Progress and Typographical Errors

I have written every day for the past several days, but only a couple hundred words a day.

Is this progress? Perhaps.

Allegheny Beast and the level of detail required for a thorough synopsis have taken all the fun out of my revisions. I decided last week to change the secret army operation in the story to some sort of environmental terrorist organization. In preparing a "character sketch" of that organization, I thought it might be cool to make it a group of college kids who originally went out to the woods to play Live Action Role Playing games. They picked the location in hopes of seeing the Allegheny Beast. But how do you make the leap from role playing geeks to dangerous environmental terrorists?

In my mind, you don't. Since I had planned to submit this manuscript, I have to hash out the details so that I can make the revisions to both the synopsis and the manuscript. But having too many details mapped out, even for revisions, has destroyed the fun of the writing process.

Have I learned a lesson?

I don't like writing with a detailed outline in front of me. In fact, it has ruined this project for me.

I have switched to the prequel to my Fashion and Fiends series, because it's a romance with some paranormal elements. But because it's loosely attached to the series, would I want to market it to romance publishers?

It's Étienne's and Basilie's love story, which happened more than 20 years before the trilogy I have done for the Fashion and Fiends series. But it's still Et and Bas. And yes, I could change the names and some of the details, but part of what makes the story special is that it belongs to Et and Bas.

Which brings into question my goals. See how this begins to fit?

Every published writer says to write the book, polish it, let it go, and market it to agents and editors with the same passion it took to write it. You must have that passion to make it. You have to have the passion to survive the "slings and arrows."

I'm looking for an agent, using the first book of the Fashion and Fiends series in my query. So far, no luck, but really, less than 20 rejections thus far. I'm not sure because I stopped counting. But with everything else on my plate, I've only been half-heartedly looking.

Meanwhile, I thought I'd finish and submit some romance manuscripts since many houses accept unagented manuscripts.

So, do I throw myself whole-heartedly into the agent search? Do I keep pushing in romance? Do I start that YA novel I have kicking in my head? Do I finish the project I was in the middle of what I got this brainstorm (inspired by LA Banks' workshop)? Do I write the short story I have plotted out for a call for stories for an anthology?

But I need a few days to write for fun. Even if I don't have plans for it.

Part of me is discouraged because of the books I read that disappoint me and the books I see coming from small, independent, and electronic-based presses. One author, at a press that markets very well on Facebook, caught my eye.

I went to her web site. The author web site. Her book comes out June 28. On the page on the web site for that book, one of her main characters' names is spelled inconsistently. Now I recognize that it was a simple inversion of letters while typing, but the author should have instantly noticed that and fixed it.

But (believe it or not) I decided to give her another chance. I clicked on the "read excerpt" link. In that passage, the author mixed up "pleas" and "please."

I fully believe that the eReader and the internet have given many authors a place that never had one before. I also believe that many less talented writers are seeing "print" and that's okay, because readers also have levels of proficiency. No one enjoys a book written above their comfort level.

But basic typing? And an editor who's paying attention?

I still want that.

Return to writing

So, I haven't written since Monday. I had pledged to let my synopsis rest, and start revisions (especially with the change from a military presence to a terrorist one) but it didn't happen.

To make matters worse, I didn't write anything.

This morning I've already revised a few lines of my synopsis.

But it's hard "to get moving again" when you've already "let the ball drop."

How do you get motivated?

Any way you have to.
Set deadlines.
Bribe yourself.
Make incremental goals.
Try a different project if the old one has you burnt out.
Write messier than usual/don't be so strict with yourself.

But write.

Major Plot Revision

Any writer who's approaching a deadline, whether imposed by someone or yourself, should know that it's always best to let a work rest for as long as you can, then review it, then revise it and send it.

In daily newspapers, you're lucky if you get 15 minutes to walk away from it.

In weeklies, you can build a day or two into a story's timeline to give it time to breath.

A synopsis is no different.

In this case, a friend asked to read mine. He's sent me the suggestions and I haven't opened the email yet because even though we had lunch and I know some of what it says, my fragile ego can't bring myself to open it.

(That is a BIG run-on, consider it reflective of my nervousness in this project.)

We're talking about Allegheny Beast. Over laughs and pizza, my friend Bill, my husband and I brainstormed changing the "villain" from the oh-so-cliché evil military compound to a paramilitary operation outside the government, or an evil pharmaceutical company, or a terrorist cell plotting biological weapons.

This is what is must feel like to work with a team of writers on a TV show. The ideas get bigger and better.

Now, why on Earth would I take a finished manuscript I had planned to submit to a major romance publisher's paranormal imprint and decide at the last minute to change the villain?

This isn't "let's make a few edits" or "tweak a character," this is major overhaul.

Yep, I'm crazy that way.

Like it wasn't enough to flip-flop genre, let's change characters too.

Such is the artists' life: You can't run from the impulse when your gut and your heart agree you'll have a stronger, more marketable manuscript.

For the record, this is not the same as the perfectionism I feel when I try to get Étienne's "frenchness" right in the Fashion and Fiends series. This is a change that improves the marketability of manuscript, not just me trying to be authentic.

Clues to building a synopsis

Somewhere around Tuesday, I finally found my voice for my latest synopsis.

Having complete these pesky detailed outlines for three other manuscripts, you'd think it'd be easy.

It's not.

Writing never is.

The trick to writing a decent synopsis is to remember you're proving your storytelling abilities, not merely outlining your novel. If you proceed in a "this happens" "and then" format, it sounds like a middle school book report.

But unless you have a gift for these things, finding the right voice for a synopsis can be tricky. It needs to evoke the mood of the genre, capture your craft skills and reveal what happens in the book, in a way that makes agents and editors want to read the book.

I don't have the answer for how to achieve this, but a synopsis is a detailed pitch followed through to the end of the book. So, I like to think about how the words sound when I'm typing them focus on flow, clarity and brevity.

Since this latest project is a paranormal romance, I have to focus on not only the murder mystery, not only the supernatural elements, but also the love story. And, being me, I need to find a way to write it so it doesn't seem sappy.

In my case, for the Allegheny Beast project, I've constructed a reverse outline to guide me with the synopsis. I've taken the manuscript and made an outline of what's actually in the story. Now from there (and yes this is time consuming and that part of it makes me crazy) I'm creating a detailed synopsis that has everything in it that I think might need to be there.

It's currently 924 words, and I expect another 500 before I finish. I'm not going to submit something that huge with my first three chapters. This will be my starting point to edit. Those of us who hail from the newspaper industry prefer to start with too much and whittle down than risk putting a story in the news hole and have blank inches staring back at us.

And we're not afraid to delete words. It's part of the process.

The conversion continues

A week and two days ago, on May 8 to cite the precise date, I came home from LA Banks' Fire Up Your Fiction workshop energized and convinced I could transform my paranormal suspense manuscript into a paranormal romance in about a week.

I have a tendency to make lofty goals.

The scary thing is: I usually achieve them. This time I did not, and the "failure" was intentional. I could very easily transform this manuscript if I lock myself in my office and write 24/7 until it's done. Author Molly Cochran might even encourage me and say that's a good thing, if it gets the job done and moves me further toward publication.

But selfishness is not a problem for me. In most areas of my life, I can be selfish. I also can be altruistic, but it's not natural for me. Blame it on my Taurean side.

I want to be a productive writer and a good mom. This is no different than dilemmas other people face. Some people balance a "real-world" career and writing. Some people balance jobs and hobbies. Some people struggle with the right blend of family vs. community/volunteer commitments. I think a politician faces this dualism daily. A politician (or a celebrity?) has a private and a public life.

So while I have undertaken this project because I think the market is right for it, I also need to NOT make myself crazy. If I strive to hit a self-imposed deadline and succeed, have I put forth my best effort? Will a week or a month make that much difference in the long run?

You could argue that markets change rapidly. Well, if that's the case maybe I've already missed the boat. Or maybe, if I get my manuscript mailed on Friday, it arrives in X place on the manuscript pile and gets on the desk of editorial assistant Ms. I-Hate-Werewolves, whereas maybe if I send it on Monday, it ends up in Y place, and Ms. I-Live-For-Shapeshifters reads it. You never know. Luck factors in greatly in this game.

I joined PLRW (the Pocono-Lehigh Romance Writers, our local chapter of Romance Writers of America) because my stories have always been relationship-driven and I know I can do this. I resisted because most of my stories have realistic (unhappy) endings. But if I can still tell the same story, make the main characters overcome with a happy ending AND sell it, who cares?

It's about hope. A good story gives up hope for humanity.

I had meant this entry to be an entry of what I've done on the manuscript lately. Yesterday I listened to some of the editor podcasts from Harlequin. I'm interested in their Silhouette Nocturne imprint. I'm having trouble with the synopsis. I can't decide how much detail to put in.

My friend Tiffani encourages me to write it as detailed as possible before I decide.

To that end, I'm revamping my manuscript outline to have a paragraph for each chapter. This is something way more organized than I usually do.

I also have concerns that my heroine doesn't have "good enough" supernatural powers. So I beefed them up, which in turn heated the conflict. Of course, I'm starting to worry I've tread into the area of major rewrite as opposed to edits, but comes with the territory I guess. Though I also must remember part of this exercise is to practice "production writing," the kind where I expend my energy selling the text and not tweaking every last word for literary perfection.

Reshaping

I finished a solid draft of Allegheny Beast yesterday, rewriting portions to make it a romance instead of a suspense book. I sent it to a friend to read, and he so kindly pointed out all the obvious errors.

Whenever you're working on a project, trying to change the essence of what it is-- in this case changing a manuscript from suspense to romance-- leaves you open to intimate errors. An intimate error is an error made not because you've failed to do the research or build a compelling character. It's an error that you overlook because you have grown too intimate with the subject matter.

In my case, I wrote a new chapter one and moved the old chapter one to chapter three. I forgot to move the exposition from that original chapter one to the new chapter one.

This is a key reminder of one of the prime editing rules for any type of project. Always read what's on the page and track where it is and where it belongs.

After you read something 1,000 times, you start to see words that aren't there.