Jennifer Griffith's Blog, page 7

How to Handle Bad Reviews (Video)

Everybody who does anything creative and has the courage to put their work out for public consumption will get a bad review now and then. I talk about how to handle it in this video interview with CJ Anaya. CJ has an amazing array of videos on self-publishing. If you’ve even been interested in trying self-pub, CJ’s YouTube channel “Author Journey” is something you really need to check out. It’s a fabulous resource.

Enduring Art and The Power of Creativity for Happiness

I have a favorite author that I almost never recommend to people because I’m not sure my taste will run the same as other people’s. Anthony Trollope wrote 84 novels in his day, the Victorian era. He was a contemporary of Dickens, and like Dickens, had his work serialized in newspapers, vast sweeping plots, with romance and political intrigue, that ran into the hundreds of pages, with heaps of description. However, unlike Dickens, Trollope’s books didn’t aim for creating sweeping social change; he set out to entertain.

And 150 years later, I’m still entertained. I still read Orley Farm late at night, and the Barchester series, and the Plantagenet series, and pretty much all eighty-four of his novels. The description is delightful in its copiousness, and sometimes it even helps me in my ongoing battle with insomnia. The characters are flawed and the plots intertwining, and the Victorian era is evoked extremely well. He’s Dickens Lite, if you ask me.

Now, I’m writing what I think of as Lite…whatever. And there’s only a very slim chance it will endure in any form, and probably no chance it will endure a hundred and fifty years. But it might. Even if it doesn’t, I’m having a lot of fun with the work of creation. It gives me joy, even if no one reads it in a century. Even if no one else reads it now.

I found a quote yesterday while I was trolling some old journals, looking for stories from when my youngest daughter was born. What I found was this, a reference to a mind-expanding talk I’d heard at a conference–about two great sources of God’s happiness being creativity and compassion. You can read the whole talk here, but the couple of paragraphs that struck me were these:

“The desire to create is one of the deepest yearnings of the human soul. No matter our talents, education, backgrounds, or abilities, we each have an inherent wish to create something that did not exist before. Everyone can create. You don’t need money, position, or influence in order to create something of substance or beauty. Creation brings deep satisfaction and fulfillment. We develop ourselves and others when we take unorganized matter into our hands and mold it into something of beauty.” — Dieter F. Uchtdorf

Later in the talk was this great nugget of encouragement:

“You may think you don’t have talents, but that is a false assumption, for we all have talents and gifts, every one of us.5 The bounds of creativity extend far beyond the limits of a canvas or a sheet of paper and do not require a brush, a pen, or the keys of a piano. Creation means bringing into existence something that did not exist before—colorful gardens, harmonious homes, family memories, flowing laughter. What you create doesn’t have to be perfect. So what if the eggs are greasy or the toast is burned? Don’t let fear of failure discourage you. Don’t let the voice of critics paralyze you—whether that voice comes from the outside or the inside.” –Dieter F. Uchtdorf

Writing is where I’m pouring my creative energy these days. That, and my family. Sometimes I try to cook something lovely, as well, like my daughter’s pineapple upside down cake for her birthday yesterday. There’s joy in it.

I hope you find some joy in creation today.

Why I Write WHAT I Write

I want to share something, and I hope it’s taken in the spirit I intend. There have been days when I’ve been down, or that I’ve thought maybe the genre I write in is not as “important” as other genres. Then last month, I took a writing workshop from Joshua Perkey where I was encouraged to write a few pages about WHY I WRITE WHAT I WRITE. I blasted it out there in about half an hour, and it’s rough, but as I hashed it out, the words helped me see why clean fiction is vital. It’s long, but I wanted to share it with you all, and give you a huge thank you for all YOU do to bring light to the world.

WHY I WRITE WHAT I WRITE

Why do I write light romance? First and foremost, I believe that it helps others escape from the stress and pressure of their daily lives. Escapist fiction, clean and uplifting (at least on some level, giving a hope of love and resolution to problems), is a needed quantity in the world. People need a break from their own concerns to worry about someone else’s for a while. They need to be able to vicariously experience an emotionally wrenching “dark moment” as a relationship looks like it’s about to fail, and then the triumph as love overcomes. In this way, a reader can be transported to a place of escape, as well as a place of emotional healing. The vicarious experience is part of why storytelling has been prominent in every society in all the history of the world.

Here’s another way to consider it. To paraphrase G.K. Chesterton, “Children do not need fairy tales to know there are dragons in the world. They need fairy tales to know that dragons can be slain.” The same can be said of light fiction, especially including romance. We need to believe in happily ever afters. We need to believe that love and romance and happiness can all exist in one good relationship. We need to have something to model our own behaviors on, as women and men treat each other well and make one another fall in love with each other. We need to be able to see it working out, even when we might have imperfect relationships in our own lives.

There is so much of the other kind of writing out there: the tawdry, the titillating, the downright filthy. Sectors of my genre can often be boiled down to pornography for women. Women crave a love story, and if there isn’t a clean one, all that will be left is the sludge. If writers like me and those in my clean romance movement failed to write, there would be nothing to fill that need, and a huge void would be left. We offer a solution, fill a need, and a wholesome—if not always necessarily uplifting—escape. I’m only saying this that it’s not necessarily uplifting because I usually would attribute a spiritual aspect to that word. However, on the other hand, true love expressed (within bounds of morals and decency) must needs be uplifting.

A few years ago, there was a huge incident of civil unrest in the Middle East, which became known as the Arab Spring. Governments were overthrown by military groups, upheaval was everywhere, putting civilians at risk. I have a cousin who grew up in Idaho but who married an Egyptian man. She has lived many years outside Cairo. During the Arab Spring’s events, we all worried for her and her family’s safety. And then, she gave me a gift: an email that changed everything about how I saw my writing. It was along the lines of this: Jenny, During all this craziness, I’ve been confined to my house. We placed large barricades in our cul de sac to keep tanks from entering our neighborhood. I couldn’t go outside or leave for several days. So, to take my mind off things, I reread your book Delicious Conversation. It was a great escape until the smoke cleared.

Tell me that fluffy fiction is useless or powerless now.

The final thing is from a Kate DiCamillo quote on Facebook that I didn’t read but heard about. I should note that she is my favorite writer of all time. She is beautiful and amazing, and every book of hers that I read feels like a glimpse into a wise and precious soul who knows what our ideal of love and relationships should really be, and she conveys that through gentle relationships, quirky and broken souls who need the healing of love. Anyway, Kate DiCamillo recently said on social media that she felt so helpless in a world that felt like it was growing darker all the time, and that there’s no way to combat it—until she realized that her writing was light, and that we have to fill the world with stories. “Stories are light. Light is precious in a world so dark.”

I feel like my voice cannot shout and tell the world to stop its sludgy trudge toward Gomorrah. I can’t be like one of those terrible, shouting radio announcers or bloggers that tell us everything that is morally sliding into the murk. I have those thoughts, but I don’t have that gift, nor do I want to accomplish such an outcome through contention, which I assume that type of communication would always entail.

Instead, I have a different gift, a talent that I’ve cultivated and practiced and given time to over the course of more than two decades. That gift is stories. That gift is to fill the world with light—and when I say light fiction, I can mean it both ways: light as in fluffy, but also light as in illuminating to a dark or heavy soul. I can do as Kate, my writing hero, says, and fill the world with light. The world needs my stories. I’m not wasting my time by writing. I’m giving the world my little, happy gifts. I hope they will receive them.

That’s why I write what I write: light fiction.

New (Free) Halloween Story in the Legally in Love Collection

People who know me will be shocked. I wrote a Halloween story? Yes! (Usually I’m more of the Christmas and Thanksgiving type.)

Assumption of the Risk is the latest installment in the Legally in Love Collection, but rather than being a sweet, contemporary romance, it’s set in the 1950s with a single woman school teacher who lives at the end of a creepy road. She’s received a threat from an angry student at school, and now…it’s a dark and stormy night.

Is there romance? Yes! Is there a hot lawyer? Of course there is! So you might as well read it. Since it’s free, and it’s only about 20 pages of creepy, love-y fun.

You can get this book free here.

Alone. Unprotected. Afraid.






I really should have found a new guard dog when Voltaire died, especially considering I lived on that abandoned road in that long-vacant farmhouse, the old MacMillan place. How is just a school teacher, surrounded by her few farm animals, supposed to cope when the threats start, wind blows, the power dies, and the knocking begins?
“Intense, with a great twist!” – Megan Oliphant, former editor, Xchyler Publishing
Short story Assumption of the Risk is a Halloween edition of Jennifer Griffith’s top-selling Legally in Love Collection, all stand-alone romantic comedies with legal entanglements.

 

Well, This is Awesome: $50 Gift Card

It’s FALL! Time to curl up on your autumn sofa with a steaming cup and escape!

If you’re a romance reader, and you want to find a new author to love but you don’t want to expend much RISK, here’s an awesome author cross-promo I joined. It’s called…

FALLING IN LOVE!

I, personally, can easily fall in love with the idea of TWENTY-TWO free romances–PLUS a chance at a free $50 gift card to Amazon. Hello. I like to party, and by party I mean read a lot of books and get a gift card for MORE books.

Here’s how it works: click here. Then you choose whichever books you want to download (mine, if you haven’t already!), and then start reading. The authors will send you an email describing a little about themselves. You can read any or all of the books, and see if you’re a match.

Easy! Low risk! Free! Lots to love.

Oh, and since this is My Book Cave’s promo, it has all the books RATED, as in movie ratings, so it tells you ahead of time what the content is. In this promo, my book is “mild,” with just the kissing of TRUE LOVE. Check out the other books, too.

Have fun. Happy weekend, falling into reading love, my friends.

From First Draft to Hitting “Publish”: The Process in 14 Steps

After a newbie author asked a question on a Facebook group, “What’s a beta reader?” I answered, regaling her with my entire draft-to-edit-to-publish process. Lucky her!

A lot of people have asked me, what’s your process, and I often tell them about how I get my ideas, or something like that. But the truth is MUCH MORE BORING AND TEDIOUS.

And so I’ll post it here.

1) Draft. As in, finish writing the first draft of the book. Type THE END, just for the sense of satisfaction it creates.

2) Let it settle a few weeks while I write a different book or two. I can’t sit around obsessing about the draft.

3) Reread my draft and do a major content edit. I’m always surprised as I reread, because I’ve been blessed with the most forgetful-of-stories brain on the planet. I even forget what *I* write. Yep. So this is often kind of fun. (Sometimes it’s horrifying, though, filled with a whole bunch of what was I thinking?)

4) Give it to my “alpha reader” (which my husband insists on being called).

5) Re-edit, based on my husband’s suggestions. He’s both brilliant and gentle. He gives me the bad news in dribs and drabs, like a slow IV drip of the meds my story needs.

6) Send to my trusted beta readers, to get secondary feedback on what strengths/weaknesses the book has. When my NYT Bestselling Author uncle came and spoke at a writers conference I attended about five years ago, he had some excellent advice: be very careful about who you show your work to. Not all feedback is created equal.

7) Work out the kinks, based on the feedback received. Choose wisely which advice to follow and which not to follow. Do not perform this step in a highly emotional state. (I have failed at this advice and ended up wonking out my whole entire book. I was glad I’d kept an earlier draft so I could go back to code.)

8) Do a final read-through, catching the loose things/typos.

9) Send to a proofreader. Or two. It’s surprising how many things slip through.

10) Fix proofers’ catches.

11) Re-read. Be critical, and yet rejoice in it. Even if I’m sick to death of this book by this point, I have to let myself be happy in the good parts.

12) Rejoice and send to my review team, who agree to read and early copy (ARC) in exchange for an honest review.

13) Hold breath. Make any changes reviewers happen to catch and contact me about.

14) Release book. Pray that after all this effort, it’s a good story that brings a light to someone’s life. Because, as Kate DiCamillo says, stories are light in a darkening world.

How long does this process take? It depends on the length of the book and the complexity of the story. I’ve had it take a year. I’ve had it take three months. But I’m always overlapping books (see step 2 above.) If I’m working on the next book while Book A is out for beta reading or editing or review, then I can keep my momentum going.

And now, drumroll, please. For the exciting news du jour. Today I sent my latest book in the Billionaire Makeover Romances to three trusted beta readers. I’ll tell you more details about that book IF the beta readers give it the thumbs up. Meanwhile, I would sit around biting my nails, worrying about whether they’d like it, but I’m too busy digging into editing the next edit. As of this afternoon, I’m 75 pages into an edit on the next book in the Legally in Love Series, which I’d love to be able to release before the end of this year.

Better go now. Writing calls.

Finishing The WIP

Today I’m telling myself that this, THIS is the day that I’m going to finish the edit of my work in progress, a third installment for the Billionaire Makeover Romance series. It’s been such a fun book to write, and it’s one I’ve had in my head for years, so it’s fun to finally see it coming to fruition.

In its earliest incarnation, it had a different title, different characters and plot and setting. I wrote about 15 pages of it, loved it, but then it died. Sometimes ideas do that.

So I resurrected it in brainstorm form. This time, it had a new set of characters, new plot, new hilarious conflict. But that one never even made it out of the “Initial Brainstorm” file. (I always do a file called “Initial Brainstorm” when Gary and I come up with an idea.)

Finally, I hit on how to make this kernel of an idea work best. Even now, it makes me laugh when I think about the concept. I love the characters and the setting. I’d actually contrived the setting while doing an “Initial Brainstorm” for a completely different series (one yet to see the light of day / an outline). But it worked so well for this book, that I figured I shouldn’t let a great setting go to waste. Someday I might get a chance to write that other series.

Now, I’ve drafted, done one full editing pass, and now I’m throwing myself into the last scene I realized I need to add to make the romance really snap between the hero and the heroine. I think the hero is so delicious, and the heroine is sweet and selfless and great. I really like them. I hope you will, too.

Assuming I EVER GET THROUGH FINAL EDITS.

#BackToWork

Why I Spend the Money to Go to Writing Conferences

This week is one of my favorite weeks of the year. For a writer, Conference Week is almost like Christmas. There are friends, laughter, good food, and dress-up events—not to mention all the learning and networking that take place.

I try to attend two writing events each year to improve my craft of writing. This year I’m attending the American Night Writers Association’s annual conference in Gilbert, Arizona. I’m looking forward to the critique camp, where I get to receive feedback on five pages of my work; the workshops on mystery writing (that’s something I’ve been dying to learn more about) and writing blurbs for the back of the book.

 

This year we have a “Protagonist Ball,” where everyone will dress up as a protagonist from a book. I’m going at Daisy Buchanan from The Great Gatsby. (I might have a Jay Gatsby thing going on. See the cover of Mergers & Acquisitions.) Plus, as a bonus, my friend Donna Hatch is hosting a pre-conference Regency Fans Tea Party at a pretty reception center. We’re dressing like we live in Jane Austen’s time and bringing a teacup and planning to be on our best manners while we catch up on each other’s lives.

Most of all, I can’t wait to see the people. There are too many to mention, but I really, honestly love and care about them. It pains me to think what my life would be like if I hadn’t found writing as my outlet for creativity, because I might not have many of these incredible men and women as influences in my life.

Last year, as my additional writing event, I attended a workshop done by David Farland (Wolverton.) Brilliant. Lots of information—and again, I was able to meet some people who, months and months later, are still men and women I count as friends. Dulice, Shelisa, Chris, Linda—we’re connected by this hobby/pursuit/obsession. We cheer for each other’s victories. And we only met for a couple of days. It’s pretty amazing.

A few years ago, I dragged my sister-in-law to L.A. to attend a screenwriting conference put on by Writers Digest. I learned things there that I still think about as I’m writing and when someone asks me for advice about writing. What an experience for me, a mom from rural America.

Later this fall, I’ll be attending a new conference, the 20BooksVegas Conference. I’m really looking forward to meeting a more diverse group, but who I’m guessing will all be connected by this same drive to write and publish. I’m really looking forward to learning from all their experiences.

I make time to do these things because they’re so valuable to me. If you’re a writer, wherever you are, try to find a group of like-minded people to write with, who will cheer you on, pick you up when you’re down, and help you reach the next level.

May you find the conference and group of writers that help you reach your best.

My Friend Cami Checketts has a New Book You’ll LOVE

The latest Billionaire Beach Romance, Alcatraz Takeover, by bestselling sweet romance author, Cami Checketts, is out and available on Amazon.

When Athena Haddad’s father and brother are killed, she busies herself working at her wellness studio and helping her mom fight MS. Little does she realize how flat her life has become–until she meets Nixon Browning. The billionaire is expanding his chain of health stores along the west coast, but he doesn’t appreciate her beautiful city and she thinks his products are over-priced and worthless.

Athena sets out to teach Nixon about the city and its history while ignoring his inherent kindness, sharp intellect, and the warmth that spreads through her body when he touches her. Nixon is determined to help her mom battle MS no matter what Athena thinks of his vitamins.

In an unexpected turn of events, their tour of Alcatraz becomes a fight for their lives, forcing them to let go of their pride and work together. If they can survive The Rock, they may be able to bring life and color to the sparks of romance between them.

NEW BOOK RELEASE ALERT: Mergers & Acquisitions

Book 4 in the Legally in Love Collection is live! I’m so excited to be able to announce…

Mergers & Acquisitions!

 

 

 

A chance acquisition of a priceless piece of art at a yard sale looks like the key to lawyer Jillian’s happiness—a way out of her soulless job as lawyer to Hollywood actors. But gorgeous banker Aero, whose kiss turns her knees to water, seems bent on stopping Jillian from putting it in her new gallery. Keeping hold of her acquisition may require a merger.

If you like a good, sweet contemporary romance, these are all standalone novels with breezy plots. I recently became a Hallmark Channel Christmas movie addict, and I realized, hey. This is pretty similar to what I write!

I hope you like it. Writing it was a blast–the story pretty much wrote itself. The hero is swoony, the heroine smart and fearless, and their matchmaker is no less than Hollywood’s quirkiest child actor.