to upgrade the minute I can.

I wanted to jump right into bed with Windows 10 the minute it showed up on my doorstep.

Only, I couldn’t.

My computer didn’t download the app. When I told it to search for updates, the little thing just went round and round. Finally, later in the afternoon, after I spent a long day trying to find a way to get the app to download on my computer, my husband found a work-around. Like any good friend who just wants me to be happy, he found a way for me and Windows 10 to be together—a download that allows one to upgrade without the app.

I jumped on it and started to download Windows 10… and then my computer crashed (at apparently a known issue). It was then so late in the day I needed to stop, make dinner and head out to a meeting.

Yesterday, my husband asked me whether I was going to try upgrading again. Oddly enough, I told him I was going to try to wait a few weeks to see if any updates/fixes came out before I tried it again. Reason (sanity?)  had come back to me.

I looked at my handsome new friend and decided to work on our relationship a little before I hopped into bed with her (Windows 10 has to be female, she’s got Cortana which can only be female).

I’m going to try to be patient. I’m going to talk with her a bit (reading everything I can about the new operating system), get to know her. I’m lusting. I’m dragging out the joy and excitement, the anticipation of the upgrade. I’m behaving in the way I try to write the romance in my novels.

I don’t let my characters just jump into bed with each other at the first inkling of attraction, I make them wait. They need to get to know each other better. They need to touch hands and lock eyes a few times before they can touch anything else. They need to experience the frustration of wanting something, then being not so sure whether they want it or not, and then be absolutely sure they want it before they hop into bed.

That’s what I’m doing with Windows 10. I’m touching her hand and then pulling back. I’m chatting with her, getting to know her better and looking her over before we hop into bed.

In another week or so I’ll probably close to going crazy with lust and at that point I will get into bed with her. I’ll upgrade and then immediately regret it (tell me who hasn’t regretted having sex with someone after the first time, even just a little bit?). I very well may go through a crisis when things aren’t going so well and I’ll wish that I hadn’t upgraded, that I hadn’t taken that plunge, but then… like in all good romances, I’ll fall in love. I’ll get to know Windows 10, all of her quirks and funny little things. I’ll be amazed at some of the things she can do and annoyed with some of the things she does and we’ll setting into living together in harmony, slowly, over time, the way all good relationships develop.

But right now, I’m taking it slowly. I’m being cautious. I’m not upgrading right away. I’m going to let this romance develop a little longer. What about you? If you’ve got a PC, have you upgraded yet? Have you jumped into bed with Microsoft or are you waiting?